Inherited enslaved people funded the expansion of antebellum family enterprises.

Evidence

Around 1837, Margaret married Cornelius Barber. The following year the newlyweds purchased a seventy-three-acre estate for 3,000 (96,000 today) in the lush green hills overlooking Georgetown in Washington, DC, and turned it into a working farm they called Northview. In the years that followed, Margaret gave birth to six children. By 1850, with a growing family and a farm to take care of, the Barbers enslaved eleven people to lighten their load, eight of whom Margaret inherited from her parents. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 58

Categorization

• XREF: Shows intergenerational wealth transfer built on slaveholding—the inheritance strand linking to Brown’s case for reparations.