Thomas C. Williams, Sr. & Enslavement

From the beginning of his business career in the early 1850s until the end of the Civil War, Thomas C. Williams, Sr. (1831-1889), a late-19^th-century Richmond College trustee and donor, was deeply immersed in and built wealth from successful tobacco manufacturing enterprises that depended heavily on the labor of enslaved adults and children. As a clerk and then a manager in the factory of James Thomas, Jr. (1806-1886), Williams facilitated and participated in the leasing and oversight of enslaved workers. In his first tobacco manufacturing partnership, he and Dr. Richard A. Patterson (1826-1912) exploited the labor of 25 to 45 enslaved workers each year between 1857 and 1861. Through Thomas C. Williams & Company (also known as T.C. Williams & Co. or Thos. C. Williams & Co.), a partnership between Williams and James Thomas, Jr., he exploited enslaved laborers in the City of Danville, Pittsylvania County, and the City of Richmond, overseeing and directing their deployment. At this time, one third of Virginia’s total population was enslaved Black people, with enslaved people constituting the majority of the population in some Virginia counties. Williams also personally paid taxes on three enslaved people in addition to taxes incurred by the businesses he co-owned. In correspondence, he discussed his frustration with abolitionist views; detailed his direction of enslaved individuals’ labor; described plans to hide enslaved laborers from Union forces; and following the Confederate surrender, expressed exasperation with the exercise of agency by those he formerly held and oversaw.

Williams’s involvement in enslavement is detailed in Federal Census records, property tax records, and extensive business records and correspondence. Further information about Williams’s life, work, and involvement at Richmond College can be found here.

Government Records

Tax records and Federal Census records located pertaining to Thomas C. Williams, Sr., his business interests, and involvement in enslavement cover the period 1857 to 1863. Images of all tax and census records cited are provided below. 

Patterson & Williams

While continuing to work for James Thomas, Jr. in his tobacco business, Thomas C. Williams, Sr. and Richard A. Patterson formed their own chewing tobacco production business, Patterson & Williams & Company, in 1852. Records suggest it operated until 1861. 

Thomas C. Williams & Company

In April 1862, James Thomas, Jr. reorganized his business into a partnership with Williams. The resulting entity was named Thomas C. Williams & Company and relocated its headquarters from Richmond to Danville, Virginia (with some properties in surrounding Pittsylvania County) due to the constant threat to Richmond during the Civil War. The business maintained some operations in Richmond. 

Thomas C. Williams, Sr. 

Personal property tax records for Thomas C. Williams, Sr. document his being taxed as an individual on enslaved persons in Richmond and Danville.

“Ran away” Advertisement

Thomas C. Williams & Company’s ownership of two enslaved men is shown in an advertisement placed by the business offering a reward for Alex and Todd, who had escaped enslavement by Williams and Thomas in Pittsylvania County. The ad refers to the purchase of Alex from a South Carolina enslaver 18 months before (“We bought him in Richmond . . . from a gentleman from Eastern South Carolina.”) and reports the purchase of Todd from the estate of Dr. Wiley Jones in Milton, North Carolina.¹⁴ Thomas C. Williams & Company offered rewards of $150 for each man if “delivered to us in Danville, or confined in jail so that we can get them.”¹⁵

Hiring Bonds and Payments

During Williams’s time as James Thomas, Jr.’s clerk, both of their names appeared on hiring bonds related to the leasing of enslaved people, suggesting that Williams acted on Thomas’s behalf in the leasing arrangements or that enslaved individuals were shared between their businesses. 

‍1853

Pre-printed documents were commonly used for the lease of enslaved adults and children, with the names of the hirer, enslaver, and enslaved person; dates; and other details added by hand. One such document reads: 

“On or before the first day of January next, we James Thomas, Jr. and Thomas C. Williams promise and oblige ourselves and our heirs, to pay to Jno [illegible initial] Eppes the sum of One hundred & fifty Dollars, for the hire of One slave named Gabriel for the present year, payable quarterly. Said slave to be returned at Christmas next, well clothed with the customary clothing and furnished with a hat and blanket. As witness our hands and seals, this 1st day of Jany 1853.”¹⁶ 

The document is signed by Thomas and Williams.

‍1859

After Williams became Thomas’s manager, he wrote and signed a similar document on Thomas’s behalf on February 11, 1859 for the hiring of Joe for $110 and Ben for $100, through the tobacconist E.O. Nolting acting as an agent for enslaver, C. Gray.¹⁷ 

Benjamin Fleet, 1855-1861

For several years, Benjamin Fleet, a King & Queen County physician, hired out two men he enslaved to Thomas. In January 1855, he wrote Thomas with an apology for “yourself & Clerk” for disputing the amount he was owed for the leasing of the two men, William and Charles.¹⁸  

Correspondence & Other Business Records

Letters and other material demonstrating Williams’s daily involvement in the oversight and management of enslaved workers span more than a decade. These sources are held in the James Thomas, Jr. Papers housed at Duke University and the College of William & Mary. Representative documents are cited below. 

1854-1856

In August 1854, when Thomas was planning to travel to Warm Springs, Virginia, Williams was responsible for the transportation of Ann, a woman or girl Thomas enslaved, so she could serve the Thomas family in the resort town. Several letters trace Thomas weighing a plan for transporting Ann before deciding that Williams would place her on a train to Beaver Dam, Virginia (with a trunk of the Thomas children’s clothes) to meet the family and be further transported to Warm Springs.¹⁹ 

After Thomas urged Williams to be alert to possible thefts by Black laborers in the factory (referred to as “the pilfering of the negroes”) on August 8, 1854,²⁰ and Williams replied with details of a transgression by an enslaved man named Alfred and his subsequent jailing (“I have yours of the 16th mentioning Alfred’s conduct”), Thomas relayed to Williams his wish that Alfred be taken from jail, whipped by a man who was likely a factory overseer, and set to work driving a horse until Thomas returned from his long stay in the mountains.²¹ 

September 1860

Williams provided Thomas’s payment for the time that an enslaved man named Jim was held in a private confinement facility for enslaved people known as the Cary Street Jail. The proprietor, Sidnum Grady, and others who ran similar “jails” in the city would often hold enslaved individuals before they were sold, a significant business in Richmond, which was at one point “the largest slave-trading center in the Upper South, and the slave trade . . . Virginia’s largest industry.” Jim was held in Grady’s facility between August 8 and September 21, 1860. The cost of confinement included fees for “Receiving & releasing” him, unspecified medicine, soap, and tobacco.²²   

Spring 1862

As the second year of the Civil War began, Williams and Thomas formed their partnership, Thomas C. Williams & Company. In April and May of 1862, Williams frequently corresponded with Thomas on the movement of enslaved individuals to Danville, Virginia, where the business was located and the Williams and Thomas families would, for a time, reside together. The company’s agricultural and tobacco manufacturing operations there and in Pittsylvania County depended heavily on enslaved labor, which was directed and overseen by Williams and included tobacco processing, spreading manure, sowing cover and food crops,²³ caring for domesticated animals,²⁴ and cutting and hauling ice²⁵ and wood.²⁶ The duties of enslaved women or girls in the residence, overseen by Williams’s wife, Ella,²⁷ included labor in the kitchen and dining room, chamber maid service, and care of the Williamses’ children.²⁸

April 21, 1862

In April 1862, Williams and Thomas corresponded about moving enslaved individuals from a Thomas property in Hanover County to the Danville area. At the time Williams was acting as Thomas’s manager and advisor, but was just days away from signing their partnership agreement. He acknowledged another employee’s belief that acting on Thomas’s direction to move the enslaved people  would result in “throw[Ing] away the crops &c &c” at the Hanover property, but with Confederate troops having fallen back to within 30 miles of Richmond, Williams proceeded to “bring them all down” to the city for eventual transportation to Danville. He relayed to Thomas that three enslaved men—Taliafero, Bob Carter, and Jerry—resisted the move, saying “they had rather stay at the farm but,” he continued, “that is nothing.”²⁹

April 22-April 23, 1862

Williams wrote from Richmond to update Thomas on his movement of enslaved people to the Danville area. He also referred to a woman enslaved by Thomas’s son, William Dandridge Thomas (1833-1901), and indicated he would send her to Danville: “Say to Wm. that his woman hasn’t come yet. Will send her when she does.” The next day, Williams wrote that he was sending items belonging to Mary W. Thomas “by William’s woman.”³⁰ 

May 6, 1862

After the initiation of the Williams-Thomas partnership, Williams reported writing to Thomas’s Hanover County farm manager directing that enslaved laborers held on that farm be sent to Richmond (“have written to Blake to send the Negroes”).³¹ 

October 8, 1862

In a letter addressed to “Messrs Thos. C. Williams & Co.,” Robert Billups of Matthews County, Virginia, requested that Williams and Thomas reply with details of clothing they were providing to those he enslaved and had hired out to their use, as well as the payment for their hire amount.³²

1863

April 11, 1863

In a postscript on a letter dealing with a range of topics, Williams noted that an enslaved man purchased by “Oliver”—likely Hiram Oliver, an operative for James Thomas, Jr. and Thomas C. Williams & Co.—had arrived in Danville: “The man Oliver bought has come up.”³³

December 18, 1863

The potential vulnerability of Thomas and Williams’s Pittsylvania County land to the anticipated movement of Union forces resulted in Williams sharing his plan to hide the enslaved people he oversaw. Likely referring to property he and Thomas had recently purchased from the Keen family, he wrote: 

“Will try & secure things if the Enemy come, but I don’t think Keens would be the place to carry them, as they [federal troops] will come down that Road. I have directed Mr Collier to hide Mules Negroes &c if they should come &c &c.”³⁴

Christmas 1863

Williams was largely responsible for determining which of the enslaved individuals he and Thomas held in Danville and Pittsylvania would be allowed to travel to Richmond to see their families during the period between Christmas and New Year’s Day and reported to Thomas on their movements:

• December 17, 1863: “I suppose the hands who have wives in Richmond are to be allowed to go down at Xmas as usual.”³⁵
• December 18, 1863: “I will send the hands who have wives down next week, & maybe some others[.] Wm. Pollard is very anxious to go.”³⁶
• December 22, 1863: “Alfred requests me to write, to ask if he may go down after Xmas . . . Eight boys go down in the morning[.] All have wives in Richmond. told them all to report to you.”³⁷
• December 27, 1863: “You said that we might let some of the hands, (other than those who had wives in R[ichmond]) go down. Talby, Ned & Nick went yesterday, and Ned & Isaac will go tomorrow, unless I get a telegram advising otherwise. Patsy has been after me several times to go, but I told her she must have your consent, says her mother is sick.” Williams also describes clothing distribution and the payment for hand hire: “I have’nt been out lately, too busy giving out clothes paying off &c.”³⁸
• January 1, 1864: Williams reported the return of those who had travelled to Richmond: “All the hands here are in place and at work, except Todd, he was to be here today.”³⁹

1864

January 1, 1864

Williams wrote Thomas with a range of news and his recommendations for the placement of enslaved laborers and the leasing or purchase of more for tobacco work: 

“If we continue farming operations we ought to have two or 3 more farm hands, I mean hands such as understand plowing, sowing & planting &c. Say middle aged men, like Todd for instance. We have but 3 farm hands out there and they are young & inexperienced & Mr. Collier you know does not know a great deal about such things. As many & a few more (say 10 to 15) of the Factory hands might be taken from the Farm, if any thing could be found for them to do elsewhere. If any thing could be done in Tobo. [tobacco] we would have to hire or buy some 10 or 12 more hands, time enough for this, as there are plenty of mouths now to feed.” 

He also reported his direction of enslaved laborers at the residence for the care of Thomas’s ill horse: “I made Alfred & two others rub him well but it did not seem to do much good for a while.”⁴⁵ 

January 16 and 24, 1864

Williams wrote to Thomas about a possible farm property lease in Milton, North Carolina, approximately 12 miles from Danville, which Williams viewed as among the best in the area. The rent for the property included 21 enslaved people. He reported that the seller “wants to rent all the Negroes, stock cattle, &c and enough bacon, corn, & food of all kinds to last till Jany 1. 21 Negroes, 10 or 12 mules &c &c price for the whole $25,000.”

Williams also reported on rationing the food of some of the enslaved individuals he oversaw.  Despite an excess of food mentioned in earlier and subsequent letters, Williams shifted those laboring on the Thomas C. Williams & Company’s Pittsylvania County farm to short rations, though their physical labor was arduous: digging up roots of small trees and shrubs, spreading manure on fields, and cutting and moving a large amount of wood. He described the hesitation of his wife to impose the “short rations” on those laboring in the household, and her hope that Thomas’s wife would soon visit to help manage the situation: “Ella says she hopes Mrs. T will come up, when the ‘short rations’ are to be issued, to start the ball & make the servants satisfied &c. I have cut them down at the farm and there is some complaints of course. I told them they would have to be satisfied if they got bread enough after while &c.”⁴⁶ A week later, Williams described the abundance of food on hand for his family and his hope that the Thomas family would “come up and help us eat the sausage, spare ribs &c &c.”⁴⁷ 

Post-War Views

In the weeks after the Confederate surrender in April 1865, a series of letters from Williams to Thomas includes his summary of the state of their Danville operations and his annoyance with formerly enslaved laborers making determinations for themselves. 

Williams wrote Thomas that “all the Negroes at the farm have left except those who have wives there.” His description of a man named Jim indicates that Williams and Thomas were not providing wages to those they had formerly held through enslavement: “the boy Jim, Patsys husband says he wont work unless he is paid, so we go.^”48 Williams also wrote of Ben, who “came to see me yesterday to say that he wanted to Rent a house (the yellow house) to keep a restaurant . . . . He has been of but little a/c [account] since the Yankees came,” instead “carrying on a brisk trade” by cooking.⁴⁹ Williams had already shared with Thomas that a woman he referred to as Aunt Sallie was irritating Ella Williams by speaking freely.⁵⁰ When Barbara and her children, a family he had expected to remain in his Danville household, made plans to leave for Richmond, he wrote Thomas that he “could not stand their laziness & impudence any longer. . . We have hired a cook, but find it impossible to get any others that come recommended. Ella has been nurse, chamber maid & dining room servant for some time.”⁵¹