Sixty-three residents of Charles City County assert "that it is the almost universal custom with the owners of Mills in this county, and indeed in the whole of the lower part of the state to employ, coloured persons, slaves, to attend to their mills and to do the duties of miller." They further complain "that the grievances under which they labour in consequence of this custom, are burdensome and ought to be redressed." The petitioners contend that "few or none of them thus employed are honest, and we are all of us constantly subjected to great inconvenience & much vexation." They charge that "in the neighbourhood of almost every mill there are located squads of free negroes, who it is believed are sustained almost entirely, by the millers, with the unlawful gains, taken from their customers and these slave millers are a sort of link of communication between our slaves and the free persons of colour." They therefore "take leave to suggest that if a law were passed, requiring every owner of a mill to keep employed as his miller a white man ... much if not all of the grievance under which we labour might be redressed."
Result: Rejected.
Or you may view all people.
Repository: Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia
