Part 1
In September of 1856 Mr. C.F. Welcker became quite upset when he realized he had purchased an unsound Negro. He wrote to a doctor in Charleston, S.C. that he had lately become the owner of a slave woman named Becky, who was about 27 or 28 years old, and her 4 year old son, Jo (or Ja?). Mr. Welcker goes on to describe the woman’s poor health and says that, according to the slave woman, this doctor had treated her. Mr. Welcker asks for a statement as to the girl’s unsoundness, complaints, surgeries, etc. He closes his letter referring to himself “as one who wishes to deal on the square with all mankind.”
About 2 years later, in August of 1858, Mr. Welcker received a letter which gives us a clue as to what became of Becky. The letterhead of Clarke & Grubb Commission Merchants in Atlanta, Ga. described their business as agents for collections of all kinds, and dealers in bacon, lard, produce of all kinds, groceries, and etc. , consignments of every description. Apparently, they sold human beings on consignment as well, for in August of 1858 they wrote the following note to Mr. Welcker:
“We sold your Negro woman last Saturday for $400.00 It was all we could get offered.” There was no mention of her son, who by then would have been 6 years old. Such is one example of slavery in the Wheat community in the years just before the Civil War.