Unearthing Their Lives: Documenting the Evolution of African American Life at Clover Bottom and Beyond

Summary

Recent excavations at Clover Bottom Plantation are contributing new information to a rich documentary record of the lives of enslaved and later freed African Americans who lived and/or worked there. Clover Bottom Plantation was owned by the Hoggatt family for the majority of its nineteenth-century history. At its peak, it was home to 60 enslaved individuals who were listed, but remained unnamed in the 1860 census. Through a comparative study of available primary sources and newspaper accounts, this paper traces these individuals and their descendants through several generations as they continued to live at Clover Bottom as tenant farmers and domestic servants. In addition, it considers the lives of these African American families beyond Clover Bottom, documenting their connections to other Hoggatt plantations as well as to free African American communities near Nashville. 

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Public History in the Clover Bottoms: An Interdisciplinary Study of Community Enslavement and Emancipation   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2016

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 935