Note
Slavery was a fact of life, including at Rural Hill. The enormous amount of labor performed on a near-daily basis would not have been possible if it weren’t for a large group of slaves working on the property. According to census records, it can be determined that there were usually about 30 enslaved persons living at Rural Hill from 1790 up until the Civil War. Typically, about half of this number were female and about one-third were children under the age of 14. Most of what we know about the African Americans living at Rural Hill during this time comes from the farm journals of A.B. Davidson, which have recently been transcribed in their entirety. Historic Rural Hill is continuing efforts to research and highlight the lives of these former inhabitants.