Note 49 — Chapter XXXIII · Lynchburg—The Interior of Virginia.
Reading edition
“Intelligent contrabands” all seem to have the money-making faculty well developed. Here is a table of the incomes of some of the freedmen about Newbern, North Carolina, during the third year of the war:
Three hundred and five persons, not employed by the Government, but working at trades of their own, returned a total income of $151,562, the average of all incomes being $496 92.
George Hargate, turpentine farmer $3,000
Ned Huggins, tar and turpentine 3,150
E. H. Hill, missionary and trader 2,000
W. A. Ives, carpenter and grocer 2,400
George Gordon, turpentine 1,500
Adam Hymen, turpentine 1,300
Samuel Collins, dry goods and groceries 1,200
Benjamin Whitfield, grocery and eating-house 1,500
Hasty Chatwick, turpentine 1,000
Limber Lewis, staves, wood, and shingles 1,500
George Physic, grocer 1,500
Sylvester Mackey, undertaker 1,000
Charles Bryan, cartman 1,000
John H. Heath, shoemaker 1,000
William Long, lumberman 1,200
John Bryan, cotton farmer 1,100
Hogan Conedy, cooper and tar maker 1,000
Danzey Heath, grocer and baker 1,500
The average of the incomes of barbers was $675; the blacksmiths, $468; masons, $402; carpenters, $510; grocers, $678; coopers, $418, and of turpentine farmers, $446.
While the negroes at Newbern, by patient toil, were putting such facts as these on record, the whole refugee white population was drawing rations.
At Beaufort, of 1,592 blacks in the place, only 300 received help, while, at the same time, 1,200 whites were supplied with rations.
The colony of Roanoke Island, in two years, made improvements whose cost value at the lowest figures was $44,000; more than would have bought the whole island before the war, with all the improvements which the “master class” had put upon it in two hundred years. In two years Sir Walter Raleigh’s colony, established here, became utterly extinct.
The negroes in that region have generally preferred turpentine farming, the work being lighter and the returns earlier, as the product of the first dipping is ready for market before mid-summer. From three thousand to ten thousand trees have thus been leased to single individuals. Many have become rich, hundreds have lived in ease, and considering the difficulties in the way, a remarkable proportion supported themselves. The same opportunities were open to the white refugees, and the result is seen in the report of the number of rations issued in Newbern, the largest camp for contrabands in the State, and the great city of refuge to the whole State. Of 8,000 negroes in camp, only 3,000 drew rations, while in the white camp every man, woman, and child was fed by the Government.