Just a question. Were there not men, or women, who owned property in a couple of states and one of them was pretty much left in the hands of a manager? It could be possible that a manager was listed as owner because of his residency and those slaves may have been recorded as belonging to him. I can see how this can happen after running into a lot of inaccurate info while digging into census material for some of my family members.
I also enjoy digging into the Agricultural Census material because it shows items that would be considered assets or wealth but are not listed in the income on the regular census. One can get a real good idea of what was considered wealth though not monetary wealth in them. One can see the huge impact of the War in the amount of goods such as barrels of flour, cattle and crops in the Ag census after the war when compared to it before. The regular household census doesn't break it down to show the 'big' picure.
Pam