Robert J. Lyles

Robert J. Lyles
Born	1817 Maryland or Tennessee
Died	(1860-05-18)May 18, 1860 near Grand Ecore, Louisiana
Occupation	Slave trader
Spouse	Mary Roy Hutchison
Children	7

Robert J. Lyles (1817 – May 18, 1860) was a slave trader who worked in Nashville, Tennessee, and New Orleans, Louisiana.[1][2]

Early life and ancestry

Robert J. Lyles was born in 1817 in Maryland or Tennessee to Robert Lyles and Juliet Johnson.[3] His grandfather was doctor Richard Lyles, a surgeon's mate at the hospital in Williamsburg during the Revolution.[4][5][6] This makes Lyles a relative of James Breathed, once leader of Jeb Stuart's horse artillery.[7]

Tennessee

Lyles married Mary Roy Hutchison in Sumner County, Tennessee on February 20, 1843.[8] In 1850, Lyles owned ten slaves.[9]

Lyles was first a scout for slave trader Henry H. Haynes,[10][11] then partnered with George W. Hitchings in 1859.[12][13] He also sometimes partnered with William L. Boyd Jr.[14] Historian Frederic Bancroft in Slave-Trading in the Old South described Lyles & Hitchings as one of Nashville's "resident leaders in the interstate traffic" in 1859–60.[15]

New Orleans

Lyles bought and sold slaves from the New Orleans market and frequently traveled there.[16] In 1842 he was a passenger on a steamboat that hit a snag while traveling between New Orleans and St. Francisville in Louisiana.[17] In 1847 he was a guest at New Orleans' St. Charles Hotel.[18]

Death

Upon one such voyage, on the steamer B. L. Hodge, while on the Red River near Grand Ecore, he was stabbed to death by hunchback passenger Bazile L. Sheath.[19][20][21] Passenger Charles Fort also died and F. G. Jernigan was wounded severely in the neck.[22] Slave trader Montgomery Little applied in New Orleans for curatorship of the Robert J. Lyles estate.[23] Lyles' son-in-law G. L. Pierce was the administrator of his estate.[24] Lyles is buried in Nashville's Spring Hill Cemetery.

See also

• List of Tennessee slave traders
• Nashville, Tennessee slave market
• New Orleans slave market

References

1. "Nashville Sites". nashvillesites.org.
2. "R. J. Lyles". Nashville patriot. July 4, 1859 – via chroniclingamerica.
3. Maryland Marriages, 1655-1850, Robert Lyles & Juliet Johnson Montgomery County 14 Mar 1814
4. "Pension application" (PDF).
5. Of Sceptred Race, p. 270
6. Centennial History of Arkansas, p. 1046
7. The Broken Circle
8. "Tennessee, Marriages, 1796-1950", , FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XDQ5-NJV : 16 March 2020), Robert J. Lyles, 1843.
9. "United States, Census (Slave Schedule), 1850 ", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MVHF-3L8 : Sun Mar 10 10:00:38 UTC 2024), Entry for Robert J Lyles, 1850.
10. Slavery In Tennessee by Mooney, p. 214
11. "Negroes at Auction". Republican Banner. July 3, 1857. p. 2 – via newspapers.com.
12. "Slave Dealers". Republican Banner. September 16, 1860. p. 1.
13. Louisiana Supreme Court; Thorpe, Thomas H.; Gill, Charles G. (1870). Louisiana Reports: Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Louisiana. West Publishing Company. pp. 474–475.
14. Franklin, John Hope; Schweninger, Loren (September 2005). In Search of the Promised Land: A Slave Family in the Old South. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-020760-1.
15. Bancroft, Frederic (2023) [1931, 1996]. Slave Trading in the Old South (Original publisher: J. H. Fürst Co., Baltimore). Southern Classics Series. Introduction by Michael Tadman (Reprint ed.). Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press. p. 249. ISBN 978-1-64336-427-8. LCCN 95020493. OCLC 1153619151.
16. Jones, Dr Vanessa. "LibGuides: Black Nashville in History & Memory: Introduction". tnstate.libguides.com.
17. "The steam Panola". The Times-Picayune. 1842-07-02. p. 2. Retrieved 2025-01-30.
18. "Arrivals at the Principal Hotels". The Times-Picayune. 1847-05-09. p. 2. Retrieved 2025-01-30.
19. "Terrible Tragedy on board the steamer B. L. Hodge". The Louisville Daily Courier. May 24, 1860. p. 3 – via newspapers.com.
20. "The Murders on the B. L. Hodge". The Daily Delta. 1860-05-22. p. 3. Retrieved 2025-01-26.
21. "(No title)". Clarksville Weekly Chronicle. May 25, 1860. p. 2.
22. "Robt J. Lyles, of Nashville, and Charles M. Fort, of Springfield, Tenn. Murdered". Detroit Free Press. May 30, 1860. p. 2 – via newspapers.com.
23. "Succession of Robert J. Lyles, No. 16,797". The New Orleans Crescent. 1860-05-28. p. 5. Retrieved 2025-01-26.
24. Court, Tennessee Supreme; Cooke, William Wilcox (February 3, 1883). "Tennessee Reports : Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Highest Courts of Law and Equity of the State of Tennessee". Soule, Thomas, and Winsor – via Google Books.

External links

• Robert J. Lyles at Find a Grave