Samuel Jones- Slave Owner, Farmer, Planter

It cannot be denied that our Great-Grandfather was a slave owner prior to the Civil War.  The following census Slave Schedules have been found online.  Even after the war he is quoted in one obscure document as stating that he believed in the Southern Cause and since he had a considerable amount of his assets invested in slaves, it is understandable that he had such sentiments, for reasons of wealth if for nothing else.

I do not believe a separate Slave Schedule for 1840 was created, at least I have no access to such online.  If it does exist surely it would be available.  Thus it is not known if Samuel Jones possessed any such property in 1840 but a few short years after arriving from Lumpkin County to the east of Ellijay.  Sadly, property was one of the terms of the time to describe slave ownership.  However by 1850 he had acquired five slaves as revealed in the 1850 census. 

Slaves were enumerated separately and listed under their owners name.  The schedule under Samuel’s name lists a mulatto couple, middle aged, and three younger males ranging in ages from 12 to 18.  The younger boys, being black, obviously were not children of the mulatto couple.  This was in the Ellijay area in Gilmer County, Georgia.  After his wife Narcissa died in 1852 the man for some reason had decided to leave Gilmer County and relocated to the northwest of Ellijay some 50 miles, closer to Chattanooga, in Catoosa County, Georgia,  very close to the southern Tennessee border.  This of course placed him in the direct path of the Civil War fighting as the Federal Armies chose his region of Georgia as the route to invade south towards Atlanta.  That has been documented in my previous effort explaining what is known of the comings and goings of the Jones family during the time leading up to, during, and after the Civil War.

1850 Census, Samuel Jones, Slave Schedule

Gilmer County, Georgia

The total number of slaves for Samuel Jones in the 1860 census reveals he is listed as owning six slaves ranging in age from 48 to 12, and but one female.  It appears that Samuel had been buying and selling in the preceding ten years for the ages alone do not match the ages of the five listed in 1850.  Apparently he had replaced all his 1850 slaves.  By no means was Samuel a major slave owner for maybe 25-100 slaves or more was considered a major holding at the time.  Most common farmers or plantation owners probably did not have any slaves.  To be an owner required capital and that was not really the norm in the day in my understanding.   Many farmers, like Samuel,  the ones that probably worked the fields day in and day out along side their slaves really looked at slaves as a necessity in order to bring any profit at all to the land.  Sadly, they were looked on probably as a modern farmer would look at a piece of mechanical farm equipment today.  It is only assumed however that Samuel also worked the fields but he assumedly had an amount of acreage that probably required him to work to some extent.

1860 Census, Samuel Jones, Slave Schedule

Catoosa County, Georgia

 

The average value of a slave in 1860 was about $500 and that depended on health, age, sex, and abilities of the individual slave.  Samuel does give some hint to their value in his actual family census entry in the listing of his assets.  That census reveals also that all his family had left home for it appears the other two members of his household were probably a caretaker and his wife employed by him.  This gives hint that the caretaker possibly was the one directing the slaves or perhaps he was just considered a field hand as well.  Samuel very well may not have been working alongside his slaves at the time but it is a mute point that can never be determined.  His daughter Elizabeth was married and living with her husband and his extended family in Alabama, assumedly someplace in North Central Alabama, up until the war but sometime during the war, between 1862 and 1865, she was forced to flee Alabama with her children and sought refuge with her father in Georgia.  That is another story in itself for she once again found herself in danger as the war commenced fighting in the very vicinity of her father’s home near the famous battle field of Chickamauga.

 

1860 Census, Samuel Jones Household,

Catoosa County, Georgia,

Near Chickamauga

1860 Census, Willis Jones Family,

Smith County, Texas,

Near Tyler

A.H. Jones in the Household, Attending School

In 1860 his son Alfred Hines was living with a brother, Willis and his family, in Smith County, Texas, very near Tyler in the eastern part of the state, and is listed in the 1860 census as a '”Student”.  After war broke out he obviously returned to his Father’s home in Catoosa County, Georgia, and enlisted in the Confederate Cavalry in the small town of Dalton in the nearby county of Whitfield.  Dalton would be an important area of battle later in the war when Sherman began his march south towards Atlanta.  Just when our Grandfather departed for Texas and why he chose to continue his education in Texas in the first place is not really known but I do find it rather curious to consider.  Regardless he headed back home to Georgia when the Confederate draft was about to begin in earnest.

Based on somewhat subjective formulas found on the web today, the total value of the Samuel’s holdings in today’s currency, is hard to determine.  I don’t consider him to have ever been extremely wealthy, but probably comfortably well off.  Perhaps his pre- Civil War holdings would amount to about $300, 000 today.  The eventual loss of most everything, if not all he held when war broke out, as revealed in his 1870 census entry must have been devastating to the man, and to all those around him. 

When looking at his story and that of his daughter Elizabeth during the war, and without knowing all the day to day happenings, it is easy to say that the surviving Jones family suffered greatly during and after the war.  He died in Gordon County, Georgia in 1870, in or near the small town of Calhoun.  Calhoun was some 30 direct miles to the southeast of the family home near Chickamauga.  It is easy to imagine the ordeal that Samuel must have endured during the period for with his slaves obviously gone and his daughter and what appears to be her four young children in tow, one of which must have been near infancy, he attempted to keep himself and his wards out of harms way.  Not knowing how and where they traveled in order to avoid the battles one can only speculate it had to have been a stressful situation for the community of Calhoun, where the man and his remaining family around him ended up was also directly along the path of the fighting.  From day to day, it is quite possible, based on typical family accounts of the time, that as they moved away from the scenes of battle, they simply placed themselves in the path of the next ensuing battle.  It must have been a terrible thing to have endured.

 

Do keep in mind that much of this is but speculation on my part.  However, based on a several years of reading of Civil War history, the theory of what happened is well within the realm of possibility.