Judith Angus, a well-to-do free woman of color of Petersburg, was the owner
of two household slaves. Before her death in 1832 she made a will which
provided that the two slave girls should continue in the service of the
family until they earned money enough to enable them to leave the State and
thus secure their freedom according to law.[11]
From the records of the Hustings Court of Richmond may be gotten the
account of a suit for freedom begun by Sarah, a slave, against Mary
Quickly, a free black woman of the city. It is worthy of note that no claim
was made by the plaintiff that Mary Quickly, being a black woman, had no
right to own a slave. The grounds for the suit had no relation whatever to
the race or color of the defendant, Mary Quickly.[12]
The only evidence at hand of the kind of relations that existed between
black masters and their chattel slaves is supplied by the word of old men
who remember events of the last two decades before the war. All that have
been heard to speak of the matter are unanimously of the opinion that black
masters had difficulty in subordinating and controlling their slaves.
William Mundin, a mulatto barber of Richmond, seventy-five years of age,
when interviewed, but still of trustworthy memory and character, is
authority for the statement that Reuben West, a comparatively wealthy free
colored barber of Richmond, went into the slave market and purchased a
slave cook, but because of the spirit of insub ordination manifested by
the slave woman toward him and his family he disposed of her by sale. James
H. Hill, another free colored man to whose statements a good degree of
credence is due, corroborates in many points this story about Reuben West
as a slaveowner. His statement is that Reuben West was a free colored
barber of some wealth and the owner at one time of two slaves, one of whom
was a barber working in his master's shop on Main Street. So much of these
statements has been confirmed by reference to tax books and court records
that the entire story may be accepted as true.