Slave Ownership in Early Georgia: What Eighteenth-Century Wills Reveal

Abstract

Compared with other North American colonies, little scholarship exists on slave-holding in early Georgia. In this article, the author augments this historiography by examining a remarkable and little-used collection of sources. Data gleaned from analyzing more than 400 wills written by eighteenth-century white settlers reveal that roughly 39 percent of early Georgians owned slaves and that slave distribution was pyramidal, as most slaveholders owned but a few slaves, although some elites held many. While these findings support existing research, data from the wills suggest that early Georgia slaveholders owned, on average, about half as many slaves as other scholars contend. Besides informing an understanding of slavery in the colony, this article provides an overview of the early Georgia wills themselves, which, as sources, are highly accessible and contain a wealth of information for future scholars.