Margaret Barber managed an estate that counted enslaved people among its property.

Evidence

While it was customary for husbands to leave their property in a trust for their widow, based on the assumption that a woman would be unable to manage the property, Cornelius left all his property to Margaret outright. Running the estate was a tall order. As Mary Mitchell notes in her book Divided Town, “A woman of less character would have sold her farm and moved into town.” By 1860, the farm had grown to include the mansion and carriage house, twenty-nine enslaved people (including many that she inherited upon the death of her husband), slave quarters, hay sheds, and hen houses. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 63