Troy Lindsay

I met this fine chap when I drove through Flagstaff on my recent trip. We were both having our complimentary breakfast at the Ramada Inn East.

He confided to me that he was on his first trip west and that Flagstaff was the most west he had ever been. In fact Troy had never been west of the mighty mississip.

Troy is the father of five boys and hails from Talladega, Alabama. We started talking about Alabama, what little I know of it anyway and I asked him if he knew Charles Barkley.

He said that he not only new him, but that Barkley was a cousin, they both had the same roots in the old Lindsay Plantation. I started thinking about the implications of carrying on the old slavemaster's family name, not sure that I could do it myself.

Troy was cool with it all, a very happy fellow with a very easy laugh.

*
I had a little time this afternoon to go back and look for the plantation and its original owner. Found this page that contains a slave census from 1860, Russell County, Alabama. Might be the patriarch.

Sherwood Lindsay, owned 73 slaves. The average slave owner only owned 10 slaves so this man had quite a few.  But nowhere near the large slave owners as you see here.

In 1860 the Russell County population included 10,936 whites, 18 "free colored" and 15,638 slaves. In ten more years the white population had practically halved.

Benjamin Williams' A Literary History of Alabama: The Nineteenth Century  recounts some drama associated with the patriarch which I can not download or read in full for some reason. Just caught this snippet on pg. 173:

Might be fictional, I will continue to dig.

I also found a Sherwood Lindsay in Georgia who owned 477 slaves. Wonder if it could be the same man? Russell County borders Georgia.

And a citation with a Lindsay in Hodes White women, Black men.

Of course, I may not have the correct original spelling. There are certainly citations for the name Lindsey in Alabama that might fit my search as well.

There were many slaveholding plantations in the Talladega area. Researching the Lindsay/Lindseys might take a little time. There does seem to be a surfeit of slaveholding Lindseys in Alabama prior to the Civil War.

According to Sellers Slavery in Alabama, the Lindseys were a large slavery concern in Alabama, at least prior to 1850.

I might continue to nose around. This might prove to be interesting research. One never knows...