Locating Slavery's Legacies @ Sewanee: The University of the South

A person whose wealth and/or income was attributable at least in part to the trade in enslaved persons

Enslaver of persons of African descent

Chambers, Maxwell

The wealth generated by the ownership, trafficking, and management of enslaved people who labored at foreclosed plantations and at the Rowan Cotton factory in Salisbury contributed to the largest donation to Davidson College during the antebellum era.

Born in Salisbury, North Carolina in 1780, Maxwell Chambers was the son of Joseph and Mary Chambers. He received his formal and informal education in Salisbury and under the tutelage of South Carolina enslavers. He built his wealth based on the ownership, trafficking, and management of enslaved people who labored at foreclosed plantations and at the Rowan Cotton factory in Salisbury.

Chambers operated a variety of businesses. Many of his business interests, however, were operated viz a vis his named family members and friends or individuals who taken out a loan from him. For instance, he publicly claimed that he had sold his interest in the Rowan factory. His will, however, revealed that he retained ownership and bequeathed it to Davidson College upon his death. As such, his name often does not appear directly in financial documents or in the slave schedules of the federal census. Rather, it is the names of his designated business agents and family members.

Based on the published histories and surviving archival records, his biography is clear. Chambers derived his wealth, power, and reputation in the institution of slavery and the slave trade. His educational philanthropy was made possible through his active involvement in the institution. He contributed both money and service as a trustee to the Salisbury Academy. Because of a relationship with Rev. Archibald Baker and college trustee D.A. Davis, Chambers bequeathed Davidson College with a nearly quarter-million dollar gift, property, people, and other benefits in his will.

1780

7 February 1855

1820-1865: Slavery, Anti-Slavery, and Civil War

Chambers Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC

Davidson College Board of Trustees, Minutes, Archives and Special Collections, Davidson College, Davidson, NC

James B. Brawley, "Chambers, Maxwell," NCPedia.org, 1979; revised November 2022.

Hilary Green, Maxwell Chambers and His Complicated Connection to Davidson College, 2023