John Carruthers Stanly

Stanly was the illegitimate son of privateer John Wright Stanly and half-brother to U.S. Congressman John Stanly. He became known as one of the largest slave owners in North Carolina and the wealthiest free black resident. Even though he himself was born a slave, Stanly had used his intelligence and family ties to become a successful entrepreneur, land developer, and plantation owner. In fact, Stanly "became not only the largest slave owner in Craven County, and one of the largest in North Carolina, but he owned more than twice as many slaves as the second largest free Negro slave owner in the South."[1] He was a key member of this prominent mixed-race family in New Bern, North Carolina which included his granddaughter, Sara G. Stanley, who would eventually become one of the first African-American women to attend Oberlin College in Ohio, and John Patterson Green, his great-nephew, who is known as the “Father of Labor Day”.[2][3]

John C. Stanly's father, John Wright Stanly, was a renowned gambler, counterfeiter, and eventually a licensed privateer who made his riches during the American Revolutionary War by stealing property from the English.[2][4] John C. Stanly's mother was an Ebo slave, who was born off the West Coast of Africa, in the region of Nigeria, and brought to America on a ship owned by John Wright Stanly. Because of the status of his African-American mother, Stanly was born a slave. However, unlike many other children born under similar circumstances, his father acknowledged him as a relation in their community of New Bern.

Upon his father's death, Stanly inherited some money, but not his freedom. His ownership at some point was transferred over to his father's neighbor and business partner, Alexander Stewart, who captained the ship that brought Stanly's mother from Africa, and his wife Lydia.[1] It is often incorrectly claimed that he was manumitted by the General Assembly of North Carolina in 1808.[1] However, he was actually manumitted thirteen years earlier at age 21 in 1795 by his owners and, by then, adopted by the Stewart family.[2] The controversy is probably the result of Stanly's dissatisfaction at simply being freed and wishing to be declared free, which was a different legal status. During this era, the freedom of black people was constantly changing and ambiguous. To establish legal clarity to protect his growing family wealth, Stanly petitioned the General Assembly multiple times to confirm him and his sons' "emancipated and set freed" with "all the rights and privileges of free persons of mixed blood".[1]

Stanly used the state's court system many times. He resolved disputes, served as an estate's trustee multiple times, and registered many written agreements with white people with the court. He was known as someone who would stand his ground and fought to maintain ownership over his family's property and had a reputation for fairness.[1]

Over the course of his life, he formed close relationships with a few notable prominent white community members, including Lydia Stewart and the lawyer-politician John H. Bryan; but most notable was his relationship with his half-brother, John Stanly Jr. Born the same year as John C., both brothers appear to have maintained an unusually long-lasting close personal and business relationship over many years.[1]

One of the few business opportunities for freed slaves was becoming a barber. Before he was released from their care, the Stewarts made sure Stanly was educated and trained as a barber so he could support himself.[2] Historian Loren Schweninger, who wrote an extensive article about Stanly's career, described when Stanly was hired out as an apprentice barber, he was considered "intelligent, quick-minded, and hardworking."[1] After he received his freedom and small inheritance, Stanly opened his own barber shop that catered to the wealthy white business people and politicians who were friends of his well-known family. He was popularly known as “Barber Jack.”[2] Stephen F. Miller, a local lawyer, described Stanly at the time as "a man of dignified presence" of whom "no citizen of Newbern would hesitate to walk the streets with him."[1] Although Stanly's barbershop was very successful, providing haircuts were not that profitable. Stanly began amassing his wealth primarily by "discounting bank notes"; basically he loaned money to white people who, for a variety of reasons, did not want the stigma of getting a loan from a bank.[1]

New Bern was an important trading center receiving ships filled with raw goods from the Caribbean and manufactured items from New England, Europe, and Africa. Because of its prime location and his unique cultural circumstances, Stanly was able to weather the economic ups and downs in the post-American Revolutionary Era, including a severe outbreak of yellow fever in the 1790s.

Owning the only barbering facilities in town eventually allowed Stanly to hire two slave apprentices, known as Brister and Boston, to run his shop while he began to occupy his time buying parcels of real estate both in town and in the rural surrounding communities around 1798.[1] His first purchase of property was from William Berry, a white man, for only thirty shillings.[1] However, over the next several years, he paid an increasing amount for properties that soon ran from the hundreds to the thousands of dollars. Schweninger noted that Stanly attended auctions to buy land that was confiscated by the county because of back taxes which were owed. By his early thirties, he had a reputation for being a sharp businessman with "significant property holdings".[1] He not only bought property, but when he saw he could make a profit, he would sell it.

Stanly used his revenues to purchase freedom for family members and free others close to him, including his wife and five children. He also rented houses, had income from cotton sales, and attended chattel sales like his white neighbors to purchase slaves. According to Schweninger, state records report that Stanly owned 127 slaves by 1820.[1] These people did a myriad amount of work including working at his barber shop and on his two plantations on Bachelor's Creek along the Neuse River. He loaned out the labor of his slaves for a profit in addition to making money manufacturing and exporting turpentine.[1] Stanly spent a considerable amount of time and money buying and then freeing family members, for example his brother-in-law John Merrick and several slaves owned by familiar white families like the Stewarts. He also took dozens of underage slaves under his guardianship, providing them with jobs and places to live; however, Schweninger was clear to state that "Stanly rose to a position of wealth and prestige through his ownership and use of slave laborers."[1] On one of his properties, Hope Plantation, Stanly hired three white overseers.[1] She also notes that "Stanly differed little from his white neighbors" in his treatment of his slaves. His male slaves were worth twice that of his female slaves, so maintaining families would have been difficult, and Schweninger's research determined that Stanly was not averse to selling his slaves' family members.[1]

By the 1850s, Stanly had amassed property worth approximately $21,200 which "would have placed him in the top one half of one percent among white men" in the South and the nation.[1] Schweninger believed part of his ascendancy was in no small part to his "amicable and close relations with Craven County white [people]." (184) After the Denmark Vessey slave uprising scandal in 1822, southern legislatures enacted new restrictions and controls on slaves and freed blacks. However, Stanly's wealth and family connections isolated him from many of these changes. Schweninger also explained that when Stanly "felt he [was] being treated unfairly, Stanly was not [averse] to using the court system to defend his rights as a property owner."[1]

By the time Stanly had entered his seventies, he was only able to hold on to a few tracts of land on which he ran a small plantation composed of seven slaves. However, upon his death in 1846, his reputation remained as high as ever. He was considered by many of his white neighbors to be no different from them.[1]