acres which he possessed in New Kent.[1] The estates of negroes were sometimes sufficiently large to require the appointment by the court of administrators to settle up their affairs.[2]
The pride of the Virginians was shown in the statute which provided that no black freeman should be allowed to secure by indenture the service of white persons to continue for the usual term of years,[3] but he was not forbidden to acquire an interest of that nature in an Indian or an individual of his own race. There seems, however, to be little room for doubt that the free negroes who had obtained an ownership in real estate were allowed to exercise the suffrage in the times when it was based upon a property qualification. When the privilege was thrown open to the freemen of the Colony without restriction, this right was not only enjoyed by the African freeholders, but it would be inferred that there was no discrimination in this respect against any negro who could show that he was not a slave, whether in possession of property or not. All freemen are included in the grant of the right of suffrage under the statutes passed in March, 1655, and in March, 1657, as well as in 1676, when the people had triumphed under Bacon.[4] In no instance is the black freeman excepted from the operation of these statutes by name. In the law of 1699, readopting the
- ↑ Records of York County, vol. 1664-1672, p. 327, Va. State Library. Leases for 99 years to negroes were not uncommon; see a lease of 200 acres for this period to Philip Morgan, a negro, by John Parker of Accomac, original vol. 1676-1690, p. 185.
- ↑ Records of York County, vol. 1664-1672, p. 495. Ajudgment for 486 pounds of tobacco against the estate of Edward Jessop, a mulatto, is recorded in Northampton County, original vol. 1683-1689, p. 258. An instance of a negro surety is found in the records of the same county, original vol. 1689-1698, p. 58.
- ↑ Hening’s Statutes, vol. II, p. 280.
- ↑ Ibid., vol. I, pp. 403, 475; vol. II, p. 356.
