Talk:Robert Allen (Virginia politician)

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Virginia Mid‑importance

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Slaveholdings?

I don't know whether ancestry.com has changed its categorization of the U.S. Federal Census slave schedules in the 1850 and 1860 censuses. I found this Allen's 1850 federal census entry, but not the slave schedule entry. In the 1840 and 1830 censuses, the entries were slimmer, more like tables, so it seems odd that a significant slaveholder in them would cease to own slaves 10 years later, when even some non-slaveholding lawyers started owning house slaves. Of course, some parents gave their slaves to their children upon marriage or as part of estate planning, but the utter absence seems odd, and I don't have the time to go to Richmond and try to find the state slave censuses. I also tried to find his brother's slaveholdings in 1850 and 1860, but couldn't find them, so suspect ancestry.com has changed the way electronic searches via its library edition present them.Jweaver28 (talk) 00:15, 21 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]