300, a year,
four bookkeepers at L50 to L60, a white carpenter at L120, and a white
plowman at L56. The overseer was changed three times during the five years
of the record, and the bookkeepers were generally replaced annually. The
bachelor staff was most probably responsible for the mulatto and quadroon
offspring and was doubtless responsible also for the occasional manumission
of a woman or child.

Rewards for zeal in service were given chiefly to the "drivers" or gang
foremen. Each of these had for example every year a "doubled milled cloth
colored great coat" costing 11$. 6_d_ and a "fine bound hat with girdle and
buckle" costing 10$. 6_d_.As a more direct and frequent stimulus a quart
of rum was served weekly to each of three drivers, three carpenters, four
boilers, two head cattlemen, two head mulemen, the "stoke-hole boatswain,"
and the black doctor, and to the foremen respectively of the sawyers,
coopers, blacksmiths, watchmen, and road wainmen, and a pint weekly to the
head home wainman, the potter, the midwife, and the young children's field
nurse. These allowances totaled about three hundred gallons yearly. But
a considerably greater quantity than this was distributed, mostly at
Christmas perhaps, for in 1796 for example 922 gallons were recorded of
"rum used for the negroes on the estate." Upon the birth of each child the
mother was given a Scotch rug and a silver dollar.

No record of whippings appears to have been kept, nor of any offenses
except absconding. Of the runaways, reports were made to the parish vestry
of those lying out at the end of each quarter. At the beginning of the
record there were no runaways and at the end there were only four; but
during 1794 and 1795 there were eight or nine listed in each report, most
of whom were out for but a few months each, but several for a year or two;
and several furthermore absconded a second or third time after returning.
The runaways were heterogeneous in age and occupation, with more old
negroes among them than might have been expected. Most of them were men;
but the women Ann, Strumpet and Christian Grace made two flights each, and
the old pad-mender Abba's Moll stayed out for a year and a quarter. A
few of those recovered were returned through the public agency of the
workhouse. Some of the rest may have come back of their own accord.

In the summer of 1795, when absconding had for some time been too common,
the recaptured runaways and a few other offe