A man who died in 1786 in Liberty County, Georgia, established a charitable fund that still – more than two centuries later – distributes funds derived from the labor and sale of enslaved people to local educational, historical, and philanthropic causes.
John Lambert and Establishment of the John Lambert Estate
In 1784, John Lambert, a planter from South Carolina, bought land in Liberty County in the vicinity of the historic Midway Congregational Church. The Church was founded by South Carolina planters who moved to the area in the 1750s after slavery became legal in Georgia and built by the enslaved people they brought with them. By Lambert’s death in 1786, the 32 people he was holding in slavery were busy providing for his livelihood on his plantation.
Inspired by the awakening of religious fervor sweeping the area, Lambert’s will had consequential results for both his enslaved workers and for the poor of his county. While he gave the usual bequests to some favored people and institutions, such as the Midway Church, he requested that the rest of his estate, including the enslaved people, be kept together and the annual income given to “any religious or good purpose” at the discretion of his executors and trustees. He recommended support for spreading the gospel, relief of the poor and orphans, and promotion of public education, as well as other causes supported by the Midway Church.
The only enslaved person named in the will was the driver, Toney, who was to be allowed to raise a few hogs, some extra clothes, or a bit of money once a year, at the discretion of the trustees. Lambert asked that the others be treated with as much leniency as possible. He wanted a small stock of cattle bought for them as soon as possible, and wanted them to have meat and rice, rum two or three times a year, and good summer and winter clothing. He asked that the minister visit them occasionally to give spiritual guidance. This likely indicates the way in which Lambert treated them during his lifetime. While Liberty County planters sometimes urged humane treatment of those they enslaved in their wills, Lambert’s decision to preserve his land and enslaved people as a charitable trust without heirs was highly unusual.
Lambert’s estate inventory put names to these enslaved people, along with values attached to their lives, expressed in British pounds. Scipio, highest valued at 100 pounds, was likely a young man in the prime of life. Men like Toney, the driver, valued at 85 pounds or Sancho, valued at 80 pounds, were probably slightly older or less physically fit but still valued for their productivity. Jamey, at 25 pounds, would either have been a child or an old man. Lucy, at 70 pounds, was probably at the height of her child-bearing and productive years, while Amey, at 12 pounds, was either very young or very old.
|
Name |
Value |
Name |
Value |
Name |
Value |
|
Toney |
85 |
Fortune |
85 |
Sancho |
80 |
|
Harcules |
80 |
Jamey |
25 |
Cesar |
60 |
|
Aaron |
70 |
Scipio |
100 |
Harry |
80 |
|
Summer |
80 |
Isaac |
80 |
July |
70 |
|
Billey |
65 |
March |
60 |
Tom |
50 |
|
Bob |
20 |
Catoe |
30 |
Cuffee |
40 |
|
Toney |
60 |
Will |
50 |
Sam |
40 |
|
Cate |
60 |
Lucy |
70 |
Moll |
20 |
|
Catherina |
70 |
Hannah |
75 |
Affey |
65 |
|
Venus |
75 |
Dinah |
70 |
Bella |
25 |
|
Priscila |
20 |
Amey |
12 |
Keeping the Estate Together (1786-1838)
The executors apparently obeyed Lambert’s wishes as regards the enslaved people. There is no record of them selling enslaved people before 1838, when an Act of the Georgia Legislature permitted them to disband the estate and the number of enslaved people was closer to 100.
Because of the coastal heat, planters in Liberty County and surrounding areas tended to retreat inland during the summer months, leaving their plantations tended by a white overseer. The Lambert plantation was even more isolated than most, with no white family in residence, and the settlement developed strong leaders whose influence as preachers reached outside of the Lambert community and was recognized by the Midway Church.
The Midway Congregational Church had accepted Black members since its founding, and church records list more than two dozen Lambert enslaved people as members between 1813 and 1839.
The estate also had duties to the local government, including provision of enslaved hands to work on the roads. In the mid-1830s, a list of enslaved men from the John Lambert estate was provided because they (among others) had been absent on a day they were supposed to be working on Liberty County roads. Each slaveowner was supposed to provide enslaved people to work on the roads for a certain amount of time annually. This list said that all but Driver Joe and Bristol had been absent and, thus, they were all to be flogged “on the first day of meeting next year.” Those to be flogged were Jimmy, Brister, Big Joe, Summer, Will, Tom, Sipio, Siah, Toney, Sampson, Hackless, Toby, John, Ned, Isaac, and Prince.
What were the trustees doing with the income during this time? As specified in Lambert’s will, they supported the education of poor whites at the local school, as well as poor white widows and orphans, but they also provided funding for Charles Colcock Jones’ Liberty County Association for the Religious Instruction of the Negroes. Jones created this mission after attending school in the Northeast, where he was exposed to abolitionist thinking. To reconcile his conscience with his future as a Liberty County slaveowner, he decided to devote his life to a religious mission to the county’s African Americans.
THE SALES BEGIN
The legality of the John Lambert estate arrangement was challenged in 1836, when another John Lambert, claiming to be the elder John Lambert’s nephew, sued, trying to have the will declared invalid on the grounds that it amounted to the illegal creation of a “perpetuity” and to the illegal manumission of the estate’s enslaved people. The claim appears to have been denied but may have provided motivation for the executors to seek an Act of the Georgia Legislature giving them permission to sell off the entirety of the estate—land and enslaved people. The trustees, who changed over time and had plantations of their own to manage, also had likely tired of the effort required to oversee an increasingly independent Black community. There was very likely also a connection with the Panic of 1837, which created a severe financial crisis affecting the value of land and the slave trade.
The Legislature granted its permission in 1838, and sales began in February of 1840. Across dozens of transactions, close to 100 people were divided among local planters.
What were the enslaved people feeling when they heard of the proposed sales? We do not have their own words, but any human can empathize with people who have been kept together as a group, and as families within the group, for more than 56 years when they learn they are to be parted.
The purchasers were all prominent local landowners and enslavers. Two were pastors of the Midway Church.
After being sold to the new owners, many of these enslaved people continued to attend the Midway Congregational Church.
AFTER THE SALES
Once the people and land were sold, the trustees reinvested the proceeds and began to make loans secured by more enslaved lives. Over the 25 years between the sales and the end of the Civil War, they made at least 95 documented loans to local slaveowners, who used 370+ enslaved people as collateral on the loans. If the loans were not repaid, the enslaved people risked being sold at auction in front of the courthouse to repay the debt. Included among the enslaved people at risk were George, to be sold on his own at 11 years old; Nanny and her six children under the age of 8; Jack and Dick, both 11; and Dinah and her five children under the age of 10. Although Liberty County slaveowners often tried to keep enslaved families together, this of course could not be guaranteed.
These loans undergirded and supported the institution of slavery in Liberty County throughout this period. Rice planters needed substantial credit to run their operations, and access to a reliable source of credit during difficult economic times was hugely valuable to them.
On paper, the documentation of these loans is very similar to today’s home mortgages. The difference was that living people were used as security. With a loan, there is always the possibility of default. Enslaved people named in these chattel mortgages would then be brought before the courthouse door to be sold at auction to the highest bidder, with no guarantee that families would be kept together. The human suffering entailed in these loans is incalculable.
DESCENDANTS
Of the Lambert estate people, most of their new enslavers died after the Civil War, meaning that there would be no probate documents (wills, estate inventories, etc) that would reveal the names of enslaved people. This complicates drawing a straight line from the list of people sold from the estate to today’s descendants.
However, there were people known by the surname of Lambert both before and after the Civil War. In 1864, Washington Winn’s estate inventory named a John Lambert, valued at $2500. John Lambert, later a freedman, voted in 1867 and also joined the Midway Congregational Church that year. He and probable relatives Phillis Lambert and Mary Lambert signed an 1867 labor contract to work on the Winn land.
Overall, there were 40 African Americans with the surname Lambert enumerated in the 1870 U.S. federal census, including 75-year-old Sampson Lambert, who very likely was the Sampson from the Lambert estate who was flogged in the mid-1830s for being absent from the road gang.
Liberty County today abounds in descendants both of those held in slavery by the Lambert estate and of those whose continued bondage was financed by its loans.
CURRENT DAY
How does the John Lambert estate fund distribute its profits in the 21st century? The Foundation is private but its tax returns are public and give us a view into the last eight years (2016-2023) of its operations.
The estate’s funds, which are believed to have dipped to about $15,000 after the Civil War–about $328,000 in today’s dollars–amounted as of 2023 to $1,124,912 in investments. The trustees distribute the annual profits to charitable institutions and churches, almost all of which are connected to the planter families of the past.
Recipients are usually:
–the Midway Museum
–historic churches that served the planter families of Liberty and Bryan Counties: Midway Church and Society, the Richmond Hill Presbyterian Church, Dorchester Presbyterian Church, Flemington Presbyterian Church, Riceboro Presbyterian Church.
–the Dorchester Village Civic Center, a community center housed in a restored 1938 brick schoolhouse; its founders include surnames found among the early planter families.
–the Liberty County Children’s Home
–the Fraser Counseling Center
–the Compassion Christian Church, which has a multi-campus presence in Savannah and surrounding areas. (Its ties to historic Liberty County and reason for inclusion in the list of recipients are unclear.)
Notably absent from the list are the many historically African American institutions and churches in Liberty County that could benefit from increased funding, both to further their charitable and religious missions and to preserve their historic buildings. It is unclear why institutions such as the Dorchester Academy, an historic Black school with deep ties to the African American members of the Midway Church, are not included.
The records on which this article is based, mostly documents of the Liberty County Superior Court, can be found on the TheyHadNames.net website. The description of the John Lambert estate after Lambert’s death is based on Dr. Erskine Clarke’s “Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic,” still the definitive source for Liberty County slavery era history. Dr. Clarke’s scholarship continues to benefit descendants of those held in slavery in Liberty County to this day.