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Subject: [NJHUNTER] Re: Slave surnames
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 16:51:53 EDT

John,
To add to what Dennis Reiley posted, a very common source for a slave's
surname was that they belonged to that family or had been a slaves of that
family for a long time or for many generations . Even after sale to someone
else, slaves maintained these surnames, for example, a slave named Aaron Lake
that I've researched in NJ was a slave of Elisha Clarke in Montgomery.
To also use the example of Thomas Jefferson (and Sally Hemings) - the
Hemings family was a slave family that existed within the extended Jefferson
family and lived and traveled with them.
And in many cases the slaves had the master's surname because he or she
was their own offspring. They were literally family - in some cases this was
openly acknowledged and the children were sent to schools etc. There were
some very complicated relationships that arose from slavery - so just saying
that slaves chose the name of people they admired is simplifying too much or
not presenting the entire picture.

I found manumission records at the NJ State Archives in a set of books they
have from the Somerset Historical Society. There are also manumissions on
microfilm there for the New Brunswick area, but I don't remember seeing
anything for manumissions in Hunterdon Co. There is a book of slave births
you can see there for Hunterdon County and some wills for Hunterdon families
mention their slaves.

What are the surnames of the slaves you found?

Jim LaRue

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