Library Guides: African Americans in Burke County, Georgia: 1800-1865 presented by Torrey Long: Enslavement in Burke

Burke County Background

Burke County was one of Georgia’s most agriculturally productive counties in the antebellum period. In 1860, for example, it was the top producer of corn, the third producer of sweet potatoes, and the third producer of cotton, making its farms the most valuable in Georgia. See 1860 Census of Agriculture
Burke County is located in the Black Belt, an area of fertile black topsoil that cuts across the Southeast. It is also an area where plantation owners enslaved large numbers of African Americans. By the time of the Civil War, over 10,000 people were enslaved in Burke County alone. See 1860 United States Federal Census,
70.6% of Burke County’s population in 1860 was enslaved. Only 9 of Georgia’s 132 counties at that time had such a large proportion of enslaved people to white people. See "Map showing the distribution of the slave population of the southern states of the United States. Compiled from the census of 1860,"
The source below provides more information on enslavement in the United States from 1790 to 1850, breaking numbers down by state. See "Slave Population of the United States,"
Further information on enslaved peoples in Georgia can be found using FamilySearch.com. FamilySearch offers free accessibility to Census records and provides a collection Court, property, military, and probate records. See FamilySearch Georgia, and FamilySearch Burke County

Examining large plantation owners helps one better understand the inhumanity of enslavement, and the immense wealth it brought enslavers. One example is Batt Jones. In 1860, he enslaved 121 people, more people than could be listed on a single Census page. All 121 people are unnamed. The only name that appears is Batt Jones. Page 17 of the Instructions for the 1860 Census states that numbers are to be substituted for the names of enslaved peoples. This demonstrates that the Federal Government did not value enslaved peoples as people.
Of the 121 people, there were: 62 women and 59 men, 59 individuals under age 18, 44 individuals under age 12, 5 individuals under age 1, only 10 individuals over age 50, no women over age 58.
The lack of elderly enslaved people tells us a lot about the physical toll of enslavement.
Jones’s personal estate, which is the category enslaved people were under, was valued at $86,617. The equivalent net worth a person would need today to have a similar purchasing power is $40,000,000. This demonstrates the massive wealth that enslavers gained via exploiting African Americans.