Year 1 Description (2021-2022)
In the first year of the project, the research resulted in three main products: a collection of eighteen biographical narratives of persons held captive by the Chaffee, Loomis, or Hayden families, a timeline on the social, political, and economic contexts of enslavement and anti-Black racism in 18th- and 19th-century Connecticut, Charleston, and the United States, and a detailed bibliography. The Year 1 team also presented to the Loomis Chaffee Board of Trustees in May 2022.
Each of the eighteen biographical narratives centers on an individual enslaved by the Chaffee, Loomis, or Hayden families. Essential evidence was drawn from US, Connecticut, and South Carolina records, including census returns, church records, bills of sale, court documents, city death records, fire insurance maps, manumission papers, newspaper advertisements, unpublished family letters, and additional secondary sources. We have worked against the grain of documentary evidence and sought not to repeat the violence and oppression inherent in the production of most of these documents. Students on the project have completed the research and drafted and revised the majority of the biographies.
The timeline lists approximately fifty events chosen to provide a broad context for the biographies we have drafted. These events can be sorted geographically and thematically. Students on the project have selected the events and written the code for the timeline. All students enrolled in College Level United States History in the 2022-2023 academic year have contributed short pieces of context for each event, and we are grateful to them for participating in the project.
The bibliography is a collaborative student/faculty gathering of sources used throughout our work and continues to grow.
Year 2 Description (2022-2023)
Beyond the age and gender of the enslaved people, we are left with minimum information to try and visualize how they lived on a day-to-day basis in antebellum Charleston. Did the two groups of people live or work in separate locations, resulting in the two entries? What else might the two entries suggest or reveal about the work and daily experiences of these groups of enslaved persons? Was their labor hired out by Hayden? Were they enslaved at his home or his workplace? Were they able to earn money for themselves? Where did they live and did they have and create a community with other enslaved and free people of color for themselves?
What about the enslaved children—did they work? Enslaved children in Charleston’s slave society usually worked in-house doing miscellaneous chores or serving white children, but the Haydens did not have children (the other two families residing in Hayden’s house did, however). Did they pursue education, or have leisure time? Do the group of ten or the entire group of 14 enslaved people represent a family group?
With these questions in mind, we traveled to Charleston, South Carolina in the summer of 2022. Our research took us to various locations in Charleston, from the Battery on the very south part of the island, to the heart of College of Charleston, to the Charleston County Public Library which is just blocks away from Mother Emanuel Church. We often walked past the site of the Haydens’ store on King Street, helping us to understand not only the journey from 10 Green Street to their business but also the central location in which the store was located. Multiple visits to Grace Church, which H. Sidney Hayden served as the first co-warden and leader of the vestry, helped us to envision the Charleston inhabited by the Haydens and the fourteen people they enslaved. The Charleston Museum’s large collection of silver objects merchandised (and some possibly made or repaired) in the Hayden and Gregg Company’s King Street shop proved evocative. How might enslaved labor have contributed to the family’s wealth gained from the making, sale, and repair of these objects? Our conversations with archivists at the Charleston County Public Library’s South Carolina Room and the College of Charleston/South Carolina Historical Society proved invaluable as we immersed ourselves in archival research and made the most of our time there.
The research trip to Charleston also provided us with opportunities to explore the home that H. Sidney Hayden and Abby Loomis Hayden rented from William Aiken at 10 Green Street in Ward 4 of Charleston. Visiting that building, now at the center of College of Charleston’s campus, allowed us to imagine details about the historical landscape known by people enslaved by the Hayden family; while we are not yet able to provide more detailed documentation of the enslaved people who lived with the Haydens beyond what the 1850 Slave Census tells us, we were able to explore their surroundings and the house itself. It is telling that the names of those enslaved by the Hayden family remain unknown. Subsequent fire insurance maps did confirm our suspicion that out-buildings constructed for enslaved people’s housing and work space were destroyed in the years after the period of study.
As stated elsewhere, the 1850 US Census Slave Schedule lists four enslaved people living in Sidney Hayden’s household at 10 Green Street. This census also records an additional ten enslaved people associated with his name. We believe they lived in a semi-autonomous household not far from 10 Green Street and south of Calhoun Street. This was not atypical. Local government in Charleston instituted a complex hiring out system in which enslavers could purchase a metal work badge that denoted the year and skills of an enslaved person. The badge, meant to be worn on an enslaved person’s clothing, allowed for some measure of independent movement and decision making as that person navigated the city job-to-job, still working for enslavers’ benefit. We were able to see a number of slave badges during our trip as they have been recovered through archaeology and metal detection and are kept in local collections, including the Charleston Museum. While this living arrangement and the badge system may suggest a comparative degree of autonomy inherent in urban slavery, sources on antebellum Charleston remind us of the manifold restrictions and threats faced by the enslaved population, including walls, church bells announcing evening curfew, and the city-operated Charleston Work House, where enslaved people faced deep anguish and torture.