23

HISTORICAL ANNOTATION 651

in Prichard's book. James Cowles Prichard, The Natural History of Man, 3d ed.
(London, 1848), 1-26, 157; George W. Stocking, Jr. , ed., Researches into the Physical
History of Man (1813; Chicago, 1973), ix-ex.
24.36 Of my father I know nothing] In Narrative Douglass not only claims that
his father was a white man but even intimates that he was rumored to be his first
master, Aaron Anthony. However, this speculation becomes more doubtful in his
subsequent autobiographies. "My father was a white man, or nearly white," Douglass
adds to his original remark in My Bondage and My Freedom, while also mentioning
that he cannot give any credence to the rumor that his father was Anthony. By the time
he wrote Life and Times, Douglass had ceased to speculate about the actual identity
of his father. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 2:35; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass,
22-23.
24.38 By its law. . .of its mother] A 1662 Virginia statute applies the civil law
concept partus sequitar ventrem, stating that "all children borne in this country shall
be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother." This law placed
the offspring of black human beings in the same condition as the broods of tame and
domestic animals, a departure from the English common-law rule that a child follows
the status of the father. The reasoning behind this practice was that it benefited slaveholders
economically and allowed them to avoid complex social situations that might
undermine the emerging institution of slavery. V. Lynn Kennedy, Born Southern:
Childbirth, Motherhood, and Social Networks in the Old South (Baltimore, 2010),
160-65; Paul Finkelman, "The Crime of Color," Tulane Law Review, 67:2063-112
(June 1993).
25.3-4 one drop of African blood] Douglass's reference to "one drop of African
blood" predates the first legal statute (Tennessee, 1910) that explicitly stated that such
a measurement should determine race. Virginia adopted its one-drop rule in the 1920s;
however, during the nineteenth century, state courts classified race using definitions
more complex than the one-drop rule. Some scholars write ahout this rule as though
it had been adopted by all states in antebellum America through Reconstruction to the
Jim Crow era and beyond. Although there is little evidence supporting this claim of
widespread legislation, the one-drop rule as a social definition of race dictated, to an
extant, the self-identification of blacks in the United States. F. James Davis, Who Is
Black? One Nation's Definition (University Park, Pa., 1991), 15; Michael A. Elliot,
"Telling the Difference: Nineteenth-Century Legal Narratives of Racial Taxonomy,"
Law and Social Inquiry, 24:611-36 (Summer 1999); Ariela J. Gross, "Litigating
Whiteness: Trials of Racial Determination in the Nineteenth-Century South," Yale
Law Journal, 108:109-88 (October 1998); Finkelman, "Crime of Color," 2063-112.
25.25 Mr. Lee's mill] Levi Lee owned a mill near Holme Hill Farm and the
Tuckahoe River in 1820. In that year. he headed a large household of eight family
members and six slaves. 1820 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 48; Preston,
Young Frederick Douglass, 36.
25.28-29 pin-hook and thread line] A primitive fishing tackle composed
of a