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Blacks in Elizabeth City (1.3.6)

Although the life of blacks--both slave and free--in Elizabeth City has yet to be fully researched and understood, fheir role in the city was important. The percentage of blacks within the city probably was similar to that of the county as a whole. The first census of 1790 (three years before the city was chartered) reported that 31.0 percent, or 1,702, of the county's 5,497 inhabitants were non-white, both slave and free. As the farm economy became increasingly dependent on slave labor prior to the Civil War, this percentage increased gradually to 50.2 percent in 1860, or 4,490 blacks out of a total population of 8,940 (Cheney 1981, 1235). The 1860 census also recorded that 624 slaves resided in Elizabeth City, occupying 56 slave houses. This was approximately one-fourth of the slaves in rural Pasquotank County. It is interesting to note that the slave-to-house average in the city was eleven, as compared with only five in the county (Butchko, 1989: 14).

While the numbers and percentages of slaves in the county and city are in line with neighboring counties, the numbers and percentages of free blacks are not. For reasons not understood, Pasquotank County had a disproportionate number of free blacks from 1810 until 1860. In 1810, the 550 free blacks in the county comprised nineteen percent of the total black population and seven percent of the total population of the county; both percentages were more than three times the state average. The number and percentage of free blacks in the county increased dramatically throughout the antebellum period. The 1,507 free blacks in 1860 constituted thirty-four percent of the black population and seventeen percent of the total population in Pasquotank County. Statewide, free blacks made up eight percent of the black population and three percent of the total population, percentages four to five times less than those in Pasquotank County. In comparison, the counties near Pasquotank--Camden, Perquimans, and Chowan--had numbers and percentages of free blacks closer to the state averages throughout this period. Why Pasquotank had such a high percentage of free blacks has yet to be determined (Statistical Abstracts, 1874: 52-53; Butchko 1989, 14, 329 n.45).

A closer analysis of the 1860 census reveals additional, but still limited, insight into the role of the free black in Elizabeth City. The 217 free blacks recorded as residents of the town comprised just fourteen percent of the county's total of free blacks. Among the eighty-eight men, the most common occupation was farm hand (nine), followed by house carpenter (eight), mariner (seven), servant (six), and blacksmith (four); over one-third of the men were too young to work. A majority of the employed women were washerwomen (thirty-four), followed by servants (twelve), and domestics, cooks, and seamstresses (three each). The fact is that the vast majority of the county's free blacks remained on the farm, where the men were employed almost exclusively as farm hands and the few women who were employed were washerwomen. This certainly suggests that free blacks did not, for whatever reasons, enjoy the benefits of the town's commercial and industrial prosperity (1860 Census).