Mississippi
(7/7/2017) The thought recently occurred to me to start looking for Ann Dimmitt in New Orleans records of slave sales. As I don't live on the East coast, I started reaching out to different groups, via email. The first stop was to the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University in Louisiana. I mailed back and forth with Phillip Cunningham - Library Reference Asst. He was so helpful, and provided me with the several great resources.
The next stop was to reach out to the Williams Research Center - The Historic new Orleans Collection. Rebecca Smith - Head of Reader Services returned my email, and was extremely helpful. She told me the following: "...post-emancipation, formerly enslaved people sometimes posted advertisements in the Southwestern Christian Advocate newspaper to try and find their families. There is a database to search names in these ads here: https://www.hnoc.org/database/lost-friends/. There are lots of Ann's in there, but no Dimmitt's."
Knowing that there were several variations of the Dimmitt name, I started searching "Lost Friends" site. Within a few variations, the following article came up from 25 March, 1880:
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| https://www.hnoc.org/database/lost-friends/search-results.php |
It is difficult to know what last name the individual family members ended up with, but it is an amazing resource and lead. If Charles Dimit / Dimmitt took Maria and her sister to Mississippi 35 years prior, that would make the trip around 1845.
Can't wait to dig in and find more!
Can't wait to dig in and find more!
I cross-checked the Kentucky post, and found the following:
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| http://understandingourhistoryofslavery.blogspot.com/2016/02/kentucky.html |
Charles E. Dimmitt was listed on a slave-census in 27 July, 1860 in Mason County Kentucky. Could this be the same Chas Dimit listed by Maria Applewhite?
To look further into Charles E. Dimmitt, I went to FamilySearch and found the following:
Charles E. was born in Mason County Kentucky to James Sinclair Dimmitt, and Deborah Elizabeth Ann Romney-Dimmitt.
There is nothing to indicate why he would have taken Maria and her sister to Mississippi. His occupation was listed in an 1865 U.S. IRS Tax Assessment as being a "Jack", with another word that I cannot understand. I am unsure what a "Jack" is, other than perhaps being a lumber jack. this does not make any sense, as his will says he left his son $10,000, and his wife and other children sections of their estate. Pretty good for a lumber jack...
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Ancestry.com. U.S. IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1862-1918 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008.
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John Brooks was found in the 1860 Federal Census - Slave Schedule. He had listed three young women, who likely included Maria Applewhite. (3 June, 1860, Scott County Kentucky)
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| Ancestry.com. 1860 U.S. Federal Census - Slave Schedules [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2010. |
We'll see what the future holds for this family. Hopefully, we will find more of their past and be able to memorialize it.
Wikipedia
Slavery
At the time of the Civil War, the great majority of blacks were slaves living on plantations with 20 or more fellow slaves, many in much larger concentrations. While some had been born in Mississippi, many had been transported to the Deep South in a forcible migration through the domestic slave trade from the Upper South. Some were shipped from the Upper South in the coastwise slave trade, while others were taken overland or forced to make the entire journey on foot.
The typical division of labor on a large plantation included an elite of house slaves, a middle group of overseers, drivers (gang leaders) and skilled craftsmen, and a "lower class" of unskilled field workers whose main job was hoeing and picking cotton. The owners hired white overseers to direct the work. Some slaves resisted by work slowdowns and by breaking tools and equipment. Others left for a while, hiding out for a couple of weeks in woods or nearby plantations. There were no slave revolts of any size, although whites often circulated fearful rumors that one was about to happen. Most slaves who tried to escape were captured and returned, though a handful made it to northern states and eventual freedom.
Most slaves endured the harsh routine of plantation life. Because of their concentration on large plantations, within these constraints they built their own culture, often developing leaders through religion, and others who acquired particular skills. They created their own religious practices and worshipped sometimes in private, developing their own style of Christianity and deciding which stories, such as the Exodus, spoke most to them. While slave marriages were not legally recognized, many families formed unions that lasted, and they struggled to maintain their stability. Some slaves with special skills attained a quasi-free status, being leased out to work on riverboats or in the port cities. Those on the riverboats got to travel to other cities; they were part of a wide information network among slaves.
By 1820, 458 former slaves had been freed in the state. The legislature restricted their lives, requiring free blacks to carry identification and forbidding them from carrying weapons or voting. In 1822 planters decided it was too awkward to have free blacks living near slaves and passed a state law forbidding emancipation except by special act of the legislature for each manumission.[16][20] In 1860 only 1,000 of the 437,000 blacks in the state were recorded as free.[21] Most of these free people lived in wretched conditions near Natchez.[citation needed]
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Mississippi#Slavery
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