SUMMARY
John Armfield, junior partner in the firm Franklin and Armfield of Alexandria, was one of the most prominent slave traders in Virginia. Born in North Carolina, he worked as a stagecoach driver before meeting Isaac Franklin and joining him in the business of selling enslaved men, women, and children for profit. In Alexandria, Armfield operated a slave-jail complex on Duke Street, gathering enslaved people from across the Upper South for shipment south, often on coastal brigs that landed in New Orleans. Many slaves then took Mississippi River paddleboats north to Natchez, Mississippi, where Franklin kept his office. The firm sold an average of 1,200 enslaved people per year, mostly young men and women either without families or separated from them, for profits of as much as $100,000 per year. Both Franklin and Armfield became rich, leaving the business in 1836. Armfield eventually moved to Tennessee, where he established a resort community at Beersheba Springs and became a fou