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2006 MailSlavery in Mount Joy, Lancaster CountyFrom Albert Geiser, March 19, 2006 I've been looking at censuses. The census for Mt. Joy, Pennsylvania, in 1840 appears to indicate slaves were owned there. The slave columns on the page are blanked out, however the number line clearly indicates that these people owned slaves. I came across a town in Ohio of the same time period in which more clearly there was slavery, because the slave columns were checked. I came across these doing genealogy for a friend whose ancestor lived in Maryland and then Ohio and owned slaves in both places, and had a connection to Mt. Joy without residing there. Do you know if there was tobacco farming in Mt. Joy
PA, or generally in other parts of Lancaster? In Troy Ohio,
Richmond County, tobacco farmers evidently protected slavery for as long
as they could, and my friend's ancestor's connection to Mt. Joy suggests
tobacco was being grown there.
Editor's reply: Thanks for your interesting
letter. Although I cannot cite documentation that tobacco was grown in
the Mt. Joy area, I am pretty sure that it was a cash crop there in 1840
and of course still is today in other parts of Lancaster. I distinctly
remember seeing tobacco barns along Route 283 as I drove from Harrisburg
to my job in Lancaster in the 1980's. The barns were distinctive because
of their unusual louvered side vents, which were often opened just after
harvest to allow the large tobacco leaves to dry properly before
storage.
Mr. Geiser's response: Thanks for your kind and
informative reply. I'm going to look up more on the subject of term
slaves.
My friend's ancestor, who was 63 yrs old, married a woman in 1849 who was mulatto and they evidently lived out the rest of
their lives together. How would I go about finding out names of slaves
in that era in Ohio, or earlier in Maryland? Have their names been
recorded sporadically, or is there a database? Ohio was a stormy
place even for that era, with Southerners streaming in thinking it
should be their territory, and Northerners streaming in |
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