Story by: Myah Ward
Photo by: Nathan Klima
DURHAM — The thumb prints of enslaved peopleare molded into the bricks.
There are knuckle prints too, formed from slavesgripping the clay, turning over the bricks to harden in the sunlight. Up higheron the wall of the former slave dwelling, the markings of five little toes canbe seen — the foot of an enslaved child leaving its mark.
More than 900 people were enslaved at one timeon the Stagville Plantation. Down the gravel road in Durham, trees cover theland of what used to be one of North Carolina’s largest plantations.
The 47-square mile plot of land was once mostlybare of trees, filled with crops and slaves at work. The white plantationowners documented their history through letters and land deeds, dominating thenarrative of slavery in the America, a story that began 400 years ago when thefirst African slaves were brought to Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619.
But below the surface of Stagville’s paper traillay the fingerprints of a larger story — one of horror, resistance andsacrifice.
That’s what weighs on the minds of historians atStagville as they sift through tens of thousands of documents to piece togetherthe past. And many documents don’t have names of the slaves, leavingresearchers with holes as they read between the lines, said Vera Cecelski, thesite manager at Stagville.
“The stories of persistence and survival —(we’re) trying to document the ways that enslaved people were forging newfamily and community bonds and creating new cultural traditions and pushingback against this system every step of the way,” Cecelski said. “And thosethings are often not acknowledged, or certainly not documented at length by thewhite people who are keeping most of the records on this plantation.”
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The two enslaved stonemasons had learned the“art of moving slowly.”
The project was taking the men longer thanexpected, and the white man supervising them didn’t understand why. In aletter, he wrote that the project would no longer be as profitable as he oncehoped.
This was one thing stonemasons could control,one way they could resist and sabotage the system. They were eating away at theprofits of their labor.
“You have this image of these two men kind ofsomehow, gradually sort of eroding the pace of this work,” Cecelski said.
Other letters reveal more gruesome acts ofresistance. Like the enslaved man who burned his foot and leg so he would nolonger work in the cotton fields.
There are many stories like this at Stagville, aplantation so large it operated like a small city. The history of enslavedpeople at Stagville dates back to 1771, and the last records of Stagvilledescendants living on the land continues until about 1980.
Stagville was born in an era when slavery waswell-established in the South.
The Bennehan family’s investment in theplantation is part of the larger narrative of wealthy landowning families inthe wake of the American Revolution. These families began using slavery astheir primary means for profit.
By 1860, the Bennehan-Cameron family owned30,000 acres of land, with more than 900 slaves scattered across theproperty.
The slaveholders didn’t interact or even knoweveryone they owned, but Paul Cameron, who inherited the estate in 1847, wouldride his wagon around the land and ask the slaves who they were owned by.
They would respond: “Mr. Cameron.”
Stagville’s large operation was not typical formost plantations in North Carolina, said William Andrews, UNC professor ofEnglish emeritus. About 25 percent of the white adult population in NorthCarolina were slaveholders, but the average slave owner in the state had six-to-eightslaves.
Enslaved people outnumbered white people in 19counties in 1860. The number of slaves in the state was more than 330,000 thatyear, about one-third of the state’s total population.That year,depending on gender and skillset, slaves were sold for $1,300 to as much as$2,000.
And for the thousands of enslaved peoplethroughout the state, and the hundreds at Stagville, there’s not a simple wayto sum up their experiences.
There were some slaves who were born atStagville and spent most of their lives on the plantation, laboring incaptivity.
There were others who were sold, separated fromtheir children. With the Cameron family’s power and land, they could movepeople as they wanted, even if that meant separating them by severalmiles.
“If you look at the plantation records, or youlook at how the Cameron family described the experience of families here atStagville, you might see a family who are all on the same Cameron tax record,are all listed under the Cameron family’s ownership,” Cecelski said. “But thatby no means means that family are not experiencing great separation and greatpain and great distance from each other.”
For some, it was being ripped away from theirloved ones. For others, it was rape and exploitation.
Around Christmas time, one of Stagville’selderly slaves was sent to deliver a letter to another slave holder in thearea. The elderly man was told he could stay for a few days, and he would beable to see his daughter who was held there.
The letter described the elderly man’s daughteras the carpenter’s “winch” he keeps with him where he works.
“She’s not a carpenter, she’s not a carpenter’s assistant.She’s facing sexual assault and harassment by that man,” Cecelski said, takinga pause and shaking her head. “And that image of that elderly man on Christmas,going to go see his daughter in that horrific place.”
This great separation — this great pain — wasoften too much to bear. And some acts of resistance turned to violence, whatfelt like the only choice they had.
An enslaved woman tried to set fire to one ofthe property’s homes. It was filled with members of the Cameron family. Shelaid the fire starter on an oak board, hoping for a quick blaze.
But the board instead smoldered and burnedslowly. If she had just placed it a few boards to the side, the letter says,who knows what would have happened.
“She obviously had experienced great danger andgreat exposure and great horrors in that building or from those people and waswilling to risk her life, and probably the life of people she loved, in orderto use violence to try to push back,” Cecelski said.
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Cy Hart was 8 years old when the Union soldierscame to Stagville in April 1865.
The Cameron family was no longer there, Hartsaid in an interview from the 1930s. The family had fled when they saw the endof the war coming.
The soldiers asked Hart’s mother to cook them ameal. When they finished eating, they told the slaves they were free — the samemessage slaves across North Carolina would hear.
The Cameron family eventually returned, andangry letters show frustrations that no one was working. Most of the slaves hadfled immediately.
The formerly enslaved people who had skills andcould work as brick masons, blacksmiths and shoemakers moved into Raleigh,Durham and Hillsborough, said Khadija McNair, the assistant site manager atStagville.
Those skilled in agricultural labor stayed onthe land. They didn’t have land or money, so they turned to signing contractswith Paul Cameron.They became sharecroppers.
“And this contract says that Paul Cameron willgive them a house to live in, he’ll give them land to farm. He’ll give themtools, animal seeds, whatever they need, and in return, they give himthree-fourths of their harvest every season,” McNair said. “So that is stilleconomic slavery. They are still making no money on their labor. They are stillsubjects of violence and abuse.”
The families stayed for generations, many untilthe early 1970s. Ricky L. Hart, 56, is part of the Hart family line that stilllives in Durham today. Cy Hart was his great uncle.
When Ricky Hart was about 14 years old, hisfather took him on the front porch of the old Hart house that still stands atStagville today. He’d smoke his pipe and tell him to look out as far as hiseyes could see to the horizon. “That’s all tobacco,” his father told him.
Then he’d take him around to the other side ofthe house and point to where other buildings used to stand. They’d walk throughthe unmarked slave cemetery.
His father taught him about what he saw as akid. He grew up making everything he owned, and he would tell Ricky he couldn’tjust go buy a bag of popcorn. They would get the dried corn from the cornfieldand bring it back to the house.
Around 15, his father bought him his first pony.It wasn’t just for Ricky’s entertainment, his father told him. This pony had to“work for what he eats.”
Together, Ricky and his father made everythingfor the horse from the “nose to its tail” out of leather.
Ricky Hart says it was all to teach him onelesson. He should always have a skill.
“A man can take your job, but he cannot takeyour skill,” his father would tell him. So, in high school, Ricky Hart tookbrick masonry.
Today, Hart is a child support enforcementworker for Orange County. He’s the last of his siblings to retire, but most of thefamily still lives in Durham.
Hart and his sister have gathered documents andtraced their family history back hundreds of years. With all he’s learned, Hartbrings it back to a quote from Alexander the Great.
“The conqueror writes the history of theconquered.” And that’s what happened with slavery, Hart said.
As Hart continues to learn about his family’spast, Stagville historians walk visitors around the historic site, giving toursof the property. The researchers continue to dig through documents to learnmore about the lives of enslaved people, and the depths of depravity amongwhite people.
And 400 years later, as Andrews studiesnarratives of the past, he said what stands out to him is how white peoplecommitted such acts of horror, yet couldn’t see it.
He sees this as a lesson for the future.
“The day may come when people will look at us,and say, you people could just overlook those things?” Andrews said. “You justpass on by?”
Myah Ward
Myah Ward is a senior from Charlotte, NC, majoring in Journalism and Political Science. She recently served as a Reporting Intern for Bloomberg News and hopes to work in print or digital reporting after graduation.
