My Daddy's Mississippi Home

SANKOFA'S SLAVERY DATA COLLECTION



Research Leads for Liberty Hall Plantation

• Location: Lowndes Co., MS
  Constructed: 1835
  History: William Ethelbert Ervin owned Liberty Hall Plantation, near Columbus, in Lowndes County, Mississippi, near Columbus. He was born to William and Eliza Dick Ervin in Sumter District, South Carolina in 1809. The family moved to Lowndes County, Mississippi, about 1832. His father died there in 1839. William E. Ervin built Liberty Hall in 1835 on the east side of the Tombigbee River. After his home was built he returned to Sumter, South Carolina, and married Sarah McGee Kennedy.
  
  
  Associated Surnames: Ervin
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• Records of Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations, Series J: William Ethelbert Ervin Diaries, 1839-1856, Lowndes County, Mississippi. http://www.lexis-nexis.com/cispubs/guides/southern_hist/plantations/plantj6.htm This collection consists of two plantation diaries kept by Ervin between 1839 and 1856. Ervin included information on buying and selling slaves, hiring slaves owned by others, providing slaves with blankets, hats, and other clothing, and paying slaves for their "Christmas work." He made lists of slave birth (and some death) dates. In 1847, he wrote out the rules for slave conduct and punishments in case the rules were broken. There were rules for how to handle quarrels, duties of husbands and wives, absence from the plantation, and the obligation of slaves to be in their quarters by 9 p.m.

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Other People Researching This Plantation

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RESOURCES

• Guide Introduction: Records of Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations Series J, Part 6 (Mississippi and Arkansas) http://www.lexis-nexis.com/cispubs/guides/southern_hist/plantations/plantj6.htm

Shields Plantation: Shields Plantation

Location: Lowndes Co., MS
Constructed:
History: ----
Associated Surnames: Adams, Shields, Smith
Associated Plantations: Smith Plantation (Halifax Co., NC)

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Associated Free White Names

• Charles Shields: owner; resided in Scotland Neck, Halifax Co. North Carolina
• Howel Adams: overseer at Shields Plantation in MS
• William Ruffin Smith: executor of the Shields estate

Research Leads

• Records of Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations, Series J: William Ruffin Smith Papers, 1772-1959, Lowndes County, Mississippi; also North Carolina. http://www.lexis-nexis.com/cispubs/guides/southern_hist/plantations/plantj6.htm Most of the papers in Series 1 relate to the Mississippi plantation of Charles Shields, William Ruffin Smith's neighbor in North Carolina. Shield bought a plantation in Mississippi and took an unspecified number of slaves there to operate it under the supervision of an overseer, Howell Adams, but died shortly thereafter. Smith, as executor of the estate, administered the property for Shields's heirs.

Lowndes Co. Links

• Lowndes Co. MS Largest Slaveholders From 1860 Slave Census Schedules, Transcribed by Tom Blake
  http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~ajac/mslowndes.htm