Talk:Mary Lumpkin

Another further reading

I'm worried I'm going to edit conflict you or I'd just add it but there's a lot of material in here on Mary Lumpkin:

Finley, Alexandra J. (2020). An Intimate Economy: Enslaved Women, Work, and America's Domestic Slave Trade. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9781469655123. JSTOR 10.5149/9781469655130_finley. LCCN 2019052078. OCLC 1194871275. Project MUSE book 76798.

thanks for creating! jengod (talk) 06:39, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I've added that. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:28, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Short description

I'm mildly concerned about "American slave owner" as a short description. I'm not an expert on Mary's bio but she was a kid who was enslaved and she surely had no property rights until after emancipation and barely even then. In the parlance of her time she would have been called a concubine. Today she would be called a rape victim. So while her rapist/common-law husband was very definitely a slaver I'm not sure she should be painted with the same brush. @Oronsay @Nikkimaria jengod (talk) 01:04, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, and I've replaced that. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:05, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This story needs much more research to fill the "holes" in the narrative.

1. Mary "reportedly told [Robert] that he could treat her however he wanted as long as their kids remained free". Under Virginia law, the children of slave women were slaves from birth and would remain slaves for life unless they were freed. Lumpkin could have promised that he would free their children (as Thomas Jefferson freed the children of Sally Hemmings) but they would have been slaves until he did so. Under Virginia law freed slaves had to leave the state within a specified length of time -- as did the children of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings.

2. How and when did she learn to read? With Lumpkin's knowledge and encouragement?

3. Lumpkin allowed two of his daughters to go to a Massachusetts finishing school. Slavery had been abolished in Massachusetts in 1783 so his daughters were free as long as they remained there. Presumably their mother and siblings were "hostages" to ensure that they would return to Virginia. And, presumably, they were white enough to "pass" as white (as the children of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings did).

4. "Prior to the American Civil War, she and her children went to live in Philadelphia, where Mary owned a house." How and why did Lumpkin allow them to do that? Slavery had been "gradually abolished" in Pennsylvania beginning in 1780 and so Mary and her children were free as soon as they set foot in Pennsylvania. From that moment on Lumpkin had no control over them; in financial terms he lost the "fair market value" of his "property" forever. And where did a "slave" come up with the money to buy a house? I know that there were slaves who were able to buy their freedom or the freedom of family members, so it is certainly possible.

5. After the war, Robert and Mary were legally married. Why? Why would she return to Virginia?

6. "In 1866 Robert died and Mary inherited Lumpkin's Jail, as well as properties in Richmond, Huntsville (Alabama) and Philadelphia; she was also named the executor of his will." Why did he leave everything to her instead, say, the United Daughters of the Confederacy? Did he have any white relatives?

7. Is it an inconvenient fact that the money Lumpkin made as slave trader made it possible for two of Mary's daughters to attend a finishing school in Massachusetts?

8. Do we know what happened to her children? Does she have any known descendants alive today? One of the children of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings chose to identify as "black," and his descendants and known. The others chose to identify as "white" and disappeared into the general/"white" population. As a result of that, there is an unknown number of "white" people who are descendants of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings and don't know it.

I will guess that most of these questions can never be conclusively answered -- Robert Lumpkin died in 1866, Mary Lumpkin died in 1905 -- but maybe a genealogist can find her living descendants -- if there are any, and they want to make themselves known to the public. 2603:800C:3A40:6400:84AB:C4FD:608C:BDEC (talk) 03:58, 18 April 2024 (UTC) 2603:800C:3A40:6400:84AB:C4FD:608C:BDEC (talk) 04:00, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]