Resistance – stories of Then

at Her request: navigating the Unraveling of the macgill estate

Background Reading

paper trail’s Pulse: dissecting the search for Polly

the tapestry of macgill’s estate

The story of Polly is one of resistance against a world designed to commodify her existence. Sold from the estate of her long-time enslaver, she escaped her new owner in a daring attempt to re-stitch the torn fabric of her own kinship community. To understand her actions, one must first examine the complex tapestry of the world that sought to control her.

Dr. James Macgill, heir to his uncle of the same name, presided over a sizable estate in Prince George’s County in the 1830s. His 740+ acre plantation was stitched together from various land tracts along present-day Annapolis Road, a significant crossroads in the Vansville District (later Queen Anne District). The estate was bordered by massive operations: the Jesuit’s 2,000-acre White Marsh plantation, the Ogle family’s 2,000+ acre Bel-air estate, and the Bowie family’s 570+ acre Locust Grove. An 1828 tax list documents the human dimension of this operation, enumerating the 34 people Dr. Macgill enslaved: six elders, eleven adults, four adolescents, and thirteen young children under the age of eight.

The 1828 Levy Court Road Survey details the estate’s strategic location, providing access to the Patuxent River and placing it in direct proximity to the Ogle’s Bel-air plantation—the community where Polly’s future husband, Peter, was enslaved.

Road No. 1 [now-Annapolis Road]: Commencing at the Priests Bridge on the Patuxent, thence through the White Marsh Plantation; then through Bel-air, thence through the plantation of Dr. James Magill by the Forest Chapel, thence by Magruders Tavern…

Road No. 3: …across Collington Branch, thence with the plantations of William Ogle, James Magill, and Walter Bowie…

Using details from the 1828 Levy Court Road Survey, Martenet’s annotated 1861 map details the route of the area’s primary artery (present-day Annapolis Road), an economic corridor connecting the adjacent plantations of Macgill, Ogle (Bel-air), and the Jesuit’s White Marsh.

Married to Julia Ann Compton in 1829, Macgill also owned property in Anne Arundel County near West River Post Office and Samuel Carr, the husband of Mary Compton. The property was situated in the First District along the road that led to Mount Pleasant Ferry, connecting Anne Arundel to Prince George’s County closer to Upper Marlboro, the county seat. The estates wove together the family’s interests across two counties, creating a broader and more complex tapestry of land and human property.

the Snag: the death of the patriarch (1840)

A decade after his marriage, Macgill’s impending death created a snag in the tapestry of his estate, and he composed his last will and testament, dividing his real and personal property among his wife and three born children, while making provisions for his unborn child. Like his uncle, he dictated how the fabric of his estate was to be cut and divided, specifically naming different mother-child family groups and directing the heir who would acquire four family groups, with a third being conveyed to Macgill’s wife as her right of dower, and the unnamed “balance” going to James P. Macgill.

ripped threads of kinship

Macgill’s division in his will ripped the threads of kinship among the community enslaved on his estates. While he nominally kept mother-child groups together, Polly and her children were divided from her larger extended family. As the wife of Peter, she became part of the larger Lee family group, and with Macgill’s will, she was separated from Harriet Lee and her children, Daniel, Oswald [Osborn], Caroline, Ann, and Amelia, who, while unnamed in the will, were named in the inventory and much later in the 1867’s Compensation List of Septimus J. Cook, the second husband of Julia Macgill. Whereas, Polly and her children were conveyed to Thomas Macgill, the oldest son, who would also receive a sizable portion of the Prince George’s estate through provisions of the 1833 will of the older Dr. James Macgill. Polly, Peter, their children, and the family of Harriet Lee were the threads that gave the plantation its texture and life. Macgill’s death subjected these threads to immense strain. They were stretched thin across counties, torn from one another, and tangled with new and unfamiliar threads.

This diagram illustrates the legal fracturing of an enslaved community following the 1840 death of Dr. James Macgill. His will distributed specific mother-child groups, including those of **Rachel**, **Sue**, **Sophia**, and **Polly**, among his heirs, pulling the kinship network apart and setting the stage for future sales and separations.

threads of inheritance

The will, far from ensuring a smooth transition, pulled the tightly woven kinship community of the enslaved in three distinct directions. Each heir represented a thread pulling part of the tapestry away from the whole. These distinct lines of inheritance did not exist in isolation; they actively pulled the community apart, a process accelerated by the legal and personal entanglements of the heirs.

the dower of the widow: the cook connection

Under Maryland law, Julia Ann Compton Macgill had a dower right to one-third of her husband’s property. This included the enslaved families Macgill designated for her, most notably Harriet Lee and her children. When Julia remarried to Septimus J. Cook in 1845, her dower portion—including Harriet’s family—was legally absorbed into the Cook household. This single act pulled an entire branch of the original enslaved community away, transplanting them into a new network under a new enslaver.

the son’s portion: the line of thomas macgill

Thomas Macgill’s inheritance was anchored in Prince George’s County. As stipulated in two generations of wills, he received a large portion of the home plantation and legal ownership of Polly and her children. While this provision placed Polly in the community where her husband Peter lived, it rested on the financial acumen of the Magill’s guardians to maintain a sizable estate without need to sell off “assets” This thread represented the patriarchal line of succession from uncle to nephew to son.

the balance of the estate: the line of james p. macgill

The younger son, James P. Macgill, inherited the family’s Anne Arundel County property near West River, along with the “balance” of the enslaved people not otherwise assigned. This act created an immediate geographic fracture in the community, moving another group of individuals to a different county and physically separating them from the kinship network on the home plantation. This thread established the West River estate as a distinct, yet connected, Macgill holding—and created the destination Polly would later seek in her flight.

The division of human property among Julia, Thomas, and James P. Macgill set the stage for further disruption. The fifteen years that followed Macgill’s death were marked by a cascade of events—probate, remarriage, and death—that continued to unravel the fabric of the enslaved community.

unraveling in motion: 1840-1855

Multiple events occurred in the years after Macgill’s death that led to self-liberation of Polly in 1855. First, there was the division of the estate as it traveled through probate, followed by the marriage of Julia Macgill to Septimus J. Cook and her subsequent death in 1846, and the re-division of her estate with her children’s. There were sales to settle the debts of the estate. Ultimately in 1855, Thomas Macgill sold his estate that inherited from his uncle to Joshua T. Clark, a neighbor and Justice of the Peace. It is most likely this sale that prompted Polly to seek ways to weave a new beginning for her family.

Polly’s design: weaving against the grain

The impending 1855 sale of the plantation from Thomas Macgill to Joshua T. Clark likely acted as the final catalyst. In response, Polly leveraged her social capital within the enslaver’s network to reach out to William Elson Peach, her late enslaver’s son-in-law. She initiated her own sale, requesting that Peach purchase her to ensure her continued proximity to her husband, Peter. However, while navigating this arrangement with Peach, she almost certainly utilized her own community’s social networks to connect with individuals who offered an alternative path. The “designing person” mentioned in the subsequent bounty notice suggests Polly was not merely seeking a new enslaver but was simultaneously orchestrating an escape. This was her attempt to gather the scattered threads of her own kinship and find lasting liberty beyond the reach of Peach, Clark, and the unraveling Macgill estate.

Sources

1828 Tax List, Prince George’s County

1828 Levy Court Road Survey, Prince George’s County

Marriage Records, for the Macgill-Compton union (1829) and the Macgill-Cook union (1845)

Maryland, U.S., Compiled Marriages, 1655-1850
Maryland, U.S., Compiled Marriages, 1667-1899

Last Will and Testament of Dr. James Macgill (the elder), 1833, PC 1:1

Last Will and Testament of Dr. James Macgill (the nephew), ca. 1840, PC 1:129

Probate Records, Estate of Dr. James Macgill (the nephew), post-1840, which would include:

Inventory and Sales Records of the Estate (PC 4:43, 57, 299; JH 1:20,107,268, 273)

Land Records, for the sale of the Macgill estate to Joshua T. Clark (ca. 1855); EWB 1:137

Newspaper Bounty Notice for the capture of Polly (1855), Baltimore Sun, newspapers.com

1867 Compensation List of Septimus J. Cook

paper trail’s Pulse: dissecting the search for Polly

The Baltimore Sun’s printer placed the ad in the last column of page 2, underneath a bounty for Peter Culver who had absconded with a “free boy, hired by me, named Alexander” and an ad for Ohio Flour.

A historical advertisement from the 1850s offering a reward for the capture of a woman named Polly, describing her as a mulatto, not less than forty years old, last seen near West River. — “$150 REWARD,” advertisement. *The Baltimore Sun* (Baltimore, Maryland), July 29, 1855, p. 4. Accessed through Newspapers.com, July 10, 2025. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-baltimore-sun/176173526/.

Transcription of Bounty

$150 REWARD WILL BE GIVEN FOR THE POSITIVE CONVICTION of any one who shall be guilty of harboring my NEGRO WOMAN POLLY, after a knowledge of this notice, whom I purchased lately of the estate of Dr. Magill.—As I have bought Polly through motives of pure humanity, and at her own request, that she might enjoy the society of her husband and relatives, I feel satisfied that she will come to me unless deceived by some designing person in relation thereto. POLLY is not less than forty years of age, a mulatto of neat and tidy appearance, and was last seen on West River. I will give Twenty Dollars if in Anne Arundel, or Thirty if elsewhere, to any one who shall convince her of the fact of my purchase and secure her to me. I also subjoin a certificate of Dr. OGLE, the owner of Polly’s husband. WM. E. PEACH, M. D., Queen Ann, Prince George’s co., Md.

I hereby certify that I have talked with PETER, the husband of Polly, and he says he is very anxious that she should come home to her master, Dr. Peach, immediately. Peter is in bad health and unable to leave the house. [jy25-St*] GEO. C. OGLE.

Within this mundane context of commerce and control, William E. Peach’s advertisement primarily sought the conviction of the “designing person” who “deceived” Polly and harbored her away from Peach who had purchased her “through motives of pure humanity” and while placing a bounty on the return of Polly so he could “secure her to me” almost as an afterthought.

the skeleton layer: who, what, and where

The basic facts of the notice form the skeleton of the story. In July 1855, Wm. E. Peach, M.D., living near Queen Anne in Prince George’s County sought the return of Polly, “not less than forty years of age” who was purchased from Dr. Magill’s estate. In her escape, she was last seen near West River in Anne Arundel County. He offered a tiered $20-30 for Polly’s return and a significantly larger sum of $150 dollars for the conviction of the “designing person”.

the sinews layer: the network of kin and property

The names in the advertisement are held together by a dense network of marriage and property. William E. Peach, son of Queen Anne District landowner Samuel Peach, had married Sarah Alexander Ma[c]gill in 1852. Sarah was the orphaned daughter of Dr. James Ma[c]gill and Julia Ann Compton, having lost her father in 1840 and her mother in 1846. Her life was split between Prince George’s and Anne Arundel Counties. Before her father’s death, she lived on his 740-acre estate along present-day Annapolis Road, situated between the Jesuit’s White Marsh plantation and Magruder’s Tavern, adjacent to Bel-Air, the Ogle estate.

After Dr. Ma[c]gill’s death, Sarah’s world was destabilized. Her mother’s remarriage to Septimus J. Cook and her mother’s subsequent death resulted in Sarah and her sister, James Anna, being shuffled to Anne Arundel County to live with their aunt and uncle, Samuel and Mary Carr. The Carrs owned land near the Ma[c]gill property at West River, which had been inherited by Sarah’s brother, James P. Ma[c]gill. The 1839 will of Dr. Ma[c]gill had stipulated that Polly and her children be conveyed specifically to his other son, Thomas Ma[c]gill.

This 1861 map of the Queen Anne District illustrates the dense network of kin and property that defined Polly’s world. Highlighted are the lands of S. Peach (the family of her new owner, William E. Peach), Dr. Geo. C. Ogle (the enslaver of her husband, Peter), and Dr. Jas Macgill (her previous enslaver). The close proximity of these estates visualizes the community she was desperate to remain within, turning her flight into a calculated risk to preserve her family bonds.

the heart: her husband and relations

As the estate was divided and re-divided, first through the death of James and then through the death of James’ relict and again, as the children came of age, Polly, “a mulatto of neat and tidy appearance” watched as her extended family was separated, corralled and moved from estate to estate. Individuals were sold to new husbands or liquidated to cover bequests and estate charges.

Amid this decade of instability, a transaction was initiated that would move Polly from her legal owner, Thomas Ma[c]gill, to his sister’s new husband, William Elson Peach. Seizing on this moment, Polly appealed directly to the young doctor, requesting that the terms of his purchase ensure she “might enjoy the society of her husband and relations.” Her husband, Peter, was enslaved by the Ogles at Bel-Air, the neighboring estate. According to a “certificate” from Geo. C. Ogle referenced in the bounty notice, Peter was “in bad health and unable to leave the house.” For Polly, a move away from the Queen Anne area would mean the permanent loss of her husband and the kinship network she fought to maintain.

the skin layer: the language of control and value

At “not less than forty years old,” Polly was an elder in her community. Her labor was likely shifting from fieldwork to tasks essential for the plantation’s maintenance: cooking, nursing, gardening, and sewing. In the logic of chattel slavery, Polly’s advanced age meant her external market value had diminished. This is starkly visible in the twenty-dollar bounty Peach placed on her body; he valued the conviction of the person who disrupted his power more than seven times higher than the return of Polly herself. Peach’s language paints him as a paternalist allowing Polly to “enjoy” her family, yet he simultaneously admits his authority is so weak that he needs help to “convince her of the fact of his purchase” and to “secure her to me.”

Daina Ramey Berry, in The Price for Their Pound of Flesh, discusses the range of attitudes toward elderly enslaved people. While the enslaved community valued their wisdom and the connections they fostered, enslavers saw only a diminished capacity for labor. This led to either “neglectful paternalism” or “disregarded isolation.” Polly, legally conveyed to an orphaned son whose estate was managed by a series of guardians and second husbands, had likely endured years of disregarded isolation as her value was debated in inventories and accounts. Sarah’s marriage to the paternalistic William Peach provided Polly an opportunity to navigate from disregarded isolation into neglectful paternalism. In this transition, she found an opening to assert her own agency.

the blood of the veins: the flow toward kin

Polly was likely living in the Queen Anne District on the former Ma[c]gill estate when Peach finalized her purchase. From there, she had access to travel lanes and turnpikes leading toward Washington, D.C., and the free states north of Maryland. Yet Peach’s ad reports she was last seen in Anne Arundel County near West River, a journey east, away from the most direct path to freedom. This eastward movement was not a mistake; it was a choice. It suggests Polly was seeking reunification with the family members who had been separated from her years before, when James Ma[c]gill first established his Anne Arundel property. Her journey suggests she was seeking reunification with children or other kin who, despite the legal lines drawn in the will, were physically located at the family’s Anne Arundel property. Her flight was therefore a calculated risk, flowing toward the heart of her kinship network, wherever it was located.

I want to acknowledge historians Daina Ramey Berry (The Price for Their Pound of Flesh) and Edward E. Baptist (The Half Has Never Been Told), whose scholarship was foundational to the anatomical metaphor used as an analytical tool in this research.

For those who wish to delve deeper into these topics, I highly recommend reading these books. You can learn more about them on Bookshop.org (I do not receive a commission from these links)

Berry’s Price Per Pound @ bookshop.org

Baptist’s Half Has Never Been Told @ bookshop.org

Eleanor (Nelly) Brown (1801-unk)

📍 wootton’s landing

♟️ goodwood

timeline

The 1836 schedule for the deed of trust transferring the Goodwood plantation to Rosalie E. Carter from the Calverts lists Eleanor “Nelly” Brown at age 35, establishing her calculated birth year as 1801. Her youth unfolded during the Early Republic Generation (1790-1815), a period of significant economic volatility shaped by the Napoleonic Wars. Trade embargoes depressed agricultural prices, creating economic distress for yeoman farmers who could not afford to store their produce. In contrast, the economic structure enabled elite planters like the Calverts to leverage their substantial capital and storage capacity. They acquired tobacco and other commodities at low rates from distressed sellers and profited when markets rebounded, a cycle that consolidated their wealth and reinforced the system of chattel slavery that held Nelly Brown in bondage.

To read more about the wealth inequalities of the Early Republic and specifically in relation to the Calverts, see Steven Sarson’s article: “It cannot be expected that I can defend every man’s turnip patch”: Embargoes, the War of 1812, and Inequality and Poverty in the Chesapeake Region

By the time of the deed of trust, written during the Jacksonian Generation Eleanor Brown was nearing the end of her “prime years” as a laborer and breeder for the Calverts. Despite the commodification of her body by the Calverts and the Carters, Eleanor Brown maintained a soul value in her roles as mother and aunt on the large estate of Goodwood.

Daina Ramey Berry’s book Their The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation offers a critical examination of the commodification of enslaved people. Berry meticulously details how enslavers and the slave market assigned an “external appraisal value” or “external market value” to enslaved individuals based on factors such as age, gender, health, and perceived productivity, and contrasts this with “internal spirit value” or “soul value” of enslaved people. While enslavers reduced individuals to mere commodities, Berry highlights the ways in which enslaved people themselves cultivated an intrinsic sense of self-worth and humanity that defied their commodification.

While it is unclear why the Calvert-Carter network designated her family name, she was grouped in the schedule of enslaved people in what appears to be a mother-child lineal grouping, signifying her kinship role to the larger enslaved community. As an adult woman, she was followed by the names of five children — usually this was an organization technique used by clerks to infer kinship.

Nelly Brown	age 35
Emeline	age 14
William	age 11
Dennis	age 8
Maria	age 4
John	an infant

The mother-child lineal grouping raises questions that are not answered in the records. For example, the gap in ages between Maria and Dennis is four years, which is longer than the three year gaps between Emeline-William, William-Dennis. This longer gap suggests three possibilities grounded in the exploitative structure of chattel slavery. The first possibility is an unrecorded infant death. Nelly may have borne a child who did not survive long enough to be recorded, a frequent outcome resulting from the inadequate nutrition, disease, and physical demands of enslavement. Second, the interval may reflect a period of poor maternal health, where a difficult prior birth or illness precluded a subsequent pregnancy. The third possibility is forced separation, a method enslavers used to exert control. The Calverts could have separated Nelly from her partner by selling him, hiring him out to another location, or moving Nelly herself. The archival record does not reveal which of these realities Nelly experienced, and its silence underscores the system’s disregard for the integrity of enslaved families.

liberation of William Brown

Seventeen years later, in an advertisement dated April 20, 1853, Charles H. Carter announced that William Brown, an enslaved man, had self-liberated from Goodwood. Carter described William as “about thirty years of age”. This detail provides a calculated birth year of approximately 1823, which is consistent with the inferred son of Nelly Brown, listed in the 1836 schedule, as William, age 11.

Given that enslavers often provided estimated ages in runaway advertisements, the two-year age difference is minor and the shared family name “Brown” from the 1836 schedule strongly suggests that the man who self-liberated in 1853 was part of this kinship network at Goodwood.

Tracing William Brown beyond the advertisement is difficult as both his given and family name are common, obscuring if he found a temporary freedom or a permanent liberation from slavery.

post-emancipation life of Emeline

While the fate of William Brown is obscured, Eleanor (Nelly) Brown’s daughter has been tentatively identified in the 1870 Census, living near Queen Anne Towne.

The household of Benjamin “Benny” West and Emily Brown, located in close proximity to Charles H. Carter’s former Goodwood estate was enumerated at dwelling number 48. The presence of this family presents a compelling, though not conclusive, hypothesis for a direct link to the community enslaved at Goodwood three decades prior.

1870 Census

🟢👑 DN 48 | 📮: Mitchellville | 📍 Queen Anne Towne
Benny West, age 50 (calc. birth year 1820)
Emily Brown, age 45 (calc. birth year 1825)
Morris Brown, age 19 (calc. birth year 1851)
Maria Brown, age 14 (calc. birth year 1856)
Ella Brown, age 12 (calc. birth year 1858)
James Brown, age 5 (calc. birth year 1865)
Eleanor Brown, age 12 (calc. birth year 1858)
Sophia Brown, age 3 (calc. birth year 1867)
Louisa Brown, age [1] (calc. birth year 1869)

geographic mapping

The primary evidence centers on Emily Brown, listed as 45 years old in 1870, and her potential connection to Emeline, a 14-year-old girl enumerated in the 1836 Deed of Trust schedule for Goodwood. While the calculated birth years (~1825 for Emily vs. ~1822 for Emeline) show a minor three-year discrepancy, such inconsistencies are common in records where ages were often estimated. The link is strengthened through given name analysis. Given this context, “Emeline” and “Emily” are recognized as plausible variations for the same individual, much like other variants such as “Amelia” or “Emilia.”

name analysis

The most powerful, albeit circumstantial, evidence lies in the naming patterns that suggest a deliberate effort to maintain kinship identity. The 1836 schedule lists Emeline as part of a cohort headed by Nelly Brown, age 35. The discovery of a daughter named Eleanor in Emily Brown’s 1870 household is therefore highly significant. For communities emerging from chattel slavery—an institution that systematically severed familial bonds—the act of naming a child after a parent or grandparent was a potent method of reinforcing lineage. As “Nelly” is a common diminutive for “Eleanor,” it is a strong possibility that Emily Brown named her daughter in honor of her own mother, Nelly Brown. While no single piece of this evidence is definitive, the combination of proximate age, plausible name variation, and the commemorative naming choice makes a strong circumstantial case for the continuity of the Brown family line from enslavement into freedom.

goodwood: calvert-carter alliance

George Calvert‘s position as a nexus in the Wootton’s Landing Neighborhood was cemented not only through his vast landholdings but also through strategic affinal kinship ties that extended his influence into Virginia. This was a common practice within the planter class to consolidate wealth and forge powerful alliances. This pattern is evident in the 1830 marriage of his daughter, Rosalie Eugenia Calvert, to Charles Henry Carter, a son of the Carter family of Shirley Plantation, one of Virginia’s most powerful slaveholding dynasties. This alliance forged a strategic affinal bridge between a powerful Maryland enslaver network and the Carter dynasty of Virginia.

The scale of the Calvert operation that Carter would come to control is evident in earlier tax assessments. While George Calvert resided at Riverdale in the Bladensburg District in the 19th century, his maintained his Mount Albion plantation in the Wootton’s Landing Neighborhood. In 1828, George Calvert was assessed for 2,777 acres and 93 enslaved people in the Horsepen and Patuxent Hundreds. By 1833, his personal property assessment for the Third District (including what would be Queen Anne District) showed an increase to 100 enslaved people on one list, likely representing the workforce at Mount Albion. Another 1833 list for the same district enumerated 26 enslaved people, possibly those at Oatlands, another Calvert property in the Partnership Neighborhood of Queen Anne District.

Image from 1836 Deed of Trust | mdlandrec.net
Calvert George H_Rosalie Eugenie Carter + husband_AB-11-32-Deed of Trust

Calvert would transfer this property to his daughter in the 1830s. This transfer of property was not merely a familial gift but a calculated transmission of a massive agricultural operation and the enslaved labor force that made it profitable. A Deed of Trust dated November 12, 1836, solidified this alliance and detailed the significant transfer of wealth. The indenture documents how George Calvert conveyed a substantial estate into a trust for his daughter Rosalie’s sole and separate use, managed by himself and Robert E. Lee of Arlington. The assets included a 728 ½-acre tract of land known as “Goodwood,” formerly the core of Mount Albion. Critically, the deed also explicitly transferred the legal title to a community of enslaved people, listing 42 men, women, and children by name and age in an attached schedule. This single transaction established the material basis for Charles H. Carter’s standing within the Prince George’s County enslaver network.

The enslaved population at Goodwood grew under Carter’s control, from the initial 42 individuals in 1836 to 52 by the 1840 census, 58 in 1850, and 76 by 1860. After Rosalie Carter’s death in 1848, the land was conveyed directly to her husband, fully transferring this portion of the Calvert family’s Maryland wealth into the Carter lineage. By 1860, Charles H. Carter’s real estate was valued at $70,000, and his personal estate—a value primarily derived from the external market value of the people he enslaved—was assessed at $55,000. This concentration of wealth and power in the Wootton’s Landing neighborhood was further solidified in the next generation through the marriages of Carter’s daughters, Rosalie Eugenia Carter and Alice Carter, into the Francis Magruder Hall and Oden Bowie families, respectively, perpetuating the cycle of elite kinship consolidation within Prince George’s County.

The reconstruction of kinship networks among the people enslaved at Goodwood is fundamentally obstructed by a documentary void. Two key record sets that typically name enslaved individuals from the late antebellum and emancipation era are missing: a probate inventory for Rosalie E. Carter and a post-emancipation compensation claim from Charles H. Carter. While Rosalie E. Carter created a will, it functioned primarily to affirm the conditions of the 1836 Deed of Trust, which stipulated that all real and personal property would be conveyed to her husband for his lifetime, precluding the need for a separate probate inventory. Furthermore, Charles H. Carter, as a nephew of Robert E. Lee, did not file a compensation claim in 1867 for his formerly enslaved human property, likely due to his Confederate ties.Consequently, research must proceed using a limited set of documents. The primary sources are the 1836 Deed of Trust, which provides a schedule of 42 named individuals, including one, Nelly Brown, with a family name, and the anonymous demographic data in the 1840, 1850, and 1860 U.S. Census Slave Schedules. This direct evidence is supplemented by three runaway slave advertisements that identify additional family names: Lloyd Wood, William Brown, John Williams, Dory Williams, Daniel Nelson, and Davy Hall.

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