reach of the English day laborer in the same age. The slaves of the seventeenth century had probably more ground for satisfaction in this respect than the slaves of the nineteenth, whose staple food was maize-bread and bacon. The negro of the seventeenth century also required less expensive clothing than the white servant. In the advertisement of a slave who had run away from his master, which was placed on record in York County in 1686, he is described as having been dressed in “red cotton,” and as wearing “a waistcoat, canvas drawers, and a broad brim black hat.”[1] In another case, the clothing of an African slave consisted of a full suit, a doublet, a pair of drawers, a pair of shoes and a cap.[2]
The county records of the seventeenth century show that the negro quarter had become a recognized part of the plantation buildings in the eighth and ninth decades.[3] The contents of the houses were of the simplest character, as may be discovered by an examination of contemporaneous inventories. An instance may be given by way of illustration. In the Stratton inventory brought before the Henrico court in 1697, the furniture and utensils in the cabin of one of the slaves are enumerated, and they consisted of several chairs and a bed, an iron kettle weighing fifteen pounds, a brass kettle, an iron pot, a pair of pot-racks, a pothook, a frying-pan and a beer-barrel.[4]
- ↑ Records of York County, vol. 1684-1687, p. 215, Va. State Library.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 19.
- ↑ In an old Survey preserved among the Ludwell Papers, a part of the Manuscript Collections of the Virginia Historical Society, it is stated that one of the lines “stopped at a poplar tree by the negroes’ quarter.” Thus estate belonged to Secretary Ludwell, 1678. The plantations of all the principal landowners were divided into Quarters. See, for examples, the wills and inventories of Ralph Wormeley and Robert Beverley on record or file in the clerk’s office of Middlesex County.
- ↑ Records of Henrico County, original vol. 1697-1704, p. 138. See, also, Records of York County, vol. 1664-1672, p. 190, Va. State Library.
