On Tuesday, October 19, the troop headed southwest, Waller leading from his horse and his friend James Taliaferro bringing up the rear, both men armed. If you carry hatred or strong dislike for people, all you are doing is hurting yourself.. Armfield and his caravan came to the Shenandoah from Alexandria. It has a double portico, with four Ionic columns on the first level and four on the second. He suspects the abuse, which had no financial purpose, stemmed from a desire for raw power: They did it because they could, and they felt like it.. The nicest families in the Shenandoah tipped people into the pipeline south. Looking for any information about the ancestors and descendents of John Armfield.I am descended through his daughter, Nancy Ann Armfield. 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. Armfield, John, Active 1830-1859. Not a single offer, Waller wrote. What to do or where to go I know notI am surrounded by difficulty, he brooded. You need to look that up. Now, I heard this more than 50 years ago from my great-grandfather, who was born in 1874, or two generations closer than me to the time in question. James Ware, Wallers broker, was having no luck selling the truncated coffle in Mississippi. As U.S. 11 steps into Tennessee, the road finds the Holston River and runs parallel to it. The coffle moved along at three miles an hour. In fact, it is more your story than it is mine.. Especially for travelers, the markets were a rival to the French Opera House and the Thtre dOrlans. Outside universities and museums, the story of the Slave Trail lives in shards, broken and scattered. Armfield, meanwhile, purchased an old hotel in the Tennessee mountains and converted it to a luxury summer getaway for the wealthy. They first came over here as indentured servants, as did the whites. Yet today, almost no one knows their names. I was sold with a younger sisterBettie. In 1832, for example, 5 percent of all the commercial credit available through the Second Bank of the United States had been extended to their firm. We have about ten thousand dollars to pay yet. During the last ten years, a number of themEdward Baptist, Steven Deyle, Robert Gudmestad, Walter Johnson, Joshua Rothman, Calvin Schermerhorn, Michael Tadman and othershave been writing the million-person-migration back into view. Waller had never been to such a big city. He came home to Natchez in 1995 and discovered Forks of the Road. After a few days Glenn turned up in Roxboro. In 1820, the number of ships carrying slaves from Eastern ports into New Orleans was 604. More Replies: Re: John Armfield b. Armfield watched and smoked. soon moved the BUcks COunty, PA where he taught school and had 5 sons and 3 daughters. The men made it across. You have Robert H. Elam operating in the site over there. 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. 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 lives alone in a five-room cottage in a black section of town, away from the camera-ready center of Natchez. And we had all these servants till they died. They didnt buy slaves in order to free them, but to make money.. She lives 25 miles from Gallatin, in a pretty brick, ranch-style house with white shutters. This is one of the richest portions of the state and perhaps one of the most healthy, he wrote home. Sarah & child $800Henry $800. About John Armfield Came to America in 1718 with his wife and a colony of Quaker emigrants to Philadephia. They say there were no feelings here.. Four or five tents were spread, and the large wagons, which were to accompany the expedition, were stationed where they could be piled high with provisions and other necessaries. New clothes were loaded in bundles. Double Oaks is a significant historic property, honored by placement on the National Register in 1985. Armfield had no wish to continue without his longtime partner. Franklin and Armfield met a few years after that in the course of business and immediately developed a rapport, Rothman said an intimacy that continued for decades and fueled their profitability. A singular spectacle, Featherstonhaugh wrote. Jack Keys children at Fairvue included Lucien Key, whose children included a woman named Ruby Key Hall. I did not know before I came home whether my parents were dead or alive. And now, mother nor father did not know me., Edward Ball The two most ruthless domestic slave traders in America had a secret language for their business. Isaac Franklin had no children who survived, Thomson had told me on the phone. Each carried 5 to 50 slaves. I had never seen so revolting a sight before, he said. Frederick County Visitor Center. They bought shoes for them, blankets for them, brought in doctors to treat them. In Winchester, the Winchester-. Nancy Ann Armfield was born 1732 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania to John Armfield and his wife. He and his nephew, John Armfield, headquartered their operation in Alexandria, Virginia, and they began to trade. 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. They ran to family, friends, or across state lines to freedom. The trace was a 450-mile roadtrace being the colonial word for a native trail through forestand the only overland route from the plateau west of the Appalachian Range leading to the Gulf of Mexico. I never heard of any mistreatment. This article was published more than3 years ago. His slave pen appears on old maps, labeled negro mart.. I squish through the mud, sweating, pulling off spiders, slapping mosquitoes and horseflies. A reedy voice, gentle manners. In Staunton, the Visitor Center. About half of those people boarded ships in Washington or Norfolk, bound for Louisiana, where Franklin sold them. 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. I want to resurrect the history of the enslavement trade, and for 20 years, that is where Ive focused.. The St. Louis Hotel is one of several places that can be identified as once-upon-a-time slave-trading sites. At the same time, that doesnt mean that he didnt have bad habits, Thomson clarifies. Robert Glenn was sold at age 8 from his mother and father in North Carolina and spent the rest of his childhood in Kentucky. On the lintel above the door you can see in faded paint its old sign, which reads, ___ CHANGE. The St. Louis Hotel was razed in 1916, but it was in the hotel that the Slave Trail ended in the most spectacular scenes. It is 8 p.m., and the sun is failing. They were the parents of at least 2 sons and 4 daughters. We had never done a dedicated exhibition on the slave trade, on slavery. Former slavesthere were four millionasked by word of mouth, but that went nowhere, and so they put announcements in the papers, trying to find mothers and sisters, children and husbands swept away from them by the Slave Trail. The previous year, Franklin & Armfield had moved their jail and slave market in Natchez to a site on the edge of town called Forks of the Road. Our mission is to offer gracious hospitality while providing opportunities for connecting with God & community. At the center of the hotel was a rotunda 100 feet in diameterover which rises a dome as lofty as a church spire, a reporter for theMilwaukee Daily Sentinelwrote. He married Margaret Dunlap about 1784, in Guilford, North Carolina, United States. Columned, brick and symmetrical, it was just about the finest house in the state, people said, second only to the Hermitage, the estate of President Andrew Jackson. Part of Virginias section of that highway is known as the Lee-Jackson Highway, a love note to Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, the two Confederate generals. And that includes about Isaac Franklin. And there were lots of them. He carries a poster, 4 by 6 feet, in the back of his red Nissan truck. As plantations talk more honestly about slavery, some visitors are pushing back, In surviving correspondence, they actually brag about raping enslaved people who theyve been processing through the firm, said Calvin Schermerhorn, a professor of history at Arizona State University. To my certain knowledge she has been used & that smartly by a one eyed man about my size and age, excuse my foolishness, Isaac Franklins nephew James an employee and his uncles protege wrote in typical business correspondence, referring to Caroline Brown, an enslaved woman who suffered repeated rape and abuse at Jamess hands for five months. Thomson is an antiques dealer, mostly retired, and an amateur historian, mostly active. We had a nurse, a woman who used to be called a mammy. Elcho (Plantation : Madison Parish, La.) Lived in Nantucket (??) Though unsure what he wanted to do, Armfield was clear on what he didnt: He loathed farming. Your Privacy Rights Many people had scars from whipping. Thats good. Now, whether the papers were trivial or actual plantation records, who knows? I pull in at various towns and ask around. After Isaac died, in 1846, they published the succession, an inventory of his belongings, he says. When cotton went low, they did not. 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. My ancestor James was dabbling in some slave dealing on these tripssmall amount, nothing big. Buyers by the hundreds crammed the viewing rooms of dealers in Natchez and the auction halls of brokers in New Orleans. He knew how rare this was, so he decided to go back to his birthplace and look for his parents. He and his young wife came with a colony of Quaker emigrants to Philadelphia in 1718. It is an abbreviation, to accommodate people.. Boxley lets less than a second pass. The yards were parade grounds that worked like showrooms. Ferrill and was brought to Mobile, Alabama at the age of 10 years. He is white, a face etched by too much sun. Other white men, similarly armed, were arrayed behind him. Their good reputations persisted after retirement. There were others. The slave cabins were vacant. People do know, however, about Civil War battles. I was sold to Joseph Bruin, who took me to New Orleans. Then, hed send the group on an arduous 1,000-mile march to slave markets in Natchez or New Orleans or hed stuff them into one of the companys three massive ships to make the same journey by water. 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. No answer, despite several cars in the drive. They came to look at my negroes & wanted to buy seven or eight, but they objected to the price, Waller said. Swinging back into Mississippi, Old Factors Stand, LeFleurs Stand, Crowders Stand, others. Some names in the lists are familiar. Today at the Forks there is a muffler shop and, next to it, a gutter-and-awn-ing business. He is loath to spend yet another day probing the dark activities and darker minds of Franklin and Armfield. Waller was pinching pennies. Trailer-park childhood. Franklin disposed of their bodies in a bayou down the road. What do you think about Isaac Franklin? My name was then Hannah Person, it is now Hannah Cole. I mean, just gung-ho., Thomson gets up and walks through the house, pointing out the ample Franklin memorabilia. One of the most persistent misconceptions about slavery in the United States is that the white upper class refused to associate with slave traders on principle, Rothman said a myth the case of Franklin and Armfield disproves. He was a minister. Isaac Franklin and John Armfield (1828-1837) were the first to use the property as a slave pen. The paper started a column called Lost Friends, a page on which people called out for family that had disappeared on the Slave Trail. Take the ashes and get off my land., The intent was to keep that history buried, McQuinn says today. Here the mountains thicken into the Appalachian South of deep hollows and secret hills. He knew how to be a gentleman. My name was Mary, and I was nine years old when sold to a trader named Walker, who carried us to North Carolina. Visitation will be held on Friday, March 3rd 2023 from 12:30 PM to 1:00 PM at the Royer Funeral Home (100 Royer Ln, Grain Valley, MO 64029). Before he married, Isaac had companions, some willing, some unwilling. This movement lasted longer and grabbed up more people than any other migration in North America before 1900. Other coffles came from the direction of Richmond. I think slavery developed here primarily because of the ignorance of the blacks. He did it, but it is what it is. Wallers letters are imprecise on his route, and by 1847 there were a few roads from Tennessee into Mississippi. Its been a long time. We have been stopped for two days by the breaking up of turnpikes and bridges. On the whole, things werent that bad. 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.. Armfield crossed them on flatboats. Well, Germans and Scots-Irish settled the Shenandoah, thats who was here. No wonder that there should be robberies and assassinations in such a population.. In place of towns were stands every 10 or 15 miles. Beautiful houses, an antique village, a large tourist trade. John Armfield, slave trader and businessman, descended from North Carolina Quakers who were Loyalists during the American Revolution. He complained that his wifes brother Samuel had condescended to him a few months before. We would like to see it, if possible. The man at the door, who I have to assume was from the slaveholding side, said, Sure, well give it to you., The man went into his house and came back out with some papers in his hands. And then they were goneout to plantations in northern Louisiana, or central Mississippi, or southern Alabama. 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. Northern Shenandoah was wheat country then, with one in five people enslaved and hoeing in the fields. Destructive 'Super Pigs' From Canada Threaten the Northern U.S. The chain gang also has roots in the Slave Trail. It is easily stumbled into. Exceedingly heavy and continued rains have stopped our progress, he told his wife. John Armfield Barrister and Mediator John specialises in estate litigation. Privacy Statement Listed in 1790 Guilf census 1-2-1 John's three married daughters had remained in Pennsylvania. We in New Orleans have come a long way since Hurricane Katrina in terms of the comfort level of addressing certain subjects. Boyd, Samuel S. Clay, Henry, 1777-1852. We were handcuffed in pairs, with iron staples and bolts, recalled Charles Ball, who marched in several coffles before he escaped from slavery. After the Tennessee River, where the Trace dips into Alabama for 50 miles, Buzzard Roost Stand. People still come to show their money at Fairvue, like Franklin himself. Nearly enclosed by green curtains of limbs, it feels like a tunnel. The tan clapboard housefolding chairs and a hammock in the front yard, cinder blocks and planks for front stepsoverflows inside with books, LPs, folk art, old newspapers, knickknacks, clothes in piles and unidentifiable hoards of objects. It hangs in the living room, above the sofa. The remainder of the gang pushed on to Natchez. It is a refrain among Southern whites who remain emotionally attached to the plantation daysthat one in 1,000 slaveholders who were black vindicates in some fashion 999 who were not. The black churches picked it up. Although the Historic New Orleans Collection is the citys most serious and extensive history center, it attracted few blacks until this year. She was fancier than he. In the 1830s, Armfield fulfilled his vow as the partner of . Both institutions broke attendance records. Two phone calls later, one of the living Franklins answers. At this point in the journey, other spurs, from Louisville and Lexington to the north, joined the main path of the Slave Trail. He does not make small talk. That was just part of life. I read, in many places, that slave traders had sex with the women they bought and sold. And in Gallatin there is a church named after one of the Key family preachers. I am fighting for our enslaved ancestors. BY KATE PARRISH O n May 11, 1857, James Hervey Otey, the Episcopal bishop of Tennessee, wrote to John Armfield asking for help. The Natchez Trace Parkway, with asphalt flat like silk, now follows the old route. She laughs, surprisingly. They were guarding 200 men and boys lined up in twos, their wrists handcuffed together, a chain running the length of 100 pairs of hands. You know, we carried on. The cut is about 12 feet wide, with shallow ditches on each side. It worked like this: Relying on a network of headhunters spread across Virginia, Maryland and the District, Armfield would round up enslaved people, holding them in an open-air pen behind the house in Alexandria or sometimes in its crowded, filthy basement until hed amassed a sufficient number: usually between 100 and 200. On April 1, Waller reached home. I have not seen him for ten years. Surnames; Search People; But during the 50 years coffles were sent on the Slave Trail, the road most taken was the Natchez Trace. Most slave traders at that time were considered common and uncouth, with no social graces. A lot of black people, she said, do not want to know about their ancestry. It sat under a piece of glass and measured about 2 by 4 feet. Born in 1797 in Guilford County, North Carolina, Armfield was coming off a brief stint running a mercantile business and, unsure of what to do next, he may have turned to the slave trade at Franklin's suggestion. Based in Alexandria, Virginia, they traded thousands of African Americans to the Deep South and secured millions in profit. A month ago the bridge was uncovered with a backhoe by a developer, Boxley says. Red flags fluttered down the streets in Richmond, on Wall Street in Shockoe Bottom, she said. I am president of the Sumner County Hysterical Society, he cracks, the only place you get respect for knowing a lot of dead people.. Developing the exhibit, Greenwald and her team created a database of names of the enslaved who were shipped from the Eastern states to New Orleans. When visitors came to the Alexandria townhouse, he always opened the door for them, made elegant small talk and offered them something nice to drink, McInnis said. In the library at Yale I did a bit more unearthing and found a travelogue by a man named Ethan Andrews, who happened to pass through Alexandria a year later and witness the organizing of an Armfield coffle. A few bring up their own ethnic lore. Will you send her out or shall I charge you $1,100 for her?, To maximize her price, Franklin might have sold the Charlottesville maid at one of the public auctions in the city. Kenneth Thomson brings out some daguerreotypes of the Franklins and others in his family tree. Thats on the Internet. 1695 ENG d. 1792 NC 10/07/99 Re: John Armfield b. 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