I am a huge fan of American history up to the Civil War, and, after reading about the last living American slaves, I am curious as to who was the last living American slave owner. I would guess someone born in the 1840s owned some slaves at around 20 years of age in the 1860s. If this person lived a long life, my guess is that he would die in the 1940s.
I don’t know the specific answer to your question but I know more about this type of thing much more than most people. Your guess about timing is about right although it may stretch into the 1950’s. I am a direct descendent of one of the very last living Civil War soldiers (Confederate). He was William Henry James and died in 1949 just shy of 101 years old.
However, that side of the family did not own slaves so he wasn’t it. There were a large handful of others still alive at that time and even into the 1950’s though. I have an original copy of Life magazine dated May 30, 1949 that has an article showing all of the known living Civil War soldiers at that time. You can see images of it on the web (Google books I believe has it). The chances are decent it will be one of the soldiers who fought on the Confederate side or a member of their family although it is possible it would be a Union soldier as well. Another possibility is that it was just some wealthy person who inherited slaves very young, never fought in the Civil War, and lived a very long time.
One problem with this question is that you have to define ‘ownership’. Slave owners would typically be the oldest male (it is possible the answer is a female too though) in the household even if their kids also held control and would inherit them someday. How do you define ownership? Is it strict legal title or just control over the slaves on a plantation through family?
Well, I’m reasonably sure my ex-wife is still alive.
Resurrecio.
I was wondering this today.
My mother’s great-aunt and step-great-grandmother (also distant cousin and half g-g-g aunt due to an odd sequence of imtermarriages) was a woman named Rebecca Deramus Rawlinson. She was born in 1855, oldest child of the second marriage of an elderly plantation owner named George Deramus, who died in 1861. In his will he divided his estate, the most valuable part of which was his 40+ slaves, “share and share alike” between his many children from two marriages and his widow, BUT in a codicil added when Rebecca was a baby he specifically bequeathed a young married couple “and their increase” to her and to any full siblings she may have (3 were born after that codicil) in addition to their other share of the estate. It was likely his way of making sure they were provided for until marriage since his older children were all grown. (He in fact had great-grandchildren from his first marriage who were older than his children from his second marriage.
Rebecca remembered and discussed in an interview the vicious fights over her father’s estate and the auctioning of his slaves and other moveable property to satisfy his many heirs when she was a little girl. She and her younger siblings grew up with the couple they inherited and their children, who took the name Deramus and continued to live with and work for the family for many years after the Civil War. (There are many black Deramuses descended from her family’s slaves, including one who is an esteemed historian on the subject of slavery.)
Her father’s will, her birth and death dates, and an interview in which she remembers the Civil War and the auction are well documented. As a young woman she married a Confederate veteran- a widower 15 years her senior with 6 children (one of them my great-grandmother)- and bore 12 children of her own (the youngest was killed in France in WW1). She attended my parents’ wedding in 1952- per my mother " she didn’t know who the hell was getting married, but she was there". She lived until 1955, dying a few weeks after her last surviving sibling and a few weeks before her 100th birthday.
I have wondered if she might be the last surviving slaveowner.
Since slavery was legal elsewhere in the world - and is still alas practised - I rather expect there are living former slave-owners in the US.
…and quite possibly current slave owners, and certainly human traffickers. But the OP is clearly referring to US slaves, ie people who were legal slaves in the USA/CSA.
Why not someone who was born in the mid-1860s and who inherited slaves when their slaveholding parent(s) died before the passage of the 13th amendment (or if you prefer, the Emancipation Proclamation)?
I’m imagining that technically, we can probably put an lower bound on how old they could have been; there was probably someone who was a small child in say… 1865, who inherited slaves on the death of their last parent somehow.
So someone born in say… May 1865 whose parent died shortly afterward, and who inherited slaves shortly before emancipation would be the youngest possible “last living slave owner”.
I’m interested specifically in the oldest(latest?) American slave owner who was 18 or older when owning a slave. Like, the last actual adult who owned a slave.
1930’s? 1933-34?
I’d love to know. It’s a fascinating topic.
How about the question of the last person to legally buy another human as chattel in what is presently the United States? The last record of a sale?
The Emancipation Proclamation is dated January 1, 1863; so it should have been clear that, should the Union prevail, slavery would come to an end.
Yet I’m sure “business as usual” went on to some degree in the Confederacy up until April 1865, and that some portion of that would be in the trafficking of slaves. The market prices must have fluctuated with the fortunes of the CSA as well.
Yet SOMEBODY was the last person to spend $100 or something on a slave, knowing full well that could be wasted money in the not too long distant future.
Slave auctioneer, hearing the rumble of artillery just over the hills: “Ten bucks! Just ten! My final offer…”
Harrison and Klotter’s A New History of Kentucky (Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1997), says that 65,000 Kentucky slaves were emancipated when the 13th Amendment came into force on 18 December 1865, so it would have been possible a child born in the summer or fall of that year could have inherited slaves before December and then lived well into the 1960s or even 70s.
Somebody who turned 18 in the fall of 1865 could have survived into the 1950s.
Remember that Texas never had Union (or US by then, I guess) troops to enforce emancipation until June 18th, 1865 - a couple of months past the generally recognized end of the war in April 1865. That’s why Juneteenth is an unofficial holiday in Texas, slaves finally were made free by US forces landing in Galveston.
There were some American slaves freed well after the passage of the 13th amendment (December 18, 1865). For instance, there were slaves freed in Alaska after the purchase in 1867. As the link say, there were slaves there until 1903, at least.
Yes, someone born in 1865 perhaps - if we can imagine a reason why a perfectly healthy southern white man might die suddenly during 1860-1865 leaving his estate to a newborn child.
Fun fact, Rebecca Latimer Felton was both the first female Senator (she served for 1 day as an appointed placeholder) and the last slaveholder to serve in the US Congress.
If you show up on June 18th, you’ll wonder where all the barbecues and parties are…
June 19th, 1865 was the actual date of General Granger’s announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Galveston, freeing the last of the slaves.
bump, I think you meant to quote the post before mine.
You’re right, I did.
I thought he landed on the 18th and made the announcement on the 19th. My bad.