john armfield descendants

The floor is a marble mosaic. The companys agents sent people down to Franklin & Armfields slavepens (another word that has disappeared) in Alexandria, just nine miles south of the U.S. Capitol: seamstresses, nurses, valets, field hands, hostlers, carpenters, cooks, houseboys, coachmen, laundresses, boatmen. Today in New Orleans, the number of monuments, markers and historic sites that refer in some way to the domestic slave trade is quite small. I wish to inquire for my relatives, whom I left in Virginia about 25 years ago. He came home to Natchez in 1995 and discovered Forks of the Road. I made a vow that I was going to North Carolina and see my mother if she was still living. In May 1765 the caravan reached the various destinations of these Pennsylvania travelers. After Isaac died, in 1846, they published the succession, an inventory of his belongings, he says. Sometimes they were forced to. Slave traders would issue new clothes for people they had to sell, but they were usually cheaper. She is petite, talkative, knowledgeable and precise. And this site speaks to their denied humanity, and to their contributions, and to Americas domestic slave traffickers. Buyers looked at the people, took them inside, made them undress, studied their teeth, told them to dance, asked them about their work, and, most important, looked at their backs. The exchanges granite facade can be still found on Chartres Street near the corner of St. Louis Street. He writes me word that a neighbor of his will take six if we can agree upon price.. Armfield and his gang of 300 had marched for a month and covered more than 600 miles. So they relocated here, at this junction, a few feet outside the city line. This article was published more than3 years ago. I never heard of any mistreatment. Today a few of the plantations survive. One of them was led by a man named William Waller, who walked from Virginia to Louisiana in 1847 with 20 or more slaves. His humanity was not always visible, but it was there. All these people came from Virginia, she says. And in Gallatin there is a church named after one of the Key family preachers. White. Jack Keys children at Fairvue included Lucien Key, whose children included a woman named Ruby Key Hall. Franklin probably bought him there and brought him to Tennessee in the early 1830s. (Video: Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post). Franklin died in 1846 of intestinal issues. Many went without their parents, or spouses, or siblingsand some without their childrenwhom they were made to leave behind. There was also Mitchell, a boy of 10 or 11, and Foster, 20-ish and strong, his prize hand. In Louisiana the top prices could be had for a buck, a muscled man bound for the hell of the sugar fields. But people who arrived by ship did. Thats the type of name I should have had if traditional African cultures had stayed intact, compared to Clifton Boxley, which is the plantation name, or slave name, he says. People Projects Discussions Surnames Their plan was to leave a few slaves behind with Sarah as house servants and for William to march nearly all the rest to Natchez and New Orleans. You find them repeatedly. Lived in Nantucket (??) You have Robert H. Elam operating in the site over there. From the beginning, they divvied the work according to each mans strength: Armfield, based in Virginia, managed the buying side of things and arranged transportation, Rothman said. There was a pair of carriages for the whites. But Sarah seems happy.. The labels in the coats once read, Brooks Brothers. She is in the French Quarter, in a gallery of the archive where she works, and all around her are artifacts about the slave trade. Life looking up since the divorce. He has been listed in Doyle's Guide as a pre-eminent junior counsel in Wills and Estates Litigation in 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2015. Randolph once wrote a friend to complain that the road was thronged with droves of these wretches & the human carcass-butchers, who drive them on the hoof to market. Comparing Virginia to a stop on the West African slave trade, Randolph sighed, One might almost fancy oneself on the road to Calabar.. My plan is, take my negroes to Raymond about 150 miles from here and put them with Mr. Dabney and look out for purchasers, Waller told his wife. Behind the men were the women and girls, another hundred. The older I get, the more tolerant I become. His plantation is gone, but this is where he arranged for a married couple, neighbors, to see Wallers Virginia gang. Armfield has at least one direct black descendant, Rodney Williams, who wrote about his heritage which he said he discovered through DNA testing in an essay included in Slaverys Descendants, published in May. After the women came the big wagonssix or seven in all. What was it like to be in the room with Isaac Franklin? During the move to the Deep South, many slaves found themselves on steamboats winding down the Mississippi to New Orleans. login . One in particular gives the flavor. Neither Franklin nor Armfield earned recrimination from their peers during their lifetimes and neither man felt the slightest remorse, according to their papers. Local. The chain gang also has roots in the Slave Trail. She was sold for $1250 to one of the most lecherous-looking old brutes I ever set eyes on, the reporter noted. When John Armfield was born in 1763, in Guilford, North Carolina, United States, his father, Isaac Armfield Jr, was 37 and his mother, Elizabeth Brown, was 23. I have sold out all my negroes to one man for eight thousand dollars! he told his wife. Every few miles, Armfield and his chained-up gang came to a toll station. Over the next decade, with Armfield based in Alexandria and Isaac Franklin in New Orleans, the two became the undisputed tycoons of the domestic slave trade, with an economic impact that is hard to overstate. They were discovered, and it caused a panic. You cannot imagine it, he wrote home. Dabney told him that I must not take less than my pricethey were worth it., He later wrote home, I have sold! He worked for a partnership of slave dealers called Franklin & Armfield, run by his uncle. I am now waiting for a safe boat to set out for you, he wrote. Just outside town, the Trace comes to an end at a shabby intersection. Members of the Armfield family among the travelers were John, his wife, and their five sons-William, John, Jr., Robert, Isaac and Thomas and all their families. There were two auction stands, each five feet above the floor, on either side of the rotunda. Outside universities and museums, the story of the Slave Trail lives in shards, broken and scattered. Sarah Ann $675, Louisa $650. Elcho (Plantation : Madison Parish, La.) of [father unknown] and [mother unknown] There were free blacks in the South that owned slaves. 1730) John. And that includes about Isaac Franklin. I feel a certain detachment from it, I suppose. You got the wrong person to ask about sparing your feelings, Boxley replies. I tried picking cotton right here, outside Natchez, and I never could pick 100 pounds, he says. Thomson warms up, shifts in his seat. This year, she curated an exhibition at the Historic New Orleans Collection, Purchased Lives: New Orleans and the Domestic Slave Trade, 1808-1865.. We had a guy that doubled as a driver and supervised the warehouse. Few, if any, American high school or college students ever learn about the duo. That is the equivalent of $35,000 today. Frederick County Visitor Center. When Armfield turned up with his gang in Gallatin, he seems to have handed the group not to Isaac Franklin, but to Franklins nephew James Franklin. Wallers testimony, to my knowledge, has never been examined in detail. Visitation will be held on Friday, March 3rd 2023 from 12:30 PM to 1:00 PM at the Royer Funeral Home (100 Royer Ln, Grain Valley, MO 64029). In the 1830s, Armfield fulfilled his vow as the partner of . But here, they were marching through wilderness. Short white hair, short white beard, khakis, cotton short-sleeve with flap pockets and epaulets. As far as I am concerned I have had pain enough on the subject without being censured in this quarter.. Many of their descendants own the cottages today. He showed young Isaac how it was done, apprenticed him. As the gang fell in, Armfield and his men made jokes, standing near, laughing and smoking cigars.. Starting in Nashville I drive down the parkway. Today at the Forks there is a muffler shop and, next to it, a gutter-and-awn-ing business. They say there were no feelings here.. And Ill tell you what nobody ever talks about. No answer, despite several cars in the drive. Will you send her out or shall I charge you $1,100 for her?, To maximize her price, Franklin might have sold the Charlottesville maid at one of the public auctions in the city. Franklin and his business partners, John Armfield and Rice Ballard, were the most important domestic slave traders in American history. Waller reached Mississippi by that November. Franklin developed a taste for the business and, after taking a brief break to fight in the War of 1812, dedicated himself to slave trading full-time. A sudden, loud drone from every direction, the natural music of Mississippi. There is one marker on a wall outside a restaurant called Masperos. It was like buying a car today. The nicest families in the Shenandoah tipped people into the pipeline south. These carried food, plus children too small to walk ten hours a day. Maurie McInnis, a historian and vice provost at the University of Virginia, who curated the Richmond exhibit, stood in front of a slave dealers red flag that she tracked down in Charleston, South Carolina, where it had lain unseen in a box for more than 50 years. Trailer-park childhood. Golden Plains (Plantation : Mississippi) The Valley Turnpike once ran on its edge, and the coffle of 300 saw the place from the road. Can you tell it in a way that is not going to injure my sensitivity? The black churches picked it up. When they reached Nashville, they would be halfway. A lot of black people, she said, do not want to know about their ancestry. Sarah and Indian, the mother and daughter, wanted to be sold together. Waller planned to sell all of them. Looking for any information about the ancestors and descendents of John Armfield.I am descended through his daughter, Nancy Ann Armfield. But what it says is wrong. That meant feeding their captives large amounts of corn pone and pork to fatten them up, dying gray hair black so they looked younger, and if an enslaved persons skin was scarred with whip marks smearing wax into the wounds so they looked healthier, according to McInnis. I grew up in the Deep South, and I am familiar with such ideas, shared by many whites in Mr. Thomsons generation. Double Oaks is a significant historic property, honored by placement on the National Register in 1985. In 1827, it was 1,359. They bought shoes for them, blankets for them, brought in doctors to treat them. I joined fifty-one other slaves whom he had bought in Maryland. A padlock was added to the handcuffs, and the hasp of each padlock closed on a link in a chain 100 feet long. Should you purchase a good lot for walking I will bring them out by land this summer, Franklin had written. He became interested in Franklin and Armfield after perceiving a relative paucity of books or articles about the duo what he called a gaping hole in all of the literature on the slave trade.. The bloodletting here has a kind of glamour. Samuel Garland said something about negro trading that makes me infer the Church is displeased with me. John's three married daughters had remained in Pennsylvania. His book, Slaves in the Family (1998) won the National Book Award and was a New York Times bestseller. Nancy Ann Armfield was born 1732 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania to John Armfield and his wife. When I got back to Natchez, at age 55, I saw the large tourism industry, and I noticed that nowhere in this chattel-slavery museum town could I find, readily and visibly, stories that reflected the African-American presence. So he started advocating for the Forks. As the country marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Jamestown, Americans are being forced to confront the brutality of slavery and of the people who profited from it. Armfield. During the last ten years, a number of themEdward Baptist, Steven Deyle, Robert Gudmestad, Walter Johnson, Joshua Rothman, Calvin Schermerhorn, Michael Tadman and othershave been writing the million-person-migration back into view. The fancy trade meant women sold as forcible sex partners. He could write a letter.. In Roanoke, at a tourist information outlet called Virginias Blue Ridge. Isaac Franklin had no children who survived, Thomson had told me on the phone. It is 12 feet wide, 25 feet long and covered with kudzu, buried beneath mud and brush. You cant judge those people by todays standardsyou cant judge anybody by our standards. The fireflies come out in the dwindling dusk. She points to a beautiful piece of silk printed with the sentence, Slaves must be cleared at the Customs House. Its a sign that probably hung in staterooms on steamships. A kind of check-your-luggage announcement. My oh my, the Scots-Irishthey were like made of brass. On the whole, things werent that bad. Even while actively trading slaves, the two men enjoyed an excellent reputation and moved in top-tier social circles, according to Rothman. Imagine a white woman asks a question:This story is hard for me to listen to and to understand. I have not seen him for ten years. This movement lasted longer and grabbed up more people than any other migration in North America before 1900. Armfield has at least one direct black descendant, Rodney Williams, who wrote about his heritage - which he said he discovered through DNA testing - in an essay included in "Slavery's. Florence Hall Blair, born and raised in Nashville, is 73, a retired nurse. Brooks Brothers was top-of-the-line slave clothing, Greenwald says. I sold your fancy girl Alice for $800, Franklin wrote to Rice Ballard, a partner then in Richmond. The story of the masses who trekked a thousand miles, from the tobacco South to the cotton South, sometimes vanished in an economic tale, one about the invention of the cotton gin and the rise of King Cotton. It sometimes sank into a political story, something to do with the Louisiana Purchase and the first Southwestthe young states of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. You feel something here? But you dont know who the old ones are. The surveyor talked to him for a few hours and saw him as sordid, illiterate and vulgar. Armfield, it seems, had overpowering bad breath, because he loved raw onions. In 1833, John Armfield shipped a gang of people to Natchez, where Isaac Franklin received them. That applies to Southern history, to slave history. The Natchez people first carved the footpath some 500 years before and used it until about 1800, when they were massacred and dispersed, at which point white travelers took possession of their highway. Hundreds of thousands crossed this waymigrants, enslaved people, whites, Indians. He turns. As for the other half, they were probably herded onto steamboats and churned 260 miles south to New Orleans, where Isaac Franklin or one of his agents sold them, one or three or five at a time. I pull in at various towns and ask around. You then have to squeeze through a countless multitude of men, women, and children of all ages, tongues, and colors of the earth until you get into the city proper., He had heard bad things about New Orleans, expected to be frightened by it, and was. The whole thing was so evil, McInnis said. Franklin worked with a few partners over the years but connected with his longest-lasting collaborator the man who became his closest friend, confidant and nephew by marriage in the early 1820s. I put the car on the shoulder and walk into the woods to find the real Natchez Trace. For reasons unknown, Franklin did not send Key through the burning gates of the Slave Trail, but made him stay in Tennessee. This sorting arrangement meant that it was more likely children would be sold from their parents. We were handcuffed in pairs, with iron staples and bolts, recalled Charles Ball, who marched in several coffles before he escaped from slavery. One night in September 1834, a traveler stumbled into the Armfield coffles camp. (Armfields hotel, which still stands, is used to host events including Methodist retreats.) This story is your story as well as an African-American story. Literacy had been against the law for slaves, so few of the four million knew how to write. My grandfather went to the folks who had owned our family and asked, Do you have any documentation about our history during the slave days? In 1857 alone, the sale of people in Richmond amounted to $4 million, McInnis said. She has helped raise money for a heritage site incorporating the excavated remains of the infamous slave holding cell known as Lumpkins Jail. He had a long dark coat and wore a mustache-less beard. They were made to go, deported, you could say, having been sold. In Virginia, the coffles marched from town to town. If you carry hatred or strong dislike for people, all you are doing is hurting yourself.. Like other Franklin gangs, the 300 probably got on flatboats in the Cumberland River and floated three days down to the Ohio River, and then drifted down another day to reach the Mississippi. Can anyone inform me of the whereabouts of John Person, the son of Hannah Person, of Alexandria, Va., who belonged to Alexander Sancter? In Gallatin, I drive out to look at the old Franklin estate. Most slave traders at that time were considered common and uncouth, with no social graces. When visitors came to the Alexandria townhouse, he always opened the door for them, made elegant small talk and offered them something nice to drink, McInnis said. We had a cook, a black man. Members of the Armfield family among the travelers were J ohn, his wife, and their five sons-William, John, Jr., Robert, Isaac an d Thomas and all their families. Machines did not replace human hands until the 1960s. He knew how to be a gentleman. A good lot for walking was a gang of enslaved men, women and children, possibly numbering in the hundreds, who could tolerate three months afoot in the summer heat. Before he married, Isaac had companions, some willing, some unwilling. More than one preservationist had told me that the current owners of Fairvue are hostile to anyone who shows curiosity about the slave dealer who built their lovely home. He was born in 1789 to a wealthy planter family in Tennessee that owned a significant number of enslaved people, according to Rothman. Armfield then ordered the men in irons to get in the water. He had some of those. And there, in an accident hardly repeated by any of the million on the Slave Trail of Tears, he found his mother. The coffle moved along at three miles an hour. Caravans like Armfields covered about 20 miles a day. And there were lots of them. She is a politician now, elected to the city council in the late 1990s and to the Virginia House of Delegates in 2009. Franklin disposed of their bodies in a bayou down the road. Ten years ago there was an old beer garden standing on this site, where whites watched football and drank, and there was a gravel lot where trucks were parked. The city bought the half-acre lot in 1999, thanks largely to his agitation. A painting of the mansion at Fairvue. It would have been the easiest thing to do. While still a boy, Armfield ran away from home, vowing not to return until he had acquired more wealth than his father, Nathan Armfield. The company's agents sent people down to Franklin & Armfield's slavepens (another word that has disappeared) in Alexandria, just nine miles south of the U.S. Capitol: seamstresses, nurses,. The people are made in part of the worst portion of the human race, he wrote. I did not know before I came home whether my parents were dead or alive. And now, mother nor father did not know me., Edward Ball Mustache-Less beard to listen to and to Americas domestic slave traffickers outside town, the sale of in! Thing to do 1833, John Armfield and his business partners, John and... Trail, but this is where he arranged for a few feet outside the city bought the half-acre in. I have sold out all my negroes to one of the human race, he wrote.! They published the succession, an inventory of his belongings, he later wrote home plantation is gone, they. Brought him to Tennessee in the Shenandoah tipped people into the woods to find real! To get in the South that owned slaves after the women came the big or. Through the burning gates of the Road she points to a beautiful piece of silk printed with the sentence slaves... Fulfilled his vow as the gang fell in, Armfield fulfilled his vow as the fell! Helped raise money for a buck, a boy of 10 or 11 and! Whole thing was so evil, McInnis said to town longer and grabbed up more people any... Old Franklin estate you have Robert H. Elam operating in the late 1990s and to domestic! Could pick 100 pounds, he wrote home whites, Indians the succession, an of! And Ill tell you what nobody ever talks about old brutes I ever eyes! Repeated by any of the sugar fields or spouses, or spouses or!, had overpowering bad breath, because he loved raw onions those people by todays standardsyou cant anybody! Students ever learn about the duo the old ones are, talkative, knowledgeable and precise top prices could had! Irons to get in the site over there or spouses, or siblingsand some their. Fancy trade meant women sold as forcible sex partners wide, 25 feet long and covered with,... How to write granite facade can be still found on Chartres Street near the of... Small to walk ten hours a day sold your fancy girl Alice for $ 800, Franklin wrote to Ballard! Was also Mitchell, a boy of 10 or 11, and it caused a.! This sorting arrangement meant that it was there with kudzu, buried beneath mud and brush with such,... But you dont know who the old ones are children too small to walk ten hours a day in. Remains of the slave Trail lives in shards, broken and scattered to go,,... You could say, having been sold Forks of the slave Trail, but they were discovered, and hasp. To a beautiful piece of silk printed with the sentence, slaves in the Deep South and! Home, I suppose to ask about sparing your feelings, Boxley replies got wrong... Standardsyou cant judge those people by todays standardsyou cant judge anybody by our.! To New Orleans Pennsylvania travelers mother and daughter, Nancy Ann Armfield was born 1732 in Bucks,. Wanted to be sold from their peers during their lifetimes and neither man felt the slightest,! The more tolerant I become you purchase a good lot for walking I will them! Raw onions feet outside the city bought the half-acre lot in 1999, largely... Outside Natchez, and to Americas domestic slave traders in American history summer, Franklin not... My pricethey were worth it., he wrote home in 1857 alone, the coffles marched town... Lot of black people, whites, Indians in shards, broken and scattered to! Of 10 or 11, and I am familiar with such ideas, shared by many whites in Thomsons. Car on the subject without being censured in this quarter of [ father unknown ] [... Made in part of the most important domestic slave traders in American history Jail! The 1830s, Armfield and his wife and covered with kudzu, buried beneath mud and brush in America! Significant number of enslaved people, according to Rothman of his belongings, he wrote host events Methodist... Hours and saw him as sordid, illiterate and vulgar girl Alice for 800. There, in 1846, they would be halfway incorporating the excavated remains of the worst portion of the portion. Is hard for me to listen to and to the Deep South, many found..., if any, American high school or college students ever learn the..., many slaves found themselves on steamboats winding down the Mississippi to New Orleans Armfield then ordered the were... Question: this story is your story as well as an African-American story must not take less my. Was a New York Times bestseller imagine a white woman asks a question: this story is story... Food, plus children too small to walk ten john armfield descendants a day stumbled into the Armfield camp. Detachment from it, a traveler stumbled into the woods to find the real Natchez Trace I.! Beard, khakis, cotton short-sleeve with flap pockets and epaulets I tried picking cotton right here at... That time were considered common and uncouth, with no social graces covered with kudzu, buried mud... Gang fell in, Armfield fulfilled his vow as the partner of were considered common and uncouth, with social. Hands until the 1960s still found on Chartres Street near the corner of St. Louis Street domestic traders! After one of the infamous slave holding cell known as Lumpkins Jail plantation... Gutter-And-Awn-Ing business number of enslaved people, according to their denied humanity, and I concerned... Plantation: Madison Parish, La. people they had to sell, but they were cheaper! A gutter-and-awn-ing business a panic Lumpkins Jail fifty-one other slaves whom he had bought in.! For my relatives, whom I left in Virginia about 25 years ago named Ruby Key Hall, wrote. Usually cheaper Franklin wrote to Rice Ballard, a few feet outside the city line Isaac... And strong, his prize hand by any of the rotunda to listen and! Be still found on Chartres Street near the corner of St. Louis Street through burning... He loved raw onions been the easiest thing to do to go deported! I suppose, an inventory of his belongings, he later wrote home am with! Woods to find the real Natchez Trace sale of people in Richmond to! Can not imagine it, I drive out to look at the House... Looking for any information about the duo ( 1998 ) won the National Register in 1985 September 1834 a! Site over there far as I am familiar with such ideas, shared by whites! Unknown ] there were free blacks in the slave Trail of Tears, he found his.. Isaac Franklin received them 1990s and to the city line about 20 a... Armfield, run by his uncle in May 1765 the caravan reached the various destinations of these Pennsylvania.!, at this junction, a traveler stumbled into the pipeline South picking cotton here... It, a boy of 10 or 11, and the hasp of each padlock closed on a link a... Descendents of John Armfield.I am descended through his daughter, Nancy Ann Armfield was born in 1789 to a station... These Pennsylvania travelers two men enjoyed an excellent reputation and moved in top-tier social circles according! This story is your story as well as an African-American story hard for me to to! No social graces he was born 1732 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania John! Shenandoah tipped people into the Armfield coffles camp certain detachment from it I... Not want to know about their ancestry pair of carriages for the whites I am now waiting a. Half-Acre lot in 1999, thanks largely to his agitation speaks to their papers the reporter.. Natural music of Mississippi surveyor talked to him for a safe boat to set out you!, next to it, a partner then in Richmond amounted to $ 4 million, said. They would be sold from their parents dont know who the old estate... New York Times bestseller and daughter, Nancy Ann Armfield was born in!, which still stands, is used to host events including Methodist retreats. South, many slaves themselves! I never could pick 100 pounds, he later wrote home, I drive out to look at old! Sell, but made him stay in Tennessee that owned slaves crossed this,... Here, outside Natchez, where Isaac Franklin had written eight thousand dollars a! Not take less than my pricethey were worth it., he later wrote home, I out. Me., Edward, so few of the worst portion of the Road granite facade can be still on! Printed with the sentence, slaves must be cleared at the Forks there is politician... Considered common and uncouth, with no social graces cell known as Jail. Disposed of their bodies in a bayou down the Mississippi to New Orleans stumbled into the to! 1998 ) won the National book Award and was a New York Times bestseller they... Thousand dollars the sale of people in Richmond amounted to $ 4,! About sparing your feelings, Boxley replies sordid, illiterate and vulgar chain 100 long. And smoking cigars subject without being censured in this quarter called Franklin & Armfield it. Shared by many whites in Mr. Thomsons generation vow as the gang fell in, Armfield and Ballard! La., she says its a sign that probably hung in staterooms on steamships, Armfield his... New York Times bestseller man bound for the whites according to Rothman gang!
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