{"id":522,"date":"2009-11-10T07:00:14","date_gmt":"2009-11-10T12:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/?p=522"},"modified":"2009-11-13T13:23:05","modified_gmt":"2009-11-13T18:23:05","slug":"use-of-surnames-among-african-americans-before-emanicaption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/2009\/11\/use-of-surnames-among-african-americans-before-emanicaption\/","title":{"rendered":"Use of Surnames Among African Americans Before Emanicaption"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_494\" style=\"width: 238px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/surnames-of-wessyngton-slaves.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-494\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-494\" title=\"Surnames of Wessyngton Slaves\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/surnames-of-wessyngton-slaves-228x300.jpg\" alt=\"Surnames of Wessyngton Slaves\" width=\"228\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/surnames-of-wessyngton-slaves-228x300.jpg 228w, https:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/surnames-of-wessyngton-slaves-778x1024.jpg 778w, https:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/surnames-of-wessyngton-slaves.jpg 1159w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 228px) 100vw, 228px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-494\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Surnames of Wessyngton Slaves<\/p><\/div>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;\"><span style=\"line-height: 115%; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;\">Slaves were usually known by their first names, especially on small farms with few slaves.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">\u00a0 <\/span>Plantation owners rarely recorded their slaves with surnames unless they had several individuals with the same first names.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">\u00a0 <\/span>For that reason the use of surnames by slaves was far more common on large plantations where more people were likely to have the same given names.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;\"><span style=\"line-height: 115%; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;\">Due to Wessyngton Plantation having such a large enslaved population many African Americans are \u00a0listed with their previous owners\u2019 surnames as early as the 1820s.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;\"><span style=\"line-height: 115%; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;\">Slave bills of sale and other documents in the Washington Family Papers collection details the origins of many of these African American families.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;\"><span style=\"line-height: 115%; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10pt;\">The list above documents the names African Americans on Wessyngton Plantation who used surnames prior to emancipation and the date of their arrival on the plantation.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Slaves were usually known by their first names, especially on small farms with few slaves.\u00a0 Plantation owners rarely recorded their slaves with surnames unless they had several individuals with the same first names.\u00a0 For that reason the use of surnames by slaves was far more common on large plantations where more people were likely to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,19,13,21,18,20,22],"tags":[10,247,223,299,329,252,298,253,45,330,297,206,39,8,25,314],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":524,"href":"https:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522\/revisions\/524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wessyngton.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}