Woodville celebrated Emancipation Day (also known as Juneteenth) with a particularly appropriate program focused on the life of enslaved persons on the Neville estates at Bower Hill and Woodville in post-colonial times. The format for the program was a tour of the Neville House narrated by Rob Windhorst, followed by a demonstration of the cuisine of enslaved persons there by Rob’s wife Erin. Both presentations were well done and filled with interesting information on a topic that warrants much more exploration. The researchers at Woodville are making a major contribution in our understanding of slavery in western Pennsylvania in the early days.
John Neville, his wife Winifred, his son Presley, and their daughter Amelia were already “well-to-do” when they arrived in the Chartiers Valley in the early 1770s to take possession of about 1500 acres of prime land on both sides of Chartiers Creek. According to Rob they were accompanied by six enslaved persons, five men and one woman. We don’t know how much of the construction of either estate had been completed by 1776 when John and Presley left to join George Washington and the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. We do know that most of the major buildings on both sites were essentially complete when they returned home in 1783. The current opinion of the Woodville researchers is that the bulk of the construction work had been done by slaves, each of whom was a master craftsman, under the supervision of two overseers.
The conventional tour through the Neville House consists of a visit to a series of well-preserved rooms, focusing on the function of each room. On this occasion the tour guide took advantage of the opportunity to explain the role of the appropriate enslaved person in each room. This was particularly evident in the kitchen where a cook, with the help of several family members, was on call every waking hour to provide sustenance for the Neville family and their guests. Similarly, the head waiter controlled the dining room and made certain that service there was impeccable. Another servant was responsible for meeting visitors at the front door, evaluating their social status, and taking appropriate action.
The visit to the log cabin (a replica of typical slaves’ quarters) was equally illuminating. Mrs. Windhorst was preparing spiced apples in a pan over a fire in the fireplace. She explained in considerable detail the components of a diet for slaves in that era on this plantation, based on food produced by the slaves for their own benefit – kitchen garden produce, fish from the creek, wild game, and domestic fowl — supplemented by cuts of meat unsuitable for consumption by the gentry in the Neville House. I was interested in her comment that corn, a staple in North America, was unknown to African cuisine and took many years to be accepted. With that exception, it appears that the Neville slaves’ diet was quite similar to that of the poor white settlers (Lesnetts and Hickmans) on nearby farms.
According to the Woodville researchers, the Nevilles had the largest group of enslaved persons west of the Alleghenies. At its peak this group numbered well over seventy persons, based on information in Neville family documents. The general impression I got from this specific visit to Woodville is that the Nevilles were benevolent slave-owners unlike those in the deep South, which is consistent with the conventional wisdom regarding Virginia plantations. This may be distorted by the fact that the source of their information was Neville family documents, which would hardly be negative. I prefer to believe that there were no Simon Legrees in the Chartiers Valley in the 1790s.
Most of the immigrants who settled the original thirteen colonies in the 1700s came from agrarian societies dominated by a feudal system in which a small portion of the population (the gentry) owned all the land and relied upon support from tenant farmers. Wealth depended solely upon ownership of land. The prospect of owning a small farm in the New World was a major motivation for them to uproot their families and begin a new life in America. In Pennsylvania this resulted in numerous small (several hundred acres), independently owned farms. In the South, however, wealthy persons chose to replicate the society they had left by accumulating enough land to build massive plantations staffed by enslaved persons.
Apparently the Nevilles chose to transplant this culture to western Pennsylvania. Their original warrants included two in the Bower Hill area – “The Avenue” (224 acres) and “Sidge Field” (404 acres), and two on the Woodville side of Chartiers Creek – “Woodville” (400 acres) and “Farm Hill” (437 acres). In addition, John Neville’s son-in-law, Isaac Craig warranted “Parnassus” (163 acres) adjacent to the Neville complex. This made the Neville family the largest land-owners in the area, with so much acreage that a significant number of subordinates would be required to farm it; enslaved persons were the obvious answer.
According to the 1790 US Census, John Neville had eighteen slaves; Presley, nine; and Isaac Craig, eight. In addition, the family had four persons in the “others” category, which we assume means non-white, therefore possibly manumitted slaves. The discrepancy between this total and the “over seventy” number reported by Woodville researchers may suggest that numerous field slaves were added after the plantation reached maturity (or were not included in the census). At any rate, the Neville complex was a unique entity on the frontier in the late 1700s, a definite throwback to feudal England in the midst of a society of small, independent farm-owners. Perhaps part of the resentment leading to the Whiskey Rebellion stemmed from resentment of settlers who had left England to avoid feudalism.
Many thanks to the Woodville folks for this event and for the valuable addition to our historical heritage that their research into slavery in this area is making. The Woodville Experience is an invaluable asset to our region.