I am up to 230 letters or other documents transcribed, and have had an interesting time with the transcription. I wrote previously about the crossed lines and the bad handwriting, making it difficult to decipher some letters, but I’ve run across another difficulty. Horton Howard also appears to have been a well educated man, with […]

At the age of 18, Horton Howard was the executor of the estate of his grandmother, Frances Horton. His inventory of the estate lists many items that were utilitarian in their day, including 1 watering pot, 4 tin pans, 1 pair of shears, 2 grind stones, 1 Hachet [sic], 4 hoes, and 1 lantern. Some […]

A friend who follows this blog asked me why Horton Howard and other Quakers would have had difficulty in freeing their slaves. Why couldn’t they make such decisions about their own property? This is a complex issue – requiring a longer and more technical bit of writing than most of my blog post. The southern […]