, Duanna

Duanna was an enslaved woman leased out to George Presgraves in 1813 and 1814, John Littlejohn in 1815, and Joseph Beard in 1816 by Armistead T. Mason. Duanna, formerly owned by Robert Armistead, was part of the estate that Armistead T. Mason administered in trust for his minor cousins, Robert’s daughters Elizabeth and Mary Armistead. The practice of hiring out enslaved people was one way for widows and others to generate income utilizing enslaved people’s labor. In this case, Duanna’s work brought income that was used to support the needs of her underaged female owners as they went to school, took dancing lessons, and enjoyed consumer goods like new clothes and shoes.

Despite the abolition of primogeniture and entail during the Revolution, many post-revolutionary Virginians continued the colonial inheritance practices of bequeathing land mostly to sons and personal property, like including enslaved people, to daughters. Inheriting personal property sometimes empowered women with benefits associated with property ownership, but Virginia law or the terms of a male testator’s will often limited the scope of what a woman could do with her personal property. Many times, personal property that a man bequeathed to his widow or minor children was placed in a trust controlled by another white man, typically a relative or close friend of the deceased. In such cases, the women or children could collect income from renting out an enslaved person, but they could not sell or transfer ownership of their enslaved property without permission from the trust’s administrator.

An example of this type of trust was the one Robert Armistead created for his daughters, Elizabeth and Mary, on 15 October 1805. In this trust, Armistead transferred ownership of ten enslaved people—Duanna, Becca, Esther, Franky, John, Joe, Lella, Phanny, Phil, and Phillis—to Armistead T. Mason as administrator of Elizabeth and Mary’s trust.  The document that established the trust used very specific language to guarantee the financial security of Elizabeth and Mary, stipulating that the trust was “[t]o have and to hold the said lands real estate negroes and Slaves unto the said Armistead Mason his heirs and assigns forever in trust for the use and benefit of my two Daughters, Elizabeth & Mary & their Heirs.”  The phrase “to his heirs and assigns forever” was a means of legally binding Duanna and her progeny to the Mason family and their descendants forever to guarantee continuous funds for Elizabeth and Mary Armistead until the daughters died, turned twenty-one years of age, or married. Per the trust’s provisions, financial security would be safeguarded through Mason’s capacity to obtain income by selling or leasing out any of the named enslaved people, including Duanna, on behalf of Mary and Elizabeth Armistead.

After the Mason family manuscript account book recorded Duanna’s rental to Joseph Beard in 1816, there is no further record of her.

By Rachel Birch