Chapter 3 of 7 · about 4 min
Freedom
What can we establish about Laura's transition from slavery to freedom between 1865 and 1870?
Experience the Evidence TableStory
Freedom changes the frame of Laura's story. In 1865, a Freedmen's Bureau register names her among people formerly enslaved by H. G. D. Brown. The clerk records Laura as twelve years old and a field labourer. This is a record of her life at the transition out of slavery, not her own account of that transition.
The Bureau oversaw work agreements after the war. Its paperwork can bring people into view by name, but it was not written to tell their whole lives. The Lucky Hit register names Hilliard, Bettie and Laura in sequence; it does not state how they were related.
What freedom meant in Laura's daily life remains harder to see. Her recorded occupation in 1865 does not tell us whether she chose that work, what she was paid, or what choices were available to her. General history helps us ask those questions. It does not answer them for Laura.
By 1870, the Copiah County census records Laura Smith, age eighteen. Hilliard, Bettie, Laura, John and Monroe appear on consecutive lines within the household beginning with Lawrence Hines: page 109 penned, dwelling 786, family 773. This is one enumerated household, not separate neighboring households.
The two records give us named appearances five years apart. They do not give us a continuous account of Laura's movements, her marriage, or any earlier separation or reunion. Her ages remain as written: twelve in 1865, eighteen in 1870.
The next chapter turns to another question: Laura's education. That investigation begins with later records, not an assumption that freedom immediately brought her schooling.
The record
Reading the record
The register and census were made for different purposes. Read each on its own terms before bringing them together.
Emancipation is historical background. Neither these records nor that background gives us Laura's personal account of becoming free.
The 1870 household entry is a dated observation, not a story of how its members came to be together. Shared enumeration does not establish biological relationships.
What we know
- The 1865 register names Laura, age 12, as formerly enslaved by Brown and records field labourer as her occupation.
- The 1870 census places Hilliard, Bettie, Laura, John and Monroe on lines 32–36 of the same Lawrence Hines household: dwelling 786, family 773.
- Laura's ages are 12 in 1865 and 18 in 1870; neither is silently corrected.
What we don't know
- Laura's experience of emancipation and the exact moment she learned she was free.
- Her pay, employment terms, schooling and daily choices between these records.
- Her movements between 1865 and 1870.
- The circumstances of any earlier separation or reunion.
- Her exact birth date; the recorded ages do not agree.
Inspect the evidence
- What does the Bureau register tell us — and why was it made?
- What was life like for Laura between 1865 and 1870?
- What can the 1870 household establish?