- Title
- North Carolina historical review [1937 : October]
-
-
- Date
- October 1937
-
-
- Place
- ["North Carolina, United States"]
-
North Carolina historical review [1937 : October]
Hits:
(0)
























The North Carolina
Historical Review
Volume XIV October, 1937
Number 4
NEGRO SLAVERY AMONG THE GERMANS IN
NORTH CAROLINA*
By William Herman Gehrke
The history of Negro slavery among the Germans whose
settlements in piedmont North Carolina date from 17471 be¬
gins with the year 1764, when a German on his deathbed dis¬
posed of a "Negro boy,”2 Four years later another German
made mention of two Negroes in his last will.3 The small
colony which settled in the present Forsyth County in 1753
hired a Negro woman to serve in their tavern in 1763 and pur¬
chased a slave in
1769/
The highest number of slaves held by
a German during the colonial period was seven.5 Although
the number of slaves in Rowan County increased from about
100 in 17546 to 1,741 in 1790, there was no corresponding
increase on. the farms of the Germans. Based on counties
whose census schedules of 1790 have been preserved, 12.2 per
cent of the German families were slaveholders, compared with
* The year 1987 marks the sixtieth anniversary of the work among the Negroes by the
Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America, which inaugurated ite
Negro mission at its sixth convention in Fort Wayne, Indiana, July 18-24, 1877. On Oc¬
tober 16, 1877, the Reverend John Frederick Doescher received his commission in Perry
County, Missouri, where the Saxon founders of the Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and other
states, a constituent synod of the Synodical Conference, had established a settlement on a
tract of 4,440 acres» in 1839. Doescher began his activities among the Negroes in Little
Rock, Arkansas. Invthe spring of 3878 he transferred his labors to New Orleans. Two
years later the Synodical Conference extended its work to Virginia, In response to an
appeal from the Alpha Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Freedmen in America,
the first Negro Lutheran synod, which had been organized by five numerically weak
churches in old St. John’s (white) Lutheran Church in Cabarrus County on May 8, 1889,
the Synodical Conference began subsidizing the work among the Negroes in North Caro¬
lina in 1891. Since then this body has opened up stations in Missouri, Georgia, South
Carolina, Alabama,' Florida, Mississippi, California, and Oklahoma; it has also done con¬
siderable work in the North, particularly during the past five years.
1 The Swiss and Palatines who settled in Craven County in 1710 have been omitted from
the body of this article, since they lost their identity as a German colony in 1749. Colonial
Records of North Carolina , IV, 955, 967. (Hereafter cited as C. 27.)
2 Will of Philip Rudisill, March 14, 1764. (Unless stated otherwise, the cited wills are
in the archives of the North Carolina Historical Commission, Raleigh.)
3 Lawrence Schnapp, Nov. 27. 1768.
4 Fries, A. L„ cd.. Records of the Moravians in North Carolina I, 274, 385. (Hereafter
cited as Records of the Moravians.)
Б
Will of John Phifer, Aug. 17, 1776.
6 There were 64 taxable males and females. C. 2?.. V.,
1Б2.
[ 307 ]
Select what you would like to download. If choosing to download an image, please select the file format you wish to download.
The Original File option allows download of the source file (including any features or enhancements included in the original file) and may take several minutes.
Certain download types may have been restricted by the site administrator.