Claiming Sunday: The Story of a Texas Slave Community by Joleene Maddox Snider (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Claiming Sunday: The Story of a Texas Slave Communityby Joleene Maddox Snider
• Kyle Ainsworth

Claiming Sunday: The Story of a Texas Slave Community. 2ndedition. By Joleene Maddox Snider. ( Fort Worth: TCU Press, 2022. Pp. 270. Illustrations, appendices, notes, bibliography, index.)

Lay readers of the second edition of Claiming Sunday, by Joleene Maddox Snider, will enjoy a thoughtful and probing case study of the people enslaved by the Devereux family at Monte Verdi plantation in Rusk County, Texas. The book is organized into four parts and has a more or less chronological structure. Readers start with the Devereux's and their enslaved people in Alabama, then make their way with them first to Montgomery County, Texas, and finally to Rusk County. At the end of each section are transcripts of oral histories the author conducted with descendants of the Devereux slave community. These testimonies link old and new generations by pairing commentaries on history and slavery with more contemporary experiences of being an African American. Chapter 11 is particularly incisive, with insights into enslaved labor patterns and a detailed exploration of the slave's free enterprise, selling their own corn and cotton crops and buying personal items from local merchants.

Historians reading this book, however, might come away wishing for additional details that are available from state and local records. Snider writes in the introduction that her purpose is "to tell the story of the Devereux Slave [End Page 102]Community in as much detail as the records allowed" (p. 1), and she deftly explores a wealth of information (letters, receipts, farm accounts, journals, etc.) in the Julien Sydney Devereaux Family Papers, which are housed in the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History Center at the University of Texas in Austin. However, the author only cites one primary source for the entire manuscript. Snider defends her methodology in the conclusion (p. 194), but additional records about the Devereux family and their enslaved people likely do exist in the courthouses of Georgia, Alabama, and Texas, and in university and state archives. For example, annual tax records would have helped Snider understand Devereux family finances and cotton production. Other county court documents (deeds, probate, court cases) could have added nuance and depth. All these additional records could have also shed light on the transition from slavery to freedom.

Snider suggests in the introduction that "the white Devereux family is a perfect example of Southern planters and slave owners" (p. 2). However, with 75 slaves, the Devereux's were hardly representative of most Texas slaveholders. Julien Devereux was in the top one percent of Texas slaveholders in 1850, and that remained the case for his wife Sarah in 1860 according to Randolph B. Campbell in An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821–1865(Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1989), p. 193. Julien Devereux's wealth allowed him to embody paternalistic virtues and look after the nutritional, medical and spiritual needs of his enslaved people. While the attentiveness of the Devereux's to the wellbeing of their enslaved people is noteworthy, their slave community's relative stability throughout the antebellum years in Rusk County was not comparable to the lives and experiences of many people enslaved elsewhere in Texas.

Kyle Ainsworth Stephen F. Austin State University Copyright © 2024 The Texas State Historical Association