Kith + Kin

The people enslaved by the Smith and McDowell extended family were never in a static community.  Purchases and sales heightened the natural dynamics of community growth and reduction, in addition to the continual physical movement of enslaved people to and from the locations where they performed labor. These labor sites included the Buck Hotel on corner of present day College Street and Broadway Street, livery stables, a tannery, various agricultural properties, and temporary camps built for mining or road-and-bridge building endeavors. Documents show that enslaved people were often moved around in groups. It is unclear the motivations behind grouping specific individuals together, and the reasons were likely different in each situation. For the purposes of Kith + Kin, these groupings are shown in an effort to acknowledge the connections, bonds, and recognitions enslaved people found in one another as they lived together in their experience of forced captivity, whether those bonds were built over months of working together, or were formed in one salient moment of being auctioned at an estate sale.  The web below shows the known familial links and groupings of people within this enslaved community, as they are indicated in the personal and business manuscripts of the Smith and McDowell extended family.