GEORGE WASHINGTON FIELDS
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Caroline, an adjoining county of Hanover,b whose name was Washington Fields, and as was the custom, he got the consent of his Master to visit and court Martha Berkley. And, after a very limited courtship, Martha and Washington were united in marriage to each other. On the part of the owners of the slaves, courtships were usually hurried or limited because of the desire of the slaveholders to have children born so as to enlarge their holdings of slaves, who were considered in their hands as personal property or other commodities such as cattle, sheep, hogs, wheat, corn, etc.c As a result of this marriage, 11 children were born to Martha Ann, all of whom, of course, were the property of Miss Catherine, who owned other slaves numbering 75 men and women and children. Miss Catherine subsequently, after the death of her husband, married a man by the name of Phillip Winston,d who was poor and added no estate to her already valuable slave property. His treatment of the slaves was fiendish, no cruelty being too severe to be inflicted upon the helpless and defenseless slave. It was a common thing to hear the cry of the slaves rending the air as he was being whipped unmercifully by this man. The children born to Washington and Martha Fields were John, Louisa, Matilda, James, Robert, Maria, William, Betty, Mary, Catherine,
b
Actually, Taylorsville was in Hanover County, just south of Hanover Junction. From Hanover Courthouse, Taylorsville was about eight miles away when going toward Caroline County. c
Slave marriages had no legal standing, nor did they affect the slaveowners’ powers over their slaves. Most slave weddings did not involve clergy or any formalities, although they might involve rituals such as the one of African origin known as “jumping the broom.” Marriages between slaves of different plantations, called “broad marriages” as in going abroad, were not unusual. Any children belonged to the slave woman’s owner. d
This was Philip Henry Winston (1818-1863), who married Catherine Robinson Berkeley (1806-1894) on December 11, 1849. Catherine, the daughter of Nelson Berkeley, Jr. (1766-1849) and Lucy Robinson (1775-1853), seems to have acquired Martha Ann’s family in the early 1840s from Catherine’s aunt Mary “Polly” Robinson (1768-1855), who had inherited Martha Ann in the early 1830s after her original master’s death.