Bryan County, Georgia, neighbors Liberty County, where I normally research, and was partially formed from it in 1796. Although Bryan County’s probate records appeared to have all been lost in a fire in 1866, its antebellum deed records are a rich trove of records containing the names of enslaved people.
I recently went through the deed records for 1796-1829 (deed books A-D) and have added references to 995 names of enslaved people to the TheyHadNames.net website in records that include deeds of sale (conveyance), deeds of gift, marriage settlements, Sheriff’s sales, chattel mortgages (using enslaved people as collateral on loans), and other transactions involving them.
I’ve been resisting the temptation to work on neighboring counties, but a research request made me focus on the interactions between the enslaving families of Bryan and Liberty Counties, and the likelihood that some of the people formerly enslaved in Bryan County wound up in Liberty County. I hope to finish the rest of the antebellum deeds at some point.
You can find these records by searching the TheyHadNames.net site or see them all together here: https://theyhadnames.net/category/bryan-county/).
Many of the records contain descriptive information, such as ages and relationships. I hope the information may be of some solace to their descendants who have to read through these brutal records to find their ancestors.
“one negro wench named Hannah about eighteen years of age”
“Frank and Peg his wife”
“the negro fellow Toney, his wife Peggy, their two children Tom and Hercules.”
“Lucy & her child Pendar”
“Judy & her four children Moses, Jack, Nanny & Louisa, and Jack”
“a certain mulatto female slave called Clarissa and her infant child about two years of age called James”
“Affe and her infant Rina now at her breast”
“Rose and her two children Rinah & Chance”
“Bet her children Smart Scippio Caty & Sary, Mary her children Juno & Flora Fellow Peter, Minimia her children Nanny & Peggy”
“Balinda and her two sons Cyrus and Smart”
“a certain negro woman named Phillis a remarkable scar on the back of her left hand about seventeen years of age with her male child named Pumpkin a light mulatto upwards of two years old, and her future issue.”
Look at the multiple relationships named in this one record.
“London his wife Mary, new negroe Joe his child London, Sharlow his wife Clarasa, Sorrow, Nancy her children Guller, Ceser & Louisa, the latters children Ben & Sharlot, new negroe Sally her children Bellar & Sary, Sinder her children Jimmy, Ginny & Rhyna the latter’s child Toby, Bob his wife Lyda her children Robert, Grace, Eve & Adam, new negro Pegy, Andrew his wife Rose, her child Sarah.”
One deed record included a remarkable detailed inventory and appraisal of 50 people enslaved by John J. Maxwell, who lived at the Belfast Plantation, with ages and assessments of their fitness for work.
Bryan County is most famous for its Richmond Hill Plantation, the home of Henry Ford, but prior to the Civil War, it held both large and small slave labor camps (otherwise known as plantations). Buddy Sullivan’s “From Beautiful Zion to Red Bird Creek” has excellent information on the early settler families.
Anyone wanting to understand the climate of that time, however, should read “North by South: The Two Lives of Richard James Arnold” by Charles and Tess Hoffman of Rhode Island. Arnold, like other coastal Georgia planters, originally came from the Northeast. The authors explore his dual lives as a Georgia enslaver who spent part of every year attending to his mercantile interests in Rhode Island.
Published in 1988, the book quietly and meticulously eviscerates his delusions of being a benevolent slaveowner. Since my next research interest is an earlier Bryan County White settler, John Pray, who had similar illusions, I found the book fascinating. I wish the authors were still alive so I could tell them what the book meant to me.