Banking on Slavery by Sharon Ann Murphy

Author:Sharon Ann Murphy [Murphy, Sharon Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS000000 HISTORY / General, HIS036050 HISTORY / United States / Civil War Period (1850-1877), BUS023000 BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Economic History, HIS056000 HISTORY / African American & Black
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2023-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

Outwitting Creditors through Fraudulent Conveyances

While debtor insolvency was a major problem for banks, especially after the panics, instances of fraud likewise increased substantially. For an insolvent debtor, successfully evading creditors through fraud was often preferable to starting over after declaring bankruptcy. Court dockets of the 1840s and even 1850s were thus filled with fraud cases stemming from the depression. For example, in the spring of 1837, Richard Abbey found himself deeply in debt to the Agricultural Bank of Mississippi.75 The New York State native migrated to Natchez as a teen, where he became a clerk in the dry-goods store of P. F. Merrick & Co. After a few years, “by reason of his great diligence and excellent business capacity, he rose to the headship of the establishment.”76 He subsequently married and became a leader in the Natchez community. He was an active member of the local Methodist church and of the Anti-Gambling Society, and “he helped organize the first temperance society in the Southwest.”77 In May of 1833, he was elected a director of the newly formed Natchez Shipping Company, and appointed the company’s secretary.78

Abbey bought out his partner just a month before Merrick’s unexpected death in May 1833, at the age of thirty-six. Abbey immediately began operating a new partnership called R. Abbey & Co. out of the same address “on Main Street, directly opposite the United States Bank.”79 The firm became the local agency of the Aetna Insurance Company in September 1833, and then a few months later, took on the agency of the American Hydraulic Company of Windsor, Vermont, which made fire engines.80 But the partners’ main focus was dry goods, especially “Ladies Misses and childrens” clothing, boots, and shoes.81 The firm also occasionally dabbled in other items that came its way, from small lots of printing paper and “fresh garden seed,” to “Carpeting of excellent quality and the latest and most tasty patterns” and “A First Rate Hartford-made Barouche”—a large, horse-drawn “four-wheeled carriage with a driver’s seat high in front, two double seats inside facing each other, and a folding top over the back seat.”82

In December of 1833, R. Abbey & Co. also listed for sale a cotton plantation known as the Boston plantation, “situated on the Yazoo river 8 miles above Manchester,” complete with “a good gin, convenient cabins, a good supply of plantation stock and utensils, and Sixteen Negroes, all first rate hands, between the ages of 11 and 40 years.”83 The Boston plantation had jointly belonged to his former partner Phineas Merrick and Hubbard Emerson, both natives of Massachusetts.84 Perhaps Merrick had sold out the dry-goods firm to Abbey in 1833 to become a full-time cotton planter before his sudden death; Hubbard was an absentee owner, only returning to Mississippi each winter to check on his business interests.85 After Merrick’s death, his widow (her hands already full with several small children) desired to sell the plantation, with Hubbard’s consent.86 Abbey apparently purchased it for himself, “for between eighteen and nineteen thousand dollars.”87 By

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