John Armfield

John Armfield

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Armfield
• https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7661778/john-armfield
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/09/14/they-were-once-am...

The original John Armfield, who was a strict Quaker and school teacher, came to America in 1695 from Northern England. By 1718 he and his wife were living in Philadelphia. He taught school in Bucks County for several years. The Armfields were the parents of five sons and three daughters. The sons were William, John, Robert, Isaac, and Thomas. By 1760 John had left Philadelphia and gone to North Carolina, settling in a log house near Greensboro. William had seven sons: Robert, William, Nathan, Solomon, Jonathan, David, and John. Nathan was the father of John Armfield of Beersheba, b. 1797, d. 1871.

According to tradition, Isaac Franklin, the prosperous slave-trader, found John Armfield driving a stagecoach and took him in as a business partner with headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia.

terpconnect.umd.edu/~calmon/FirstFamiliesRev.doc

John Armfield, slave trader and businessman, descended from North Carolina Quakers who were Loyalists during the American Revolution. While still a boy, Armfield ran away from home, vowing not to return until he had acquired more wealth than his father, Nathan Armfield. In the 1830s, Armfield fulfilled his vow as the partner of slave trader Isaac Franklin.

With headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, Franklin and Armfield conducted gangs of chained and shackled slaves down the Natchez Trace and sold them in the slave pen on the edge of that Mississippi town. The arduous journey took seven or eight weeks, but wealthy cotton planters paid Franklin and Armfield well for their traffic in African flesh. Armfield's biographer, Isabel Howell, estimated that the pair averaged sales of twelve hundred slaves per year for every year from 1828 to 1835.

In 1831 Armfield courted and married Franklin's niece, Martha Franklin. A rich man when he retired in 1845, Armfield soon acquired social acceptance and began investing in Tennessee real estate. About 1850 he visited Beersheba Springs, a resort on Broad Mountain in Grundy County. Taken by the beauty of the springs and the possibility for development, Armfield purchased several hundred acres in 1854 and began renovations on the hotel. With its neo-classical facade, two-story galleries, and white columns, the hotel opened in May 1856 and inaugurated the glorious era of Beersheba--and Armfield's success as host and entrepreneur. Armfield also erected a saw mill, a brick kiln, a grist mill, and a tannery, remnants of which survive. An Episcopal supporter of the proposed University of the South, Armfield built cottages at Beersheba for Bishops James H. Otey and Leonidas Polk in 1859. Both houses still stand, along with the hotel and twelve other structures.

Armfield died childless in 1871, his fortune diminished by the Civil War. He is buried in the little private cemetery on Armfield Avenue across the road from his Beersheba home on the bluff.

http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=32

Mother: Jane FIELD b: BEF 1790

Spouse: Martha R. Franklin Armfield 1815–1904 (m. 1834)

Partner in highly successful and one of the largest pre-Civil War slave trading businesses "Franklin & Armfield" in Alexandria, Virginia. Estimated 8,000 slaves were sold and distributed throughout the Deep South during the firm's operation.

Armfield was instrumental in founding the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee.

He owned popular Beersheba Springs Resort in Grundy County, Tennessee, following the close of the slave trading business.

• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Jan 14 2020, 21:35:49 UTC

  ---

https://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=kak&id=I4786 ID: I4786 Name: John ARMFIELD Sex: M Birth: ABT 1790 Occupation: Slave trader for firm Franklin and Armfield. Residence: Grundy Co., TN. Burial: Grundy Co., TN.

Note: During the Civil War he became quite wealthy as a slave trader. Raised several nieces and nephews.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Armfield

John Armfield (1797-1871) was an American slave trader. He was the co-founder of Franklin & Armfield, "the largest slave trading firm" in the United States. He was also the developer of Beersheba Springs, and a co-founder of Sewanee: The University of the South.

Early life

John Armfield was born in 1797 in North Carolina to Quaker parents. He was of English descent.

Career

Armfield took up slave trading in the 1820s. For example, he sold a slave in Natchez, Mississippi in 1827. In 1828, Armfield and his uncle by marriage, Isaac Franklin, formed the partnership of Franklin & Armfield to buy slaves in the mid-Atlantic states (Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware) and re-sell them in the newly opened territories of the deep south. They dissolved the partnership in 1835 and sold the business to one of their agents, George Kephart. Armfield retired to Central Tennessee in 1835.

Armfield settled Gruetli, a Swiss settlement in Grundy County, Tennessee. He also developed the resort of Beersheba Springs in Grundy County, Tennessee in 1855. Additionally, he was involved in the founding of Sewanee: The University of the South.

Personal life and death

Armfield married Martha Franklin, Isaac Franklin's niece, in 1831. Armfield joined the Episcopal Church, and his wife converted from the Presbyterian faith to Episcopalianism for him. The family attended Christ Church Cathedral in Nashville, Tennessee, as did Bishop Leonidas Polk, with whom Armfield was a close friend. Another one of Armfield's close friends was John M. Bass, the mayor of Nashville.

Armfield died on September 20, 1871 in Beersheba Springs.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Armfield_John_1797-1871

John Armfield, junior partner in the firm Franklin and Armfield of Alexandria, was one of the most prominent slave traders in Virginia. Born in North Carolina, he worked as a stagecoach driver before meeting Isaac Franklin and joining him in the business of selling enslaved men, women, and children for profit. In Alexandria, Armfield operated a slave-jail complex on Duke Street, gathering enslaved people from across the Upper South for shipment south, often on coastal brigs that landed in New Orleans. Many slaves then took Mississippi River paddleboats north to Natchez, Mississippi, where Franklin kept his office. The firm sold an average of 1,200 enslaved people per year, mostly young men and women either without families or separated from them, for profits of as much as $100,000 per year. Both Franklin and Armfield became rich, leaving the business in 1836. Armfield eventually moved to Tennessee, where he established a resort community at Beersheba Springs and became a founding trustee of the University of the South, in Sewanee. The American Civil War (1861–1865) helped destroy his fortune, which shrank from $500,000 in 1850 to less than $60,000 in 1870. He died in 1871.

Early Years

John Armfield was born in 1797 in Guilford County, North Carolina, the son of Nathan Armfield and Polly Dempsey Armfield. The couple also had two daughters, while another son died at the age of sixteen. The Armfields descended from a Quaker immigrant from England and were Loyalists during the American Revolution (1775–1783). John Armfield's grandfather was disowned from his local meeting in 1785, possibly for having taken up arms in the cause. The family was allowed to rejoin in 1799.

Nothing is known of John Armfield's childhood and education. The family owned at least one slave and were not listed among the local Quakers. On some unknown date, Armfield left home and worked as a stagecoach driver.

About 1824 Armfield met Isaac Franklin, and the two traveled together to Sumner County, Tennessee, just north of Nashville. Franklin had been working as a slave trader since 1810, and he took Armfield on as his partner. The earliest known record of Armfield selling a slave dates to 1827, in Natchez, Mississippi. The next year, the two founded Franklin and Armfield, with Franklin based in Natchez and Armfield in Alexandria, Virginia. In 1831, Armfield married Franklin's sixteen-year-old niece, Martha Franklin. They had no children. At some point Franklin had joined the Episcopal Church, and his wife, raised a Presbyterian, joined, too.

Slave Trader

Franklin and Armfield became one of the largest slave-trading firms in the South. Smaller traders—sometimes, as in the case of Silas Omohundro, acting as agents on the firm's behalf—purchased enslaved men, women, and children across the Upper South and sent them to Alexandria. There they were held at the complex run by Armfield and located at 1315 Duke Street, on the city's outskirts. An elegant, three-story building with two chimneys fronted Duke Street. Armfield's offices were on the ground floor and the residence was upstairs, while the enslaved prisoners, awaiting sale or transportation south and segregated by sex, were kept in a two-story wing attached to the house. Various other buildings, including a kitchen, tailor's shop, and hospital, as well as a courtyard, were all hidden behind a whitewashed wall.

While the Upper South had an abundance of enslaved labor, the Lower South was always in short supply and planters there paid the best prices. Franklin and Armfield regularly sent its slaves south, either overland to Franklin's office in Natchez, a trip that took seven to eight weeks by foot, or by sea. The latter method, a Franklin and Armfield innovation, was quicker, more reliable, and allowed for more precise scheduling. And ships making a return voyage could be laden with sugar, molasses, whiskey, or cotton, for sale and additional profits. By 1829, Franklin and Armfield owned the coastal brig United States, and within six years had purchased at least three more: the Tribune, the Uncas, and the Isaac Franklin. Vessels initially departed once a month but soon began making runs every other week, landing in New Orleans. Slaves bound for Natchez would be met by the firm's associate Rice C. Ballard, who sent them upriver by paddleboat. In January 1831, the Comet, a coastal brig carrying 164 enslaved people, including 76 owned by Franklin and Armfield, wrecked in the Bahamas. While waiting on repairs in Nassau, 11 slaves escaped, were captured but then declared free by the British governor. The firm eventually collected $37,555 in insurance claims on the enslaved people it lost.

Between 1828 and 1835, Franklin and Armfield sold an average of 1,200 enslaved people per year. Those who traveled south by boat, by law, had their names and ages recorded. A statistical analysis by the historian Donald Sweig indicates that most of the slaves transported by the firm during these years were young men and women, without families. More than 80 percent of the women had no husbands and most had no children. The great majority were under twenty-five years old. Almost half of the women were under sixteen. Prior to 1829, when Louisiana law prohibited it, the firm sold enslaved children under the age of ten. From 1833 to 1835, probably in response to pressure from abolitionist and more moderate antislavery groups, or from local planters who themselves felt social pressure, the firm avoided separating family groups. While families were always a small part of the business—at times totaling about 7 percent of all sales—that percentage doubled during those years.

The rewards for this business were enormous. In the year from 1831 to 1832, the firm counted $250,000 in bills receivable, and profited as much as $100,000 per year. Isaac Franklin became a millionaire while Armfield, the firm's junior partner, was worth about half that. Both men sought to cultivate a polished and gentlemanly air, which was at odds with the popular and socially restricting notion that slave traders were involved in a dirty, disreputable business.

On July 24, 1835, the abolitionist and lexicographer Ethan A. Andrews visited the firm's Alexandria offices and described Armfield as "a man of fine personal appearance, and of engaging and graceful manners." That same year, the British geologist G. W. Featherstonhaugh encountered Armfield while traveling. He was "a queer, tall animal about forty years old," Featherstonhaugh wrote, "with dark black hair cut round as if he were a Methodist preacher, immense black whiskers, a physiognomy not without one or two tolerable features, but singularly sharp, and not a little piratical and repulsive."

In November 1836, Franklin and Armfield's last shipment, consisting of 254 enslaved people, went to New Orleans aboard the Isaac Franklin. Soon after, the two men sold their firm and its ships. The residence and slave jail on Duke Street went to George Kephart, their agent in Frederick, Maryland. Early in the 1850s it was sold to the slave-trading firm of Price, Birch, and Company, which owned it at the time Union troops first occupied the city in 1861, during the Civil War.

Later Years

Isaac Franklin quit trading and purchased six properties in Louisiana and one in Tennessee, totaling more than 10,600 acres worked by 700 enslaved people. When he died unexpectedly, on April 27, 1846, his estate was worth between $500,000 and $750,000. At the time, Armfield and his wife had been living with the Franklin family in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana. Armfield preserved the body in whiskey and transported it to Franklin's native Tennessee. Armfield and Franklin's father-in-law served as executors of Franklin's estate, and disputes involving the disbursement led to a lawsuit that was not settled until 1854, in Armfield's favor.

By 1849, Armfield and his wife had settled in Sumner County, Tennessee. He purchased 339 acres and a two-story brick house—an estate called Hard Times and later Grasslands—for $6,000. He added a house and mill for another $6,000. A year later the property had slimmed to 300 acres of improved land, worked by fifteen slaves. At the same time Armfield remained active in business, working as a cotton broker in New Orleans while handling the settlement of assets for the defunct company Franklin had created with Rice Ballard.

In 1854, Armfield purchased the highland town of Beersheba Springs, in Grundy County, Tennessee, to develop as a resort. He and his wife moved there a year later and Armfield used the venture to develop high-level contacts with members of the business and planter elite who stayed there. He built houses for two Episcopal bishops, the future Confederate general Leonidas Polk and James Hervey Otey, the latter of whom in March 1857 offered Armfield a seat on the board of trustees of the new University of the South. Armfield used that position, along with a donation of $25,000 per year (probably over two years) for the construction and maintenance of buildings, to influence the selection of the university's location near Beersheba Springs. Now popularly known as Sewanee, the University of the South was founded on July 4, 1857, in part as a refuge from northern and, in particular, antislavery influences.

During the Civil War, Armfield paid to equip a company of Confederate volunteers. In 1869, he helped promote Beersheba Springs as the site of a colony of Swiss immigrants. His business, meanwhile, suffered from the effects of the war and his fortune shrank, from $500,000 in 1850 to just $57,670 in available assets twenty years later.

Armfield died at his home in Beersheba Springs on September 20, 1871. He was buried in a nearby private cemetery.

Time Line

1797 - John Armfield is born in Guilford County, North Carolina.

ca. 1824 - John Armfield meets the slave trader Isaac Franklin and travels to Sumner County, Tennessee, with him.

1827 - John Armfield files a bill of sale for an enslaved person in Natchez, Mississippi.

1828 - The slave-trading firm of Franklin and Armfield is established, with offices in Alexandria, Virginia, and Natchez, Mississippi.

1828–1835 - The firm of Franklin and Armfield sells an average of 1,200 enslaved people per year.

1829 - By this year the firm of Franklin and Armfield owns the United States, a coastal brig for transporting enslaved people south.

1831 - John Armfield and Martha Franklin, the sixteen-year-old niece of Armfield's business partner, Isaac Franklin, marry. They will have no children.

January 1831 - The Comet, a coastal brig en route to New Orleans and carrying 164 enslaved people, including 76 owned by Franklin & Armfield, wrecks in the Bahamas. While waiting on repairs in Nassau, 11 slaves escape, are captured but declared free by the British governor.

1835 - By this year, Franklin and Armfield owns at least four coastal brigs for transporting enslaved people south: the United States, the Tribune, the Uncas, and the Isaac Franklin. The firm's ships left every two weeks for New Orleans.

November 1836 - Franklin and Armfield's last shipment consists of 254 enslaved people sent to New Orleans aboard the Isaac Franklin. Soon after the owners sell the firm.

April 27, 1846 - Isaac Franklin dies in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana.

1849 - By this year John Armfield and his wife are settled in Sumner County, Tennessee.

1850 - John Armfield owns 300 acres of improved land, fifteen slaves, twelve horses, and six cows in Sumner County, Tennessee.

Early 1850s - The slave jail on Duke Street in Alexandria, formerly owned by Franklin and Armfield, is sold to the slave trading firm of Price, Birch, and Company.

1854 - John Armfield purchases the highland town of Beersheba Springs, in Grundy County, Tennessee, to develop as a resort.

1855 - John Armfield and his wife move to Beersheba Springs, in Grundy County, Tennessee.

March 1857 - The Episcopal bishop James Hervey Otey offers John Armfield a seat on the University of the South's board of trustees.

July 4, 1857 - The University of the South is founded in Tennessee in part as a refuge from northern and, especially, antislavery influences.

January 4, 1859 - John Armfield pledges $25,000 per year to the University of the South for the construction and upkeep of its first buildings on the condition it be built near Beersheba Springs.

September 1861 - John Armfield pays to equip Company A of the 5th Tennessee Volunteer Infantry Regiment.

1869 - Swiss immigrants settle near Beersheba Springs, Tennessee, with encouragement from John Armfield.

April 20, 1870 - John Armfield writes his will while visiting a friend in Nashville, Tennessee.

September 20, 1871 - John Armfield dies at his home in Beersheba Springs, Tennessee. He is buried in a private cemetery nearby.

Son of JOHN FRANKLIN & ELIZABETH RAWLINGS

Married: May 23, 1831, ELIZABETH ALLCORN CAGE, Sumner Co., Tennessee
Two children:
1. Jane Blanche FRANKLIN
2. James FRANKLIN* Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Mar 13 2024, 4:35:42 UTC