Salem Hancock was born about 1830 on the John Allen Hancock Plantation in Jackson County, Alabama, near Bellefonte. He was born into slavery. He was mulatto, and it is likely that white plantation owner John Allen, or one of his older white sons (William, George, or Lewis), was Salem’s father. An enslaved black female giving birth to a child fathered by a male in the master’s family was not uncommon in the South. His mother would have been a slave belonging to white John Allen. Salem, and maybe his mother, may have come to Texas in 1838 with one of John Allen’s adventurous white children, William, Lewis, or Frances Hancock, who all settled on Onion Creek south of Austin.
In 1847, John Allen’s youngest son, Tennessee-trained lawyer, Judge John, left his Alabama home for Texas, probably taking one slave with him. John’s older brothers already in Texas, Lewis Swanson, William Ryan, and George Duncan, were established near Onion Creek and Austin. After also purchasing land here and spending time with his brothers’ families, Judge John, with his one slave, settled in Austin, rooming in the Swisher Hotel. At that time in Austin, some hotels provided separate quarters for slaves of their guests. By 1851 Judge John became a circuit judge traveling to seven counties to hold court. The Judge’s first slave ran away to the hills west of town and drowned in the Colorado River. By 1851, the Judge had a second slave with him, 21-year-old Salem who probably had come to Texas earlier. Lewis died in 1850 so Judge John, as executor, would have been with the family awhile to help settle his brother’s affairs. Lewis’ wife Elizabeth soon married a judge named Jones, and that may have been how, in 1850, Salem fathered a son, John, with an enslaved woman named Jones born in Alabama (according to John’s death certificate). It may also explain how later Salem’s son John came to live with his father when it was customary for children to belong to their mother’s owner who in this case would have been Judge John’s sister-in-law. As Judge John continued traveling the circuit holding court, Salem, Judge John’s only slave, likely would have accompanied him taking care of his horse and baggage.
In 1852 Judge John’s older brother, William Ryan, died of cancer of the face. William’s wife had died two years earlier, and their deaths left five orphaned children. Bachelor Judge John took the two youngest, William 13 and James 10, to rear. Along with the two brothers came seven slaves whom they inherited. Salem would likely have already known, and maybe been related to, some of those slaves because some or all of them came originally from the Alabama plantation of John Allen. Being a bachelor, the Judge had to make arrangements for his greatly enlarged group of dependents. He purchased a sizeable tract of land in Austin in the Spier League next door to Elizabeth Moore’s inherited land. Not far from the Moore house in a large grove of oak trees, likely Judge John’s slaves built a comfortable log house possibly for his new overseer, James Doughtry from Alabama, and several smaller quarters for the slaves.
So by 1853, Judge John had a mature woman Polly and teenager Julia to take care of cooking, cleaning, and slave children (Harriet and Martha) and young men to begin clearing land and caring for livestock (Lewis, Tom, and Booker). Salem probably continued to travel with Judge John. Typically, Judge John rode his circuit twice a year holding court for 4 weeks in Travis County, 1 week Hayes County, 1 week Guadalupe County, 1 week Caldwell County, 2 weeks Fayette County, 2 weeks Bastrop County, and 1 week Burnet County.
By 1854-5, Judge was paying taxes on 10 slaves, two more than he was known to have owned in 1853. Could Judge John have met Eliza in his travels as a circuit judge and purchased or obtained the mother of his two biracial sons at this time? Could one of these new additions have been John, Salem’s son, joining his father on the Judge’s farm? Judge John’s last white descendant, Nell McCutcheon, remembered hearing of a little black slave named John who saved Judge John’s only child, Edwin, when he fell in the fishpond. Nell remembered that slave lived for many years on the Judge’s farm, even after freedom.
In 1855, Judge John retired as a circuit judge and married Susan Richardson who soon was pregnant. When the Judge’s father died in late 1855 in Alabama without a will, all of his property was inventoried and sold. Judge John, whose biracial son, Hugh Berry, had just been born in Austin, traveled to his old home place in Alabama early in 1856. He was interested in purchasing slaves only. There were 20 for sale but he chose only nine. These were three young men Salem thought of as “brothers”, Salem’s kin, Jemima and Dorcas (likely “sisters”), and Susan, Jemima’s mother plus elderly Daphney who may not have lived to see freedom. Certainly all eight and possibly Daphney, too, were all part of Salem’s family. Some were also kin to white Judge John (according to DNA Orange was Judge John’s biracial son and Rubin his half brother). So by 1856 Judge John had three more healthy young male workers and an additional two or three prime young women. And Salem had his family with him. This brought Judge John’s total of slaves to 19, many or all related to each other and some to Judge John.
Why would a lawyer, former judge and Unionist during the Civil War spend a large part of his fortune buying nine more slaves? Most landowners bought slaves for labor or for breeding stock. Judge John apparently never sold a slave so breeding for profit was out. But why buy these nine (they included two children and a senior woman) for labor when he had to go all the way to Alabama to buy them and then spend more time and money to bring them to Texas where there were plenty of work slaves already here he could have purchased? He had 300 acres of land to plant and harvest after all. Or could it possibly be that he could have his farm workers AND keep the mixed race extended family together?
After 1855, Salem may have served the Judge and his wife in their home in Austin, or he may have lived and worked on the Judge’s farm and lived in a little house in the oak grove with his “brothers” and “sisters”. But he would have known when, in 1860, the Judge sent his two young biracial sons and their mother, Eliza, to Ohio thus freeing them. He also was well aware of the beginning of the Civil War in 1861 when the Judge encouraged his nephews to join a Union cavalry unit.
Salem was married to Mary Ann “Mollie”, a mulatto woman born in Mississippi. Slave marriages were not recorded but Salem and Mollie had a life long union. They had no children but Salem’s son John lived with them.
In June 1865 when freedom came, the four “brothers” all had a family to support. Since brother Orange made arrangements to work for the Judge, so possibly did all four. But by 1870 Salem, Orange, and Payton had moved about two miles north to work for George Davis and to live on his land.
Salem, the oldest, was the first to take the bold step of getting his own land by renting 45 acres on Burnet Road. Based on his 1869 production, he likely had help farming this land. On this tract he produced 600 bushels of Indian corn and had milk cows, hogs, and work animals, both oxen and horses. His cows produced 96 lbs. of butter. The value of his farm production in 1869 was $90.
In 1871, only 6 years after slavery, Salem purchased 5 acres with a house on the west side fronting on the Upper Georgetown Road (Burnet Road) from Mrs. Harriet McKenzie for $500 cash (probably between Braker and Loop 1). Only 2% of former slaves managed to own land by 1870. In 1873 Salem purchased 7 acres from J.P. Richardson for $200 cash on the east side of the road. And the next year he bought another 18 acres from Richardson along Burnet Road for $350 cash and another $200 which he agreed to pay with interest in one year. He eventually owned about 25 acres straddling Burnet Road.
So how did Salem get $1050 ($29,000 in 2025) cash for this land? Family stories agreed that Judge John helped the “brothers” get farms but no records have been found to explain how. Perhaps the Judge had been paying wages to his slaves during the Civil War. Salem and Mollie probably would have saved every penny toward the opportunity to buy land. Salem, who had served Judge John for 20 years and whose son saved the Judge’s only child, may have received other assistance. Records show that Judge John’s law partner, N. G. Shelley, handled some legal transactions for the “brothers”. In addition without a doubt it would have helped Salem that his benefactor was a lawyer and Congressman which may have shielded Salem, his brothers, and families from some of the worst treatment legalized by Black Code laws and by a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan.
By 1880 Salem’s “brothers” had moved away so it may have been only Salem and his one son John who worked his 25 acres of land. He had 3 horses, 6 head of cattle plus calves of which two had died or been stolen, 8 hogs, and a large flock of chickens which produced 100 dozen eggs a year. He had a very poor crop of Indian corn but produced 167 bushels of oats on only 5 acres. He also cut 6 cords of wood. The total value of his farm production was $110, only twenty dollars more than 10 years earlier. Still his 25 acre farm was valued at $1000 plus another $30 in implements and $150 in livestock.
In 1881, when finally all his “brothers” were land owners themselves, big brother Salem exchanged his tillable 25 acres for 107 acres very likely uncleared in the Rogers Survey between Orange to the west and Rubin to the east. Salem increased his hogs to 45 by 1885 which did not require cleared land. In fact, oak trees supplying acorns as fall and winter mast would have been ideal for hogs. His farm was worth $800 for tax purposes. Son John also purchased his own land near his uncle Rubin at Waters Park.
Even though Salem never learned to read or write, he registered to vote and participated in politics. In 1873 he was selected by the Democrats of Precinct 3 in Travis County to be one of 13 delegates (and maybe the only non-white) to the county convention. When Salem died in August, 1888, the Austin Daily Statesman reported: “This community [Duval] has suffered a great loss by the death, this morning, of one of its colored citizens, Salem Hancock. He owned a good farm near Duval, and conducted it with energy and intelligence. His experience as a stockman made him sought after when anything unusual happened to stock. He was universally respected by everybody that knew him, as he was a just and upright man in all his dealings with his fellowman. He will be greatly missed and generally mourned.” He was 58 years old.
Salem’s wife Mollie and son John inherited his land. Mollie remarried George Holland, and they and John sold Salem’s land in 1891 to Carl Jentzen only ten years after Salem acquired that land.
Salem’s son John married Caroline Manor and had one son, Richard, born about 1869. John and his family lived for some years on the Judge Hancock place on North Loop. John later purchased a 98-acre tract of land in the James Rogers Survey near Rubin. John died in 1918 during the flu epidemic. Wife Caroline was buried in the Fiskville cemetery a couple of miles south. Son Richard married Fannie Daniels in 1896 and they had two children, Ruthie and L. G. (Fannie had a child before she married Richard named Lillie Johnson.) Fannie divorced Richard and remarried Joe Hickey. Richard died in 1939. Ruthie never married and had no children. L. G. married Carrie Wright first and then Hazel Woods, but he had no children. Salem Hancock’s line ended in this generation with his great grandchildren.
Karen Sikes Collins, revised March 2025
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