Robert Mahaffey's Freedmen Bureau Labor Contract - 1865

"De young marster called us in an' said it was all true, dat us was free as he was, an' us could leave whenever us got ready. He said his money warnt no good anymore an' he didn' have no other to pay us wid. "I can't recollec' if he got new money an' paid us or not, but I do 'member ever' las' one o' us stayed." Prince Johnson, Ex-Slave in Yazoo County, Mississippi

Extracted by Linda Durr Rudd
LRudd@aol.com

Freedmen Labor Contract - List of Freedmen
Planter: Robert Mahaffey
County: Simpson County, Mississippi
Date: August 09, 1865

NAME, AGE AMBIES, 35
AMOS, 5
ANN, 4
BEN, 1
CLOE, 35
FRANCIS, 3
GEORGE, 2
HAROD, 38
ISAAC, 18
JANE, 11
JENY, 25
JOHN, 55
LILL, 12
MARY, 16
MARY, 40
MARYAN, 38
MELINDA, 13
PHILES, 16
PIERCE, 20
RACHAEL, 60
TOM, 5
TOM, 7
WALKER, 26
WILEY, 5

SOURCE

Freedmen Bureau Labor Contract - Microfiche Number 47-059
Slave Narrative of Prince Johnson
All sources found at Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Remembering Their Names