James Battle Avirett: The Old Plantation

Document Text

CHAPTER VII

Let us take this cross street, running out of Broadway into what the servants call Chestnut street. What strikingly large building is that which fronts us as we go on in our rambling walk of observation? That is what is called, in the parlance of the plantation, the gin house or the cotton gin. You observe it is very large and three stories in height. To what use is it to be put? You see it is surrounded on all sides by a deep shedding; in this first shed room are kept the large family carriage, sulky, buggies and light wagons, some from the celebrated factory of Cook in New Haven, Connecticut, and several others from Dunlap in Philadelphia. The old planter prided himself on the cost and elegance of his vehicles, and that beautiful family carriage, finished in silk, did not cost him less than a thousand dollars, with fine, silver-plated harness to correspond. With the large, steel-gray horses purchased in Baltimore it makes up an outfit so exactly suited to her taste that the mistress would not take twenty-five hundred dollars for it. There is a well-appointed harness room, some of the very best of Concord, New Hampshire, work. Ah, these old planters and their families had the very best the markets of the world could afford. The large shed room on the east is known as the pork house, where the meat rations of the estate are kept, at the great doorway of which they are served or dealt out by weight on alternate Saturday afternoons. On the north side of the main building, in a commodious well lighted shed room. is where the carpenters, four in number, ply their most useful industries. On the west side you have two rooms, one in which Virgil, the painter, keeps his paints and oils; the other is where the various stores of hardware, nails, bolts, screws, etc., are kept. What octagon-shaped house is that out in the yard? That is the cotton screw or compress, where the cotton and wool are baled for market. That stairway out there to your left leads up to where the cotton is kept before it is ginned, and that small room there is where old Santy mends the harness, and half soles the shoes of the servants. You observe in it the only stove on the estate? Why is this? This stove is used to keep the old cobbler’s wax ends so warmed as to be pliable in the coldest of weather. You see, in the various and multiform appointments of his large estate, the old planter does not forget anything. Well, we must go on. What buildings are those down there in that little ravine, with the large gum trees growing near by and those beautiful willows fed by the moisture of the small streams, which constitutes the drainage of the quarter? These are the quarters of perhaps the most useful and at the same time the most interesting servant on the estate; that is Robert, the blacksmith, and that Hercules of a man near by is Washington, who wields the ponderous sledge hammer as though it were a toy. Look at the splendid muscle in those brawny arms, as he and his chief are keeping time with their hammers on the blazing iron on the anvil. Indeed it is an anvil chorus, and how the sparks do fly all over the smithy, but they are well protected by their ample leather aprons. What is Robert doing now? He is putting a set of steel plates on that beautiful saddle horse out there in the yard. Does he work in steel too? Yes, he served his apprenticeship when a youth under one of the best artisans in the city of Richmond, Virginia. So you see there is skilled labor on this estate as well as in Lowell, Massachusetts. That large room on the left is where Caesar, the wheelwright, makes and repairs the carts and wagons. As we ascend the hill from this ravine, on that broad level are many houses. To what uses are they put? Some of them are barns and cribs for the storage of grain and forage; others again are large wagon sheds and others still for the comfortable stabling of one hundred and fifty horses and mules that are required on this estate. Those out there are for the comfort of the milch cows and the five yoke of oxen. Over there in a more modern building are kept the fancy or pleasure horses of the family, while lower down, in a separate lot or inclosure with high fence all around, are the stables for the two fine stallions, “John Richlands” and Crackaway,” the latter a valuable present from one of the old planter’s dearest friends, William B. Meares, Esquire, of Wilmington; the former the colt of Vashti, the celebrated Sir Archy mare sired by imported Trustee, the father of the world-renowned Fashion, the empress of the American turf. Do you hear that fearful noise down there—a sort of combine of foghorn and trombone? My sakes! what an unearthly racket that is! It’s the bray of old “Dosy,” the jack, sire of many of the best mules on the plantation. Do you suppose the notes of Balaam’s animal were either as deep or long drawn out? Never. The seer would have been deaf as well as blind in the angelic interview. But the disciples of the higher criticism must answer your questions satisfactorily on this point. Whose quarters are those in the center of the quadrangle on which faces so many of these buildings? Those are rooms known as the storehouse, in one of which dear old Ben sleeps, and in which are kept the saddles and bridles, the riding outfit of the family. How complete this saddlery is! Where does it come from? Mostly from the fine shops of Nashville, Tennessee, and one or two there are of the English Shafter pattern, bearing the London trademark. In this other larger room are kept the shoes, blankets and hats not yet distributed to the servants, while back in there you will find hoes of various patterns, from the narrow bladed rice hoe to the broader cotton hoe, rakes, shovels, axes, pickaxes, spades, pitchforks, wagon whips, collars large and small for horses and mules. What small room is that with long table and drawers, well supplied with hooks inserted in the wall. That is Ben’s inner sanctuary or where the keys of the whole plantation, on both sides of the creek, are securely kept under his faithful eye. It would try our patience to stop long enough to count them all, but this faithful, honest darky knows and keeps them all in his safe custody while he is always ready to saddle you a horse if you wish to ride out on horseback, or on that long bench cut a hamestring for Suwarro’s use among the plowmen. We shall see Ben again before our work is done, for you must know him better. He is the embodiment of honesty with some of the queer African freaks, in its racial fondness for dress of bright coloring and fancy materials. In other words, Ben is the dude of the plantation, the Beau Brummel of his race, and so you will pronounce when you see him dressed up in his best bib and tucker for the plantation Christmas dinner, the description of which is yet before us. Dear old Ben! Blessed old Ben! He is gone long ago where the good darkies go! How the writer wishes he had a good likeness of him with which to embellish these pages, for a nobler spirit never breathed the breath of life. Across the river of life in the Great Beyond, Ben, I wave my hand to you; yes, I kiss my hand to you and hope soon to have long, long, talks with you of the good old plantation days, when we will thank God that my people taught your people to know and love the Christ, the King.

There are some other things before us and we must hurry on. Let us go back to the old mansion, and in the description which we would leave of it let us insert two or three features of the outhouses, and just one on the interior of the house. Let us go upstairs and on the back piazza, which you observe is without roof, and see what Edith and Kate, the maid servants of the writer’s sisters, are doing. They are helping Handy, the dining room servant, to bring up large trays of fruit—peaches, pears and apples—to be dried up there, where nothing will disturb them in the hot rays of the sun. What fruit is that of deep blood color? That is the wild plum of the plantation and those trays over there are full of whortleberries and wild currants. All of this wild or uncultivated fruit has been purchased from the young servants of the estate, gathered by them in the adjoining woodland stretching far away to the south. The storeroom was thus well supplied with delicious dried fruit, and in the winter pies, tarts and dumplings came in as a part of the dessert. As we go downstairs in the hall near the old planter’s bedroom door what large enclosure of black walnut is that so like a handsomely finished wardrobe? That is the gun case or closet. Let us look in. Do you see that large double-barreled gun in the center there? That is the gun from a London manufactory (not Joe Manton’s, but of very fine workmanship) and, you observe, heavily mounted with silver, with two sets of barrels to the same stock, a larger set for the larger game of bear and deer, while the smaller is used for wild turkey partridges, squirrels and other smaller game. This is the planter’s special property, while in the half-dozen other guns you will find such as will please almost any one, likely to use them. Besides the shot guns, there are two or three rides of different calibre, and one other gun of large bore and great weight manufactured at the United States arsenal, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and especially adapted to plantation purposes.

On the line of the fence dividing the poultry yard from the dog kennel, on the slope of the hill, do you observe that brick house partly embedded in the hillside? That is the most complete dairy or springhouse in this section of the State. Take down that calabash or gourd and dip down into that deep basin of crystal water which wells up in the center. No limestone there. Pure freestone or soft water and deliciously cool and very potable. Those troughs all around the sides of the dark; cool room are for the pans of milk. Let us count them. One, two, three and so on to twenty-four pans of milk. How yellow and rich it looks while the cream is coming to the top. Here come the milkmaids now. Do you observe, as they come through the side gate en route to the dairy, with what ease and apparently with what security they balance those large milkpails filled with milk, on their heads and without touching them with their hands? What is the secret of their ability to do this? Perfect health and strength, with long training from childhood up, running through generations, it may be from the jungles of Africa.

“How many cows are you now milking, Aunt Abby?”

“’Bout twenty-five, suh.”

“What do your cows eat now?”

“Dey’s on the secon’ crap of rice now, suh.”

Thus with twenty-five cows to milk and those fed on the second growth of the rice field, after the crop has been harvested, you will quite understand both the quantity and quality of the milk and butter which graced the old planter’s table.

The object of the proprietor of this estate was to produce, as nearly as possible, everything consumed, as well on the plantation proper, as in the turpentine orchards. Thus the large number of casks of spirits of turpentine, as well as the thousands of barrels of resin, which were sold each year in the New York market, produced the monied income of the estate. The ordinary yield of corn was about thirty-five hundred barrels, with a large quantity of forage in fodder belonging to this crop, and they were nearly all consumed on the estate. Aside from the large number of beeves butchered on the estate, there were annually a large number sent to the market, while five hundred hogs every winter went to the shambles, providing the meat rations of the whole plantation. These furnished a supply of hams for the planter’s table, in number so great that they went over from year to year, so that on a highday or a holiday it was not an unusual thing to have a ham on the table seven years old. The writer is entitled to an opinion on the subject of hams, and he here ventures to say that not even the Smithfield ham of Virginia nor that of Westphalia in Europe surpasses those which found their deep russet color in the green hickory and corncob smoke of the old plantation smokehouse. The flocks of sheep, both those on the plantation proper and those under the care of the white tenants in the turpentine orchards, yielded a fine supply of lambs in the spring of the year to go with the green peas of the early garden, with plenty of mutton throughout the year; while in the wool, both for home use and the markets, there was no little profit. Just here let it be observed that among those ill informed upon subjects upon which they do no little talking, and but little well informed thinking, the idea is common that there was little or no care taken in the selection of the breeds of farm animals on the Southern estates. It is true that the “razor-backed” hog was seen running at large and sometimes as wild as the country in which they were found. At the same time, on this estate and many others there were several improved breeds of swine, the Essex, the Poland China, the Jersey Reds, the Little Guinea, the Chester Whites, and that perfection of a farm animal of its kind, the Berkshire. The proprietor gave particular attention to the breeding of the Merino and Southdown sheep, while among his herds of cattle could be found as fine specimens of Durham and Devon breeds as one might care to see. This you must remember was before the introduction of the Alderney, Jersey or Guernsey from those small islands of England.

Among other products of this estate were large crops of the black-eyed pea, that Southern substitute for clover and with this advantage to the pea, in that it was both grain and forage; some eighty or a hundred bags of cotton, with rice, tobacco and sorghum for home use. One can quite understand that when all the crops of this estate had been carefully harvested and the hog-killing or butchering season was over, with the era of “hog and hominy” fairly ushered in, there was a reign of such an abundance of good things as demanded with full warrant the observance of Christmas, that blessed queen of all the plantation highdays and holidays, to which justice in nowise could be done until at least a full week had been allowed for this high tide of enjoyment, in both great house and cabin, to expend its force, finding its ebb on January second, when all entered on the duties of the new year. You may be upon the point of asking what were the rations of food and clothing which went regularly to the servants on this estate, and of what did the rations consist? You shall have the answer. These people worked faithfully and they should have been warmly clad and abundantly fed. And so they were. The rations were issued by weight on alternate Saturday afternoons. To each servant there was issued for these fourteen days a half bushel of cornmeal and seven pounds of the very best mess pork, with his potatoes, rice and sorghum, together with his twist or roll of tobacco. The bread ration was often not drawn, but the money equivalent paid at market rates, which ordinarily were fifty cents for meal and forty cents per bushel of potatoes. The clothing was all spun, woven and made on the plantation. The work by which this was done was the outcome of the most perfect system in any department of the plantation industries. The hum of the spinning wheel, the noise of the loom, with the stirring whiz of the weaver’s shuttle (all accompanied, many times, by the melody of plantation songs) “Way Down on de Swannee River,” “Carry Me Back to Ole Berginny,” “Masse’s in de Cole, Cole Groun’” and many others which will grow into eternity with blessed memory as the writer crosses over and meets his dear sable friends, could be heard from January to December.

The clothing of so many servants required a great deal of systematized labor. The dyeing process was simple. The barks from the forest trees, the red oak, the poplar and dogwood, furnished the coloring, which was carefully set or fixed by old Aunt Daphne, by the judicious use of copperas and alum. This gave a serviceable brownish gray which rarely faded either in the woolen or cotton goods. Those bright red bars, about the width of your little finger, in the dresses of the young women and girls you see there fitting them so snugly, are the outcome of cochineal, known as “de turkey red” (and red it was) which gives delight to African eyes—just as scarlet as that seen in the uniform of the British soldier of revolutionary days in ’76 and thereabouts. To each servant were allowed three full suits of clothes annually, with plenty of wool and cotton allowed the wives and mothers for as many pairs of socks and stockings as they required. Three pairs of shoes, one pair of blankets, one wool and one straw hat went annually with each ration. To those who were much exposed to bad weather such as the drivers of the mule teams and ox-carts, warm overcoats, often weather-proof, were issued. The men employed in ditching, and Uncle Amos, who did nothing but hunt and “’stroy varmints” from year’s end to year’s end (making the best wages of any servant on the estate, because he killed so many eagles, coons and an occasional bear, with untold numbers of squirrels, black and red fox and the gray or cat squirrel), were given heavy brogan boots. The hides and skins from the sheep and cattle slaughtered during the year were exchanged for shoes and the leather needed for harness purposes by Brown & De Rossett, the commission merchants in New York, to whom was also consigned the wool for which in exchange we received hats and blankets.

Thus cared for, we greatly doubt whether any European peasantry or the lower element, the farm laborers of England’s population, or any factory element of either Old or New England fared as well as did the servants employed on this Southern plantation, under the practical, judicious and humane system which has been outlined on these pages. In maintaining this proposition I indulge in no misleading theories or distempered speculation. I discard the vaporing of all sickly, maudlin sentimentality when I say that no laboring population was ever better housed, better fed, better clothed or more humanely employed, as a rule (in which self-interest asserted itself, and where does it not assert itself?) than were the servants on this old estate of my father’s. Would you ask what there is to justify this assertion? The answer is close at hand. Facts substantiated by figures. Statistics. You say that statistics are misleading. Yes. One can lie by figures, as seen in watered stocks in Wall street and elsewhere, but figures of themselves will not lie.

The rapidity with which the servants on the Southern plantation increased in number, say from 1810 to 1860 just a half century, for the sake of round numbers, is proof conclusive that the general laws of health must have been in the main largely obeyed, and the conditions of numerical increase in families must have been complied with, else the several hundreds of thousands of dusky forms of African laborers, at the close of the first decade of this century would not have grown into the millions which we all know were found south of the Susquehanna in 1865. From a general statement let us pass to a specific, well emphasized demonstration of the truth in this matter. On this plantation dwelt two married couples—Henry with his wife, Daphne, and George with his wife, Emelene. They must have been married in the late twenties. To the former couple were born thirteen children, boys and girls, twelve of whom they reared to full adult age. To the latter were born eleven children, of whom ten reached manhood and womanhood. In other words the increase of twenty-two servants from the parentage of four persons. This is an increase of more than four hundred per cent., and tells us its own story of kind treatment. Nor have we any ground for saying that these were exceptional cases, when we remember that to-day in the South there are whole Congressional districts in which the negroes far outnumber the whites. Nor yet can anyone (save he who has been misled by Mrs. Stowe’s ex parte, and therefore unfair, statement in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”) say that the recital of facts, figures and conditions on these pages is not a fair picture of the old plantation life. Doubtless in Virginia on the James River estates, in South Carolina on the Wade Hampton plantations, and elsewhere in the South, there were many instances of even more humane treatment of the servants than is given here.

But we will go into no elaborate argumentation. The day for that is over. What we want are facts, and we are meeting Mrs. Stowe’s statement, not by argument, but by cool, dispassionate facts. What do you say to the portrayal of an element of African character in the form of an anecdote? Nothing pleases me more.

Well, it was a week of Christmas. Of several large gobblers, already fat, which had been put up in the large fattening coop to be flavored by the peanuts so abundant, one was missed. It created quite a stir. Handy, who fed the poultry, was excited, half mad and half frightened, in view of the consequences. Report was made to Uncle Jim, Suwarro and Ben, and close search was had. At last, so close was the search for the fine gobbler which was to grace “ole Marster’s” Christmas dinner table that he was found hid away in old Cupid’s ash barrel. Report was made and arrest ensued, with incriminating facts. The old darky sent for his Marse John. His young master appearing, the following conversation ensued:

“Come, now, Uncle Cupid, tell the truth about it; the whole truth, mind you, old man, and nothing but the truth. Are you sorry or not that you stole that turkey?”

The old darky’s racial fondness for turkey going into the background, under the shadow of his fear of penalty and in his great confidence in his young master, he called out:

“Marse John, you ax fo’ de truf, doan’ yo’?”

“Yes, Uncle Cupid, the whole truth.”

“Well, now, suh, yo’ see I can’t say so mi’ty much ’bout bein’ so ’ticular sorry I tuk dat turkey; but ’fore Gord, suh, young marster, I’se mi’ty sorry I was co’ch.”

“That will do, Ben, let him go, he has told the truth. Don’t steal any more turkeys, old man. Go home, now, and I will always stand by you when you tell the truth, for you certainly have told the truth this time—not so very sorry you took the master’s turkey, but mighty sorry you were caught.”

With loving laughter in his old eyes, Cupid went on to his home rejoicing, while Ben and the other servants laughed most heartily at the old man’s straightforward honesty of speech, if not of act.

---

Source: James Battle Avirett. The Old Plantation. New York: F. Tennyson Neely, 1901.