[Slavery]. [Women]. Whitmire, Nancy

[Bill of Sale for the Property of Nancy Whitmire, a South Carolina Slaveowner, Including an Unnamed Female Slave]

[Pickens, S.C. ca. February, 1860]. [4]pp., on a single folded folio sheet. Moderate wear, foxing, and soiling. Good. Item #3014

Manuscript "Bill of Sale of property at Nancy Whitmires / Deceased This Feby 3rd 1860" including "1 Negro Woman." Estate papers on file with the U.S. Wills and Probate Records include a "Bill of Appraisement" for the Nancy Whitmire estate near Picken, South Carolina. The version offered here is likely a draft bill of sale from the liquidation of the property with the inclusion of a name, presumably the buyer of Whitmire's property, alongside the price paid for the listed property. At the end of a four-page listing of furniture, livestock, housewares, and other products, the list ends with the sale of "1 Negro Woman,” to "Carwell Hester" for $416. Material relating to slave-owning women is especially rare on the market. Awareness of woman slave owners has been heightened in recent years by the publication of Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers’ They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South. The present example is made more poignant and sad given the fact that the female slave did not even warrant a name in the bill of sale.

Price: $750.00