It is commonly believed that most slaves took their masters’ surnames upon emancipation. In fact, many African-American genealogy classes 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.
The truth of this belief, however, does not stand up to scrutiny. Take a look at the following example:
In 1867, after the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution abolished slavery once and for all, the General Assembly of the state of Maryland established an office of the Commissioner of Slave Statistics for each county in the state. Maryland held the rare distinction of being a so-called “slave state” that did not secede from the Union; Missouri and Delaware were the only two other such states. The Emancipation Proclamation did not free the slaves of these three states—it only applied to the seceded states. The Commissioner of Slave Statistics recorded the names and ages of the slaves owned by each individual slave-holder in each county, with the intention of petitioning the federal government to compensate the slave-owners for the “loss of property” occasioned by the abolition of slavery. In other locales, such as the neighboring District of Columbia, slave-owners had successfully petitioned courts for such compensation. Even within Maryland, the Adjutant General had previously compensated those slave-owners who legally manumitted any slave that then served in the U. S. Army during the Civil War.
These “slave statistics” consisted of lists of slaves by name. In most cases their full names, including surnames, were provided. When checked against the 1870 federal census, one finds that these reported surnames remained attached to the families. The results refute the premise that slaves always, or even most of the time, took on their former owners’ surnames.
Among the 6,319 legible names of slaves recorded in the Slave Statistics of Prince George’s County, Maryland, the originals of which are held at the Maryland State Archives in Annapolis, only twenty-six (26) freedmen and women maintained the same surname as their most recent owner. This amounts to just 0.41% of the slaves held at the time of their final emancipation. An additional 388 (or 6.14% of the total) did not have any surname provided in these records. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that all 388 of these slaves took their masters’ surname, we still have a total of 414 out of 6,319 that used their masters’ name, which brings the total to a meager 6.55%. In other areas or locales, the total proportion of those slaves who did, in fact, use their masters’ name, may have been higher.
Freed slaves chose their surnames very carefully. At times, certainly, the freed slaves did take the name of their owner, but often they took the surname of a national figure, such as Washington, Jefferson, or Lincoln, or a locally prominent citizen. Just as often, if not even more often, slaves had their own surnames that they used even before being freed, as can be seen in many runaway ads and estate inventories, where a slave may be identified with a surname. These surnames may have been used and passed down over several generations. After being freed, these slaves would simply continue using the same surnames.
Comments
With the exception of Louisiana.
The Creole Family
In the Creole family the father was dominant. His word was law. He was not always a faithful spouse, but he was an indulgent parent. If he was a planter, he ruled his estate like a king. He had a large house, large crops, and a large family. He was a dutiful husband and accompanied his wife to balls, the theatre, and social events. He would go to the cafes to discuss business, play dominoes, and have a drink.
Young men were given their own quarters for entertainment purposes. They had mistresses who were Black or mulatto, but they couldn’t marry them. Having a mistress was an accepted custom because marriages were usually business arrangements, not for love, and the men expected their wives to be passive and innocent lovers.
A gentlemen took fencing lessons, went horseback riding, dancing, or played cards. He would fight duels if necessary and preferred to die rather than be dishonored.
Girls needed a dowry and had to marry before they were twenty-five years old. They usually had a “coming out” during an evening at the Theatre d’Orleans which marked the beginning of their search for a husband. The whole family attended the performance and sat in a box. Young men who were interested in the girl stopped by the box to pay their respects. They had intermediaries talk to the father 80 that they would be permitted to call on the girl at home. The first formal visit was brief, with the girl’ 8 mother and perhaps other relatives in attendance who would find out the young man’s intentions. After four home visits the father asked the young man if he was serious about his daughter. If the young man wanted to marry the girl the two fathers negotiated the dowry. A notary came to write a list of the couple’s possessions and drew up the marriage contract. Once the contract was signed, the families announced the engagement.
The girl’s family gave a big dinner at her house where the young man gave her an engagement ring. As a fiancee the young man could visit the girl whenever he wanted and take her out, but they were always chaperoned.
A few days before the wedding, the young man gave his fiancee a wedding basket with lacework (handkerchiefs, mantilla, fan), a cashmere shawl, gloves, jewelry. She could not wear the jewelry before the wedding, nor could she leave the house for three days before the wedding.
The Creoles liked to have weddings on Mondays or Tuesdays in Saint Louie Cathedral in New Orleans in the late afternoon. The bride wore a silk dress with pearls and lace. The veil was held in place with a crown of orange blossoms. The bride carried the same flowers in her bouquet. Later she left the bouquet in the church, put it on a relative’s grave, or sent it to the convent where she studied.
After the ceremony the members of the family signed the register. The guests then went to the bride’s home for the banquet. The bride cut the cake and gave pieces of it to single girls to put under their pillows. When the guests began to dance, the bride and her mother went to the bridal chamber where she took Off her wedding clothes and changed into her nightgown. The bride and groom spent their honeymoon in her parents’ house. They were expected to stay in the bedroom for five days or more.
DIGITIAL LIBRARY ON AMERICAN SLAVERY
Petition 20882406 Details
Location: St. Landry, Louisiana
Salutation: To the Honorable the Judge of the District Court in and for
the Parish of St. Landry (, )
Filing Court and Date: District, 1824-March-18
Ending Court and Date: District, 1824-May-21
General Petition Information
Abstract: Eulalie Simon and her husband, Michel Papillon, free people of color, petition to recover a debt from Charles Simon, also a free person of color. Charles borrowed $716.14 from Eulalie on 22 November 1822, providing a mortgage on a tract of land in the "Grand Prairie of Opelousas" as security. While Charles has paid one installment of the debt, he has "wholly refused to pay" the remaining $616.14. Therefore, Eulalie asks that Charles be condemned to repay the debt and that the mortgaged land be
seized and sold to satisfy the debt.
Result: granted
# of Petition Pages: 4
Related Documents: Judgment, 21 May 1824
Pages of Related Documents: 1
People Associated with Petition 20882406
Slaves: 0
Free Persons of Color: 3
Defendants: 1
Petitioners: 2
Citation Information
Repository: St. Landry Parish Courthouse, Opelousas, Louisiana
Records of the Fifth Judicial District Court
Record Group:
Document Number 845
Box:
Folder:
Book:
Volume:
Page:
Microfilm:
Processing Information
Transcribed?: No
Book Edition?: No
Record Created: 10/5/1996
Record Final Edited: 3/30/2004
Record Last Updated on: 12/20/2005 10:27:00 AM
Guillory Family: The infamous "Margarita" Case
In the early 1980's, a Louisiana court case made headlines when a woman sued the State of Louisiana to have herself declared to be of the white race, questioning a state law which required her to be registered as "colored" because her descent included 1/32 Negro blood. This woman was a direct descendant of my ancestor, Joseph Gregorie Guillory, and his slave, Marguerite (Spanish = Margarita). This 20th century court case brought to light long buried details of a 200-year-old courtcase that has become known as "The Margarita Case".
Joseph Gregorie Guillory was born c1712 on what is now called Dauphin Island (Alabama), the son of Francois Guillory and Jeanne Montfort. Francois Guillory had arrived in colonial Louisiana (Mobile, Alabama) c1707-1708 from Montreal and established himself on the eastern end of Dauphin Island (then called Massacre Island).
In 1739, Joseph Gregorie married Marie Jeanne LaCasse, the daughter of Jean LaCasse and Marie Anne Fourche. At the time of her marriage to Joseph Gregorie Guillory, Marie Jeanne was the widow of Joseph Stameyer (aka: Estamier dit Chateauneuf). Joseph, a soldier in the company of Le Sueur, had died in 1738, less than 10 months after his marriage to Marie Jeanne.
Joseph Gregorie Guillory and Marie Jeanne LaCasse produced at least 8 children before the death of Marie in April 1764 at the age of 38. Soon after Marie's death, two sons-in-law of Joseph Gregorie sued for their portion of Marie Jeanne's estate and an inventory was taken at that time which included nine slaves. Among them was Marguerite, a "Negro" slave who was pregnant on the date the inventory was made, 22 July 1764. Shortly thereafter, Joseph moved his children and slaves to Louisiana and settled at Opelousas Post where he had recently received a land grant of 640 acres. It is here that the "Margarita" case begins.
It is not known if Marguerite gave birth to the child she was carrying before arriving at Opelousas Post. It is now assumed, however, that the child Marguerite was carrying was "Catherine" (called Catiche, born c1764, fathered by Joseph Gregorie Guillory.
After the move to Opelousas Post, Marguerite produced three additional children fathered by Joseph Gregorie: Jean Baptiste (c1766), Joseph (c1769), Marie (c1770). (The fact that Joseph Gregorie Guillory was the father of Marguerite's children was never disputed.) After the birth of Marie in 1770, Joseph Gregorie Guillory went thru the motions of freeing his Negro mistress and their children.
At the same time, he convinced his legitimate children (who owned an undivided half interest in the slaves) that he was capable of paying them their portion of their deceased mother's estate without having to sell the slaves or divide them between the heirs. Joseph Gregorie Guillory then had a local schoolmaster draw up the emancipation paper. However, unbeknownst to Marguerite, the document was technicially invalid because the schoolmaster was not qualified to officiate at the manumission. Whether Joseph Gregorie was aware of this fact is unclear.
However, as stated by Winston Deville in the article entitled "The Margarita Case: Historical Perspectives on a Controversial Case in 18th Century Louisiana" (Louisiana Bar Journal, Volume 31, Number 2):
"We are left with the distinct impression that Guillory probably wanted to appease his mistress by giving her and her children what they would believe to be their freedom, yet have a loop-hole for the future."
On December 31, 1770, the emancipation act was recorded in New Orleans before Andres Almonester y Roxas, Notary Public.
However, in 1773, in order to settle the estate of his deceased wife, Joseph Gregorie Guillory legally conveyed his mistress, Marguerite, and his four mulatto children to his legitimate children, ignoring the 1770 emancipation. Their value was placed at 2000 livres.
Four years later, as death grew near for Joseph Gregorie, he went at night to the residence of his white children, threatened his son, Jean Baptiste Guillory, at knife point and abducted Marguerite. His legitimate children showed no opposition to their father's actions as he promised the return of the slave to them after his death, indicating he needed her services only during his life. Joseph Gregorie Guillory died between 1777 and spring of 1778 but not before giving Marguerite, once again, her freedom.
On April 27, 1778, my ancestor, Jean Baptiste Guillory, conveyed the story of the abduction to the commandant at Opelousas. In his petition, he demanded the return to slavery of Marguerite to his and his sibling's ownership. The Opelousas Post commandant transferred the petition to the high court of the
Cabildo in New Orleans (January 20, 1779).
The defendents, Marguerite and her Guillory mulatto offspring, contended that they had been freed in 1770 and that the plaintiffs had approved their emancipation. The plantiffs, on the other hand, insisted that the alleged manumission of 1770 was illegal; they were young at the time and their father had taken advantage of that fact; the so-called freed slaves had become solely their property in 1773, when their father had conveyed them to the heirs. Due the the obvious complexity of the case, the case was transferred to the high court in Havana, Cuba.
Note: Upon close examination of the case outline that appeared in the January 1935 edition of Louisiana Historical Quarterly, it appears that Marguerite's four mulatto children remained as slaves in the household of the legitimate Guillory children although the mulatto children maintained that they had been set "free". I have seen no evidence to suggest that Marguerite's children were with her between her 1777 abduction and the 1783 settlement of this case. In 1781, Claude Guillory, another son of Joseph Gregorie's, brought forth a suit in order to recover a slave that had run away (January 20, 1781, No. 3494, 13 pp. Court of Alcade Jacinto Panis, New Orleans). This slave, of course, was Marguerite, who was now reported to be living in New Orleans. As a result of this suit, Marguerite, and her employer, Miguel Barre, were arrested and put in prison. After producing the document to prove her emancipation, both Marguerite and Miguel Barre are released. The 1770 emancipation document, certified copy
presented in this case, stated as follows:
"I, Gregoire Guillorie, over my ordinary mark, of my own free will and that of my children, or the life and thirty years services rendered me by Margarita, my slave, not only to me but to my children before and after the death of my wife I declare that I give her her freedom as well as that of her children, on condition that she serves me up to my death. Done and executed of my own free will, April 13, 1770. Juan Batiste Guillorie, son, Ordinary mark of Mr. Gregoire Guillorie, Claude Guillorie, son, Luis Guillorie, son. Signature of Mr. Guillorie approved by Benoit."
On March 9, 1782, Marguerite, a free Negress, filed suit against the Guillory heirs to compel them to declare her children free (No. 3440, 71 pp. Court of Alcade Panis, New Orleans). Marguerite, once again presented the act of emancipation and indicated that her four children were suffering under the power
of the Guillory heirs who were unwilling to free them. Marguerite maintained that her children had been held by force and treated with cruelty by the Guillory heirs. (Click here to see a copy of Marguerite's petition.) Although the case dragged on for another year, the final outcome was this (as detailed in the act dated at New Orleans, April 5, 1783):
Marguerite, a free Negress, and her four mulatto children, were ordered to pay the Guillory heirs 600 pesos, in confirmity to and under the following conditions: 150 pesos which has to be counted as diminished by the personal labors of her son, Juan Bautista, during two years and two months that he must remain in the service of Juan B. Guillory, and 150 pesos that she has to pay in cash, 50 pesos more to be paid within three months, and the remaining 250 pesos within two years counted from this day. As soon as the amount shall be paid, the Guillory heirs agree to give Maria, Joseph, Juan Bautista, and Catalina their freedom.
Little is known about Marguerite's life after the 1783 settlement. It is known, however, that she was still alive on February 23, 1808 when her daughter, Marie, married Juan Mateos of Vera Cruz. Both Marguerite and daughter Marie are listed as "free". What few people knew at the time, however, was the intense struggle that Marguerite and her children went thru to become that way.
Comments on Michael Hait’s “The myth of the ‘master’s name’”
Recommended website: AfriGeneas.com
Michael Hait shines the spotlight on a series of Maryland-specific records that surely make researchers in other states drool with envy. Imagine how I would love to have an official document dating to 1867 that links a large part of the ex-slaves in Georgia to their last slave owner!
However, Hait’s main point is to debunk an alleged myth. He says: “It is commonly believed that most slaves took their masters’ surnames upon emancipation. . . . The truth of this belief, however, does not stand up to scrutiny.” 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.”
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. I have interlined my comments between Hait’s sentences:
“Freed slaves chose their surnames very carefully.” True
“At times, certainly, the freed slaves did take the name of their owner . . .” True
“. . . but often they took the surname of a national figure, such as Washington, Jefferson, or Lincoln, or a locally prominent citizen.” Deceptive statement. He is downplaying the value of surnames as slavery links by implying that ex-slaves chose a famous figure’s name more “often” than the former owner’s name. I’d like to see his statistics for that – although I don’t doubt it happened, in my Georgia research experience I have never seen a famous surname selected as an ex-slave’s surname.
“Just as often, if not even more often, slaves had their own surnames that they used even before being freed, as can be seen in many runaway ads and estate inventories, where a slave may be identified with a surname.” The topic of surnames used during slavery was forcefully introduced into historical discussion by Herbert G. Gutman in his book, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom (1976), and has been picked up by others. I have argued elsewhere that Gutman overstated his case; nevertheless, Gutman establishes that some slaves had surnames that linked to a former owner, or an enslaved father who belonged to a different slave owner. To what extent ex-slaves kept these names has not been studied. Leon Litwack, Elizabeth Regosin and others have published significant discussions of surnames selected by ex-slaves.
“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.
“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.
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). The implications for slave families (and hence, sources of surnames) include a much higher likelihood of cross-owner marriages and a much higher likelihood of free-to-slave marriages. Not to speak of the different cultural milieu; Maryland was not a place of plantations with distinct separation of Big House from slave Quarter.
For see an example, Slave Statistics of St. Mary's County Maryland are online at the Maryland State Archives website.
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.
Genealogist Kenneth H. Thomas, Jr., wrote in 1978: “One assumption long held about the South has been that at the end of the Civil War, newly free Blacks took the surnames of their masters.” His study of the freed laborers on a Georgia plantation in Marion County suggested a variety of different sources for surnames. He found only one person whose surname matched that of the presumed last former slave owner. In one of his more questionable conclusions, Thomas wrote that the lack of a match between ex-slave surnames and the surnames of local ex-slave masters “encourages the researcher to accept the names as genuine identification for the future rather than stigmatic links to the past.”
Thomas’ 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.
Like Thomas’ work, much scholarship in the 1970s focused on how many ex-slaves took the last master’s surname and how many did not. In my opinion, this approach incorrectly placed ex-slave owners at the center of an ex-slave’s new world. Occasionally writers attempted to show that by not taking the ex-master’s surname, former slaves were rejecting “old massa .” By this line of thinking, old massa still dominated the ex-slave’s self-identity and therefore required that the newly-freed slave either accept or reject an identity with the old owner.
Leon F. Litwack, author of Pulitzer Prize-winning Been in the Storm So Long (1979), pages 248-251, repeatedly quotes anecdotal examples to suggest that, “Scarcely ever did a Negro choose the name of his or her owner” (page 248).
Herbert G. Gutman (The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, (1876) pages 230-256) presented evidence found in records from the immediate post-freedom period, lists of wartime plantation lessees in emancipated regions, and lists made by Union Army and Freedmen's Bureau officials - to show that "relatively few [freedpeople] had the surname of their final owners" (page 232). Gutman concluded that from two-thirds to three-quarters of ex-slaves chose surnames different from their last owners. However, Gutman only rejects the argument that ex-slaves chose a surname other than that of the last slave owner—he specifically argues that many surnames had a relationship to some past owner. Despite an over-enthusiasm elsewhere in the book for finding slaves’ allegedly secret surnames embedded in slave master’s business records, Gutman’s discussion of surname selection is detailed and nuanced and deserves close reading.
Eugene D. Genovese also argued a more nuanced interpretation than Litwack or Thomas, but reached a similar conclusion about the last owner’s surname: “After the war slaves throughout the South took surnames or openly announced those they already had. . . . [T]hey did not usually take their master’s name, but neither did they always repudiate it. . . . They had had another and more significant reason for going back in time to take the name of the first master they had ever had, or perhaps of the first whom they could remember as having been a decent man: by so doing, they recaptured, as best they could, their own history. That the name had its origin with whites, sometimes even cruel whites, mattered little: for better or worse, it had become their own property. . . . The important thing was to establish a real history, preferably well back in time but in any event in a family experience.” (Roll, Jordan, Roll, page 446)
"To establish a link with the master’s family, or with some master’s family, often meant to establish a link with one’s own father. The idea that black people’s names today are “slave names” is true but distressingly twisted, for it overlooks the formidable black initiative in their creation.” (Roll, Jordan, Roll, page 446)
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.
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. Couples married in slavery seem to have used one surname after emancipation, usually the man’s name, and shared by the children (although there were occasionally older children in the family with different surnames). This makes surnames problematic when searching for the slave-owner of an already-married woman, where marriage records don’t exist to show the maiden name.
Do we have any idea how many genealogy researchers have been successful using the surname to find a former slave master, and how many have found the surname to be a dead-end? That kind of information would help validate the method.
Note: Also, although Hait's conclusions are essentially valid for the data he studied in maryland, his interpretation of the data exaggerates those conclusions. 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 (I guess a lot of ex-owners did not bother to submit lists to the commissioners. It cost 25 cents each to enroll names of in these lists, and required the oaths of two witnesses). 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. The naming patterns in the Slave Statistics of St. Mary's County Maryland (see link above) seem to support this. 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 ancestors shortened their name from Raiford (Rayford) to Ray. I have found evidence of this to be true. Once I discovered that, I realized that the rest of my ancestors on various parts of the family tree may or may not had kept the slaveholder's surname. I do hope to find slave inventories in the near future to help me.
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