Free laborers and slaves hired by the month

The laborers hired by the year, principally slaves, were evidently not kept on payrolls. Their wage did not vary unless they were absent for over a week. As these 1796 payrolls for overseers and laborers show, overseers and free laborers were on payrolls and during the building season monthly hires, usually more free laborers than slaves, were added to the payrolls.

The March 1796 payroll lists three overseers, including John S. Slye, who was hired by the commissioners as a reward for bringing 30 hired slaves to the city. Obviously those slaves, paid by the year, are not on this monthly payroll. One of the two laborers on the payroll, Jeremiah Holland, was, I think, the laborer referred to in a 1795 note as "Jerry the black man." 

The April payroll is as spare as the one in March and Slye is not on it. My guess is that he left or was fired.

I copied the July and August 1796 payrolls for overseers and laborers which shows how the number of laborers swelled. Also two new overseers are listed: William White and Samuel Smallwood. The July payroll shows that laborers got a raise in the middle of the month from 60 Maryland shillings a month to 75. However in the spring of 1797 they would again make 60 shillings a month so the raise was probably an inducement to continue working during the hot months.

These payrolls do not segregate the free laborers paid by the month from the slaves. Although members of the same family did work together, usually men with the same second name listed together were slaves and that the last name they shared is the last name of the master. Unfortuntely,  many of the payrolls were bigger than the photocopy machine at the Archives so I did not always include the signature of the person who received the monthly wages.

In my book I list hired slaves, masters, black laborers and white laborers so there you can find my ideas on the status of all the men on these payrolls. Below the 1796 payrolls, I show a scanned photocopy of a May 1797 payroll showing how a master or his agent signed for the receipt of his slaves' wages. The two men listed with Burnes as the last name were slaves of James Burnes.