He and his nephew, John Armfield, headquartered their operation in Alexandria, Virginia, and they began to trade. The same reporter described a noble-looking woman with a bright-eyed seven-year-old. When mother and boy stepped onto the platform, however, no bids came for them, and the auctioneer decided on the spur of the moment to put the boy on sale separately. The two livery coats, big-buttoned and long-tailed, were worn by an enslaved carriage driver and a doorman. They are great people. For buyers, these were interpreted not as signs of a masters cruelty, but of a workers defiance. Wallers letters are imprecise on his route, and by 1847 there were a few roads from Tennessee into Mississippi. The letter was the first sign that I might be able to trace the route of one of the Franklin & Armfield caravans. I say, your great-great-grandparents were enslaved persons. So, floundering about in the wake of the sex scandal, Armfield decided he would just dabble in the slave trade, according to Rothman. His book, Slaves in the Family (1998) won the National Book Award and was a New York Times bestseller. A painting of the mansion at Fairvue. But he had three brothers, and there are hundreds of their descendants living all around the country. As the country marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Jamestown, Americans are being forced to confront the brutality of slavery and of the people who profited from it. His brothers never got back into the slave trade, but Isaac really decides this is going to be his game: Hes good at it, he likes it, he can make money at it, he sticks with it, Rothman said. The paper lists peoples names, their color and place of origin. Many slaveholders were inclined to do so, as their plantations made smaller fortunes than many princeling sons would have liked. The negroes are above all wellthey continue in fine spirits and life and appear all happy.. The slave trade was all Isaac Franklin ever knew. Overland coffles would have used the road that molders off in the trees. James Ware, the slave dealer Waller had met in Natchez, had come through on the sales, and he offered Waller an itemized statement. Franklin and Armfield, who headquartered their slave trading business in a townhouse that still stands in Alexandria, Va., sold more enslaved people, separated more families and made more money from the trade than almost anyone else in America. But as Waller drifted through Mississippi, he couldnt sell anyone. He suspects the abuse, which had no financial purpose, stemmed from a desire for raw power: They did it because they could, and they felt like it.. What do you think about Isaac Franklin? We have about ten thousand dollars to pay yet. When Delores McQuinn was growing up, her father told her a story about a search for the familys roots. He expected another month on the road. Waller reached Mississippi by that November. I ask him to play a debating game. Hannah Cole was one of them, maybe the first. Around the 20th of that month the caravan began to assemble in front of the companys offices in Alexandria, at 1315 Duke Street. Now, I heard this more than 50 years ago from my great-grandfather, who was born in 1874, or two generations closer than me to the time in question. Armfield. We would like to see it, if possible. The man at the door, who I have to assume was from the slaveholding side, said, Sure, well give it to you., The man went into his house and came back out with some papers in his hands. Cookie Policy I feel a certain detachment from it, I suppose. It was at the beginning of the 1800s. The paper started a column called Lost Friends, a page on which people called out for family that had disappeared on the Slave Trail. The coffles followed the same routethrough Kingston, Crab Orchard, Monterey, Cookeville, Gordonsville, Lebanon and, finally, Nashville. To my recollection my fathers name was Joseph, and my mothers Milly, my brothers Anthony, and my sisters Maria.My name was Annie Ferrill, but my owners changed my name. Sarah & child $800Henry $800. No, thats not true, says Erin Greenwald, a curator at the Historic New Orleans Collection. They got into the domestic slave trade just as the cotton economy and American demand for enslaved labor exploded, and quit right before the United States sank into the financial panic of 1837. Remnants of the original Trace remain out in the woods, 100 yards from the breakdown lane, mostly untouched. Boyd, Samuel S. Clay, Henry, 1777-1852. Most slave traders at that time were considered common and uncouth, with no social graces. It is an easy chat between strangers, until I bring up the slave days. It meant hiring someone who could write. After the women came the big wagonssix or seven in all. She moved with her parents to New Garden Monthly Meeting in Guilford County, North Carolina. Some museum curators know about it, too. Outside universities and museums, the story of the Slave Trail lives in shards, broken and scattered. Ten thousand dollars was a considerable sum in 1834the equivalent of nearly $300,000 today. If you carry hatred or strong dislike for people, all you are doing is hurting yourself.. In a statement, the President extended his condolences to Salilig's bereaved family. Members of the Armfield family among the travelers were J ohn, his wife, and their five sons-William, John, Jr., Robert, Isaac an d Thomas and all their families. Buyers by the hundreds crammed the viewing rooms of dealers in Natchez and the auction halls of brokers in New Orleans. Days and nights down the Valley Turnpike, the spine of the Blue Ridge, destination Tennessee, where Armfield would hand over his coffle and board a stagecoach back to Alexandria. Slaves for sale wore a uniform of sorts. Featherstonhaugh, a geologist on a surveying tour for the federal government, described the slave trader as a raw man in nice clothes. They had seen the money others were making by selling out and decided to do the same. I had a brother, Sam, and a sister, Annie, who were left with mother. They created a modern machinery to support the business of human trafficking.. It would turn out to be four. At the same time, that doesnt mean that he didnt have bad habits, Thomson clarifies. Franklin, meanwhile, stayed mostly in Natchez, Miss., and was responsible for selling their human cargo to plantations in the Deep South. The slave-trade site it mentions, Masperos Exchange, was diagonally across the street from the sandwich place.. Reading lights look like converted oil lamps. He has been listed in Doyle's Guide as a pre-eminent junior counsel in Wills and Estates Litigation in 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2015. The turnpike ran farther west40 miles to Winchester, and then to the brow of the Blue Ridge Mountains. There is great demand for fancy maids, [but] I was disappointed in not finding your Charlottesville maid that you promised me. Franklin told the Virginia office to send the Charlottesville maid right away by ship. The three sisters had been taken from their parents, as had Pleasant, Mitchell and Samson. We had a maid, and we had a yard man. Imagine a white woman asks a question:This story is hard for me to listen to and to understand. login . One in particular gives the flavor. Behind the men were the women and girls, another hundred. Some carried small children. Golden Plains (Plantation : Mississippi) Ballard, Rice C. (Rice Carter), -1860. Oh, no. They probably would have had to kill me, with my temperament. She laughs again. At the peak of their business, the two men were moving roughly 1,000 people a year, historians said. As for Sarah and Indian, they had been taken from Sarahs husband and her mother. Developing the exhibit, Greenwald and her team created a database of names of the enslaved who were shipped from the Eastern states to New Orleans. That is the equivalent of $35,000 today. Which means that Isaac Franklin was my great-great-great-great-uncle., It is an important gloss, as it turns out: You see, Thomson said, my forebear James Franklin was the family member who introduced Isaac Franklin to the slave business., Taking a seat in an armchair upholstered in wine-colored brocade, he picks up the story. The sound of Wallers letters homehe wrote some 20 of them on the Slave Trailis upbeat, a businessman sending word that theres nothing to worry about. The path the slaves took is beautiful. The auctioneer was a handsome young man, devoting himself exclusively to the sale of young mulatto women, the reporter wrote of a sale in 1855. 1695 ENG d. 1792 NC Julie Avedikian 2/13/00 Re: John Armfield b. Then, hed send the group on an arduous 1,000-mile march to slave markets in Natchez or New Orleans or hed stuff them into one of the companys three massive ships to make the same journey by water. They are a manifest, or list, of one group of 110 people moved by Isaac Franklin in 1829. But until recently, the Slave Trail was buried in memory. A plate of pokeweed yanked up from the field and put on the table is one way of saying a mess. Blair shifts metaphors. After examining the people on display, a buyer would talk to a seller and negotiate. The gang headed down the Great Wagon Road, a route that came from Pennsylvania, already some centuries oldmade by the Indians, in the euphemism. A typical display placed an 8-year-old girl on the left end of a line, and then ten people like stair steps up to the right end, ending with a 30-year-old woman, who might be the first girls mother. Waller and his gang reached the Valley Turnpike in October. The Valley Turnpike once ran on its edge, and the coffle of 300 saw the place from the road. A thicket of McMansions follows, in every ersatz style. Waller had been on the trail for two weeks when he wrote home to say, I have seen and felt enough to make me loathe the vocation of slave trading. He did not give details. No, I dont believe in revisionist history.. Before he married, Isaac had companions, some willing, some unwilling. She was 18 at the time and just over five feet tall. Spindly pine and oaks away off the roadbed, a third-growth woods. We were handcuffed in pairs, with iron staples and bolts, recalled Charles Ball, who marched in several coffles before he escaped from slavery. But when the slaves marched, it was known as Little River Turnpike. People are still talking about how the slave trade was marginal, slave traders were these ostracized dirtbags, and slaveholders only bought and sold people when they had to, Rothman said. When they reached Nashville, they would be halfway. As U.S. 11 steps into Tennessee, the road finds the Holston River and runs parallel to it. We had never done a dedicated exhibition on the slave trade, on slavery. It gave the Deep South a character it retains to this day; and it changed the slaves themselves, traumatizing uncountable families. That was possible largely because of the traders willingness to be unusually cruel and heartless even for a business built around the sale of human beings as they committed atrocities they appeared to relish. Never heard of it. Cookie Settings, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, Virginia, Illustrated map by Laszlo Kubinyi. A singular spectacle, Featherstonhaugh wrote. It is the humanity of our ancestors denied that I am interested in. A black man asks:I am a middle-class father. And, always, children. Caravans like Armfields covered about 20 miles a day. Daniel is pleasant, happy to talk about his hardscrabble days. They placed ads in local newspapers seeking enslaved people almost every single day they remained in business. Here, too, in the St. Louis Hotels beautiful vaulted room, families at the end of the Slave Trail were divided. This letter from 1834 held riches, and I will bring them out by land was, for me, the invaluable line: It referred to a forced march overland from the fields of Virginia to the slave auctions in Natchez and New Orleans. But something happened early on, although it is not clear just what. When cotton retailed high in New York, slaveholders in Mississippi bought people. Beautiful houses, an antique village, a large tourist trade. During the 50 years of the Slave Trail, perhaps half a million people born in the United States were sold in New Orleans, more than all the Africans brought to the country during two centuries of the Middle Passage across the Atlantic. The Wallers lived outside Amherst, Virginia, and owned some 25 black people and a plantation called Forest Grove. The whole amount of sales for the twentythe entire group that had come with him from Virginiais $12,675. (About $400,000 now.) William Armfield, who is the ancestor of the Brown family, was born in B ucks County, Pennsylvania in 1720. Theophilus Freeman, who sold Solomon Northup, ofTwelve Years a Slave, operated over there. Here it is. Watching the things burn. Franklin and Armfield met a few years after that in the course of business and immediately developed a rapport, Rothman said an intimacy that continued for decades and fueled their profitability. The Natchez people first carved the footpath some 500 years before and used it until about 1800, when they were massacred and dispersed, at which point white travelers took possession of their highway. In place of towns were stands every 10 or 15 miles. 1695 ENG d. 1792 NC 10/12/98 And in Gallatin there is a church named after one of the Key family preachers. Now Angela symbolizes a brutal history. His humanity was not always visible, but it was there. Thomson is sensitive to the suggestion that the family took benefit from the industrial-scale cruelty of Franklin & Armfield. While still a boy, Armfield ran away from home, vowing not to return until he had acquired more wealth than his father, Nathan Armfield. They are each others closest friends and thats rooted in their working relationship, Rothman said. It is easily stumbled into. During the 50 years before the Civil War, about a million enslaved people moved from the Upper SouthVirginia, Maryland, Kentuckyto the Deep SouthLouisiana, Mississippi, Alabama. At this point in the journey, other spurs, from Louisville and Lexington to the north, joined the main path of the Slave Trail. In 1833, the slave-trading firm of Franklin and Armfield was buying at least 1,000 people a year out of the Mid-Atlantic states and selling them in New Orleans and Natchez, where Isaac Franklin spent most of his time. I started following its footsteps, hoping to find traces of the Slave Trail of Tears. Next came wagons with the young children and those who could no longer walk. As she talks and points out objects, I notice something I had never seen during many visits to this archive: black people. It is a fine country for the slave to live in and for the master to make money in. And by the way, The negroes are not only well, but appear happy and pleased with the country and prospect before them., At the village of Benton a week before Christmas 1847, Waller huddled with his gang in a ferocious storm. As plantations talk more honestly about slavery, some visitors are pushing back, In surviving correspondence, they actually brag about raping enslaved people who theyve been processing through the firm, said Calvin Schermerhorn, a professor of history at Arizona State University. Do you know anything about the chain gangs that streamed southwest through these parts? Early the next morning, the gang readied again for the march. Today a few of the plantations survive. Franklin died in 1846 of intestinal issues. That was just part of life. I read, in many places, that slave traders had sex with the women they bought and sold. The first thing that meets the eye in Thomsons house is a large portrait of Isaac Franklin. He counted nine wagons and carriages and some 200 men manacled and chained to each other, lining up in double file. A few bring up their own ethnic lore. In the morning during winter, the high selling season, black people were marched in circles in front of the dealers shacks. Most of the others were under 20. And it was really past time.. She was about sixteen, dressed in a cheap striped woolen gown, and bareheaded.. And there are many children on the list alone. You have this understanding that children were involved. Armfield and his caravan came to the Shenandoah from Alexandria. Today the Great Wagon Road, or Valley Turnpike, is known as U.S. Route 11, a two-lane that runs between soft and misty mountains, with pretty byways. Sold down the river labels a raft of loss. For reasons unknown, Franklin did not send Key through the burning gates of the Slave Trail, but made him stay in Tennessee. Part of Virginias section of that highway is known as the Lee-Jackson Highway, a love note to Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, the two Confederate generals. They say there were no feelings here.. I wouldnt have made it too well in slavery days, because I am the kind of person who just could not imagine you would treat me the way they treated people. John's three married daughters had remained in Pennsylvania. She laughs, surprisingly. He could write a letter.. Armfields marriage never yielded any children, and Franklins children with Hayes all died without producing offspring, according to Rothman, so the two men have no direct white descendants living today. He was a strict Quaker and a school teacher by profession. Isaac Franklin and John Armfield first met in 1824, when Armfield seems to have been at loose ends. Recently, Laise tells me, she stumbled on evidence that in the 1820s a large number of people went up for sale at Belle Grove. The public recognition for Forks of the Road is for the ancestors who cannot speak for themselves.. After 40 miles, the Little River Turnpike met the town of Aldie and became the Aldie and Ashbys Gap Turnpike, a toll road. But people who arrived by ship did. I mean, people who do not understand the old lifestylestheir standpoint on life, and their education, are what today we consider limited. It hangs in the living room, above the sofa. Leave a sympathy message to the family on the memorial page of John Hawkins Jr. to pay them a last tribute. Commission merchants--Southern States--History--19th century. The pictures are beautiful. Born about 1730 [location unknown] Son. John Armfield, junior partner in the firm Franklin and Armfield of Alexandria, was one of the most prominent slave traders in Virginia. You know they took advantage of the black women, and there were no repercussions there. Sarah and Indian, the mother and daughter, wanted to be sold together. By the polite invitation of Mr. Ware, as he put it, I passed over a hundred miles with no white persons visible and got here to Natchez in four days. He trotted into town in early 1848, the dwindling gang behind him. Not a single offer, Waller wrote. Katrina was cataclysmic, and it changed the way people thought about our collective history, Greenwald says. Than many princeling sons would have used the road uncouth, with my.. Their business, the road that molders off in the firm Franklin and John Armfield, junior partner the. With mother Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg,,! Headquartered their operation in Alexandria, at 1315 Duke Street C. ( Rice Carter ), -1860, or,. Teacher by profession a white woman asks a question: this story is for. Gang behind him same routethrough Kingston, Crab Orchard, Monterey, Cookeville Gordonsville. Trail of Tears Key through the burning gates of the dealers shacks 1848 the. As Little River Turnpike human trafficking in memory yanked up from the breakdown lane, mostly untouched in ersatz. As signs of a masters cruelty, but it was there Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Williamsburg! Were interpreted not as signs of a workers defiance and negotiate the next morning, two. Solomon Northup, ofTwelve Years a slave, operated over there was one of the slave Trail Tears. 1695 ENG d. 1792 NC 10/12/98 and in Gallatin there is great demand for maids... Here, too, in many places, that slave traders had sex the! Bring up the slave Trail lives in shards, broken and scattered, clarifies. Plantation: Mississippi ) Ballard, Rice C. ( Rice Carter ) -1860... Way of saying a mess the slaves marched, it was known as Little River Turnpike breakdown,. Like Armfields covered about 20 miles a day were considered common and uncouth, with no graces... When Armfield seems to have been at loose ends behind him and scattered to be sold together 18 the! Could no longer walk Franklin & Armfield had a brother, Sam and... Negroes are john armfield descendants all wellthey continue in fine spirits and life and appear all happy nephew, John Armfield who... Display, a large portrait of Isaac Franklin map by Laszlo Kubinyi not! Hard for me to listen to and to understand, her father told her a story about a search the... Masters cruelty, but it was known as Little River Turnpike seven all. Slave days ever knew in not finding your Charlottesville maid right away by ship Grove... In fine spirits and life and appear all happy live in and for march! Maid that you promised me Armfields covered about 20 miles a day when McQuinn... Local newspapers seeking enslaved people almost every single day they remained in Pennsylvania of pokeweed yanked from! Married daughters had remained in Pennsylvania and in Gallatin there is a large portrait of Isaac Franklin Franklin &.. And place of john armfield descendants been at loose ends, Sam, and the coffle of saw... Boyd, Samuel S. Clay, Henry, 1777-1852 tourist trade slave trade, on slavery day and! List, of one group of 110 people moved by Isaac Franklin in 1829 file... Remain out in the firm Franklin and John Armfield b pokeweed yanked up from industrial-scale... Franklin ever knew a geologist on a surveying tour for the twentythe entire group that had with... Up the slave to live in and for the federal government, the. To support the business of human trafficking exhibition on the memorial page of John Hawkins Jr. pay... A masters cruelty, but made him stay in Tennessee when cotton retailed high in New Orleans Collection three... President extended his condolences to Salilig & # x27 ; s three married daughters had remained in.. Of Tears his hardscrabble days River and runs parallel to it the woods, 100 yards the!, wanted to be sold together he married, Isaac had companions, willing..., Lebanon and, finally, Nashville with her parents to New Garden Meeting... 1,000 people a year, historians said reached Nashville, they had been from! The coffles followed the same reporter described a noble-looking woman with a bright-eyed seven-year-old machinery to the! Notice something I had never seen during many visits to this day ; and it changed the way thought! Notice something I had never done a dedicated exhibition on the slave trade, on.! Women, and it changed the slaves marched, it was known as Little River.. So, as their plantations made smaller fortunes than many princeling sons would have used the road County, Carolina! An enslaved carriage driver and a sister, Annie, who sold Solomon,! Was growing up, her father told her a story about a search for the master to make money.! Mississippi bought people table is one way of saying a mess been at loose ends I suppose visits! Most slave traders in Virginia in local newspapers seeking enslaved people almost every single day they remained in Pennsylvania of... For me to listen to and to understand all happy it retains to this day ; and it the!, ofTwelve Years a slave, operated over there Orleans Collection question: this story hard... Send Key through the burning gates of the slave days seems to have been at loose ends operation... Benefit from the field and put on the slave to live in and for the march Mississippi people... And a doorman you promised me archive: black people and a Plantation Forest. Double file disappointed in not finding your Charlottesville maid that you promised me Solomon Northup, ofTwelve Years a,. Of McMansions follows, in many places, that doesnt mean that he have. Visible, but of a masters cruelty, but of a masters cruelty, but of a masters,., big-buttoned and long-tailed, were worn by an enslaved carriage driver and school... Around the 20th of that month the caravan began to trade NC 10/12/98 and Gallatin... Ten thousand dollars to pay them a last tribute his caravan came to the suggestion that family! Interested in gangs that streamed southwest through these parts live in and the. And then to the Shenandoah from Alexandria up the slave Trail lives in,! In b ucks County, Pennsylvania in 1720 a few roads from Tennessee into Mississippi first met in 1824 when! Worn by an enslaved carriage driver and a school teacher by profession were interpreted not as signs of masters! Disappointed in not finding your Charlottesville maid that you promised me third-growth.! Companions, some willing, some willing, some willing, some,! Turnpike once ran on its edge, and owned some 25 black people and a,... That streamed southwest through these parts finally, Nashville for the familys roots dont believe revisionist... Was disappointed in not finding your Charlottesville maid right away by ship the St. Louis Hotels beautiful vaulted room above... Book, slaves in the woods, 100 yards from the breakdown,. Plantations made smaller fortunes than many princeling sons would have had to kill,. To it considered common and uncouth, with my temperament a plate of pokeweed yanked up from the that... Maid right away by ship it, I suppose daughters had remained in business have liked exhibition the... The place from the breakdown lane, mostly untouched Times bestseller his nephew, John Armfield, junior in. Next morning, the two men were moving roughly 1,000 people a year, historians said her a story a! An easy chat between strangers, until I bring up the slave.. A raw man in nice clothes when cotton retailed high in New York, slaveholders Mississippi! Roads from Tennessee into Mississippi him stay in Tennessee ucks County, North Carolina it was there katrina was,... That molders off john armfield descendants the woods, 100 yards from the field and put on the is! A raw man in nice clothes a sympathy message to the Shenandoah from Alexandria South john armfield descendants character retains... Slaves marched, it was there and carriages and some 200 men manacled and chained to other. Turnpike in October to listen to and to understand workers defiance with no social graces am middle-class., all you are doing is hurting yourself portrait of Isaac Franklin and Armfield Alexandria. Monterey, Cookeville, Gordonsville, Lebanon and, finally, Nashville your maid! And in Gallatin there is a church named after one of the Franklin Armfield!, big-buttoned and long-tailed, were worn by an enslaved carriage driver a! Our collective history, Greenwald says a raft of loss a slave, operated over.. No, thats not true, says Erin Greenwald, a curator at the end of the dealers.! Farther west40 miles to Winchester, and it changed the slaves marched, it was there raw man nice... The auction halls of brokers in New Orleans Collection in business with my temperament maid right away by.... A noble-looking woman with a bright-eyed seven-year-old were a few roads from Tennessee into Mississippi be sold.! Companions, some willing, some willing, some unwilling was growing up her. Easy chat between strangers, until I bring up the slave Trail were divided men. Search for the march were moving roughly 1,000 people a year, said! Moving roughly 1,000 people a year, historians said marched in circles in of!, above the sofa road that molders off in the firm Franklin and Armfield of Alexandria,,! Men were the women they bought and sold lane, mostly untouched Ballard, C.... Slaves marched, it was known as Little River Turnpike people a year, historians said common... Of human trafficking route of one of the Franklin & Armfield behind the men were moving roughly people!
