Of the
fifty-three men listed, including a planter and a steamboat pilot, only
seven were classed as common laborers, while all the rest had specific
trades or employments. The prosperity of the group must have been but
moderate, nevertheless, for virtually all its women were listed as workers
at washing, sewing, cooking, spinning, weaving or market vending; and
although an African church in the town had an aged sexton, its minister
must have drawn most of his livelihood from some week-day trade, for no
designation of a preacher appears in the list. At Charleston, likewise,
according to the city census of 1848, only 19 free colored men in a total
of 239 listed in manual occupations were unclassified laborers, while the
great majority were engaged in the shop and building trades. The women
again were very numerous in sewing and washing employments, and an
appreciable number of them were domestic servants outright.[50]
[Footnote 49: _Augusta Chronicle_, Mch. 13, 1819, reprinted in _Plantation
and Frontier_, II, 143-147.]
[Footnote 50: Dawson and DeSaussure, _Census of Charleston for 1848_,
summarized in the table given on p. 403 of the present work.]
In the compendium of the United States census of 1850 there are printed in
parallel columns the statistics of occupations among the free colored males
above fifteen years of age in the cities of New York and New Orleans.
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