Seen/Unseen
A companion website to the book
Seen/Unseen: Hidden Lives in a Community of Enslaved Georgians
The Book
John B. Lamar, his sister Mary Ann Lamar Cobb, and her husband Howell Cobb lived gilded lives that propelled Howell to the highest reaches of power in the United States government. Undergirding all of it was an empire of more than a dozen plantations, spread over 250 miles of Georgia, built on the labor of hundreds of people that the family held in bondage. Fragments of their lives were captured in thousands of letters written between the Cobb-Lamars, who recorded the external experiences of the enslaved but never fully reckoned with their humanity. Seen/Unseen reveals a community that maintained bonds of affection, kinship, and support across vast distances of space, striving to make their experiences in slavery more bearable.
The Enslaved
This website expands beyond the parameters of the book to explore the lives of more than 700 people enslaved by the Cobb-Lamars. All people deserve to have their stories told. Recognizing those whose humanity was so little valued during their lifetimes is an important addition to the historical record. While details of many lives are sparse, the biographical sketches on this site address enslaved people as people rather than as characters who fall under the category of “slaves.” Accounts of their kinship, labor, movements, and genealogies are small steps towards encountering human beings rather than as historical ideas.
The Network
The Cobb-Lamar plantations and houses functioned on an extensive administrative network that controlled the endless movement of people, goods, and information. Maintaining it required constant written communication between John B., Mary Ann, and Howell, as well as other family members, overseers, and sometimes even enslaved people. Yet the aboveground network was mirrored by an invisible one built below it by the enslaved, who used this web of connectivity to remain in touch, protect one another as much as possible, and preserve their own worlds. Their efforts are visible, even if only in fragmentary glimpses, amid the hundreds of thousands of now-archived pages that were left behind.