, quoting the
Lynchburg _Press_.]

A normal record is that of Fowler's plantation, the "Prairie." Virtually
all of the adult slaves were paired as husbands and wives except Caroline
who in twenty years bore ten children. Her husband was presumably the slave
of some other master. Tom and Milly had nine children in eighteen years;
Harry and Jainy had seven in twenty-two years; Fanny had five in seventeen
years with Ben as the father of all but the first born; Louisa likewise had
five in nineteen years with Bob as the father of all but the first; and
Hector and Mary had five in seven years. On the other hand, two old couples
and one in their thirties had had no children, while eight young pairs had
from one to four each.[21] A lighter schedule was recorded on a Louisiana
plantation called Bayou Cotonier, belonging to E. Tanneret, a Creole. The
slaves listed in 1859 as being fifteen years old and upwards comprised
thirty-six males and thirty-seven females. The "livre des naissances"
showed fifty-six births between 1833 and 1859 distributed among
twenty-three women, two of whom were still in their teens when the record
ended. Rhode bore six children between her seventeenth and thirty-fourth
years; Henriette bore six between twenty-one and forty; Esther six between
twenty-one and thirty-six; Fanny, four between twenty-five and thirty-two;
Annette, four between thirty-three and forty; and the rest bore from one
to three children each, including Celestine who had her first baby when
fifteen and her second two years after. None of the matings or paternities
appear in the record, though the christenings and the slave godparents are
registered.[22]

[Footnote 21: MS. in the possession of W.H. Stovall, Stovall, Miss.]

[Footnote 22: MS. in the Howard Memorial Library, New Orleans.]

The death rate was a subject of more active solicitude. This may be
illustrated from the journal for 1859-1860 of the Magnolia plantation,
forty miles below New Orleans. Along with its record of rations to 138
hands, and of the occasional births, deaths, runaways and recaptures, and
of the purchase of a man slave for $2300, it contains the following summary
under date of October 4, 1860: "We have had during the past eighteen months
over 150 cases of measles and numerous cases of whooping cough, and then
the diphtheria, all of which we have gone through with but little loss save
in the whooping cough when we lost some twelve children." This entry was i