From Slavery to Freedom in Boone-Duden Country

by Bob Brail

Federal population censuses are a treasure house of information. A researcher can discover, depending on the specific census, names, ages, incomes, literacy, vocations, property ownership, length of marriages, birthplaces, education, and so forth for all the individuals living in very specific areas, such as townships. These censuses are also valuable in determining what changes occurred from census year to census year.

This revelation of change over a period of several decades is certainly seen in the study of census data for blacks living in the Boone-Duden area from 1860 to 1900. During this forty year period, which began before Missouri abolished slavery in 1865, and ended two generations later, blacks in Dardenne, Callaway, and Femme Osage Townships in St. Charles County, and Charrette Township in Warren County, made great strides forward in property ownership and literacy, but almost no movement from farming to any kind of skilled labor.

In the 1860 slave census, taken several months before the advent of the Civil War, only nine free blacks lived in the previously mentioned townships. The only family unit lived near Cottleville: Daniel Ricks (age 45), a laborer, and his wife Rachel (40) were both illiterate. They had three children: Ann (15), Matilda (3), and Mary (1). This free black family owned real estate valued at $400. They were the only blacks in the Boone-Duden area who owned land in 1860. Other free blacks were laborers from Missouriton: Charrette Stiel (50), Robert Johnson (20), and Judge Stiel (6). Strother Han (Ham?) (14) was a free black boarding in Marthasville.

Of course, the overwhelming majority of blacks who lived in this area in 1860 were slaves. To be exact, 1,031 slaves resided in the Boone-Duden area in 1860, which meant that free blacks made up less than one percent of the black population. The slave population was 403 in Dardenne Township, 312 in Callaway Township, 222 in Femme Osage Township, and 94 in Charrette Township. No census taker bothered asking slaves about literacy or property ownership.

By 1870 slavery was five years in the past. The population census from that year indicates progress in some areas, yet stagnancy in others, with a significant decrease in the black population in this area. Blacks numbered 720 compared to 1040 in 1860. Of these 720 persons, 350 were age fifteen and younger. There is no way of knowing how many of the 720 had been enslaved in the four townships, but it is safe to conclude that a large number of former slaves moved away. The exception to this exodus was Charrette Township which had 96 black residents in 1870 compared to 95 ten years earlier. It is possible that blacks in that township felt a stronger possibility of advancement: the only blacks in the Boone-Duden area who owned property in 1870 lived in this township. These same individuals were also the only blacks in the Boone-Duden area to have vocations in something other than farm labor. The were Nic Callaway (40), his wife Harriette (30), and their three children, who lived in Marthasville. Callaway was an illiterate carpenter who owned $500 of real estate. John Brown (40), his wife Emily (35), and their child lived in Holstein. Brown was an illiterate teamster who owned $500 of real estate. Living with the Browns was another teamster, James Bibbs (30), who could read and write. About 4,000 black Missourians households received land grants from the Freedman's Bureau, a federal agency which existed from 1865 through 1872, but none of these individuals lived in the Boone-Duden area.

Missouri state government “provided the legal framework for black education” in 1865 when it abolished slavery. The legislature “encouraged counties and townships to create schools for African Americans.” Townships were required to provide schools for blacks, but many local school boards refused, and there was no law to enforce the requirement. Literacy rates for blacks in the Boone-Duden area were on the rise by 1870, but only slowly. The literacy rates for adults (aged sixteen and older) in each township were as follows: Dardenne 13%, Callaway 12%, and Charrette 20%. Femme Osage, according to the census records, had a literacy rate of 73%. This figure, however, is likely inaccurate since the census taker rarely tallied literacy for the first fifty of the sixty pages that make up the Femme Osage Township census. If a ten percent literacy rate for slaves is used (a commonly accepted figure), it can be concluded that there was little improvement in literacy in Dardenne and Callaway Townships, but a doubling of the literacy rate in Charrette Township. Those three townships had a total of 40 literate adults in 1870. The literacy rate for non-whites in the United States in 1870 was 20.1 percent.

Almost every black male in Boone-Duden country in 1870 was involved in farming. Because the only two black property owners in this area in 1870 were not farmers, this means that all the blacks who were farming were sharecropping. This was not unusual for the time; “[a]t the close of the Civil War, Black Americans owned very little farmland.” Sharecropping was far from an ideal situation for the laborer but could be highly lucrative for the landowner:

Contracts between landowners and sharecroppers were typically harsh and restrictive. Many contracts forbade sharecroppers from saving cotton seeds from their harvest, forcing them to increase their debt by obtaining seeds from the landowner. Landowners also charged extremely high interest rates. Landowners often weighed harvested crops themselves, which presented further opportunities to deceive or extort sharecroppers. . . . [F]inancially distressed landowners could

rent land to African American sharecroppers, secure their debt and labour, and then drive them away just before it was time to harvest the crops.

Blacks were no longer enslaved in 1870, yet sharecropping meant that they were not much better off financially than before. This was certainly true in the four townships under discussion.

Because the 1880 census did not tally property ownership and the 1890 census was almost completely destroyed by fire, the next census to be considered is the 1900 census. The first noteworthy aspect is the decreased population of blacks in Boone-Duden country. In the 1870 census, there were 370 black adults (aged sixteen and over); the 1900 census lists only 226. This is a decrease of 39% in thirty years. However, Callaway Township actually increased its population of black adults from 94 in 1870 to 118 in 1900. The other extreme was Charrette Township which had only four black adults in 1900, down from 55 in 1870, a loss of 93%. Dardenne Township's loss was 59%, and Femme Osage Township's loss was 42%.

There were two more noteworthy changes. One was in the number of blacks who owned real estate. Only two blacks had owned real estate in 1870, and they were not farmers. By 1900 twenty-eight blacks in the four township area were farming land that they owned. This represented just over 30% of the black households in the area. The other significant change was in the literacy rate. Excluding Femme Osage Township (earlier its highly suspect 1870 literacy was mentioned), the increase in literacy among black adults was 344%. The overall black literacy rate in 1900 for the area was 62% : Dardenne, 41%; Callaway, 70%; Femme Osage, 64%; and Charrette Township, 100% (of its four adults). The literacy rate for American non-whites was 55.5% in 1900.

In spite of improvement in some areas, by 1900 there was still no diversification in the types of jobs Blacks worked. Only three employed black individuals in the 1900 census for the four townships under investigation were not working as farmers. These people were William Teeters (50) and his son Albert (17), who were both listed as stonemasons living in Femme Osage Township. Both of these men were literate, as was Maud Castlio (16), a dressmaker who boarded in Charrette Township. So in spite of improvement in the level of property ownership and literacy, Blacks in Boone-Duden country by 1900 were making little headway as practitioners of skilled labor.

Although slavery was abolished in the United States in 1865, freedom for black Americans did not bring immediate change in every area of life. While literacy rates and property ownership for black residents in Boone-Duden country increased significantly over the latter part of the nineteenth century, by 1900 the overwhelming majority of these people were farmers, just as they had been in 1870.

Sources: “The Contemporary Relevance of Historic Black Land Loss” (americanbar.org); Federal Slave and Population Censuses; “Freedmen's Bureau” (britannica.com); “National Assessment of Adult Literacy” (nces.ed.gov); Rebels on the Border: Civil War, Emancipation, and the Reconstruction of Kentucky and Missouri by Aaron Astor; “Sharecropping” (britannica.com).