Note 37 — HISTORICAL NOTES
Reading edition
The wills and property inventories of members of the Moss family reveal much information that helps reconstruct the activity on their farm. Considering the equipment used, the products grown and processed, and the number of slaves reported, it is possible that between the 1820’s and 1850’s the farm was also engaged in breeding slaves for export to the rice and indigo plantations of South Carolina and the cotton plantations of Alabama and Mississippi. A certain amount of this traffic was also carried on locally.
U.S. Census population records compiled from 1810 through 1850 show that slaveholding continued at a high level relative to other changing circumstances in agriculture and in the Moss family. See census records for Fairfax County in National Archives, Microfilm Division, Microcopy Roll 68 (1810), 137 (1820), 201 (1830), 558 (1840), 942 (1850).