Work and Slave Family Life in Antebellum Northern Virginia

Work patterns and the nature of regional agriculture defined the world of antebellum slave families in the American South. This article examines the effects that work had on the collective experiences of slave families living in Fairfax County in northern Virginia. Specifically, this study explores the consequences of work for child rearing, family time, and the development of internal family economies among slave families. A region often overlooked by historians of the antebellum South, northern Virginia was a difficult place for slave families by any standard. As this study will show, a weak agricultural sector and small slaveholdings, combined with long workdays, forced slaves to resort to shared child rearing and offered families few opportunities to be together or to develop extensive family economies.