African-American Population in Bertie County
Bertie County (around 1750) was one of the most densely populated in North Carolina. The increasing population from that time period onward was largely due to the numbers of African-American slaves. These first had been brought by the Virginians who settled in Albermarle province, but by the early 1700's slaves were imported directly into Bertie County (probably from West Africa). They made up 25% of the population by the 1740s. (Tax digests indicated taxes levied on all blacks at least 12 years of age as well as white males over 16 years of age)
Free non-whites were identified as blacks and mullatoes and made up 2-3 percent of the population. Tax lists indicated: 1751=37; 1763=48; 1774=59. They were taxed for their wives and all children over 12 years of age. (White women were untaxed and white males were not taxable until 16 years of age) Some free Negroes reported slaves in the 1830 census, but by 1860 these slave owners were non-existent and only 29 actually owned any real or personal property.
African-American population of Bertie County was in the majority by the 1800 and continued to increase. Although most of these were living on the large plantations, the 1790 census does show that almost half of the county included slaves within their household.
Religion was important at the turn of the century with the Second Great Awakening, and many black churches were founded at that time. HISTORIC AFRICAN AMERICAN CHURCHES IN BERTIE COUNTY
Free Negro orphans were frequently apprenticed. (Bertie County Apprentice Indentures 1750-1790, stack file no. C.R. 010.101.7- Raleigh)
Nov 29, 1763. Negro boy named Jacob, aged seven years. Bound to
Aaron Ellis. Cordwainer. Signers: Thomas Pugh, Aaron Ellis. Witness: John
Johnston
Resource: Bertie County: A Brief History by Alan D. Watson. NC Archives and History, 1982.
Wynett Haun's Court Minutes of Bertie County provide a source of information.
Vol VI. 1788-1792
"Aug 1789. A bill of sale for a negroe boy named Daniel from Edward Turner to William Gray was proved in due form of law by the oath of Jas Turner one of the subscribing witnesses and ordered to be registered."
1860 - Slave Schedule (partial)
Free African Americans of North Carolina and Virginia by Paul Heinegg
Plan to spend some time at this site. These family groups are well documented and contain lots of other surnames within the grouping.
It has a search engine, so just feed in your surname, and you'll locate all the references. Or you can just browse through the alphabetical lists.
You can also just type in "Bertie" which will bring up the special sections which he includes on the Bertie County 1790, 1800, 1810, and 1820 surnames of free persons of color.
Result of searching for "Bertie"
Census Listing for 1820 Search for Bertie or specific surname.
Slave history and genealogy have suffered from inadequate attention to many of the records which tell us most about the identities and lives of North Carolina's slave population. When records from the slavery period have been extracted and published, they have been mainly the records which are most useful to researchers looking for free persons; and those records tend not to be the most fruitful sources of slave information. In many other cases, published extracts of records have omitted the names of the slaves present in those records. Legal records preserved in our county courthouses (and, in some cases, at the Department of Archives and History in Raleigh) are, in fact, the most numerous and most easily accessible of all pre-1865 records, and are the richest source of primary slave data. They deserve careful and methodical examination, analysis, and extraction.
There is no such thing as a "slave record" in the courthouses of North Carolina, if, by slave record, we mean a court document whose purpose was to record the names or activities of slaves for their own sake. Legal records were about the personal rights and property rights of free persons, and slaves had no personal or property rights. The fundamental relationship between free persons and legal records, therefore, was different from the relationship between slaves and legal records. Slaves do not appear as parties to any lawsuit, marriage, contract, deed, bond, or court action (except in rare cases as defendants in criminal trials). They did not make wills or inherit property. They are not named in the tax digests. They do not appear on any jury list, land lottery, poor school roster, or voters list. And yet, tens or hundreds of thousands of individual slaves are named and described in the court records of North Carolina, their lives inseparably intermingled with the lives of free citizens with whom they lived.
The historian or genealogist researching legal records for our North Carolina ancestors who lived as slaves must take a different approach to that task from the approach taken toward records of free persons living in North Carolina before 1865:
- Because slaves were property, they are liable to be found in any record which documents property rights. Many of these records are of little or no interest to persons tracing free ancestors, and are therefore unfamiliar to most genealogists.
- Because slaves were accountable under the law for criminal acts, they are present in criminal court records as defendants and as witnesses, but even more slaves are identified in the criminal records of white persons who traded illegally with slaves, stole slaves, or had other improper relations with slaves.
- The careful reader of court records will discover a world of information about slaves and slavery not equaled in size by any other kind of record.
It is this author's opinion that a comprehensive program of extracting, organizing, and indexing all legal records from the slavery period for each North Carolina county (and, eventually, for the entire United States) is long overdue. The old court records of most North Carolina counties have not even been thoroughly inventoried. I encourage historical societies to consider such projects in cooperation with the official custodians of their county records.
A note on extracting and indexing genealogical data on slaves. Genealogists researching free persons recognize that, without the combination of first, middle and last names by which free persons were legally known in different legal records, tracing free ancestors would be virtually impossible. Imagine how useless an index or extracted record would be if it only contained first names! Full names allow us to somewhat confidently connect persons from one record with the same persons in another record. Slaves in legal records also have more than first names. A slave's legal identity was the combination of his/her first name and the full name of his/her owner. This combination of slave's first name and owner's full name can be as effective as the name of any free person in tracing slaves from record to record. It is essential whenever extracting slave data about slaves that their owners' full names, as given in the record, also be extracted. When indexing any record which includes slaves, always index slaves by owners' full name (in the usual manner of last, first, middle) followed by the slaves' names, for example:
(Ruffin, John) Violet
One of the greatest challenges in tracing slave ancestors is to trace individual slaves back through former owners, because (working from more recent records to older records) the identifying "tag" of the owners' names usually changes without a clue. A slave typically appears in the records of an owner's legal affairs with no indication of where he or she came from. This is similar to the dilemma faced by researchers of free persons in trying to trace a married woman's ancestry when marriage (or other) records do not exist to show her maiden name. Just as marriage records are indispensable in tracing free persons, records of sale or transfer (as in estate sales, distributions of estates, and bills of sale) are essential to trace individual slaves from owner to owner. In many cases, a particular enslaved person with multiple owners, or even several generations of slaves, could be traced from our oldest records forward, if all existing records were thoroughly extracted and indexed.
Written by David Paterson for Georgia Research and adapted for North Carolina.
Contributed by: Cathy Farris
As I have been sorting thru the different files I have gathered on my
BRYAN(T) line, I have had in my possession all along, but didn't see this
until I made an outline of my ancestor...is the whereabouts of Milly. By
working on the various surnames related to my BRYAN(T)s, I was able to see
where Milly has been...and if I had a few more records, I'll bet I could
find out more about Milly and her children...maybe even her parents.
This doesn't happen all the time, but I thought it worth posting...who
knows, maybe someone is looking for this Milly. I also thought this was
one of the best research lessons I have followed up on.
Maybe this group would like to make a research project here, by using
the books and records you have right there beside your desk. We know she
was in Bertie and then Randolph. Maybe someone out there would like to
try...as a research project... to find the rest of the story on Milly WIGGINS
===============================================
The story of the WIGGIN family bounded out to different people thru two
county court systems.
This outline was on Aaron ELLIS dec'd 1769, 2nd husband to
Catherine____BRYANT ELLIS dec'd 1779. I tried to search all records to put
his activities in chron order for study purposes...mostly for trying to
figure out how Aaron met Catherine widow of William BRYAN dec'd 1744
Bertie. They are the parents of Michael BRYAN dec'd 1794 Bertie.
The records below show his association with Milly WIGGINS born about 1757.
There are 2 Milly 'WIGGINS, mother and daughter.
"Bertie Co Court Minutes, book III" Haun
1763 29 Nov Negro boy named Jacob aged 7, bound to Aaron ELLIS, Cordwainer.
Signers: Thomas PUGH, Aaron x ELLIS.
wit: John JOHNSTON
1763 29 Nov Negro girl named Amelia aged 5. bound to Aaron ELLIS, Spining,
Nitting and Sewing.
Signers: Thom PUGH, Aaron x ELLIS. no wit
COMMENT: Maybe Amelia is Milly? cathy in the record below it states as of
1775 Milly is 18 years old. I believe this to be the Milly bound to
Catherine MARSH daughter of Catherine___BRYAN ELLIS.
1763 29 Nov Negro boy named Arthur age 2 bound to Aaron ELLIS, Cooper. Signers:
Thomas PUGH, Aaron ELLIS,
wit: John JOHNSTON
1769 Ordered William WIGGINS 5 year orphan of Sarah WIGGINS be bound to
Josiah GODDEN (GARDNER?) until 21 to learn trade of cooper.
1771 969 Court ordered that Jacob WEGGINS the mulato bastard of Mille a
mulattoe free wench
be bound to Catherine ELLIS age abt 14 til he arrives at age 21.
Court ordered that Mille a mulatoe the bastard of
Mille a mulatoe free wench age abt 13
be bound to Catherine ELLIS til she arrive at age 21
Court ordered that Arthur the mulatoe bastard of
Mille a mulatoe free wench age abt 11 be bound an apprentice to Catherine
ELLIS
NOTE: 8 years have passed since the court ordered these same children to
Aaron ELLIS, Jude would be 18 by now. Jude is mentioned in the will of
Catherine ELLIS in 1779.
Book IV
1772 Orderd Allin WIGGINs age 6 bastard child of JUDAH WIGGINS be bound
apprentice to George WILLIAMs.
Ordered Sarah WIGGINS age 10 bastard mulatoe child of JUDAH
WIGGINS be bound to George WILLIAMS
Ordered that Anthony WIGGINS age 8 son of Sarah WIGGINS be bound
as apprentice to Luke RABY to learn trade of planter.
Ordered Edward WIGGINS age 7 son of Sarah WIGGINS be bound appt to
Luke RAYBE to learn trade of planter.
1774 Ordered Jemina WIGGINS age 8 bastard mulatto child of Sarah WIGGINS
bound appt to John SKINNER.
Order Mary Betth age 10 mulatto child of Sarah WIGGINS be bound
appt to John SKINNER.
"Bertie County Court Minutes Book Book IV", Haun:
1775 Motion of Edward WIGGINS to have order for court to bind his
children to John SKINNER quashed, the court being convinced of SKINNERS ill
and deceitful behavior in procuring said order do hereby order and command
that said former order be quashed and entirely revoked.
1775 Ordered Jesse WIGGINs age 8, Luke WIGGINS 6, be bound apprt to John
GARDNER to learn trade of shoemaker and Letters WIGGINS age 5, Pegg WIGGINS
3 be bound to John GARDNER to spin, orphans of ____WIGGINS.
Below is a court order for Milly WIGGINS to Catherine MARSH daughter of
William BRYANT and Catherine _____BRYANT ELLIS:
from "Edgecombe Co NC Abst of Court Min". 1744--46, 1757-94 by Marvin K.
DORMAN Jr.
1968, Salt Lake 975.646p2d
1775 Wed 19 July Milly WIGGINS 18 years old, daughter of Sarah WIGGINS,
bound to Edmund MARSH and his wife Catherine.
NOTE: Milly WIGGINS a free wench, as we see from the entry below Catherine
ELLIS owned Milly and then passed her on to Edmund MARSH her son in law.
There were several children by Sarah WIGGENS that were mentioned in Bertie
court records being bound out to familiar names. Since Catherine ELLIS
mentioned Judah in her will...from the 1763 entry below it would seem that
JUDE is sister to Millie WIGGINS...not her mother.
from Bertie Court....
1763 On motion of Thomas JONES att at law in behalf of Aaron ELLIS an
order of court to have a negro boy Matthew 14½, Jacob 7, girl JUDE 10,
Mille 5, Arthur 2, until age 21, to learn the following, Matthew - cooper,
Jacob - cordwainer, Arthur - cooper.
daughter Catherine BRYAN married Edmund MARSH, they moved from Bertie to
Randolph Co NC. An abstract of his will can be found in Grimes for Guilford
Co. NC, however, I have a written copy from Randolph Co NC. 1779...cathy
NOTE: Another find on Milly comes from the "Randolph Co., NC Genealogical
Journal"- Summer 2000 page 16:
Capias 28 July 1794 issued by Robert REDING, JP, on testimony of
Darias RAMAGE that "one Milly WIGGEN a Negro Woman is a free person that
there is four of her Children in the possession of Charles STEWARD one with
Uriah MARSH and one in the care of William ARMSTED, Esqur. and held as
slaves. These persons to come forward and answer the charge that these
children are of right free persons.
NOTE: Capias---A writ issued from the magistrate to a constable, ordering
him to find an individual, most often the accused, based on a complaint.
Once found, the accused person is forced to post a recognizance, thereby
agreeing to answer the charge at an upcoming term of court. Usually, the
defendant is not physically detained for matters arising before the lower
court. The names of witnesses are frequently recorded on the reverse of
capias writs and are included in the abstract after the symbol, "w/."
I do not have the rest of this story. If one is interested...Maybe starting
with the 1800 census to see if Milly WIGGINS is entered in Randolph Co. NC.
Also, check the name Edward WIGGINS mentioned above. He must be father of
some, of the WIGGINS children and maybe he is listed on another record.
The name WIGGINS can be found in Bertie. I wonder if Edward took on the
name of his previous owner? cathy
Slaveholders in Bertie County
