Clarke County, Alabama, United States, North and Central America
Date:
January 8, 1866
Description:
A handwritten contract between Freedman Dred and Mary Josephine Rivers. The document stipulates that Dred and his child Alfred are to work for ten dollars per month for Rivers and her family in Clarke County, Alabama, with an additional five dollars per month to be paid if Dred's wife Sylvester is also capable of field work. Lodging, rations, and mending of clothes is included, and pay is to be delivered "at or by the end of this year" with deductions for doctors and medical care as well as "all lost time from slouth, sickness or otherwise, and all things furnished them not aforementioned." Dred is not to be absent without leave and faces expulsion from the property if the terms of the contract are violated. The final line of the contract appears in darker ink and states that expulsion must first be approved by the Assistant Superintendent of Freedment in Clarke County. The document is written on blue lined paper in dark ink, which is faded. Sheet is folded into quarters; body of document is interior when folded. The back or outside of the contract has written on it the signatures of Mary Josephine Rivers and of E. M. Portis, the Assistant Superintendent of Freedmen for Clarke County, Alabama. Approval is dated April 3, 1866.
