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Black-Owned Businesses in the South, 1790–1880

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

Loren Schweninger
Loren Schweninger
Affiliation:
Loren Schweninger is professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.
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Abstract

This essay analyzes the changing configuration of black-owned businesses in the South over nearly a century. It divides the region into two sections—the Lower South and the Upper South—and examines changes that occurred prior to 1840, during the late antebellum era, and as a result of the Civil War. It uses a “wealth model” to define various business groups, and then creates business occupational categories based on the listings in various sources, including the U.S. censuses for 1850, 1860, and 1870. The article compares and contrasts the wealth holdings among various groups of blacks in business, and it analyzes, within a comparative framework, slave entrepreneurship, rural vs. urban business activity, color—black or mulatto—as a variable in business ownership, and slave ownership among blacks engaged in business.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 63 , Issue 1: Entrepreneurs in Business History , Spring 1989 , pp. 22 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1989

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21 City-Gazette and Daily Advertiser [Charleston, S.C.], 9 Jan. 1797, MESDA.

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28 Rawick, George, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, supplement, ser. 1, 10 vols. (Westport, Conn., 1979), vol. 4, pt. 2:368, 371.Google Scholar

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31 Receipt, William Shipp to Jean Meullion, 5 Feb. 1811, Meullion Family Papers; Milk, The Forgotten People, 57; RPPC, Natchitoches Parish, La., Successions, #375, 26 July 1839.

32 These statistics are derived from Woodson, ed., Free Negro Owners of Slaves, and Koger, Black Slaveowners, 20–21; see Halliburton, R. Jr, “Free Blacks Owners of Slaves: A Reappraisal of the Woodson Thesis,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 76 (July 1976): 129–35Google Scholar, and Schweninger, Loren, Black Property Owners in the South, 1790–1915 (Urbana, Ill., 1990Google Scholar [forthcoming]), 385–86. The number of free black families in the Lower South is a rough estimate derived from the general population figures in Berlin, Slaves Without Masters, 136–37. In a total population of 30,193, with about one in five counted as a family head, there were approximately 6,039 free black families in the region.

33 Berlin, “The Structure of the Free Negro Caste,” 297–319; and Slaves Without Masters, 136–37.

34 Memorial of the Richmond and Manchester Colonization Society, Presented January 1825, in Annual Reports of the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color of the United Staus, 91 vols. (1818–1910; rpt., New York, 1969), 8:55.

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42 Franklin, The Free Negro in North Carolina, 45, 144, 176 183, 190, 216; USMSPC, Casewell Co., N. C, 1850, p. 193 [Day]. In this and subsequent census citations, the page number in the upper right corner of the right-hand page is cited to include both the page on which the number appears and the facing page. The page numbers are usually printed, but occasionally they are holograph. Gatewood, Willard B. Jr, “‘To Be Truly Free’: Louis Sheridan and the Colonization of Liberia,” Civil War History 29 (Dec. 1983): 332CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Louis Sheridan to Joseph Gales, 20, 27 May 1836, in Records of the American Colonization Society, reel 26 [Sheridan]; John Hope Franklin, “The Free Negro in the Economic Life of Ante-Bellum North Carolina,” North Carolina Historical Review 19 (Oct. 1942), 369–70 [Sampson].

43 Legislative Records, Petition of the Inhabitants of Davidson County to the Tennessee General Assembly, 1801, #20–1-1801, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, Tenn.

44 Clamorgan, Cyprian, The Colored Aristocracy of St. Louis (St. Louis, Mo., 1858), 9Google Scholar [Mordecai], 15 [Charleville]; RCPC, St. Louis, Mo., Estates, #637, 29 July 1825 [Rutgers]; Christensen, Lawrence O., “Cyprian Clamorgan, the Colored Aristocracy of St. Louis (1858),” Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society 31 (Oct. 1974): 5, 6, 13, 14, 16, 22.Google Scholar

45 For Ivey, Sampson, and Sheridan see notes 40 and 42. England, J. Merton, “The Free Negro in Ante-Bellum Tennessee,” Journal of Southern History 9 (Feb. 1943): 54Google Scholar [Bryant]; Schwartz, Philip J., “Emancipators, Protectors, and Anomalies: Free Black Slaveowners in Virginia,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 95 (July 1987): 317Google Scholar [Batte].

46 [R. G. Dun and Company], The Mercantile Agency Reference Book (and key) Containing Ratings of the Merchants, Manufitcturers and Traders Generally, throughout the United States (New York, 1865).Google Scholar

47 USMSPC: Georgetown Co., S.C, 1850, p. 309 [Mitchell]; Sumter Co., S.C., 1850, p. 385; 1860, p. 133 [Ellison]. I have estimated Ellison's realty at $15,000, rather than the $8,300 Usted in the census. Koger, Black Slaveowners, 37–38, 62, 121–23, 132, 136, 144–45.

48 USMSPC: Mobile Co., Ala., 1850, pp. 464, 481; Southern District, 1860, p. 27; Northern District, 1860, pp. 136–37, 140 [Chastang and Collins]; Adams Co., Miss., Natchez, 1860, pp. 44, 120; Jefferson Co., Texas, 1850, pp. 481, 497, 499; Orange Co., Texas, 1860, n.p.; Muir, Andrew, “The Free Negro in Jefferson and Orange Counties, Texas,” Journal of “Negro History 35 (April 1950): 186Google Scholar, 191, 206 [Ashworths].

49 Computed from USMSPC, Louisiana, 1850; U. S. Census Office, The Seventh Census of the United States: 1850 (Washington, D.C., 1853), 474.Google Scholar The approximate number of rural free black families in the state was derived from dividing the total rural population by the average family size (6,302 by 5 = 1,260). In the nation, 22 percent of the families owned at least $1,000 worth of realty, and 13 percent at least $2,000. Soltow, Men and Wealth, 186.

50 Computed from USMSPC, 1850, 1860; Soltow, Men and Wealth, 64, 76, 81, 186; Menn, Joseph Karl, The Large Slaveholders of Louisiana—1860 (New Orleans, La., 1964), 316Google Scholar; Sterkx, The Free Negro in Ante-bellum Louisiana, 200–214.

51 United States Manuscript Agricultural Census [hereafter USMSAC]: St. John the Baptist Parish, La., p. 661; St. Landry Parish, La., 1850, p. 695 [Ponis]; Whitten, Andrew Durnford, 85, 88; USMSPC, Plaquemines Parish, La., 1850, p. 278; USMSAC, Iberville Parish, La., 1850, p. 81; USMSPC, Iberville Parish, La., 1850, p. 329; Clarke, James Freeman, Present Condition of Free Colored People of the United States (New York, 1859), 13Google Scholar; also see Mills, The forgotten People, 221–23 [Ricard].

52 USMSAC: Pointe Coupee Parish, La., 1850, p. 569; St. Landry Parish, La., 1850, p. 695; St. Mary Parish, La., 1850, pp. 727–29; Menn, The Large Slaveholders of Louisiana—1860, 79, 92–93; USMSPC, St. Mary Parish, La., 1850, p. 213.

53 USMSPC: Charleston, S.C., 3d Ward, 1860, p. 312 [Francis]; Charleston, S.C., St. Philip and St. Michael Parishes, 1850, p. 98 [Lee]; 1850, p. 129 [Brown]; 1850, p. 186 [Howard]; 1850, p. 156 [Mishaw]; 1850, p. 269 [Francis]; 1850, p. 110 [Green]; 3d Ward, 1860, p. 283 [Howard, ]; List of the Tax Payers of the City of Charleston for 1859 (Charleston, S.C., 1860), 389Google Scholar [Francis].

54 Johnson, “Free Blacks in Antebellum Savannah,” 418–31; USMSPC: Escambia Co., Fla., Pensacola, 1850, p. 135 [tailor Ransom Lambert]; Mobile, Ala., p. 299 [carpenter and builder Joseph Lorant]; Madison Co., Ala., Huntsville, p. 188 [livery operator John Robinson]; Lauderdale Co., Ala., Florence, 1860, p. 39 [barber John Rapier, Sr.]; Hogan and Davis, William Johnson's Natchez, intro.; USMSPC: East Baton Rouge Parish, La., 1850, p. 169 [grocer Michael Granary]; 1860, p. 481 [merchant B. J. Beauregard].

55 Catterall, Judicial Cases, 3:292, 589, 611–12; Walker, “Racism, Slavery, and Free Enterprise,” 354, 361–62 [Macarty]; USMSPC: New Orleans, La., 1st Mun., 7th Ward, 1850, p. 396 [Soulié]; New Orleans, 3d Ward, 1860, p. 257 [Lacroix]; 4th Ward, p. 82 [Casenave]; RPPC, New Orleans, La, Successions, #38,677, 27 May 1876, in New Orleans Public Library [Lacroix]; Curry, Leonard, The Free Black in Urban America, 1800–1850: The Shadow of the Dream (Chicago, Ill., 1981), 42Google Scholar [Soulié]; Rankin, David, “The Impact of the Civil War on the Free Colored Community of New Orleans,” Perspectives in American History 11 (1977–1978): 402–3Google Scholar [Lacroix].

56 Computed from USMSPC, 1850, 1860. For a detailed list of occupations in each group, see the appendix.

57 Robinson, Henry, “Some Aspects of the Free Negro Population of Washington, D.C., 1800–1862,” Maryland Historical Magazine 64 (Spring 1969): 52–53Google Scholar; USMSPC: District of Columbia, Georgetown, 1850, p. 186; Georgetown, 1st Ward, 1860, p. 3.

58 Jackson, Free Negro Labor and Property Holding, 97n, 156; USMSPC, Dinwiddie Co., Va., Petersburg, East Ward, 1860, p. 199.

59 Clamorgan, The Colored Aristocracy, 14; USMSPC, St. Louis, Mo., 2d Ward, 1850, p. 222; James Thomas to John Rapier, 3 May 1858, Rapier-Thomas Papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C.

60 USMSPC, Halifax Co., Va., 1850, p. 95; Jackson, Free Negro Labor and Property Holding, 107, 129 [Epps]; Gatewood, “‘To Be Truly Free,’” 332–48; USMSPC: Baltimore, Md., 9th Ward, 1850, p. 47 [Jakes]; Henrico Co., Va., Richmond, 1850, p. 248 [West]; Davidson Co., Tenn., Nashville, 3d Ward, 1850, p. 356 [Doxey]; St. Louis, Mo., 4th Ward, 1850, p. 49; RCPC, St. Louis, Mo., Estates, #4173, 12 April 1854 [Meachum].

61 Computed from USMSPC, 1860.

62 Ransom, Roger L. and Sutch, Richard, One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation (New York, 1977), 64–73Google Scholar; Reid, Whitelaw, After the War: A Tour of the Southern Stales, 1865–66, ed. Woodward, C. Vann (1866; rpr., New York, 1965), 211–12Google Scholar; Koger, Black Slaveowners, chap. 10; Mills, The Forgotten People, 237.

63 Rawick, George, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, 19 vols. (Westport, Conn., 1972-), vol. 5, pt. 4: 158Google Scholar [St. Mary quote]; Mills, The Forgotten People, 237 [Natchitoches quote]; Petition for Relief of Antoine Meullion, Dec. 1889, #8090, in Meullion Family Papers; RPPC: St. Landry Parish, La., Successions, #5040,14 Oct. 1890; Iberville Parish, La., Deeds, bk. 9 (15 July 1868), 221–23; J. Ward Gurley, Jr., to Charles Benjamin, 18 May 1875, RCC, reel 6; Koger, Black Slaveowners, 120–24, 193–95; Johnson and Roark, Black Masters, 314–15, 324, 330–31; Record of General Tax Return, South Carolina, 1865, 1866, 1867, SCDAH; Computed from USMSPC, 1860, 1870. Land values in the South dropped approximately 45 percent between 1860 and 1870; in some areas of the Lower South, they depreciated between 60 and 70 percent. The average total estate for adult males in the South dropped nearly 50 percent, from $3,978 for the free population in 1860 to $2,034 for whites in 1870. See U.S. Department of Agriculture, Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for the Tear 1867, 12 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1867), 102–19Google Scholar; Ransom and Sutch, One Kind of Freedom, 51; Soltow, Men and Wealth, 65.

64 Computed from USMSPC, 1860, 1870; USMSPC, New Orleans, La., 6th Ward, 1860, p. 189 [Labat]; Rankin, “The Impact of the Civil War,” 396–98, 403–6.

65 New Orleans Picayune, 9 Sept. 1874 [Lacroix]; RPPC, New Orleans, La., Successions, #38,677, 27 May 1876 [Lacroix]; Rankin, “The Impact of the Civil War,” 405 [broker John Racquet Clay].

66 Computed from USMSPC, 1860, 1870; Koger, Black Slaveholders, 197. Some of this decline came after the deaths of leading antebellum businessmen and the failure of their children to sustain their wealth holdings. See RCPC, Charleston, S.C., Estates: #239–25, 15 June 1876 [realtor Joseph Dereef]; #220–6, 8 July 1873 [tailor William McKinlay]; #243–20, 5 Feb. 1877 [builder Anthony Weston]; #158–19, 24 Feb. 1864 [butcher Francis L. Wilkinson]; Johnson and Roark, Black Masters, 202.

67 Computed from USMSPC, 1860, 1870. See “A Note on Sources and Methodology” and appendix.

68 Dennett, John, The South As It Is, 1865–66 (New York, 1965), 48Google Scholar; Trowbridge, John T., The Desolate South, 1865–66; A Picture of the Battlefields and of the Devastated Confederacy, ed. Carroll, Gordon (1866; rpt., Boston, 1956), 153.Google Scholar Despite the title, Trowbridge described areas in the upper slates that were conducting business as usual within a short period after the war.

69 Jackson, free Negro Labor, 202–4; Schwarz, “Emancipators, Protectors, and Anomalies,” 329–32; Franklin, The free Negro in North Carolina, 160.

70 Rabinowitz, Howard, Race Relations in the Urban South, 1865–1890 (New York, 1978), 62.Google Scholar

71 USMSPC: Kent Co., Del., Murderkill Hundred, 1850, p. 228; 1870, p. 192 [Colwell]; Baltimore Co., Md., Baltimore, 6th Ward, 1860, p. 541; Baltimore, 5th Ward, 1870, p. 159 [Adams]; District of Columbia, 7th Ward, 1860, p. 868; District of Columbia, 7th Ward, 1870, p. 322 [Bean]; Thomas, Herbert A. Jr, “Victims of Circumstance: Negroes in a Southern Town [Lexington], 1865–1880,” The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 71 (July 1973): 268Google Scholar [Spencer]; USMSPC: Davidson Co., Tenn., Nashville, 4th Ward, 1860, p. 400; Nashville, 4th Ward, 1870, p. 240 [Napier]; St. Louis, Mo., 4th Ward, 1860, p. 73; St. Louis, 5th Ward, 1870, p. 31 [Taylor].

72 RCPC: Kent Co., Md., Land Deeds, Liber #JR-1 (1849), p. 27; Liber #JKH-2 (1860), p. 230; Liber #JKH-5 (1866), p. 359, in Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Md. [Perkins]; USMSPC: Kent Co., Md., Chestertown, 1860, p. 1006; Chestertown, 4th Dist., 1870, p. 172; A. W. Bolenius to the Freedmen's Bureau, 31 May 1866, Records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, Maryland, R.G. 105, National Archives [Perkins]; USMSPC: Baltimore, Md., 9th Ward, 1860, p. 426; 9th Ward, 1870, p. 409 [Roberts]; Henrico Co., Va., Richmond, 1860, n.p.; Richmond, Clay Ward, 1870, p. 422 [Woodson]; Jefferson Co., Ky., Louisville, 5th Ward, 1860, p. 107; Louisville, 6th Ward, 1870, p. 632 [Rogers]. In 1860, Rogers's real estate was listed under his wife's name.

73 Computed from USMSPC, 1860, 1870. See “A Note on Sources and Methodology” and appendix.

74 Charles R. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, 17 May 1867, Frederick Douglass Papers, reel 2, Library of Congress; USMSPC, District of Columbia, 1st Ward, 1870, p. 1; RCPC, District of Columbia, Estates, #1700, 31 Oct. 1884; Broad Ax [Salt Lake City], 31 Aug. 31, 1895 [Wormley]; USMSPC, Davidson Co., Tenn., Nashville, 5th Ward, 1870, p. 266 [Harding]; Rabinowitz, Race Relations, 88 [Harding]; USMSPC, St. Louis, Mo., 3d Ward, 1870, p. 196 [handwritten page number]; RCPC, St. Louis, Mo., Deeds, bk. 405 (1 April 1870), 69; New York Herald Tribune, 6 July 1871; Schweninger, From Tennessee Slave to St. Louis Entrepreneur, 12–13 [Thomas].

75 Robinson, “Some Aspects of the Free Negro Population,” 43–64; Green, Constance, Secret City: A History of Race Relations in the Nation's Capital (Princeton, N.J., 1967), 94Google Scholar; USMSPC, District of Columbia, 1st Ward, 1860, pp. 222, 232–33, 347, 357.

76 USMSPC, District of Columbia, 1st Ward, 1860, p. 378; 1st Ward, 1870, p. 67.

77 Ibid., 2nd Ward, 1870, p. 170 [Booker]; 2d Ward, 1860, p. 525; 2d Ward, 1870, p. 268 [Francis]; 4th Ward, 1870, p. 683 [Briscoe]; 2d Ward, 1870, p. 228 [Sanders].

78 Ibid., 2d Ward, 1860, p. 550; 2d Ward, 1870, p. 300 [Henson]; 1st Ward, 1850, p. 26; 1st Ward, 1870, p. 181 [Wright]; 5th Ward, 1870, p. 22 [Downing]; New York Freeman, 7 March 1885 [Downing]. Other antebellum free persons of color in the city not listed as businessmen were also engaged in various business activities. Isaac Johnson, for example, although listed as a messenger in 1870, was actively engaged in a number of real estate transactions. By 1870, he had increased his holdings substantially and controlled $17,000 worth of property. USMSPC, 1st Ward, 1860, p. 324; 1st Ward, 1870, p. 53.

79 Computed from USMSPC, 1860, 1870.

80 Goodstein, Anita, “Black History on the Nashville Frontier, 1780–1810,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 30 (Winter 1979): 412–13Google Scholar [hotel owner Robert Rentfro]; Sterkx, The Free Negro in Ante-bellum Louisiana, 206 [Jean Baptiste Meullion]; Reinders, Robert, “The Free Negro in the New Orleans Economy, 1850–60,” Louisiana History 6 (Summer 1965): 279Google Scholar; New Orleans Tribune, 26 March 1865 [Casenave]; Ralph Flanders, “The Free Negro in Ante-Bellum Georgia,” North Carolina Historical Review 9 (July 1932): 271 [Humphries]; Mills, The Forgotten People, 128–29 [merchant Jerome Sarpy, Sr.]; Spraggins, Tinsley, “The History of Negro Business Prior to 1860” (MA thesis, Howard University, 1935), 37Google Scholar [North Carolina merchant Louis Sheridan]; Hartgrove, W. B., “The Story of Maria Louise Moore and Fannie M. Richards” Journal of Negro History 1 (Jan. 1916): 24CrossRefGoogle Scholar [Moore's husband, shopowner Adolphe Richards]. One of the most fruitful areas for future research in black business history centers on the question of clientele. There is some preliminary evidence that the movement to serve black customers, well-documented for the period from the 1880s onward, might well have begun with the expansion of blacks in business immediately following the Civil War.

81 Du Bois, W. E. B., Black Folk Then and Now: An Essay on the History and Sociology of the Negro Bace (New York, 1939), 217.Google Scholar This was an expanded version of Du Bois's The Negro, published in 1915.