Field slaves

By no means was there anything lucky about being a slave. However, as in society, there were different classes of slaves. Lower class slaves would be considered the field slaves, and the upper class slaves being the house slaves. Just as the name suggests, house slaves were slaves that worked in the house and field slaves worked in the fields of the plantation. Field slaves had it a lot worse in comparison to house slaves. First of all, being a field slave was much more grueling than being a house slave. Field slaves would be up from sun up until sun down in the hot fields working. Many times, field slaves would be in the fields between ten and eighteen hours a day. During the course of their day, field slaves were monitored by an overseer. An overseer made sure that the work the slaves were doing did not slow down or cease until the work day was over. If things weren’t running smoothly or someone wasn’t doing their “job”, they would be whipped by the overseer. Even a pregnant enslaved woman could not escape her duties on the field. She would have to work up until the delivery of the baby, and right after the delivery of the baby. The clothing of field slaves was terrible. Field slaves received the bare minimum to cover their bodies and were usually allotted a winter pair of clothes and a summer pair of clothes. Field slaves often lived one room shacks with mud floors. Field slaves were fed once a day. There meal consisted of cornmeal and fatty meat given to them by the slave master. Many times there was animosity between the field slaves and the house slaves. One of the reasons for this is that the house slave acted as the slave master’s spy on occasions. They would report back to the slave master on runaway plans, and even who was slacking in the field when they should be working.

Field slaves were African American people who did the hard manual labor in the fields of plantations. They commonly picked cotton, sugar, rice and tobacco.

Being a field slave was very hard work. Slaves were expected to stay in the big fields from sun up to sun down, making for 18 hour days. Women and Men worked the same hours and did the same tasks. Even if a woman was pregnant she was expected to work up until her child’s birth. Field slaves also had an overseer who was mean and would whip slaves if they were not working hard or fast enough.

The most popular crop in the south was cotton, which is a very prickly bush. Often, the bushes would cut their hands but they had to keep working despite the bleeding. They were also dressed very inappropriately. Most slaves were only given one set of clothes for winter and one set for summer. They were fed whatever their Master chose to give them for the day and had to make dishes out of things they could find. The slaves lived in one-room cabins with their whole family and slept on straw filled mattresses. The cabin roofs were usually leaky and in the winter the cabin filled with smoke because of the fireplace.mas Jefferson first recorded in his Farm Book the slave clothing [1] distributed to each of his slaves. Because he noted the quality and quantity of materials beside the name of each slave, it is possible to imagine not only the appearance of Monticello's enslaved community, but also the ways in which their clothing became a visual indicator of age, gender and -- most importantly -- status. Monticello slave Peter Fossett, a house servant, recalled: "As a boy I was not only brought up differently, but dressed unlike the plantation boys."

Jefferson began his 1794 clothing allotment entries with the household staff, the most privileged of Monticello's slave hierarchy. Jefferson's personal servant headed the list, a documentary position which corresponds precisely to the quality of the clothes he received. For Jupiter, there was a coat, waistcoat, cloth breeches, and over 10 1/2 yards of Irish linen to have fashioned into shirts and cravats. These items constituted the basic pieces of any stylish Virginian's wardrobe, but the fabric and trim along with cut and fir would distinguish the garment as servants livery.

Jefferson next listed the brothers James and Peter Hemings, both of whom received the same clothing as Jupiter, but instead of breeches, they received "overalls of cloth." A surviving pair of Jefferson's own overalls confirms that such garments were similar to cut to the fashionable knee breeches, but they were secured with buttons from waist to knee along each outer leg, made of a sturdy cotton, and represented a much more utilitarian garment.

If Jefferson's notations concerning clothes are reliable indication, the sisters Critta and Sally Hemings, and their niece Betsy, stood just beneath Jupiter, James and Peter in the Monticello hierarchy of household slaves. Like their male counterparts, each woman was issue a quantity of Irish linen with which to make shirts, but they were not issued any ready-made garments. Rather they received wool flannel to fashion warm undergarments and for outerwear, callimanco, a worsted wool fabric with a fine gloss finish and often patterned with stripes or flowers, was provided. A garment made of such cloth would have distinguished these three house servants from the women who worked outside wearing coarsely woven, solid-colored woolens.

Among the household slaves were four boys -- Joe, Wormeley, Burwell, and Brown -- who ranged in age from nine to 14. In quality and cost their clothing ranked below that of the adult household slaves but superior to the majority of Monticello slaves. Instead of Irish linen for shirts, the boys received osnaburg, an unbleached linen-hemp fabric, but then received a more costly fabric for their outerwear called "Bearskin", a durable napped woolen, and according to Jefferson's notes blue in color. Since they were the only slaves issued this particular fabric, their clothing would have given them a visual identity as boys who worked in the house.

By far the greatest portion of the 1794 clothing distribution list pertains to the 93 artisans and agricultural slaves -- adults as well as children -- who lived at Monticello. This majority received osnaburg coupled with a coarse, plain woven wool cloth for their outer garments. Along with this cloth, each slave -- even the children -- received several skeins of thread, and although not listed on the distributions, the slaves were obviously provided the tools they needed to make their clothes, as sewing implements such as thimbles, straight pins, scissors and bone buttons have surfaced in archaeological investigations of the shops and dwellings along Mulberry Row.

Jefferson issued a total of 60 pairs of shoes to Monticello slaves in 1794. Excluded from the shoe allotment were slaves too old to work, in this instance Old Aggey and Juno, and children under ten. It was perhaps in imitation of the young slaves around them that Jefferson's grandchildren Anne Cary and Thomas Jefferson Randolph once refused to wear shoes. In January 1795 Jefferson wrote to his daughter that her three year old son "has not worn his shoes an hour this winter. If put on him, he takes them off immediately...Within these two months we have put both him and Anne into mockassens, which being made of soft leather, fitting well and lacing up, they have never been able to take them off..." Possibly this solution occurred to the caretakers of Anne and Jeff because it was one to which slave parents sometimes resorted.

References

* [http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/Slave_Clothing Gaye Wilson; "Monticello Newsletter", Spring 1999]
* [http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0212661/id42.htm Field Slaves]
* [http://www.benjaminschool.com/lower/hagy1/slave_life.htm Slave Life]
* [http://eblackstudies.org/intro/chapter9.htm Into to African Studies Chapter 9]