Elisabeth "Zabette" Bernardey

Slave Property

Elisabeth sold to Robert Stafford 28 Dec 1841 Cumberland Island, Camden, Georgia

biography

from http://www.diaspora.illinois.edu/news0309/news0309-8.pdf

[Robert] Stafford's nearest neighbors were the French-speaking Bernardeys, slave-holders probably from the Caribbean. When Elizabeth Bernardey (Zabette) was about eighteen years old, she bore a daughter fathered by Robert Stafford. The small island community soon knew of his paternity. In 1841 Mrs. Bernardey sold him her girl “Zabette” and her two-year old child, Mary Elizabeth, for the nominal sum of one dollar. Zabette would be a nominal slave – a slave in name only. A special relationship underlay Stafford’s purchase, which was indicated by the language of the deed of sale. Because Elizabeth was purchased for the remarkably low price of one dollar, the document was recorded as a “deed of gift.” In the deed itself Mrs. Bernardey mentioned her gratitude to Stafford for his assistance in helping her administer her land and field hands in the past decade. Evidently Stafford had helped her run her place. Mrs. Bernardey also owed money to Stafford, who by the 1850s had become a strikingly successful grower of Sea Island cotton. Young female slaves, generally prized because they could breed more slaves, fetched higher prices. Perhaps he said he would cancel Mrs. Bernardey’s debt to him by accepting Elizabeth’s true value (about $650 or $800) and taking the young woman. ....

Stafford familiarized himself with Georgia law regarding manumission and fugitive slaves. In 1853, eight years before the Civil War, he had already completed a succession of financial maneuvers that brought his six children by Elizabeth Bernardey to Connecticut, a free state.

• 18 Elizabeth Bernardey’s children were placed at the home of Belton Copp, a close friend of Robert Stafford. Copp looked after their interests until his death in 1858.

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• page 317 of Robert Stafford of Cumberland Island: Growth of a Planter By Mary Ricketson Bullard
• Frau Doktor Nancy Stafford of Georgia: From Slave to Physician By Mary R. Bullard and Tracy Moxhay Castle. The African Diaspora Archeology Network: March 2009 Newsletter.
• Cumberland Island Researchers Aid
• Reference: MyHeritage Family Trees - SmartCopy: Oct 3 2016, 6:45:43 UTC
• Reference: FamilySearch Genealogy - SmartCopy: Oct 3 2016, 6:57:13 UTC
• Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: Oct 3 2016, 7:09:05 UTC
• Reference: MyHeritage Family Trees - SmartCopy: Oct 3 2016, 7:27:31 UTC