My students and I have been pondering a fascinating line in the September 1749 will of Richard Bennett III, who died in Queen Anne’s County, Maryland, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore:
Bennett wills to Ann Bell (actually Beall), whom he identifies as “a little girl that lives with me under the care of her aunt the said Ann Brooke” a estate of 249 acres, and then adds:
“I give and bequeath unto the said Ann Bell [Beall] the negro girl Bettey that plays with her, and one hundred pounds sterling and one hundred pounds current paper money. The said land and plantation and the said legacy of the Negro Girl and money to be under the care and management of the said aunt Ann Brooke until she comes of age or marriage.” (Liber 28, folio 466. 25 Sept. 1749, p, 474)
At the time of his death Richard Bennett III was reckoned the wealthiest man in Maryland colony and perhaps the wealthiest man in British colonial North America. He is sometimes referenced as North America’s first multimillionaire. His lengthy will was subject to extensive subsequent litigation and laid the foundation for the wealth of many Maryland families of historical importance.
Our fascination here, however is in the wording of the final passage of the paragraph, in which Bennett bequeaths to the little girl Ann Beall, evidently motherless, who lives with him, the “negro girl Bettey that plays with her.” What kind of emotional and ideological configuration is evoked in this phrasing? And what in turn, can we infr about the lives of these two young women, Ann Beall and Bettey, linked by this legal instrument?
In itself, there is nothing particular unusual in a white child being willed a enslaved child, of roughly the same age. The practice of pairing free and slave same-sex children appears to have been common in slave-owning societies in North America and the Caribbean, in part to ensure that the white child would have a paired enslaved person to serve as a companion and domestic, perhaps in time as a valet or maid in waiting. Elsewhere in this same will Bennett bequeaths to the three white children of Charles Browne (married to his cousin Priscilla Brooke Brown) a twelve year old male slave child and an eight year female slave child.
Elsewhere, I have written of the case of Lt William Joseph Belt of Calvert County, Maryland, across the Chesapeake Bay from Queen Anne’s County, who at this death in 1859 bequeathed each of his four sons an enslaved boy, and to each of his four daughters, an enslaved girl. In my book, The Accidental Slaveowner (2011), I discuss comparable probate cases, in which one might argue the enslaver, writing his will, is in effect deploying enslaved children as pawns or counters in reinforcing the bonds of white kinship.
Yet although the patterns is familiar, there is something particularly striking about the phrase, “the negro girl Bettey that plays with her.” In many cases in which enslaved children are bequeathed in wills, they are identified as the child of a named enslaved mother. This was consistent with legal code that based the station of slavery on the state of the mother: the child of an enslaved mother was perpetually enslaved, regardless of whether or not the child’s father was free. Since on many plantations more than one bond-child bore the same first name, the addendum of the mother’s name served to legally differentiate enslaved children, an important matter when division of the estate was worked out by the estate’s administrators.
Here, however, the enslaved girl Bettey is only identified by the fact that she plays with the orphaned white girl Ann. Bettey’s status as a play companion was presumably emphasized by Bennett, in part, to disambiguate Bettey from other enslaved girls in his voluminous estate.
One may, as well, infer a certain sentimental indulgence on the part of Richard Bennett, in his own mind. Ann Beall, cared for by her aunt Ann Brooke (for whom she might be named) is being gifted the Black child who she has a close emotional bond with, as one might bequeath a pet or plaything to a young person who had become attached to an object of affection. (Having said that, as my colleague Stephen Clingman notes, it is intriguing that the enslaved Bettey is in effect assigned agency by Bennett- it is she “that plays with” the white girl Ann.)
We might note that this is not the only act of sentimental charity in the will that makes use of enslaved people. The document begins with the declaration that Bennett bequeaths “To cousin George Parker of Accomac Co., [Virginia], all my lands, as Bennetts Cr. in Nansemond Co., my livestock, & negroes, to raise L 30 Virginia silver currency yearly to be paid to the wardens of the Lower Parish Nansemond on 25 March for the poor.” The Poor, that is to say, the white poor, of the parish (where his grandfather, as it happens, resided) are to be cared for in perpetuity by the labor of enslaved persons in the local Bennett estate.]
There is a kind of sentimental kinship at play in Bennett’s performative utterance, ensuring that the free girl Ann and her enslaved counterpart Bettey will be bound together for life. They are it would appear in Bennett’s eyes already sisters of sort, by virtue of innocently playing with one another. The legal act of bequeathing makes this quasi-kinship affective relationship an irrevocable jural fact on the ground, transferring Bettey from the category of playmate to property/plaything.
We might read this transformation of Bettey from Ann’s playmate to her property as an instance of what Rob Nixon terms “slow violence,” the gradual, often unremarked-upon imposition of potent relations of power, unfolding in ways that are often mystified or, in psychoanalytic terms, disavowed by actors. At the manifest level, the act of bequeathing is framed as preserving girlish friendship among age-mates. In a legal sense, of course, Bettey was already enslaved, so the transition is only from her being property of Richard Bennett to being new property of Bennett’s ward Ann Beall, under the supervision of Ann Beall’s aunt Ann Brooke , until Ann Beall comes of age. Through the will’s phrasing the underlying structural violence of the relationship between enslaver and enslaved is somewhat displaced or muted, recast as one of mutual affection. All of this is consistent, as I have argued in my book The Accidental Slaveowner (2011), with a common structure of feeling in the enslavement system, in which the plantocracy often sought to cast chattel bondage in a sentimental ethos of mutual care, deference, and putative kindness.
This transaction may also be conceived of as a special instance of The Gift as classically theorized by Marcel Mauss. Bennett imbues the gift (in this instance the slave girl Bettey) with an aspect of himself, so that the gifted entire comes to embody the enduring relationship between himself and the recipient, with ward Ann Beall, a bond that would last after Bennett’s death. The gift relationship is complicated by the fact Bettey is also a commodity, who can, once her new owner comes of age, be sold by Ann Beall on the market or used as security in a loan or mortgage.
Manumission of Dick, and Gifts of Clothing to Slaves
Bennett only frees one enslaved person in his will, his enslaved carpenter, Dick, with the following provisions:
“Item, I do give my Negro man Dick the carpenter his freedom and hereby manumit and set free and at full iiberty my said Negro man Dick, and do him hm all the chest of tools and other tools of every sort which he usually works with, and do also order my executor to give the said Negro Dick one suite of Cloathes made of narrow cloth of shilligngs stocking of hard, two shirts of Irish linen of one shilling and five p? of yard and two shirts of spring ozenbuggs? line, one part of good shoess and one part worsted stockings. one castor hatt and two Romal hankerchiefs. ” (p. 476)
In the previous item, Bennett instructs his executors to provide all his negroes and mulattos in the province of Maryland with articles of clothing, including coats for the males and petticoats for the females.
Who were the parties?
It should be noted that Richard Bennett’s enormous wealth was in part due to his advantageous marriage around 1700 to Elizabeth Rousby (1682-1740), who controlled the plantation and lucrative commecial port known as Morgan’s Neck (later Bennetts Point), on the southeastern side of the Chesapeake Bay, having inherited it from her childless aunt and uncle Frances and Peter Thayer. The Bennetts never had children and after Elizabeth’s death in 1740, Bennett continue tor reside on the property until his own death in 1749.
Perhaps because he was childless, Bennett had multiple cousins residing with him at Bennett’s Point. I am not sure at this point of all their connections, but a close reading of several wills and associated document of the period indicate that Ann Beall (the little girl to whom Bettey was willed) was the daughter of Elizabeth Brooke (b. 23 Nov 1707) , deceased before 1749, and Nathaniel Beall, who died 20 February 1757 (Frederick, Maryland). Nathaniel does not seem to have been able or willing to care for his daughters Ann and Priscilla Beall, and hence must have entrusted their care to his late wife’s sisters, Ann Brooke and Priscilla Brooke Browne.
Elizabeth Brooke Beall’s surviving sister Ann Brooke later married William Carmichael (d. 1769), and was evidently the stepmother of the prominent American secret agent, diplomat and delegate to the Continental Congress, William Carmichael, Jr. who died on a mission to Spain in 1795. Perhaps in gratitude to her wealthy beneficiary she named one of her own sons, Richard Bennett Carmichael (1752-1824).
Elizabeth and Ann Brooke’s sister Priscilla Brooke by the time of Richard Bennett’s death was married to Charles Browne. As noted in Richard Bennett’s will, Ann Beall was cared for by her aunt Ann Brooke, and her sister Priscilla Beall was cared for by her aunt Priscilla Brooke Brown.
As of this writing, I have not been able to locate the probate inventory records for Richard Bennett’s 1749 estate in the Queen Anne’s County Register of Wills records. The inventory would normally list the names, ages, and appraised values (and in some cases family relations) of all enslaved persons in the estate.
It may well be that Bettey was the biological daughter of Richard Bennett, or that there was some other biogenetic relationship between Ann Beall and Bettey, as this was not unusual in slavery-based households. One recalls the famous instance of Sally Hemmings, the enslaved half sister of Martha Wayles Jefferson, who was transferred from the estate of of John Wayles, the shared father of Martha and Sally, to Thomas Jefferson. Thus, Martha’s half sister Sally accompanied her from the Wayles household to the Jefferson household, where Sally as is well known, in time bore some of Jefferson’s enslaved children.)
What Happened after Richard Bennett’s Death?
Ann Beall was reasonably well set up in life by Bennett with a gift of the 249 acre property known as Poplar Ridge, “in the borough of Wye River in Talbot County where Edwd. Griffin is my tenant”. Her aunt and guardian Ann Brooke, with whom she would continue to live until her marriage or her majority, was willed the estate of Stagwell, “purchased from Andrew Price & pat. for 526a, Stagwell Addition 129a adj., the rest of Bennett’s Choice on the crk. leading to Seths Landing, & the negroes & livestock.” So Bettey would have been removed from the main Bennett household and taken to Stagwell, near Queenstown. This site, which passed into the Carmichael family through Ann Brooke’s marriage to William Carmichael, was located on what is now Carmichael Road near Wye Fields Lane and Stagwell Road in Carmichael, Maryland. This is about 12 miles northeast of Bennett Point, where the Richard Bennett household had been located.
Hence, what was likely conceived of by Richard Bennett as a sentimental gesture, presumably had real life consequences for little Bettey, most likely separating her from her mother and siblings in the Bennett household. The will also states that Ann Brooke, who oversaw Ann Beall, was to receive “negro girl Easter & negro boy Benn that attends in the house”, so Bettey would be brought up with these two individuals, who may or may not have been her kin.
Easter and Benn, willed in 1749 to Ann Brooke (later Ann Brooke Carmichael), appear four years later in Ann Brooke Carmichael’s will, which was proved 15 January 1753 (Queen Anne’s County Register of Will, Liber 28, folio 510), She wills to her cousins “Ann Beall and Mary Beall, negro boy Ben, and negro woman Easter (that always waited on me) and her issue, equally divided.” If Bettey was still alive, she thus would have been reunited with Ben and Easter, and perhaps lived with Easter’s eventual children.
“Our” Bettey may be the same Betty who is referenced in a manumission act by the grandson of Ann Brooke Carmichael, William Carmichael on 26 November 1818. A newly freed woman “Betty” is listed as “Daughter to Betty, mother to Hannah & Jenny” (Queen Anne’s County Folder 11,2,, witnessed by Wm. Clayton & E.P. Wilmer. Entered in Liber TM #2, folio 24-5, 30 Nov 1818. Series: c251.) This William Carmichael (1775-1853), son of Richard Bennett Carmichael, was an attorney and Maryland state senator who manumitted at least 66 of his enslaved people, between 1811-1839, one of the largest manumissions in Maryland history.
One of these Bettys might be the Betty Mathy listed as heading an all Black free household in the 1820 census in the adjacent Anne Arundel County, District 4, Maryland, consisting of a free Black woman over 45, a free Black man over 45, and a free Black man between the ages of 26 and 44.
It is hoped that future research may cast light on the story of the enslaved child Bettey and her family, in the Richard Bennett household and then under the control of Ann Brooke Carmichael and her ward Ann Beall.
Acknowledgements: I am grateful for guidance on Queen Anne County probate records from Ms, Barb Pivec, President Emeritus, Queen Anne’s County Historical Society.
Mark Auslander 