John Armfield
John Armfield | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1797 North Carolina, U.S. |
| Died | September 20, 1871 (aged 73–74) |
| Occupation | Slave trader |
| Spouse(s) | Martha Franklin (m. 1831) |
John Armfield (1797-1871) was an American slave trader. He was the co-founder of Franklin & Armfield, "the largest slave trading firm" in the United States.[1] He was also the developer of Beersheba Springs, and a co-founder of Sewanee: The University of the South.
Early life[]
John Armfield was born in 1797 in North Carolina to Quaker parents.[2] He was of English descent.[2]
Career[]
Armfield took up slave trading in the 1820s. For example, he sold a slave in Natchez, Mississippi in 1827.[2] In 1828, Armfield and his uncle by marriage, Isaac Franklin, formed the partnership of Franklin & Armfield to buy slaves in the mid-Atlantic states (Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and the District of Columbia) and re-sell them in the newly opened territories of the Deep South.[1] They were enormously successful and became two of the wealthiest men in the country. They dissolved the partnership in 1835 and sold the business to one of their agents, George Kephart. Armfield retired to Central Tennessee in 1835.[citation needed]
Armfield settled Gruetli, a Swiss settlement in Grundy County, Tennessee.[3] In 1855, he also developed the resort for the wealthy of Beersheba Springs in Grundy County, Tennessee, which still exists.[3] Additionally, he was the biggest single donor in the founding of Sewanee: The University of the South.[2][3]
Personal life and death[]
Armfield married Martha Franklin, Isaac Franklin's niece, in 1831.[2] Armfield joined the Episcopal Church, and his wife converted from the Presbyterian faith to Episcopalianism for him.[2] The family attended Christ Church Cathedral in Nashville, Tennessee, as did Bishop Leonidas Polk, with whom Armfield was a close friend.[2] Another one of Armfield's close friends was John M. Bass, the mayor of Nashville.[2]
Armfield died of old age on September 20, 1871 in Beersheba Springs.[3]
Armfield and his wife had no children. He fathered at least one child with an enslaved Black woman; he sold both her and the child. Rodney G. Williams has established his descent by DNA testing.[4]
See also[]
- Slavery in the United States#Slave trade
References[]
- ^ Jump up to: a b Gudmestad, Robert H. (Fall 2003). "The Troubled Legacy of Isaac Franklin: The Enterprise of Slave Trading". Tennessee Historical Quarterly. 62 (3): 193–217. JSTOR 42627764.
- ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h Howell, Isabel (March 1943). "John Armfield, Slave-trader". Tennessee Historical Quarterly. 2 (1): 3–29. JSTOR 42620772.
- ^ Jump up to: a b c d "The Late Colonel John Armfield". The Tennessean. October 13, 1871. p. 3. Retrieved November 3, 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ Williams, Rodney G. (2019). "Seed of the fancy maid". In Strauss, Jill (ed.). Slavery's Descendants: Shared Legacies of Race and Reconciliation. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-1978800762.
Further reading[]
- Gower, Herschel (October 8, 2017). "John Armfield". Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. Tennessee Historical Society.
- Ball, Edward (November 2015). "Retracing Slavery's Trail of Tears". Smithsonian.
- Natanson, Hannah (September 14, 2019). "They were once America's cruelest, richest slave traders. Why does no one know their names?". The Washington Post.
- 1797 births
- 1871 deaths
- American people of English descent
- American slave traders
- People from North Carolina
- People from Grundy County, Tennessee
- Sewanee: The University of the South people
- 19th-century American businesspeople
- American slave owners