Samuel Gist

Samuel Gist (1717 or 1723, – February 1815) was an English-American slave owner. An Englishman, he rose from humble beginnings to become a wealthy slave owner and plantation owner in the Colony of Virginia. Upon the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, he returned to Great Britain. In 1808, he drafted a will which stipulated the manumission of all of his slaves. He later amended it so that his executors could revoke that provision. However, the executors freed many, possibly all, of the slaves, probably numbering around 500, though some estimates go as high as 1,000.

Life Gist was orphaned at an early age, and grew up at Queen Elizabeth's Hospital in Bristol, Great Britain. In 1739, he was apprenticed to Alderman Lyonel Lyde as a scrivener and sent to his agent, the Virginia tobacco farmer John Smith. When Smith died in 1747, Gist married his widow, Sarah (or Mary) née Massie, and became very rich as a result, with large holdings of land and slaves. Gist, living in London, obtained the legal opinion of Charles Yorke concerning his rights in the matter. Patrick Henry, in a letter dated February 1770 (believed to be the earliest known letter of his), laid out his reasons for disagreeing with Yorke's conclusion.

Gist wrote to George Washington from London on June 17, 1769. He became a burgess of Bristol in 1752, indicating his intention to return to England, but it seems family and business commitments delayed his return. In 1782, the Virginia Assembly vested his property, including 82 slaves, in his stepdaughter, Mary Anderson, because he was a non-resident British subject. Later, he regained ownership through legal action, though he apparently never returned to the United States, He supposedly owned 274, though a later codicil noted that that number had increased substantially. He later amended the will so that his executors were not required to free the slaves. Nonetheless, it appears that they did indeed free many, possibly all, of the slaves, probably numbering around 500, though some estimates go as high as 1,000. A major problem was that the Virginian Assembly had passed a law preventing freed slaves remaining in the state for more than a year, so they had to be relocated to the nearest free state, Ohio. This was hugely expensive, and as part of the funding was to come from the tobacco harvest, the funds were reduced as their demands increased. The first of the removals was in 1819, the last in 1829. In the meantime, some of the former slaves ran away, some refused to move, some were too old to survive the long journey, and many children were born, so the actual numbers cited vary widely.