Your boy Ellick ran away from your overseer and came to me some days ago. I ordered him to go back but he was very unwilling to do so. And said from the general conduct of the overseer to him he was sure of being unmercifully beaten if he returned. I was convinced that if I sent him back that he would run away & lie out, & I disliked to put him in jail on many accounts, so I ordered him to go to my place and stay until I should be advised by you what to do with him. I will pay you his hire in the meanwhile or keep him during the balance of the year as you like. I have a great deal of fencing to do & have few men at home to split rails, so that I should have employment for him if you should not desire to put him back under the present overseer.

Louis a boy of yours ranaway about 3 months ago & came over here. I wrote a letter recommending him to the clemency of the overseer & sent him home. The overseer however whipped him severely. This circumstance has frightened Ellick together with a belief that the overseer is predisposed to use him worse than the rest. I am disposed to believe that your overseer is not the proper person for your place. Lane & others in Milledgeville are of that opinion. And the circumstance of his not being able to manage his negroes without running them off is evidence of his incapacity with me.

My opinion is that circumstanced as you are & as I am, an overseer with a small family is most desirable. A single man is objectionable on many accounts, he will have few ties to bind him at home, & is disposed to be absent too much & moreover he causes disturbances among the negroes, by interfering with their domestic arrangements. A married man will be home at night with his family & has fewer inducements to call him off, besides his wife if she be any account at all, will be of service in attending to pregnant women, to seeing that the children are taken care of properly while their mothers are at work. The only persons who object to overseers with families, are those who live sufficiently near their plantations to receive the benefit of the butter, eggs, chicken, potatoes & c that are raised. In that case an overseer’s wife is a troublesome “article,” as she will appropriate to her own purposes more than she is entitled to. But a man whose plantation is remote must expect to be imposed on a great deal with even the best of overseers, & such grievances as those are small, & can be borne if the overseers general conduct is such that makes him a desirable man. I will never have an overseer who is single myself, unless I had a family & a little plantation near me, where I made my house supplies. In that instance I would prefer having no woman to squabble with my wife about the chickens, but in no other case would I employ a single man.

Although I am a bachelor myself I am willing to admit that one married man is worth two bachelors to any community. A married man who is not a sot you can make some sure calculations on. On a single man you can make none. He has no ties to any place, & can in [a few] days notice, pull up stakes & locate a thousand miles off before you are aware that he is going. A married man has given good security for his behavior in his wife & children, a single man can give no pledge, he acts as well as long as it suits him & plays the devil when he chooses, thinking that no person that he cares for will be affected by it.

I would trust a man of family much sooner in any situation than a single man.

This is preaching up principles that I do not follow myself – you will laugh & say. Well.

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Source: Howell Cobb Family Papers (MS 1376), Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia.