Slaves in the Family

by Edward Ball

  Dolly … lived with the old man: Memoranda, “[22 Jun 1742] Dolly went too town by water with Mrs. Dogett,” “[23 Dec 1742] Sanders Doleys son was born,” Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS.

  Elias sold two men: Misc. records, 20 Nov 1741, vol. EE, 102–108, SCDAH.

  a painter named Jeremiah Theus: Margaret S. Middleton, Jeremiah Them: Colonial Artist of Charles Town (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina, 1953).

  [John Coming] called his new stake Hyde Park: Smith, Baronies of South Carolina, 33. Smith confuses Hyde Park with Kensington plantation, purchased in 1747 by Elias Ball II.

  a builder named Amos: Memoranda, 20 Oct 1741, 4 Aug 1743, 8 Oct 1743, Mar 1745, Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS.

  Second Elias … felt … isolated: Deas, Recollections of the Ball Family, 66–69; Alexander Murfee to Elias Ball, 5 Aug 1763, and memoranda, 25 Mar 1740, 22 Jan 1741, Account and Blanket Book 1720–78, BP-SCHS.

  Second Elias … Kensington: Richard Gough to Elias Ball, 27 Feb 1747, Charleston deeds, vol. 2F, 51–55, SCDAH.

  Lydia Chicken brought [slaves]: “Ratclif and Amey,” Jenny Buller, Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS.

  “name of ‘Jenny Buller’ “: Deas, Recollections of the Ball Family, 163–64.

  1748 … slave … conspiracy: Report: South Carolina Council Journal, #17 (20 Dec 1748–16 Dec 1749), SCDAH; Akinfield: Smith, Baronies of South Carolina, 174; Cornelia: memorandum, Jun–Aug 1738, “Cornelah, from Feb … to August … 22 weeks at £30,” Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS; Thom Paine: memorandum, 14 Aug 1739, “[to Mrs. Elizabeth Harleston] a bottel of rum lent you sent by Tompane,” Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78; Tom White: 1777 list of male slaves and where born, “Tomwhit — Angola — [age] 55,” May 1751 slave list (Tom White, Carolina, Pompey, and Violet), Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78; Carolina: “Runaway from my plantation … Carolina,” South Carolina Gazette, 4 May 1752.

  The wedding took place at Comingtee: Cross, Historic Ramblin’s Through Berkeley, 53.

  largest slave trader in the British colonies: Richard Waterhouse, South Carolina’s Colonial Elite: A Study in the Social Structure and Political Culture of a Southern Colony, 1670–1760 (Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 1973), 160–65.

  “I, Elias Ball of Charles Town”: Will of Elias Ball, 31 Aug 1750, BP-SCHS.

  Elias died: No record of the death or burial of Elias Ball survives, but the last week of September 1751 is most likely. In a posthumous inventory of Elias Ball’s property, begun October 4, 1751, there is a slave child named Surrey, listed as a son of Angola Amy. According to slave lists in Elias’s Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, Surrey was born September 25, 1751, and died soon after. Because the infant appears in the inventory, Elias died after September 25 and before October 4.

  a posthumous inventory: Inventory of Elias Ball, 8 Nov 1751, Charleston inventories, vol. R(1), 119–25, SCDAH.

  8: SAWMILL

  Georgianna Gadsden Richardson: Author’s conversations with Gadsden-Richardson family, South Carolina.

  Comingtee, the first Ball plantation … [and] one of the last: Will of Affra Coming, 28 Dec 1698, Charleston Wills; Irving, John B. Irving, Day on Cooper River, Louisa Cheves Stoney, ed. (Columbia, S.C.: R. L. Bryan, 1969), 80, 125; conveyances of Comingtee: Ann Deas to Alwyn Ball Jr., 1 Jan 1901; Union Corp. to Comingtee Corp., 1 Apr 1918; Comingtee Corp. to Joseph Frelinghuysen, 19 May 1927; Leigh Banana Case Company to WestVaco, 28 Jun 1949, Berkeley County RMC, books C-4, 793; C-19, 537; A-55, 195; and C-46, 58.

  Maum Mary Ann [and family]: Deas, Recollections of the Ball Family, 166; eulogy: Keating Simons Ball Plantation Journal, 1850–59, 1866, BP-Duke; Mary Ann Royal and Surrey Pinckney, memoranda, 6 Feb 1862 and 31 March 1866, Plantation Record Book, 1849–90, BP-SCL; Celia Pinckney birthdate: Plantation Record Book, 1803–34, BP-UNC.

  Daniel … was whipped: Thomas G. Finklea to John Ball, 11 Oct 1833, BP-SCHS.

  “The negro cemetery … a grove of tall white-oaks”: Deas, Recollections of the Ball Family, 15, 151.

  a couple on Comingtee, Binah and Brawley: Ibid., 166–68.

  the great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Angola Amy: Angola Amy: “Slaves born and bought, 1721–36,” and later birth lists, Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS; Plantation Record Books, 1779–1817 and 1803–34, BP-UNC; Will of Elias Ball [III], 6 Dec 1809, Charleston Wills; Plantation Record Book, 1849–90, BP-SCL; Keating Simons Ball Plantation Journal, 1850–59, 1866, BP-Duke; Comingtee labor contract: Moncks Corner, South Carolina, labor contracts, Jan–May 1866, vol. 237, entry 3286, Freedmen’s Bureau, National Archives; Probate records, Charleston and Berkeley counties.

  9: BLOODLINES

  a tiny hereditary cadre: Will of John Coming Ball, 28 Mar 1764, Charleston Wills; Terry, “ ‘Champaign Country,’ ” 114, 331–35, Appendix II.

  the new young patriarch: Will of Elias Ball, 30 Aug 1750, Memorial of several tracts of land belonging to Elias Ball, BP-SCHS.

  thoroughbred racing: Irving, Day on Cooper River, 53, 81; Foaling register, 1745–77, BP-SCHS.

  birthplace of … male slaves: List of Males at Comingtee, 27 Jul 1777, in Account and Blanket Book 1720–78, BP-SCHS.

  “Slaves from the River Gambia are preferr’d”: Henry Laurens to Richard Oswald, 17 May 1756, Laurens to Smith and Clifton, 17 Jul 1755, in George C. Rogers Jr. et al., eds., The Papers of Henry Laurens (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina, 1968 ff.), II:186 and I:295 (hereafter, Papers of Henry Laurens); J. F. Ade Ajayi and Michael Crowder, eds., The Historical Atlas of Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), plates 35 and 72.

  the “Species” of slaves: Henry Laurens to Law, Satterthwaite and Jones, 14 Dec 1755, Laurens to John Knight, 28 May 1756, and Laurens to Smith and Baillies, 1 Mar 1764, in Papers of Henry Laurens, II:38, II:204, IV:193.

  Mandinka … Coromantees … Popo: Littlefield, Rice and Slaves, 10, 13; Henry Laurens, Charleston, to Richard Oswald and Co., London, 17 May 1756, Henry Laurens, Charleston, to Smith and Clifton, St. Christopher’s, 17 Jul 1755, Papers of Henry Laurens, II:186, I:295.

  Laurens [had an] interest in botany: Irving, Day on Cooper River, 83.

  price of rice … doubled: Coclanis, Shadow of a Dream, 106.

  Second Elias … bought Limerick: Smith, Baronies of South Carolina, 30–32; Elias Ball, bought of Daniel Huger, 3 Apr 1764, BP-SCL.

  an English carver named Thomas Elfe: “Thomas Elfe Account Book, 1768–1775,” SCHM, vol. 36 (1935), 133; vol. 37 (1936), 25.

  the Balls commissioned paintings: Middleton, Jeremiah Theus, 103, 113, 166, 171, and throughout.

  a clothier named Jacob Tobias: Receipt, Jacob Tobias to Nelly Ball, 10 Dec 1784, BP-SCHS.

  peacock of the family … John Ball: Catherine Simons to John Ball, 10 Jan 1775, 24 Jan 1775, 6 Mar 1775; Diana: Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78; Memo Book of John Ball, 1774–80, BP-SCHS.

  Death came often: Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS, 23 Feb 1771, and throughout; Cheryll Ann Cody, Slave Demography and Family Formation: A Community Study of the Ball Family Plantations, 1720–1896 (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1982), 211, 232.

  murder … ménage: Henry Laurens to Elias Ball, 2 May 1766, Papers of Henry Laurens, V:123.

  many slaves … tried to escape: South Carolina Gazette, 4 May 1752, 20 Oct 1766, 22 Feb 1768; Carolina, Patra, and Truman: 15 Apr 1742 and 20 Oct 1753, Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS.

  More people tried to escape in South Carolina: Billy G. Smith and Richard Wojtowicz, Blacks Who Stole Themselves: Advertisements for Runaways in the Pennsylvania Gazette, 1728–1790 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1989), 13.

  Tom … from a rebellious family: Birth: 18 Jan 1741, Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS.

  “Two Toes … cut off”: South Carolina Gazette, 23 Aug 1740.

  The slave child named Edward … presented a problem: Elias Ball to Ric
hard Shubrick, deed of gift for the child Ned, 19 Nov 1741, Misc. records, volume EE, 102–3, SCDAH; Smith, Baronies of South Carolina, 154; “Doley & her Children went to St. James to Live,” 19 Feb 1748, and throughout, Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS.

  Edward Tanner … hostler: Foaling register, 1745–77, BP-SCHS.

  free people of color: Coclanis, Shadow of a Dream, 64; Terry, “ ‘Champaign Country,’ ” 116; David Duncan Wallace, South Carolina: A Short History, 1520–1948 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1951), 247.

  Kate died: “Abstracts from records of the Court of Ordinary,” SCHM, vol. 27 (1926), 92–93.

  “Dolly died ye 5 Dec 1774”: Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS.

  9.5 million people were carried from Africa: A credible study of the human traffic appears in Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1969), with sections relevant to the United States, chap. 3, “The Colonies of the North Europeans,” and chap. 5, “The English Slave Trade of the Eighteenth Century.”

  Ball in-laws became the largest slave dealers: W. Robert Higgins, “Charles Town Merchants and Factors Dealing in the External Negro Trade, 1735–1775,” SCHM, vol. 65 (1964), 205–17.

  Laurens wrote the Balls: Henry Laurens to John Ball, 3 May 1756, Letterbook, 12 May 1755–25 Apr 1757, Henry Laurens papers (unpublished), SCHS; Henry Laurens to Smith and Clifton, 26 May 1755, Papers of Henry Laurens, I:255.

  Brewton & Smith: Waterhouse, South Carolina’s Colonial Elite, 163.

  “refuse Negroes”: Henry Laurens to Ross and Mill, 11 Mar 1769, Papers of Henry Laurens, VI: 407.

  “the Hare … from Sierra Leon”: South Carolina Gazette, 17 Jun 1756.

  Limba, Kono, Mende … among others: Kup, Sierra Leone, 38 and throughout.

  Henry Laurens … wrote several letters to friends: Henry Laurens to John Knight, 28 May 1756; Henry Laurens, Charleston, to Richard Oswald, London, 29 Jun 1756; Henry Laurens to Samuel & William Vernon, 5 Jul 1756; Henry Laurens to John Knight, 5 Jul 1756; Henry Laurens to Robert & John Thompson & Co., 24 Jul 1756; Henry Laurens to Augustus & John Boyd & Co., 30 Jul 1756; Henry Laurens, Charleston, to Richard Oswald & Co., London, 14 Aug 1756; Henry Laurens Papers, II:204–05, 232–33, 238–39, 239–43, 269–70, 272–73, 283–85.

  Second Elias picked out six [children]: Account of Sale, Charges & Net Proceed of 63 new Negro slaves receiv’d per the sloop Hare … (17 Jul 1756), Papers of Henry Laurens, II:256–258; “[1756] I bought 4 boys and 2 girls,” “[13 Sep 1769] Bought 13 Gambias … 11 boys and 2 girls,” Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS.

  10: “YOURS, OBEDIENTLY”

  Thomas Martin … retired teacher: Author’s conversations with Martin family, South Carolina.

  life of P. Henry Martin: Plantation Book, 1804–90, BP-UNC; P. Henry Martin to Isaac Ball, 20 Feb 1926, P. Henry Martin to Mary H. Ball, 2 Oct 1932, P. Henry Martin to Mrs. Henry H. Ficken (Julia Ball), 27 Mar 1933, private collection; conversations with Martin family.

  a rudimentary education: F. W. Liedtke to Lieut. C. E. Campbell, 1 May 1868, Moncks Corner, South Carolina, Letters and circulars, Aug 1866–Jan 1868, entry 3279, Miscellaneous reports, 1866–68, entry 3280, teacher’s monthly school report for Nazareth Church School, Lists and Registers, 1866–68, entry 3287, record group 105, Freedmen’s Bureau, National Archives.

  remains of Limerick: Smith, Baronies of South Carolina, 30–32; William B. Lees, Limerick: Old and in the Way: Archaeological Investigations at Limerick Plantation, Anthropological Studies 5, Papers of the Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina, 1980), 31–32, and throughout.

  [Martin family] descendants of Priscilla: The South Carolina Gazette for 17 June 1756 reads, “Just imported in the Hare, Capt. Caleb Godfrey, directly from Sierra Leon, a Cargo of Likely and Healthy Slaves, To be sold upon easy Terms, on Tuesday the 29th Instant June, by Austin & Laurens.” In an account book of Henry Laurens, Charleston slave trader, there is a note, “Account of Sale, Charges & Net Proceed of 63 new Negro slaves receiv’d per the sloop Hare. …” (Papers of Henry Laurens, II:256–58). For the sale, which took place 29–30 June 1756, Laurens lists his customers, including Elias Ball [Jr.], Laurens’s brother-in-law, who bought three boys and two girls on June 30th, paying £460 in cash. Elias Ball seems to have bought another boy separately, at £140. In a ledger kept by Elias Ball Jr. (1709–86), who owned Comingtee plantation, there is a note: “I bought 4 boys and 2 girls their ages near as I can judge Sancho = 9 year old, Peter = 7, Brutus = 7, Harry = 6, Belinder = 10, Prosillo [Priscilla] = 10, for £600,” Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS. The subsequent records of births and deaths are good enough that it is possible to reconstruct much of the family of Priscilla’s descendants (Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, Slave Registers and Blanket Book, 1804–21, Slave Lists, 1804–10, Limerick plantation, all in BP-SCHS; Plantation Record Book, 1804–90 and Birth Lists, 1735–1817, in John and Keating S. Ball Books, 1779–1911, BP-UNC). According to these records, Priscilla had nine children, probably by a man named Jeffrey: Friday, Monemia, Little Binah, Harriet, Charlotte, Marcia, Lettice, Amy, and Jeffrey. Jeffrey and Priscilla’s children had forty children between them. One of them, Priscilla’s granddaughter Sally, had a daughter named Dinah (b. 1834). On October 6, 1855, Dinah became the mother of Henry, who was freed in 1865, and took the name Peter Henry Martin.

  11: A HOUSE DIVIDED

  The Ball holdings … five hundred black people: An Inventory of the estate of John Coming Ball, 12 Jan 1765 (Charleston inventories, vol. W, 198–202, SCDAH) names 249 people as the property of one planter. Other villages at Comingtee: Account and Blanket Book, 1720–78, BP-SCHS; Hyde Park, Kensington, Limerick: Smith, Baronies of South Carolina, 32–33; Old Goose Creek: Irving, Day on Cooper River, 100; and Tranquil Hill: Henry A. M. Smith, Cities and Towns of Early South Carolina (Charleston: South Carolina Historical Society, 1988), 22.

  South Carolina was the bulwark of plantation slavery: Coclanis, Shadow of a Dream, 64.

  the rebellion became linked … with a threat to slavery: Events of 1775–76: Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1961); Robert A. Olwell, “ ‘Domestick Enemies’: Slavery and Political Independence in South Carolina, May 1775–March 1776,” Journal of Southern History, LV:1 (February 1989), throughout.

  Third Elias decided … to join a militia: South Carolina Provincial Troops, Named in Papers of the First Council of Safety in the Revolutionary Party of South Carolina, June–November 1775, compiled by A. S. Salley (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1977); Elias Ball to John Ball, 27 Aug 1775, BP-SCHS.

  a plan to defend the colony in the event of British attack: Robert W. Gibbes, ed., “Report of the Committee for Forming a Plan of Defence for the Colony,” in Documentary History of the American Revolution: Consisting of Letters and Papers Relating to the Contest for Liberty, Chiefly in South Carolina, From Originals in the Possession of the Editor, and Other Sources, 1774–1776 (three volumes, 1855), reprint, three volumes in one (New York: Arno Press, 1971), I:205.

  “our Governor [Campbell] who is now found out to be an old Traitor”: John Ball to Isaac Ball, 19 Sep 1775, BP-SCHS.

  “We are making all warlike preparations”: Elias Ball to John Ball, 18 Nov 1775, BP-SCHS.

  “[Y]ou are hereby ordered … to Sullivan’s Island”: Olwell, “ ‘Domestick Enemies,’ ” 45; Papers of Henry Laurens, X:546.

  the battle of Fort Sullivan: Robert M. Weir, Colonial South Carolina: A History (Millwood, N.Y.: KTO Press, 1983), 328–30.

  “[The King] has waged cruel war”: Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence (New York: Knopf, 1969), 180–81.

  “advantages … in raising a Regiment of White Men”: John Laurens to Henry Laurens, 2 Feb 1778, The Army Correspondence of Colonel John Laurens in the Years 1777–8, now first printed from original letters addressed to his father He
nry Laurens, President of Congress, with a memoir by Wm. Gilmore Simms (New York, 1867), 114; John Laurens to George Washington, 19 May 1782, quoted in Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution, 67; Henry Laurens to John Laurens, 6 Feb 1778, “Correspondence between Hon. Henry Laurens and his son, John, 1777–1780,” SCHM, vol. 6 (Apr 1905), 47–52.

  Boston King … born in 1760: “Memoirs of the Life of Boston King, a Black Preacher, Written by Himself, during his Residence at Kingswood School [England],” The Methodist Magazine (London) 21 (1798), 105–10, 157–61, 209–13, 261–65.

  Ann Ball in the big house, Boston became a Ball slave: Will of Richard Waring, 8 Jun 1780, Charleston Wills; Waring family, misc. file, SCHS; Legaré Walker, Dorchester County: A History of Its Genesis … and other matters of a historical nature (ms., 1941/1979), SCHS, 23; Elizabeth Ann Poyas, The Olden Time of Carolina (Charleston, 1855), 79–80.

  Tranquil Hill … in the Revolution: Smith, Cities and Towns of Early South Carolina, 22; Weir, Colonial South Carolina, 334–35.

  a watercolor … depicting Tranquil Hill: “Tranquil Hill,” watercolor on paper, artist unknown [ca. 1800], Gibbes Museum of Art/Carolina Art Association, Charleston.

  British authorities called for an occupation force: Gregory Palmer, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution (London: Meckler Publishing, 1984), 38; Murtie June Clark, Loyalists in the Southern Campaign of the Revolutionary War (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1981), I:183.

  Wambaw plantation, on the Santee River: Lease and release, John Coming Ball to Henry Laurens, 11 May 1756, Indenture and release, Henry Laurens to Elias Ball, 25 May 1769, Charleston deeds, vol. 2Y, 513–30 and vol. 3N, 171–79, SCDAH.

  two relatives stayed with the rebel underdogs: Sara Sullivan Ervin, South Carolinians in the Revolution (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1965), 90; Orderly book for the regiment of Light Dragoons, Commanded by Col. D. Horry, 1779, BP-SCHS.

  “a blue cloth coatee, faced and cuffed with scarlet cloth”: Extract from Capt. F. Marion’s Orderly Book, 1775, and Regimental Orders, Col. Marion, 23 Jun 1777, Gibbes, ed., Documentary History of the American Revolution, I:104, II: 59–60.