Lawrence of Hotel A
    by Shivani Dimri

The University of Virginia Faculty Minutes of 1837-1838 recount a variety of issues at the University ranging from student suspensions to disagreements regarding boarding at the Hotels. The Faculty Minutes from January 8, 1838 include a complaint about an enslaved adult male named Lawrence.1 Chairman of the Faculty Gessner Harrison informed those present (Professors Tucker, Emmet, Davis, Cabell, and Rogers) that “the Proctor had reported that in Mr. Conway's district the servant Lawrence had been negligent in cleaning the arcades, having swept the offall upon the Lawn, and allowed the ashes &c from the fires used in kindling in the morning to remain on the arcades for days together.”2 The hotel keeper and the professors continued the discussion of the event two days later on January 10, 1838. The Faculty found that the Proctor’s complaint of negligence occurred on a holiday week when Lawrence was absent. Hearing from both Conway and the proctor, Willis H. Woodley Sr., Harrison and his peers managed to verify that after the holiday week ended, Conway and those working for him kept Hotel A sufficiently clean.3

This certainly is not the only complaint about a slave’s behavior on record at the University. Of course, the Faculty spoke with both Conway and Woodley, but the records provide minimal insight into the experiences of the individual at the center of the quarrel, Lawrence. Slaves owned by hotel keepers performed a variety of tasks at the University including fetching water, cleaning rooms and making beds, making fires in the winter, cooking, shining students’ shoes, and running errands for students.4 Besides cleaning the arcades, Lawrence could have contributed to the operation of Hotel A by executing a number of these tasks throughout his years with the Conway’s in Charlottesville.

Different records shed more light on Lawrence’s life. Letters of the family of Professor John B. Minor offer researchers a stronger understanding of Lawrence’s life over a larger arc of time. How did Lawrence come to work at the University? What happened to him after the Conway’s no longer operated Hotel A? From these letters historians may also deduce how other enslaved individuals may have come to and left Grounds.

Edwin Conway’s wife, Mrs. Mary Jackson Dade Conway, worked alongside her husband as a hotel keeper of Hotel A from 1832 to 1845. Mrs. Conway wrote to John B. Minor, a University of Virginia law professor, in 1846 seeking legal assistance. Mrs. Conway found her family in debt and embroiled in legal battles in the years following the death of her husband in 1844. In her letters to Minor, she revealed how she came to own Lawrence in order to verify her claim to him. Lawrence and his mother, a woman named Betty Vines, became “dower [widow’s] property” of Sarah Dade, Mary Conway’s mother, after Dade’s first husband and Mary Conway’s father, Captain Frances Dade, died in 1791. Lawrence became Sarah Dade’s carriage driver and dining room servant at Oakingham, Dade’s home.5 Thus, Mary Conway inherited Lawrence and his mother after Sarah Dade’s death in 1808, approximately two years after her marriage to Edwin Conway.6

The letters also reveal Mrs. Conway’s intended plans for Lawrence. After living in Charlottesville as a hotel keeper, Mary Conway moved to Louisville, Kentucky. Conway wrote to John B. Minor that “I will repeat to you I will not sell Lawrence, I wish to hier him [in Virginia] as his wife cant be bought.”7

A pervasive practice in Virginia and in the South more widely, slave hiring was so institutionalized by the middle of the nineteenth century that hiring contracts, hiring fairs, and agents to match owners and renters had grown commonplace. Individuals also made slave hiring arrangements privately. Slaveholders rented out slaves for various reasons: to repay family debts, to pay neighbors in localized barter economies, to earn extra income, to make profit while they traveled and did not need labor at home, to punish misbehaving slaves. Single and widowed white women often relied on slave hiring as their sole or primary source of income.8 Having to negotiate with a renter each party’s authority and responsibility regarding the slaves, slaveholders sought to establish legal title to their slaves before renting them out.9

Because Conway’s ability to hire-out Lawrence hinged upon her establishing legal title to him, her letters to John B. Minor had described in detail how she came into possession of him and listed other individuals who could verify her ownership of Lawrence through time. Conway sought to rent out Lawrence instead of bringing him to Kentucky for several reasons. This hiring-out arrangement would allow Conway to pay off her various creditors with the profits gained from renting-out Lawrence. Plus, the arrangement would allow Lawrence to stay closer to his wife in Virginia. Although she did not explicitly state the following consideration in her letters, the fact that Kentucky outlawed the importation of slaves into the state during this time period may have also been an incentive to keep Lawrence in Virginia.10 The Kentucky government did not strictly enforce this law, however. In fact, Conway wrote that if she could take another one of her slaves, Jim, to Kentucky, “I can hire him for two hundred dollars a year” without expressing concern over the law.11

M. Conway’s letters to John B. Minor alongside the Faculty Minutes help us construct a longer chronology of Lawrence’s life. This information reveals how inheritance and hiring-out arrangements in the antebellum Upper South moved this enslaved individual through different owners and throughout Virginia during his lifetime.

Notes
1 Julia Munro, “----, LAWRENCE,” JUEL, http://juel.iath.virginia.edu/node/413.
2 University of Virginia, “Faculty Minutes, Session 14, 1837-1838” (January 8, 1838), University of Virginia Library.
3 University of Virginia, “Faculty Minutes, Session 14, 1837-1838” (January 10, 1838), University of Virginia Library.
4 Brendan Wolfe, “Slavery at the University of Virginia,” Encyclopedia Virginia, 2016, https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Slavery_at_the_University_of_Virginia.
5 M Conway, “M Conway to John B Minor,” June 11, 1846, John B. Minor Papers, University of Virginia Library.
6 Sarah Hall Johnston, ed., Lineage Book, vol. XLIV, 1903 (Washington, D.C.: Daughters of the American Revolution, 1917), 198.
7 Conway, “M Conway to John B Minor,” June 11, 1846.
8 Jonathan D. Martin, Divided Mastery: Slave Hiring in the American South (Harvard University Press, 2004), 8, 74–86; John J. Zaborney, Slaves for Hire: Renting Enslaved Laborers in Antebellum Virginia (Louisiana State University Press, 2012), 3, 6.
9 Martin, Divided Mastery: Slave Hiring in the American South, 191.
10 “Non-Importation Law of Kentucky, 1833,” http://www.uky.edu/~dolph/HIS316/sources/1833.html.
11 M Conway, “M Conway to John B Minor,” March 10, 1846, John B. Minor Papers, University of Virginia Library.

References: 

Conway, M. “M Conway to John B Minor,” March 10, 1846. John B. Minor Papers, University of Virginia Library.
———. “M Conway to John B Minor,” June 11, 1846. John B. Minor Papers, University of Virginia Library.
Johnston, Sarah Hall, ed. Lineage Book. Vol. XLIV, 1903. Washington, D.C.: Daughters of the American Revolution, 1917.
Martin, Jonathan D. Divided Mastery: Slave Hiring in the American South. Harvard University Press, 2004.
Munro, Julia. “----, LAWRENCE.” JUEL, http://juel.iath.virginia.edu/node/413.
“Non-Importation Law of Kentucky, 1833.” http://www.uky.edu/~dolph/HIS316/sources/1833.html.
University of Virginia. “Faculty Minutes, Session 14, 1837-1838.” Charlottesville, January 8, 1838. University of Virginia Library.
———. “Faculty Minutes, Session 14, 1837-1838.” Charlottesville, January 10, 1838. University of Virginia Library.
Wolfe, Brendan. “Slavery at the University of Virginia.” Encyclopedia Virginia, February 2, 2016. https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Slavery_at_the_University_of_Virginia.
Zaborney, John J. Slaves for Hire: Renting Enslaved Laborers in Antebellum Virginia. Louisiana State University Press, 2012.

JUEL Sources:
Faculty Minutes, Session 14, 1837 – 1838
Minor Letters, M_Conway_to_John_B_Minor_June_11_1846
Minor Letters, M_Conway_to_John_B_Minor_March_10_1846