The Anti-Slavery Slaveowner: 52 Ancestors 2023 Prompt “This Ancestor Went to Market”

 

Edward Rumsey Weir: Civil War Era Man of Contradictions

Edward Rumsey Weir:  1816-1891 (Maternal First Cousin 4x Removed)

 

Edward Rumsey Weir was a conflicted man, full of moral contradictions. Although he was a slaveowner in Kentucky, owning forty human beings at the time of the 1860 census, he proclaimed himself to be anti-slavery. He worked to keep Kentucky in the Union during the Civil War, and even personally funded Home Guard units and the formation of Union companies in Kentucky. Did he undergo some sort of transformation in the years leading to the Civil War? But if so, why did he continue to own slaves?

Edward Rumsey Weir

Edward Rumsey Weir was born November 29, 1816 to parents James Weir and Anna Cowman Rumsey Weir. He was the oldest of their five surviving children, and grew up in Greenville, a town in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. His father was a successful merchant, and was able to send his two sons, Edward and James, to college and on to study law at Transylvania University.

In 1838, Edward married his first cousin, Harriet Rumsey Miller. She was the daughter of Samuel Miller and Harriet Rumsey. Harriet Rumsey was Edward’s aunt, as she was James Weir’s sister-in-law. Edward was 22, and Harriet was only sixteen when they married. The couple settled in Greenville where Edward had a legal practice. They had ten children, five of whom survived to adulthood.

Edward seemed to share his father’s business acumen. According to Otto Rothert’s A History of Muhlenberg County, Edward continued his father’s mercantile businesses following his death, although he sold some of the more distant properties. He also started a grist mill in the 1840s.

Edward also ran a large plantation. I don’t know what crop they were producing—perhaps tobacco? Edward owned 1000 acres of land, and he built a large ‘plantation home” on the portion of the property nearest to Greenville.

Despite relying on slavery to run the plantation, Edward believed slavery was wrong. As described in the next post, he became active politically as an abolitionist, risking his safety and his finances. And yet he didn’t free his slaves. His ancestor and editor noted that it may have been difficult to free his slaves in the 1850s and 1860s as the slaves would have faced a precarious future if they remained in slaveholding Kentucky. In addition, they would have been ill-equipped to relocate to a safer place in the north, and without their labor Edward would have lacked the resources to help them. I suppose Edward may have felt he was making the best choice among many terrible options.

In his memoir, Edward’s conflicted feelings about slave-owning are apparent. He wrote:

“Though slaves, they did live well and all were educated to read and write. A few received even better education. Yet, they had lived with us so long that they became part of the family. After the War, when they were free to leave, they remained in my employ and continued to live with us. There is no justification for slavery. In the South in the first half of the 19^th century, it was only through the use of slaves that one could economically operate a plantation and effectively compete with his neighbors.”

He seems to be trying to justify his ownership of these people, or at least he is trying to defend himself as a more enlightened and decent slaveowner than his neighbors. Following the war, he expressed gratitude for his slaves’ actions protecting him, his family and his property.

Edward’s anti-slavery sentiment seems to have come from his father, James Weir. The editor of Edward’s memoirs wrote that in the 1820s when Liberia became a destination for former slaves to resettle in Africa, James Weir “made the offer to his slaves to pay the passage of anyone wishing to relocate in Liberia. Several of them accepted his offer…” Edward Weir later called Liberia a “failed” experiment. Family papers that were donated to Western Kentucky University contain letters from two former Weir family slaves—probably Edward’s rather than his father’s former slaves—who had moved to Liberia. The archivist describes the letters as follows:

“Folder 17 contains two letters written to Edward R. Weir, Sr. by Lewis Ware [Weir] and E. Weir, emancipated slaves recolonized to Liberia. Lewis recounts his struggle with illness and his difficulties providing for his family because of drought, limited agriculture, lack of markets for crops, and expensive foreign imports. He asks to be sent aid in the form of clothing, shoes and foodstuffs. E. Weir’s letter is shorter but more cheerful, as he reports building a house and an “edifice,” perhaps for business.”

In addition to offering slaves the opportunity to emigrate to Liberia, Edward also gave at least three of his slaves permission to enlist in the Union Army (the Army required permission from slaveowners before accepting slave recruits). One of the three soldiers is pictured below.

Corp. Wilson Weir, Company F, 108th U.S. Colored Infantry

Edward Rumsey Weir was an interesting man, dependent upon a system of chattel slavery that he abhorred. In the next two blog posts, I will describe his political efforts to abolish slavery and to support the Union in the Civil War, and how these efforts devastated him financially.

 

Sources:

1.       "Edward Rumsey Weir, Sr." in the Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition, discovery.civilwargovernors.org/document/N00009772, (accessed September 19, 2023).

2.       Seventh Manuscript Census of the United States (1850), Slave Schedules, Kentucky, Muhlenberg County, Subdivision 2, p. 144-145.

3.       Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Slave Schedules, Kentucky, Muhlenberg County, District 2, p. 98A-B.

4.       Lewis Collins and Richard H. Collins, Collins' Historical Sketches of Kentucky, vol. X (Covington, KY: Collins & Co., 1874), 640.

5.       "Edward Rumsey Weir, Sr. (1816-1891)," Find A Grave, Memorial #71435457.

6.       Kentucky Marriage Records, Madison County Courthouse, Richmond, Kentucky, Muhlenberg County Marriages.

7.       Otto A. Rothert, A History of Muhlenberg County (Louisville, KY: John P. Morton & Company, 1913), 56-62.

8.       The Recollections of Edward R. Weir, Sr. Written 1888. Douglas B. Brockhouse, Ed. MSS 651, Manuscripts & Folklife Archives, Library Special Collections , Western Kentucky University. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?filename=2&article=5534&context=dlsc_mss_fin_aid&type=additional

9.       Source: “An old homestead sold.” The Record [Greenville, KY], 9 June 1910, page 3. Image provided by Muhlenberg County Kentucky History Group.

10.   Muhlenberg County Heritage Volume 14, Number 1. “Old Buildings” by Martha Beth Shelton.