Hello Dane:)

We have such a plantation cemetery here in Nashville known historically as
Devon Farm and located on the historic Natchez Trace.  It was the original
plantation of the Harding Family before they built BelleMeade stud closer to
town up the trace.  The plantation also has an interesting story that goes
with it.  Apparently one of the planter's married a barren wife and imported
an enslaved African-American woman from Virginia with which he had a series
of children. Upon his death he left half his plantation to the slave woman
and half to the widow, the slave selling her half back to the widow and
moving her family to Ohio to better their lives. It is reputedly the only
mixed plantation cemetery in the Mid-Tenn region.

Dan Allen <[log in to unmask]>



----- Original Message -----
From: "Dane Magoon" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, February 10, 2003 11:09 AM
Subject: 19th century African-American burial grounds


> Hello HISTARCHers:
>
> I'm looking at a 19th-century plantation cemetery
> (family plot) that contains both the burials of the
> family and the burials of the slaves, and this strikes
> me as very unusual.
>
> I can't think of any plantations where the slaves and
> the owners are buried together; usually, in my
> experience, the family plot is perched on a bluff
> overlooking the James River and the slaves are buried
> someplace else (at a separate, spatially distinct
> location).
>
> Has anyone else run into something like this before?
> I know that larger community burial grounds and church
> burial grounds will have both, but I was hoping to
> find comparative late 18th century or antebellum
> plantation examples, similar to this particular site.
>
> Dane Magoon
> [log in to unmask]
>
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