Relative Stability Among Families

Draft post 20210417

For the enslaved people owned by the Jesuits, disruption and family separation were definitely a possibility. The 125-year history of their collective enslavement in Maryland is punctuated by individual and small group sales and some significant transfers among the estates. Nonetheless, overall the groups experienced a significant degree of stability. Tracing the family connections through the archival sources reveals several large, multi-generation families that spanned from the 1750s to the point of sale in 1838.