A death certificate’s domicile field ties freed descendants to slaveholder land

Evidence

In a miraculous discovery, George Thompson’s death certificate reveals that he lived and died in Columbia, that his mother was Tena, and his father was Renty. But most remarkably, the certificate determines the domicile of the decedent as “Arthurtown,” which, prior to 1871, was land owned by Benjamin Franklin Taylor. George Thompson’s death record offers a very compelling argument. It points to a kinship between the Taylors and Thompsons; even more incredibly, this record places my ancestors not only in Columbia but on land owned by the slave owner Benjamin Franklin Taylor. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 1155

Categorization

• CANDY: The detail that a post-Emancipation death certificate named ‘Arthurtown’ as domicile — land the family stayed on after slavery — is a striking, condensed fact.
• ADDENDUM: Ties into the reader’s ‘Grafting & Growth’ frame loosely, but more directly shows how records keep enslaved families rooted to slaveholder geography — a mechanism of the afterlife of slavery.