It occurred to me, when I wrote my recent post about Webster, a runaway slave, that with digitized texts, it has now become possible to develop a biographical sketch of an individual slave simply by performing a keyword search of their name.

For example, in my book, I rely heavily on Elizabeth Meade Ingraham’s diary, “Leaves of a Journal of a Lady Near Port Gibson…,” which was published anonymously in Sarah Anne Dorsey’s Recollections of Henry Watkins Allen. Nearly every entry in Ingraham’s diary discusses the attitudes and behaviors of her slaves, and she regularly refers to these men and women by name. Granted, she is the slaveowner, so certainly anything she says must be interpreted carefully and consciously, considering the nature of her viewpoint and its limitations, but nevertheless, I believe such a technique can still be useful.

For instance, let’s see what we can learn about the slave, Martha.

When I perform a keyword search for “Martha” in the GoogleBooks edition of Dorsey’s text, I get 10 hits. As with any kind of free-text search, the results must be screened carefully. Two of the hits are not applicable. The first hit on page 339 is not relevant, as it does not appear in the portion of the book that is Ingraham’s diary (pages 397 to 420). One other hit, on page 408 and appearing in quotations, refers to a cat. Thus, eight hits are determined to be relevant.

So, what can we learn?

Martha is described as being a “very tall, big woman.” (p. 399) She also may have guided marauding Yankees to the cellar, or taken some things, herself. Yet the next day, (p. 404) Ingraham instructs her to put away some clothes that had been piled up in a bedroom, in an attempt to rescue them from the Yankees. Martha works with Hester on this task. Ingraham complains of Martha’s lack of “honesty,” but apparently still trusts her enough to allow her into the house, and to trust her to put the clothes in their proper place. A few days later, Martha does not come to the house (p. 409). Perhaps she has “gone visiting” as some of the slaves have done, for later she reappears in the diary. We learn that her husband is Jeff (p. 411). He apparently is a slave on the Ingraham plantation as well and Ingraham considers him “loyal.” A week or two later, Martha is instructed to take Emma, an uncooperative slave, “in hand” (p. 413), but a few days afterward, Martha has become resistant, herself. In fact, she refuses to help one of her fellow slaves, Patsy, with a sick child – unless Ingraham agrees to pay Martha for her services. Patsy goes to Ingraham for aid instead (p. 414). Likewise, Martha tells Kia Jane, another slave, that she will not help her during the delivery of her baby unless she is paid for it (p. 417). Finally, on June 7, Martha, her three children, and some other slaves, including Emma, leave the Ingraham place for good (p. 419).

While this method certainly has some serious limitations, I do think it can be useful. We can extrapolate some information from the above details. First, Martha apparently was a house slave, and, it would seem, a senior one, since she is instructed to correct Emma. Martha also seems to be the resident midwife. Clearly, she is an assertive person, insisting that she be paid for her work, even when assisting other slaves. Her size and stature could only have lent gravity to anything she said. She is married with (at least) three children. She is probably between 20 and 50 years old.

Absolutely, we must use caution when creating a biography based on second-hand and biased sources, but considering there is so little personal information about any slaves, this method, with some effort, might enable a dedicated researcher to reconstruct some of the residents of the slave quarters, and learn more about their personalities, skills, tasks, family life, and the ways in which they coped with or resisted the dehumanizing institution of slavery.