Who was Robert Sheegog?

Sheegog was tied to the University of Mississippi (UM) during its founding. According to records recently unearthed by members of the UM Slavery Research Group (UMSRG), Sheegog regularly hired out his slaves to the University, as did his neighbor and original UM Board of Trustees member Jacob Thompson. Both Thompson and Sheegog owned large plantations in the countryside but also built “home places” for their families in Oxford where they held a smaller number of slaves. Census records reveal that Robert Sheegog claimed nine slaves in Oxford in 1850 and eight slaves in 1860, but we currently have no information about the experiences of these enslaved people or even where their dwellings may have been located on his estate.