Life Story: Jane Webb (ca 1682–1764)

Jane Webb was born in Northampton County on the Eastern Shore of Virginia around 1682. Her father Daniel Webb was enslaved. Her mother Ann Williams was a white indentured servant. According to the laws of the colony, Jane should have inherited the status of her mother. But because Jane was mixed-race and her parents were not married, Jane was enslaved until she was eighteen years old. During these years, she probably performed domestic work like cooking, sewing, and laundry. She may have also worked in the fields, planting and harvesting tobacco.

The household Jane grew up in was typical in colonial Virginia. The hard work required to thrive in the colonies, coupled with the relatively small population, meant that most farms and plantations employed a mix of free, indentured, and enslaved people of different races and ethnicities. There was also a thriving free Black community in Northampton County who owned land and understood how to use the courts to protect their freedom and property.

Growing up in this environment, Jane learned at a young age that Black women could sue in colonial courts to protect their rights. She was likely raised with the belief that the law could–and should–be used to protect one’s freedom. Jane knew from personal experience that enslavement was not a permanent condition, because two men were emancipated from her household when Jane was young. She also knew that enslavement did not have to pass from parent to child because of her own status. Finally, she knew her father had a last name that did not tie him to his enslaver. He had also been the witness to the signing of a will. These were things that were typically only allowed to free people. Through these and other examples, Jane learned that one could challenge the condition of enslavement by knowing and understanding the law.

Jane was emancipated around 1700, when she turned eighteen. She stayed in Northampton County, where she likely continued to do the same type of work that she had done while enslaved, but now she earned a wage for her work. In 1703 Jane fell in love with an enslaved man named Left. But Jane knew that for a marriage between a free Black woman and an enslaved man to work the wife would need to be willing to use the courts to protect her own freedom and the freedom of their potential children.

First Jane had to convince Left’s enslaver, a man named Thomas Savage, to allow their marriage to take place. She did not have money or goods to offer, so she offered herself as an indentured servant. Jane signed a seven-year indenture contract with Thomas, an enormous sacrifice for a woman who had only recently been emancipated. The contract also stated that any children born to Jane and Left during those seven years would be indentured to Thomas until they were eighteen years old. In 1711 when Jane’s term of service ended, Thomas would emancipate Left. Any children they had after 1711 would not have to be indentured to Thomas.

It might seem unusual that an enslaver would make such a deal with a Black woman, but this kind of contract was considered necessary to control free Black women. Under the English legal practice called coverture, married women had no legal status of their own. They were supposed to exist only under the protection and authority of their husbands. But Left was enslaved, which meant he had no legal identity. This meant that if Jane and Left married without a contract, Jane would have become the legal head of their household. By requiring the indenture contract, Thomas kept Jane subordinate to a man. Jane benefited because it prevented her future children from being born outside of marriage and enslaved, the way Jane had been as a child. Thomas benefited because it allowed him to profit from the work of Left, Jane, and their future children for the term of the contract.

But getting this agreement signed and legally marrying Left was only the first challenge Jane faced. Thomas, like many other enslavers at the time, chose to ignore the end dates that were set for Left and the children’s years of service. During Jane’s contracted term, she and Left had three children. All three were bound to work for Thomas as was agreed in the original contract. But Thomas refused to emancipate Left in 1711 and he bound two additional daughters who were born after Jane’s contracted term was up. Finally, when Jane’s eldest child Dinah turned eighteen in 1722, Thomas refused to free her, citing a new Virginia law that allowed child indentures to extend to age twenty-one. 

Jane turned to the courts for help. On August 16, 1722 she petitioned the Northampton County Court to release Dinah and her two older children from their indentures. In her claim she noted that the colony had already revised the indenture laws so her children were expected to serve until they were twenty-one years old. She expressed fear that their terms would continue to be extended and asked if the court was trying to enslave her children. Thomas delayed the case until January 1723, and then the court ruled in his favor. It called Jane’s case frivolous and ruled that Dinah would not be released from her contract until she reached age twenty-one in 1725.

By this time, Jane was living in her own home with her two younger children Elisha and Abimelech. But Thomas resented that these children had escaped serving him. In February 1725 he petitioned the court to have Elisha and Abimelech returned to his household and indentured to him. He argued that Jane could not properly support her children, and that they were destined to either become a burden to society or turn to crime.

Jane had lost faith in the county court because it had consistently sided with Thomas. She chose instead to fight Thomas in the chancery court. The chancery court was a branch of the English legal system that dealt with issues of justice and equity, rather than strictly deciding if something was legal or not. It was widely known as the court of last resort. On March 11, 1725 Jane sued Thomas for failure to fulfill the terms of their contract. Thomas claimed the original contract was missing, but Jane accused him of taking it. Unfortunately for Jane, a copy of the document had never been entered into public records. Thomas claimed that he had never agreed to emancipate Left and that Jane and Left had promised that all of their children would be indentured to him. He produced two white witnesses who claimed to have read the contract and supported his story. The chancery court sided with Thomas. On July 12, 1726, Elisha and Abimelech were indentured to Thomas.

Jane was summoned to appear before the chancery court again the very next day. She was accused of saying “if all Virginia negros had as good a heart as she had, they would all be free.” This was a dangerous statement of racial solidarity in a colony ruled by white people trying to assert the inferiority of Black people. It demonstrates that Jane understood that there were terrible injustices happening in her community, far beyond her personal experiences, and that she hoped someday enslaved people would rise up together to end it. Jane was punished for expressing her anger publicly. The court ordered she be stripped to her waist and given ten lashes from a whip at the public whipping post outside the courthouse. It is likely that the court officials were trying to show the other Black people in the colony that speaking out against the institution of slavery would not be tolerated.

Next, Jane found a free Black witness who supported her version of the contract with Thomas. Rather than revise their ruling, the justices ruled in April 1727 that Virginia would not accept legal testimony from free Black people. Without a witness to support her case, Jane was forced to give up. She did not appear for the next court session and on July 11, 1727, her entire case was dismissed. Left remained enslaved for the rest of his life, and all of their children served Thomas or his heirs until they turned twenty-one. 

Jane was unsuccessful in her legal battles, but her example inspired her children to continue to fight for their own rights. Dinah sued Thomas and won when he refused to end her indenture in 1725. And when Elisha was illegally sold into slavery in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in the 1740s, she took her case to court. Jane helped Elisha prove her claims by obtaining statements from witnesses that she had certified in court. Elisha won her case. 

Jane died around November 1764 in Northampton County. She was buried at Hungars Parish Church. Descendants of Jane’s oldest children still live in North Carolina.

• chancery court: Named for the Lord Chancellor, this is a court that focuses on equity and justice, rather than strict legal rules.
• coverture: A common law practice where women fell under the legal and economic oversight of their husbands upon marriage.
• emancipated: Freed from the bondage of enslavement.
• indentured servant: A person under contract to work for another person for a definite period of time without pay.
• petition: A formal written request sent to an authority figure.

• To learn more about the laws governing slavery and freedom in the Virginia colony, see Legislating Reproduction and Racial Difference and Conditional Manumission Laws.
• Use Coverture to help students understand the legal limitations Jane Webb faced as a woman. 
• Compare and contrast this resource with Casta Paintings and Life Story: Esperanza Rodríguez to consider the experiences of mixed-race communities in the Spanish and English colonies.
• Combine this life story with Life Story: Sarah and Life Story: McLennan’s Enslaved Woman for a more complex discussion of the experiences of Black women in the English colonies.
• Explore Children at Work to learn more about the experience of children who were indentured servants.

POWER AND POLITICS; WORK, LABOR, AND ECONOMY