Creator: Barrow, Robert Ruffin, 1798-1875.
Collection number: 2407
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Abstract: Robert Ruffin Barrow (b. 1798) was a sugar planter and canal operator in Terrebonne Parish, La. Barrow was the son of Bartholomew Barrow (d. 1852), a merchant of Fishing Creek, Halifax County, N.C., and later a planter in West Feliciana Parish, La., where he settled on his estate, Afton Villa, in 1820. Robert Ruffin Barrow’s mother was Ascension Slatter Barrow. The younger Barrow owned six Terrebonne Parish plantations, including Residence, Myrtle Grove, and Caillou Grove, as well as plantations in Lafourche, Assumption, and Ascension parishes and in Texas. Daybook (microfilm), 1811-1914, of Bartholomew Barrow in Fishing Creek, N.C., and journal, 1857-1858, for Robert Ruffin Barrow’s Residence Plantation in Terrebonne Parish, La. The daybook includes accounts with Fishing Creek residents, including several blacks. The plantation journal, kept by Residence manager Ephraim A. Knowlton and several overseers, including Robert P. Ford, George Bucknall, N.B. Holland, and Charles Lull, contains slave records, details of sugar production, records of daily operations, and reports of conflicts between slaves and overseers and between Barrow and his overseers, including reports of fugitive slaves. Slave records include slave lists, birth and death records, and notes on illnesses, tasks assigned, and supplies distributed.
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: This collection includes the original and a typed transcription of the plantation journal, 1857-1858, of Barrow, sugar planter and canal operator in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana. The journal documents the relationship between plantation owner and overseer, and between overseers, field slaves, and slave drivers. It also contains slave lists, accounts of resistance and punishments, and tasks assigned slaves, and includes information on slave births, deaths, and illnesses as well as items distributed to slaves and runaways. Microfilm available.