Slaves in the Family
Page 52
“live oak, hickory, pine”: Plat of Strawberry plantation, 17 Oct 1680, BP-SCHS.
the Natives made room: Waddell, Indians; George D. Terry, “ ‘Champaign Country’: A Social History of an Eighteenth Century Lowcountry Parish in South Carolina, St. Johns Berkeley County” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of South Carolina, 1981), 36.
a simple wooden cottage: Anne Simons Deas, Recollections of the Ball Family of South Carolina and the Comingtee Plantation (Charleston, 1909), reprint (Charleston: South Carolina Historical Society, 1978), 12.
Africans and Natives built … shelters: Leland Ferguson, Uncommon Ground: Archaeology and Early African America, 1650–1800 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1992), chap. 3.
a four-year-old [child]: Grand Council Journal, 23 Oct 1671.
John Coming died: Cheves, Shaftesbury Papers, 231 n; Will of John Coming, 20 Aug 1694, Charleston County Wills, Works Progress Administration transcripts, Charleston County Library, Charleston (hereafter, Charleston Wills).
“All Negroes, Mollatoes, and Indians”: M. Eugene Sirmans, “The Legal Status of the Slave in South Carolina, 1670–1740,” Journal of Southern History 28, no. 4 (Nov 1962).
“my sad state of widowhood”: A copy of Mrs. Affra Coming’s letter to her sister Ann Harleston Bulkeley, 1696, BP-SCHS.
the option fell to Elias: Nan S. Ball, Ball Family of Stoke-in-Teignhead.
Affra … etymology: Isaac Taylor, M.A., Words and Places, or Etymological Illustrations of History Ethnology and Geography (London, 1909), 56, 368; Genesis 25:4, Micah 1:10.
“I Give unto ye sd John Harleston & Elias Ball all my Negroes”: Will of Affra Coming, 28 Dec 1698, Charleston Wills.
Elias Ball sailed into the harbor: No precise record of Elias Ball’s arrival in South Carolina survives, but two pieces of evidence make summer or fall of 1698 nearly certain. A letter written by Affra Coming to her sister Elizabeth Harleston in March 1698 shows that neither the Harleston nor the Ball heir has yet come to Charleston (quoted in Deas, Recollections of the Ball Family, 29–30), while Elias Ball’s mention in the 28 Dec 1698 will of Affra Coming suggests that he has since arrived. The will gives a bequest to John Harleston “of Dublin in ye Kingdom of Ireland” as well as “to Elias Ball,” whose whereabouts are not stated, presumably because he is already in the colony.
3,800 free whites and 3,000 slaves: Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (New York: Knopf, 1974), 26 n, 144.
the “most noted plantations”: Terry, “ ‘Champaign Country,’ ” 66; John Oldmixon, “The History of the British Empire in America, 1708,” Narratives of Early Carolina, Salley, ed., 366.
“I sent my fouor Cheldren to Mr. Faur”: Memorandum, 23 Jan 1721, Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS.
3: THE WELL OF TRADITION
a distant cousin, Elias Ball Bull: Author’s conversations with Elias Ball Bull, Charleston.
Bull … tried to fight the uprising: Edward McCrady, History of South Carolina Under the Royal Government, 1719–1776 (New York: MacMillan, 1899), 794–95.
Elias Ball … commission his portrait: Elias Ball, oil on canvas, ca. 1740s, by Jeremiah Theus, private collection; a copy of the painting is in the collection of the Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston.
Dorothy Dame Gibbs … Ball family lore: Author’s conversation with Dorothy Dame Gibbs, Charleston.
Work House … floggings for a fee: Thomas G. Finklea to John Ball, 26 Oct 1827, 8 Mar 1832, and 11 Oct 1833, BP-SCHS; “[18 Nov 1819] Work house fees for confinement of Joe … $65.25,” “Oct 14, 1828 paid W. E. Gordon, work house fees for Town, $8.87,” in Pimlico plantation book, 1810–30, BP-Duke; Charles R. Simpson to Isaac Ball, 15 Mar 1814, BP-SCL.
receipts for slave purchases: Bill of sale, “mulatto fellow Sam,” John Ball to Banks & Lockwood, merchant, 27 Jan 1803, Misc. records, vol. 3X, p. 525; bill of sale, “man named George,” Martha C. Ball to Herman Bourhaus, 13 Feb 1821, Misc. records, vol. 4V, 83; bills of sale, “girl named Mary,” Elias O. Ball to Thomas Waring, n.d. Dec 1839, and “girl named Nancy,” Elias O. Ball to Mrs. E. Belin, 17 Dec 1839, Misc. records, vol. 5W, 90–91; bill of sale, “Lewis and Daniel,” James Poyas, exor., est. Isaac Ball to Wm. W. Smith, 10 Jan 1845, vol. 6A, 335, all at SCDAH.
4: BRIGHT MA
a slave named Tenah … Mende: Tenah: List of Negroes at Limerick, 25 Mar 1806, BP-SCHS; provenance of names: Professor Alpha Bah, Department of History, College of Charleston, S.C., and Prof. Akintola Wyse, Fourah Bay College, Freetown, Sierra Leone; villages: A. P. Kup, Sierra Leone: A Concise History (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975), 35, 38 (map).
“I … give to my said nephew”: Will of Elias Ball, 6 Dec 1809, Charleston Wills; plantation record book, 1803–34, BP-UNC.
his specialty … pigeons: Thomas G. Finklea to John Ball, 19 Oct and 15 Nov 1833, BP-SCHS.
another child, Binah: Plantation record book, 1818–33, BP-UNC.
Tenah and Adonis … felt the whip: Thomas G. Finklea to John Ball, 26 Oct 1827, BP-SCHS.
“the torturing lash”: American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839), reprint (New York: Arno Press, 1968), 52–54.
the plantation infirmary: Ann Ball to John Ball, 27 Nov 1823, Thomas G. Finklea to John Ball, 2 Aug 1833, BP-SCHS.
most of his belongings … were auctioned: Will of John Ball, 26 Jun 1834, Charleston Wills; List of Negroes belonging to Mrs. Ann Ball purchased from the estate of John Ball (1834), BP-SCHS.
the lawsuit … divided the slaves: Keating S. Ball, bond, 1843, and E. R. Laurens, report, Charleston Library Society (hereafter, CLS); Mortgage, Elias Horry Deas and Keating S. Ball … Lydia Jane Waring, 1 Mar 1841, Misc. records, vol. 5S, 123, SCDAH.
their village … split in two: Plantation Record book, 1849–71, BP-UNC; Comingtee plantation Blanket Book, 1841–61, Charleston Museum, Charleston (the notation EHD, for Elias Horry Deas, appears next to the names of people selected to move to Buck Hall).
Buck Hall, a 635-acre plantation: Berkeley County, South Carolina, Register of Mesne Conveyance, A11-41 (hereafter, RMC).
“He could not get along with” the black people: Misc. note, Anne S. Deas, private collection, Charleston.
Federal soldiers … headed for the slave street: Statement of possession of Buck Hall and Washington plantations, F. M. Montell, Commander of the Potomaska, 9 Mar 1865, Elias H. Deas to Anne S. Deas, 5 May 1865, E. H. Deas papers, SCL.
Katie Roper: Author’s conversations with Heyward-Roper family, South Carolina.
Katie … became … Mrs. Heyward: Moncks Corner, South Carolina, labor contracts, Jan–May 1866, vol. 237, entry 3286, record group 105, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, National Archives, Washington, D.C. (hereafter, Freedmen’s Bureau, National Archives).
Heyward clan … numbered more than 150: Heyward Family Reunion, booklet, Jul 1995, private collection.
5: A FAMILY BUSINESS
the “pest house”: An Act for the … Defence of this Province, 12 Jul 1707, in Nicholas Trott, “The Laws of the Province of South Carolina” (1719), part II, no. 5, p. 23, SCDAH.
forty percent of … Africans … came through Charleston: Elaine Nichols, “Sullivan’s Island Pest Houses: Beginning an Archaeological Investigation,” conference paper, Archaeology and the Black Experience, University of Mississippi, Oxford, 17–20 May 1989; Wood, Black Majority, xiv.
“what for Filth, putrid Air, and ‘putrid Dysenteries’ “: Alexander Garden, quoted in Edmund Berkeley and Dorothy Smith Berkeley, Dr. Alexander Garden of Charles Town (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1969), 124; corpses: South Carolina Gazette, 8 Jun 1769. (Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century South Carolina newspapers are collected at the Charleston Library Society, Charleston, and in various collections.)
“15 negro men [and] 15 Indian women”: Early agriculture: John Norris, “Profitable Advice for Rich and Poor … a Description, or
True Relation of South Carolina” (1712), in Selling a New World: Two Colonial South Carolina Promotional Pamphlets, Jack Greene, ed. (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina, 1989); John Lawson, A New Voyage to Carolina (1709), reprint (Readex Microprint Corporation, 1966); Lewis Cecil Gray, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860 (New York: Peter Smith, 1941), 1:153–60; Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS.
Anabaptists … refused to buy slaves: Terry, “ ‘Champaign Country,’ ” 48–52, 88; J. Russell Cross, Historic Ramblin’s Through Berkeley (Columbia, S.C.: R. L. Bryan, 1985), 130–32.
uprising of Native slaves: A. S. Salley, ed., Commissions and Instructions from the Lords Proprietors of Carolina Public Officials to Public Officials of South Carolina, 1685–1715 (Columbia, S.C.: Historical Commission of South Carolina, 1916), 144.
the Balls expanded operations: Lands granted to Elias Ball the first, and Memorial of several tracts of land belonging to Elias Ball of St. Johns Parish in Berkly County, BP-SCHS.
between £20 and £30 per adult: People sold in Virginia, 1699–1708, cost of indentured servants in late 1600s; Gray, History of Agriculture, I:368–70.
Native workers … purchased with animal skins: Minutes, 17 Apr 1712, 4 May 1714, A. S. Salley, ed., Journal of the Commissioners of the Indian Trade of South Carolina September 20, 1710–April 12, 1715 (Columbia, S.C.: Historical Commission of South Carolina, 1926).
Elias’s neighborhood … the domestic slave trade: Strawberry Ferry: An additional act for the making of high ways, and for appointing a ferry over ye Western Branch of Cooper River, 17 Feb 1705, BP-SCHS; slave raid: Verner W. Crane, The Southern Frontier, 1670–1732 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University, 1928), 147.
“He had frequently commanded scouting parties after Indians”: A short history of the family of the Balls since my grandfather settled in South Carolina, wrote by John Ball (1786), BP-SCL.
children who lived past infancy: Ball family genealogy, in Deas, Recollections of the Ball Family, 184–85.
John Harleston … moved to the opposite end of Comingtee: John Ball, Chronicles of Comingtee (1892), BP-Duke.
fifteen Native nations formed an alliance: Appeals to colonial government: Minutes, Commissioners of the Indian Trade, Salley, ed., throughout; Yamasee War: Crane, Southern Frontier, 166–184; George Chicken, “1715 … Journal of the March into the Cherokee Mountains in the Yemassee War,” Year Book of the City of Charleston, 1894 (Charleston), 342–52; John Barnwell, Map showing the route … from North Carolina in 1715 to aid South Carolina during the Yamasee War, SCHS; Captain Elias Ball: Officer’s commission, Gov. Charles Craven to Capt. Ball, 4 Apr 1715, private collection; “Military Men … bent upon Revenge”: Gideon Johnston, Charleston, to Secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, London, 19 Dec 1715, quoted in Crane, Southern Frontier, 179; “not to buy … slaves above the age of 14 years”: 10 Jul 1716, Commissioners of the Indian Trade.
Elias acquired still more land: Land records, 1680–1842 & n.d., and Memorial of several tracts of land belonging to Elias Ball, BP-SCHS; names of tracts deduced from Will of Elias Ball, 31 Aug 1750, BP-SCHS.
Elizabeth “was taken with a Malignant Fever”: John Harleston (South Carolina) to Ann Bulkeley (Dublin), Feb 1721, quoted in Deas, Recollections of the Ball Family, 35–36.
Elias bought a new account book: Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS.
“Bella had of me 3 yards of negero cloth”: Bella: memoranda, 10 Nov 1720 (cloth), n.d. Nov 1749 (blankets), 20 Oct 1753 (shoes), Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78; first … purchase of people: slave lists for 1721, Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS.
slow … slave traffic: Wood, Black Majority, 151.
Fatima: Biography: memoranda, “1721—Bought … Fatima,” “Born 1725—Pino (Fatima’s girl),” “Giley, Fatima’s son was born [23 Apr 1742]” (disappears after birth, perhaps dead), Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS.
the market, one Saturday each month: An act for settling a fair and market in Childsberry Town in St. Johns Parish in Berkly County (1723), BP-SCHS.
“Taken with the runaway Negroes … a jacket and britches”: 4 Sep 1731, Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS.
law concerning the treatment of runaway slaves: “Acts for the Better Ordering of Slaves,” Thomas Cooper, ed., The Statutes at Large of South Carolina (Columbia, S.C.: 1837), Act #314, 7 Jun 1712.
Elias hired a music teacher: Memoranda, 1722/3, 1731, 1735, Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS.
4,328 acres and forty-three slaves: Property in 1727: Terry, “ ‘Champaign Country,’ ” 331–35; overseers and new house: May 1721, Sep 1722, ca. 1736, Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS.
The first rice fields: Gray, History of Agriculture, I:278–286.
“the name that stands out … is ‘Dolly’ “: Deas, Recollections of the Ball Family, 169; “Molattoe Wench”: Will of Elias Ball, 31 Aug 1750, BP-SCHS; death of Dolly: “Old Dolly died ye 5 Dec 1774, age 62,” Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS.
evidence of white-black sex: Legislation against: Wood, Black Majority, 99; La Salle case: Grand Council Journal, 6 May 1692.
Dolly was born in 1712: Biography of Dolly: memoranda, 13 May 1727 and 28 Jan 1728 (doctor), n.d. 1745 (shoes), April 1735 (Cupid), Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS.
Dolly gave birth to … [a] child … Edward: Birth: 16 Sep 1740, Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS; sister: Catherine Johnston, receipt for legacy, 5 Feb 1821, papers of Edward Tanner, in BP-Duke; as executor of sister’s estate: “Citation to Edward Tanner to administer on estate of Free Kate … 5 Sep 1768,” Abstracts from Records of the Court of Ordinary, South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine (hereafter, SCHM) vol. 27 (1926).
“frequent less with their black Lovers the open Lots”: South Carolina Gazette, 18 Mar 1732; “Africain Ladies”: 24 Jul 1736.
6: WRITTEN IN THE BLOOD
Carolyn Goodson’s family: Author’s conversations with Smalls and Goodson families, Pennsylvania.
Frederick Poyas … mulatto: Census of the United States, 1880, Charleston County, South Carolina, Parish of St. Thomas & St. Denis, enumeration district 97, p. 44; birth lists, Cedar Hill, cloth list for 1850, Limerick cloth list, 1851, in Plantation Book, 1804–90, BP-UNC.
James Poyas … inherited money from Isaac Ball: Will of Isaac Ball, 15 Nov 1825, Charleston Wills; Mathurin G. Gibbs to Isaac Ball 11 Feb 1825, 16 Feb 1825, and Conveyance, Cedar Hill plantation, James Poyas to William James Ball, 1 Jan 1850, BP-SCL; William J. Ball and James Poyas, 4 Feb 1850, Charleston County RMC, E-12, 343; Henry A. M. Smith, The Baronies of South Carolina (Charleston: South Carolina Historical Society, 1931), 172.
the trial of his accused killer: State of South Carolina v. Tony Lewis McNeil II (1996), case #E-291072, Ninth Judicial Circuit, Charleston County.
7: THE MAKING OF A DYNASTY
Angola Amy: “Bought—1736 … Amey,” later “Angola Amey,” Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS; Wood, Black Majority, Appendix C.
Amy and Windsor worked … until … 1790: Amy and Windsor and their progeny: A list of Negroes the property of Elias Ball made the 12th day of May 1784; death dates: [List of] Superannuated Negroes as Incumbrance, in Appraisement and division of the Negroes late the property of Elias Ball (1787), BP-SCHS; Cheryll Ann Cody, “There Was No ‘Absalom’ on the Ball Plantations: Slave-Naming Practices in the South Carolina Low Country, 1720–1865,” American Historical Review 92 (Jun 1987). Amy’s relationship with Windsor is hypothesized from this evidence: (1) on two lists of slaves, made years apart, Amy and Windsor share a house; and (2) in context of the slave practice of naming children after grandparents, four of Angola Amy’s grandchildren would carry the name Windsor. Amy’s family tree: research by Lucy D. Rosenfeld and Jessica B. Cohen; tree constructed by Jessica B. Cohen.
slave dealers [in] “Angola”: Daniel C. Littlefield, Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and
the Slave Trade in Colonial South Carolina (Chicago: University of Illinois, 1991), 41–44; John K. Thornton, “African Dimensions of the Stono Rebellion,” American Historical Review, 96:4 (Oct 1991), 1101–13; Joseph Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730–1830 (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1988).
pay … for … extra work: Memoranda, Jan 1728, Jan 1736, and 1740, Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS.
“task system”: Philip D. Morgan, “Work and Culture: The Task System and the World of Lowcountry Blacks, 1700 to 1880,” William and Mary Quarterly, 39:4 (1982), 563–99.
Hannah … grew … tobacco: Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS.
[Elias] would move to … Charleston: Conveyance, Elias Ball Sr. to Elias Ball Jr., 1000 acres, Aug 1733, BP-SCL; memoranda, May 1738 and “5 February [1739]—My father went down to live being of a Tuesday,” Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS.
The rebellion started on a Sunday: John K. Thornton, “African Dimensions of the Stono Rebellion”; Wood, Black Majority, 314–26.
Elias … in the fort: Deas, Recollections of the Ball Family, 47.
Negro Act of 1740: Joseph Brevard, An Alphabetical Digest of the Public Statute Law of South-Carolina (Charleston, 1814), II:228–44.
Charleston had grown: Peter A. Coclanis, The Shadow of a Dream: Economic Life and Death in the South Carolina Low Country, 1670–1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), Introduction.
Elias’s townhouse … overlooking the wharfs: Plat, 17 Oct 1750 … Showing dispute between Charles Pinckney and Jonathan Scott, by surveyor Thomas Blythe, SCHS.