“Massa turn poor buckra away ho!
But Massa can't turn poor neger away oh!”
We see that they must have looked at their position from a different view-point from that we naturally take now.
I have read through two or three books of records of such estates as Worthy Park and Rose Hall, and in them the slaves are enumerated in exactly the same fashion as the cattle on the next page. The Worthy Park book I found specially interesting. It was an old brown leather-covered book, 18 inches long by 1 foot broad, and round it clung—or so it seemed to me—an unrestful emanation, as if the men who wrote in it were discontented and found life a vexatious thing.
This slave book begins—and the beginning is written in a very clear clerkly hand; I expect my grandmother would have placed the writer's status exactly—with a description of the lands, 3150 acres, held by the original owner of Worthy Park, John Price, Esq., of Penzance, England; he was an absentee owner, and there is no record in the book of his ever having visited his estate. George Doubt was the superintendent, and lived at the Great House; but whether it was he who made those first entries, there is no means of knowing. He certainly did not make them all, for the handwriting varies, and there were no less than six overseers in the five years, the book records, between 1787 and 1792. And the ink and the paper reflect credit on the makers, for though browned with time the writing is perfectly legible, and the pages are stout still.
Once the limits of the estate are laid down, we come to the stock upon it—the negroes, the mules, the horses, the oxen; and every quarter returns were made to the Vestry of the Parish. This, I think, because a tax of 6d. a head had to be paid upon every slave; and for the safety of the public a certain number of white men had to be kept, capable of bearing arms.
The white men were always changing, with the exception of George Doubt, so I conclude either that that superintendent was a hard man, or that John Price, comfortable in his English home, drove him hard; for even for those times the pay seems to have been poor. What Doubt got I do not know, but the overseer got £200 a year, and of course his board and lodging; the surgeon got £140 per annum; the book-keeper and distiller £50 per annum, and the ordinary book-keepers £30 per annum each. It was no catch to be a book-keeper in those days. As a rule he had nothing to do with books, but he did all the little jobs that could not be entrusted to the slaves. He served out the corn for the feeding of the fowls, kept count of the rats that were killed, and went into the cane-fields with the negro drivers. He had to be out in the fields so early that his breakfast was sent out to him.
A negro wench, complained a long-suffering young man, brought him his breakfast—a bottle of cold coffee, two herrings, and a couple of boiled plantains stuck on a fork. It does not sound luxurious, and £30 a year did not hold out much hope of bettering himself.
Among the stock the negroes come before the cattle, and are described in much the same language.
“A General List of Negroes on, and belonging to, Worthy Park Plantation, taken the 1st January 1787.”