for wages when they needed service.
It was this readiness which made their presence in many cases welcome in a
neighborhood. A memorial signed by thirty-eight citizens of Essex County,
Virginia, in 1842 in behalf of a freedman might be paralleled from the
records of many another community: "We would be glad if he could be
permitted to remain with us and have his freedom, as he is a well disposed
person and a very useful man in many respects. He is a good carpenter, a
good cooper, a coarse shoemaker, a good hand at almost everything that is
useful to us farmers."[47] Among the free negroes on the seaboard there was
a special proclivity toward the water pursuits of boating, oystering and
the like.[48] In general they found a niche in industrial society much on
a level with the slaves but as free as might be from the pressure of
systematic competition.

[Footnote 41: F.N. Watkins, "The Randolph Emancipated Slaves," in _DeBow's
Review_, XXIV, 285-290.]

[Footnote 42: _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 126.]

[Footnote 43: S.M. Hamilton ed., _Letters to Washington_, IV, 239.]

[Footnote 44: Carter MSS. in the Virginia Historical Society.]

[Footnote 45: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 155.]

[Footnote 46: _E. g_., F. Cumming, _Tour to the West_, reprinted in
Thwaites ed., _Early Western Travels_, IV, 336.]

[Footnote 47: J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, p. 153.]

[Footnote 48: _Ibid_., p. 150.]

Urban freemen had on the average a somewhat higher level of attainment than
their rural fellows, for among them was commonly a larger proportion of
mulattoes and quadroons and of those who had demonstrated their capacity
for self direction by having bought their own freedom. Recruits of some
skill in the crafts, furthermore, came in from the country, because of
the advantages which town industry, in sharp contrast with that of the
plantations, gave to free labor. A characteristic state of affairs is shown
by the official register of free persons of color in Richmond County,
Georgia, wherein lay the city of Augusta, for the year 1819[49]. Of the
fifty-three men listed, including a planter and a steamboat pilot, only
seven were classed as common laborers, while all the rest had specific
trades or employments. The prosperity of the group must have been but
moderate, nevertheless, for virtually all its women were listed as workers
at washing, sewing, cooking, spinning, weaving or market vending; and
although an African churc