Thriving in Natchez – 1791 to 1794 (pages 143–148)
(page 144, par. 4) Katherine Lintot [1770-1844], now remarried to Stephen Minor Born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, her parents were Bernard Lintot (1740 – 1804) and Katherine Trotter (1744 – 1804). Bernard Lintot is reputed to have studied at the Inner Temple, London. He was a Wall Street trader who became the commissary at Manchac in British West Florida. Once widowed, Katherine remarried Stephen Minor. She subsequently became known as the “Yellow Duchess” because of her reputed fondness for all things golden.
(page 144, par. 5, line 2) Eli Whitney’s cotton gin Faber, Eberhard L. Building the Land of Dreams: New Orleans and the Transformation of early America, pp. 40-42; and Whitten, David O., ed. Eli Whitney‘s Cotton Gin.
(page 144, par. 1) Early adopters on Wilderness Plantation. Ezekiel Forman Estate Inventory, Spanish Administration Records, Chancery archives, Natchez: Adams County Court House, and MDAH Reel microfilm 17798, Vol. 32, pp. 83-107. A cotton gin is listed as being worth the relatively large sum of $50, comparable to the value of a grist mill or sawmill. 11,000 pounds of “cotton in the seed,” awaiting ginning, indicates a significant cotton growing operation on Wilderness plantation by mid-1795. This is an earlier date than is often asserted for the adoption of the cotton gin in the future Adams County, Mississippi. The county was the epicenter for King Cotton’s explosive antebellum expansion throughout the Mississippi Delta South.
(page 145, par. 2, line 5) fruitful and multiplied. See Appendix II for an estimate of the fertility of the Forman enslaved group during their first five years’ residence in Spanish West Florida.
(page 145, par. 3, line 3) Philip Nolan (1771 –1801) Nolan’s obligation in favor of Ezekiel Forman for 332 Spanish silver dollars and 3 reales dated August 9, 1791 is the largest single note documenting Ezekiel Forman’s business dealings within Luisiana and Spanish West Florida. It is likely to have been for sale or consignment of commodities produced on Forman’s plantation. It is also possible that Nolan had by then left Wilkinson’s employ in 1791, and that Ezekiel Forman had taken an equity position in Nolan’s second trading venture to Texas, at which time Nolan forfeited his entire inventory of trade goods because his Spanish West Florida passport was repudiated in the neighboring Viceroyalty of New Spain. The precise nature of this business arrangement between Ezekiel Forman and Philip Nolan remains unknown. In later years Nolan was a notorious freebooter encroaching upon the Spanish Mexican domain in what is now modern Texas. Nolan was killed by Spanish soldiers on such an errand in 1810. Nolan’s $332/3 rial note was enumerated in the Ezekiel Forman Estate Inventory, Op. cit. For a short biography of Nolan, a filibuster or freebooter, venturing to trade and acquire Comanche horses in Spanish Texas borderlands, with ultimately fatal results for him. See Jack Jacobson’s entry in Garraty, John A., and Mark C. Carnes, eds. American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 24 Vols., 1999; and Wilson, Maurine T., and Jack Jackson. Philip Nolan and Texas: Expeditions to the Unknown Land, 1791–1801.
(page 146, par. 2, line 1) Citizen Edmond Charles Genêt (1763 – 1834) See article by Harry Ammon in Garraty, John A., and Mark C. Carnes, eds. American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 24 Vols., 1999.
(page 146, par. 2, line 4) General Collot (1750 – 1805). George Henri Victor Collot and P.F. Tardieu. A Journey in North America. Collot’s travelogue, including its detailed characterizations of American and Spanish military installations, and excellent maps – the best yet produced for the region – was only published in its entirety in Paris in the late 1820s. By then, the inflammatory nature of Collot’s enterprise for international relations among the United States, Spain, and France during the early 1790s had become of scant interest thirty years later.
(page 148, par. 1, line 3) Nanny and Toddy’s eldest son Wiring Jack and pre-teen Alley Appendix II, Ezekiel Forman Estate Inventory, Op. cit.