Robert Shelton's article "Slavery in a Texas Seaport: The Peculiar Institution in Galveston" offers a detailed description of what daily life was like for bondspeople living on the island. In the absence of rural plantation life, enslaved Galvestonians were often employed in trades such as domestic service, brickworking, iron factories, cotton presses, and a variety waterfront labor such as working at the wharves or loading ship cargo.
While it is certainly interesting and important to consider the kind of labor and services that enslaved people were employed in, it is also important to think about what their lives may have been like outside the realm of work.