If Robert Hairston’s will had been followed, the history of the South – in fact, likely the whole United States – would have been very different.
That’s the claim of Henry Wiencek, author of “The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White” (1999, St. Martin’s Griffin,and since I knew nothing of Chrillis Hairston (1845-1913) until I read his book, I’ll let Mr. Wiencek tell her story, through summary and paraphrase.
Chrillis’s story starts with that of her father, Robert Hairston (1785-1852) of Henry County, and her mother, Elizabeth Hairston (1824-1858) of Mayo River District, Patrick County.
The the white Hairstons were all slaveholders and plantation owners. Robert Hairston’s first wife was Ruth Stovall (1784-1869), the widow of Peter Wilson (1770-1815) of Berry Hill Plantation near Danville. In 1832, Robert Hairston “had done something no Hairston had ever done before – he had sent some slaves free,” wrote Wiencek (p. 87). Those six slaves had lived on the Leatherwood Plantation, and he paid their passage to and 6 months of their living expenses in the new colony of Liberia in Africa.
“Robert’s act shocked Ruth and the rest of the family,” Weincek wrote (p. 89). Around that time his wife, Ruth, had inherited 15,000 acres and several hundred slaves. Ruth and some family members indefinitely stalled the adjudication of the will, because once she officially owned it, it would have fallen under her husband’s control, because women back then had few rights.
Robert had been planning to free more slaves, but after a fight with Ruth at Berry Hill Plantation, he left her and Virginia for good. After various travels, he ended up at one of the plantations he had started several years earlier in Mississippi. (Two other of his brothers also had moved from Henry County to Lowndes County, Mississippi: Harden and John.)
For a variety of reasons, including the weather, the crops, the laws and the customs, Mississippi was a much harsher place for slaves than Virginia.
Robert lived exclusively with his servants as his household and family. He took a black servant, Elizabeth, as his wife, even though he was still married to Ruth who was back in Viriginia. He made no secret of his relationship with Elizabeth, and she wore his wedding ring.
Somewhere between 1845 and 1847 they had a daughter they named Chrillis. By all accounts, Robert, then in his 60s, was delighted to be a father. Apparently, he had intended for his daughter to be raised with respect and with wealth, but he fell sick and died while she was still a child.
He was sick with pneumonia and when it became apparent he probably would not survive, he made haste to have his will drawn up.
First Robert had his will drawn up by his nephew, George Hairston (1811-1885), who had studied law but never worked as a lawyer. Robert decreed that he would give his nephew some property and four slaves, but otherwise, Chrillis would inherit all of the slaves and all of the plantations — Leatherwood, Nashville, Coleman’s, Coxes, Hishahoma, Moore’s Bluff and Hairston’s Bend.
Robert’s brother Harden and other family members were shocked and outraged. They had been expecting to inherit his tremendous wealth (much of which was actually that of his wife, Ruth, but remember, women did not control their own destinies back then). His family members told him that that will would never stand because in Mississippi it was illegal for an enslaved black person to inherit property, and that Robert could not legally liberate his daughter from slavery in a will.
Worried for his daughter’s fate, and with the idea that if she were brought to a free state her chances at freedom and inheritance would be much better, Robert sent off for a more experienced lawyer from Aberdeen, 25 miles away, to handle his business.
However, by the next morning, Robert realized he was not going to live long enough for that other lawyer to arrive, so he called for yet another lawyer, named Gilmer, who was closer.
Gilmer arrived around 11 a.m., and Robert quickly dictated his will. It was as simple as that Chrillis be set free and inherit his entire estate.
Robert lost consciousness before he could sign the will, but Gilmer roused him, and guided his hand to help him sign it.
Robert “had turned the world upside down – a slave girl was now one of the richest women in the United States,” Wiencek wrote (p. 95).
If Robert had quietly given his half-white, half-black daughter her freedom with enough money to live well on, as other slaveholders had done, everything probably would have gone well. However, “He was dismantling his part of the Hairston empire and threatening the hegemony of America’s slaveholders,” Weincek wrote (p. 96). “News of Robert’s death hit the Virginia clan like a thunderclap.” The multiple-plantation-owning Hairston family protested in any and every way possible.
By pure happenstance, Robert’s second, unofficial wife, the black Elizabeth, was allotted to his first and legal wife, the white Ruth. The dying Robert had asked his nephew, Major George Hairston (1811-1885; the same who had prepared his first will) of Chatmoss Plantation in Henry County, to look out for his family; Major George bought Elizabeth and kept her.
Chrillis, meanwhile, mostly disappeared from history. There were accounts that she had died, and accounts that she had been sent back into slavery. The court clerk who filed Robert’s will listed Chrillis as “maintained,” instead of “manumitted” (released from slavery).
However, later records show that she married George Hairston. By then she was going by her middle name, “Elizabeth.”
The web is tangled and confusing, in part because the white Hairston family repeated the same names through the generations; Peters and Georges and Ruths and Johns and Samuels abound.
Did the mixed race Chrillis marry a white Hairston? Surely that would have been commented on quite a bit. It looks like the George Hairston she married was her father’s nephew, Major George Hairston, but to get to the bottom of that would take another several hours of digging around various sources.
For now, we’ll just remember the child Chrillis, who was granted riches beyond imagination by her plantation-owning father, but never acknowledged by the rest of her family or, apparently, by the law.
