University of Missouri Research Board

Research Questions

Central to Mutti Burke’s research are everyday interactions in slaveholding Missouri: relationships inside and outside farms, marriages, and the formation of communities. These questions are relevant well beyond state borders. As she notes, “in the South, as a whole, the vast majority of slaveholders owned 20 or fewer slaves”—and so slaves in that region may have formed communities similar to those characteristic of Missouri farms, rather than large plantations.