The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 84, July 1980 - April, 1981 Page: 53
502 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Plantation Journal of John B. Webster
John B. Webster expanded his plantation during the 185os. By tax
assessment time in 1859, roughly the chronological mid-point of the
journal, he reported 3,696 acres of land, sixty-three slaves, twenty-nine
horses, seventy head of cattle, and various miscellaneous property for a
total assessed value of $55,970. The census of 186o, which reported on
the 1859 crop year, showed that Webster's plantation was highly pro-
ductive. He grew 3,000 bushels of corn, 2,400 bushels of other grains,
and 71o bushels of food crops, such as sweet potatoes, and slaughtered
more than $i,ooo worth of animals for home consumption. The cotton
crop amounted to 203 bales (a figure in close agreement with the 205
bales recorded in the journal) worth more than $9,000.8
The reader may be surprised to note that on a plantation with more
than sixty slaves (seventy-five by mid-186o, according to the census of
that year), the journal records the daily work of fewer than forty bonds-
men. The usual number listed during the 1859 cotton picking season,
for example, was thirty-eight. It is interesting, too, that the census re-
ported only eight slave houses on Webster's plantation, a situation that
would have put more than nine bondsmen in each house. The expla-
nation for these circumstances lies in the age-sex breakdown of Web-
ster's slaves. He had a very high proportion of females and children
among his bondsmen. In 186o, there were forty-seven females and only
twenty-eight males; moreover, thirty of these were children under the
age of ten. There is no obvious reason for this age-sex breakdown
other than chance. Webster clearly needed labor on his plantation. He
was not producing children for sale; in fact he was purchasing addi-
tional hands during the period of this journal. It should also be noted
that regardless of the age-sex breakdown, Webster's slave force was
highly productive. Even if we assume that he had seventy-five slaves
when the 203-bale 1859 crop was produced, this amounts to 2.71 bales
for every man, woman, and child he owned, a figure quite comparable
to the productivity levels for like-sized plantations in Harrison County.u
What sort of man was John B. Webster? He was, as noted above, well
educated and reportedly the possessor of a fine library. He was a devout
Baptist who, in the absence of a minister, was known to have filled the
pulpit himself. He knew the joy and heartbreak of fathering a family in
sHarrison County Tax Rolls, 1859; United States Eighth Census (186o), Schedule 4:
Productions of Agriculture (microfilm; North Texas State University, Denton).
oFor information on Webster's slaveholdings in 186o, see Eighth Census (186o), Sched-
ule 2. For evidence that age-sex ratios were generally more balanced on Texas plantations,
see Richard G. Lowe and Randolph B. Campbell, "The Slave-Breeding Hypothesis: A
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 84, July 1980 - April, 1981, periodical, 1980/1981; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101225/m1/73/: accessed May 1, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.