52	WILLIAM   AND   MARY   QUARTERLY

contained only two taxable slaves; another quarter had only one. On
these, the lives of the slaves perhaps paralleled those of poor white ten-
ants. Like Mingo, Dick, and Toby, these slaves apparently operated small
family farms away from their master's home plantation. Eleven of the
thirty-seven quarters contained three or four adult slaves, while between
five and twenty taxable adults lived on the remaining fifteen. Some of
the slaves on these larger operations must have enjoyed some measure of
responsibility, status, and power.60 If it is assumed that one black on each
of the thirty-seven quarters held a position that approximated that of an
overseer, 3 percent of the slave men in the county in 1733 were so em-
ployed. To these thirty-seven should be added another handful of slaves
who lived either on the home plantations of widows with no resident
white man or on estates where adult blacks greatly outnumbered adult
whites. In such situations black men probably assumed some of the
responsibility for operating the farm and for supervising the work of
other slaves.61

A firm estimate of the number of slaves engaged in domestic service
during the 17205 is impossible, but there can be little doubt that their
ranks were swelled as the wealth and labor force of the great planters
grew. Nor is it possible to measure the number who found work at the
stores and taverns located in the several service centers (most still too
small to deserve the name of towns) that were beginning to emerge in the
region or in the minor industrial enterprises organized by wealthy planter-
merchants."2 However, when these possibilities are added to the chances
to acquire a craft or a supervisory job, it becomes reasonable to suggest

r'° For the freedom and power of men in such positions see the example of
Charles Calvert's black overseer who harbored a runaway slave for about a month
in the winter of 1728-1729, Maryland Gazette (Annapolis), Dec. 24-31, 1728, Jan.
21-28, 1729. See also Mullin, Flight and Rebellion, 171-172.

61 The tax list is in the Black Books, II, 109-124, Hall of Records. Because the list
does not distinguish slaves by sex, it has been necessary to estimate the number of
black men by applying a sex ratio of 1.500 to the total number of taxable-age slaves.

K- For examples of blacks in non-farm jobs see the references to the slaves at a
copper mine owned by John Digges and at mills owned by John Hoope and
William Wilkinson, Prince George's County Tax List, 1733, Black Books, II, 121,
and Charles County Inventories, 1717-1735, 208. See also Michael W. Robbins, "The
Principio Company: Iron-making in Colonial Maryland, 1720-1781" (Ph.D. diss.,
George Washington University, 1972), 92-93, 99-101. Mullin, Flight and Rebellion,
esp. 94-96, reports slaves working at a wide variety of jobs in 18th-century Virginia.
On the small urban centers in the region in the 17205 see Allan Kulikoff, "Com-
munity Life in an Eighteenth-Century Tobacco County: Prince George's County,
Maryland, 1730-1780" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Eastern His-
torical Geography Association, October 1973).