Lott Cary

How this work helped shape America

Born enslaved in Virginia around 1780, Lott Cary was hired out beginning in 1804 to work in Richmond's tobacco warehouses, where he developed literacy, commercial knowledge and increasingly responsible occupational skills. Cary worked as a shipping clerk and supervisor of tobacco workers and was permitted to collect and sell small quantities of waste tobacco for his own benefit. Through these activities he developed an unusual degree of participation in Richmond's tobacco economy while still enslaved and accumulated earnings that contributed to his purchase of freedom for himself and his children for $850 around 1813. Cary's progression from enslaved warehouse labor to supervisory work and independent tobacco sales demonstrates how commercial skill and limited market access could be converted into capital and freedom within one of Virginia's most important export industries.