Embracing the Realities of Western North Carolina History
by Johnnie Grant
For African Americans whose family heritage originated in the woodlands and mountainous western part of this state, many truths have come to light. These truths reveal an entangled ethnic past with epochs of history many families have chosen not to disclose.
One potent and inescapable fact that was always apparent – but easily hidden, was the blighted social dynamic in relationships between owners and female slaves who became exceptionally valued property in numerous ways. Thus, a history that connects many families, both African American and European, to a “tie that binds.”
Slave records recently opened to the public at the Buncombe County Register of Deeds office have shed much needed light on a well-hidden past. These documents offer clear evidence of entangled heritages, and also proof that a viable market of chattel slavery did exist in WNC.
James McConnell Smith was one of the largest slaveholders in the region, owning more than 60 enslaved persons by the 1850s. Smith’s slaves worked on his farms and in his general store, his hotel, his tannery, and his other businesses. As indicated in his will, a number of them were skilled crafts-persons. Female slaves were cooks, weavers, child-caregivers, and house servants. Smith also frequently rented out slaves to his neighbors. Nothing makes this clearer than the will James Smith prepared, in which he parceled out his slaves to his wife and children.
The Last Will and Testament of James McConnell Smith, 1850 (in part)…
“Also I give and bequeath to my said wife Polly during her natural life the following negro slaves, viz. Bob (the tanner) and his wife Lidia and her children, Alexander, Sy (the blacksmith), Bob Hardin, Catherine and Betsey, also Moses, together with all the household and kitchen furniture at the homeplace…”
Asheville never had a public slave market, but slaves were regularly bought and sold on an owner-to-owner basis and through newspaper notices. Asheville’s earliest newspaper (the Highland Messenger) often carried notices about slaves who were offered for sale, and notices of slave masters looking for runaway slaves.
For Oralene Graves Simmons, this history became a reality when she began to trace her family heritage, which took her to the grounds and halls of Mars Hill College as a co-ed. Ms. Simmons has deep roots in Madison and Buncombe Counties, and was the first African American admitted to the school (in 1961). Her story, told on Page 3 of this issue, personalizes the printed words in a way nothing else can do.
