Although slaves were the main component of the estates of Elizabeth Johns and Ann Reams, these women had children old enough to control their father's legacy. Neither necessarily would have had sole possession of previous households. The 1858 estate papers of thrice married Aletha Dixon, however, mention neither household nor farm implements. Dixon's estate consisted entirely of twenty-six slaves worth $24,600.

Aletha Ann Goolsby Atkinson Jackson Dixon was born in Amite County around 1820 to early area pioneers. Her parents, Randall V. Goolsby and Elizabeth Hudson Goolsby, were from Oglethorpe and Madison Counties in Eastern Georgia and had migrated to Amite County soon after their 1817 wedding. When she was only two years old, Aletha's father, Randall V. Goolsby, began granting both land and chattel to her in her name, not in the name of a dowry or future husband. The conveyance book also records a transaction that may have involved the slave named Louisia whom Aletha inherited from her grandfather, Isaiah Goolsby, of Wilkes County, Georgia. (40) When her father died in 1823, (41) her mother, Elizabeth Hudson Goolsby, managed her daughter's affairs until 1832, when Francis Hudson, presumably her mother's brother, was appointed her guardian. (42) While Randall Goolsby did not leave a will, his estate, appraised for $2580.84, indicated a relatively comfortable existence for a young couple. The inventory, in addition to livestock and seven bales of cotton, included six slaves, four beehives, a looking glass, two tables, and seven chairs. Someone must have continued to operate the late Randall Goolsby's farm, for preserved in Aletha Goolsby's estate papers is an 1829 statement showing that nine bales of cotton had been sold for $311. As she grew older, her mother and her guardians were careful to make sure that she was well dressed. Aletha Goolsby's expenditures during the first eight months of 1834 consist almost entirely of expensive fabric and sewing notions. That she or her seamstress had more time for sewing in the winter months is indicated by the bi-weekly ordering of silks, braid, and hooks and eyes from purveyor James Bond. Squeezed in among the dry good orders are one copybook and a half dozen quills in a "fancy box." These two items are the only indicators of any schooling that she may have received. Aletha's education does not seem to have been a priority in any of her surviving estate papers. (43)

Aletha and her mother Elizabeth, (44) now remarried to John Gunby, were active in Ebeneezer Baptist Church, the oldest organized Baptist Church in Mississippi Territory. (45) It was there that she married, in August 1835 when she was about fifteen years old, fellow parishioner Eldridge D. Atkinson; she eventually had two children by him, both of whom were still living at the time of her death. No surviving papers indicate whether Aletha's estate was held in settlement when she married, but at Atkinson's death, sometime between 1840 and 1842, Aletha would have gained control of her share of his estate in addition to that which she had brought into her marriage. (46)

In July 1843 Aletha was married to the executor of her husband's estate, and fellow churchmember, Andrew Jackson. Jackson's extended family, like Aletha's, were also early pioneers of Amite County. 47 In addition to managing Atkinson's estate, Jackson had also been named the guardian of Aletha's and his two daughters, Margaret and Sarah, and with him she had at least four more children. Jackson was a prosperous farmer who at age thirty-four, according to the 1850 census, had accumulated over $3000 in real property.(48) While he did not leave a will, when Andrew Jackson died in February 1852 his estate was valued at $10,377.00. His enterprise, however, seems not to have been the cotton that Aletha's father grew, but that of foodstuffs. The sixteen slaves enumerated in his inventory may have grown the seven hundred bushels of corn and two thousand pounds of fodder and taken care of the fifty hogs, three yoke of oxen, nine head of cattle, three beehives, twelve horses and four goats. Even though the April 1852 inventory may have been enumerated after the previous year's cotton crop was sold, the lack of seeds indicates that he did not plant the fiber. However, the Jackson family may have cultivated the crop with tools and seeds Aletha had inherited from her father or Eldridge Atkinson. This inventory indicates only the movable property Andrew Jackson owned separate from his wife and her daughters. This second widowhood marked the only time Aletha conducted business in her own name. She registered two lots in Land Conveyance Entry Book number two in 1854, just before she married again.

Aletha Ann Goolsby Atkinson Jackson married for the third time in December 1854 to Benjamin F. Dixon. Dixon was a widower with three children from East Feliciana Parish across the Louisiana state line. In 1840 Dixon's father, William G. Dixon, had died, leaving him the bulk of his estate. Therefore at the early age of twenty-one Dixon was a sizable property owner. (49) The following year he married Jane Norwood, a daughter of a prominent planter family and sister-in-law of Robert Germany, Elizabeth Craft's brother. (50) Dixon and his wife had at least three children during the thirteen years they were married before her death in March 1854. Despite his responsibilities in East Feliciana, Dixon married Aletha nine months after his first wife's death and moved his family to Amite County. Records indicate that they lived in Aletha's house and continued to farm his property in Louisiana. By the time she wrote her will in May 1858, she was the mother of seven living children, among whom she was to divide her estate. She also may have been a grandmother, for within a year of her marriage to Dixon, her eldest daughter Sarah Atkinson had married physician William Kinabrew and settled nearby. Aletha's second daughter, Margaret Atkinson, would marry in December 1858, but Aletha Dixon would not live to attend that wedding. Though there is no certain record of her death, her will was probated in November of that year. She had named her husband sole executor of her estate.

In light of the property she had inherited from her father and two previous husbands, her estate seems somewhat strange. Unlike the other married women who had been widowed previously, Aletha Dixon mentioned no household or farm implements in her will or her inventory. Her estate consisted entirely of twenty-six slaves worth $24,600. (51) Within the text of the will she apportioned her slaves out by name to her husband and her seven previous children, with the stipulation that after her husband's death, his portion of her estate would go to her two children by him. Aletha seems to have taken care to distribute her slaves according to their market value. She distributed full field hands, fertile female slaves, and young children with the result that each of her heirs received approximately $2,600 worth of labor. Because of this type of bequeathment, after the Emancipation proclamation, her heirs' inheritance would be worthless. While no records have survived indicating how her children managed, B. F. Dixon remarried in August 1859 and wrote his own will in May 1869, shortly before his death later that year. After Aletha Dixon's death, he was a relatively wealthy man. The 1860 census indicates that his real estate was worth $12,000 and his personal property $70,000. Despite the fabled ravages of war and Reconstruction, B.F. Dixon seems to have remained comfortably well off, for at his 1869 death, Dixon left his new wife several sizable tracts of land and was able to bequeath each of his five surviving children between one hundred and five hundred dollars in cash. One of Aletha's sons by him, Warren T. Dixon, was no longer living, but their other son William K. Dixon inherited five hundred dollars and his one-fifth share of the residue of his father's estate. (52) Any real estate that may have belonged to his mother was not mentioned.

After managing three separate households, Aletha Dixon's bequeathment of only slaves, with no mention of a myriad of personal goods found in the other inventories, is an enigma. As indicated in the wills, most Amite County women, after a couple or more marriages and a few children, usually had accumulated movable household goods. By the time she died, Aletha had married three times and had seven surviving children but did not own any furniture, clothes, or other personal things. Perhaps her older children had inherited from their fathers the easily distributable household items, but this is unlikely given the young age of most of her children at the time of their fathers' deaths. Without their fathers' wills, it is impossible to tell the disposition of the deceased husbands' estates' distribution. This mysterious lack of personal possessions may have had its root in Aletha's background. Although she had been a child heiress, she never transacted any business in her own name even after 1839 when, with the change in law, she could have done so. Perhaps she simply gave away her property before she wrote her will, or else simply assumed that all of her possessions belonged to her husband. Hence the most likely explanation for the lack of personal goods lies not in the law but in the character of the woman involved.

Unlike the deferring Aletha Dixon, the wills and estate papers left by two other women suggest that they ran successful plantations and took full advantage of their legal status. Both Victoria Caroline Batchelor Buckholtz Street and Elizabeth Germany Land Craft accumulated sizable personal fortunes consisting of land, chattels, and agricultural implements. Impressive by any standard, these estates were all the more remarkable because both women expanded their enterprises during their marriages and brief widowhoods.

Inventory records belonging to Elizabeth R. Germany Land Craft, who wrote her will in June 1853, indicate that she was the wealthiest among the women surveyed. While she did inherit some property from her father James Germany, the bulk of her estate came from her first husband Nathan Land. Elizabeth had grown up in eastern Amite County near the Wilkinson County line and attended Ebeneezer Baptist Church along with many of her neighbors. Her Georgia-born father had settled in Amite County before 1810, when he purchased the family's property. Born around 1815, Elizabeth Germany in the mid 1830s married wealthy landowner Nathan Land. Nathan Land was several years her senior, having staked his own claim in southeast Amite County in December 1809. (53) By the time of the 1830 census he was the owner of thirty-one slaves and would continue to expand his workforce over the next fifteen years. (54)

In his 1845 will Nathan Land divided his estate between his wife Elizabeth and his nephew, Joshua Land. (55) Despite the fact that the 1850 census indicates that John W. Land, Nathan and Elizabeth's son, was at least three or four years of age at the time the will was written, the child was not listed. (56) Nonetheless, after Nathan's death, Elizabeth R. Land was a wealthy widow. At the time of the 1850 census, she was one of the top ten property owners in Amite County. (57) During her widowhood, Elizabeth Land is on record as having purchased land on three separate occasions between 1851 and 1852. Three years after her first husband's 1849 death, Elizabeth Land married Thomas Craft. One land purchase was within three days of this second marriage. (58)

Whether the Crafts lived on Elizabeth's property inherited from Nathan Land or set up housekeeping elsewhere is not certain. However, the extensive inventory compiled at the time of her death includes articles that would have been found in an extremely well equipped household. (59) Elizabeth Craft owned seventy-two slaves and personal property totaling over $58,000. (60) Considering the quantity of Elizabeth's property, it would have probably been easier for Thomas Craft to set up housekeeping on the Land estate rather than transfer these holdings to some other location.

Although the seventy-two slaves willed by Elizabeth Craft would not have placed her family in the uppermost echelons of southern high society, by Amite County standards she was extremely prosperous. As there are no available records of how the plantation was run, Elizabeth's responsibilities as plantation mistress, wife, and later widow cannot be ascertained and would be dependent upon both her ability and what kind of assistance she received. A competent and trustworthy overseer and other support staff could have minimized her involvement with the business side of the plantation, but she may have faced these challenges with little outside help. Perhaps Elizabeth's remarriage after three years of widowhood was motivated by a need for assistance in the running of her estates. Yet, the evidence suggests that she might have been managing the property quite well on her own. It is conceivable that in the years before Nathan Land's death Elizabeth had already assumed more responsibilities of the plantation and transacted some business. Therefore, her apparent success during widowhood, indicated by the growth of her property during those three years, implies that Elizabeth may have been quite independent by the standards of her time. If so, her re-marriage after three years of widowhood suggests emotional rather than economical reasons. Her decision, however, would have compromised her autonomy and may have cost her more than she initially bargained.

While Elizabeth's judgment seems to have been sound, her new husband may have been interested in her fortune. Thomas Craft remains something of a mystery because he seems to have appeared from outside the area; the Amite County census of 1850 does not list Thomas Craft--or indeed, any Crafts at all--in the county. Regardless of her physical attributes, Elizabeth Germany Land would have been considered a matrimonial prize. The Germanys and the Lands were prominent families in the southern part of the county, and she lived near other important and influential residents. The propertyless Thomas Craft may have found, through his bride, an entree into the best society of southern Mississippi. In light of her actions after the wedding, Elizabeth may have soon realized that her second marriage was less auspicious than her first.

Within ten months of remarrying, Elizabeth R. Craft wrote her last will "Revoking and making void all former wills." (61) Her decision to amend her estate papers does not seem to have been urgent because unlike the majority of other wills in this survey, Elizabeth admitted to "being of good health of body and of sound disposing mind. . . and being desirous of attending to my affairs while I have strength." (62) While she divided her estate, "both real and personal," between Thomas Craft and her son John W. Land, she made clear that Craft would not get custody of her son nor would he have any hand in the administration of his John Land's minor estate. Elizabeth R. Craft instead appointed her brother, Robert Germany, as guardian to her son John.

Although Mississippi rulings are not clear, there may be a link between a married woman's testimentary capacity and her ability to appoint guardians for her children. Under other circumstances, mothers had no legal right to appoint testamentary guardians and could not overturn an appointment made by a reasonable father. (63) But unlike most women, Elizabeth Craft had feme sole prerogatives and could write a will. Her ability to appoint a guardian for her son may be linked to the fact that her second husband was not the child's natural father. Further, since Craft was not a native of Amite and there is no indication of his having brought any substantial economic gain with him to the marriage, Elizabeth was in a unique position of possibly having "rights" acquired by position, wealth, and the status of feme sole during her three-year widowhood. In any case, the possible motivations for Elizabeth Craft writing her will at this time and in this manner are intriguing. Of course, as before theorized, she might have married for business guidance--but the indication that she had written at least one will previous to her final testament shows her acumen in the disposition of her extensive estate.

Approximately twelve months elapsed between the writing of the final will and the inventory, which was usually made within a week to ten days of the testator's death. Although Elizabeth Craft indicated that she was in sound health at the time of her writing of her testament, her death within the year suggests she was not entirely unprepared for her decease. One possibility was that she had been in the early stages of a difficult pregnancy and foresaw the possible complications and "while I have strength" planned for her son's future. Also, at thirty-eight years of age, she was at some health risk had she and her new husband decided to expand their family. Further, since Thomas Craft had no Amite County roots and most probably came into the marriage much poorer than his wife, it is likely that Craft may have desired a child not only for emotional reasons but for the life interest in her estate that he would immediately be entitled to at her demise. Had she not written a will, and had they remained childless, her son John would have been the sole heir to the Land estate and all of the growth it had encountered even under Craft's management.

Another separate possibility could have been tensions between her adolescent son and his step-father. After having his mother to himself for three years, John W. Land may have resented the intrusion of Thomas Craft. The boy may also have suspected the newcomer of having less than honorable designs upon the Land fortune. Her former in-laws may have also been a source of tension. The fact that Elizabeth appointed a guardian that was not related to either the Land family--Nathan's nephew, Joshua, or relatives on that side of the Land family may still have been living--or to her second husband seems unusual. Her decision suggests a strong sense of family within the Germany clan. The1850 U.S. Census indicates that she was living on property adjoining that of her brother, Robert Germany, further suggesting that despite her two marriages, Elizabeth Germany Land Crafts still had strong ties to immediate blood relations. Perhaps she felt that she could only put her final trust in them; it was to her blood kindred that she bequeathed her most valuable possession, her son. The ability to write a will gave her the power to safeguard her desires and to give them legal backing. Despite any animosity with the Lands that may have resulted from her remarriage or the possible souring of her relationship with Craft, Elizabeth Craft was able to make the ultimate decision about the future of her estate. Fifteen years before, her actions would have been impossible under common law.

Victoria Caroline Batchelor Buckholtz Street, like her neighbor Aletha Dixon before her, was descended from early pioneers and had inherited a considerable estate from both her father and her first husband. Victoria's mother, Rebecca Gayden Wren Batchelor, and her extended family migrated to southern Amite County from the Aiken District of South Carolina before 1805. (64) What soon became Amite County was then part of Wilkinson County, and it was in that county's registry that the December 1805 marriage of the widow Rebecca Gayden Wren and lawyer-planter Thomas Batchelor is recorded. (65) Batchelor and his Gayden in laws filed several adjoining land claims in southern Amite County a few miles from the Louisiana border in 1808 and 1809, forming a large family complex on adjoining lands. (66)

The Batchelor-Gayden family quickly became among the most prominent in the county. Thomas Batchelor set up a legal practice in Liberty that lasted for nearly forty years; his name appears on hundreds of documents preserved in the Amite County courthouse. Batchelor also shared in the establishment and eventually took over the plantation "Beech Grove" on the family's land about ten miles from the county seat and just off the main road that linked the county with the Felicianas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. When Rebecca's father, George Gayden, died in January 1819, his will, the first recorded in Will Book I, distributed property estimated at $10,863.25. Five of his ten slaves were men each appraised at a thousand dollars, and his inventory lists extensive furnishings, livestock, and luxury items such as books and looking glasses. (67) Gayden divided the slaves and movable property among his children, granting chiefly the livestock and farm implements to his two surviving sons. He bequeathed to his daughter Rebecca Batchelor "a slave girl named Nilst" and to each of Rebecca's sons by Wren he gave three hundred and sixty dollars. (68) Rebecca's two daughters by Thomas Batchelor, Victoria Caroline and Mary Ann Harriet, were not included, nor were their sons (69) mentioned. This second daughter, Mary Ann, would marry the first minister of Unity Presbyterian Church of which her parents and Gayden uncles were founding members. (70) But it was to their elder daughter Victoria Caroline that the bulk of the estate would eventually pass. Successful in both his legal and agricultural endeavors, by 1830 Thomas Batchelor was the wealthiest man in Amite County, owning sixty-five slaves in addition to his real and personal property. (71)

The day after Christmas 1826, twenty-year-old Victoria Caroline Batchelor married local planter Abel Hodge Buckholtz, seven years her senior. Buckholtz's grandfather was a Prussian who had fought in the Revolutionary War and later settled with his son Jacob's family in Mississippi Territory. (72) After the senior Abel Buckholtz's death in 1812, Jacob Buckholtz began acquiring large tracts of land in central Amite County. Between November 1815 and January 1816, Jacob purchased over 524 acres for $2004. (73) When Jacob Buckholtz died in 1824, he left a widow, six children, and an estate estimated at $12,002.35. (74) Abel Hodge Buckholtz was the executor of his father's estate and continued to run his family's farm. Two years later he married Victoria Batchelor, and during the next six years Abel and Victoria had three daughters, Harriet, Rebecca, and Amanda. Abel Buckholtz's early death at age thirty-four in 1833 may have been sudden; he continued to conduct business transactions until a few weeks before his death and did not write a will. His estate's papers have been lost, but the land conveyance records suggest that Victoria and her father Thomas Batchelor conducted some of the concluding business of the Buckholtz estate.

Widowhood seems to have revealed several of Victoria's talents. Unlike Aletha Dixon, who only once seems to have transacted any business in her own name, Victoria Street actively bought and sold land during her brief widowhood between Buckholtz's death in 1833 and her marriage to Virginia lawyer Henry G. Street in 1836. Though she could not transact any business in her own name between 1836 and 1839, when her father died in 1842 she was able to take control of her portion of that estate. That she did so is reflected in transactions dated 1843 and 1844 as recorded in the land conveyance records. (75) At her father's 1842 death Victoria inherited twenty-one slaves, a filly, and a fourth of Thomas Batchelor's estate. While he initially left the plantation "Beech Grove" to her eldest brother James Madison Batchelor, at this brother's death sometime in the late 1840s Victoria gained control of this property as well. By the time of the 1850 census, Victoria Street and her immediate family were well ensconced on the homeplace; its future success would depend on her talent and business acumen. This census provides a revealing look at the Street household at mid-century, for while Henry Street is listed as the head of the household, his income as a lawyer is listed separately from the plantation holdings in his wife's name. Clearly, she ran the property, and Henry Street agreed that she should take credit for her endeavors. She was a wealthy woman and would accrue even more by the time she died. The worth of Victoria Street's personal property alone was estimated at $5000 in this record; her land and slaves were worth far more. The property continued to serve as a family compound for her younger brother Thomas A. Batchelor's family, their aunt Elizabeth Morgan and step-sister Elizabeth Harrell, and their families also lived on or adjacent to the estate. (76)

The incredible energy spent running her plantation could not last forever. When fifty-two-year-old Victoria Street wrote her will only four weeks before her April 1858 death, she was "weak in body, but of sound and disposing mind and memory." Despite her final illness, she carefully and very specifically distributed her slaves and property among her four children and husband. (77)

Unlike the other wills written in antebellum Amite County by married women, Victoria made a gender distinction between the property left to her sons and her daughters. This gender differentiation is all the more compelling because she herself successfully ran her family's plantation. To her sons Thomas Parke Street and Charles Napoleon Street, who at the time of Victoria's death were eighteen and fourteen years of age respectively, she bequeathed:

[M]y plantation and land whereon I now reside commonly known as 'Beech Grove' together with all the buildings and improvements, farming utensils, and agricultural implements thereunto belonging together with all the residue of my negroes not herein before bequeathed. All my stock of horses, mules, cattle, hogs, sheep and poultry also all the kitchen furniture to have and to hold the same to them and their heirs forever. (78)

To her two surviving daughters Rebecca Buckholtz Galtney and Amanda Buckholtz Norwood she left fine, easily movable pieces of personal and sentimental property. Each woman received two slaves, six silver spoons, and a pair of silver candlesticks with a total value between $1,500 and $2,000. Perhaps Victoria and her husband had already given them a portion of their inheritance when they married or Victoria felt that her daughters would be taken care of by their husbands. The two would have already received their portion of their long dead father Abel Buckholtz's estate, but no records indicate what they acquired. Victoria Street may have realized that neither of her daughters had a talent for plantation management and therefore did not give them an interest in the family lands. She may have also wanted to keep the entire property intact in order to continue to make it as profitable as possible.

Victoria Street's seemingly inequitable division of her estate is enhanced by the exclusion of her husband in an omission repeated only once in the entire survey. (80) Though she does not leave her husband Henry G, Street anything in her will, she does make him executor of her estate. Perhaps Victoria and Henry Street had agreed he would live off his own income after her death, thus allowing their sons as full a bequeathment as possible. (81) This decision only gives further evidence that Victoria Street was an organized and independant businesswoman who successfully ran an extensive plantation enterprise. She served as both plantation mistress and master, a dual role not achieved by many women in the antebellum South.

The last will written by a married woman in antebellum Amite County was that of Nancy M. Daniels Sleeper. Nancy's father John M. Daniels and her mother Eliza Jackson Daniels were both probably dead by 1842 when she and her siblings were placed under the guardianship of Josiah C. Causey. They lived with Causey and his own family while he managed each child's share of their parents' estate. Records for Nancy Daniels' inheritance dated 1843 through 1845 indicate that Causey hired out each of the children's slaves, earning over $600 a year. While no records survive to indicate how many slaves each child inherited, an inventory taken during the transfer of guardianship from Josiah Causey to his son Thomas J. Causey, after the elder man died in the late 1840s, indicates that Nancy owned five slaves worth a total of $1800. Three of her slaves were aged six and under, indicating that they were born to either the twenty-two-year old Fanny or slaves owned by Nancy's siblings. (82) Although Thomas J. Causey continued as her guardian after his father died, Nancy Daniels continued to live with Josiah's widow Susannah and maintained ties with that family. Nancy Daniel's papers, like those of Aletha Goolsby at a similar age, indicate dressmaking expenditures. Nancy, however, received a genteel education as indicated by accounts for school tuition and singing lessons.

In October 1852, when she was nineteen years old, Nancy Daniels married planter Gardner Southwarth Sleeper. Twenty-three-year-old Gardner had been able to establish his own household early because he had inherited from his father, planter Gideon Sleeper. When he turned twenty-one, Gardner had acquired control of his share of his father's estate and had bought two lots near the community of Beechwood, five miles southeast of Liberty. After her marriage, Nancy Daniels Sleeper disappears from the public record. She did not buy or sell any of the slaves that would be her legacy. Were it not for her attendance at sessions at Bethany Presbyterian Church and her will, she might have disappeared from any surviving documents altogether. While she may have chosen to defer all business decisions to her husband, Nancy Sleeper's lack of recorded commercial activity may reflect the short span of her adult life. She could have taken control of her estate only after she turned twenty-one, two years after her marriage. By then, she was already a mother and would have had a busy household, including several slaves, to direct. Because she died only six years later, she might have never had the opportunity to act as a feme sole had she not written a will. Her last act assured that her one venture into the public sphere would be legally and permanently recognized. At twenty-seven years of age, she was the youngest woman to write a will among those recorded in Amite County between 1811 and 1919.

Nancy Sleeper's will was nun cupative, (83) meaning that it was dictated to another party and witnessed by at least two persons. This is the most simple form of will and it was written without aid of legal counsel. The text of her will, written by her brother-in-law Fabius Hoyt Sleeper, explains how Nancy "after repeatedly expressing her sense of approaching death and saying she could not survive many hours, was asked if she desired to make any dispinsation [sic] of her property." (84) Her husband then summoned her cousin Moses Jackson and James H. Casey, the son of her former guardian, to witness her wishes.

In her will Nancy Sleeper desired that her property be divided equally between her children and her husband and that the property be kept together in order to support and maintain her children. She also indicated that out of her estate her husband was to give her two nephews living in Texas, sons of her brother Jonah Daniels, the sum of one-hundred dollars each. The wording of her will does not make clear whether her husband was to receive half of her estate (which would have been the normal share for a husband) or the one-third share he would have received had the estate been divided equally. Unlike many of the other wills written by women, she did not go into much detail or give specific items, other than cash amounts, to her heirs. This omission may have been due more to illness than neglect or carelessness because she died within a day or two of writing her testament. The inventory of her estate indicates eight slaves valued at $7200, a sewing machine worth $80, and a bed and furniture worth $40. (85) These items would have been easy to distribute among the heirs or else liquidate should Gideon Sleeper decide to invest the money for his children.

Nancy Sleeper's desire to safeguard the welfare of her children and her brother's children seems to have been foremost in her mind. She may have urged her husband to remarry and might have suggested her replacement. Within three months of Nancy's will reaching probate court, her widower, Gideon Sleeper, married Isadore Causey, the daughter of Nancy's guardian. While this may seem callous, Gideon Sleeper had three young children, one still an infant, to care for. Nancy Sleeper's unspecified illness may have been a long one necessitating a female relative, in this case possibly Isadore, to come and look after her family. Others may have felt the remarriage too hasty, for just after their June 1860 wedding, the couple transferred their membership from Bethany Presbyterian where Nancy had been a member, to nearby Unity Presbyterian. (86) Sometime after 1870 the family moved from Amite County to Waco, Texas, and may have joined Nancy Daniels Sleeper's brother and his family to begin a new life in the Lone Star State.

The women who wrote wills in antebellum Amite County, Mississippi were linked by several threads. Not only were these women substantial land and slave owners, but they were neighbors, fellow churchgoers, and social equals who may have influenced each other in the decision to write a will. While their participation in commercial enterprise varied widely among the women according to circumstance, abilities, and opportunities, all verbalized their final wishes in an official and permanent manner. The power these women wielded over their slaves and the wealth they controlled would not be equalled again; the Civil War and subsequent ending of slavery forced the residents of Amite County to find other means of economic gain.

CONTINUE TO CHAPTER II:  THE CIVIL WAR AND AFTER

THESIS INDEX  PAGE
    INTRODUCTION
    CHAPTER 1: A Circle of Neighbors and Kin - PART A  1839-1858
      CHAPTER 1: A Circle of Neighbors and Kin - PART B   1859-1860
    CHAPTER 2: The Civil War & After
    CHAPTER 3:  Town Matrons and Store Fronts
    CONCLUSION
    NOTES
 
 
 

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