Summary Of Nell

• Ask historical questions: Irish Nell and her descendents were enslaved because of her choice to marry a slave named Charles. Richard Boarman was a Lordship who envied the idea of Nell marrying a "salt water Negro" instead of him. He gave Nell an ultimatum after writing an act stating any women who marry a slave were then slaves of their husband's master and that all of their descendents between the married couple would be born into slavery as well.
• Analyze the evidence: According to witnesses Nell and Charles married because they both loved one another. Nell even stated to Boarman that she would rather bed Charles than her Lordship and be damned. Later on in their lives a younger witness stated that he remembered hearing Charles and Nell sharing terms of endearment with one another calling the other old man/woman. Some of the witnesses didn't seem to know that Nell as a white woman was even a slave because of the fact that she acted like a free woman, carrying out the duties they would normally do like spinning, cooking, and acted as a midwife. These are all reliable testimonies to the court because they are memories of people who existed in a time before records were kept about race …show more content…
I can assume that in the neighborhood Nell and Charles resided in had to be a farming community because people stated she was a hard labourer who worked in the fields and made good crops. I can also tell there were multiple slaves in this area which were expensive so the neighborhood had to be in an expensive area where people could afford to purchase this many slaves. It seems that slaves and servants were on the same level of political heirarchy, meaning they were low on the totem pole and resided together commonly enough that one servant could see a slave enough to fall in love with

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