UCLA ID#: 304­349­943Phd Robin DG Kelley

M158 Winter 2014

White Supremacist Expansion at Kentland Farm 

By Clinton A. Clad­Johnson

Clad-Johnson pg !1

Abstract

The Montgomery County Kentland Farm plantation  was a prime settlement location in 1

the Appalachia. It is located just south of the Alleghany mountains in the Blue Ridge region and

north of a horseshoe shaped winding portion of the New River. It was a site of conquest in the

century before my study and experienced booming development during the first 60 years of the

19th century. James Randel Kent was made rich by his exploitation of enslaved labor, and

empowered by his membership in a family network of men involved in legal and militaristic

activities in southwest Virginia which led to his ownership of various businesses and the Virginia

and Tennessee Railroad. At the time that the Civil War came to Kentland Farm he possessed over

6000 acres and 122 slaves although he is reputed to have actually owned a total of 200-300

slaves.

"Introduction: A personal journey to inquiry on the subject of slavery at Kentland

Carmen Jones-Clad raised me since I was seven years old, and she is my “mother.” In

the Mills and Lewis-Jones Descendents reports Carmen Jones-Clad to be a 6th generation Mills

and 4th generation Jones. These families came from Kentland and the surrounding plantations in

Montgomery County, Virginia . Carmen is listed as the fourth child of eight children begat by

Lillian Mills and James Samuel Jones. The family lineages start with James Lewis Jones, born in

Bluefield, W.V. in 1857, and a Samuel Mills, born in Cland County, VA in 1790. Today many

Mills and Jones descendents still live in the Wake Forest community while others moved during

the Great Migrations to Northern cities, like Carmen’s family did to Detroit in the mid-50’s. It is

! Kentland Farm is the title given to the site by the National Parks Service, it was originally named Buchanans Bottom after a previous owner 1

and River Farm

Clad-Johnson pg !2

for them and the rest of Black America that I want to learn the narrative of my mother’s slave

roots.

White society has basically asked me “to just forget about slavery” because “it was so

long ago!” and “there is an even playing field,” as white friends said so many times. I always

found this hard to swallow. Although integration is not within the scope of my study I ask: ‘how

can we claim that a integration in schools has fulfilled its objectives when schools are still not

integrated and so few Americans understand the consequences or our own personal connection to

Black American Slavery?” The education system has refused to teach American racism, also

known as White Supremacy, as it exists or the accompanying politics, doctrines and economic

development that exists alongside it and left us to learn these things for ourselves. Which is what

I seek to do here.

I was raised by my uncle’s ex-wife Carmen Jones-Clad. Carmen raised me as her son and

I recognize her as my psychological mother, she is my “Mama.” This dynamic was not always

easy for me and growing up in a White community and I was quick to challenge peers when

confronted with anti-Black racism, but as I grew older and moved to a ‘Hood (North East, D.C.)

I became worn down trying to challenge everyone around me. Especially as the remarks began to

come from close friends. I had become in peoples eyes a ghetto boy and a reflection of a

negative Black society. Rejection from White society was painful, but it made me consider the

racial perception. This created a desire in myself to embrace a positive tradition of Black

academics, knowledge and struggle. It was this experience that has led me to seek out true

knowledge and engage in knowledge creation.

Carmen was born on December 17th, 1944 and was the first Wake Forest community

Clad-Johnson pg !3

member born in a Hospital (Jones-Clad conversation). For the first ten years of her life she lived

on this family farm that had been parceled out in small portions by her grandfather James Jones,

born in Montgomery County in 1885, to his Children one of them being James Samuel Jones,

born in 1918. This is the personal connection I have to enslaved people. I have undertaken this

research to: understand slavery and White supremacy, prepare for a life and career of academic

research, and to assist my mother in providing a readable and documented history for the

descendents of the enslaved people at Kentland and all Black Americans. With this knowledge

and research I will be able to provide a narrative to those communities and gain the experience to

assist others in seeking out the truth of their own family’s history.

"Thesis

The Kentland plantation developed in the colonial and postcolonial era in an economic

system perpetuated on the basis of White Supremacist political economics. The men who settled

Montgomery and the neighboring counties in Virginia’s southwest region were interrelated by

blood and marriage, and connected through business. James Kent was a well endowed member

of these men, whom made his money through the work of the enslaved people he held captive at

the plantation on land now called Kentland Farm. The farm played a critical role in local

economics and later in Confederacy politics. The Civil War ended slavery at Kentlands, but the

Kent descendents retained wealth and continued to reap profits from the labor of workers who

were descendents of the enslaved. Kentland, Kent and the enslaved is a great case study to

understand the process of development in the Appalachian region and demonstrate White

Supremacist economic and political development. This paper demonstrates the role the plantation

Clad-Johnson pg !4

at Kentland played in the the local political and economic system in context of the narrative of

American history.

"Method and Sources

Many sources have been utilized in this study. I have used online database and journals to

find related scholarly articles, the Virginia Tech Kentland Plantation Revitalization website as

well as conversations, emails and texts with Carmen Jones-Clad. The first piece of material I

used was the oral history of the late Clarence Page (a Wake Forest community member and

descendent of the slaves at Kentland, a removed cousin of Carmen) and with the assistance of

Phd Robin DG Kelley as an advisor and professor in Winter 2014 Introduction to African

American History (M158) I have utilized lecture, documentary evidence, and books from the

UCLA library, as well as it’s Inter-Library Loan service and my own collection to create the

following historical and ideological framework that tells a story of the Kentland Farm plantation.

Three sources have guided the research and use of other sources: my 23 year mother-son

relationship with Carmen Jones-Clad, testimony from a 1982 interview with the late Clarence

Page, and Patricia Givens Johnson’s book on the Kentland Planation entitled Kentland at

Whitethorne, despite her Confederate and Kent family sympathies.

This research and information has been compiled to provide a factual history narrative

regarding the Kentland plantation owner’s business and political lives, the work and lives of the

enslaved, and a general regional context. Geographic location, and history of the land is

important to understanding the context of what happened and who lived at Kentland. The paper’s

focus is a story of a military and settlement campaign that establishes an order to facilitate

Clad-Johnson pg !5

James Randel Kent’s economic rise using enslaved labor before the commencement of civil war

and how the Kentland Farm continued operating after the end of war and death of James Kent.

"Origins: Settlement based on White Supremacy, family network and wealth creation

Kentland is encircled by a number of towns that have turned into cities. Blacksburg sits

closest to the near east, Christianburg is to the southeast, Radford to the near south, Dublin to the

southwest, and Pearisburg to the northwest. The Montgomery County lands on the New River

had been awarded to the McGavock, Cloyd and Kent families  by judges William Preston and 2

James McGavock in the 1780’s (Summers, 880-891). Multiple marriages between the Cloyds

and Kents kept family wealth close. James McGavock married a Mary Cloyd in 1760, and their

daughter Margaret married James (Randel) Kent’s father Colonel Joseph Kent in 1787. Another

daughter from the James McGavock marriage named Elizabeth married a Gordon Cloyd in 1797.

When James Kent married his cousin Mary Cloyd ,who was a daughter of Gordon Cloyd, in

1818, he married into family wealth and their inheritances (Nat. Park Service, 2-3).

Slavery, trade and violence were important parts of Virginia and Kentland history leading

up to the economic explosion in southwestern Virginia, and Kentland, during James Kent’s time

as owner. Slavery started in Virginia in August 1619 when “twenty negroes” were sold from an

uncommissioned Dutch “pirate” frigate named “the Treasurer” followed by sporadic immigration

of Africans immigration from passing ships (Ballagh, 9). Thirty years later there were 300

negroes thought to be a result or sexual reproduction or “natural increase” not trafficking (9-10).

! There were other wealthy families enriched by land grants including Joneses, Triggs, Buchanans, Prestons and other wealthy families not 2

directly related to James R. Kent, as well. The Annuls of Southwestern Virginia by Lewis Preston and A History of New River Settlements by David Johnson provide further information

Clad-Johnson pg !6

During this time a wealthy trader named Cadwallader Jones and his brother Captain Peter Jones

began to explore the New River region extensively before 1680 while trading with Indians in the

Roanoke, and Western Carolina and Virginia regions to the west  (Johnson, 4). Peter married into 3

the “Wood-Batts-Jones-Evans” frontier family that between 1670 and 1700 gained extensive

knowledge of the New River region and its tributary creeks (6). Soon these two factors of a

growing slave trade and the settlement of the Virginia frontier would collide.

Virginia was already a booming market making considerable profits for the English

monarchy when African enslavement policies went into place. In 1662 enslavement has made

hereditary dependant on the mother's status at birth, in 1667 a law disregarded previous Christian

baptism slavery exemptions was made for Indigenous people and Africans, and in 1669 murder

of slaves during disciplinary punishment was made legal (Ballagh, 56; M158, Slave Law

Examples). It was these laws among many laws that laid the foundation for Virginian slavery,

but also contributed to the political strife of that led to the biracial Bacons Rebellion in 1676

(Welch, 52-53). At Fort Henry, nearby the future Montgomery County, Commander Wood had

conveniently stayed neutral during the rebellion. A result of frontier neutrality and the upheaval

caused by the rebellion, was the tightening of the leash by the English Monarchy and new rules

on expansion which halted frontier settlement  and pushed some future White landed elite to 4

revolutionary politics rebellious (Johnson, 7-10).

At the same time, and thereafter, shiploads of slaves from Africa were brought, en masse,

to the Virginia colony. Planters “obtained large estates through head rights” from their

! There is some uncertainty about the record and the family relation according to Patricia Johnson.3

! Official New River exploration had all but ceased, and Kentland was without White settlement until Adam Harman came in 1745.4

Clad-Johnson pg !7

importation of servants and slaves, concentrating wealth in the hands of only a few people, the

White landed elites, of whom the families of southwest Virginia and James Kent were a part of

(Ballagh, 10)  . In England the wealthy merchants and royalty monopolized the colonial slave 5

trade as the Royal African Company operated until 1698 with “exclusive charter” to import

slaves to the colonies, (Ballagh, 10). A violent and exploitative society based on the right of the

superior race to dominate and murder inferior races was being developed when Adam Harman

settled at the Kentland location as part of his role as a New River road overseer and Augusta

County militia captain (Nat. Park Service, 1).

Adam Harman was a Moravian immigrant and had lived in a nearby Shenandoah Valley

German settlement before moving to the Kentland Farm site where he lived until death. He

established Harmans Ford  across the river from his brother Jacob’s residence at the current site 6

of Kentland Farm and began producing gunpowder to hunt game and kill Indigenous warriors

allied with the French (Nat. Park Service, 1; Johnson, 10-15). He clashed with them and led a

1758 massacre of ally Cherokee for scalp bounties as they finished a George Washington

directed campaign against the French allied Shawnee (Johnson, 16-17). The Indigenous fought

settlers on numerous occasions and drove off many. They killed Jacob Harman (Adam’s brother)

and his son (Adam’s nephew), drove Adam off the land numerous times, in one ritual instance  7

brandished decapitated heads, and also perpetrated the “massacre at Drapers Meadow  (15).” 8

! According to multiple sources only 114 slave owning families had slave populations of over 100 in 1850 (Welch, 103).5

! Harman’s Ford (he had picked this location to settle because of the ford) and Toms Creek Ford (also in the immediate vicinity of Kentland) are 6

the factors that placed Kentland as a superior land parcel to others. These local fords were crucial to “eighteenth- and nineteenth-century transportation sites,” and the likely forded by hundreds of slave coffles, during the heyday of southwestern Virginia slave trade between 1850 and 1860 (Nat. Park Service; Featherstonhaugh, 121).

! This is in reference to a story told in the 1870’s by Professor Conrad, the President of Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical college 7

! On July 31st, 1755 a “militia company” and other settlers, “many more” were killed (Johnson, 15). 8

Clad-Johnson pg !8

There was perpetual violence at the current location of Kentland throughout the Colonial and

Slavery eras.

By the outbreak of the Pontiac War in 1763 the region was completely militarized. Along

“the New River the settlers [were] building forts,” forts that were eventually inhabited by the

military families that ruled Montgomery and the neighboring counties following the American

Revolution. Anyone who fled the violence lost their land, and so as a result the land fell into

hands of the militiamen such as land surveyor John Buchanan (the next owner of Harman’s

land), Colonel (and later Revolutionary General) William Preston, and other authorities, who

installed themselves as the owners (17). They took Adam Harman’s land when he died in 1763,

and Jacob Harman’s land after he died in 1756 (18). These records show the violent nature of

land ownership on the mountainous frontier of southwest Virginia. It was in this White

supremacist context that landed elites William Preston and James McGavock took control after

the Revolutionary War.

William Preston and James McGavock who had been leaders in the Revolutionary War

parceled out the land to Cloyds, Kents, McGavocks, and Prestons as a means of wealth creation.

These powerful families were all friends or family, by blood, and marriage. James McGavock

and William Preston working as justices with state authority named a plethora of Cloyds, Kents,

McGavocks, and Prestons as local judges, tax collectors, land surveyors, constables, deputies,

sheriffs and ranked members of the local Militia and Revolutionary Army (Summers, 833-866).

Taxes and laws were enacted to end the importation of slaves to Virginia but had failed to stem

the growth of the African population in Virginia. The taxes did however produce great wealth in

Virginia and make possible the undertaking of large public works and the development of a

Clad-Johnson pg !9

powerhouse colony and in the future the restrictions grew a domestic slave trade (Ballagh,

10-12). This tax supported development were the basis of Justices McGavock and Preston’s

authority to control the liquor prices, to permit building projects, fund jails, and bind people local

works (Summers, 741-866). They even condemned enslaved people to lives of bondage as was

the case for “Milly Jones” and “Lewis Jones” on October 2nd, 1798 and November 6th, 1798

(873). The families controlled the region with laws and militias.

Government politics, military affairs, land speculation, livestock raising, bulk farming of

corn, cereals or grain, and the trading, selling, owning and hiring out of enslaved Africans

allowed these families to became prominent regional leaders of great wealth and power.

Kentland was controlled by men empowered by military, politics and law until approximately

1890. Colonel John Buchanan was a deputy land surveyor, deputy sheriff, and commander in the

Augusta County Militia and he sold the land to Revolutionary Commander and Virginia

Congressman Abram Trigg  (Nat Park Service, 1). Trigg sold Kentland to the Cloyd brothers 9

whose portions General Gordon Cloyd bought in total in 1820 before willing it to his son-in-law

Major James Kent in 1818 (Nat. Park Service, 1-2).

General Gordon Cloyd had saved the life of William Preston during the American

Revolution, and married the sister of James McGavock in 1797 cementing family friendships,

and a local favoritism that paid huge dividends for James Kent (Johnson, 23). The “1810 census

for Montgomery County” records Kentland as having seven White inhabitants and zero slaves

(Nat. Park Service, 2). The 1813 Land Book for Montgomery County shows the owner of the

! Trigg was wealthy merchant from New Dublin and a Montgomery County representative at the Virginia Convention of 1788 for the 9

Constitutional ratification (Johnson, 20). Through Abram Trigg the Kentland Farm plantation was present at the birth of the United States of America.

Clad-Johnson pg !10

Kentland having 1,781 acres, and in 1820 James R. Kent was enumerated with two daughters,

his wife Mary, and 15 slaves (2). Times were changing at the Kentland Farm, still known as

Buchanans Bottom, and it would be the work of enslaved people that would be the catalyst of an

economic boom and the further development of the American frontier, in this case southwestern

Virginia.

James Kent: A landed elite gains considerable wealth with use of enslaved labor

Kentland was named after James Randel Kent (James Kent) in following his May 1867

death. James Kent, according to Patricia Johnson, was “the nearest thing to the great lords of

England that the county would ever see” and his “beautiful antebellum plantation . . . was the

nearest thing [the] New River region would ever have similar to the slave plantations of the Deep

South or the Mississippi delta (Johnson, 38 & 44).” In the years following Gordon Cloyd’s death

in 1933 James Kent became by far the richest man in Montgomery county, he was head and

shoulders above the rest of his contemporaries. As of 1860 not another person in Montgomery

owned “land valued at more than $63,000 or [had] more than 71 slaves” while James Kent

possessed “123 slaves” “farm land valued at $126,000” and “personal property valued at

$196,000” as a result of his “holdings in the Montgomery White Sulphur Springs

Corporation . . . shares in three Virginia Banks  , and in the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad 10

(Nat. Park Service, 4).” Whether he was great or his exploitative plantation was beautiful, is in

the eye of the beholder, but this certainly was the outlook of the men who created his wealth and

had taken ownership of the county, and region.

! It is not clear in the National Parks Service National Register of Historic Places or in Patricia Johnson’s book Kentland at Whitethorne if these 10

banks include his investments in the Blacksburg Savings Institute, which was founded by James Kent (Johnson, 44). The one thing that is clear is that he used these relationships to foster business with surrounding business men of importance, most of whom were in debt to him (35-38).

Clad-Johnson pg !11

James Kent was raised by Col. Joseph Kent and his wife Margaret McGavock at the

Kenton Estate in Wythe county. Joseph Kent was a wealthy cattle raiser whom likely owned

many slaves because when James Kent married Mary Cloyd and moved to the Kentland Farm, in

1818, he brought with him around 15 enslaved Africans (Nat. Park Service, 2). His father Joseph

Kent had been one fifteenth of the committee that wrote the the Fincastle Resolutions which

papers were presented at the First Continental Congress and started the American Revolution

movement (2). Joseph’s son James embodied much of that ideology when he: prospered from the

exploitation of enslaved African labor, lived without the threat from a far off authority

unrepresentative of himself, and retained the right to raise arms against a government he did not

support  . After living a privileged upbrining James Kent left his family become a Patriarch in 11

his own right.

Early in his years at Kentland James Kent quickly became wealthy and soon became an

unparalleled financial elite in Montgomery County until a Civil War occupation of Kentland in

May 1864. His profits first came from the raising of cattle and other livestock which he travelled

to Richmond and Lynchburg to purchase and sell (Johnson, 35). It was from these profits that he

began to act as a local banker and founded Blacksburg Savings Institute. Politically he started out

as the local Sheriff collecting taxes and debt (debt to him, and likely taxes on wealth he was

creating for the others with his loans), but since it was the “sheriffs, judges, and constables” who

were authorized “to collect fees for conducting auctions and for jailing slaves,” one must ponder

if a deep engagement in runaway slave capture accounts for his drastic increase in slave holdings

(Johnson, 35; Inscoe, 122). In 1842-1845 there is evidence of him being court justice and in 1847

! This is exactly what Kent and his network of family and friends did before and during the Civil war.11

Clad-Johnson pg !12

a land surveyor and he was a founder of the Olin and Preston Institute  of which he was a 12

trustee (Johnson, 35, Nat. Park Service). In 1833 he built Kent’s Mill and other local mills with

stone that his enslaved workers cut at his “millstone quarry at Brush Mountain . . . on the Kent

land [and] became quite noted [locally] (35).” Kent was insanely wealthy because of this

enslaved labor kept under his authority under violent duress of the local White supremacist

culture that he himself developed as a businessman, and with violence that he cultivated as slave

patrol sheriff.

The Appalachian region was originally a great barrier for travel west. This necessitated

it’s settlement and the building of a local infrastructure to exploit the natural resources and

traverse its topography into the new territories of Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio. It was a

rugged, independent and mountainous region populated by backwoodsmen who lived in the

highlands and were independent of the governing states  , not having gained from their 13

development and prosperity nor using. In the book Appalachians and Race Richard Drake states

that the time that James Kent’s owned Kentland is “one of the least understood periods of

Appalachian history  ,” because of its culture of violence, economic development, slave market, 14

and a wealth of natural resources (Inscoe, 16). Whatever is not understood about the

Appalachian generally there is still enough known about Appalachian economic development

and James Kents investments both of which were greatly predicated on the labor of enslaved

people.

! The Olin and Preston Institute over the years became what is known now as Virginia Tech.12

! In this case Virginia to which the prosperous elites of the plantations and low lands were heavily invested and integrated into.13

! Actually he specifically says the era from the War of 1812 until the beginning of Slavery, while James Kent came to own Kentlands in 14

1818/1820 and died in 1867 when Kentland was passed into the Cowan family of his daughter Margaret Kent and Major Cowan.

Clad-Johnson pg !13

The enslaved Africans who became Black Americans  were kept in bondage under 15

terrorist duress from past violence, threatened violence, displacement and the threat of

displacement. Their families were broken at the will of their de jure owner (the Master), who

also approved of the severe violence and terrorism perpetrated by the overseers. In order for the

Master and his family to engage in little more work that supervising large industry or paper

pushing and so that their daughters and sons could live aggrandized lives without sometimes

even lifting a finger their every task was tended to by the enslaved. “Preparing meals, washing,

and mending clothes, cultivating the garden, chopping wood” and every other meaningful chore

on the property was fulfilled by the enslaved. After the day working in the Master’s homes and

fields tending to his crops, livestock, children and guests the enslaved had to go home to their

cabins and tend to their own homes, children and crops. This reflects Phd Robin Kelley’s

observation that Black people not just took care of their master but also provided for themselves

to keep their own community alive (Barber, 175; Kelley, Course M158 week 10).

Even in their own cabins they were not the commanding authority. This is one of the most

enraging things about American slavery. Masters used enslaved’s family as a vicious tool of

control. Without the proper respect to the master there was the threat that future generations

would be mistreated, or sold away without their knowledge, wives and daughters were raped  , 16

their marriages were not considered legal and neglected or considered illegitimate in the eyes of

! Identity is a contentious topic, and these terms are sometimes inadequate and/or fluid. African Americans as they are referred to in the title of 15

UCLA course M158 have been in the past called African, African-American (with hyphenation), Negro and Black, some of these terms are self-identifies and others are the identification that White society have termed. My Mama, Carmen Jones-Clad, uses the term Black with the implication of American origin, as does the rest of her family who do not externalize a identification with Africa. Since I come from a community (Washington, D.C.) and a family that uses the term Black almost exclusively this is the term I will use to discuss modern descendents of kidnapped African people enslaved in America.

! Carmen Jones-Clad has done a DNA test with Ancestry.com which states she is 26% European. Carmen has said to me it is confusing to her 16

because she has no White people in her family that she has ever heard of when in reality she has had a White bloodline all the time. This to me was no surprise at all seeing as she has always told me her family was descendant of house slaves, which to my thinking would seem to be the most logically to be favored and sexually assaulted by the Masters, their male relatives and White guests.

Clad-Johnson pg !14

the “tyrant slave-masters” when compared to the reverence given a White marriage (Kelley,

M158). Without the constant threat of violence the enslaved would not have continued to exhaust

the majority of their own energy providing lavish lifestyles for the Master while only providing a

meager one for themselves.

The enslaved at Kentland likely had a large diversity in experiences because there was a

variety of tasks to fulfill and a division of labor that afflicted the community and dictated

relations. Virginia Historian Patricia Johnson says that the Kentland plantation was similar to the

large “Deep South or . . . Mississippi delta” plantations, and like those plantations (Johnson,

38).” James Kent had enslaved people cooking, cleaning, cutting stone, planting, harvesting,

tending to humans and cattle, taking care of the Black children born into slavery, overseeing and

every other imaginable task at the property. There were also the laborers that were hired out to

work on the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad (V&T), at White Sulphur Springs and in the nearby

Salt mines. At all hours there was a large slave population busy working to operate Kentland,

transporting themselves to job sites or at work somewhere else.

At Kentland there is a record of a House Slave/Field Slave distinction, although it does

not appear significant there is note of loyal house servants and enslaved people (one or a few

more) living in the Kent home. The various last names of the Kentland slaves were: Eaves,

Hopkins, Sherman, Price, Henderson, Page, Palmer, Boon, Scott, Jones, Bannister, Milton,

Jackson and Bannister; among them the Eaves, Jones and Sherman families were supposed house

slaves (Johnson, 40). It does not appear that either group was spared grief but that the house

slaves were given marginal preference (and eventually settled at nearby Wake Forest established

Clad-Johnson pg !15

after the Civil War to house the slaves whom stayed away from Kentland)  . Janet Barber 17

describes in her University of Kansas dissertation the existence of a “lower” and “upper” quarter

slave community where house servants and skilled workers lived accessibly close to the Masters

home while “field hands” were assigned to the homes on outlying farms in “more primitive  and 18

occasionally temporary [residences],” (Barber, 165). At Kentlands in 1860 there were thirteen

slave cabins probably situated in such a “lower” and “upper” quarter fashion. During the Civil

war number of trusted enslaved people did help hide valuables (Johnson, 47-48). Clarence Page

relates a story of a “great grandmother” who was an Eaves and “was a cook [who] also washed

and ironed,” and lived “downstairs” at the Kent home which was on ground level and “had a big

fireplace, several storage rooms, and a dirt floor (Clarence Page interview).” The Johnson book

also tells of a “house servants who liv[ed] in the brick Kitchen house on the second floor” which

was “good in the winter but excruciating in the summer (Johnson, 47-48 & 40, Clarence Page

interview).” These distinctions would have affected and left factions in the enslaved community

at Kentland although both were used and abused.

At Kent’s home enslaved women were tasked with cooking, cleaning the home, and

tending to the Kentland women and the multitude of visitors who stopped by on a daily or

weekly basis. Letita Burwell, of Bedford county, was a contemporary  of the Kent daughters 19

! Although not as simple as the “House Nigger, Field Nigger” concept coined and popularized by Malcolm X as the house slaves likely took 17

heavy doses of psychological abuse from the whole house, physical abuse by the Kent family women, and sexual assault from James Kent and male visitors during the “gander months (Kelley, M158).” Some vestiges of this ideology did exist though and when speaking with Carmen Jones-Clad she referred in conversation to the “field laborer and house nigger” with noticeable spite for the house slave and a reverence for the field slave despite her supposed descent from Kentland house slave lineage.

! I reject the term primitive for qualitative purposes and I believe rundown, dilapidated or basic housing is the actual meaning here.18

! Her father William Burwell Jr much like James Kent was a wealthy plantation owner who dominated his locale and local government where 19

he gained expansion of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad to Piedmont. His father Congressman William M. Burrell worked as secretary to Thomas Jefferson. Letitia traveled Virginia would visit James Kent’s White Sulphur Sprins on occasion (Burwell, 117).

Clad-Johnson pg !16

(and visitor to James Kent’s White Sulphur Springs) wrote an autobiography attesting to a

plantation life “among negroes” where the “house servants were numerous, polite and well

trained (Burwell, 3-4).” In accordance with her upbringing she claims that “no establishment

[was] complete without a multiplicity of [Black servants] constantly darting about on errands

from the house to the kitchen and the cabins, upstairs and downstairs, being, indeed, omnipresent

and indispensable (4).” In the text of the book she relates an environment where a paternalism

took place were the Whites looked after the Blacks at considerable “cost . . . to civilize,

Christianize, and elevate the naked, savage Africans to the condition of good cooks and

respectable maids (44).” Letitia is representative of the attitudes that White Plantation owners

and their families took to justify the violence and cruelty that it took to coerce confinement ,

labor and obedience from the enslaved population.

It took generations of murders, beatings and psychological abuse to create the White

supremacist system in place at Kentland. With this large a slave population it is unlikely that they

always acted in perfect submission to the White men whom commanded them and although there

is no record of a slave revolt on Kentland insubordination likely took place in the form of “work

slow-downs, the hiding of individuals who had committed offenses, pilfering goods . . . and

sundry other acts of passive resistance (Barber, 181).” The way to handle this was to use

measures of violence as James Kent would have taken part in this violence at his father’s

plantation, on his own plantation, and in his role as a local sheriff and a major in the local militia.

Although a family descendant Liz Adams states that Kent was “good to his slaves,” she in the

next breath acknowledges that he was a “very (author’s italics) firm disciplinarian (40).” They

were often times beaten or whipped for drinking as “alcohol was strictly forbidden [to the

Clad-Johnson pg !17

slaves]” and for some time it was by mistake because it was concluded that they were actually

high from the smoke emanating from their burning of “hemp debris (40).” In the case study by

Barber she found a quote from the plantation owner that said “‘correction’ [when] required . . .

should be applied ‘with no other weapon than a hickory switch. (Barber, 178)’” The dissertation,

though, concluded that “whippings were . . . frequent but, more importantly, prospects of

whippings figured largely in the consciousness of slaves (178).” Overseers were living on

Kentland and in the surrounding community. Men like John Hammet, Henry Linkous, Harmon

Keister, George Knode and whole generations of men in the Albert family beat, whipped and

raped the Kentland Farm enslaved people into submission in order to get them working

effectively, quickly and without discussion, as well as to transport them across the New River for

long journeys by foot in coffles to salt mines, construction projects, and to the Deep South

(Johnson, 31 & 39-41).

Kentlands may have been owned by the Kent Family but for the most part it was a Black

community although their lives were dictated by the will and whim of James Kent’s investments

and pocketbook. They worked in his house, on his farm, or were rented out to local men for big

and small projects. On the farm the enslaved Black people tended to the rustling, raising,

slaughtering, and milking of livestock. James Kent had cattle, pigs, and prize horses, so there

was also a lot of manure to shovel and turn into fertilizer that the enslaved would also spread on

the crops. Tobacco, wheat, corn, flax, indigo, and hemp were among the crops grown and

harvested by the enslaved. Outside of the farm the enslaved workers were hired out to nearby

industry. In the book Appalachians and Race a writer states that “hiring transactions generally

occurred . . . [at] a courthouse.” and while some slave owners went far to hire out their slaves at a

Clad-Johnson pg !18

higher profit that “most mountain slave owners . . . ke[pt] their property nearby, where they

could maintain . . . control (Inscoe, 110).” Considering the family history in the local courts

binding white workers to certain employments and putting enslaved people in the authority of

white men we must conclude that Kent was profiting immensely from the hiring out of his

enslaved labor.

In 1832 General Cloyd, James R Kent’s uncle and father-in-law, willed 100 shares of

“two Virginia banks” to his daughter and a “third part of 80,000 acres . . . in Giles county (3, Nat.

Park Service)” to James Kent (3, Nat Park Service). Kent had inherited another ⅓ of General

Gordans enslaved workers and in the following years James Kent’s personal property and tax

assessments began to rapidly increase (4). The value of his buildings jumped and he acquired

more land and by the 1840 census to 6,000 acres and 90 slaves (4). This immense wealth of

what were considered assets signals that he likely only sold slaves. The descendents of the

Kentland claim in Johnson’s book that the New River was key to these transactions as the

Railroad was built late in the economic development of Kentland and had not been yet been built

near the Kentland Plantation. James Kent was successful in persuading fellow investors to bring

the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad (the V&T) to White Sulphur Springs in nearby

Christianburg, also a James Kent investment, but not directly to Kentland (Nat. Park Service, 4).

Kent’s enslaved workers worked at building sites, and likely labored on the V&T, and at

the White Sulphur Springs Resort which he owned with a number of the local elites as a vacation

destination for rich southern plantation owners (Burwell, 117-119). The resort could hold 1,000

and was served meat from the Kentland livestock and produce (Calhoun and Cowan). The

powerful men who came were likely sold slaves and fed Confederate politics as it became a

Clad-Johnson pg !19

meeting place for Confederate Generals (Nat Park Service, 5). Workers who went to work at the

salt mines had to walk five days to “General Francis Prestons saltworks” in coffles and might

sometimes have been sold without even knowing it and be walking to a new life. This is an

example of the brutality of James Kent and his system of Slavery at Kentland (Johnson, 40).

It was the Salt mining, and incoming the V&T railroad that made the slave trade explode

in the Appalachian between 1850 and 1860. In 1856 “435 of the 643 [V&T Railroad] workers

were hired slaves” and “toiled as blacksmiths, carpenters, and mechanics,” as well as the grunts

to “cut wood, . . . br[eak] up stone for ballast, la[y] track, and clea[r] snow,” and it is this exact

diversity of workers that James Kent possessed on his farm so it is a certainty that of these 435

many are hired workers from Kentland (Inscoe, 110).” Savery “grew at a dramatic rate along the

New River,” in these years according to the historical record and James Kent was the reining

economic titan of the region leading man (Inscoe, 107). James Kent was deeply involved in local

slave economics.

Although there only appears to be a nine slave increase in his Kentland population in this

time it is probable that he was intimately connected to all the major slave markets, agents and

dealers in the Appalachian. This is because he was far and away the largest slave owner in

Montgomery County (at minimum 122 but reputedly up to 300 in 1860) and whose brothers

were among the other prosperous slave owners one of them also owning 70 slaves and the other

“a goodly number (Johnson, 39).” Wilma Dunaway tells of “two western Virginia speculators

regularly transport[ing] slaves, via Charleston, down the Ohio River to Kentucky (Inscoe, 125).

The men were transported in coffles to stations like one in Loudoun County where: “four

respected community leaders acted as professional slave traders,” “representing interstate

Clad-Johnson pg !20

traffickers located in distant port cities.” As the major slaveholder, and member of the political

establishment in the area Kent might be one of those two Virginian speculators or one of the four

respected community members spoken there of. He certainly would have known all the

movements of major slave coffles and any large business transaction in his locale. Kent would

have taken part in, and sought profit from, any and all slave trading taking place in the area.

The direct instances of Kent involvement in the domestic slave trade are documented at

the Virginia Tech special collections, reviewed in Patricia Johnson’s book, and described in the

book by Featherstonhaugh entitled Excursion through the Slave States. James Kent sold a large

amount of these Black people to Tennessee plantations in particular he sold women into

Tennessee but was also known to sell a slave when if they were incurably sick, “involved in

making a problem  ,” or on a whim if he needed cash (39). On one occasion a “Mr. Hale from 20

Giles wanted to buy to boys” and in another instance another “a gentleman from Georgia . . .

wanted 15 or 20 thousand dollars worth of slaves in families for which . . . he would pay cash

now (Johnson, 39).” After careful prepared large slave purchases were made the slaves were

rounded up from both Kentland and the nearby Horseshoe Farm (and other small slave

plantations) at the fords by the New River. Being sold to the South and venturing there on foot

was a dreaded destiny so the whole transaction was shrouded in secrecy, when individual slaves

we sold they were often snuck out in the middle of the night, so as to not arouse anger and

dissent in the enslaved population (40). It was not recorded among Kent’s transactions but

according to Patricia Johnson “some slaves in Virginia killed themselves” in order to avoid being

sold into the excruciating heat of the Deep South, which was a result of fear mongering by the

! Patricia Johnson writes sometimes in a cryptic manner and is difficult to decipher but from reading the book and understanding her sympathies 20

to the Kent family and the Confederate South I read “making the problem” as rebellious or insubordinate.

Clad-Johnson pg !21

slave owners who would often threaten to break up families and sell members to the Deep South

as a means of keeping slaves in line (40). From the New River the slaves were marched off to

begin their long march to the South, it was a crucial link on the transportation chain from the

eastern shore to the west and the Appalachian and conversely also a crucial link for regional

traffic back to the eastern coast..

The New River was the key to these slave transactions before the Railroad was built in

the 1850’s, and James Kent’s plantation office would been witness to everything occurring.

Although many of the backwoodsmen mentioned earlier were poor, many started gaining serious

financial capital in the law and order  style Black slave trade. “One [in]154 Appalachian 21

households” made some money engaged in “slave-trading activities” of which “nearly half were

landless,” but averaged “$10,890,” while ten percent of them averaged $79,333 reporting

“primary occupations like merchant, land speculator, farmer or commercial wagoner (Inscoe,

123).” These were the “region’s most respected economic elites” and they were “attorneys and

judges;” they were just like New River families (123). The slavers gained contracts on slaves for

distant clients and set up “country stores [to] advance” slave bounties and take the “larger

commission” for themselves (123). James Kent worked with these bounty hunters, and was

surely invested in local country stores and stocking them (and the commercial wagoners) with

his stocks of grains, tobacco, smoked meats and more. In a book on race in the Appalachian I

found an image with the caption “slave coffle camped along the New River, Virginia” that

showed White men holding rifles in fancy suits with wide brimmed hats while watching over

Black people chained in twos (Inscoe, 124). When I tracked down the image to the primary

! Law and order is a policing term that signals personel boots on the ground physically enforcing the norms set by law. It is fact that slave 21

catching and jailing was a core role of the sheriff and deputies in the Slave South, and also the North after fugitive slave acts.

Clad-Johnson pg !22

source (Excursion through the Slave States) I found a description of slave drivers “shepherding

three hundred slaves from Montgomery to Pulaski County,” where they were given to John

Armfield to be sold in Natchez, Mississippi and Louisiana (Featherstonhaugh, 120-123). This

image shows what is surely the New River family Patriarchs, or their sons, and their top

Overseers, likely Henry Linkous, Harmon Keister or George Knode and definitely the Albert

men of Kentland.

From 1849-1853 James Kents travelled and worked vigorously to promote the

construction of the V&T Railroad tracks constructed through through Montgomery County. As a

stakeholder representative to the Virginia Board of Public Works he was successful in persuading

fellow investors to bring the V&T) to the White Sulphur Springs in Christiansburg resort in 1853

but was unable to convince them of constructing the railroad directly through Kentland  and 22

summarily left that position (Nat. Park Service, 4). With so much prosperity and development

based on the system of violent racial subjugation and labor exploitation it should be no surprise

that James Kent was a leading man in the Confederate.

James Kent was an early supporter of succession and was prepared to house, arm and

feed the Confederate army especially if he could reap big profits. As a Major in the confederacy

and local militia leader Kent was responsible for organising local Confederates (Johnson, 46).

White Sulphur Springs operated then not as a resort but as a Confederate Hospital and in May

1963 he was under contract to supply beef for “300 cadets” which he bargained for with

“General Smith (Johnson, 54 & 46).” As the war waged on it became evident that the

Confederacy would lose and in 1864, shortly before the raid on Kentland Kent organized a

! which might have led to a complete and utter economic domination of the region by Kent22

Clad-Johnson pg !23

midnight conspiracy with the Preston plantation to hide local tax and legal records (Johnson, 47).

The conspirators used “eleven two-horse wagons” to transport documents from the

Christiansburg courthouse using 20 local Confederate troops (47)  . James Kent is deeply 23

implicated in the Confederacy and as a result his Farm was raided as the Union troops tried to

shut down his supply operation.

Civil War Interruption: Slavery at ends Kentland with labor desertion and evolution

The Kentland farm, the V&T supply chain, and neighboring Christiansburg had to be shut

down and so the Union troops led by General Crook set about a plan to raid southwestern

Virginia through the New River Valley. Patricia Johnson believes it was the “lucrative cattle

contracts with the Confederate Army” that was his “undoing,” but Kent was so wealthy and

invested in the White supremacist slave system and the Confederacy that he could not be ignored

(Johnson, 46). In 1860 James Kent had 40 horses, 1,100 “other” livestock, and had cultivated

15,000 bushels corn and 3,600 bushels ”grain,” personal property valued at $196,000 and 123

slaves while Kentland itself was valued at $126,000 and now 5,850 acres (Nat. Parks Service,

4).” Enslaved labor was the basis of the Kent and a number of local poor and wealthy White

families were also on his payroll, or owed him money. He was fully dedicated to White

supremacy as system and his way of life, inheritance and family plans were predicated on the

continuance of bondage slavery.

The Union Troops of Colonel George Crook in 1964 marched through Tennessee to wage

war on the New River Valley and the V&T (Crook, 114). On the campaign Crook wrote that his

well-trained men conquered the Blue Ridge/Appalachian region easily and with little resistance

! No records were destroyed, or doctored as a result. Kent and the Prestons had saved records of community wealth (Johnson, 47). 23

Clad-Johnson pg !24

except harassment from “bushwhackers  ” (86). Crook had defeated General Jenkins troops at 24

Cloyd’s mountain on its way to its attack on the V&T supply chain and to destroy the “bridge

across New River  (114).” Kent had intel and was aware of the coming attack and the Kents hid 25

their “salt and sugar,” “jewelry” and other expensive values (Johnson, 47 and 48).” Margaret

Kent  used a “trusted old negro servant” to bury the goods in the middle of the night, and field 26

hands took the remaining horses and livestock to the woods (48). When the Union troops arrived

they were originally planning on destroying the building but decided against it (48). The Cloyd’s

farm was not so lucky as it was utterly destroyed in the Battle of Cloyd’s Mountain, as was Dr

Otey’s  (Johnson, 50). The Union set about undoing James Kent’s empire during their stay on 27

Kentland.

The “four day” occupation of Kentlands destroyed James Kent’s hegemony. Although

there is no official record of it  the family tradition that tells of a “devastating Yankee raid on 28

Kentland” following the Battle of Cloyd’s Mountain in May 1964 (Nat. Park Service, 4). Patricia

Johnson pieced together a thorough narrative from the oral traditions of the Kent, Albert and

previously enslaved families (Johnson, 47-51). Col. Crook admits destroying local fences for

firewood and taking all food rations for the army, so it is fitting that his men would have

plundered Kentland (Crook, 86). They cut up livestock harnesses, slaughtered livestock, stole

food for rations, and “cut into pieces” the rest, while stationed for the four days at Kentland

! The bushwhackers were local mountaineers fighting on both sides would shoot the enemy and slip away often without being seen. 24

! It seems that this would be the moment of an attack on Kentland but Crook doesn’t mention it specifically in this autobiography.25

! The youngest daughter and future wife of Major Cowan who took over Kentland after the 1867 death of James Kent.26

! Dr. Otey was married into the Kent family through James Kent’s daughter Louisa and owned some slaves who lived at Wake Forest.27

! This is according to the National Parks Service National REgister of Historic Places continuation sheet on Kentland Farm.28

Clad-Johnson pg !25

(Johnson, 49). Clarence Page states in his 1982 interview that his enslaved great-grandmother by

the last name Eaves  lived in the downstairs of the Kent home and witnessed the “Yankees” 29

coming through.

“Granmother (sic) was there when the Yankees came through. She had to

hide the silver! The Yankees were there for a day or so [and] would leave [and]

come back. The took the horses and slaughtered the cows and cut the harnesses up

(Page Interview).”

Margaret Kent and her father were defiant and unrepenting in the face of Union troops. Margaret

yelled “I’ll be damned if you take this last bit of meat we have worked so hard for,” and James

refused to leave the Kentland mansion when troops threatened to burn it, instructing “to burn it if

they wished but . . . he would not leave (49).” The 71 year old was spared along with the home

which still stands today (49). There may be no official record of the raid but James Kent was

exempted the next year from taxes on 44 negroes and 38 horses “taken by the public enemy (5,

Nat. Parks Service).” There is also record of a special committee set up in Montgomery county to

present a memo to Virginia Governor Francis H. Pierpont stating the need for assistance because

of the loss of “able bodied negroes,” who had escaped or been taken by the Yankees.

There fifty-two  Black men who “escaped to the Yankees” are a significant number 30

considering there were 123 slaves living in the 13 cabins at Kentland at the time. On the case

! This is the woman who lived in the Kent home on the ground level with the dirt floor.29

! Johnson in Kentland at Whitethorne says that “52 of his negoes” escaped, but the tax record excuses him only of “44 negroes and 38 horses 30

(Johnson, 49-50; Nat. Park Service).” Either way the number is significant, especially considering it from the whole number. It is possible Kent might not have gotten tax credit for all his lost ex-enslaved workers or he also could have been high numerating for the sake of defrauding the state on his tax records. It should be noted that there existed a discrepancy in my sources regarding James Kent’s largest slave ownership being the 123 stated on the Nat. Reg. of Historic Places by the Nat. Park Service Continuation Sheet or the 200-300 number quoted in the Clarence Page interview and the Johnson book. My belief is that he was at his New River plantation office engaged in the ownership, hiring out, and trading, of hundreds of slaves at any given time but that the 123 number of enslaved Black people refers to a permanent roster of skilled workers that he kept enslaved and living in the 13 cabins at Kentland proper.

Clad-Johnson pg !26

study plantation in the University of Kansas dissertation there is a record of five enslaved people

who “escaped to the Yankees” so the 52 leaving at Kentland with the cover of Union troops

shows significant dissatisfaction with the Kent family at Kentland (Johnson, 49-50; Barber, 181).

Some of the 52 no doubt joined the Union troops and joined the “Twenty-Fourth Corps of

‘Darks’ (Col. Crooks words) marching up to the front,” and confronting the enemy during his

battles at Appoppotomax (Crook, 139). Some Kentland ex-slaves stole the Kent family coach

and followed the Union troops and considering the Kents were the only family in all of

Montgomery county owning a coach it seems poetic justice that it was ridden away by his human

capital in a joyful contingent as documented by “Trooper Wilson, 12th Ohio (Johnson, 50).” Life

in the Union was not perfect as Phd. Robin Kelley professed his and the first enemy plantation’s

enslaved people were only confiscated under the 1861 Confiscation Act (Kelley, M158). The

Union was cruel in its treatment of Black people and it only allowed them to work in menial job

such as cleaning and cooking, at first. I saw in a book of Civil War drawings a picture entitled “. .

. Mode of Punishing Negro Soldiers for Various Offences . . .” that captured Black men being

forced to sit on a raised beam (11-13 feet high) and a picture of Black union workers washing

dishes with the caption: “Washerwomen in the Army of the Potomac (Bookbinder, 80 & 91).”

Both images were racial caricatures. While the Union army an equal opportunity employer the

leaders of the Reconstruction were nonetheless born there. Men who had dignity, some money

and guns to possibly defend the new legal liberty. Political movement in Virginia and fear of an

armed contingent returning to kill James Kent and take his wealth led to the founding of the

Wake Forest for the previously enslaved people of Kentland.

After the troops left and the Kent family settled into their new reality, the war soon

Clad-Johnson pg !27

afterward ended. Kent had been supporting the Confederacy until the very last day  . The Kents 31

began taking care of business to move forward with their industry and although Montgomery

county records were safe in his home’s attic his own records at the plantation office on New

River had been destroyed and there were 44 less strong men to work his fields, and quarry  32

(Johnson, 52). He complained but got nothing because he and his other plantation owning friends

were still rich and profiting from the exploited labor of the Black workers on his plantation. Life

after slavery was uncertain for the previously enslaved as they faced starvation, homelessness,

continued racial subjugation, discrimination and exclusion and as a result many stayed on their

plantations.

The white men feared Black reprisal and attempts to take land, or attack their White

supremacist system. The Enquirer claimed capitalism was under attack as Blacks could not be

evicted and the “capitalist[s] [are] threatened with murder if he dared to discharge [them] (Du

Bois, 541).” Some previously enslaved had “drifted back [and] expected to be fed before they

worked” at Kentland and those who stayed also now “were expecting to be paid (Johnson, 52).”

Kent seems to have refused them, as there is no record, and he was angry over losing the war

(52). Many Black Virginians didn’t even want employment, they preferred “confiscation” of the

slave masters land and the “distribution” of those lands among themselves like was called for on

April 10, 1867 at the Virginia Republican Convention (Du Bois, 540). This and worse was what

James Kent worried about. Johnson writes that “fear was [his] constant companion” since the

! On April 9, 1865 Kent had “transferred several thousand dollare worth of grain and feed to the Confederate Army(Johnson, 51).31

! Most of Kent’s livestock had been slaughtered for the Confederate troops, of by the Union troops during their stay at Kentland.32

Clad-Johnson pg !28

many white hands and overseers had perished in the Civil War  (Johnson, 52). There were also 33

many free black moderates who thought that confiscation would lead to reactionary

discrimination against Black people in Virginia. Fields Cook called the confiscation plans “ill-

advised” endeavors and he was correct about the coming discrimination and reactionaries (Du

Bois, 540). The Kents feared insurrection and being trapped with no way to get help from an

unfriendly military regime, or escape through roads in disrepair (Johnson, 52). They felt their

financial and physical security threatened and did not want “an unhappy several hundred Black

people surrounding them (52).” It was the Black political movement in Virginia that made

Elizabeth Kent establish Wake Forest.

In 1865 Wake Forest was founded to be a home for the house servants and the other

slaves that continued to work at Kentland or the surrounding community. Additional lands (16

acres) were set aside for “several faithful house servants,” and after they sold it back to a White

man the sixteen acres parcelled out to the children of former slaves (Johnson, 53, Clarence Page

interview). This is when James Henry Jones, Carmen Jones-Clad’s grandfather, bought a piece of

the land and then divided it among his own children, one was James Samuel Jones (Jones-Clad

conversation). From Africa this community had been kidnapped and stowed by a White

supremacist system, then sold to cruel White supremacists profiting by government sanction

from their labor. Through generations they worked, were beat, raised families, ran away and

were raped, From across the eastern seaboard they were sold up and down coastlines, and rivers

until coming onto the New River plantations like Kentland. There they toiled for the immense

profit of James Randel Kent so he could found White Sulphur Springs, the school that became

! They probably died fighting for the New River families at the Battle of Cloyds Mountain, or while bushwhacking in the woods.33

Clad-Johnson pg !29

Virginia Tech, and invest in the Bank of Virginia. At Wake Forest these people became a

community again, not free from White supremacist terror or racialized labor exploitation, but

free to have a household and free to be the authority over themselves at their place of residence.

The Kentland farm continued after his death but not in the same capacity. When James

Kent died in May, 1867 his “land holdings” were valued at $74,000; “41% less than in 1860

(Nat. Park Service, 5).” The records indicate he probably had comparable losses to his personal

estate and investments which Margaret Kent took much of as inheritance before marrying Major

John Cowan in 1868 (Nat. Park Service, 5; Johnson, 53). James Kent had been a viciously

callous man all the years he operated Kentland. He made money dealing human flesh. From his

youth until his death he was an integral part of Black oppression in the United States. Kent had

been born into an inbred lineage of military men developing the American government ad hoc

from their large estates. To make his first dollars he chased, captured and sold slaves as a

Montgomery county Sheriff. Even more importantly was the system he put in motion. From his

position of a wealthy local Sheriff, land surveyor, and justice he took command of a financial and

political system to push forward an agenda of White supremacy for individual and family wealth

accumulation. The kingdoms that men like James Kent built have not disappeared, they just fail

to be identified.

Major John Cowan is one of those that continued to benefit from the kingdom that James

Kent had created and he ran the farm in a profitably. Cowan had left the Civil War “penniless”

and targeted Margaret Kent for marriage (Johnson, 57). By 1880 Cowan turned the farm back

into a profitable machine his farm was assessed in that year to be worth $58,000, and with the

help of a rebuilt mill he produced “8000 bushels of corn, 2700 bushels of other grain and 4000

Clad-Johnson pg !30

pounds of tobacco” on the original 1,650 acres that Kentland had began as when the Harmans

and Buchanan's had owned it (Nat. Parks Service, 5). He invested in West Virginia coal mines,

became the co-owner of White Sulphur Springs and established a Post office at what was now

called Cowan’s Mill (Johnson, 59). He continued James Kent’s legacy in many ways.

The Cowans had house servants who had been slaves under James Kent and still used

Black labor to run the farm and it’s mills (Johnson, 57). John Cowan also sat on “first board of

visitors at . . . the Agricultural and Mechanical College” which had been the Olin and Preston

Institute and was later named Virginia Tech (58). Although Cowan tried relying on white labor

which reflected the sentiment of publications like the Lynchburg Virginian encouraged landed

elites to “fill the State with white laborers from the North and Europe” and to “crowd the Negro

out” and “rid the the State of an element that will hinder its prosperity,” but Cowan continued to

be dependent on Black labor (Du Bois, 541). For generations Black people from Kentland

worked in his fields and sharecropped their own lands by buying the overpriced tools, supplies

and other goods from his country store (59). The Cowans were local socialites and they still

hosted “many small social affairs” but with less servants and sometimes self-serve policies,

much to the ire of some of the men used to older days (58). His son was named James Randel

Kent (JRK) Cowan and it was he who took over the property when Cowan died. JRK Cowan

eventually failed to pay the taxes owed on the property and in 1936 ownership changed hands

again to the Bell family and years later it would become part of Virginia Tech when the land was

bought in 1988 (73). It is now the location of the Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station.

Conslusion: Thoughts on White Suprmacy and the legacy of enslaved labor at Wake Forest

From the Appalachian the Kent, Cloyd, McGavock, Cowan and contemporaries took part

Clad-Johnson pg !31

in a process of economic development in a White European Supremacist system of expansion

from the Atlantic coast into the western frontier. These families killed the Indigenous people and

dominated Africans in an abusive system of forced labor. Their society had proclaimed them as

intellectual superiors assumed a right to decide the fates of non-whites people in the colonial

nation and the budding United States. Slave-owners claimed this right and succeeded from the

Union to retain it. The Kent family established their Virginia empire and the Kentland plantation

with these norms governing their society.

As I look at the world today I think to myself: how far have we come? Is the economy of

the United states still predicated on a White Expansionist economy of domination, subjugation

and exploitation? It appears so. We are forced into a frame of reference based on celebrating the

conquest of western societies living to celebrate Western values and norms. By Western I mean

to identify what I think is the political, philosophical and economic Roman, Greek canon

continued by England and supplemented with French and German philosophy and Anglo-

American law. This topic has been a personal one in which I sought to learn about the core

problem of being multicultural in America The event of Slavery in the history of Black America

is the core problem I face as a multiculturally identifying White male raised by a Black woman.

The event of Slavery in the specific family lineage of Carmen Jones-Clad is then a source

of my personal frustration with the racism perpetrated against Black people in America. Slavery

is a defining characteristic in American history and the number one implicated factor, by Black

Americans, in the continued impoverishment, oppression, imprisonment and brutality of many

Black-African-Americans. Black people suffered in America, for America, these people suffered

to show America the kind of public treatment of people that is wholly unacceptable. Today we

Clad-Johnson pg !32

still see the worst treatment America reserved for Black Americans. My education has been

tasked to find truths to these questions on race in America and finding the tools to communicate

them to others.

I have found the story of my own “Mama’s” plantation to fit neatly into a tale of

expansive oppression and useful for explaining the realities and history of American Black

slavery. This research made my own role clear, I must continue to learn to research and

communicate the truths I understand because of my identity. Many of the people related to the

Kentland slaves have moved to Detroit, Chicago and parts of Ohio, there are few children from

that family still in Wake Forest and while they are there their stories must be told, before they are

lost forever. The endurance and resilience that the generations of oppressed Black people have

embodied throughout this narrative of America’s White supremacist economic expansion at

Kentland is moving and my heart goes out to all their descendants, alive and dead.

Works Cited

Page, Clarence. Interview by Carmen Jones-Clad. Personal interview. 1 Jan.

1982.

Andreano, Ralph. The Economic Impact of the American Civil War.

Cambridge: Schenkman Publishing co., 1962. Print.

Ayers, Edward L., and Anne S. Rubin. Valley of the shadow: Two

Communities in the American Civil War. New York: W.W. Norton &

Co., 2000. Print.

Ayers, Edward L., and Carolyn R. Martin. America on the eve of the Civil War.

Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010. Print.

Ballagh, James Cutris. A History of Slavery in Virginia. Baltimore: The Johns

Hopkins Press, 1902. Print.

Barber, Janet Campbell. Old age and the life course of slaves: a case study of

a nineteenth century Virginia plantation. Ann Arbor: University

Microfilms International, 1983. Print.

Bookbinder, Judith Arlene, and Sheila Gallagher. First hand: Civil War era

drawings from the Becker collection. Chestnut Hill, MA: McMullen

Museum of Art, Boston College ;, 2009. Print.

Breen, T. H.. Tobacco culture: the mentality of the great Tidewater planters on

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