The death of a slaveholder often led to the sale of enslaved people and separation of Black families, as multiple heirs tried to divide estate equally.

An 1818 document in the Commodore Collection shows how this cruel arithmetic worked. At the time of his death in 1813, William Skinner held ten people in slavery — most of them children. Here, the executor of Skinner’s estate shows how he had attempted to divide the inheritance fairly among Skinner’s widow (who was to receive one-third of the total value) and his eight sons and daughters (who were owed equal shares of the rest). In order to achieve this difficult calculus, different enslaved people were assigned to each heir, with the balances made up by cash payments or by other articles of value (feather beds, a horse, etc.).

Other documents in the collection show that many of these enslaved children were soon sold off by the different heirs who inherited them.

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