Seth Woodroof

Seth Woodroof (August 4, 1875) was a slave trader based in Lynchburg in central Virginia, United States. He was an interstate trader who ran what the Lynchburg Museum called the "most active and infamous" slave pen in the city. He is believed to have been actively trading from approximately 1830 until the beginning of the American Civil War in 1861. Woodroof sat on the Lynchburg city council from 1858 to 1865.

Biography

Early life and family Seth Woodroof was born about 1805 in Virginia. He was the son of Jesse Woodroof and Rhoda Pettyjohn, and a Virginian on both sides; Woodroof's family background is fairly well-attested, in part due to a later lawsuit involving his maternal grandfather William Pettyjohn's 1822 will. Seth Woodruff's father Jesse Woodroof had a total of 12 children with four partners; Rhoda Pettyjohn, the second of Jesse Woodroof's four life companions, died in 1822. thumb

Slave trading and politics Seth Woodroof worked as a slave dealer as early as 1830, when he was around 25 years old. In 1832, Woodroof was one of several commissioners appointed to manage the Harris Creek Manufacturing Company of Amherst County. On April 14, 1834, Mississippi court records show that Woodroof sold "two negroes, both slaves for life, Albert, a man aged about 28 years, and Amelia, his wife, a woman aged about 19 or 20 years" to the Doyal brothers in Natchez, Mississippi for $1,100.

The Jones Memorial Library in Lynchburg holds a notebook in their manuscript collection that was once kept by Woodroof. In 2023, the library transcribed and digitized the account book, which lists more than 200 enslaved persons by first and last names. The library has published a dataset and article about the account book with Enslaved.org and the Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation.

The library posted page images on FromthePage.com, a crowdsourced historical transcription site. The first two pages refer to slave-trading transactions made in March and April 1834. The final page is dated to 1834 and 1835 and records Woodroof's expenses ($340.75) to transport "33 negroes" from Lynchburg, Virginia from Natchez, Mississippi, a journey that took from January 17 to February 18. The third and fourth pages date back to 1840. Woodroof may have sold slaves in Natchez, perhaps at the Forks of the Road slave market, possibly in partnership with a man named Thomas Hundley, doing business as Woodroof & Hundley.

C. R. Bricken sold slave insurance, and listed a number of notable slave traders (including Seth Woodroof, Robert Lumpkin, Silas Omohundro, Hector Davis, Solomon Davis, and R. H. Dickinson) as references to whom "losses had been paid" (Richmond Enquirer, November 6, 1855)

At the time of the 1840 census of Amherst County, Virginia, Seth Woodroof was the head of a household consisting of four enslaved people, namely a female aged 24 to 35, a girl under 10, and two boys under 10. Seth Woodroof was also involved in horse racing in the 1840s, possibly running horses named Camillus and Chance. As a property-owning white adult male, Woodroof was legally permitted to participate in democratic processes in the U.S. state of Virginia in the early Republic era, and as such, Woodroof was one of several members of the Lynchburg Democratic Association elected to attend the 1848 state Democratic Party convention in the state capital, Richmond, Virginia. At the time of the 1850 U.S. census, Seth Woodroof of the town of Lynchburg, Virginia, was listed as the owner of 21 enslaved people, all male, aged 10 to 40, with the majority being in their teens and 20s. Of the 21, 18 were listed as black, and three were identified as mulatto.

Woodroof is believed to be referenced in a remarkable letter written in 1854 by an enslaved woman named Pen Taylor. The letter, preserved in the archives of Sweet Briar College, informed businessman, plantation owner, and former Lynchburg mayor Elijah Fletcher that she had been sold in Lynchburg, was being held in the slave jail of "Mr. Woodrough", and that she expected her jailor would soon ship her further south (where she could be sold at a higher price). Pen Taylor explained that Fletcher already owned her sister and requested that he purchase her: "buy me if you please. I shal Depend on you". Fletcher did indeed purchase Taylor; she became one of the 155 or so people he owned.