hprinze Loc: Central Florida

First American s***e-owner was a Black man
http://www.dcclothesline.com/2015/04/29/first-american-s***e-owner-was-a-black-man/

moldyoldy

Good story but not quite true.

There were no laws regarding s***ery early in Virginia's history. But, in 1640, a Virginia court sentenced John Punch to s***ery after he attempted to flee his service.[4] The two w****s with whom he fled were only sentenced to an additional year of their indenture, and three years' service to the colony.[5] This marked the first legal sanctioning of s***ery in the English colonies and was one of the first legal distinctions made between Europeans and Africans.[4][6]

S***es processing tobacco in 17th-century Virginia
Ens***ed people imported to American colonies[7]

In 1654, John Casor, a black indentured servant, was the first man to be declared a s***e in a civil case. He had claimed to an officer that his owner, free black colonist Anthony Johnson, had held him past his indenture term. A neighbor, Robert Parker told Johnson that if he did not release Casor, Parker would testify in court to this fact; which under local laws, may have resulted in Johnson losing some of his headright lands. Under duress, Johnson freed Casor, who entered into a seven years' indenture with Parker. Feeling c***ted, Johnson sued Parker to repossess Casor. A Northampton County court ruled for Johnson, declaring that Parker illegally was detaining Casor from his rightful master who legally held him "for the duration of his life".[9]

During the colonial period, the status of s***es was also affected by interpretations related to the status of foreigners. England had no system of naturalizing immigrants to its island or its colonies. Since persons of African origins were not English subjects by birth, they were among those peoples considered foreigners and generally outside English common law. In 1656 Virginia, Elizabeth Key Grinstead, a mixed-race woman, successfully gained her freedom and that of her son by making her case as the daughter of the free Englishman Thomas Key. She was also a baptized Christian. Her attorney was an English subject, which may have helped her case. (He was also the father of her mixed-race son, and the couple married after Key was freed.)[10]

S***es on a South Carolina plantation (The Old Plantation, c. 1790)
Shortly after the Elizabeth Key trial and similar challenges, in 1662 the royal colony of Virginia approved a law adopting the principle of partus sequitur ventrum (called partus, for short), stating that any children of an ens***ed mother would take her status and be considered born into s***ery, regardless if the father were a freeborn Englishman or Christian. This was a reversal of common law practice, which ruled that children of English subjects took the status of the father. The change institutionalized the power relationships between s***eowners and s***e women, freed the white men from the legal responsibility to acknowledge or financially support their mixed-race children, and somewhat confined the open scandal of mixed-race children and miscegenation to within the s***e quarters.

The Virginia S***e codes of 1705 further defined as s***es those people imported from nations that were not Christian. Native Americans who were sold to colonists by other Native Americans, or captured by Europeans during village raids, were also defined as s***es.[11] This established the basis for the legal ens***ement of any non-Christian foreigner.

Implemented in colonial Louisiana in 1724, Louis XIV of France's Code Noir regulated the s***e trade and the institution of s***ery in the French colonies. It gave Louisiana a very different pattern of s***ery compared to the rest of the United States.[12] As written, the Code Noir gave unparalleled rights to s***es, including the right to marry. Although it authorized and codified cruel corporal punishment against s***es under certain conditions, it forbade s***e owners to torture them or to separate married couples (or to separate young children from their mothers). It also required the owners to instruct s***es in the Catholic faith, implying that Africans were human beings endowed with a soul, an idea that had not been acknowledged until then.[13][14][15]

Together with a more permeable historic French system related to the status of gens de couleur libres (free people of color), often born to white fathers and their mixed-race concubines, a far higher percentage of African Americans in Louisiana were free as of the 1830 census (13.2% in Louisiana compared to 0.8% in Mississippi, whose population was dominated by white Anglo-Americans. Most of this "third class" of free people of color, between the French and mass of s***es, lived in New Orleans.)[13] The Louisiana free people of color were often literate, had gained educations, and a significant number owning businesses, properties, and even s***es.[14][15] The Code Noir forbade interracial marriages. But interracial relationships were formed and their mixed-race descendants became an intermediate social caste between the w****s and the mass of s***es. In the English colonies the mulattoes and the b****s were considered equal and discriminated against equally.[12][15]

When control of Louisiana shifted to the United States after the Louisiana Purchase, the contrast with the "Protestant" South was evident, as their English norms prevailed and interracial relationships were officially discouraged. The Americanization of Louisiana gradually resulted in the same binary system about race, with free people of color losing some status and even certain rights as they became characterized as officially "black".[12][16]

MarksDaman Loc: USA

Fascinating, Thanks for the education Moldyoldy.

Loki Loc: Georgia

There is a bit more to the story.

Anthony Johnson sued Robert Parker in the Northampton Court in 1654. In 1655, the court ruled that Anthony Johnson could hold John Casor indefinitely. The court gave judicial sanction for b****s to own chattel s***es of their own race. Thus Casor became the first permanent s***e and Johnson the first s***e owner.

W****s still could not legally hold a black servant as an indefinite s***e until 1670. In that year, the colonial assembly passed legislation permitting free w****s, b****s, and Indians the right to own b****s as chattel s***es.

By 1699, the number of free b****s prompted fears of a “Negro i**********n.” Virginia Colonial ordered the repatriation of freed b****s back to Africa. Many b****s sold themselves to white masters so they would not have to go to Africa. This was the first effort to gently repatriate free b****s back to Africa. The modern nations of Sierra Leone and Liberia both originated as colonies of repatriated former black s***es.

However, black s***e owners continued to thrive in the United States.

By 1830 there were 3,775 black families living in the South who owned black s***es. By 1860 there were about 3,000 s***es owned by black households in the city of New Orleans alone

Coos Bay Tom Loc: coos bay oregon

The native Americans were the first s***e holders. In my area the stronger tribes preyed upon the weaker for s***es. they were taken north and traded at the present site of the Dalles Oregon for horses mostly.

Homestead

That would have had to have happened after the Spanish came and reintroduced horses to the continent.

I assume that there were s***es being captured before that, do you have any idea how prevalent it was.

Was it something that happened once in a while or was it a daily part of life?