sentences:  Despite the stress and anxiety caused by this indifference to family stabilityon one occasion an overseer wrote that the separation of families "seems like death to them"marriage was the foundation on which slaves established their own community, and longevity in these unions was not uncommon.Large families that covered multiple generations, along with their attendant marriages, were part of a slave community-building process that transcended ownership.Washington's head carpenter Isaac, for example, lived with his wife Kitty, a dower-slave milkmaid, at Mansion House Farm.