Six Bills of Sale, Seven Enslaved People

When I first listened to a voicemail from Boyd Greever back in March of this year, I assumed he just wanted to chat about his family history. From time to time, I receive calls of this nature: folks enjoy sharing what they’ve found in our collections, Virginia Untold or elsewhere. I like talking about history as much as the next historian turned archivist, but I was surprised to learn that Boyd had other intentions in mind.

Boyd had read a recent feature on Virginia Untold published in the Library’s newsletter, The Broadside. He was taken with the project and wanted to share his own family’s complicated relationship with slavery. The bills of sale, preserved within his family papers, contain the names of seven enslaved people bought by his ancestor, Hiram A. Greever. Boyd recognized that digital preservation had the power to connect a descendant with their enslaved ancestor. If the purpose of Virginia Untold is to tell the untold stories of Black history, Boyd Greever knew his family papers had some stories to tell too.

Boyd ultimately donated six digital images of bills of sale dating from 1843-1862 to the Library of Virginia. Each one documents Hiram A. Greever’s purchases of seven enslaved people: Sarah, 13; Edward, 23; Anica, 7; Clary, 17; Alexander, 10; Charles; and Caesar, 52. Greever bought Edward and Anica in the same sale in 1843. The sale document fails to mention Edward and Anica’s relationship with one another. Hiram Greever bought Charles at a sheriff’s sale in 1852. Ten years later in 1862, amid a newly started civil war, Hiram Greever bought a fifty-two-year-old man named Caesar. Greever purchased Caesar (sometimes written: Ceasar or Cesar) from a man named Joseph Meek of Tazewell County for $1200. Caesar was reportedly sound of mind. The author referred to him by a common phrase: “a slave for life” to indicate there were no former agreements in place to emancipate him.

But we know now that Caesar would in fact not be a slave for life. Just six days after the bill of sale was written up, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, declaring all enslaved people in the Confederate states free. In April 1865, the Union secured military victory in the Civil War: the beginning of the end of legal chattel slavery in the United States.

Thanks to records previously digitized in Virginia Untold, we learn that Caesar lived to see this freedom. Using the Smyth County Cohabitation Register, I found Caesar living in Smyth County in 1866 with his wife Clara and five children. A cohabitation register, or as it is officially titled, “Register of Colored Persons Cohabiting Together as Husband and Wife on 27th February 1866,” is often used to conduct African American genealogy because they contain useful information for identifying enslaved ancestors and their former enslavers. On February 26, 1866, the General Assembly passed an act legitimizing the marriages between enslaved people and during the early days of Reconstruction, local officials collected information on enslaved men and women, their date of marriage, and their children. Many of the registers also contain additional information such as ages, place of birth, residence, occupations, previous enslavers, and the previous enslaver’s city or county residence. The Smyth County Cohabitation Register includes every one of these details for Caesar Campbell.

Caesar Campbell married his wife Clara on January 20, 1849. Of course, the register refers to the union as the “date of cohabitation” because at the time, the government didn’t recognize Caesar and Clara’s marriage as legitimate. But they did. When the local official inquired, they were specific: the couple provided the day, month, and year. It was a day that they recognized and remembered.

In 1866, Caesar worked as a farmer and lived in the South Fork region of Smyth County. Four children lived in Caesar Campbell and Clara’s household: Mary A (20), Andy (14), Virginia (3) and Nancy (10 months). While Caesar was 56 at the time, Clara was only 37. Clara had also been enslaved by Hiram Greever before the War. In fact, in 1846, Greever purchased a seventeen-year-old woman named “Clary” from a woman named Eleanor H. Davis whom I now believe was Caesar’s soon-to-be-wife. Clary’s sale was one of the six bills of sale donated by Boyd Greever. The couple married in 1849, several years before Greever purchased Caesar. Did Greever purchase Caesar because he already owned his wife?

Hiram Abbus Greever was the son of Philip Greever Sr., the Greever patriarch, who settled in Washington County in 1780. Philip Greever Sr. and his sons purchased and settled land in Washington, Smyth, and Tazewell Counties, including land that would become known as the more famous Burke’s Garden.¹ Members of the Greever family are documented throughout the Library’s collections. Photographs from the Tazewell County Public Library include over 150 images related to the Greever family or their properties in Southwest Virginia. Boyd descends from a different line than that of Hiram Greever (he’s a descendant of Philip Jr. who was a half-brother to Hiram A. Greever). When Hiram’s line died out, Boyd’s branch of the family inherited many of the family papers. In addition to stewarding the family collection, Boyd continues to build upon the research established on the Greever family. Over lunch one day, Boyd pointed out to me that Caesar, purchased by Hiram Greever in 1862, was mentioned in the Library’s copy of Mary Scott Greever’s “Reminiscences.”²

Mary Scott Greever married James Scott Greever, a son of Hiram A. Greever. Her “Reminiscences” document her memories from the Civil War. It’s important to note that these are Mary Scott Greever’s interpretations of events and people’s feelings and actions. Her writing reflects the popular Lost Cause narrative of the time. She used derogatory and paternalistic language when referring to Black people. While we shouldn’t minimize the harm caused by this language, her recollections, and others like them, offer clues to tracing and identifying formerly enslaved people.

Greever described Caesar as a “favorite and trusted slave.” When the Union army came through Southwest Virginia “pillaging homes along their path,” Caesar reportedly took the family silver and fled. Union troops fired at him, but he escaped by hiding under a bridge.

After the war, he brought the silver back. Mary Scott Greever also relayed an account from Caesar’s daughter Mary Ann—no doubt, the 20-year-old “Mary A” listed in Caesar and Clara’s household in the Smyth County cohabitation register. According to Greever, Mary Ann was heartbroken to watch the “Smyth Rifle Greys” leave their homes and their families. Mary Ann was tasked with carrying food to this unit every day from the Greever family home. In the absence of Mary Ann’s honest thoughts preserved in the documentary record, we wonder how she actually felt about her white enslavers fighting to defend slavery.

According to a marriage register entry from Washington County, Mary Ann married on March 7, 1867, to a man named Henry Fullbright.³ Her parents are recorded as “C and Milly Campbell.” Caesar may have had children, including his daughter Mary Ann, with a previous wife before marrying Clara. My brief traverse through Ancestry.com revealed little for Caesar or “C” Campbell but instead provided many promising leads for finding his children in the documentary record. There’s clearly more to uncover about this family.

Slavery did exist in Southwest Virginia, but we often struggle to tell that story because of the lack of documentary evidence and prevailing stereotypes about the region. Thanks to Boyd Greever’s donation, we’re a little closer to recognizing the stories of men and women like Caesar and Clara Campbell, Edward and Charles, and children like Sarah, Alexander, and Anica.