On May 14, 2009, I posted a column, “The myth of the ‘master’s name.’” David E. Paterson posted a very detailed response to this column as a comment. I would like to use this space to briefly respond to a few points.
First, I would like to thank you for your detailed comments to my article. I do appreciate your bringing your different perspective into this conversation.
David’s comment: "He does not cite any authority for this alleged common belief. Even if the average citizen who is not well-versed in our history believes it, does anyone really teach that anymore, or is Hait setting up a strawman target, easy to knock down? I have not attended any ‘African-American genealogy classes’ so I cannot say if ‘many’ of them ‘inform their students that this should be the first place to look when trying to identify their ancestors’ owners. Students are told to look for white families nearby bearing the same surname.’”
My response: Do I really need to cite an "authority" for a commonly-held belief? This belief is held by most beginning African-American genealogists, as well as the “average citizen,” which you yourself concede. Furthermore, you admit yourself that you have never taken any African-American genealogy classes, and yet proceed to question my statement about what they teach. Here are two online classes, available free and online, in which the process of searching for white families of the same surname in order to locate the last owner of freed slaves, is described:
"Making a Breakthrough in your African American Research," Ancestry.com Webinar, taught by professional genealogist Marjorie Sholes: http://tinyurl.com/pby8fc Please note, also, that Ms. Sholes herself concedes, in response to a listener question, that only about 15% of all slaves took on the name of their last owner.
"Trails Back, Tracing Ancestors in Slavery through Census, Probate and Land Records," presented by Beth Wilson at the 2006 Annual Conference of the African-American Historical Genealogical Society: http://tinyurl.com/ou3dnb
Please note that these are not the only two lecturers in the world that present this course of action. I have also personally attended local presentations on beginning/intermediate African-American genealogy that teach the same methods.
David’s comment: "Hait concludes his argument with a set of statements that seem to dismiss the value of surnames as research tools to link ex-slaves to ex-masters."
My response: This was precisely my intent with these statements. My own study, as cited, showed an extremely low percentage of freed slaves that took their former masters’ surnames. There are many other records created both before emancipation and later during Reconstruction that identify slaves by both given and surnames. If none exist for a specific ancestor, then you can attempt to connect him to white families in the area. However, with such a small percentage of freed slaves taking their former masters’ names, the chances of success using this process are correspondingly small.
David’s comment: “‘These surnames may have been used and passed down over several generations.’ Pure speculation. Some historians, including Gutman and Litwack, have suggested the same thing, just as speculatively, but no-one has ever demonstrated it.”
My response: You claim this is speculation, then cite other sources for the same assertion, without demonstrating anything to the contrary. I have been a professional genealogist for several years, and have successfully traced quite a few of my client’s families into slavery. In one recent case, which I am not at liberty to identify further, I have been able to trace several generations of one enslaved family using the slave-owner’s family probate records and account books. The same surname was used across these generations, for a time period of at least sixty years, and it was not the name of the slave-owner.
David’s comment: “‘After being freed, these slaves would simply continue using the same surnames.’ This is also speculation. No-one that I am aware of has done any study of whether, or to what extent, names found in runaway ads (or in any other records made by slave masters) persisted into freedom and were used by the ex-slaves.”
My response: I believe that you are correct in that I am not aware either of any published study as to whether or to what extent names persisted into freedom. My source for this statement is based on my own study, on slaves of Prince George’s County, Maryland, of which this entire column was but a small part of the conclusion. I am currently continuing to compile the data of this study for future publication. However, in this study, I have already traced hundreds of the families listed in the Slave Statistics through subsequent federal census enumerations, even locating 20th century death records for many of them.
David’s comment: “The slave-owning South was a place of many regional variations. By 1860, Maryland was very different from states in the Deep South. Half the blacks in Maryland were free. The median slaveholding in Maryland in 1860 was 14 people, compared to Louisiana 49, South Carolina 39, Alabama 33, Georgia 26 (for examples). ... Not to speak of the different cultural milieu; Maryland was not a place of plantations with distinct separation of Big House from slave Quarter.”
My response: This is a misleading assertion. Maryland was, itself, “a place of many regional variations.” Southern Maryland, specifically St. Mary’s, Charles, Calvert, and Prince George’s counties, was very different from, say, northwestern Maryland, which reached into the Appalachian mountains, obviously not planting country; or north-central Maryland, which was settled mainly by Pennsylvania Dutch; or Baltimore City, which indeed held a large free black population, as did many of the larger cities in the U. S. at that time; or the northern Eastern Shore, with its large, anti-slavery, Quaker community. Southern Maryland, even into the 20th century, largely consisted of tobacco plantations. In the 1860 federal census, the African-American population in Maryland as whole – as you stated – was about half free. More specifically, 83,942 free blacks vs. 87,189 slaves; about 49.05% free. In Prince George’s County, in contrast, there were 1,198 free blacks vs. 12,479 slaves; about 8.76% of all blacks in the county were free, 91.24% were slaves. These slaves comprised 53.50% of the total population—black, white, and others—of Prince George’s County in 1860. And speaking to the “different cultural milieu,” there were quite a few plantations in southern Maryland, with the distinct “Big House [and] slave Quarter.”
David’s comment: “Hait stands at the end of a long line of historians and genealogists who reached the same conclusion urged by Hait. Beginning in the 1970s they challenged the assumption that ex-slaves took the last slave-owner’s surname. ... [Kenneth H. Thomas, Jr.]’s argument, by suggesting that ex-slaves were likely to reject links to their past as ‘stigmatic,’ does not seem to allow that ex-slaves may have chosen names that linked them meaningfully to a personal family past, whether that name coincided with an ex-slave master or not. Thomas makes the common mistake of framing the question incorrectly — essentially he asks whether slaves took the last slave master’s surname, or rejected the last slave master’s surname — as if slaves necessarily considered only those two binary choices.”
My response: I thank Mr. Paterson for citing several historians who reached the same or similar conclusions in their research as I have in my own. However, at no point in my article did I mean to imply the “stigma” that is seemingly central to Mr. Thomas’s conclusions. I did not state as much in this article, nor do I believe that this is the case. My research, and the conclusions that I summarized in this article, was only meant to show that slaves did not generally take the names of their most recent owner. It does appear that in some cases, slaves would bear the surname of a past owner, but that this surname had been accepted as their own, and had been passed down through several generations. I did not state this much in my article, though in hind-sight, maybe I should have.
David’s comment: “Although the Maryland Slave Statistics data is highly significant and suggestive for Maryland, Hait’s conclusions, and those of the historians cited above, should not be uncritically applied to the whole slave South.”
My response: I would never ask that any conclusion be uncritically applied. I welcome the differing opinions and perspectives that you have presented in your comments. All studies and conclusions, in my opinion, should comprise a dialogue, to attain a better understanding of the subject matter.
David’s comment: “I’m sure other researchers can share similar findings, but my analysis of marriage records in Upson County, Georgia, suggests that at least 80% of unmarried adult freed slaves between 1865 and 1870 shared the same surname as the last slave owner. And if you include unmarried freedpeople who shared a surname with a previous slave owner, but not the last slave owner, the percentage is even higher.”
My response: I am very interested in reviewing these findings that suggest 80% or more adult freedmen took the same surname as their last owner. I have never seen any other research, either genealogical or historical, that suggests that this number would be this high. I will email you so that we can discuss this further.
David’s comment: “The 1860 census found 12,497 slaves in Prince George’s County, Maryland, so that the Slave Statistics of Prince George’s County, Maryland (1867) account for about half the enslaved population.”
My response: The data I cited came from the legible, original Slave Statistics. Two of these lists were illegible due to damage. Many of the original lists were also destroyed. However, the register books for the Slave Statistics, into which the originals were copied, contain all of the lists. The number of slaves thus represented in the register books is much larger. Perhaps I will be able to post the full data in a later column.
But assuming that every single one of the “missing” slaves took the surname of his final master, this still barely brings the total to 50%. This does not disprove my conclusion. My intent was to show those genealogists who may have an interest in tracing their ancestors into slavery, that they cannot assume that their ancestor carried the surname of their final master, as is commonly believed.
David’s comment: “Hait’s use of the words ‘freedmen and women’—implying that his statistics are based on adult ex-slaves— is misleading. The lists embrace children down to infants (ages as of November 1, 1864 when a new Maryland constitution abolished slavery). It strains credibility that small children in a family would have chosen their own surnames; rather, (as my research and that of others has suggested) grown members of family groups selected surnames that reflected their own patrilineal and matrilineal heritage, as they saw fit.”
My response: Any implication that the statistics are based on adult ex-slaves was not my own. At no point did I state anything of the sort. My data are based on all slaves that were listed on the Slave Statistics, as I specifically stated in the text. Arguing that I deliberately implied or misled with reference to slave children is, as you earlier accused me, creating a “straw man” argument that can be easily knocked down. All of my research, both within Prince George’s County and without, agrees that small children generally bore the surnames of their parents.
David’s comment: “The fact that these names do not match the LAST owner’s surname is not surprising, although the degree to which they do not coincide in these Maryland lists is, admittedly, truly impressive.”
My response: This was my original thesis, and, despite the long response, you conclude by stating that my thesis is “not surprising.” Thank you.
I would like to remind you that, despite the extensive research you and I appear to have conducted, this article was written for a general audience. The majority of my readers are not likely to have conducted vast studies of large groups of slaves, as we have. Neither was this column written for—nor does it appear in—a scholarly journal designed to debate and discuss the detailed intricacies of research.
Many beginning African-American genealogists are under the impression that their enslaved ancestors bore the surname of their last owner, and that to identify the last owner of an individual born into slavery, one should search for white families with the same name. This is a common misconception, and one which my article was designed to refute. Might I have used a better example than Prince George’s County? Possibly, but the fact remains that my conclusions were sound. You yourself call them “not surprising.” Hopefully, this exchange will serve its ultimate purpose, and help to further educate genealogists.
Comments
It has been my understanding that a large majority of the slaves retained the surname of the white family with whom they identified - usually where their first America slave ancestor lived.The white owners of my family were Spencers, but I am told the Buchanans had the property near the end of slavery. We maintained the Spencer Name. On my maternal side, some of the family members were Reeds, while a brother took the name Mitchell. Another brother took the name, Walker. These were all
Plantation owners in the same county. I believe they shared the same mother, but had different fathers. The Mitchells were sold off to another state (Tennessee) and maintaned that name. They came back to Virginia to be with the Reeds and Walkers.
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