Home is Where the Crops Are: Letter from David Madison Chaney to Daughter Emily Whitehead (Part 2)

A continuing series drawn largely from Laura Powers Marbut and Sarah Powers Thielbar's book David M. Chaney, 1809-1859, Allied Families and Descendants. The book has long been out of print, having been published in 1971 by Heritage Papers of Danielsville, Georgia.

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One of the real joys of family research is the discovery of the unexpected. Such a surprise was ours when we received a photostatic copy of a letter written by David Madison Chaney to his daughter Emely Whitehead after she had gone to Texas to make her home.

(Marbut & Thielbar, pg 13)

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Last month I shared a letter from David Madison Chaney to his daughter, Emily, and her husband, John and Emily Whitehead in Texas. They had been newly married, and upon their marriage, Emily joined John at his home in today's Polk County, Texas.

The first part of the letter, written on 5 July 1857 and which I wrote about here, was about David not receiving previous letters from John and Emily as promised, marriages and deaths David knew of, and court cases he knew of or had a part in at his home in East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana.

The next part of the letter details his home and plantation and provides an insight into his personal world at the time.

I still have Cousin John Jones living with me and he has made us a first rate overseer after titening him down, and we have a very large crop on hand and it all looks pretty fair after all the cold weather.

We have 250 acres of cotton, 150 in corn, and 8 in potatoes - and we have already taken 60 acres in fine oats - our corn crop is as good as we have had in two or three years and our cotton, though young, looks promising. And potato vines have nearly covered the ground.

East Feliciana Parish was unique in that it was a cotton-corn transition zone. While the "Sugar Bowl" parishes to the south, like St. Mary and Iberville, focused on sugar cane production, the rich soil beneath the parish's rolling hills was capable of producing one bale of cotton per acre, which was a very high yield at the time. By the 1850s at least, East Feliciana Parish farmers and planters were divided into three groups: the small or yeoman farmers, the mid-sized or small planters, and the wealthy minority. David Madison Chaney, by at least the time of the writing of his letter in 1857, had worked his way into the wealthy minority of planters.

Small, or yeoman farmers, were the largest group of farmers in East Feliciana Parish. They ran small farms generally owned and worked by one family without the aid of slave labor, and they typically cultivated between 10 to 30 acres of cotton. Because cotton required at least one able-bodied worker for every five to ten acres, these farmers tended to prioritize corn and only used their surplus land for cotton to generate cash for taxes and supplies. This group was most concerned with debt payment and acquiring more supplies for farming and living.

Mid-sized farmers, or small planters, acted as a bridge between the smaller, yeoman farmers and the wealthy minority planers. While the yeoman farmer grew corn to survive, the small planters chased the market. They were not just trying to pay off their debts, but they were trying to break into the upper wealthy minority. The small planters typically owned between five and ten enslaved persons, and oftentimes he and his family worked in the fields alongside these persons. Generally 30 to 80 bales of cotton were produced annually, and they typically held between 200 and 400 acres. They only improved, or cleared, about half of this acreage. The rest was timberland for building and for fuel. This group was most concerned with buildling enough wealth to break into the wealthy minority.

As stated earlier, David Madison Chaney had, by 1857, made his way into the wealthy minority. This group averaged between 200 to 600+ acres of cotton. The rule of thumb was that one person was needed to work eight to twelve acres of cotton. These plantation owners were more concerned about mass export and global trade than debt payment, basic supplies and wealth accumulation like the other two classes.

The 1850 Slave Schedule for East Feliciana Parish shows him in possession of 9 slaves, while at the same time showing his mother, Elizabeth Ratliff Chaney, in possession of 34 slaves. Elizabeth died five years later in 1855, and thus we find that, when the inventory for David's estate was filed in the East Feliciana court four years after her death in 1859, he was in possession of 34 slaves valued at $19,875. It can be fairly well assumed that most of these slaves came from his mother's property.

His inventory also shows a number of properties, including one tract of 1280 acres and another 640 acre homestead tract which had originally been his mother's. His total inventory at the time of his death, including land and personal effects (livestock, furniture, etc.) was valued at $34,089.33. That value today would be $1,331,204.

An overseer, of course, was needed on the larger plantations to manage the day-to-day operations. They surpervised field labor and discipline by coordinating the daily output of the workers, assigning gangs to specific tasks, and ensuring labor quotas were met. That this included maintaining order and obedience is a given. Overseers oftentimes functioned as the plantation's accountant and inventory manager. They tracked crop yields, maintained agricultural tools and plantation machinery, and kept detailed logs of the workers. Overseers were also responsible for distributing basic provisions to the workers. This might include issuing cornmeal and meat, clothing (typically given out twice a year), and seeing to medical care or calling a doctor when necessary.

As for titening, David probably means "tightening" which can be assumed that Jones had to be taught or trained for the position. Also, where exactly cousin John Jones fits into the family tree is not known. And, it must also be born in mind, the term cousin was used rather loosely at this time. Everyone was a cousin, and the term was not strictly relative to the son or daughter of my father or mother's brothers and sisters. The relationship could be rather more complicated, involving first and second and once-removed cousins and on and on.

While Jones' history is obsure, David's family is not. Jones, of course, having turned into a first-rate overseer, freed David's time to focus on his family. He had married a third time to Susan Bankston in 1845, and letters were, of course, were always about family news . . .

---- to be continued ---

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A life-long educator and writer, Donna has always had stories in her head. When they were not swirling and gnawing, she had her head in a history book - both fiction and non-fiction. While in junior college, her grandfather gave her a family notebook with McQueen documents and family group sheets. Thus, her love of genealogy was born, and she has not stopped hunting down all the ancestors she can. She graduated from Texas A & M University with a teaching degree, and has since published five historical novels based on her family history, five books on her genealogy, and a few smallish books. Donna teaches middle-school English Language Arts and tutors privately. She dreams of life in a log cabin the woods, even as she is addicted to antique and thrift shopping.

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