He is direct, assertive and arresting, with a full baritone voice. Why does no one know their names? Privacy Statement And, always, children. A good lot for walking was a gang of enslaved men, women and children, possibly numbering in the hundreds, who could tolerate three months afoot in the summer heat. Isaac Franklin and John Armfield first met in 1824, when Armfield seems to have been at loose ends. We are only accountable if it is repeated.. A walk through the house, a look at the kitchen where all the work was done, a walk through the slave cemetery, a rundown of the people who lived and died here, white and blackthanks to Laise, Belle Grove is not a house museum that shorts the stories of slaves. The only reason your black behind is here at all is because somebody survived that deal. login . I put the car on the shoulder and walk into the woods to find the real Natchez Trace. In Edinburg, a history bookshop. The chain gang also has roots in the Slave Trail. And it really is a trace, the faint line of what used to be a wagon road. There was also Mitchell, a boy of 10 or 11, and Foster, 20-ish and strong, his prize hand. In Louisiana the top prices could be had for a buck, a muscled man bound for the hell of the sugar fields. Genealogy for John Franklin Layfayette Armfield (1858 - 1910) family tree on Geni, with over 240 million profiles of ancestors and living relatives. But when the slaves marched, it was known as Little River Turnpike. And you see a lot of records in which there are an unusual number of 10-year-olds alone. I do not believe that black people were responsible for their own enslavement, or that African-Americans should be grateful for slavery because they are better off than West Africans, or that a black man was author of the slave system. Every Sunday, preachers around the South looked out at congregations and read announcements from Lost Friends and columns like it. There was one place en route, however, with a small slave marketAberdeen, Mississippi. I had plenty of money for the trip, he said. This sorting arrangement meant that it was more likely children would be sold from their parents. He had a long dark coat and wore a mustache-less beard. In 1834, Armfield sat on his horse in front of the procession, armed with a gun and a whip. Bettie was sold to a man named Reed, and I was sold and carried to New Orleans and from there to Texas. In May 1765 the caravan reached the various destinations of these Pennsylvania travelers. Nearly enclosed by green curtains of limbs, it feels like a tunnel. I wish to inquire for my relatives, whom I left in Virginia about 25 years ago. Now those, gesturing at some more yellowed papers, are the worst for me, she says. If you carry hatred or strong dislike for people, all you are doing is hurting yourself.. Who was my mother, says Florence Blair. No. First Name: Last Name [Advanced Search] Home Search Login Find. One night in September 1834, a traveler stumbled into the Armfield coffles camp. . And I think something like that has happened over and again, symbolically.. The story of the masses who trekked a thousand miles, from the tobacco South to the cotton South, sometimes vanished in an economic tale, one about the invention of the cotton gin and the rise of King Cotton. It sometimes sank into a political story, something to do with the Louisiana Purchase and the first Southwestthe young states of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. Armfield has at least one direct black descendant, Rodney Williams, who wrote about his heritage - which he said he discovered through DNA testing - in an essay included in "Slavery's. You then have to squeeze through a countless multitude of men, women, and children of all ages, tongues, and colors of the earth until you get into the city proper., He had heard bad things about New Orleans, expected to be frightened by it, and was. Other white men, similarly armed, were arrayed behind him. I am enveloped in darkness; but still, strange to say, I live upon hope, the friend of man.. I have not seen him for ten years. John Armfield, slave trader and businessman, descended from North Carolina Quakers who were Loyalists during the American Revolution. In 1832, at age 43, supremely rich from 20 years as a long-distance trader, Franklin built a big house on 2,000 acres outside Gallatin. The whole amount of sales for the twentythe entire group that had come with him from Virginiais $12,675. (About $400,000 now.) On June 24, 1865, two months after the truce at Appomattox, in a Philadelphia newspaper called theChristian Recorder, she posted this: Information Wanted. People Projects Discussions Surnames Then she came to me and said, Aint you my child? Glenn recalled. The Civil War interrupted the fortunes of the southern plantation owners and the cottages acquired by them were taken back by John Armfield. He regularly acts as a mediator with respect to family provision claims. Born 50 miles that way, Radford for 20 years. And you know that the first legal slaveholder in the United States was a black man? While still a boy, Armfield ran away from home, vowing not to return until he had acquired more wealth than his father, Nathan Armfield. This year, she curated an exhibition at the Historic New Orleans Collection, Purchased Lives: New Orleans and the Domestic Slave Trade, 1808-1865.. Slave traders would issue new clothes for people they had to sell, but they were usually cheaper. She is petite, talkative, knowledgeable and precise. In Knoxville, in October 1847, Waller readied his gang of 20 or more for the second half of their journey. They give the impression of perfect manners. The men dressed in navy blue suits with shiny brass buttonsas they marched singly and by twos and threes in a circle, wrote Felix Hadsell, a local man. Leave a sympathy message to the family on the memorial page of John Hawkins Jr. to pay them a last tribute. Kenneth Thomson brings out some daguerreotypes of the Franklins and others in his family tree. Franklin went to the theater with other rich whites and threw dinner parties, earning a reputation as a gregarious host with the best liquors, Rothman said. During the 50 years before the Civil War, about a million enslaved people moved from the Upper SouthVirginia, Maryland, Kentuckyto the Deep SouthLouisiana, Mississippi, Alabama. We werent there. Are we accountable? She was 18 at the time and just over five feet tall. They came to look at my negroes & wanted to buy seven or eight, but they objected to the price, Waller said. But he stood in the door, in front of my grandfather, and lit a match to the papers. He said his own father knew the name of the people who had enslaved their family in Virginia, knew where they livedin the same house and on the same landin Hanover County, among the rumpled hills north of Richmond. Today the Great Wagon Road, or Valley Turnpike, is known as U.S. Route 11, a two-lane that runs between soft and misty mountains, with pretty byways. Behind the men were the women and girls, another hundred. Not a single offer, Waller wrote. This is the only child I have and I desire to find him much. The Slave Trail of Tears is the great missing migrationa thousand-mile-long river of people, all of them black, reaching from Virginia to Louisiana. I feel a certain detachment from it, I suppose. They are each others closest friends and thats rooted in their working relationship, Rothman said. It was March 13, 1848. We are not accountable for what happened then. And here, someone close to the memory of it says much the same. Thomson emphasizes these last sentences. They created a modern machinery to support the business of human trafficking.. So-called mulatresses., Isaac Franklin was all over this market. The path the slaves took is beautiful. My direct ancestor is Isaacs brother James. We have about ten thousand dollars to pay yet. The editors of theSouthwestern Christian Advocatepublished their paper in New Orleans, but it went out to Methodist preachers in Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas and Louisiana. Sometimes they were forced to. He wore my old Virginia cloth coat and pantaloons on his march, as he told his wife, Sarah Garlandthe daughter of a congressman and a granddaughter of Patrick Henry, the orator and patriot. He does not make small talk. In his late teens, right around the time the United States passed a law barring the transatlantic slave trade, Franklin and his older brothers grew interested in the domestic version: They began transporting small numbers of enslaved people between Virginia and the Deep South. Take the Bible. Advertising Notice Armfield watched and smoked. They got into the domestic slave trade just as the cotton economy and American demand for enslaved labor exploded, and quit right before the United States sank into the financial panic of 1837. His four children all died before they grew up. Thomson is an antiques dealer, mostly retired, and an amateur historian, mostly active. He had grown up near Gallatin, 30 miles northeast of Nashville, and he went there during off months. I stop at one of the oldest, Belle Grove. Ferrill and was brought to Mobile, Alabama at the age of 10 years. After Emancipation, now a freedman of about 20, Glenn remembered the name of his hometownRoxboro. It was typical on the Slave Trail: People like Waller marched a coffle and sold one or two people along the way to pay the travel bills. Waller decided to try to sell one or two people there. In 1834, the two men became family when Armfield married Franklins niece. His wife and children greeted him. We have been stopped for two days by the breaking up of turnpikes and bridges. The expectation of so many slaves was that their families would be annihilated, and so it became important to be able to forget. When they reached Nashville, they would be halfway. The two men launched the slave trading firm Franklin & Armfield and moved into the Alexandria townhouse today a museum in 1828. For example, she persuaded the city to fund a tourist walk about slavery, a kind of mirror image of the Freedom Trail in Boston. Waller was 58, not young but still fit. Terms of Use You cannot imagine it, he wrote home. A typical display placed an 8-year-old girl on the left end of a line, and then ten people like stair steps up to the right end, ending with a 30-year-old woman, who might be the first girls mother. There, at the age of 22, she married Joseph Thornburg son of Edward and Sarah Ann Hannah Haman Thornburg on 30 Nov 1754. To my recollection my fathers name was Joseph, and my mothers Milly, my brothers Anthony, and my sisters Maria.My name was Annie Ferrill, but my owners changed my name. At the peak of their business, the two men were moving roughly 1,000 people a year, historians said. People do know, however, about Civil War battles. This letter from 1834 held riches, and I will bring them out by land was, for me, the invaluable line: It referred to a forced march overland from the fields of Virginia to the slave auctions in Natchez and New Orleans. My oh my, the Scots-Irishthey were like made of brass. So one of his men picked a shallow place and tested it by sending over a wagon and four horses. When Delores McQuinn was growing up, her father told her a story about a search for the familys roots. The man may be gone, but generations later, some of his people are still around. You see, blacks were better off coming to this country. It meant compliant, gentle and not broken by overwork. The people are made in part of the worst portion of the human race, he wrote. Randolph once wrote a friend to complain that the road was thronged with droves of these wretches & the human carcass-butchers, who drive them on the hoof to market. Comparing Virginia to a stop on the West African slave trade, Randolph sighed, One might almost fancy oneself on the road to Calabar.. Neither Franklin nor Armfield earned recrimination from their peers during their lifetimes and neither man felt the slightest remorse, according to their papers. John Armfield, slave trader and businessman, descended from North Carolina Quakers who were Loyalists during the American Revolution. Today, on the same spot, a six-lane bridge crosses the New River, and there is a town called Radford, population 16,000. He was an amateur slave trader, not a pro like Armfield, and his journey, though from another year, is even better documented. The great fall in cotton has so alarmed the people that there is not the slightest prospect of our selling our negroes at almost any price, he wrote home. Daniels expression empties. John's three married daughters had remained in Pennsylvania. Her research is like a poke salad, she says, dropping a Tennessee-ism. But until recently, the Slave Trail was buried in memory. Slaves were routinely insuredplenty of companies did that sort of business, with policies guarding against damage. But collecting on such damage would be inconvenient. He was so smooth he managed to impress even a New England abolitionist who visited Alexandria in the 1830s. Franklin and Armfield, who headquartered their slave trading business in a townhouse that still stands in Alexandria, Va., sold more enslaved people, separated more families and made more money from the trade than almost anyone else in America. I have sold out all my negroes to one man for eight thousand dollars! he told his wife. One in particular gives the flavor. Starting in Nashville I drive down the parkway. Exceedingly heavy and continued rains have stopped our progress, he told his wife. In the deep archive of the Virginia Historical Society I discovered an extraordinary batch of letters that Waller wrote about the experience of selling people he had known and lived with for much of his life. Franklin divided his retirement between a large mansion he built in Tennessee and several Louisiana plantations he acquired over the course of his career. Caravans like Armfields covered about 20 miles a day. A clean back was a rarity, and it raised the price. The surveyor talked to him for a few hours and saw him as sordid, illiterate and vulgar. Armfield, it seems, had overpowering bad breath, because he loved raw onions. He is loath to spend yet another day probing the dark activities and darker minds of Franklin and Armfield. With that signal from Natchez, Armfield began vacuuming up people from the Virginia countryside. The two most ruthless domestic slave traders in America had a secret language for their business. Records of that part of the journey do not survive, nor do records about the individual slaves in the coffle. Double Oaks is a significant historic property, honored by placement on the National Register in 1985. Few profited more than the two Virginia slave traders. They were the parents of at least 2 sons and 4 daughters. These children were not 10. Next came wagons with the young children and those who could no longer walk. She laughs, surprisingly. All the dealers pinned little scraps of paper on their flags to describe the people for sale., Virginia was the source for the biggest deportation. Franklin and Armfield transported an estimated 10,000 enslaved people over the course of their careers, according to Rothman. He had some of those. If they are alive, I will be glad to hear from them. What do you think about Isaac Franklin? And Ill tell you what nobody ever talks about. The headline reads, Isaac Franklin was a Well-liked Slave Trader. The thousand-word piece is the only thing Thomson has published on the subject of his family. Address me at Morales, Jackson Co., Texas.Mary Haynes.. Armfield and his caravan came to the Shenandoah from Alexandria. No, I dont believe in revisionist history.. A singular spectacle, Featherstonhaugh wrote. He called it Fairvue. If any man lost his footing, everyone could be washed downstream, yanked one after another by the chain. It is an easy chat between strangers, until I bring up the slave days. A clergyman who saw a march toward Shenandoah remembered that the gang members, having left their wives, children, or other near connections and never likely to meet them again in this world, sang to drown the suffering of mind they were brought into. Witnesses said Old Virginia Never Tire was one song all the coffles sang. And it was really past time.. As the steamboat churned to dock, it passed ships berthed five or six deep, miles of them, from all nations of the earth, bringing in their products and carrying away ours. The arrival, gangplank on the levee, cargo everywhere. She was captured and enslaved 400 years ago. In 1833, the slave-trading firm of Franklin and Armfield was buying at least 1,000 people a year out of the Mid-Atlantic states and selling them in New Orleans and Natchez, where Isaac Franklin spent most of his time. She lives 25 miles from Gallatin, in a pretty brick, ranch-style house with white shutters. She had seen him last when he was 8, and did not recognize him. As autumn gathered in 1834, the caravan that John Armfield handed over left Tennessee, bound for Natchez. Recently, Laise tells me, she stumbled on evidence that in the 1820s a large number of people went up for sale at Belle Grove. For almost everyone, the break was permanent, the grief everlasting. These were stores and taverns with places to sleep in the back. In 1820, the number of ships carrying slaves from Eastern ports into New Orleans was 604. After an hour of this, the showing of the lively stock, the enslaved stood in rows on long overhanging porches. A sofa and chair that belonged to Isaac Franklins parents. Surnames; Search People; The company's agents sent people down to Franklin & Armfield's slavepens (another word that has disappeared) in Alexandria, just nine miles south of the U.S. Capitol: seamstresses, nurses,. Franklin and Armfield quit the business around 1837. But in the 2000s, a developer began building a golf course on the fields where the colts ran. Each negro is furnished with two entire suits from the shop, Andrews noted, which he does not wear upon the road. Instead, these clothes were saved for the end of the trip so each slave could dress well for sale. They bought shoes for them, blankets for them, brought in doctors to treat them. Later the same wagons hauled those who had collapsed and could not be roused with a whip. Slave traders brought a banjo or two and demanded music. Historic Structures Report The Historic Structures Report (HSR) for 1315 Duke Street, the Freedom House Museum, was formally presented by SmithGroup on October 28, 2021. You got the wrong person to ask about sparing your feelings, Boxley replies. After 15 years at various Tennessee hospitals, and after 15 years selling makeup for Mary Kay Cosmetics (and driving a pink Cadillac, because she moved a ton of mascara), she now occupies herself with family history. Franklin worked with a few partners over the years but connected with his longest-lasting collaborator the man who became his closest friend, confidant and nephew by marriage in the early 1820s. , some of his men picked a shallow place and tested it by sending a... Dont believe in revisionist history.. a singular spectacle, Featherstonhaugh wrote, a developer began building a golf on..., about Civil War interrupted the fortunes of the human race, he wrote from... 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