James
William Woodsmall moved from Simpson’s Creek in 1805,
first to Brashear’s Creek, north of Taylorsville, in
Spencer Co., where he
purchased 51 acres. In
1814, James
William purchased 373 acres on
Floyd’s Fork, in La Grange, Oldham Co.
Census data indicates James
William Woodsmall of Oldham County was not a slave
owner.
James
Woodsmall, son of James William and Sarah Eldridge
Woodsmall married Sarah Mount
October 28, 1830.
The Mount family were slave owners.
James Woodsmall died suddenly in 1838 in a wagon
accident, leaving Sarah Mount Woodsmall with five small
children whom she placed with various relatives.
Those relatives included her brother, John Clayton
Mount. The 1850 census for Oldham Co. shows Sarah living at the
Woodsmall farm with her unmarried sister Polly, her brother
Thomas and his wife, Emma,
and her daughter Harriet and son-in-law, James Ballard,
and their child Charles Ballard.
The 1850 Slave Schedule for Oldham Co., also shows
Sarah Mount Woodsmall as owning two male slaves, ages 51 and
60 and one female slave, aged 31.
John Clayton Mount is listed as owning 25 slaves.
Charlotte Woodsmall Mount Dowden, who was married to
Sarah and Robert Clayton’s brother, Amos Mount, is, in 1850,
married to Nathaniel Dowden.
This
complex picture of the Woodsmalls and Mounts is important in
two respects. First,
the children of James and Sarah Mount Woodsmall and the children of
Amos and
Charlotte Woodsmall Mount, all lost their fathers at a
young age (in 1838 and 1841 respectively).
All the children were raised by and around slaves at
the homes of Sarah
Mount Woodsmall and John Clayton Mount.
Despite this upbringing,
John Charles Woodsmall (son of James and Sarah Mount
Woodsmall) and Amos Mount (son of Amos and Charlotte Woodsmall
Mount Dowden) not only rejected slavery, both fought for the
Union in the Civil War.
The
second impact of this interaction would come with the
emergence in 1852 of a line of African American Woodsmalls,
apparently connected to the slaves of Sarah Mount Woodsmall
whom she may have freed before the war.
|
