Searching for Nelly, Harriet, and Juno – Part 2

In my February blog post I promised to follow-up with a particular discovery in the case of three women who self-liberated from their enslavers in Frederick County, Virginia. In my initial search, I was not able to find my main characters in any online sources; my primary evidence for their escape was a letter written by their enslaver, Notley C. Williams, seeking support from local government officials. I knew that at some point in time, Williams had created a newspaper advertisement offering reward for their capture. For help, I reached out to the managing director of the Library’s Virginia Newspaper Project, Kelley Ewing. Sure enough, she directed me towards a physical copy of the National Intelligencer housed in our 4th floor stacks. After about fifteen minutes of turning the large, oversized pages within my date range, I found exactly what I was looking for.

As often proves true of runaway advertisements, I learned critical details about the three self-emancipators including their ages, physical descriptions, family relations, and Nelly’s surname.

Williams reported that the women had taken with them “a variety of other clothing, consisting of calicoes, ginghams, cambrics, &c…” which matches his report to local officials that he had examined their clothing chests after noticing they had absconded, finding they had “conveyed off their stock of clothes.” Williams was providing further information about the dresses the women might be wearing if found at large.

He goes on to give full physical descriptions of the women, which, please be warned, includes racially charged and objectifying language. When used to refer to enslaved people, the term “likely” could mean those individuals were capable, strong, or versatile. For women, “likely” often meant fertile.¹ I had mistakenly assumed that Nelly’s daughters Harriet and Juno were young girls. I was surprised to find that Williams described Harriet as 18 years old and Juno 16 years old. My heart sank when I read several lines down: Harriet had left behind her infant child who was only six weeks old.

Although I was equipped with more information (including approximate birthdates and Nelly’s last name), my effort to find Nelly or Harriet or Juno in census records was not successful. Harriet and Juno may have married and taken different surnames. If Nelly was still living by the time of the 1850 census, she may have been using a different surname or even provided an entirely different first name to the census taker out of fear of being re-enslaved.

I found Notley C. Williams using records accessed from Ancestry.com, but I didn’t find much. Basic vital records told me about his life, but little about those he enslaved. According to the 1830 slave schedule, Williams enslaved 16 people, only one of whom was a female between the ages of 10 to 23. Two women, however, were between the ages of 24 and 35. Could this mean he had not found Harriet (age 18) and Juno (age 16)? I knew that if I wanted to learn more about his enslaved property, I needed to check local property records such as deeds, wills, and probate records. Thanks to several digitized indexes available via Loudoun County’s Circuit Court webpage, I learned that Williams shows up in several deeds recorded in Loudoun County in the early nineteenth century.

Much of the records document land transactions, but in April 1826, just months before the three women self-emancipated, Williams purchased an enslaved man named Kendall from James Currell, possibly Williams’ brother-in-law.

But what of Nelly, Harriet, and Juno? In 1825, Williams entered into a trust agreement with other men in Loudoun County; several enslaved people were used as collateral. But these weren’t enslaved people belonging to Williams, and while it certainly confirmed that Williams was in the business of owning people, I still had no further information about the three women.

Perhaps the most striking new piece of information was the name and general address of Nelly’s sister, Vice. According to the newspaper ad, Vice bought her freedom. There could be a legal document recording the transaction or agreement with her enslaver. This is sometimes recorded in deeds of emancipation where an enslaved person has paid for their freedom like in the case of Amey Halestock from Richmond City. Once again, I came up short. It appears that the deeds I might be seeking are at the National Archives, but not yet available online:

If she had been enslaved in Virginia, it would make sense for Vice (and Nelly and her family) to migrate towards Washington, D.C. The free Black population in D.C. steadily increased in the early years of the nineteenth century, and by 1830, it eclipsed the number of those who were enslaved (of the 9,109 who were Black, 4,604 were free while 4,505 were enslaved).² Like Virginia, the District of Columbia required those who were emancipated or born as free people of color to register with the court.

These registrations are not available online as far as I can tell but they are available in print. Dorothy Provine who served as an archivist at the National Archives compiled these registrations in a published format in the 1990s, District of Columbia free negro registers, 1821-1861. I searched every page but could not find Vice. It’s possible that Vice is documented in other D.C. papers; Dorothy Provine created an extensive collection of photocopied records related to free Black people—the Dorothy Provine Free Black Research Collection is now housed at the DC Public Library—yet another collection of gems that is not yet available online.

While this blog began as a story of discovery, it turned into a very realistic example of the challenge to find digitally-available information on enslaved people like Nelly and her daughters. Perhaps it is also a story about why the work of digitization and improving access is so important.

The hard truth is that searching for your enslaved ancestors can take years. I had a few weeks. If I had time to pore over lists and records, here’s some other sources that I would likely check into:

• More research into Notley C. Williams, his wives, and their property records. Did Williams die with enslaved property? Did his children inherit them? Did his wives bring enslaved people into their marriage to Williams?
• Continuing to search census records or city directories for areas in which Nelly, Harriet, or Juno may have settled: Berryville, Washington D.C., or farther north.
• Filling out the life of Vice, Nelly’s sister:
  • Did she attend a church? Sources such as: The Historical Society of Washington, D.C. Minutes First Baptist Church Washington, D.C. 1802- April 30, 1852 might be a place to look
  • Did Vice have run-ins with the legal system? Where else might she be documented in government records?
  • Can we paint a picture of Washington D.C. in the 1820s? Are there other collections that might document Vice’s community or her everyday life?

Do you have other ideas for more resources to search? Let us know!