Dwelling Place

by Erskine Clarke

  Perhaps something had happened to Phoebe, perhaps some emotional tie had snapped, when she was taken to live in Savannah with Mary and Charles in the early 1830s, leaving her less able to focus on her children. The move had separated her from young Clarissa and John and had left her deeply anxious and troubled. Or perhaps her restless spirit and largely suppressed rage distracted her over the years—as Buh Rooster was distracted and failed to notice Buh Fowl-Hawk preparing to swoop down and take his children. Or maybe she did not have in Cassius—with his two families at other plantations—a father who was as interested in providing for his children as were his brothers Cato and Porter and the other fathers who had one family in the settlements. Whatever the source, Phoebe did not focus her energies on caring for and protecting her children in the way that Patience and others did.

  A critical issue, of course, for all who lived at Carlawter, was supplementing the food that was distributed by Cato. They received regular provisions of corn, rice, black-eyed peas, and sweet potatoes. And during seasons of heavy work and at Christmas, a cow or ox was butchered, lambs were made into stews, and cane syrup was provided to sweeten porridges and hoecakes. In January and February hogs were slaughtered and smoked to be used as bacon throughout the year. But none of this was enough to provide a balanced diet and adequate nutrients for young children or for those engaged in the heavy work of a plantation. For this reason the gardens, chickens, rice plots, and hogs of the people were critical supplements for the diets of those who lived in the settlements. And hunting and fishing were also important as a way to add sufficient amounts of protein to their diet.31

  Unlike the island settlement at Maybank, where seafood provided a steady supply of protein, the locations of Carlawter and Arcadia put limits on what was readily available from hunting and fishing. Inland they had no great banks of oysters or marsh creeks teaming with fish and crabs. But many at Carlawter and Arcadia took advantage of what they had. They could fish in the river, in swampy creeks, and in the rice canals. They employed, as did other low-country slaves, hooks and sinkers for catching freshwater bass and bream, and they set out trot-lines for catfish, stringing the line along the edge of the river, where the water was deep and the hooks could be loaded down with night crawlers, the fat earthworms that came to the surface of the ground at night when the soil was wet. And late in the summer, when the water was low, the men “churned” together for fish in the canals of the rice fields, wading in the water with flour barrels.32 Of course there were not only fish but also snakes, turtles, and alligators in the canals and creeks. The snakes were left alone or sometimes hunted at night by torchlight. But the turtles were caught for food, especially the pond slider, a basking turtle that would flop off a log into the water when disturbed. It could easily be caught in a trap baited with a fish head or the guts of a chicken. And on occasion, alligators would be caught with an iron hook attached to a long pole. At low water, when an alligator’s hole was exposed, a front leg of the creature would be hooked and the hissing, thrashing gator would be dragged by several men up on the bank, where a brave soul with a sharp axe would sever the powerful muscles in back of the head. Both turtle and alligator—especially the alligator’s tail—would go into stew pots.33

  There was also game to be trapped or shot. Rabbits could be lured into a simple box with a door that fell quickly when jarred. Possums could be caught in a snare; raccoons could be hunted with some of the dogs that were always around the cabins looking for a handout; and wild ducks, geese, and turkey and even deer could be hunted with one of the guns kept in the settlements. Surprisingly, slaves throughout the low country owned or had access to guns. They used them to scare birds out of the rice fields or for their own hunting. Cato owned a gun that could bring down a deer; Stepney used a shotgun to hunt ducks and geese; and Andrew was noted for his success in hunting wild turkeys with a smoothbore musket. Years later archaeologists digging in low-country settlements found not only remnants of guns and musket balls but also the bones of deer and fish and other animals hunted or trapped.34

  In addition to such game there were blackberries and plums that could be gathered in June and July, and in the late summer children could scramble up small trees and shake loose the wild muscadine grapes that grew at the edge of the woods or where sunlight penetrated the forest canopy. And in the fall, hickory nuts and walnuts could be gathered by those who wanted to take the time to crack the shells and dig out the meat. All these foods added variety and provided important supplements to the diets of those who lived at Carlawter and Arcadia and encouraged in them a spirit of self-reliance and independence from their white owners.35

  Nevertheless malnutrition visited in some of the cabins, and the most obvious sign of its presence among adults was the dangerous habit of pica: clay eating. “Cross-eyed Titus,” who lived at Arcadia, had showed indications of being a clay eater in 1849 when Charles and Mary were still in Columbia. The signs were clear: indigestion and emaciation; pale lips and fingertips; whiteness of the tongue; cold skin; and great fatigue. Mary was convinced that “if not stopped he would become seriously diseased and die.” Two years later, in the late spring of 1851, three of the Maxwell-Cumming slaves at Lambert were diagnosed as being afflicted with the habit.36

  Many physicians thought that the clay eating was acultural residue from Africa and named the custom cachexia africana.37 But some planters and physicians recognized that a better diet would prevent the outbreak of pica on a plantation. Roswell King, years earlier when he had been manager of the Pierce Butler plantations, had found that an extra “feed of ocra Soup, with Pork, or a little Molasses or Hommony or Small Rice” had so satisfied the children in the settlements that there was “not a dirt eater among them.” And John LeConte, in his medical investigations of the malady, argued vigorously that a better diet was the best response. Mary and Charles, together with the Maxwells, responded in a way that acknowledged indirectly the need for a better diet—all four clay eaters were sent to Colonel’s Island, where they evidently received enough proteins and minerals (especially calcium and iron) in their diets to quench the desire to eat the clay. But two from Lambert were made to wear for a time iron mouthpieces “to prevent access to the poison,” and the others were threatened with its use in order to break the habit.38

  Most of those who lived at Carlawter, Arcadia, and Maybank were able to adequately supplement their diets through their own “after task” efforts. In the afternoons, after their tasks were complete, they could work their corn or rice patch, tend their gardens of turnip greens and rutabagas, okra and arrowroot, peas, melons, and peanuts. “Don’t forget,” Charles would instruct Thomas Shepard, “to let the people have every chance of planting for themselves.”39 And most did, driven by self-interest and the need to add substance and variety to their diets.

  But the children of Phoebe and Cassius continued to show signs that they were not getting enough to eat. The year after their Albert died, Cato wrote Charles:

  All are now well excepting Phoebe and her whole family. They are up and down some one every day with fevers. I have gotten away all the worms from Lafayette, Lizzie, and Victoria, and Mr. Shepard says we must not give them any more medicine, but try and break the fevers with Thumowist [?] Tea, and dogwood and cherry bark. None of them are ever very sick but can’t get clear of the fever.

  A few weeks later, Shepard wrote Charles:

  Cato mentioned in his letter that the most obstinate cases of fever was with Phoebe’s three children Victoria, Lafayette and Lizze. They would in turn miss their fevers from three and four days and then it would return. Poor Little Lizzie had missed hers for four days on the previous to the 9th inst. on the morning of which day she was as usual playing with the children till the fever came on, which Phoebe says she did not think her any sicker than she had often been before with the same fever till in the evening Cato came up and she let him know how restless Lizzie appeared to be, and on his examination found her dying which took place soon after which wa
s no doubt from the effect of worms. Lafayette and Victoria has been more or less sick ever since.40

  Phoebe later complained bitterly that Cato did not supply enough provisions for the settlement, but most at Carlawter were apparently able through their own hard labors “after task” to secure what was needed in the way of an adequate diet. For in spite of their work in muddy rice fields and down long rows of cotton, in spite of swarming mosquitoes and invasions of roundworms, in spite of all the burdens of slavery on a low-country plantation, the little Gullah community at Carlawter not only persevered but also grew. In 1858 Joe completed a statistical study of Carlawter. He found that between 1834 and 1858 there had been thirty-five deaths in the settlement and eighty-six births, a natural increase of fifty-one in the population over a twenty-four-year period. No doubt the stability of the settlement, its family structures and housing patterns, together with the diet supplemented by the efforts of those who lived at Carlawter, contributed to this remarkable growth of its population.41

  There was one family, however, that was not included in the statistics for 1858. That was the family of Phoebe and Cassius, and their exclusion, as we shall see, flowed not directly from births, diets, diseases, and deaths but from decisions made by white owners who were famous, far and wide, for their benevolence.

  24

  ARCADIA II

  In November 1851, Irwin Rahn wrote Charles and reported on the crops and conditions at Arcadia. The work that year had been strenuous, and good crops of cotton, rice, corn, and peas had already been gathered. But Arcadia, he said, was not producing all that it might. “I find, as I have been told by 2 experienced planters, that I have not got a sufficient force here to keep up and improve the plantation as I would like.” The plantation included 550 acres of cotton land and 600 acres of inland swamp, much of which was in diked rice fields. With its pine barrens, Arcadia was twice as large as Montevideo and almost three times as large as Maybank. Yet, Rahn noted, he had only sixteen full hands to work the plantation.1

  Charles was convinced that Rahn was right. More could be done at Arcadia. Moreover, Maybank had been losing some of its productivity. The soil was still rich along the island ridges where the old oyster-shell middens added fertility, but most of its land was sandy, and even under Andrew’s good management its harvests were not very large.2 The population in the settlement at May-bank, however, had been steadily growing over the years. The answer seemed clear—good management meant moving people from the settlement at May-bank to the settlement at Arcadia. In January 1852 Charles wrote instructions from Philadelphia:

  I wish Prime, Fanny, and their family sent up to Arcadia: Prime, Fanny, Niger, and Harriet occupy Lymus’ house; Lymus removed to Montevideo. Big Titus go with Stepney; and Little Titus with Agrippa and Bella; and Clarissa and Patrick take their house; and Phillis and her child take Clarissa’s place in Silvia’s house until we have two more houses built. When they are built, then Elsie can move with her family to Arcadia. This removal from Maybank had better be made at once, in order that the people may assist in preparing for the coming crop.3

  Prime and Fanny had lived at Maybank for years—they were part of Andrew Maybank’s estate that had been left to Charles and Mary in 1834. Fanny had been only two years old when she had been taken—a motherless child—to the settlement at the “Hut” in 1800. So Fanny must have had little if any memory before she had been taken to the settlement above the Medway. Prime, however, had been twenty-three when had been brought to the island. He and Fanny had soon married, and in 1824 they had their first child, Agrippa. During the coming years, four more children would be born to them in their little cabin overlooking the Medway marshes—Titus, Phillis, Niger, and Harriett.4

  When Charles decided to move them to Arcadia, Prime and Fanny had been living together in the Maybank settlement for almost twenty-nine years. With them went their five children, their daughter-in-law Bella (Agrippa’s wife), and three grandchildren. They were all, no doubt, glad they had been kept together as an extended family, but once again the move indicated the power of whites to act arbitrarily and to uproot a black family from their home of many years.5

  Among the others who were removed to Arcadia was Elsey, whose carpenter husband Syphax lived at Lambert. Elsey brought with her to Arcadia their eight children, who represented the union of important families in the settlements. On their mother’s side were Elsey’s father, Daddy Robin, and her brother Stepney, who were at the center of the settlement at Arcadia. On their father’s side was a line that extended from Syphax through his parents, Hamlet and Elvira, to Hamlet’s parents, Old Jupiter and Blind Silvey, and to Elvira’s mother, Fanny, who had been born in Africa. So it was not surprising that among the children brought to Arcadia by Elsey there was a little Elvira named after her grandmother and a little Stepney named after his uncle.6

  This shuffling of people to Arcadia meant that the settlement at Maybank would no longer be as large as it had been and that Maybank itself would become increasingly marginal as a source of wealth for Charles and Mary. At the same time, Arcadia would grow in economic importance, regularly producing more cotton and rice than Montevideo. But Montevideo would remain the beloved home, the old home place, for Charles and Mary, and Maybank would remain the summer retreat where they entertained friends and guests and where in the evenings they continued to watch the shadows spreading slowly across the low-country landscape.7

  If Arcadia would never play an important role in the hearts and imaginations of the white family who owned it, it would become an increasingly important place for the African Americans who lived in its settlement. Indeed, in the coming years the family of Daddy Robin and the family of Prime and Fanny would claim the lands of Arcadia as their own in ways that in 1852 could only be envisioned in settlement whispers and secret songs.

  Among those who were already living at Arcadia was Clarissa, Phoebe’s oldest child by an unnamed father when Phoebe had been only sixteen. Clarissa had remained at the edges of life in the settlements. Unlike her mother or grandfather Jack, she did not become a valuable house servant. In 1848 Clarissa had her first child—a little girl she named after her mother. The child’s father was a man named Oscar from a neighboring plantation, but his relationship with Clarissa had evidently been only casual, for in 1850 Clarissa had her second child, this time by Patrick, a man who was to become her husband. They named their little girl Mag, after Patrick’s mother.8

  Patrick lived at the Quarterman Baker place, which adjoined Arcadia, and he had as a young man a reputation of being something of a rogue. The Midway congregation had suspended him on two occasions, and his reputation raised questions for Charles and Rahn about his becoming the husband of Clarissa. But his master wrote in support of Patrick’s appeal. “I suppose you know,” Quarter-man Baker wrote, that Patrick “has been bad. He has not however done anything very bad which has been proven on him for more than two years within the same time he has been suspended on two occasions but it has not been proven on him to my satisfaction therefore must consider him as not guilty.” Clarissa was herself eager to become a member of Midway, but her application was denied until she and Patrick were formally married. When Charles wrote from Philadelphia and gave his approval to the marriage, he also gave instruction that a new cabin was to be built for them so that the family might have some privacy and a place to call their own. Shortly after their marriage, Clarissa was received into the Midway congregation. She and Patrick had another daughter, Chloe, in 1852, and in 1855 they had a son, John, who was named after Clarissa’s half-brother. So the greatgrandchildren of Jack and the grandchildren of Phoebe would grow up calling Arcadia home and were destined to become laborers who would bear in their dark bodies the sorrows of their people and the heavy burdens of raising cotton and rice before returning to the earth in deep anonymity.9

  There were, of course, other marriages in the settlements while Charles and Mary were away in Philadelphia. Andrew and Mary Ann’s daughter Dinah married Abram,
a slave of the Roswell Kings. He lived in the settlement at Woodville, and he and Dinah were to have four children during the 1850s before a bitter separation and death tore them apart and left Andrew and Mary Ann, by then grown old, to look after their grandchildren.10

  The two most talked about marriages in the settlements during these years when Charles and Mary were away, however, took place not at Arcadia, Carlawter, or Maybank, but on adjoining plantations. At White Oak, Mary—a cousin of Cato’s and Cassius’s—asked to marry Zadock, a slave of John Barnard on his nearby North Hampton plantation. Thomas Shepard wrote Charles the details of what happened:

  I wrote you in my last that little Mary had a babe. I saw it a short time since for the first and find it instead of being Zadock’s pickanniny its daddy is a white man. A short time since Zadock brought me a proper ticket from Mr. Barnard saying if it met my approbation Zadock had his full consent to marry the woman. So I gladly gave Zade my full permission and at the same time congratulated him on the birth of a son, which he appeared to take well and seemed to understand. But lo and behold, when he saw the babe the colour was too bright for him—however, Zade is a pretty accommodating fellow. He told the girl she must not do the like again and took her to wife rough at a venture.11