Beschreibung:

Lot of 2 slave manumissions from slave owners Washington Webb and Noah Spears located in Bourbon County, Kentucky ca. 1860 and 1861. Washington Webb of Bourbon County, Kentucky set free Patty Hurley, her daughter Polly Ann Smith and Polly's children Sarah Ellen and Austen. The manumission is very specific about the age, complexion, and height of each person. It mentions a scar on Patty's forehead and Sarah Ellen's complexion is listed as mulatto. Webb signed the manumission on January 16, 1860. It does not account for any sort of transaction or amount paid for their freedom. Noah Spears, from the same county, emancipated all his slaves on June 21, 1861. The manumission has the same attention to detail as Webb's. He freed Green Smith, who had a crooked pinky finger on his right hand; Harriet Smith, who had a small scar on her forehead; her children James and David; and Sanford Williams. In the 1860s, Noah Spears and Washington Webb were two of 960 slave owners in Bourbon, Kentucky. Kentucky did not abolish slavery during the Civil War, but approximately 75% of slaves either fled or escaped the state from 1860 until 1865. Little is known about Washington Webb. Records indicate that he owned only two slaves in 1840, but by 1850 he owned thirteen. Noah Spears, on the other hand, was part of a well-known family deeply connected to Kentucky’s distilling history. Spears’ father, Jacob, was a farmer, distiller, dealer in blue grass seed, and breeder of fine horses in Bourbon County. He employed Noah and his brother, Abram (also spelled Abraham), to load barrels of whiskey on a flatboat on Cooper’s Run and travel to New Orleans. Local legend says that after one trip, Noah walked home from New Orleans along the Natchez Trail with a money bag strapped to his side. Remarkably, he returned unscathed despite travelling through Indian country in areas rife with robbers. Noah assumed responsibility over the family business and ran a small farm with some slaves. After a Methodist Minister, B.W. Stone, visited the Bourbon County and argued against slavery, he could no longer justify owning another person. The next year, he freed all his slaves and was one of two people in the county who voted from Lincoln in the 1860 election. After emancipating his slaves, Spears built homes for them in Xenia, Ohio. Xenia was one of the Underground Railroad's major stops. Many freed and runaway slaves settled there, creating a large community in and near the surrounding area. A collaboration of leaders from the Cincinnati Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Church established Wilberforce University in 1856. The school classically educated and provided teacher training for black youth. In addition to many families in the surrounding area, the college supported freedom-seeking slaves. The established population of former slaves most likely influenced Spears to build homes in the area. His former slaves repaid his kindness by giving him asylum after he and his family fled Bourbon County during the Civil War. He died in 1868 surrounded by flowers given to him by his former charges (The Independent Monthly No. III Vol. I, “Noah Spears,” Cincinnati, Ohio, March 1, 1869, p.89-98) Even though they were from different a master, Webb's slaves also settled in Xenia, Ohio for a brief period of time. Census records indicate that Webb’s slaves Patty and her family joined a forty-year-old black woman named Tennessee and a seventy-year-old black man named J.K. Douglass in the area. No other records clearly indicate if she and her family permanently settled there or moved elsewhere. Sources: https://books.google.com/books?id=RmdJAAAAMAAJ&lpg=PA96&ots=TsvDF3Afuj&dq=noah%20spears%20vote%20for%20lincoln&pg=PA96#v=onepage&q&f=false Condition: Typical folds with some toning of the paper.