As Tropical Storm Debby bears down on us here on the Georgia coast, I’ve finished up Bryan County Superior Court Deed Book E (1830-1840), which contained the names of 650+ enslaved people and a wealth of records for people searching for their enslaved ancestors.
Normally I’m strict about only working on Liberty County records, but there is so much overlap with neighboring Bryan County, and the Bryan County probate records from before the Civil War have disappeared, leaving only these deed records. I started working on these because I was researching Flanders Pray, an African American educator Liberty County in the postwar period who turned out to have been held in slavery by the John Pray family of Bryan County. I plan to go back to that research now and then finish up the 1840-1865 Bryan County deed records later.
The loss of the probate records really puts a crimp in Bryan County genealogy research but some of those probate documents wound up in the deed records, including:
–an 1833 estate appraisal and division of William N. Gray, naming 87 enslaved people and identifying their new enslavers
–an 1837 estate appraisal for Mrs. Ann Pray, naming 69 enslaved people and giving their ages and capacity for work
–an 1838 estate appraisal for Mrs. Jane Stiles, naming 19 enslaved people and identifying their new enslavers
Even though this set of records included only a 10-year period, it included very valuable and rich records for people researching African American ancestors in Bryan County.
For example, a free man of color, James Dolly, sold 245 acres of land in 1830 to one of the largest land and slaveowners in Bryan County, Richard J. Arnold. Since even free people of color did not have legal rights, he had to use a White man, James Harn, as his “guardian” to finalize the sale. Dolly had purchased the land from William Dickerson.
Numerous family relationships were identified in these records, including:
–Prince, Nanny, and their children, Matilda, Little Prince, Henrietta, Binah and Mary (gifted by William C. Footman to his wife in 1832)
–Leah and her two children Matilda and Lucy (gifted by Ann Maxwell to her daughter Mary Ann Maxwell)
–Rebecca, about 35 years old, and her child named Riner, about 8 months old (sold by John Burnside of Bulloch County to George Shuman of Bryan County)
–Lisset and her children, Jane, Stephen, Levina, Washington, Dublin and Peter (used as collateral by Lewis Hines in 1839)
–Berry and his daughter Emily; Matthew and his wife Chloe; Matilda and her four children George, Mary, Margaret and Augustus (all put into a trust for Margaret Ann Dearing Harden by her father, William Dearing)
Children were sold by themselves:
–Will, about 10 years old, by Jekyl Shuman to Reuben English
–Dick, about 12 years old, by John and Jane Bradley of Liberty County to James N. Bird of Bryan County
Enslaved people were also used as collateral on promissory notes, and would be seized and sold at auction in case of default. In 1838 Lewis Hines used 29 people as collateral on a promissory note of $6267.05 to the “the trustees of the meeting house [Church], on the Neck Road, near Hardwick in the County of Bryan.”
In 1833, William King, a merchant of Savannah, borrowed $4300 from the “Georgia Infirmary for the relief and protection of aged and of afflicted negroes” and used part of the tolls from the turnpike road over the Ogeechee Causeway as collateral.
Sometimes related records can be found in neighboring counties. For example, in 1839, Raymond Harris of Bryan County had a problem with a promissory note for $12266.66 he had written to Sarah G. Haig of Chatham County (Savannah). He had used 46 enslaved people as collateral, but had only paid the interest, none of the principal, so had to add five enslaved people and his Palermo Plantation as collateral. This deed record named the five additional people, but not the original 46. So I looked in Chatham County records, since Haig was from there, and found the original mortgage naming all 46.
Unmarried women could and did own property, and were more likely to own enslaved people than land because people could be moved to their future husband’s land. When they married, however, all their property became their husband’s. So it was common for better-off women to have a trust created when they married in order to protect their property from their husband’s debts and enable them to pass their property down to their children if they died and their husband remarried. These marriage settlements usually name the enslaved people. Some settlements happened before marriage; others after marriage or were modified after marriage.
This record set included marriage settlements for William C. and Maria H. Footman, Charles Harper and Eliza Bennet (a widow), Charles A. Harden and Eliza M. Maxwell, Alexander W. and Cleminia Stephen, Beecroft and Jane Penney, White E. and Ann E. Harden, John Pray and Eliza Maxwell, William M. and Ann M. Maxwell, Joseph T. and Mary R. (Shrine) Simmons, Mary Jane Maxwell and Thomas F. Williams, Ann Constant Maxwell and Oliver Sturges Burroughs. Some of these couples were Savannah residents, but if property was included that was in Bryan County, the deed would also be filed there. These records are also a clue to check Chatham County (Savannah) records for these couples for more information on your enslaved ancestors.
You can find all of the Bryan County deed records abstracted so far at: https://theyhadnames.net/bryan-county-deed-records/.