Slaves of Major Sartin, Mississippi

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: Sartinville, Walthall, Mississippi, United States
Surnames/tags: Sartin Slavery

The purpose of this page is to document the enslaved owned by Major Sartin, as well as, the oral history and narratives related to the enslaved and their descendants.

Contents 1 Slaves of Major Sartin 2 Oral History commentary from Descendant of Catherine Sartin 3 Narrative of Enslaved person Harry Bridges 4 Note 5 Sources

Slaves of Major Sartin

Possibly Catherine Sartin and her children.

In the 1840 census Major was in Marion County, Mississippi, recorded with one slave - female between age 10 and 23.^[1]

In the 1850 Slave Schedule Major Sartin held 3 enslaved people in Pike, Mississippi, United States.^[2]

All Enslaved People:

Gender Age

Female 17 - possibly Catherine

Male 12

Male 1 - possibly Catherine's son Ransom

In the 1860 Slave Schedule Major Sartin held 12 enslaved people in Pike, Mississippi, United States.^[3]

All Enslaved People:

Gender Age

Male 27

Female 27 - possibly Catherine

Female 27

Male 22

Female 14

Female 12

Male 12 - possibly Catherine's son Ransom

Female 5

Male 5

Male 4

Female 2

Female 3/12

Oral History commentary from Descendant of Catherine Sartin

The other side that seems to be neglected here is the story of Catherine Sartin, one of his slaves and the mother of his children. As well as, the story of Major Sartin his plantation and his slaves. As this is a major point in not only Mississippi history but US history as well, It is neglectful that this portion of his story has been left untold here. I intend to repair this oversight. As his great great great great grandson I feel the need to add this information to this profile. I hope that my other distant cousins agree as we would not exist without this man. As well, if not for the US slave trade in general we would not exist today. Not that that's anywhere close to an equal trade-off, yet still history cannot be erased and it can only be learned from by being remembered accurately.

Narrative of Enslaved person Harry Bridges

Uncle Harry Bridges was born a slave of Major Sartin's, a prominent planter and slave owner of Pike County. The Sartin plantation was located near Sartinville, which village was named for the well known Sartin family. Harry Bridges was born in 1858 and remembers incidents before and connected with the Civil War as he was nearly 8 years old at the end of the conflict. One of the incidents impressed on Bridges childish memory was on visits of slave traders to the home of his "old marster" just prior to the Civil War. As he recalls these slave traders traveled in an especially built hack which contained a small wooden cage with a seat for the driver and the trader mounted on top. The hack was usually hauled through the cotton-belt mud by two fine horses. It seemed to be the custom of these traders to buy young negro boys ranging in age from 5 to 8 years from the planters. The boys would find themselves placed in the wooden cage, the door securely locked and food tossed to them to eat in animal fashion. It was the recollection of Bridges that Major Sartin did not sell his grown slaves to these traveling traders. His graphic description of these sales of slaves in which he vividly portrays the fear of the boy and suffering of the negro mother leads one to believe that Uncle Tom's Cabin might not have been so grossly overdrawn after all.

An amusing description is given by Bridges of the method used by his "old mistis" to feed the little picannies during the farming season when all the grown negroes were working in the fields. There were, however, several exceptions to the rule that the able-bodied negroes all work in the fields: these were, the house boys and maids, the butler, the grooms, and the aged negroes who acted as nurses for the white children. It seems that Mrs. Sartin had a long wooden trough constructed just outside the kitchen door in which was placed "pot-likker", milk, and a generous portion of cornbread in a pulverized state. About the middle of the morning Mrs. Sartin would walk to the negro quarters, and have all the little negroes who ranged in age from 1 to 8 rounded up like so many small animals. She always carried a small whip or paddle, consisting of a short handle on which was fastened a piece of thin leather. With this "cat-o-nine-tails" she herded the little negroes down to the house and to the filled trough where they ate their fill of the hardly appetizing mixture.

Of particular interest is the description Bridges gave of the first notice the slaves of the Sartin plantation had that they had been freed following the close of the Civil War. It seems that the negroes were working as usual knowing nothing of the Proclamation of Emancipation until a certain day when three men wearing the uniforms of the Federal calvary rode up to the plantation in search of Major Sartin.

A group of negro women were chopping cotton with only one old negro man present who harrowed the cotton ahead of the hoe hands on this momentous occasion. The Yankees stopped their horses and the leader called to the old negro at the plow and asked for the owner of the place. The overseer seeing the negroes stop their work came to see the reason for the delay. The soldiers then inquired of him who the negroes were working for and if they had been told that they were free.” When the women overheard the soldiers, “knowing a change had taken place” they “rushed to the quarters telling the news to the other women and children.” Sartin had refused to tell his slaves that they were free, but the Union sol- diers “told them of their freedom."

"One negro woman who was unable to believe the news asked if they might leave the plantation at the moment to go where they wished and of course she was answered in the affirmative much to her surprise.”

The freeing of Major Sartin’s slaves illustrates two important themes of the Reconstruction period. The first is that former slave owners and Southern whites generally resisted treating African Americans as free and no longer slaves. When they finally did reconcile themselves to the end of slavery, former owners never believed that African Americans were equal to and should be granted the same rights as whites. The second is that freed people had to define freedom for them- selves, like the woman described above. Typical definitions of freedom often in- cluded living where one wanted and receiving payment for one’s labor.

One woman recalled in the 1930s that the freed people had expressed the desire to “do like dey please wid no boss over dem, an’ den dey wanted to go places an’ have no patroller ketch dem.”

Note

The link to the narrative above may be in a book that is not linked online.

Sources

1. ↑ 1840 Census: "1840 United States Federal Census"
   Year: 1840; Census Place: Marion, Mississippi; Roll: 216; Page: 122; Family History Library Film: 0014841
   Ancestry Sharing Link - Ancestry Record 8057 #3599245 (accessed 14 March 2023)
   Maja Sertin in Marion, Mississippi.
2. ↑ 1850 Census: "1850 U.S. Federal Census - Slave Schedules"
   The National Archive in Washington Dc; Washington, DC; NARA Microform Publication: M432; Title: Seventh Census of the United States, 1850; Record Group: Records of the Bureau of the Census; Record Group Number: 29
   Ancestry Sharing Link - Ancestry Record 8055 #91169434 (accessed 13 March 2023)
   Major Sartin in Pike, Mississippi, USA.
3. ↑ 1860 Census: "1860 U.S. Federal Census - Slave Schedules"
   The National Archives in Washington DC; Washington DC, USA; Eighth Census of the United States 1860; Series Number: M653; Record Group: Records of the Bureau of the Census; Record Group Number: 29
   Ancestry Sharing Link - Ancestry Record 7668 #90466722 (accessed 13 March 2023)
   Major Sartin in Pike, Mississippi, USA.