Browse Items (15 total)

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…

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…

In this detail of his lithograph celebrating the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, James Carter Beard illustrated the ability that the freedpeople had to control their own labor and acquire their own land after emancipation.

In addition to teaching freed men, women, and children to read and write, northern missionary and relief associations also established industrial schools for adults to help African Americans achieve self-sufficiency in the new free labor market.

The Seabrook Warehouse did not burn in Richmond's evacuation fire and reopened in June 1865. About two-dozen freedmen were employed at the warehouse at the time.

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…

P. C. Morgan's contract identifies the people he hired as he would have identified them back in slavery times, as belonging to his neighbors ("Irby's Henry, Hudson's Albert, Thomas's Ned, Peggie and Eley"). It also indicates that the hired people…

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,…

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…

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…