{"product_id":"1848-enslaved-persons-bible","title":"1848 VIRGINIA PLANTATION BIBLE. With Records of Enslaved Persons' Births Up through Emancipation Proclamation","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn exceptional historical artifact of antebellum American slavery, documenting both the white slaveholding Yerby family and, unusually, the Black individuals born into legal bondage on their plantation. While Bibles from the antebellum South routinely recorded white family births, marriages, and deaths, records that explicitly catalog the births of enslaved people, as here, frequently euphemized in white family records as \"servants\" or \"servants born,\" are considerably rarer, surviving in only a small number of period domestic Bibles.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe family recorded in these ledger pages is the prominent Yerby family, a long-established planter family with deep roots in coastal and eastern Virginia (particularly Northern Neck counties such as Lancaster, Richmond, and Northumberland, as well as spots further south in Tidewater and Piedmont regions). By the early to mid-19th century, branches of the Yerby family had substantial landholdings and held a significant number of individuals in chattel slavery on agricultural plantations, eventually expanding into Alabama and Mississippi as part of the antebellum domestic slave trade and cotton expansion. The individuals listed in the present are likely the \"domestic\" slaves rather than the slaves of the field. We even see one child given the birth name \"Butter,\" which was often given if an enslaved child was lighter color [Honey was another popular alternative; a disproportionate number of these children were parented by a male family member], or if a parent was in fact responsible for household churning. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn Southern family Bibles of this era, keeping a meticulous register of enslaved births served a dual purpose. For the slaveholder, it was a practical and legal record of property value, labor force growth, and chattel succession across generations. For historians and genealogists today, however, these manuscript birth entries provide invaluable, irreplaceable documentation of Black individuals who were otherwise omitted from federal population censuses (where enslaved people were listed only by age, sex, and race under the slaveholder's name in the Slave Schedules, rather than by personal name).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe present is an irreplaceable piece of antebellum Black genealogical evidence and history, providing not only the first names, but the lineage and birth dates of the enslaved individuals; the first names reflecting antebellum conventions where slaveholders denied enslaved populations official surnames in domestic ledgers. Where mother's names are supplied, these entries preserve vital maternal lineages that allow researchers to reconstruct matrilineal enslaved family units on the Yerby plantation. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last similar example to be sold was the Bible of the Rixey family plantation, also of Virginia, offered at auction in 2019. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments Together with the Apocrypha Translated from the Original Tongues, and with the Former Translations Diligently Compared and Revised; with Canne's Marginal Notes and References. To which are Added, An Index; An Alphabetical Table of All the Names in the Old and New Testaments, with their Significations, Table of Scripture Weights, Measures, and Coins, \u0026amp;c. Concordance, and the Psalms of David in Metre. Philadelphia. James A. Bill. 1848. \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLarge 4to Bible which appears to be entirely complete, but is in only fair condition with losses to leather binding as shown, both boards are detached, the family records [apparently complete] are detached as well. Otherwise, the contents are generally solidly bound with scattered foxing and stains. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Specs Fine Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51468251234340,"sku":null,"price":2250.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0093\/3910\/9435\/files\/09-15-2026SpecsFineBooks-7.jpg?v=1789495349","url":"https:\/\/specsfinebooks.com\/products\/1848-enslaved-persons-bible","provider":"Specs Fine Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}