Browse Items (15 total)

In this contract, Catharine L. Cate agreed to work as a cook for B. J. Johns for the rate of $5 per month along with lodging and rations ("found"). They agreed that any changes to the contract would be made before a local Freedmen's Bureau agent,…

In 1866 the General Assembly authorized local overseers of the poor to "bind out," or apprentice, orphaned or homeless African American children to responsible adults to raise, educate, and provide training in some useful occupation. The Virginia…

After slavery, African Americans controlled their own labor and by the end of the nineteenth century more African Americans owned their own farms in Virginia than in any other state.

On January 1, 1866, William H. Eubank hired African Americans Bob, David, George, Patrick, Louisa, and Susan to farm his land for the ensuing year. The labor contract specified what Eubank would pay each of them and that he supplied lodging and…

In April 1868, James B. Carter, an African American member of the constitutional convention, purchased a lot at the corner of Thirteenth and Hull Streets in the town of Manchester and opened a grocery store in partnership with Richard Smith. It's…

This November 1865 contract between William D. Floyd, of Lunenburg County, and six members of the Burnett family is a fairly typical agreement by which a landowner allowed workers to farm his land in exchange of a share of the crop that the workers…

In December 1865 Nancy Arvin contracted with William Arvin Jr., possibly her former owner, to care for his farm for a suit of summer and winter clothing for her and three of her children and for wages for two of her other children. In the aftermath…

In June 1865 Hanover County farmer Slaughter B. Bullock contracted with his former enslaved laborers to work for him for stated wages and a place to board on his farm. The agreement was unusual (and unusually fair) in that it allowed either party "to…

In December 1865 Pollard Gaines, an African American, contracted with Royall H. Eubank to work his Nelson County farm, tend to all the livestock, repair buildings and fences, cut and haul firewood, fill the ice house, and cultivate the garden "for…

In 1867 a former enslaved man named Peter Wiggins petitioned the Westmoreland County Court to gain custody of the two sons and two daughters he and Malinda Thompson had before the Civil War; but because Wiggins had been married to a woman named Ann…