In the summer of 1846, a sealed ledger was placed in the basement of the Adams County Courthouse in Natchez, Mississippi. It remained there, untouched, for 112 years. When county workers opened it during renovations in 1958, they discovered 73 pages of daily entries documenting what had happened to Margaret Halloway between June 14 and November 9, 1846.
Each entry was written in the same meticulous hand, recording weights, behaviors, punishments, and observations. The final entry, dated November 9, consisted of only 4 words: “The treatment is concluded.”
Margaret Halloway was 23 years old in 1846, the daughter of Edmund Halloway, one of the wealthiest plantation owners in Adams County. On June 13, 1846, Edmund gathered members of his household staff and several enslaved workers and announced that Margaret required specialized treatment for her condition. He had constructed a treatment facility in the large barn behind the main house. Three enslaved men would oversee Margaret’s daily regimen under Edmund’s direct supervision. The treatment would continue until she showed sufficient improvement.
Margaret entered that barn weighing 247 lb. In the ledger, she was described as disobedient, gluttonous, and morally compromised. She had refused 4 marriage proposals, spoken disrespectfully to her father on multiple occasions, and was rumored to harbor romantic feelings for an inappropriate man. Edmund told neighbors he had consulted physicians in New Orleans who recommended rigorous labor therapy as a cure for female hysteria and moral weakness.
What took place in the barn over the next 5 months went far beyond labor therapy. It was a systematic effort to destroy Margaret’s will completely.
The 3 men Edmund placed in charge of his daughter were caught in an impossible position. They were ordered to treat the plantation owner’s daughter like a field laborer, to push her beyond exhaustion, to show no mercy. Yet they were human beings compelled to watch a woman being broken day by day. Eventually, they would face a choice that would cost them everything.
The story might have remained buried in that courthouse basement were it not for 3 developments. First, the ledger contradicted the official version Edmund had shared with his neighbors. Second, in 2003, archaeologists conducting a historical survey excavated the burned foundation of a barn once belonging to Riverbend Plantation; what they found raised troubling questions. Third, descendants of one of the 3 enslaved men preserved family records containing testimony about what truly happened during those 5 months. That testimony was made public in 2007.
To understand the events in the barn, it is necessary to return to Riverbend Plantation in the spring of 1846, when Edmund Halloway was widely regarded as one of the most moral men in Adams County.
Edmund was 51 years old in 1846. He had inherited Riverbend Plantation in 1823 at the age of 28. The property encompassed 2,000 acres of fertile Mississippi soil along the Mississippi River, approximately 12 mi north of Natchez. Cotton was the principal crop, though tobacco fields and extensive vegetable gardens were also maintained.
Edmund owned 137 enslaved people, placing him among the larger slaveholders in the county, though not among the absolute elite who owned 300 or more. His distinction lay less in the size of his holdings than in his reputation. Throughout Adams County, he was known as a model Christian gentleman. He attended First Presbyterian Church every Sunday without fail, taught Bible study on Wednesday evenings, donated generously to the church’s missionary fund and to the local orphanage, and financed most of the construction costs for a new school building in Natchez. When neighbors faced financial difficulty, Edmund was often the one who extended loans on generous terms or arranged credit.
He had married Sarah Chandler in 1824. She came from a prominent Charleston family and brought a substantial dowry. Quiet and devout, she devoted herself to managing the household and raising their children. Margaret was born in 1823, shortly before Edmund and Sarah married, a timing never publicly discussed. A son, Edmund Jr., was born in 1826 but died of fever before reaching 2 years of age. Sarah never fully recovered from the loss. She became withdrawn, spending most of her time reading scripture and writing letters to missionaries. In 1839, when Margaret was 16, Sarah died. The official cause was fever, though many whispered that she had gradually lost the will to live.
Edmund’s grief was public and proper. He wore black for 1 year, commissioned a marble monument for Sarah’s grave, and spoke movingly at her funeral about her devotion to God and family. No one questioned his faithfulness as a husband.
After Sarah’s death, Edmund turned his full attention to Margaret. She was his only surviving child, his heir, and increasingly, his greatest disappointment.
According to Edmund, Margaret had been difficult from childhood. She asked too many questions, read books deemed inappropriate for young ladies, and expressed opinions when silence would have been more acceptable. As she matured, these tendencies intensified.
By the age of 20, Margaret openly challenged her father’s authority and questioned his decisions. Her weight became part of the problem. She had always been large, but after her mother’s death she gained considerable weight. By 1845, she weighed well over 200 lb, which Edmund regarded as grotesque by contemporary standards. He worried about her prospects for marriage and about the embarrassment her appearance caused him.
Yet the greater issue was not her weight but her mind. Edmund had provided her with an unusually strong education for a woman of her time. Tutors instructed her in literature, history, French, and music. She had access to his extensive library. He believed such accomplishments would make her more appealing to a wealthy suitor.
Instead, education sharpened her independence. Margaret read Mary Wollstonecraft and other writers advocating women’s rights and education. She obtained abolitionist newspapers, despite their prohibition in Mississippi. She formed her own views on slavery, on women’s roles, and on the structure of society, and she did not conceal them effectively.
The first serious public incident occurred in 1843, when Margaret was 20. During a dinner party hosted by Edmund for prominent planters and their wives, conversation turned to slavery’s expansion into new territories. One guest praised slavery as a positive good, sanctioned by scripture and beneficial to the enslaved.
Margaret spoke up. She questioned how people torn from their families and compelled to labor without compensation could be considered better off. She suggested that perhaps the institution of slavery corrupted those who practiced it more than those subjected to it.
The silence that followed was absolute. No one argued with her; they merely stared. Edmund ended the dinner early, attributing Margaret’s remarks to fatigue and ill health.
In private, he reprimanded her, explaining that she had embarrassed him and threatened his standing in the community. Margaret apologized, but Edmund understood that she regretted only the disruption, not her convictions.
Subsequent incidents deepened his frustration. She asked enslaved house servants about their families and origins. She gave food to children in the quarters. She was discovered teaching a young enslaved girl basic letters, a clear violation of Mississippi law.
Edmund restricted her reading to approved religious texts and forbade unnecessary interaction with enslaved workers. He introduced her to suitable men, hoping marriage would resolve the matter.
Between 1843 and 1845, 4 men courted Margaret and proposed marriage. She refused them all. One was dull, another cruel to his servants, a third coarse in manner. Edmund suspected the true reason was that she did not wish to marry at all.
He warned her that unmarried women had no respected place in society, that she would become an object of pity, that a husband was necessary to provide meaning and security. Margaret replied that she would rather remain unmarried than wed a man she neither loved nor respected. If society’s expectations were unreasonable, she suggested, perhaps the fault lay with society.
By early 1846, Edmund felt his authority undermined. Margaret was 23, unmarried, overweight, and defiant. Gossip circulated. Some questioned his control over his household. His carefully constructed image as a moral patriarch appeared threatened.
In May 1846, Edmund traveled to New Orleans for 2 weeks. Officially, he met with cotton factors and bankers. In reality, he also consulted men experienced in breaking the spirits of resistant enslaved people—overseers and slave breakers who understood how to produce obedience without leaving visible marks.
He required a method to subdue his daughter without scandal. The process had to appear medical, defensible, even benevolent. The advice he received was explicit: physical labor to induce exhaustion, isolation to eliminate support, unpredictability to prevent psychological adaptation, humiliation to destroy pride, and relentless documentation to ensure systematic progress.
Edmund returned to Riverbend Plantation on May 26 with a plan. He selected the large barn behind the main house, 60 ft long and 40 ft wide, solidly built with thick walls and a hay loft. Equipment was removed, heavy locks installed, hooks embedded in support beams. A grain mill requiring continuous manual effort was brought in. A thin mattress was placed in one corner. A desk and chair were positioned for Edmund, along with a leather-bound ledger.
He then selected 3 enslaved men to supervise the treatment: Benjamin, aged 38, a steady field hand with a wife, Ruth, and 3 children; Samuel, aged 27, a quiet stable worker born on the plantation; and Daniel, aged 33, a literate carpenter sold to Edmund in 1838.
Edmund informed them of their roles on June 13. They would supervise Margaret’s labor, record her behavior, and show no leniency due to her status. When Benjamin asked what would happen if they refused, Edmund responded plainly: his wife and children would be sold separately to distant plantations. Samuel and Daniel received similar warnings concerning people they cared about.
The men were given no true choice.
That night, Benjamin told Ruth. She urged him to refuse, to run, to resist. He explained that resistance would only bring ruin upon their children. If he participated, perhaps he could mitigate some of Margaret’s suffering.
On the morning of June 14, 1846, Edmund brought Margaret to the barn, instructing her only to wear plain clothing. When she saw the grain mill, the sparse bedding, and the 3 men waiting, she demanded an explanation.
“This is your treatment,” Edmund said calmly. She would live in the barn, work daily under supervision, and learn discipline and obedience. As her father, he claimed legal and moral authority to correct her behavior.
He locked the door behind him.
For several moments, no one moved. Finally, Benjamin addressed her quietly. They did not wish to do this, but refusal would bring destruction upon their families. He asked her to cooperate to make it easier for all.
Dazed, Margaret asked what she was to do. Daniel indicated the grain mill. She would push it for 4 hours, rest briefly, haul water with Samuel, then return to the mill for another 4 hours. Afterward, she would receive food and sleep.
Margaret approached the mill. Within minutes, her arms ached. Within 30 minutes, she was exhausted. Yet she continued.
At noon, Edmund returned, observed her condition, and made the first entry in the ledger: “June 14, noon. Subject shows initial resistance and shock. Physical exhaustion evident after 4 hours labor. Compliance achieved through lack of alternatives. Continue current routine.”
Thus began a pattern that would continue for months. Margaret worked, ate minimal rations of cornbread and beans, and slept on the thin mattress. Edmund weighed her weekly, adjusted the regimen, and recorded her transformation.
Within 3 weeks, she lost over 20 lb. Calluses formed on her hands. Muscles ached constantly. Exhaustion clouded her thoughts.
Benjamin, Samuel, and Daniel tried, when possible, to grant small mercies—longer rest when Edmund was absent, extra water in the heat, quiet words of encouragement. Yet the essential reality remained: Margaret was being broken.
By late July, she had ceased open resistance. She worked when told, spoke rarely, and cried quietly at night. Edmund’s July 28 entry recorded her weight at 202 lb. Compliance was now automatic. Emotional affect flattened. Work requirements were increased.
In August, after 7 weeks in the barn and 43 lb lost, Edmund intensified the regimen. He introduced unpredictability. Some days she was worked to exhaustion; other days, given reduced labor without explanation. Meals varied. Punishments were imposed for invented infractions—working too slowly, showing imagined disrespect. The objective was to convince her that outcomes depended solely on Edmund’s will.
Benjamin, Samuel, and Daniel were forced to implement these changes. The cruelty deepened.
During this period, something shifted among them. Margaret began to perceive their shame and reluctance. She understood that they, too, were trapped, compelled to harm her to protect their families. They, in turn, saw her not as the master’s daughter, but as another human being suffering under calculated oppression.
In mid-August, after Edmund departed one day, Benjamin quietly apologized. He explained the threats against his family. Margaret replied that she was not angry. He was as trapped as she.
From that point, whispered conversations followed. Daniel spoke of learning to read and of knowing ideas about justice he could not act upon. Samuel spoke of watching his mother sold when he was 8. Margaret described her mother’s death, the suffocating expectations placed upon women, and her reading of works advocating dignity and freedom.
These exchanges were dangerous. Yet they created a shared understanding.
One evening in late August, Daniel asked what would follow if the treatment ended. Margaret believed Edmund intended to marry her to a man willing to overlook her damaged reputation in exchange for inheritance. She would live obedient and diminished.
Daniel asked, “What if you did not have to accept it?”
He spoke of escape. Dangerous, rarely successful, but possible. Hope returned, fragile and terrifying.
Over the following week, Daniel persuaded Benjamin and Samuel. The risk was immense: capture would mean death or sale of their families. Yet Samuel declared he had never made a meaningful choice in his life. Perhaps it was time. Benjamin, thinking of Ruth and their children, ultimately agreed.
On September 2, they committed to helping Margaret escape.
As they planned in fragments and coded phrases, Daniel resolved to discover Edmund’s true intentions. On September 8, while repairing a window in the main house, he entered Edmund’s study. In a partially unlocked drawer, he found a small leather journal.
It was a breeding ledger.
For over a decade, Edmund had systematically forced enslaved women to bear children by men he selected, recording traits and offspring value. Near the end, Edmund wrote of aging “breeders” and the expense of purchasing replacements. Then came the proposal: Margaret herself. From strong stock, physically healthy. If paired with enslaved men of chosen characteristics, her children—legally enslaved—would be valuable. But first, she must be broken.
The barn treatment was not preparation for marriage. It was preparation for enslavement.
Daniel returned the journal and that night told Margaret.
“We leave tomorrow night,” she said.
They accelerated their incomplete plan. Supplies were gathered. The route: north to the Mississippi River, then upriver toward free territory.
On September 9, Margaret worked as usual. Edmund noted her 61 lb weight loss and wrote that physical transformation was nearly complete. Soon he would introduce her to her “new purpose.”
At 9:00 p.m., Benjamin set a small fire in a distant storage shed, drawing attention and labor to extinguish it. Amid the confusion, Samuel and Daniel unlocked the barn and led Margaret into the darkness. Benjamin joined them shortly thereafter.
They moved north through woods, traveling at night, hiding by day. After 3 days, they had covered over 20 mi. On the fourth night, September 13, dogs picked up their scent.
They ran. Voices shouted behind them.
Ahead stood an isolated barn belonging to a small farm. With dogs nearly upon them, they rushed inside and barred the door.
Searchers surrounded the structure. Edmund’s voice rang out: surrender, or the barn would burn.
There was no rear exit.
Margaret opened the door slightly. She asked that the men be spared, claiming she forced them. Edmund laughed. They would face punishment.
She stepped out. Edmund smiled, believing she surrendered. Instead, she seized his torch and ran back inside, dropping it into dry hay. Flames spread instantly. She barred the door from within.
As smoke filled the air, Benjamin asked why. “Because this way we choose,” she replied. “We die together on our terms.”
They joined hands in a circle as fire consumed the barn.
They died of smoke inhalation before flames reached them.
By the time Edmund’s men broke through, it was too late. Four bodies were pulled from the ruins.
Edmund told neighbors his daughter died in a tragic barn fire during an escape attempt by enslaved people who had kidnapped her. He commissioned a marble headstone for her grave. The treatment ledger was sealed and stored in the courthouse basement.
Benjamin, Samuel, and Daniel were buried in unmarked graves. Ruth and her children were sold to Louisiana within a week.
Yet the story endured.
In 2003, archaeologists excavating the barn foundation uncovered belt buckles, a knife blade, chain fragments, and a gold locket fused to burned timber. Inside were 2 damaged miniature portraits. On its back, partially legible letters read: M A H—Margaret Ashworth Halloway.
Researchers found little in public records. But they located the sealed ledger.
In 2007, William Fletcher, a descendant of Samuel, provided family letters, including a letter written by Ruth in 1855 describing Benjamin’s account of the escape and Edmund’s breeding plan. Witnesses had known Margaret set the fire deliberately.
Evidence showed the barn door barred from inside and multiple ignition points.
A report was published in 2008. In 2016, a historical marker was erected near the site, describing the event in restrained language, omitting many of its darkest details.
Edmund Halloway died in 1862. He never remarried. Riverbend Plantation was eventually dismantled. The land became fields.
Margaret’s marble headstone remains in the family cemetery, inscribed: “Beloved daughter.”
For descendants of the enslaved at Riverbend, the story is not obscure history but family memory.
It reveals cruelty as systematic, not impulsive. The barn treatment was not aberration but extension of a system treating human beings as property. It also reveals forms of resistance: Margaret choosing solidarity and death over submission; Benjamin, Samuel, and Daniel choosing humanity over enforced obedience.
Four people died in that barn. The system endured until the Civil War ended slavery in Mississippi. Yet in impossible circumstances, they affirmed their humanity and denied total victory to their oppressor.
Their choice remains part of Mississippi’s buried history, preserved in ledgers, letters, burned timbers, and the quiet persistence of memory.
