Inventory of the estate of John Alpheus Colvert, Iredell County, North Carolina, 1827.

On the second page, in the second column, are “Negroes hired for one year,” that is, slaves leased to neighbors to earn money for Colvert’s estate. “Boy Walker” was about eight years old. That he was listed without his mother suggests that he was an orphan, though he may have been kin to the others who appear in this list. Walker had arrived in North Carolina only two or three years before, passed to John Colvert from the estate of John’s father Samuel. When John’s died, his son William I. Colvert inherited Walker. William was even younger than his own slave, however, and Walker was likely hired out until the boy came of age.