Hollingsworth and Jefferson

Originally Published in the Cecil Whig

The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia will offer an exhibit this spring and summer called “Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello.” The road to slavery at Monticello, or at least a spur of it, runs right through Cecil County. To be sure, slavery was long established in both Jefferson’s Virginia and Maryland when our short story begins in 1792, but it was helped along by a relationship between Jefferson and Cecil County’s own, Jacob Hollingsworth.

The date is not certain when Hollingsworth and Jefferson met, but on July 14 and again on October 4th, 1792, Jefferson stayed at Hollingsworth’s Elkton tavern while shuttling between Monticello and Philadelphia. During those visits, the two struck up a conversation about plantation farming in general and management of plantation farms in particular. Jefferson sought a plantation overseer and Hollingsworth had the perfect candidate. The two parted ways without contact for over a month. Then, on November 16th, Jefferson wrote a letter to Hollingsworth acknowledging their conversations and wonders why he has not heard from Hollingsworth on the subject.

Hollingsworth quickly replies in a letter dated November 18th which is lost to antiquity. Four days later Jefferson writes, expressing doubts that the overseer Hollingsworth suggests might be overqualified. But Jefferson is not discouraged and makes a suggestion. “Perhaps a reasonable augmentation of price might induce him: if so and you will be so good as to let me know what advance of wages would be, I will immediately say whether it would suit me to give them.” Money talks in the 18th century too!

Jefferson notes that Monticello is similar to farms in Cecil County and the candidate would have to have similar management qualities, “because the labour with you being chiefly by Negroes, your people of course understand the method of managing that kind of laborer.”

In his December 9th reply (ripe with spelling issues), Hollingsworth confirms that, not only does he have a candidate, but he is suitable for Monticello’s “method of managing that kind of laborer.”

“A Sartain Mr. Samuel Biddle who was Born with in Five Mills of me,” Hollingsworth writes, “the young Man has been an overseear for three yeers past and I Expect nows well how to mange Neagros tho not in a very harsh manar he says he will undrtake to manage them but not with they are Reasonably fed and Clothed.”
Three days later, Jefferson writes directly to Samuel Biddle, copying Hollingsworth, laying out his terms of employment. He offers $120 per year. “The wages are a good deal higher than I expected, as Mr. Hollingsworth mentioned that the usual wages in your neighborhood were from £25. to £30. Maryland currency.” Then he notes, “I have a smith and some sawyers (someone who saws wood) who will require to be seen once a day, and the first year of your being there I shall have some people employed in finishing a canal, who will also need to be attended to.”
A new overseer is not Jefferson’s only management need. He also wants to engage tenant farmers to farm parcels of his land near Monticello. Hollingsworth suggests two candidates who want to leave Cecil County because, “Rents are so High on the Eastern Side of Elk River that they are Ditirmined to Leave the County.” These two recruits venture forth to Virginia and visit the farm land in question. Unfortunately they go without Jefferson’s knowledge. Jefferson is not happy. “I am sorry the two persons you mention to have gone to look at my lands, should have gone without asking a letter from me…. Should any others wish to go, whom you would recommend, be so good as to drop me a line….”

Finally, on June 18th, Jefferson and Biddle reach an agreement and Jefferson puts it in writing.
“It is agreed between Mr. Samuel Biddle and myself that he shall overlook certain parts of my affairs in Virginia as explained in a letter to him of Dec. 12. 1792. for which I am to pay him one hundred and twenty dollars a year. His wages are to begin the 1st. day of September next, and he is to proceed to Virginia about the middle of October.”
Biddle goes, but the honeymoon lasts less than 6 months. In February of 1794 Jefferson writes to James Madison referring to Biddle as a “poor acquisition.” According to the Research Librarian at the Jefferson Library at Monticello, Anna Berkes, the fact that Biddle lasted about a year is not unusual.

“At Monticello and Jefferson’s other major plantations, it seems that overseers typically did not stay longer than a year or two. The longest-running overseers Jefferson had,” writes Berkes, “were Gabriel Lilly (1801-1805) and Edmund Bacon, by far (1806-1822).”

What happened to cause Biddle to leave after a year is not described in any known correspondence from either Biddle or Jefferson. It is not certain where Biddle went after leaving Monticello. A Samuel Biddle appears in the 1820 and 1830 census living in Tyler, Virginia, but, based on current information, it is nearly impossible to determine if this is the same Samuel Biddle who grew up in Cecil County, Maryland, befriended a local tavern owner, and ended up working for our future third President of the United States.