How did a wealthy Newark family secure and exploit Black laborers?
By: Maureen Iplenski | Posted: 7-7-2022
On March 20, 1844, Albert Lewis, a wealthy farmer and enslaver, purchased 125 acres of farmland in the vibrant village of New Ark, Delaware for the sum of $1,000.[1] Located behind Main Street, and between Academy and Depot Streets, this property includes what is now the University of Delaware’s North Green. In 1915, this land was sold to Delaware College, the predecessor to the University of Delaware.[2] Throughout his life, Lewis and his family profited from the work of Black laborers, using a variety of labor systems to do so, including multiple, overlapping forms of bondage (enslavement, apprenticeship, and indenture), as well as waged labor. Characteristic of Newark-area landowners, the Lewis family’s exploitation strategies are part of the University of Delaware’s historical entanglement with slavery and other systems of unfreedom, and illustrate the complexity of labor relations in Delaware, even in a supposed “age of manumission.”
Syl Woolford, a Delaware historian, has studied the Lewis Family, along with their reliance on unfree labor in great depth. He has kindly shared his research related to the Lewis Family to those of the UD and Newark community. Through his dedicated work, he unearthed much of the information related to the enslaved and indentured persons who resided within the Lewis Household. His findings inform the breadth of this work.
Both Albert Lewis and his wife Catharine hailed from slave holding families and grew up watching their parents buy, sell and own Black laborers.[3] After marrying, they bound over a dozen Black individuals from the 1820s to the 1860s.[4] The variety of methods the Lewis family used to secure labor show the extent of their reliance on bound Black laborers. While the Lewis family census records indicate “Free Blacks” in their household, this definition of freedom is narrow.[5] Vagrancy laws limited out-of-state travel for free Blacks; vagabond laws made it legal for unemployed or idle Black Delawareans to be indentured; and Black parents the authorities found to be unfit could see their children forced into exploitative apprenticeships. Such regulations allowed White residents to exercise social control over free Black Delawareans. The Lewis’ utilized these laws to secure a cheap supply of labor; and without it, they could not have earned their fortune.
The practice of delayed manumission was one of the tactics utilized by White Delawareans to define Black freedom.[6] Manumission was legal in Delaware, unlike many other slave states, but the date of final, formal freedom was up to individual enslavers – who often kept control of their human property well into their prime laboring and reproductive years. Albert and Catherine delayed the manumission of their enslaved laborers to twenty-one years of age for males, and twenty-eight years of age for females.[7] According to Essah, this practice of deferred manumission “resulted in the creation of a large class of Delaware Blacks who were neither free nor slave.”[8] She refers to these individuals as “quasi-free” and “half-free.”
Albert Lewis was also accused of taking a free Black teenager into bondage. In 1825, James Reynolds, a free Black man, claimed that Albert “obtained fraudulent apprenticeship papers against his twelve-year-old son, James.”[9] Reynolds demanded for the contract to be voided and that his son be set free. The 1830 Census for the Lewis Family does not include the young James. However, it is not certain if he was immediately returned to his family, as the entry for the Reynolds household does not include him in the 1830 census.[10]
In 1837, Henry Duffy was sold to Catherine by Jefferson Lewis at the price of $50.[11] Jefferson, Albert’s brother, acquired Duffy through the Trustees of the Poor in 1825. The Trustees of the Poor were tasked with overseeing the condition of free Black Children, along with those in Delaware who were impoverished, unemployed, or in the case of children, orphaned. In 1811, the Trustees required Black parents to demonstrate that they were able to care for their children. If deemed unfit, the Trustees could place these children into a term of bondage, either in the form of an indenture or an apprenticeship.[12] In Duffy’s case, it was believed that he did “not [have] parents of sufficient ability to raise him.” Subsequently, at just four years-old he was apprenticed to Jefferson Lewis until he reached the age of twenty-one.[13]
The relationship Albert maintained with Henry’s father, Edward Duffy, suggests that the Lewis’ consciously manipulated these regulations in order to secure Black labor. According to Albert’s financial records, he hired Edward to tend to his farm in Kent County. Edward’s duties included stacking corn, cradling wheat, and butchering hogs. Albert gave the laborer meager payments in exchange for this work, and subsequently the debt in which Edward accrued often outweighed his salary. In one instance, Edward’s purchase of salt, rum, and corn from Albert exceeded the payment he received for “killing hogs” and “cutting up.”[14] It is possible that such incidents of accumulating debt encouraged Albert, along with his brother Jefferson (who also oversaw the property), to deem Edward as unable to care for Henry. When Henry was purchased by Catherine, five years remained of his apprenticeship.The apprenticeships of James Reynolds and Henry Duffy demonstrates how Black children who were born free and raised in a free Black household could easily fall into bondage – to the Lewis’s benefit.
Catherine added to the number of Black laborers in the Lewis Family Household in 1834 with the purchase of Eliza Ivory from Mary Green. Eliza was “quasi-free,” manumitted, but for a future date. Catherine bought the 14 years remaining on Eliza’s enslavement term for $100.[15] The Lewis family utilized Eliza’s reproductive power to secure additional, future unfree labor. Throughout these few years on the Lewis Estate, Henry Duffy and Eliza had four children. Three of these children–Phoebe, Harriet, and Henry–died during infancy. (The frequency of these deaths, along with Eliza’s early death in 1852, suggests that Eliza may have been overworked or malnourished.) Their surviving child, Ann, was born in 1841, and was indentured by the Lewis’s for a term that ran until she was 28 years old.[16]
When Henry Duffy’s apprenticeship expired in 1842, Eliza did not birth another child for two years. During this short break, Catherine and Albert devised a means in which they could continue benefiting from Eliza’s reproductive labor. From 1844 to 1850, Eliza birthed three children from three different fathers: David (b. 1844, son of a Robert Harris), Susan (b.1847, daughter of a Benjamin F. Comegys) and Elizabeth (b.1850, daughter of a Tom Smith).[17] As Ann had been, David, Susan, and Elizabeth were all indentured by the Lewis’s soon after their births. When Catherine laid upon her death bed in 1847, she passed Eliza and her children, Ann, David, and Susan, down to her children, Edmund, Mary, Henrietta, and Hester. Along with determining the inheritance of these bound Black laborers, Catherine also calculated the monetary worth of each of these persons. In a list of her personal property, Catherine valued Eliza, along with three of her children, at the total price of $325.[18] The Lewis’s not only benefited from Eliza’s productive and reproductive labor to build their wealth, they monetized it, and transferred it to their children.
The bondage of Eliza’s children did not deter Albert and Catherine from securing other sources of bound Black labor. In 1844, the couple apprenticed John Thomas Kerr, a five-year-old Black child for a term of sixteen years. During this time, he was “to be taught…in the trade…of farming or husbandry.”[19] In addition to Kerr, twelve-year-old James Chippa was indentured to Albert for a term of eight years and six months in 1849. In exchange for his labor, Chippa was to receive “one quarter [of] schooling in [the] Winter season.”[20] Kerr and Chippa both ran away before they completed their terms. [21]
The wealth accumulated by the Lewis Family could not have been achieved without the labor exerted by the Black individuals who were bound to Albert and Catherine. As Delaware College received property and a monetary donation from the Lewis’s, the institution directly benefited from this wealth. Financial contributions include a donation of $100 from Albert, which was put toward the college’s endowment fund.[22] More significantly, however, in 1915 Delaware College acquired the land in which the Lewis Family’s enslaved persons once labored, thus further connecting the school with Catherine and Albert’s reliance on unfree labor.[23] By accepting a donation from Albert Lewis, and then buying the Lewis Family property, Delaware College benefitted from the wealth generated from systems of unfreedom. The land in which they purchased with this corrupted wealth ultimately determined the shape of University of Delaware’s modern-day campus.
Maureen Iplenski is a PhD student in the History Department and Museum Studies Program
[1] Albert Lewis and Thomas Blandy, March 20, 1844, Lewis Family Papers, 1696-1915, MSS 0130, Box 2, Folder 14, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, DE; Jacob Price and Samuel M. Rea, Map of New Castle County, DE, from Original Surveys (Philadelphia: Smith & Wistar,1849).
[2] Albert L. Lewis and Hugh Rodney Sharp, April 28, 1915, Deed Books of New Castle County, Delaware, Volume Q-24, Roll No. 284, p.55-58.
[3] Census records of Catherine and Albert’s fathers: John Lum, St. George’s Hundred, New Castle County, Delaware, 1820 United States Federal Census, accessed via Ancestry.com; Phillip Lewis, White Clay Creek Hundred, New Castle, Delaware, 1800 United States Federal Census, accessed via Ancestry.com. According to the census, four “Free Colored” persons and three “slaves” lived in John Lum’s Household as of 1820. As for Albert’s Father, Phillip, he counted four “slaves” in his household.
[4] Based on the censuses from 1830 to 1860, twelve Black persons resided within the Lewis Household throughout these decades. An 1820 Census does not appear for Albert, but a petition filed by a Free Black man in Delaware reveals that Albert was placing Black children in bondage as early as 1825. Between these two sources, I determined that Lewis’ forced thirteen free Blacks into some form of bondage – but it is likely that this calculation is lower than the true number.
[5] Patience Essah, A House Divided: Slavery and Emancipation in Delaware, 1638–1865 (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1996), 7.
[6] Essah. A House Divided, 7.
[7] The Lewis Family Bible states that Eliza Ivory died in 1852 at 31 years of age, therefore when she was sold to Catherine in 1834, she was just 13 years old. Her term was set for 14 years, placing her age of manumission at 27-28 years old. The Lewis Family Bible, Lewis Family Papers, Box 5, F46. According to the term contract signed by Albert, Eliza’s daughter Ann was to also serve the Lewis Family until she was 28 years old. The Apprentice Contract of John Thomas Kerr stipulated that his term end at 21 years of age, and James Chippa’s indenture, according to a note written by Albert, was to end once he reached 21 years of age as well. Lewis Family Papers, Box 2, Folder 19, and Box 5, Folder 44.
[8] Essah, A House Divided, 104.
[9] “Race & Slavery Petitions Project,” The University of North Carolinia at Greensboro, https://library.uncg.edu/slavery/petitions/details.aspx?pid=4158 ; Syl Woolford, “The Lewis Family Papers” (Presentation, September 7, 2021).
[10] James Reynolds, White Clay Creek Hundred, New Castle, Delaware, 1830 United States Federal Census, accessed via Ancestry.com. A James Reynolds, who was born in 1813 (which correlates well with the year of Reynold’s Petition) appears in a Philadelphia Census Record in 1850. He identifies himself as a shoemaker who is of pauper status. He resided in the Philadelphia Almshouse. The Census also states that he was born in Delaware.
[11] Jefferson Lewis, The Indenture of Henry Duffy, Mar. 30, 1837, Lewis Family Papers, Box 2, Folder 13.
[12] “Overseers of the Poor/ Trustees of the Poor,” Delaware Public Archives. accessed Oct. 27, 2021, https://archives.delaware.gov/delaware-agency-histories/overseers-of-the-poortrustees-of-the-poor/
[13] Jefferson Lewis, The Indenture of Henry Duffy, Mar. 30, 1837, Lewis Family Papers, Box 2, Folder 13.
[14] Albert Lewis, Memorandum Book, 1834-1836, Lewis Family Papers, Box 4, Folder 33.
[15] Mary Green, The Indenture of Eliza Ivory, March 4, 1834, Lewis Family Papers, Box 2, Folder 19; Syl Woolford, “The Lewis Family Papers” (Presentation, September 7, 2021).
[16] Albert Lewis, The Indenture of Ann Ivory, Feb. 2, 1844, Lewis Family Papers, Box 2, Folder 19. In the Lewis Family Bible, Henry Duffy is listed as the father for Phoebe Ivory. The next father listed is Robert Harris with the birth of David Ivory in 1844. It is likely that Albert did not record the father for Ann or Henry because this detail was already mentioned in the birth of Phoebe. The timing of these first three births also correlates with Duffy’s term of indenture. Lewis Family Papers, Box 5, F46 and Syl Woolford, “The Lewis Family Papers” (Presentation, September 7, 2021).
[17] The Lewis Family Bible, Lewis Family Papers, Box 5, F46, and Box 7, F46. Syl Woolford has followed the course of Susan Comegy Ivory’s term, and found she was given to Mary Lum following Catherine’s death. Syl Woolford, “The Lewis Family Papers” (Presentation, September 7, 2021)
[18] Catherine Lewis, Amount of Inventory, Nov. 9, 1847, Lewis Family Papers, Box 4, Folder 32. (Elizabeth Ivory was excluded from this list as she was not born until 1850).
[19] Albert Lewis and Catherine Lewis, The Apprenticeship of John Thomas Kerr, Feb. 1, 1844, Lewis Family Papers, Box 2, Folder 19.
[20] Albert Lewis, The Indenture James Chippa, 1849, Lewis Family Papers, Box 5, Folder 44.
[21] Syl Woolford had previously researched the apprenticeship of James Chippa and John Thomas Kerr. Syl Woolford, “The Lewis Family Papers” (Presentation, September 7, 2021).
[22] Rathmell Wilson, Notes & Bonds, July 18, 1857, Series II, Items 7700-8099, George Evans Papers, 1717-1937, MSS 0271, Special Collections, University of Delaware, Newark, DE.
[23] Albert L. Lewis, Land Deed with Hugh Rodney Sharp, April 28, 1915, accessed via Ancestry.com.