Slavery
Slaves entered Henderson County with their owners. Persons who filed the first land deeds in what is today Henderson County had slaves.
Many members of today’s black communities in the county can trace their ancestry back to the first settlers in the county.
Tracing this ancestry is extremely difficult. The slaves were not listed by name on censuses. Typically, a slave was only given a first name. They were not given last names. They were listed as property, not people. They were sold and traded as property. Their owners had to pay taxes on them; therefore, there were slave schedules. In searching black ancestry back to a slave, it is necessary to search property and tax records, along with trading at slave blocks.
Study on the black history in the county, especially prior to the Civil War, is an ongoing process.
The first recorded mention of a name of a slave in Henderson County is a land deed recorded by William Mills on June 13, 1790: “three forks of Hungry Creek of Green River, includes my ‘negher’ Tom’s cabin and improvements.”
One of the earliest grave stones in the county is that of a free black, Ellen M.L. Jones, who was buried at the Mill Pond Cemetery in the Rugby community. On her grave stone it states: age 28 years, born Sept. 29, 1784, died March 20, 1812.
From cemeteries and census reports it is known that free blacks were within Henderson County prior to 1800. Some of the free blacks may possibly have escaped from slavery in South Carolina. It is known that blacks escaping slavery in South Carolina hid in the mountains of Western North Carolina.
Church minutes also give us information on early slavery and names of some slaves within the county.
It is known that slaves attended the early Methodist campground meetings with their owners. This is recorded at Shaw’s Creek Methodist campground and at Mills River.
Cemeteries were established at these two early Methodist campground meeting sites. Sections were set aside in these cemeteries for slaves.
Later, slaves attended the Methodist church at Patty’s Chapel in the Hooper’s Creek community. A section of this cemetery also included slaves, and later their descendants.
Early Baptist churches in the county before the Civil War accepted slaves into membership. Slaves attended the same Baptist churches as the early white settlers. There are recorded in these church meetings the first names of slaves who were baptized in these early Baptist churches. These include Mountain Page, Ebenezer, Old Salem (Fletcher), and Mud Creek. Sections of the cemeteries at these churches also have slave graves, and in some of the cemeteries the graves of the slave descendants.
In the church minutes at Mud Creek Baptist Church is recorded a request that the slave owners visiting from Charleston, S.C., in the summers at Flat Rock to stop leaving the bodies of their deceased slaves on the Baptist church grounds for burial.
It is known that St. John in the Wilderness Episcopal Church had a gallery for slaves that occupied space in the back of the church building. The cemetery at the church also has the graves of slaves.
Mills River Presbyterian Church has a section of the early cemetery set aside for slaves.
In many instances the slaves were buried in and/or near the same cemetery as their owners. Many of the early family cemeteries in Henderson County contain the graves of slaves. Examples include the Mills Cemetery, Samuel King Cemetery, and Hiram King Cemetery (King’s Grove Baptist). The Featherstone family had a separate cemetery for their black slaves, as also did the Drake family.
During the Revolutionary War and earlier, captured Cherokee were made slaves. Some of these Cherokee slaves had children with black slaves owned by the slave owner. This occurred in Rutherford and other surrounding counties. Some of these descendants are also found in Henderson County, particularly in the Edneyville community. Some of these descendants are buried at the St. Paul Cemetery in Edneyville.
An early list of slave owners is on this web site. The total number of slaves owned by some of the people from South Carolina who lived in Flat Rock during the summers is not included. They only had to count the slaves who lived on their property in North Carolina on the census and slave schedules. The slaves who remained on properties in South Carolina are counted on the South Carolina reports.
As is apparent from the attached list of slave owners on this web site, many people in the county who owned slaves only had one or two.
The census for 1840 in Henderson County included 4,662 whites, 466 slaves, 35 free blacks.
The census in 1850 included 5,892 whites, 924 slaves, 37 free blacks.
The 1860 census included 8,981 whites, 1,382 slaves, 85 free blacks.
Click on the following link for lists of slave owners in Henderson County prior to the Civil War.