by John E. Danielson
March 30, 1994 9:17 pm
Bowling Green, Kentucky
This is a compilation of information found in records that shed some light on the life of an African-American who lived a long life in the first part of the last century, two-thirds of it in the bonds of slavery. He is not to be confused with another Jack Taylor, who lived even longer, but a couple of generations later; however, the two would have known each other for over two decades. Our subject was apparently known by the white Taylors as “Old Jake” (at least in later life), so he will be referred to here simply as Jack Taylor.
Birth
Jack was born right around 1785, in North Carolina. His owner, Joseph Taylor, in 1808 and thereafter, indicated that he was a “slave over sixteen years of age”, putting his birth prior to 1793 (Warren County Tax List for 1808). S V Goode, who was married to Elizabeth Ann Taylor (who as a girl had emigrated to Kentucky with Jack) recorded in the 1850 Federal census of Warren County (as an Assistant Marshal, in his own handwriting, no less) that Jack was 60, which would put his birth about 1790. He also reported North Carolina as the place of birth. The clincher, however, comes from the document that set Jack free, dated 1839, in which he is described as “about 53 by Allen Taylor and his brother Joseph Taylor III (Deed Book 17, page 142). Slave owners knew perfectly well how old their slaves were, and in Allen’s case, there is a further biological basis: he and Jack were nearly the same age, and in 1808 as they prepared to move from North Carolina, Allen would have been 19, and would have known whether Jack was 18 or 23, demonstrating that the age given in the 1850 census is only a round figure.
Childhood
Nothing can be known about Jack’s younger years until records from North Carolina (such as tax lists) are sifted through, although we can speculate. Shari Franke (1993, 2nd ed., p. 39) suggests that Jack might have been given to Sarah Best by her father, but that is impossible, since at that time (1783 or earlier) he had not been born yet: the implication that Jack’s mother was a slave of the Best family is plausible, however, and should be followed up. A final observation concerns the arrival of Jack into the Taylor household, as a youngster, as a teenager, or maybe not until his early twenties, but at any rate prior to the trek to Kentucky in 1808. Whenever it was, the older Taylor children would have been not far in age from Jack; the reader may wish to ponder how this fact affected the social atmosphere of Joseph and Sarah Best Taylor’s large family.
Over the Mountains
Picture the large group of neighbors that assembled at the Conetoe Swamp near the Edgecombe/Martin county line in the Spring of 1808 to prepare to move to Kentucky: a white couple, their dozen children, two sons-in-law, four grandchildren, and at least a half-dozen Cherry step-grandchildren, aged from newborn to nearly sixty, and a young black man aged about twenty-three, for a total of over 25 persons. If they all went together, they would have had to leave pretty early in the summer, since Joseph Taylor already appears in Kentucky on the 1808 Tax List, which was compiled each year during the period from March through June, with possibly time to make additions and corrections before the final copy was made in the Fall and sent to state government. (By the 1840’s, the clerks of court had become more efficient, and were getting the state’s copy done by June or even late May.) Therefore, the possibility should be considered that Jack and Joseph went ahead, in early Spring, to find a likely piece of land, and that the others would follow automatically a few months later; this could also account nicely for the varying traditions as to which season of 1808 is the true one.
Maybe examining the listing of Joseph’s taxable property will help. The categories were land, white males over 21 (to assess the strength of the local militia), slaves, both over and under the age of 16, horses, and a few luxury items such as stud horses and billiard tables.
1807 (Joseph Taylor not listed)
1808 (no land)
1 white male over 21 (himself)
1 slave over 16 (Jack)
4 horses
1809
(exact date provided, March 13)
140 acres on Swan Creek, entered by O’Neal
140 acres on Swan Creek, entered by Moberly
2 white males over 21 (himself and his son William;
Allen would not attain 21 until the following December)
1 slave over 16 (Jack)
4 horses
The first notable feature is that Joseph was paying taxes on his lands even before the deed were drawn up (in May 1809 and November 1811), and therefore no doubt occupying them as well. One of the tracts included, at the time of purchase, an “improvement”, perhaps just a cleared field, but more likely also a usable farmstead. When plotted on aerial photos this improvement falls within a few hundred yards of the Taylor cemetery (Deed Book 4, page 173, and Book 6, page 190). It is conceivable that a pre-existing structure became the cabin that Jack lived in. Most likely, the Taylor clan built a house from scratch. William Cherry housed himself on separate lands, but perhaps the Wallaces lived on the Taylor farm; they all lived very close together, since their taxables were all counted on the same day, March 13, 1809.
First decade in Kentucky
Jack is consistently listed as taxable property each year as the slave of Joseph Taylor, not by name, but by the numeral “1” in the “slaves over 16” column. The 1810 Federal census has a column for all slaves regardless of age, and Jack is duly counted with a “1” there, too. The first additional mention comes when Joseph Taylor draws up his Will on December 1, 1815 (Will Book B., page 222), in which our subject is referred to as “one Negro man named Jack”, to be the property of Sarah Best Taylor from Joseph’s death until her own death, then to be sold along with the other personal property, and the proceeds thus raised to be “divided equally between all of my daughters”. (Whether children of deceased daughters were to inherit a share of Jack’s value is not specified, but the question was not to arise until the 1830’s if it ever arose at all.) Wills were not commonly made in those days in Warren County, so Joseph’s reasons for doing so are of interest. First, there was his desire to give the land to the sons, and the rest of the property to the daughters; without a will, state law gave the widow one-third of everything, and divided the other two-thirds among all the other heirs, but in those cases, lines on the ground weren’t actually drawn unless the widow or one of the children insisted. Maybe Joseph wished to forestall such discussions. If he was figuring that his daughters would do fine without land, by making advantageous marriages, he turned out to be correct. Second, he may have been feeling his own mortality. It is possible that he fell seriously ill around that time; many wills were filed at the courthouse only a few weeks or months after being written, indicating quick deaths. Perhaps he was responding to the melancholia of a parent who has outlived a child. His daughter Nancy had died not so long before, and another daughter, Amy Wallace, may have died only that year. Whatever his motivation, he must have discussed his plans with his wife and sons, in order for them to properly carry out his wishes as executors. Whether he would have informed Jack, then about 30 years old, about future plans is open for speculation: should a slave be left wondering who would be his new owner upon his master’s death?
The death of Joseph Taylor
Jack was still owned by Joseph Taylor in February of 1819, but Joseph had died by April 4, at which time Jack’s status was not so easily defined (Deed Book 9, page 46; Court Order Book “E”, page ____). The tax list of 1818 had still listed Joseph Taylor as owning one slave over the age of sixteen, but in 1819 Jack is assigned to “Allen Taylor & c, Executors Joseph Taylor Dec’d”, which means that he was now officially owned by William and Allen for the time being. Jack was also listed in the inventory and appraisal of Joseph Taylor’s estate. This inventory was written up on June 30, 1819, sworn to before the neighborhood Justice of the Peace on July 3, 1819, and presented at the session of court held July 5 (Will Book “B”, page 241). The inventory clearly shows that Jack was absolutely indispensable to the Taylor farming operation, being valued at $800.00, or almost two-thirds of the entire estate. The four categories of horses, cattle, hogs, and beds are tied for second place, at around $110.00 each, and everything else (the other livestock, the other furniture, the tools, miscellaneous household items) only comes to $106.37 ½.
Working for Sally Taylor, widow
After this, references to Jack in the records are again perfunctory numerals in columns, for quite some time. He was a slave belonging to Sally Taylor in the 1820 Federal census, and a slave of over 16 years belonging to her in the 1820 tax list. It is strange that the 1821 tax list shows “William and Allen Taylor” again as possessors of Jack, but most likely this is just and error. After this, year after year in the tax lists, Jack appears as the slave of Sally Taylor, then is tallied in the 1830 Census, and after that continues again in the tax rolls, always as “1 slave over 16 years of age”, on into 1835 and 1836.
The death of Sally Taylor
Sometime after late spring of 1836, after the tax lists had been finalized, Sally Taylor died probably aged seventy-something (if her assumed birthdate of 1764 is close to the truth). This sad event would have certainly drawn a large crowd to the graveyard services at the family burial ground, which might not have had more than five to ten fieldstone-marked graves at the time. A rough count indicates that about fifty-one grandchildren, and from seven to ten great-grandchildren might have attended, just from the local area. Surely Jack would have been on hand, too. It is difficult to conclusively narrow the range of possible dates for Sarah Best Taylor’s passing, but if she had died much before mid-December 1836, Elijah Upton and Allen Taylor would probably have attended the third-Monday of December court session to begin handling her estate; however, they did not do so until January 23, 1837. When Elijah was granted “the administration of the estate of Sally Taylor decade” (with Allen acting as security for the required bond), an order was given for her personal estate to be appraised by “any three” of James Hudnall, John Morrow, Peter Reeves, William Madison, and William White. Jack was therefore in sort of a legal limbo, officially belonging to the estate of the long-deceased Joseph Taylor once again, as specified in the will which had been written twenty-one years before. When the tax listing for 1837 is consulted, it shows immediately after the entry for Allen Taylor, an entry for “same, Executor of Joseph Taylor” (meaning Allen), which makes sense, since the other executors were either deceased (Sally) or non-resident in Kentucky (William, of Missouri). Also, in strict compliance with the terms of his father’s Will, Allen set apart from his mother’s personal property those articles which he could identify as remaining from the inventory of Joseph Taylor’s property, and only belonging to Sally during her lifetime. This of course included Jack. It would be interesting to know whether Jack was apprehensive about being sold to a stranger (which he must have known was a possibility) but, in the event, that did not happen. The appraisals of the two estates were not recorded. But the values would have been close to the prices received at the public sale. The date of the sale was not written down, but the sale bill was presented at the April 224, 1837 session of court, and recorded that same day (Inventory Book “E, pages 409-412). Jack had passed the age of fifty, and was now valued at only $400.00, but still formed over ninety percent of Joseph’s estate, and even if one adds up every last cow, horse, and stick of furniture, Sally’s own estate totals less than Jack’s monetary worth. Joseph Taylor (meaning her son) was listed as Jack’s buyer, and this is backed up by the next year’s tax list, when the only slave of any age owned by the Taylors is “1 slave over 16” in Joseph’s possession, and valued at $400.00. It is not clear how the proceeds from the sale were distributed, since Temperance Taylor Smart was living so far away (Illinois and would only outlive her mother by about five years). Similarly, even though William Taylor in Missouri had no right to a share of the sale value of Jack, or any of his father’s other personal property, and had deeded all his rights to any lands to his brother Joseph, he should have been entitled to a share of his late mother’s livestock and other goods, once they had been reduced to cash. Perhaps someday a receipt for a share of the division will be found in an attic.
The emancipation of Jack Taylor
The next year, on Monday, September 24, 1838, and extraordinary even in the life of Jack Taylor occurred. He was “emancipated and set free … from all obligations of service” by Joseph and Allen Taylor (Deed Book 17, page 142). Apart from the obvious benefits, one side effect was that Jack would after this be referred to in documents as having both a first and a last name: however, in this deed he was still only “Jack, a man of color, the said Jack being a negro who was a slave belonging to the estate of Joseph (Taylor) dec’d and purchased by the said Allen & Joseph Taylor”. How Allen entered into the deal is a complete mystery, whether he put up some of the price when his brother “bought” Jack, or was simply covering all the legal bases as executor. In any case, it would be unfair to claim that Jack Taylor was given his freedom; he had to purchase it for the now familiar amount of $400.00. Another mystery is how Jack raised that daunting sum while a slave. Perhaps he had performed paid labor when not running Sally Taylor’s farm, or possibly was allowed to keep proceeds from selling some commodity. Maybe the generosity of others was part of the picture. This freedom document has another surprise, a personal description of Jack: “the said Jack is about fifty-three years of age near six feet high and black colored”.
Jack Taylor as landowner
Just a few months later, on May 16, 1839, Elijah Upton sold part of an odd-shaped parcel of land for $100.00 to “Jack Taylor (a free man of color)”. The southern part, about 30 acres out of the original 95 acres, had been sold to Allen Taylor two and half years earlier. This leaves about 65 acres by calculations in Jack’s portion, but it wasn’t ever surveyed, and would later be variously reported as containing 50, 60, or 70 acres. This land had been taken up by Upton twenty years earlier as part of the Warren Seminary scheme, but was probably not where he lived; it lay almost a mile to the west of the Taylor cemetery, and adjoined the land apportioned to Joseph Taylor III. It straddles the high, flat ridge between the headwaters of Lost Creek to the north, and Clifty Creek (also called Hudnall or Reeves Creek) to the south, and is bisected by the main road from Richardsville to Riverside. Up until fairly recently, this was the main road between the county seats of Glasgow and Morgantown (via the ferry at Woodbury) and one can imagine Jack seeing all sorts of passers-by as he tended to crops and livestock, but there is every reason to believe he would have stayed in his old cabin at the Taylor springs, as it was only a brief walk to his newly-acquired land. Jack Taylor continued to be listed in the tax rolls, but in his own rights, and not as the property of others. Here is a sample of those listings:
1839 (water damaged; illegible)
1840 “Taylor, Jack, Colored”
60 acres 1 horse
At this time, the 1840 census was taken, and Jack appears as “1 free Negro: in the entry for Allen Taylor.
1841 (list is missing)
1842 The tax commissioner who drew up the lists this year apparently didn’t subscribe to the concept of “free negro”, for we find Jack’s 50 acres on Clifty Creek listed as Allen Taylor’s property, and Jack himself is shown as a slave belonging to Allen. No doubt one of the horses is really Jack’s, as well.
1843 “Taylor John (Colored man)”
60 acres 3 horses 7 cattle
1844 “Taylor Jack (Col’d man)”
60 acres 3 horses 6 cattle
1845 “Taylor Jack, colored”
70 acres 3 horses 8 cattle
1846 “Taylor Jack (FMC)” (Free Man of Color)
60 acres 4 horses (no cattle)
1847 (missing the booklet for this portion of Warren County)
1848 “Taylor Jack man Color”
60 acres 4 horses 3 cattle
1849 “Taylor Jack (man color)”
60 acres 3 horses 3 cattle
1850 “Taylor Jack col’d Man”
60 acres 3 horses 3 cattle
At this time the 1850 census was taken – it had several features, including an agricultural portion. Jack Taylor’s farm was canvassed sometime in the first week of October 1850 (Sheet 833, line 13, in District 1). Samuel V Goode, who had been married to Jack’s former owner’s daughter, Elizabeth Ann Taylor, for over two decades was the census taker, and doubtless new jack personally. The data should be very reliable, if not one hundred percent perfect:
Livestock, as of June 1, 1850
3 horses
2 milch cows
(no oxen)
5 other cattle
(no sheep)
65 swine
Total value of Livestock: $250.00
Value of animals slaughtered (in last year): $40.00
Produce in the year ended June 1, 1850
Wool zero pounds
Peas & Beans 2 bushels
Irish Potatoes 10 bushels
Sweet Potatoes 15 bushels
Butter 50 pounds
Flax zero pounds
Flax seed zero bushels
Value of Home-made Manufacturing: zero Dollars
The layout of the farm is suggested by the classification of the acreage into two categories:
improved land: 35 acres
unimproved land: 35 acres
Cash value of the whole 70 acres is $1,500.00
Value of the farm implements, etc. 50.00
For the sake of completeness, it may be mentioned that Jack Taylor produced none of the following three items, but that very few farms in the rest of Warren County did, either:
Cheese
Hemp
Hay
Personal Data from the Population Schedule:
Tax Lists, Continued:
1851 “Taylor Jack Col’d man”
50 acres 3 horses 4 cattle
1852 “Taylor Jack Colr’d man”
50 acres 2 horses 6 cattle
Transcribed from March 30, 1994 copy
by: H. Jane Smith
7/32/2022
