African American Men-European American Women Liaisons And Relationships In The Slavery Period


Intercontinental liasions and relationships between European American women and men of African ancestry have been part of the history of the British American colonies since the seventeenth century. They were not rare and were not limited to modern times. Many of the women involved were indentured servants who lived and worked in close proximity to enslaved and free African American men. Despite laws that imposed severe penalties on both the women and their children, these relationships continued and produced a significant number of mixed children. In Virginia and North Carolina, more than one thousand children were born to European American women and African American men during the colonial period. Maryland and Delaware saw more than six hundred such births. Maryland court records from the seventeenth century document more than two hundred and fifty European American women prosecuted for having children with enslaved African American men. Punishments included extended indentures, fines, corporal punishment, and the forced enslavement of their children. These laws did not stop the relationships. They continued well into the eighteenth century and became the primary source of the early free African American population in Virginia and Maryland.

The pattern continued into the nineteenth century. Court petitions from the southern states show European American husbands seeking divorces because their wives committed adultery with African American men, both enslaved and free. Some petitions describe wives giving birth to mixed children within months of marriage. Others describe wives leaving their husbands and children for African American partners. Two petitions involved a wife who had a child by her grandfather’s enslaved man. Another involved a wife who had a child by her father’s enslaved man. One petition described a wife who left her husband and five children after twenty four years of marriage for an African American man. Another described a Confederate soldier returning home to find that his wife had conceived a child with an African American man during his absence. A petition filed in 1805 in North Carolina by Christian Limbaugh, who was my maternal 7th Great Granduncle, described the same situation. These records show that intercontinental intimacy was a recurring part of American life even under legal systems designed to suppress it.

My family history reflects this broader pattern. On my paternal side, descent traces back to Patience Smith, a free born daughter of a European American woman of Irish ancestry and a man who was the son of a European American woman and an African American man. Patience married John Turner, the enslaved son of English American Thomas Weathersbee and an African American woman. Patience purchased John’s freedom in Halifax County, North Carolina in 1769. They were already living as a couple with children at the time. Her free status allowed the Turner family to live as free people of color in Marion County, South Carolina. Most of their children married European American spouses, and some of their sons were recorded as white in census records. Over time their descendants blended into European American communities. One of my enslaved African American paternal 3rd great grandparents descended from one of their sons and his European American wife.

My maternal side contains similar history. My 11th Great Grandaunt Sarah Cooper, who was a British born Quaker woman living in Pennsylvania, formed a relationship with an enslaved African American man. The child that resulted from that relationship brought her into direct conflict with the laws and moral expectations of her community. When the required fine was not paid, she was punished with a public whipping, a penalty that mirrors the corporal punishments imposed on indentured women in Maryland for similar relationships. Her case survives in Quaker meeting records and stands as a clear example of how these unions continued despite legal, religious, and social pressure. It also shows that the forces shaping the lives of European American servant women in the southern colonies were present in Pennsylvania as well, revealing how porous these boundaries were in lived experience.

This combined history reflects a larger truth. Intercontinental relationships between European American women and African American men were not rare exceptions. They were a continuous part of American life from the seventeenth century through the Civil War era. They shaped the origins of many free African American families and left documentary and genetic traces that continue to appear in the present.


https://commonplace.online/article/freedom-in-the-archives/

https://freeafricanamericans.com/introduction.htm

https://freeafricanamericans.com/Intro-md.htm

https://hsp.org/blogs/hidden-histories/black-history-month-inter-racial-marriages-and-relationships-in-colonial-pennsylvania

https://dlas.uncg.edu/petitions/

https://www.martygrant.com/genealogy/turner/turner-john-marion.htm

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Cooper-123

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03631990241291860


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