21

HISTORICAL ANNOTATION 649

his living as a sawyer and lived with him in her cabin. There she bore nine daughters
and three sons. She was also a midwife, a service for which Anthony paid her. Upon
Anthony's death in 1826, Bailey was inherited by Andrew Skinner Anthony, Aaron's
son; when Andrew died in 1833, she became the slave of John Planner Anthony.
Despite this succession of masters and the death of her own husband, she remained in
her cabin on the Tuckahoe Creek farm, living alone, nearly destitute, and going blind.
In 1840 Thomas Auld, John Anthony's uncle, learned of Bailey's condition and sent
for her, caring for her in his Talbot County home until her death.
Douglass to Thomas
Auld, 3 September 1848, 3 September 1849, in NS, 8 September 1848, 7 September
1849, reprinted in Lib., 22 September 1848, 14 September 1849; Aaron Anthony
Slave Distribution, 22 October 1827, Talbot County Distributions, V.JP#D, 58-59,
MdTCH: Aaron Anthony, Inventory of Negroes, Distribution of Negroes, folders 71,
77, Aaron Anthony Ledger A, 1790-1818, folder 94, Aaron Anthony Ledger B,
1812-26, folders 77, 159, 165-68. Anthony Family Papers, Harriet L. Anthony, annotated
copy of Bondage and Freedom, folders 93, 180, all in Dodge Collection,
MdAA; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 8, 16-20, 167.
23.33 Isaac Bailey] Born sometime before 1775, Isaac Bailey was a free black
man and the husband of Betsey Bailey, a slave owned by Aaron Anthony. Isaac and
Betsey lived together on Anthony's Tuckahoe Creek farm. A sawyer, Bailey was frequently
employed by both Anthony and Edward Lloyd V to provide lumber for their
plantations. On occasion, he would hire one of Anthony's slaves to assist him in his
work. He also earned wages as a plowman and harvest laborer on Anthony's farms.
Bailey appears in the 1820 Talbot County census as a free black presiding over a large
household with four adult women and nine children. The 1840 census lists him as
living with one adult woman and a young boy. Bailey died during the 1840s. Aaron
Anthony Ledger B, 1812-26, folder 95. Aaron Anthony Ledger C, 1809-27, folder
96, both in Dodge Collection, MdAA; 1820 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County,
336; 1840 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 9; Preston, Young Frederick
Douglass, 17-20.
24.3-4 seine-haulingJ Catching fish with a net that hangs vertically in the water.
24.14-16 high privilege...upon her] On some plantations, elderly slave women
cared for children under six years of age in communal "nurseries" during the day
while the mothers worked. Many slave mothers assumed traditional family responsibilities
like childcare, cooking, sewing, and cleaning for their own households,
accomplishing these tasks either in the early morning hours, before the work day, or
late at night. Some slaveholders manumitted their older slaves, both women and men,
when their ability to work did not seem to justify the expense of keeping them. In
other cases, the slave community itself cared for its aged members, delegating to them
the tasks of caring for the youngest children: teaching them manners, prayers, and
skills like fishing and feeding the animals. Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of
Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present (New York,
1985), 11-43; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 494-523.