These “research snippets” are correlations found while documenting references to named African Americans in Liberty County, Georgia, probate, court, and church records. This is analysis and not confirmed. Please refer to the original documents referenced below to compare these speculations with your own research.
On March 1, 1844, Edward E. Pynchon, Chatham County, used as collateral on a promissory note of $8000 to Mrs. Mary E. Parsons and her children, Liberty County, via her trustee George W. Walthour “property” that included 23 named enslaved people and part of the plantation of the late Samuel Lewis. Some of the enslaved people on the list also appeared on Samuel Lewis’ 1828 estate inventory.
How are we to make sense of this record? Why does a man from Chatham County own some of the people enslaved by Samuel Lewis of Liberty County, and what does Mrs. Mary E. Parsons have to do with this? And, most importantly, what can research show us about the lives of these enslaved people?
In this first installment, let’s start with the connections among the slaveowners. Why? Because this kind of research can tell us where these enslaved people might have come from. It turns out that Edward Pynchon was married to Sarah Harriet Lewis, one of four daughters of Samuel Lewis and Drusilla Hines Way Lewis of Liberty County. Thus we see that his wife would likely have inherited some of the enslaved people mentioned in the 1844 document. In fact, Samuel Lewis’ 1828 will specifies which of his enslaved people are to be inherited by his wife and the four daughters.
Another Samuel Lewis daughter? Mrs. Mary Eliza Lewis Parsons, to whom Edward Pynchon gave his promissory note in 1844. Research reveals that all four of the daughters of Samuel and Drusilla Lewis married socially prominent men from Massachusetts. Mary Eliza’s husband, James Parsons, was the son of one of the founders of Amherst College. Pynchon himself attended Yale University. Further research into these men would likely reveal a web of connections to the Northeastern elite of the day.
All four Samuel Lewis daughters inherited people enslaved by their parents, both directly from him at his death in 1828 and likely later in 1829 when their mother Drusilla died. Her estate inventory reveals the names but does not show who inherited whom. However, her 1829 will does reveal some of this, and also reminds us that she was married twice, and had children from both marriages who inherited from her estate. By comparing the people mentioned in Drusilla’s will and estate inventory and in her husband Lewis’ will and estate inventory with the list of the 23 enslaved people used as collateral by Edward Pynchon in 1844 we know that at least some likely came from the Lewis estate.
But we know even more than this, and farther back. Drusilla’s father was Lewis Hines, brother to Charlton Hines (“Hinesville”), and in his 1840 will, her father named both of his wives and their children, including Drusilla, and divided his estate among them with the exception of certain enslaved people whom he distributed by name. Further, he stated that his executors were to sell not more than 40 of his enslaved people, with priority given to the ones purchased from the estate of the late Ann Pray (probably the mother of his first wife, Mary Jane Pray Sleigh Hines). Thus we know that some of his enslaved people came from the Pray family.
Research further back into the antecedents of Lewis Hines and Samuel Lewis would likely give us even more clues about where their enslaved people may have come from.
A side note: Samuel and Drusilla Lewis baptized their daughters in the Midway Congregational Church, which had both white and African-American members throughout its 1754-1867 history. It was worth a check of those records to see if any people enslaved by the Lewis family joined that Church, but none were found.
In the next installments, we will explore where the Lewis and Hines family members who inherited enslaved people moved to, and what this meant, and then compare the various documents to see if we can trace any of the enslaved people through time, especially to the 1870 census.