We have a family heirloom in our household. It is a collection of the Lady’s Newspaper from the year 1850. Originally it had been carefully bound, but with time it has been deteriorating and now has only one of its back pieces intact. It belonged to my great-grandmother, from all accounts a feisty character. She held onto this collection, carefully bound, and it was only when my mother first visited her with my father she suddenly took a shine to him and insisted on presenting him with this carefully bound book.
Over the years I have dipped in and out of this collection of newspapers, enjoying the wide range of issues covered and deeply frustrated by others. For example, there are huge sections dedicated to royal court proceedings, which consist of details of where an Earl went to Europe and which landed gentry had gone to Bath, and all kinds of nonsense about the royal family and what they were up to. Obviously, people in the 1850s, were as fascinated by royalty as some are today.
There are huge sections entitled Accidents and Offences, recording, dire accidents, like mines flooding, industrial fires, or people being dismembered inside spinning mill machines. Gruesome accounts of events such as the decapitation of a worker are spelled out with horrific detail. It was depressing to find that the normal conclusion of the coroner to all these workers’ deaths was invariably ‘died under unforeseen circumstances’ or ‘death by misadventure’. Murders are also elaborated on with excessive relish and it seems that people have always been fascinated by crimes of a gruesome nature. Nowadays, we have whole TV channels dedicated to this genre, but in the 1850s, it was part of a column, entitled Accidents and Offences.
There are simply pages and pages devoted to crochet and lacework. Obviously, something a fashionable woman was interested in those days.
Then, of course, there were sections on drama, musical theatre, and popular literature. An unusual addition was a whole column, entitled Charms and Amulets, I need not go further. There was an interesting chess problem given in every publication which surprised me given its audience. There was an interesting and rather nasty piece, entitled simply, Gypsies. Quoting from the paper,
‘These swarthy itineraries, have spread themselves all over Europe, as is testified by various travellers of all nations, and everywhere, like the Jews, pretend to keep themselves as a distinct people. Attempts have been made to drive them out of various countries.’
Prejudice like this towards various nationalities (and indeed the poor from anywhere), leeches from almost every page.
Daring fashion trends from Paris and London are given with under the title, General Observations on Fashion and Dress.
As you can see from the illustration. There is no flesh on show just the mere glimpse of a hand and face. But then again fashions do change with the decades and these were very early days indeed. I came across a very small note about a certain Absalom Yancy in the States. I almost regret finding it, as it has prompted me to plague my entire family, with either giving details of his life or asking them to do research to find out the details I don’t know. Here is the article with which I shall now plague you too!
A person cannot be held responsible for their name, but it does feel a bit weird that someone chose to call him Absalom. I know it was fairly common to use biblical names in the 19th century, but why choose a chap who not only murdered his own brother but then attempted to overthrow King David, his father? The unusualness of the name Absalom Yancey, did make it much easier to do research on it. Note the sympathy towards the aged planter in the article, however, it does point out that he whipped his slave sufficiently hard that he fled and then proceeded to hunt him down with dogs. When I began the research I already had my doubts on which side sympathy should be given. A little bit of research had indicated that his father was Zachariah Yancey (1754-1852) and his mother was called Nancy (1807-1891). I was even able to find Absalom Yancey’s will and testament online. Note the section where he gave his slaves to his children and his odd anger at one of his daughters inheriting her mother’s estate rings loud and clear. The slave’s increase means that all the children that the slaves might have by the time of his death would belong to Absalom’s descendants too.
ABSALOM YANCEY
IDENTITY: SON OF ZACHARIAH & ELIZABETH (MAYES) YANCEY
STATE: ALABAMA
COUNTY: RUSSELL
DATED: 1841
PROVED: 1850
RECORDED: RECORD BOOK 2 PAGE 12
I, ABSALOM YANCEY, of the State and county aforesaid being in a low state of health but of sound and disposing mind and being fully persuaded of the certainty of death am moved to make this my last will and testament.
Item 1st. I give my soul to God who gave it, my body to be buried at the discretion of my friends.
Item 2nd. I will and bequeath unto my two sons MILTON P. S. YANCEY and ULYSSES Z. M. YANCEY and my daughter MARY A. T. YANCEY the settlement of land whereon I now live. It being the east half of section number twenty three in township number nineteen in Range number twenty eight containing three hundred and twenty acres more or less; also all my landed Estate which I hold in the state of Georgia.
Item 3rd. I will and bequeath unto my three children above named all my negroes, thirteen in number together with all their increase named as follows, viz. Sarah, Candis, Alfred, Eliza, George, Tony, Robert, Louisa, Evaline, Elvira, Loyd, James, Arminda, together with all my stock of horses, mules, cattle, sheep, and hogs, and all my household and kitchen furniture and tools of every description including my gin and thrashing machine.
Item 4th. It is further my will and desire that my three children above named shall inherit the crop that may be made or growing on the place at my death, together with all the money or notes that may belong to my estate after paying all my just debts.
Item 5th. To my daughter PELONEY ANN ELIZABETH MCCALL I have not given anything in this my Last Will and Testament, my reason for not giving is not for the want of affection for she feels near to me, but my reasons are the following - when she married I gave her a negro and some property and at the death of my father-in-law [H____all?] he willed to her my wife's share of his estate which in justice ought to have been willed to all my children and was much more than a share of my estate.
Item 6th. I hereby nominate my two sons MILTON P. S. YANCEY and ULYSSES Z. M. YANCEY executors to this my Last Will and Testament.
In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal this second day of September in the year of our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Forty One.
ABSALOM YANCEY
Since the slaves are named it suggests that one of the male slaves might have been the one who murdered Absalom. That leaves us with 6 suspects, Alfred, George, Tony, Robert, Lloyd, or James. My curiosity got the better of me so I decided to consult the database giving executions in the US from 1608 – 1972. https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/executions-overview/executions-in-the-u-s-1608-2002-the-espy-file executions US.
I searched in 1850 for those who had been executed for murder in Alabama to see if any of Absalom’s slaves were mentioned. It was frustrating not to find any of them. Strangely, when you examine 1608 – 1972 this gives a total of 7, 363 people executed. This averages around 20 people per year over this timescale. Another file gives those more recently executed in the US from 1977-2023 as being 1577 this equates to 34 executions a year on average. In other words, the US has increased the number of executions a worrisome trend.
But back to Absalom Yancey when I looked in 1851 there was a black man executed for murder in Alabama and his name was Dick (Yancey) and as it was November that Absalom was killed so perhaps justice took time. It was not uncommon for slaves to take their slaveholder’s surname. However, none of the slaves mentioned in Absalom’s will match this name. However, to be fair the will was made out in 1841 so it is possible that this is a recent slave acquired in the nine years that followed after the will was written. Meanwhile, I discovered a legal document concerning Absalom Yancey which indicated that he was more than just a plantation owner with slaves. He ran a slave trading firm with a partner and we know this because Absalom took his partner to court for stealing some money from him. See below an excerpt,
In 1820, Absalom and Jackson M. Yancy established a slave-trading firm. According to Absalom, they bought "a great many slaves either for cash or on credit," spending a total of "twenty thousand Dollars or some other large sum," all of this using his money. He claims that Jackson took the blacks to South Carolina and Georgia, and sold many of them. He charges that Jackson gambled away the profits, and turned over eight thousand dollars of the company's money to one Dr. Thomas Hunt to deprive him of his share. [ further details ]
Obviously, we are often shaped by our peers and their views and perspectives. Perhaps Absalom was shaped by opinions similar to that expressed by the Southern States well known Presbyterian preacher, Dr. R. L. Dabney of Richmond:
"If our civilization is to continue, there must be a class who must work and not read.... There must not be a mixture of the decent and the vile in the same society. they [the decent? must not be daily brought into personal contact with the cutaneous and other diseases, the vermin, the obscenity, the groveling senti-ments, and violences of the gamins. The State is too poor to afford public education."
It is hard to digest such vile nonsense but perhaps when you and everyone you talk to shares the same views it becomes normalised instead of being recognised as the prejudice it epitomises.
It suddenly struck me that due legal execution might have not been the fate of Absalom’s slave. After all, lynching was a fairly common aspect of life for African American slaves who misbehaved in the southern states. There is a list of lynchings carried out in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lynching_victims_in_the_United_States
Unfortunately, this search did not prove productive but it was a depressing lesson in how degraded human nature can become when hatred and mob violence enter communities. A particularly depressing entry from 1851 from California is given below.
So just to recap this woman in her home was attacked by an intruder who assaulted her and in defence she killed him (a white man) and was lynched for it. Another tale of injustice concerns an African American called Adam.
I had to read this a few times to get my head around it. Apparently, it was a local practice that if a white man was murdered a random African-American slave could be chosen as a substitute for the actual criminal (presumably when the actual villain could not be found). Here the law courts declared the whole shady affair a mistrial and a mob disliking the result broke into the jail and lynched an innocent man. It all feels quite awful and so very far from any sense of justice and fairness.
Of course, this is only a tiny snapshot of an even greater injustice that had already taken place much earlier than 1850. From 1662-1807 British and British Colonial ships purchased 3, 415, 500 Africans for the transatlantic slave trade and of that number only 2, 964, 800 survived that dreadful sea journey. Only Portugal and Brazil transported more than Britain and the total number of Africans sent across in the transatlantic slave trade is reckoned to be 12 million. This was the largest forced migration in human history. In 1807, thanks to people like Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce, the slave trade was abolished in Britain. However, it was not until 1838 that slaves in the British colonies were freed. As far as the US was concerned it would not be until 1865 that slavery would be abolished.
Of course, the driving force for the transatlantic slave trade was profit. It is interesting to note historically injustice has often been fuelled by the financial gain of others. Today, the US has over 1.77 million people incarcerated in prisons (this has dropped 14 % from an even higher figure since the Covid outbreak in 2020), and incarcerated workers in the US produce at least $11bn in goods and services annually. While pay rates for prisoners in the US vary widely by state and job, the average minimum wage is $0.93 per day. China has the second largest prison population (1.69 million) in the world. However, to set this in context the US has only a total population of 334 million whereas China has a total population of 1425 million. It is clear that the US is pretty unique in how many of its own citizens it keeps incarcerated. It has been claimed that a full quarter of all prisoners worldwide are held in U.S. jails and prisons and sixty-five percent of the total U.S. prison population is black. When the Lady’s Newspaper mentioned poor Absalom Yancey’s murder the sympathy of its readers was definitely with the slaveowner and not his whipped slave. One wonders how the future will judge our present society’s injustices and our ability or inability to see them?
If thine eyes be turned towards mercy, forsake the things that profit thee and cleave unto that which will profit mankind.
Bahá’u’lláh
