Enslaved Ancestors Still for Sale After 167 Years

— By Patricia Lowther

Stamp Show in Wisconsin

On Saturday I attended a stamp show with my husband, Kevin, here in Springfield, Virginia. Kevin steered me to the Philatelic dealer who specializes in postcards. An hour’s search yielded one each from Aiken and Edgefield, South Carolina.

I looked quickly through a couple of other dealers and found nothing of interest, but at my last stop the dealer asked me if I had a particular interest. Yes, I replied, Civil War, and especially anything from Confederate covers/letters from Edgefield. SC. (I’m always searching for covers/letters that might have been written by the wife of James B Griffin.) As I was looking through a box of Confederate covers, the dealer told me he had some documents from that era, Bills of Sale for slaves, and other items. “Would you like to see them?” I couldn’t say yes fast enough, and when he came back and put the stack of documents in front of me, I couldn’t believe it. As I went through the documents, two items stood out.  One was a Bill of Sale for a group of enslaved individuals from one member of a Birdsong family to another, in 1855 in Sussex, Virginia. This was priced at $450. And the other was a receipt for payment for the rental of an enslaved woman for one year. (I don’t remember the price but it was a lot.)

I left the stamp show and those two documents still in the hands of the dealer, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt that something was just not right. On Sunday I started reading Tim Kilby’s book about his Virginia family, and on one page there was a picture of a Bill of Sale for slaves.

It suddenly hit me why I was upset about seeing those documents in the possession of, and for sale by, a Stamp Dealer:

1. They were real people to me, whose lives and the fruits of their labors had been stolen for someone else’s profit back in 1855, and here 167 years later, they were still for sale for someone else’s profit;
2. As an African American researching her family in South Carolina and Virginia before 1870, I know how extremely difficult it is find any trace of them with an actual name;
3. Documents like a Bill of Sale can be invaluable to us because it will contain precious names and proof that they existed, we can find nowhere else;
4. Many of us would never think of going to a Philatelic Stamp Show to ask around among dealers about documents from the 1800’s, the Confederacy, plantations, Wills, Bills of Sale, etc. Yet these people often have access to estates that are being broken-up, and documents like this fall into their hands;
5. Like the documents I saw on Saturday, they are for sale at prices that: first of all, most of us couldn’t afford; and second, paying for them again makes us still feel used by others, robbing us a bit of our human dignity;
6. I would love to suggest that these dealers, when they come across items like these, donate them to the appropriate historical societies, or libraries or other organizations where they might become available to African American researchers who are desperate to find the kind of information that was contained in the documents I saw;
7. I am deeply saddened to think there might be descendants searching for the enslaved Birdsong family members mentioned in that Bill of Sale, and would be deeply grateful if that document could fall into their hands.

Fortunately, my very understanding husband, who is a philatelist himself and shares my feelings, went back the next day and bought the Birdsong Bill of Sale. He negotiated a much more reasonable price. We will donate it to the Virginia Library in Richmond or the Sussex County Historical Society. Or try to find some of the descendants of the Birdsong family. But I’m still worried about that rental receipt for the enslaved woman for the year.

Author: Patricia Lowther is a South Carolinian who has been researching her Edgefield, South Carolina families for over 20 years. She’s been a member of the Northern Virginia CTTT chapter for several years, and through them was introduced to the Linked Descendants working group. She began her career as an English as a Second Language teacher while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Turkey. After living and teaching in Southern Africa, she now resides in Northern Virginia.

©2022, Patricia Lowther. All rights reserved.