The Will of Samuel Townsend, UA Digital Collections

During class Monday we had the opportunity to visit the Hoole Special Collections Library on the UA campus. This special library is not just a collection of old books, though. The folks at Hoole collect and manage pictures of artifacts, rare photos, correspondences, recordings and most anything else that can help tell about the past. They also manage the UA Libraries' Digital Collections. 

In this case, the library has maintained and photographed the will of Samuel Townsend, a plantation owner in Madison county in the mid 1800s. His lawyer, Septimus Cabaniss, drafted his will, which was very controversial at the time. 

The will, which called for certain of Townsend's slaves to manumitted out of the south, named those slaves as Townsend's heirs. There is speculation as to whether or not the slaves mentioned were Townsend's children. 

The collection also includes a deposition by Cabaniss about his role in establishing the estate and documents referring to the slaves' possible manumittance in Ohio. Wills like this one can help historians discover the common (or in this case, uncommon) practices of land-owners in the mid 19th century.