- Jin died in 1808 and Cato in 1825; both died as free people. Jin never left the Ashley family and Cato probably didn’t. Both never left Deerfield. They chose to remain with the Ashleys.
- Jin cooked and did housework, all of which was done for the Ashleys.
- Cato’s work: reaping oats, picking corn, haying, husking, mowing, dressing flax, pulling flax, plowing, harrowing, hoeing, fetching hay, fetching corn, dunging out. Rev. Ashley also loaned him out to other farmers for a fee.
- For the most part, Jin and Cato’s work was not different from that of Deerfield’s White residents.
- The enslaved in Deerfield and other places in the North usually, but not always, lived under the same roof as their enslavers. Most White Northerners couldn’t afford to enslave more than 1 or 2 people and it was too expensive to provide separate housing for so few.
- As a reverend, Ashley’s main duty was to tend to “his flock,” and he may have had little time for farm work. Also, before his sons were old enough to work, he might have needed extra help.
- Both were allowed to attend services in the meetinghouse, although they sat in a separate section from White residents, and both were allowed to have store accounts.
- Cato was baptized, fought in the French and Indian War, and since he bought a “small pamphlet” must have been able to read, which means he received some education.
- The enslaved were the property of their enslavers and could be sold, given away, or bequeathed to someone else, just as items such as tools, farm animals, and furniture could be.
- Different – the enslaved on southern plantations did more fieldwork and produced great quantities for sale and shipment out of the South. They did not work alongside their enslavers and didn’t do the same work. Jin and Mrs. Ashley would not have worked together making Jin’s shroud (or doing any other kind of work together) and would not have happily visited or “chatted” together. The enslaved in the South had separate housing that was of poorer quality than that of their enslavers. They would not have had any of the privileges mentioned in #2 above.
- Same – Northern and Southern enslaved people still belonged to someone else and were considered property (like items); as in the South, they were all made to do work that was not for themselves; they were all considered to be of lesser intelligence than Whites.