WEALTHY FREE WOMEN OF COLOR IN CHARLESTON,

SOUTH CAROLINA DURING SLAVERY

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A Dissertation Presented
by
RITA REYNOLDS
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Submitted to the Graduate School of

The University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

MAY 2007

AFRO-AMERICAN STUDIES
 UMI Number: 3275800

Copyright 2007 by
Reynolds, Rita

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All rights reserved.

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UMI Microform 3275800

Copyright 2007 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company.
All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against
unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

ProQuest Information and Learning Company

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Copyright by Rita Reynolds 2007

All Rights Reserved

 WEALTHY FREE WOMEN OF COLOR IN CHARLESTON,
SOUTH CAROLINA DURING SLAVERY

A Dissertation Presented
by
RITA REYNOLDS

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Approved as to style and content by:
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_____________________________________
Manisha Sinha, Chair
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_____________________________________
Robert P. Wolff, Member

_____________________________________
John H. Bracey, Member

_____________________________________
Martha Saxton, Member

__________________________________
Esther M.A. Terry, Department Chair
Afro-American Studies
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IN MEMORY OF
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Angelina V. Reynolds
(1933-1996)
who still inspires and encourages me.
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 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express my sincere thanks to the faculty members of the

Department of African American Studies at the University of Massachusetts. Their

collective knowledge has been an inspiration to me.

I am grateful to John Bracey for all his guidance. This dissertation would not

have been possible without his encyclopedic knowledge and experience in the field of

African-American history. I am thankful to Robert Paul Wolff for all his help in every

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aspect of my work. Bob tirelessly read and reread multiple drafts of my dissertation and

helped me organize my ideas. He also kept me on track and focused. I am in his debt.
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Id like to also thank Martha Saxton for her kindness and help. Her insights, suggestions

and corrections have been invaluable to me. Id like to sincerely thank my dissertation
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director, Manisha Sinha, for all she has done. She challenged my ideas, helped me refine

my scholarship and provided ceaseless advice, comments and scholarly wisdom.

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I am grateful to my family and friends who never stopped encouraging me as I

researched and studied the wealthy free black community in Charleston. I would like to

thank Donna Armstrong for her support, enthusiasm and friendship over the years,

Charles Corno for his spiritual support, prayers, kindness and enduring friendship, Rollin

Shoemaker for his encouragement and prayers and Anita Simms Monte for always being

there and for helping me make sense of the process.

I also owe a great deal of thanks to my colleagues and former classmates, Jennifer

Jensen Wallach and Andrew J. Rosa. They supported me and made the journey a joy.

Tricia Loveland and Bill Strickland helped make my ride more humorous and I am
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thankful for them. I am grateful to Esther Terry for always speaking her mind, for her

wisdom, warmth and kindness. I am thankful for my brother Eric, my sister Roxane and

her husband Steven for their consistent and unwavering support as I researched and wrote

my dissertation. I could not have done it without their encouragement and prayers. They

never tired of hearing about the women over the years. I am also grateful to Roger

Vincent for providing the seeds of information in the mid 1980s. Lastly. I owe my

mother a debt of gratitude I will never be able to repay and I humbly thank God for

making all this possible.

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R.R.

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 ABSTRACT

WEALTHY FREE WOMEN OF COLOR IN CHARLESTON,

SOUTH CAROLINA DURING SLAVERY

MAY 2007

RITA REYNOLDS, B.F.A., CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF THE ARTS

M.A., NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

M.A., UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES

Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST

Directed by: Professor Manisha Sinha

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This dissertation focuses on the lives and experiences of a small group of affluent
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free mulatto women in antebellum Charleston, South Carolina. Unlike their enslaved
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sisters we know very little about their community and the place they occupied in it. To

comprehend the everyday world wealthy free women of color inhabited I begin by

examining the origins of the wealthy free colored community in Charleston. I then
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investigate individual case studies of five wealthy free mulatto and black women and

how their varying choices, made under differing degrees of societal duress, molded and

formed their lives. Biographical sketches of Rachel and Martha Inglis, Nancy Randall,

Hagar Richardson and Margaret Bettingall consider the different options each woman

experienced under the same social, economic and racial framework. All five women

(whose stories are told here for the first time) dealt with enslavement from either a

personal perspective as slaves themselves, or as a recent memory in recalling a mother or

grandmothers bondage. Their stories relate how the lives of wealthy free women of

vii
color were paradoxical and how they often dealt with triumph and tragedy in the same

instance.

Like the majority of wealthy southern white women who spent a portion of their

time as sophisticated urbanites, wealthy free women of color also set out to participate as

free people in a slave society. To fully share in the economic and social benefits of

society these women made deliberate efforts to improve their station through education,

religious participation, social institutions and caste and racial identification with their

wealthy white neighbors. However, the oppressive nature of Southern slave society

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greatly thwarted their best efforts. As a result, free blacks basic rights were

fundamentally denied. This examination of five wealthy free women of color will analyze
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the manner in which social, community and family relationships influenced the world

these women occupied. Racial and class status were also defining creeds for free wealthy
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women of color. By probing into the importance of race and class affiliations in the free

mulatto community a clearer portrait of racial hierarchy among the wealthy emerges.
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 CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS..................................................................................................v

ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................vii

LIST OF TABLES..x

CHAPTER

1. INTRODUCTION......1

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2. ORIGINS OF WEALTHY FREE COLORED COMMUNITY.......16
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3. RACHEL INGLIS: MENTAL INSANITY IN THE FREE BLACK
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COMMUNITY..56

4. MARTHA INGLIS: SECOND GENERATION FREE WOMAN OF

COLOR....116
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5. NANCY RANDALL, ANN BETTINGALL, AND HAGAR

RICHARDSON : CONCUBINE, MISTRESS, OR WIFE.187

6. CONCLUSION...239

BIBLIOGRAPHY.......250

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 LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

1. Racial Breakdown of Charleston, South Carolina in 1790, 1800 and 1810.28

2. Population of Jamaica, West Indies in the 18th Century.......81

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x
 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

This dissertation focuses on the lives and experiences of a small group of affluent

free mulatto women in antebellum Charleston, South Carolina. Unlike their enslaved

sisters we know very little about their community and the place they occupied in it. To

comprehend the everyday world wealthy free women of color inhabited I begin by

examining the origins of the wealthy free colored community in Charleston. I then

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investigate individual case studies of five wealthy free mulatto and black women and

how their varying choices, made under differing degrees of societal duress, molded and
IE
formed their lives. Biographical sketches of Rachel and Martha Inglis, Nancy Randall,

Hagar Richardson and Margaret Bettingall consider the different options each woman
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experienced under the same social, economic and racial framework. All five women

(whose stories are told here for the first time) dealt with enslavement from either a
PR

personal perspective as slaves themselves, or as a recent memory in recalling a mother or

grandmothers bondage. Their stories relate how the lives of wealthy free women of

color were paradoxical and how they often dealt with triumph and tragedy in the same

instance.

Like the majority of wealthy southern white women who spent a portion of their

time as sophisticated urbanites, wealthy free women of color also set out to participate as

free people in a slave society. To fully share in the economic and social benefits of

society these women made deliberate efforts to improve their station through education,

religious participation, social institutions and caste and racial identification with their
1
wealthy white neighbors. However, the oppressive nature of Southern slave society

greatly thwarted their best efforts. As a result, free blacks basic rights were

fundamentally denied. This examination of five wealthy free women of color will analyze

the manner in which social, community and family relationships influenced the world

these women occupied. Racial and class status were also defining creeds for free wealthy

women of color. By probing into the importance of race and class affiliations in the free

mulatto community a clearer portrait of racial hierarchy among the wealthy emerges.

Considering the harsh environment of one of the Souths most brutal slave ports,

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free women of color, in all probability, faced the same dualii discrimination that slave

women grappled with. In her book Arnt I a Woman Deborah Grey White argues that
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slave women had the least formal power and were perhaps the most vulnerable group of

antebellum Americans 1 I agree with this assessment, and in this study I argue further
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that wealthy free black womens position, in many ways, mirrored their enslaved sisters.

Whether free or slave, blacks lived in a society that was dominated by racial bondage.
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The line that divided slavery and freedom was one that was barely visible to some free

blacks; they suffered under many of the same legal and social restrictions as slaves. In

some instances, poor free women of color struggled under oppression just as slave

women did. While one group was free and the other not they both, occasionally, dealt

with some level of exploitation as they tried to function as women.2

1
Deborah Gray White, Ar'n't I a Woman? : Female Slaves in the Plantation South, 1st ed. (New
York: Norton, 1985), p. 15.
2
George Blackburn and Sherman L. Ricards, "The Mother - Headed Family among Free Negroes
in Charleston, South Carolina, 1850-1860," Phylon (1960) 42, no. 1 (1st Qtr., 1981), 11-25. Free
women of color headed a disproportionate number of free black households.
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 Charlestons wealthy free black community was not immune to the significant

legal and social restrictions put in place by South Carolina lawmakers to keep them in a

semi-subservient position, a position that considered them more like chattel than free

people. Proslavery writer Edwin C. Holland saw

negroes as the Jacobins of the country, against whom we should

always be on our guard, and who, although we fear no permanent

effects from any insurrectionary movement on their part should be

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with an eye of steady and unremitted observation.

Holland stated further,

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They are the anarchists and the domestic enemy; the common

enemy of civilized society, and the barbarians who would, IF

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THEY COULD, become the DESTROYERS of our race.3

His proslavery rhetoric was undoubtedly directed at the black community at large since

American slave law defined all Africans as chattel. By edict free blacks were required to

prove their status and if they could not they were presumed chattel and enslaved.

Historian Ira Berlin rightly terms free people of color slaves without masters.

3
Manisha Sinha, The Counterrevolution of Slavery : Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South
Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 362, p. 15 and Shearer Davis
Bowman, Masters & Lords : Mid-19th Century U.S. Planters and Prussian Junkers (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 189.
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 For wealthy and poor free women of color, this subservient rank went further.

White Southerners saw white women, especially planter class women, as the keepers of

southern culture and the moral conscience of society. The plantation mistress, as

historian Catherine Clinton has termed her, was the image of humanitarianism in the

slave South. As a good mother to her family and proper wife to her husband she

defended the Southern way of life.4 Free women of color, however, were not Southern

belles regardless of how economically advantaged they were, or how much European

heritage they claimed, or how elite their position in the free black community. Gender

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was not an overriding consideration for whites when they considered the free black

community since colored women were not put on a pedestal as white women. Their
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importance was negligible since they were not legitimate members of society and thus

not relied on by southern ideologues to care for their families in a manner that would
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further the southern way of life. Given that part of their heritage was African, and thus

part of the inferior class of the states inhabitants, they were excluded from any part of
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republican ideology. In much the same manner as slave women, free women of color

were denied their womanhood.

Another point of contention in this dissertation is the rules of southern class

accountability. Class structure in the South was rigid, but it was applied unevenly to free

wealthy women of color as it did white women of the same class. Proslavery ideology

was an important component of South Carolinas social, political, and religious

landscape. Clearly Charlestons free black community suffered under a belief system

4
Steven M. Stowe, Intimacy and Power in the Old South : Ritual in the Lives of the Planters
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987).
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that categorically denied it the same rights wealthy whites enjoyed. Proslavery ideology

played an important role in the way whites perceived gender relationships in the free

black community.

As the majority of Charlestons black upper class were of mixed European and

African heritage, which they proudly proclaimed, I argue this identification allowed them

additional privileges unavailable to other free Afro-American women who could not

make the same claim. Additionally, E. Horace Fitchetts work on the free brown elite

suggests that they emulated upper class white society in all aspects of life, from slave

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ownership to religious affiliations. This work examines the importance of proper

southern behavior by free women of color and how white gender norms determined how

they were treated in society.

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Free women of color, not unlike their white counterparts, struggled in a male
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dominated society, which greatly limited their opportunities. One area of concern is how

accessible education was since instruction was exclusively for Charlestons white elite.
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After 1832, South Carolina law forbade educating blacks, free or enslaved, but this law

was enforced selectively because the majority of wealthy free women of color were

literate. Evidence indicates that the free brown elite were successful, to a certain degree,

at appeasing the white communitys fears and were allowed to operate their own school.

Also, a small number of slave women in the lowcountry reaped the reward of

emancipation for long-term, seemingly stable, consensual sexual, or romantic

relationships with their white owners. In securing liberty and economic security for

themselves and their children they also gained entry into the wealthy free black

community. They owed, their standing largely to their association with a white male
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benefactor of high political, social and economic position. This study examines what it

meant for slave women to give informed consent to their masters sexual advances and

how newly freed wealthy women of color differed from others of their class whose

families enjoyed freedom for generations.

Lastly, slave ownership among the free brown elite has been a thorny issue in

African-American history. The notion that free blacks enslaved other blacks is an

inconceivable one to the contemporary reader, however, the reasons for this practice were

not as simple as previously believed. I argue that while wealthy free blacks utilized slave

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labor for the economic benefits associated with it, they also used it to literally draw a

line between themselves and the vast majority of enslaved Africans and African
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Americans. Those who shared European and African heritage identified with their white

ancestors and denied their African ones. Paradoxically many free people of color
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exhibited a form of what I call selective communal amnesia when it came to recalling

their past. In many instances, members of the free brown elite devised ways to
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completely refute their slave heritage. This renunciation caused a great deal of friction

between wealthy free people of color and many in the slave community.

Historiography*

American historians for the past 25 years have done a great deal in bringing the

voices of the traditionally unheard to the forefront. African-American and womens

history are two areas that have benefited greatly from this historiographical revolution of

sorts. U.S. womens historians such as Gerda Lerner, Barbara Welter, and Nancy Cott

*
This historiographical discussion, for obvious reasons, is by no means an exhaustive look at the
scholarship of American women or the free black community in antebellum South Carolina. I
have instead only included the most important works on both topics.
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have incorporated and integrated the story of American white middle-class northern

women into the larger body of American history. So too have scholars of African

American history begun to extricate the complexity of the slave community from past

mistaken belief that slaves were contented beings who completely identified with their

master and therefore had no community or traditions of their own. Both these

reevaluations have taken place over the past thirty plus years and while these

developments are significant in bringing the histories of white women and minorities into

the realm of mainstream American history there remains much scholarship to be done

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concerning free black women of all economic groups in the north and south. While

several studies have looked at many aspects of southern and northern womens lives,
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middle-class white women in New England, the southern Belle in the south, slave women

and more recently southern yeoman women, there are few comprehensive historical
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examinations of southern free black women in general, and more specifically, wealthy

free women of color. This dissertation will look at some major past historical trends
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pertaining to the scholarship of womens history to understand why the history of

wealthy free women of color has been neglected and to contemplate what direction new

scholarship on this topic should take.

Scholars such as Barbara Welter and Nancy Cott have presented a definitive study

of northern middle-class white womans separate domestic sphere. Their scholarship

illuminated womans world as a distinct element apart from mens world. In much the

same manner, Southern historians Ann Firor Scott and Catherine Clinton disarmed the

myth of the southern belle that portrayed southern wealthy white women as emotionally,

sexually and religiously pure. Their pioneering studies were some of the first to trace the
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origins of womens place as second-class citizens in the south. Welter, Scott, and

Clintons studies all clearly sought to demonstrate that gender was the primary source of

oppression for antebellum women in the U.S., but this notion of a single womens

community, grounded in a common oppression, denies the social and material realities of

race and class in America.

To fuse southern womens experiences, Elizabeth Fox-Genoveses ambitious

study of antebellum plantation life examined the divisions between slave women and

their mistresses arguing that gender was the defining element. Her creative thesis which

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considered plantation women as either ladies or servants, does as Catherine Clinton

argues in response, more to legitimate the language of the master class than to understand
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the complexities of race and class that this group of women faced daily on an individual

and collective basis. In response to the paternalistic leanings of Fox-Genovese, Brenda

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Stevensons scholarship on family and community life in Loudoun County, Virginia

better conceptualizes concepts of gender, class and race in the slave south by giving voice
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to both black and white, rich and poor communities.5

In an attempt to grasp what life was like for a cross section of all southern women

Suzanne Lebsocks study of Petersburg, Virginia examines the complexities of the lives

of free women from different social, racial and economic backgrounds. At the time of its

publication, there were few books to compare it with. Two additional works, written just

after Lebsocks Free Women in the mid 1980s, Deborah Grey Whites Arnt I A Woman

and Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow laments the harsh realities of the
5
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household : Black and White Women of the Old
South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988) and Brenda E. Stevenson, Life in
Black and White : Family and Community in the Slave South (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1996).
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lives of slave women and celebrates the creative ways black women survived such

oppressive circumstances. However, unlike Lebsock, Jones and White make African-

American women and the black family the focus of their studies. Their scholarship build

on the growing volume of literature on American slavery.

The few historical studies that made white and slave women central to their

scholarship, have generally omitted southern free wealthy black women. This is

surprising since wealthy free women of color were literate, owners of slaves and

property, there are more primary sources on them then on their enslaved sisters, but

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despite this fact the overwhelming majority of historical scholarship is on the white and

enslaved population. Unfortunately, the study of wealthy free black women has been,
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mostly overlooked by historians of southern womens history.

The historical construction of Charlestons black female community has been

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slow, and largely characterized by the hardships of bondage, oppression and poverty.

But, most historical narratives of black women in South Carolina draw few if any
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distinctions between the experiences of slaves and ex-slaves in Charleston despite class,

caste, education, religious affiliation, or social position. We are thus, presented with a

monolithic image of black womanhood. However, historical evidence, which is still being

uncovered, does suggest that Afro-American women in Charleston occupied every social

and economic class from the Colonial period through to Reconstruction and beyond.

The black community in Charleston was diverse; its religious, political and social

beliefs varied greatly. The wealthy members of the free brown elite, in particular, were

significantly distinct from slaves in Charleston. To some extent, they enjoyed the benefits

of wealth and freedom in a society that held the vast majority of Afro-Americans as
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chattel. Not surprisingly most of what we know about the free black and brown

community in Charleston concerns men. In 1950, E. Horace Fitchett, one of the first to

study the topic, wrote a detailed sociological and historical study of the social and

economic environment of wealthy free mulatto men in Charleston. Fitchetts book length

manuscript was never published (it was his doctoral dissertation), and as a result, the next

wave of scholarship on Charlestons free black community came almost 25 years later

when Marina Wikramanayakes 1973 study, A World In Shadow; The Free Black in

Antebellum South Carolina revealed the complexities of life for a group of people who

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were, while legally free, mostly poor, illiterate and under constant scrutiny by the white

community.
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While the history of American slavery was making giant leaps in the 1970s and

1980s, the history of free blacks moved at a snail's pace. Peter Wood and Charles
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Joyner, among others, published ground breaking studies about slavery and slave

communities in South Carolina. The next edition of scholarship concerning Charlestons

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free people of color was not offered until the mid 1980s. Michael Johnson and James

Roarks No Chariot Let Down is a collection of letters between two free black men,

James Johnson, a Charleston tailor, and William Ellison, a planter in Statesburg, S.C, was

written on the eve of the Civil War. This work begins where Wikramanayake and

Fitchett left off. No Chariot Let Down reveals a great deal about the importance of

gender roles and class distinctions in Charlestons free black community. This set of

thirty-four letters is the most complete collection of correspondence between free blacks

in the antebellum South. Johnson, a tailor by trade, penned twenty-six of the thirty-four

letters in Charleston and addressed the everyday concerns of the free black community
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with surprisingly little attention paid to the ever-tightening legal restrictions placed on

them. Johnson and Roark have done a commendable job reassembling facts concerning

specific individuals mentioned in James Johnsons correspondence in pre-Civil War

Charleston. Their introduction and carefully cited footnotes attest to the considerable

time and effort put into editing these letters which begin to unravel the mystery of how

free blacks functioned in a society that categorically denied their humanity and would

have enslaved all people with the slightest hint of African blood. But, as commendable

as the study is in reconstructing pre Civil War Charleston, Johnson and Roark fail to fully

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analyze or comment upon the many gender issues in their historical commentary of the

letters. For instance, in one of the letters, Anthony Weston a member of one of
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Charlestons most wealthy and respected free families of color, demanded a retraction

from a Charleston newspaper that had implied that one of his daughters was a woman of
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low moral character. The paper falsely reported that one of Westons daughters was

punished (the newspaper did not identify which one it was) in the Charleston Workhouse
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for insolent behavior to a white lady.6 Weston understood, as did all wealthy free people

of color, that not only was a free colored ladys good reputation key to maintaining her

coveted place in free black society, but that his family was also in danger of losing its

respectability among whites and blacks alike, something the Weston family, for at least a

generation, had worked to obtain and maintain in the eyes of white Charlestonians.7 Also

6
Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roark, No Chariot Let Down : Charleston's Free People of
Color on the Eve of the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), p. 109.
7
Southern white Ladies were expected to conform to masculine ideals of cultural and racial
purity. Fathers, brothers, uncles and cousins made sure that female family members virtue
remained intact by their obsessive control of the southern womens world. See Catherine
Clintons article Southern Dishonor: Flesh, Blood, Race, and Bondage in Carol K. Rothrock
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in jeopardy was his daughters marriage prospects. A soiled reputation would have all

but shattered her chances of marrying into any of Charlestons elite free families of color.

In Anthony Westons eyes his daughters life was at risk of being ruined by rumors of

unruly behavior unbecoming to someone of their social class and standing. Weston

wanted to ensure that his daughters future prospects would not be devastated by

mistaken identity reported in an inaccurate newspaper article produced by the often

hostile white press. Clearly representations in gender roles were as important to wealthy

free blacks as they were to whites.

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Another important piece of scholarship is Ira Berlins impressive work Slaves

Without Masters. Berlin scrutinizes social and political conditions of the free black
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community throughout the South from the Colonial period to the Civil War. Berlins

study divides the south into two parts, the upper and lower and offers another way to
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envision the complexities of opposing regions within the south for free people of color.

Berlin builds on John Hope Franklins study on free blacks in North Carolina and Leon
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Litwacks North of Slavery solidly bringing the history of free blacks into mainstream

American history. Clearly these three works reveal that there were free blacks that lived

outside the free north. At the time of their publications this was a revelation of sorts

since most American historians prior to the 1960s denied that self-sufficient and semi

independent free black communities ever existed.

By the 1990s, the writing of the history of black South Carolinians was well

under way. Bernard Powers and Larry Kogers social histories examined race relations in

Bleser, In Joy and in Sorrow : Women, Family, and Marriage in the Victorian South, 1830-1900
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
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Charleston in the 19th century and up until that point, the taboo subject of black slave

ownership. Powers rich study examined the complex social, political and economic

dynamics between free blacks, slaves and whites. Black Charlestonians importance lies

in its ability to incorporate the experience of free black men into the larger picture of

Charleston race and class relations. Larry Kogers, Black Slaveowners takes the wealthy

free black community to task, male and female, for owning slaves solely for financial

gain.8 Readers may feel uncomfortable with Kogers heavy-handed approach, which casts

the free brown elite as victimizers and not as the social outcasts that they truly were.

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However, Black Slaveowners has generated a series of insightful, probing questions that

will take historians years to answer.

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One of the more recent and interesting additions to the study of free blacks in

Charleston is Douglas Egertons He Shall Come Out Free, a biographical examination of

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accused slave insurrectionist Denmark Vesey. Egertons narrative of antebellum South

Carolinas most notorious former slave does much to explain the reasons why a free man
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of color would plan an enormous slave revolt and put his own position at risk. Egerton

along with Powers and Koger, reconstitutes the social, political and racial atmosphere in

antebellum Charleston. The images they present are not pleasant. They are often

complex and paradoxical, but still necessary in understanding conditions for the free

black community.

The study of wealthy free women in Charleston, South Carolina or elsewhere in

the antebellum south, for that matter, is necessary if we are to have a better understanding

8
Larry Koger, Black Slaveowners : Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860
(Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1985).
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