Legally, there were no marriages among the slaves. They were not citizens, but property. The men were urged to take their "wives" from among the women of the home estate, if a suitable companion could be found. But if not they eventually secured one in the neighborhood and the master usually allowed the slave a pass to see his wife every night in the week. While such a cohabitation was not exactly a legal affair most of them were held as sacred as those more legalized unions among the master class. Many masters paid an unconscious tribute to these unions. When there ran away a slave who had a wife living in the neighborhood or even at a great distance the owner would make mention of the exact locality of the wife in order that people in that region would be on the lookout for the fugitive. J. C. Bucklin in 1824 did not give much of a description of David, who had left his master, but he very carefully stated that he had a "wife and children at William Shirley's, about 16 miles from this place, on the Westport Road."[367] An owner in Fayette county after giving a detailed picture of "Arthur" added that "Capt. Peter Poindexter, eight miles from Lexington owns his wife, and I expect that he will be in that neighborhood."[368] A more extreme example was that of "Dick," a Lexington slave who ran away to New Orleans, the owner thought, because "he has a wife living in that city, and he has been heard to say frequently that he was determined to go to New Orleans."[369] Such cases as this were the logical consequence of the slavery system. They existed in Kentucky just as in any other slave State, but they were few compared with those slaves unions that were never broken.
It was to the economic as well as humanitarian interest of the master to have sympathy with the peace and contentment of his servant. Thus most of them took care that the family relationships of the slaves should not be disturbed. Oftentimes when the owner of either a husband or a wife was on the point of moving out of the county the masters would get together and make a trade which would obviate any disruption of the slave family. Under such conditions a man would part with a servant who otherwise could not have been bought at any price. Such a situation was possible only in a State where the personal interest in a slave and his welfare took precedence over merely his economic value to the owner.[370]