Take yourself back to 1800’s Virginia in Rappahannock County. Imagine you are a young slave. This most likely means you did not grow up with your parents or even maybe no siblings as well. You could live on a large plantation farm with many other slaves, or on a small farm with just a couple other slaves and your master’s family. Being a slave means someone else makes most, if not all, of your decisions for you. Also, your master could keep control of you for your entire life if he chooses. Some masters were kind enough to eventually free their slaves, however, because of the laws, this could be very hard to do. One slave woman who endured this experience was Kitty Payne.
Because of the time period and the fact that Kitty was a slave, there are not many records of her life. The few records that there are have come from court records, a later letter from her daughter Eliza (who was one of her children kidnapped with her), and ancestors that record the history that has been passed down. Many of these records are unpublished. Though the documents are few, they have helped to piece together and tell the story of Kitty Payne.
Kitty Payne was a slave woman born around 1816 in Rappahannock County.[1] She most likely was born on the Samuel and Mary Maddox’s farm.[2] Like most slaves, she probably did not grow up with her parents and there is no record of who her parents were.[3] Because Kitty grew up on a small farm with only a couple other slaves, she grew up working closely with Mary Maddox in the house.[4]
In February 1843, when Kitty was twenty-seven years old, Mary Maddox, whose husband had passed, granted Kitty and her three children their freedom (Kitty’s husband, Robert Payne, was already a freeman).[5] This is the first document that officially recognized Kitty’s existence, and in it she is only referred to as “Kitty”.[6] Because of the Virginia law, the now free slaves had a year to leave Virginia. A few months later, Mary Maddox traveled with Kitty, her children, and the other two slaves she freed to Pennsylvania.[7] Mary remained with the family for a few months and then returned to Virginia. [8]
_______________________________ [1] M. L. Bishop, “Slave to Freewoman and Back Again: Kitty Payne and Antebellum Kidnapping” (PhD diss., Indiana University, July 2007), 29, Accessed 9, 2015 https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/bitstream/handle/1805/1009/Slave%20to%20Freewoman%20and%20Back%20Again.pdfsequence=1 [2] Ibid. [3] Ibid. 32, 35. [4] Ibid. 35 [5] Ibid 41-42, 45 [6] Ibid. 33 [7] Ibid. 47 [8] Ibid. 52 (Picture): T. Prudente, "Kidnapped Slave's Descendant Honored During Re-enactment," The Evening Sun, Accessed 15 April, 2015 http://www.eveningsun.com/ci_15595139.