county courts reveal instances of great cruelty on the part of unfeeling masters, as when Samuel Gray, a minister of the Gospel, bound his runaway slave, who was still a mere boy, to a tree and compelled another slave to beat him until he died.[1] There were also cases in which children were torn from their mothers at an age when such separation would be a cause of poignant grief to the parent.[2] Suicide among adults was not unknown. In 1690, Bess, a negro woman belonging to Colonel William Byrd, threw herself into Falling Creek and was drowned. There is no light as to her motive.[3]
The increase in the number of negroes in the Colony towards the close of the century, the population of two thousand in 1671 having probably risen to six thousand by 1700, enlarged the opportunities of employment for persons who wished to follow the occupation of an overseer. Many of the slaves who had been imported had been imported directly from Africa, and were savages of a very gross type unaccustomed to any form of restraint. It was observed that those among them who had been important men in their tribes were insolent, haughty, and obstinate, and while this class was necessarily small, their characteristics must have been shared in a measure by such of their fellows as had never before been compelled to labor steadily and continuously. The supervision of
- ↑ Records of Middlesex County, original vol. 1694-1705, p. 238.
- ↑ Records of Rappahannock County, vol. 1677-1682, p. 20, Va. State Library. In this case, Elizabeth Craik bequeathed to one daughter, Frances by name, a negress and the third child to be born of her; to a second daughter, Elizabeth Moss, the first and second child to be born of the same woman. “I will that the two children the said negro woman shall happen to bear to the use of Elizabeth (Moss), be and remain with the mother until they shall be one year old, and that then they may be taken away.”
- ↑ Records of Henrico County, vol. 1688-1697, p. 170, Va. State Library.
