Category Archives: Alexander Magruder

Trafficke is here!

trafficke-cover

One day long ago, when the world and I were young, I sat down to write what I thought might turn into a 10 or 15 page sequence of poems about Alexander Magruder. I had three questions: who was he? what was he? and what, in 1652, was Maryland? Twenty years later, here is the result: 177 pages of historical narrative, prose poetry, and verse. When an interviewer asked me why I embarked on this tremendous journey, I wrote back: That’s like asking Frodo Baggins why he left the Shire! No one can predict where a path will lead.

Following my original three questions led me into deep darkness and strange light; to libraries and archives, farms and graveyards; to Scotland eight times; to new friends, new cousins, and kind strangers; to a theory about how and when and why American Magruders came to believe (and have so fiercely clung to) the idea that we are part of Clan Gregor; and to very hard truths about our Magruder legacy in the American south.

Fair warning! Trafficke is not your typical book of family history or genealogy. You may want to read an excerpt before parting with your hard-earned dollars. Find an excerpt at Apartment Poetry 5; or at Evening Will Come, where it appears with a short statement about other poets whose work influenced the inception of Trafficke.

From the book’s back cover:

“If ignorance     is innocence / all is true    all is false.” Thus Trafficke plows under the surface of our collective amnesia and unearths a family past–beginning in Reformation Scotland, ending in slavery’s abolition in Maryland–that is our American past. History and myth, treachery and self-preservation, prose and verse collide and change places, caught in the dialectic eddies and splinters of Tichy’s luminous formal invention. This is a work of piercing lyric intelligence and fearless heart. Trafficke changes all the rules. — Peter Streckfus

To help Trafficke become a small press best-seller, please purchase a copy at Small Press Distribution.

Or, if you would like a signed copy, contact me through this site.

For more about the book and its making, visit its very own Traffickeblog.

 

Trafficke arrives in March!

trafficke-coverMy new book, Trafficke, will be released in March by Ahsahta Press. Trafficke began in 1994 with a few simple questions: who, and what, was Alexander Magruder? And, for that matter, what was Maryland in 1652? Those questions, and the answers, have led me down many roads I could not have imagined when I set out. The resulting text travels through Scotland and Maryland, McGruther/Magruder family history, and the whole arc of slavery in Maryland, from the 1660s to Emancipation…and a little beyond.

You can read a description at SusanTichy.com, find an excerpt in the online poetics journal, Evening Will Come, and follow the book’s adventures on its very own website, Traffickeblog.com.

You can place a pre-order at Ahsahta Press or wait for it to show up on Amazon. Once the book is out, you’ll also be able to purchase a signed copy directly from me, or order it through your favorite independent bookstore.

A visit to Magruder’s Landing…and a glimpse of Anchovie Hills

Patuxent River, Magruder's Warehouse site. Photo: Margaret Yocom, 2013.

Patuxent River, Magruder’s Warehouse site. Photo: Margaret Yocom, 2013.

Last weekend, a friend and I made a quick trip to southern Maryland, visiting Magruder’s Ferry and Historic St. Mary’s City, site of Maryland’s first colonial capital. I’ve made a page for photos and snippets of history on Anchovie Hills & Magruder’s Tobacco Landing in the Maryland section.

Coming soon: St. Mary’s City.

For those interested in the Magruder/MacGregor question…

Please see comments by Jim Magruder on the page (under Alexander) called “Alexander’s Family Tree.” Continuing that conversation, I have updated the page (under Scotland) called “McGruder / McGregor / Campbell / Drummond: Are you confused yet?” I haven’t changed the argument I make there, but I have added more details, some sources, and some clarifications.

To all who still believe, or want to believe, in the Magruder-MacGregor connection: your comments are welcome. More welcome still would be evidence to back up the legend.

Jim Magruder says in his comments that belief in the connection goes back to the 17th c. I know of no evidence before the 19th; and the 19th c. Magruders whose writing I’ve seen, or whose stories have been published, make no claim pointing farther back than the late 18th.

When I first started researching Alexander and all these related histories, a long, long McGruder-MacGregor tradition was exactly what I expected to find…but I didn’t. I read about Alexander’s life, and I read about Clan Gregor, and I couldn’t find any intersections between them. Likewise, when Don McGruther began researching in Scottish historical records, he expected to prove the McGruther-MacGregor connection: instead, he wound up proving that there is no evidence.

So, really, if you have older evidence from Maryland, I can’t wait to see it. And if you have evidence from Scotland, bring it on! We can start the hunt all over again.

Directions to Belliclone Farm

For Liz, who is cycling around Crieff and Perthshire…traveling vicariously for us all…here are directions to Belliclone Farm.

I took this this partly from memory (from two previous visits) and partly from someone else’s typed directions.

Belliclone is east of Crieff on the old Perth-Crieff road. You can come from that direction, or reach it off the A85 east of Crieff.  About 6 miles from Crieff is an unnumbered road on the right that leads in about a mile to the ruins of Inchafray Abbey. You’ll see them on your right, not very large, across a field. There’s a private house there but the owner let myself and friend in to see the ruins in ’99. His electronic gate says Inchaffray Abbey. To find Belliclone, keep going on that road past Inchaffray about 2.5 miles to a paved road, which is the old Perth-Crieff road. Turn right. There are new houses along that road, in case you have to ask directions. The typed directions say it’s about a mile from there to the Bellyclone road on the right, a private road. I recall that it was or seemed farther. Once you turn right on the Bellyclone road it will run north a short way then hook back to the right (east) and you’ll see Belliclone on the right, if new houses haven’t been built in front of it. The tenants in ’99 were reasonably friendly toward our visit. Because of the plaque placed on the house by American Magruders in ’75 they weren’t too surprised to see strangers at the gate.

If you look at the outbuildings, you’ll find a partition wall between two sections where the stonework looks markedly older than the rest. It is visible from the outside where the end of the partition wall forms part of the exterior wall. This is said to be stonework dating from Alexander Magruder’s time, though I don’t’ know how this was established, nor what kind of building it is supposed to have been.

Also nearby is Maderty Church & cemetery.

Good luck, Liz!

McGruder / McGregor / Campbell / Drummond : Are you confused yet?

The more I learn about the McGrouther/McGruther/McGruder family in Scotland the more outlandish it seems to imagine they were part of Clan Gregor or that Alexander ever identified himself as a MacGregor. The Drummond family, to whom the McGruders were connected for many generations, were closely allied with the Glenorchy Campbells, with whom the MacGregors feuded bitterly. And, more particularly, the Drummonds and McGruthers had a powerful reason to feud with Clan Gregor themselves. See the new page I’ve just put up, with the same title as this post, under the heading Scotland.

McGruder/MacGrouther sites in Glen Artney

Well, I’m back from a summer spent 12 miles from the nearest internet, so you can expect more posts and new pages in the coming months. Jill asked if I had birth or death dates for the 16th c. McGruders in Alexander’s family tree–and the answer is no, no one does. Don McGruther and the other researchers mentioned on that page have reported the records that survive–mostly land transactions, legal proceedings, and the like. From those fragments we can make educated guesses about the the life spans of some of those named, but we can’t go any further.

So, where is Meigor, where Alexander’s uncle acquired title to land? And where is Craigneich, where we believe Alexander was raised by McGruder relatives after the death of his father…………?

I have moved this information to a new page, McGruder Sites in Glen Artney, under “Scotland,” with a couple of useful links added to help you find ’em.

 

Finding Magruder plantations in MD

Actually, I haven’t made much effort to do this, but here are some ways to start…

Use the link at right to Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties, where you can search by name, browse within counties, and so forth.

  • Magruder sites include Anchovie Hills and Dunblane. Most of the early Magruder plantations were in what is now Prince George’s County.
  • Magruder’s Landing (now Magruder’s Ferry) can easily be found on the map, as it’s now a park and public boat launch. Anchovie Hills was/is just uphill from there. When I tried to find in about a dozen years ago, the property was overgrown and going unused.
  • Descriptions of the properties were current when application was first made for historic protection, so check the date on the documents, and browse for other information, like where the original surveys and deeds may be found.
  • I have had the best luck searching with a “Begins with” string, rather than trying to match the exact name they have in the database.

In her 1959 book, Prince George’s County Heritage, Louise Joyner Heinton included a fold-out map of tracts as they were laid out in the early years of the county. There little correlation to modern landmarks, but major watercourses and the rail line give some aid. The early Magruder properties were all in the portion that had been Calvert County before P.G. was founded. The original of this map should be at the Maryland Hall of Records, according to a note in the book.

  • I used this map as I drove around the area back in the 90s, and was able to locate some properties, at least approximately. It helps when developers name streets for the old plantations.
  • Alexander’s plantations Anchovie Hills, Good Luck, Alexandria, Craignecht, and Dunblane all appear on this map.

Use the link at right to Find a Grave. Family cemeteries are one way to locate a vanished home site. Several significant Magruder cemeteries in Prince George’s County.

Oakley Cabin African American Museum, Olney, MD (Montgomery County). Oakley Farm was purchased by Dr. William Bowie Magruder in 1836. Lots of interesting sites near-by.

Conditions of Indenture in Alexander’s Time

Page numbers are from Russell Menard’s Economy and Society in Early Colonial Maryland (Garland Publishing, 1985), unless otherwise noted. See Sources for more. 

  • Most indentured servants in 17th c. Maryland were young men and boys. A 22 year-old immigrant would live about 18-23 years (pp 68, 135). As a man already in his early 40’s on arrival, Alexander Magruder was a great exception.
  • Most were probably from “middling” families–yeomen, husbandmen, artisans. They differed from free settlers primarily in being unable to pay their own passage. (pp 68, 71)
  • In later generations, more came from the lower classes.
  • Alexander and others transported as prisoners of war were the exception, not the rule, as were transported criminals.
  • Few had formal education and only about half could write their name. It is possible that some could read who could not write. The colony’s public affairs were conducted orally. Alexander Magruder appears to have been fully literate. (p 58)
  • Servants probably worked 10 to 14 hours a day, six days a week, as specified by English law. (p 69)
  • Servants could be sold, and faced severe punishment for running away (p 69). Historians’ analyses of how many ran away–and where and why–vary.
  • Servants’ rights included adequate food, clothing, and shelter, Sundays off, and the right to protest ill-treatment in the courts. They were subject to corporal punishment. Surviving records indicate few cases of abuse, though some cases that do survive are extreme. (p 69)
  • No actual documents of indentures survive. A model document from the 1635 promotional publication A Relation of Maryland, specifies that the master was to pay the servant’s passage, provide food, lodging, clothing, and other necessities. At the expiration the indenture, he was to provide clothing, food for a year, and 50 acres of land. (Menard p 69, or read the document in Narratives of Early Maryland p 99)
  • By a 1640 act of the Maryland Assembly, at the end of his term a servant was entitled by law to “one good cloth suite of Keirsey or Broadcloth a Shift of white linen one pair of Stockins and Shoes two hoes one axe 3 barrels of Corne and fifty acres of land five whereof at least to be plantable.” (p 70)
  • Masters did not give their servants 50 acres of their own land, but only a “headright” to 50 acres of uncleared, unimproved land–typically valued at a mere 100 pounds of tobacco. To make use of his headright, a man newly “come out of his time” had to locate the 50 acres, pay a surveyor, and then a clerk’s fee to register his ownership (p 70). Headrights could be, and often were, sold. Most who entered indenture never acquired land.
  • The usual term of service was 5 years, but shorter terms could be assigned to someone with artisan skills. Earlier release also could be purchased, and such arrangements sometimes obligated the servant to continue providing some services to his former master. (p 70-71) See my page on Alexander for my beliefs about why he served a much shorter term.
  • In the first generation, only about half of indentured servants survived their indenture. Most who died, died of disease–cholera in summer, pneumonia in winter. The death rate among newly arrived settlers was only a little lower than the catastrophic death rate among Natives.
  • “Seasoning” was the period after arrival, when a settler faced a high likelihood of death. Seasoned men were more valuable as servants, having proved their ability to survive.
  • Edmund S. Morgan has argued that the high mortality rate increased opportunities for those who did survive. Menard finds too little evidence to support this theory. (p 177)
  • In any case, those who did survive indenture could expect to become substantial members of society. Once this early generation secured their places in the food chain, opportunities for later arrivals narrowed.
  • Menard studied 137 indentured servants who arrived in Maryland between 1648 and 1652. Just over half appeared later in the records as free men–though 5 of those died soon after completing their indenture, and another 11 vanished from the records soon after. Of the 56 remaining, most became small, land-holding planters, holding on average between 50 and 400 acres. (p 174)
  • Alexander Magruder is named by Menard as one of just 3 in this group who owned more than 1000 acres when they died. (p 174-75)
  • Around half of those who did not acquire land nevertheless established families and participated in local government. (p 175)