The Slave Mother Who Was Forced to Take the Lives of Her Own Children
Margaret, also known as “Peggy” was a mulatto born on June 4th, 1834, as a house slave to the Gaines Family of the Maplewood plantation in Boone County, Kentucky. A “mulatto” is a mixed-race child with one white and one black parent. These were mostly enslaved people who lived in their owners’ houses and performed domestic labor like housework, cooking, cleaning, and much more. However the darker side of their servitude often involved abuse like corporal punishments and sexual slavery.
Growing up as a house slave would undoubtedly have been a humiliating experience for Margaret. Her identity as a mulatto most likely came from the sexual abuse that slaves were subjected to in that era. It is said that she was the daughter of the plantation’s owner, John Pollard Gaines, as slave owners were known to force themselves onto their female slaves, and impregnating them in the process. It was just a horrible reality that the enslaved had to put up with, and it is probably what happened to Margaret’s mother, who was a black female slave. John Pollard Gaines was Margaret’s owner, a military man, and a US political figure who served as the governor of Oregon from 1850 to 1853.
