My husband was a slave of de Sloans and didn't get to see me as often as he wanted to, and of course, as de housemaid then, dere was times I couldn't meet him, clandestine like he want me. Us had some grief over dat, but he got a pass twice a week from his marster, Marse Tommie Sloan, to come to see me…Sam was a field hand and drive de wagon way to Charleston once a year wid cotton, and always bring back something pretty for me.George P. Rawick, The American Slave : A Composite Autobiography, Vol. 2, Part 1 (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1972), 300.

Historians have found it difficult to assess the extent and nature of slavecross-plantation marriages (that is, where husband and wife lived ondifferent slaveholdings). This is largely because white sources give nobasis for estimating their scale or character. Estate papers and businessrecords often list slaves belonging to a particular owner, but such listsgive no indication of spouses and other relatives of those slaves whomight belong to neighbours. Similarly, except for scattered comments onvisiting privileges given to certain slaves, or references to the possibleadvantages and inconveniences of allowing slaves to marry off theplantation, owners took little interest in the vigour of such unions.