An essential read! They were her property was very informative. It touched on topics most readers would find surprising. The role of white women during slavery differ from white men only by their physical make-up! Their lack emotional attachment and inhuman treatment mirrored that of the white men slave holder.

“Some couples, for example, preferred one style of mastery for managing and disciplining their own slaves and another, perhaps more brutal, system to control those of their spouse. In other households slave-owning couples allocated discipline and management according to the enslaved person’s sex. ...Other couples... delegated management and discipline according to where the enslaved people labored — in the house versus the field, for example. The couple shared the responsibility of punishing the slaves who worked in the house while they employed overseers to discipline those who worked in the fields. Slave-owning couples also used different instruments to administer punishment, and this, too, was a reflection of their particular styles of achieving mastery and preserving the value of their human property.”

This book debunks any delusions that anyone might have had that women were uninvolved in the purchase, sale, inheritance and abuse of slaves in the United States. Personally, I’ve never made any distinction between male and female slave owners. This book describes the same cruelty and abuse that I’ve read about many times before. The gender of the abuser is irrelevant to me. However, other people may appreciate the fact that this book gives female slave owners their proper place in the historical record. I can’t really applaud these examples of equal opportunities for women.

The book has too many descriptions of contracts, wills and legal proceedings. I felt like I was back in law school, and that’s not a compliment. Too much of the book read like this:

“Louisiana courts required married women who sought a separation of property to prove that their husbands’ pecuniary affairs, fiscal mismanagement, or economic circumstances jeopardized their own property and economic well-being. One such form of evidence was a husband’s indebtedness to his wife or his misuse of her ‘paraphernal’ (separate) or her ‘dotal’ (dower) property, which she would continue to own after marriage, but would have placed under his management.”

Or the ridiculously long description of Chancery Courts (much abbreviated here):

“Chancery courts as they came to exist in the United States developed in fourteenth-century England during the reign of Edward III. When British subjects could find no remedy for matters related to ‘trust, fraud, or accident’ under the common law, they petitioned the king for relief and resolution of legal matters. He, in turn created the Court of Chancery, appointing a member of his Council to serve as chancellor and assist him ‘in all cases in which natural justice, equity, and good conscience required his intervention.’”

This book might be useful for a women’s studies class. It was informative, but very dry and pedantic. 3.5 stars

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

The role of white women in slave owning have often been glossed over, or even remodeled into the white savior narrative, but it was more like the woman in "12 Years a Slave." This book goes into how white women participated in, benefited from, and tormented slaves in their own ways. This book very much seems like a response to the problems with white feminism that have been on display since 2016 where white female voters betrayed their fellow women at the polls. Owning up, starts with owning the actual historical narrative.

You never know until you read a book on what surprises you will find! Yes,white women had more day about the slaves than the men It's Just not talked about that much especially in the South. They are the ones who ran the household so they did know better than anyone what slaves they did or didn't have! Very strong book. Feces from Net Galley. Had a hard time following the story but then it could of been me!

Wow. This is a deeply impactful book that lays out a part of history that we are never told. In the USA classrooms as children, history is taught as though the women (white women) are almost bystanders to everything pre-WW2 and this really points out how much they influenced and affected the business of the slave-trade..This is an incredibly eye-opening account and really should be mandatory reading to students of American History.

#TheyWereHerProperty #NetGalley

Every white person needs to read this book so that they'll have a better understanding of slavery and how we enable it.

I am in charge of our Senior School library and am looking for a diverse array of new books to furnish their shelves with and inspire our young people to read a wider and more diverse range of books as they move through the senior school. It is hard sometimes to find books that will grab the attention of young people as their time is short and we are competing against technology and online entertainments.
This was a thought-provoking and well-written read that will appeal to young readers across the board. It had a really strong voice and a compelling narrative that I think would capture their attention and draw them in. It kept me engrossed and I think that it's so important that the books that we purchase for both our young people and our staff are appealing to as broad a range of readers as possible - as well as providing them with something a little 'different' that they might not have come across in school libraries before.
This was a really enjoyable read and I will definitely be purchasing a copy for school so that our young people can enjoy it for themselves. A satisfying and well-crafted read that I keep thinking about long after closing its final page - and that definitely makes it a must-buy for me!

A very well researched book about a largely unknown subject in american history, at times hard to read but it does keep your interested and wanting to know more.

Visceral, shocking, and amazing. Stephanie Jones-Rogers takes the reader on a painfully poignant look into the past, but it’s a past that’s been looked at through rose-tinted glasses. Jones-Rogers takes away those glasses and forces the reader to come to terms with the reality of America’s ugly past and the role white women played as slaveholders. As a historian who studies women’s history as well as antebellum history in America, this book has been remarkably eye opening and has changed the way I interpret history for guests who come to the antebellum plantation home at which I work. Very well done.

This book deserved every bit of the 5 stars I gave it. I’m just at a loss for words. Through watching many movies and reading snippets on slavery, we are never shown the role that white women had. In fact, they had a MAJOR hand in slavery. I mean, MAJOR. They were involved in trading, disciplining and even holding free slaves captive for their own benefit. My mind is truly blown with all that I learn. I always assumed that their husbands powers the enforcers of the things mentioned and that they simply just followed their direction. Boy was I wrong. In fact, a lot of times women owned more slates coming into a marriage than their soon to be husband did. Simply because their family gifted them slaves. White women even took to signing prenups to protect their property.

This is definitely a piece of history that everyone needs to read and be aware of. It’s a book that took me a while to finish but that’s only because there was so much information to consume. Highly recommend this one.

https://medium.com/@sharongalantino/for-many-white-women-slaves-were-their-freedom-a6ad750527d0?source=friends_link&sk=5b54eb03c892affb2cf4061172d60011

This book was so interesting! I had no idea of the impact of white women on the slave trade. In history classes the focus is always on the men, so this was a book filled with facts I hadn’t previously heard.

This book covers the subject of slavery from A to Z, looking through the lens of women's ownership of enslaved people from the time of slavery in the US until Emancipation in the 1860s. Nearly every aspect of this subject is covered, covering the way women treated enslaved people versus the way they were treated by the men who owned them.

Generally, women owners were more shrewd and more compassionate about the treatment of those who were enslaved, but this is a relative term when considering that enslaved people were commodities, pure and simple, and they were nothing more than belongings who were collected, bought, sold and traded, as long as they were valuable assets to their owners' farms.

This is not a pleasant book; it's not meant to be, but it is eye-opening when it comes to the ways enslaved people were treated and how they were used (as wet nurses to their owners' infants, gifts to their owners' children at their births, marriages or for no particular reason). There are brutal examples of how enslaved people were treated, punishments given for trivial infractions, or sometimes for no reason at all.

This book is exhaustive in its research, with nothing left out.

"They Were Her Property" is a novel by historian Stephanie E. Jones Rogers, whos view goes against the widely accepted history of female slave owners being mostly bystanders in a men's world instead of active participants. "They Were Her Property" examined the lives of many female slave owners that were not only independently invested in slave ownership, but took part in every aspect of the slave trade as well, In some cases, they were even more ruthless than men. Ones husband even fought for the union during the civil war and would often confront her against hurting the slaves. To which she would respond viciously.

This book intrigued me from the start, as I often wondered about the women slave owners. I highly recommend this book.

An excellent study about often ignored aspect of slavery: white women. The book reveals the power of white women as slave owners and their role in slavery. It discusses an intersection of gender and slavery, as well as historical and economic circumstances, capitalism and worldview. Highly recommended read.

The book covers about the role of white women in American slavery. This controversial subject is well documented by the author and Stephanie brings light to this dark side of the American history.

#TheyWereHerProperty #NetGalley

Excellent read about the significant role that white women played in the institution of slavery, it’s growth and expansion. I was both fascinated and horrified, but mostly horrified by a woman’s ability to sell another woman’s children away from her just because she could and it would get her the most amount of profit. The testimonies from formerly enslaved peoples in their own words about these very events were the most shocking and heartbreaking.

They Were Her Property: White Women As Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers is, wow I’m not sure I can give this masterpiece the proper review it deserves. Never in my life have I imagined that white women would be so cruel and even involved in such things when it comes to slavery. I’ve seen countless movies and read books on slavery and never has the “lady of the house” been depicted as cruel, malicious just pure evil owners. This book absolutely blew my mind. The testimony of formerly enslaved people, just wow! I am utterly speech on this gem of a book. I honestly wished I buddy read this book because there is so much to talk about and analyze. This is a must read, should be a recommended read. Bravo Jones-Rogers! Bravo! Thank you NetGalley and Yale University Press

Thanks to Yale University Press and NetGalley for providing me with an Advance Review Copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is an important book in a much-overlooked topic. All too often in historical writing we see white women being given a free pass when it comes to their culpability for the horrors of slavery. This book seeks to set the record straight and change our assumptions about antebellum women slave-owners.

I have recently read The Book of Night Women which although set in the Caribbean and not the United States, featured more than a few reprehensible ‘mistresses’ of the house. The cruelty of these women towards their slaves did not just exist in the reals of fiction, as Stephanie Jones-Rogers explains in this book.

The book is extensively and exhaustively researched and draws on a wealth of different primary sources. Slaves were often the main source of personal wealth for wealthy white women in the South and these women participated fully in buying and selling slaves. They had an in depth understanding of their worth and used their slaves to enhance and maintain their economic power, often keeping this source of wealth separate from their husbands as a rather grim form of nest egg.

The book makes for difficult reading as all books about the inhumanity of slavery do. It is important however to highlight that women can be just as evil and calculating as men and that there is a responsibility not to whitewash their contribution to maintaining and benefiting from slavery.

The quality of the research makes this a great resource to use in classrooms and for further study of the subject. I’d recommend this book to both fellow History teachers as well as anyone who is interested in reading more about the subject. Although the subject is a difficult one, the writing itself is accessible and suitable for a multitude of audiences. This book will still with you a long time after reading it and I highly recommend doing so.

This book is a thorough academic investigation into the role of white women in the American slave economy. The author is trying to establish that Southern women were not only passively benefiting from enslaved people but were active in their own right in all aspects of the slave economy and society.
By relying on a broad variety of sources among them oral histories of former enslaved people a clear picture emerges that many southern women were heavily engaged in the whole system of slave economy. The book shows that these mistresses were slaveholders in their own right , even after marriage. These women participated not only in buying, selling but also punishing and callously exploiting their ‘ merchandise’ . This book paints a harsh picture of the southern slave society and the romanticised picture of dainty white ladies who just accepted the circumstances is corrected.
This book is a must read for anyone interested in the history of slavery and gender.