To My Children, Godchildren, and Grandchildren: Freed Black Women and the Transmission of Household Goods in Colonial Brazil

Freed black women in the mining towns of colonial Brazil accumulated material wealth that was notably inferior in value than what was reported in the probate records of White urban residents. Nevertheless, their wills and inventories reveal a careful investment in household goods that suggest an effort to fully mark their transition from slavery to freedom and from likely material deprivation to some material comfort. Items like household furniture, table and kitchen ware, religious objects, and personal goods afford researchers a view into their investments beyond property that supported their main economic pursuits. Moreover, archives relative to the succession of their property record their intention to pass on to their descendants and dependents the, sometimes meagre sometimes numerous, items they managed to accumulate as freed people. Ownership of inherited property could in turn enable young Black people to share the material experiences—whether of dress, private worship, or in their everyday routines—that were typical of the more elite urban households of Minas Gerais. They could also inhabit public spaces equipped with the types of material trappings that might support claims to social standing and treatment beyond what White dominant groups believed was appropriate for their status. Through an analysis of surviving wills and probate documents from freed Black women in mid-eighteenth century Sabará, one of the largest mining towns of Minas Gerais, Brazil, this paper will investigate this population’s material life and inheritance practices. It argues that in their pursuit of a meaningful freedom for themselves and their descendants, Black women property holders and testators complicated the intersection between colonial material life and socio-racial hierarchies. They constructed, furthermore, the role urban households played in the material security, social identity, and community strategies of free African descendants in an Atlantic slave society.