ere urged to take their "wives" from
among the women of the home estate, if a suitable companion could be
found. But if not they eventually secured one in the neighborhood and
the master usually allowed the slave a pass to see his wife every
night in the week. While such a cohabitation was not exactly a legal
affair most of them were held as sacred as those more legalized unions
among the master class. Many masters paid an unconscious tribute to
these unions. When there ran away a slave who had a wife living in the
neighborhood or even at a great distance the owner would make mention
of the exact locality of the wife in order that people in that region
would be on the lookout for the fugitive. J. C. Bucklin in 1824 did
not give much of a description of David, who had left his master, but
he very carefully stated that he had a "wife and children at William
Shirley's, about 16 miles from this place, on the Westport Road."[367]
An owner in Fayette county after giving a detailed picture of "Arthur"
added that "Capt. Peter Poindexter, eight miles from Lexington owns
his wife, and I expect that he will be in that neighborhood."[368] A
more extreme example was that of "Dick," a Lexington slave who ran
away to New Orleans, the owner thought, because "he has a wife living
in that city, and he has been heard to say frequently that he was
determined to go to New Orleans."[369] Such cases as this were the
logical consequence of the slavery system. They existed in Kentucky
just as in any other slave State, but they were few compared with
those slaves unions that were never broken.

It was to the economic as well as humanitarian interest of the master
to have sympathy with the peace and contentment of his servant. Thus
most of them took care that the family relationships of the slaves
should not be disturbed. Oftentimes when the owner of either a husband
or a wife was on the point of moving out of the county the masters
would get together and make a trade which would obviate any disruption
of the slave family. Under such conditions a man would part with a
servant who otherwise could not have been bought at any price. Such a
situation was possible only in a State where the personal interest in
a slave and his welfare took precedence over merely his economic value
to the owner.[370]

Charles Stewart in _My Life as a Slave_ has given us his own
experiences of home life and marriage among slaves in Kentucky. He
lived in Paris and was e