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38 <br /> The Ironic Fourth of July: History of the Enslaved People in the <br /> Hogan-Rogers House <br /> On July 4, 1858, the enslaves residents of Thomas Hogan's plantation <br /> watched nervously as revelers past the house, headed to the Independence Day <br /> festivities in Chapel Hill. They didn't share the joy of the hour. These men and <br /> women were worried about the fate of their ailing master whose life was slipping <br /> away as he lay in the upstairs of his grand house. Late that day, the news came that <br /> death had taken "Master Hogan" away. Male slaves picked up shovels and headed <br /> to the small cemetery in front of the house to begin digging his grave. Every slave <br /> on the Hogan farm knew what his death meant for him or her - all of Thomas Lloyd <br /> Hogan's property would be divided up between his heirs; property which included <br /> them. Both the slaves in the nearby quarters and those living in the "big house" <br /> worried about separation from friends and family. Sam Morphis, another Chapel <br /> Hill enslaved man remembered the scene when his master died. <br /> "When I was sixteen years old my master died. I shall never forget the day. <br /> The state of things at the "quarters"was sad enough. The Negroes were in a <br /> panic. The death of the master was the thing most dreaded by our slaves. It <br /> meant separation and new masters.And we knew that few masters were like <br /> ours. "With the settlement of Hogan's will, their worst fears became a <br /> reality. <br /> Living with Thomas, were his wife Elizabeth, and seventeen year old Joseph C., and <br /> Elizabeth McCauley, aged 12. In 1850, Thomas Lloyd Hogan owned eighteen <br /> people; ten men and eight women. Six of these were mulattoes. The rest of Thomas' <br /> children had moved off to plantations of their own. His son,Alexander Hogan, <br /> owned eight slaves on his plantation north of his father's property.Another son, <br /> William Johnston Hogan, owned eleven slaves and was a successful merchant in <br /> Chapel Hill. In all, the family owned thirty-seven people. <br /> Besides using African-Americans for their labor, sex became a part of life for the <br /> family's female slaves. The census record reveals the 184os had been a decade of <br /> much interracial sexual contact in the Hogan family. On the 1850 census of the <br /> Hogan house, six slaves, two boys, aged 10 and 2, along with four girls, aged 9 and <br /> 7, were all listed as mulattos. As the decade of the 185os continued, so did this <br /> tradition. Born in 1857, Morris, a slave on the Alexander Hogan farm, claimed his <br /> 6 <br />