On Saturday, February 21, 2009 at 10:00am, Farmington will host the re-enactment of James Speed’s 1863 interview with the American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission.  The interview will be re-enacted by two of Farmington’s longtime volunteers Ken Miller and John Thompson.  Following the re-enactment Historian Jennie Cole will give a lecture on her interpretation of the 1863 interview with James Speed and about the Freedmen’s Bureau in general. The re-enactment of the 1863 interview is a part of Farmington’s Saturday Series.

Speed provides descriptions of enslaved African American men working in the hemp fields, while enslaved women tended to the gardens, orchard, dairy and poultry operations, the Speed family and their home. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased in advance or at the door.

There is a limited amount of information about slave life at Farmington and the different attitudes of various Speed family members towards slavery.  Slave life at Farmington was representative of that at other large Kentucky plantations.  When John Speed died in 1840 nearly 60 enslaved African Americans lived and labored on the plantation.  Much of the information that we do know about slave life is found in oral histories, court records, newspapers, family letters, and interviews such as James Speed’s.  In his adult life James Speed, oldest living son of John Speed, worked as a lawyer in Louisville.  He would later be appointed as Abraham Lincoln’s last Attorney General in 1864.