Category Archives: Free African-Americans

Adding one more person known to have been enslaved by Magruder descendant Walter W. W. Bowie

For those researching family among people declared by “Three W’s” Bowie in Maryland’s 1867 Slave Statistics, here is another record–and another surname–to consider. It surfaces just over the line in Washington, D.C.

Those enslaved in the District of Columbia were emancipated by the Compensated Emancipation Act of 16 April 1862. All slaves were freed immediately and slave holders had 90 days to file a petition for compensation. The website Civil War Washington has transcribed and indexed those petitions, with images of the original documents attached. When I posted about this, several years ago, I emphasized that because both owners and the enslaved frequently moved back and forth across state lines, this source should be searched for those with Maryland or Virginia roots…and here is a good example.

In 1862 one of those petitioning for compensation was a black man named Gabriel Coakley (or Cokely). Coakley had previously purchased the freedom of his future wife, Mary Calloway, and another woman, possibly his sister, Ann M. Coakley. Ann was purchased from John Larcum (or Larcombe) of Washington, D.C., in 1857, for the sum of $1. Mary Calloway was purchased in 1850 from Walter W. W. Bowie, of Prince George’s County. Petition of Gabriel Coakley

Like many before him, Gabriel Coakley’s earnings were devoted to freeing family members–an expensive but effective form of bootstrapping by which some families reached freedom. Those purchased were usually manumitted–often immediately–but ownership could also provide protection, especially in Washington, where the kidnapping of free blacks was terrifyingly frequent. Should a loved one need rescuing, proving ownership could be easier and more effective than proving freedom.

From Bowie’s deed to Coakley, it looks like Gabriel required help to get up the $350 he needed to free the woman he wished to marry, and thus protect their future children from being born into slavery. The deed mentions “current money to me in hand paid” as well as promissory notes from Gabriel Cokely and two other men. Gabriel discharged his debt to those men just one year prior to D.C. Emancipation.

More helpful to genealogists is that Bowie’s deed identifies Mary Calloway as “the same servant girl who belonged heretofore to Mary Weems late of Prince George’s County Maryland.” Mary Hall Weems was Bowie’s grandmother, through his mother Amelia Hall Weems, who married Walter Bowie.

Mary Weems wrote her will in 1840, but lived until 1849, with the inventory completed in 1850, the year Bowie agreed to sell Mary to Gabriel Coakley. The will names only a few enslaved people, and does not mention Mary Calloway, but she shows up on the estate inventory as Mary, age 21, valued at $500. From this we learn that though Bowie was not willing to free Mary for a token sum like $1, he did agree to let her go at a bargain price. What was his relationship with Coakley? I don’t know, but investigating that question might lead to more webs of family.

For Mary Calloway’s antecedents, you can take a deep dive into Mary Weems’ will and probate records, and then through her family. Vertically, her parents were Richard Bennett Hall and Margaret Magruder. Laterally, her brothers were Francis Magruder Hall and Richard Lowe Hall. You can start on my page, An Enslaved Community: Tracing Ancestors from 1867-68 Slave Statistics in P.G. County, where you will find links to key probate records and further info on how some of the enslaved were moved around among the white families–not always in ways you could predict.

By 1862, Mary and Gabriel Coakley had six children, from eleven down to one-and-a-half. Because Gabriel had never manumitted Mary, the children too were slaves in the eyes of the law. His petition for compensation thus included eight people–Mary, Ann, and all the kids–for a total of $3,300. In the formulaic language of the petitions, he describes their roles in the family.

  • Ann M. is an excellent nurse and chambermaid and at this time hired by Dr J C Riley of this city at $8 per month in his family. She is a moral, and a well behaved servant, stout & healthy.
  • Mary does all my cooking washing and ironing together with all my house-work [and is] moral industrious and temperate.
  • Mary Ann [eleven years-old] is a good childs nurse and is employed in my family.
  • All the rest of the above named servants are living in my family and I know of no moral, mental or bodily defect in either of them to depreciate their value.

Few petitioners received the full amount they requested–Congress had budgeted a million dollars, and commissioners had to parcel that out amongst claimants–so we should not assume that Gabriel got anything like $3,300. Even so, whatever sum he received can be looked at, however ironically, as a form of reparation.

Which is where this story began, for me, with an episode of Trymaine Lee’s podcast, Into America, “Uncounted Millions: The Power of Reparations,” in which he and family members explore what Mary and Gabriel Coakley’s descendants have accomplished, and continue to accomplish, through “the legacy of service and Black Liberation.”

Most emancipated people started with nothing, so it didn’t take much to get a leg up. Be it capital, literacy, or land, a family that received something–anything–got a running start at freedom. Lee’s podcast helps us imagine what might have been, had all freed slaves received…anything at all. Find it wherever you get your podcasts.

Most former slaves in D.C. left their enslavers immediately, and by 1870 70% of those emancipated had left the city. So even if your family has no known connection to D.C., I urge you to take the time to search these petitions. They are cross-indexed, with names of both enslavers and enslaved, and supporting documents are attached. In addition, each petitioner had to explain how they came into possession of each person–a researcher’s goldmine.

Tracing Ancestors from the P.G. County Slave Statistics, part 2: Lewis Magruder, Edward Magruder, Thomas B. Beall, & Henry Phillips

Two months ago I posted confirmation that Susannah Beall Magruder, who in 1828 married Henry Phillips, was the daughter of Fielder Magruder Sr., making her the only sister of Fielder Jr., Lewis, Edward E., and William T. Magruder.

The addition of Phillips to this family brought additional depth to the through-lines of enslaved families from the 1867-68 Slave Statistics back to four Magruder probate records of the 1840s and 1850s. An Enslaved Community: Tracing Ancestors from 1867-68 Slave Statistics in P.G. County, Part 2, published today, includes two brothers, Lewis and Edward E. Magruder; their brother-in-law, Henry Phillips; and Thomas Birch Beall, the husband of one of their cousins, Jane Beall Magruder.

My project is to identify the multiple pathways by which an enslaved person might have become the property of a particular Magruder or related slaveholder in the statistics, with the hope of helping descendants push their family trees back another generation.

The four men in this family acquired slaves from the estates of four Magruders who died between 1840 and 1852.

Fielder Magruder Sr. (d. 1840) and Matilda Magruder (d. 1849) were the parents of Lewis, Edward E. and Susannah B. Magruder.

Fielder’s brother, Edward Magruder Sr. (d. 1842), was the father of Jane Beall Magruder; Oliver B. Magruder, who died young in 1852, was her brother and Edward’s son.

The records known as the Slave Statistics were created after the Maryland legislature passed a resolution asking the Federal government to reimburse the “loyal citizens” of Maryland for the loss of their enslaved laborers. That ship had sailed, but it’s lucky for us that many slaveholders were optimistic enough to visit the county court and “declare” their lost laborers, including in most cases their full names, with ages as of 1864, when Maryland’s new constitution abolished slavery in the state.

The Slave Statistics are incomplete–filing was voluntary, and open only to those who had been loyal to the Union–but they comprise the single most important source for linking ancestors to their last enslavers in Prince George’s County.

An Enslaved Community: Tracing Ancestors from 1867-68 Slave Statistics in P.G. County, Part 2 includes a downloadable database of everyone I have been able to identify who was enslaved by this small extended family, with a second page showing the most likely connections from probate records to the 1867-68 lists. Most are surnamed Semmes, Wright, Crawford, Edmondson, and Brown. One man, William Magruder, is likely the son of one of the white Magruder men.

I’ve provided links to most of my sources, including the original 1867-68 declarations and Magruder family probate records.

The Alabama Black McGruders, published at last!

Thirteen months ago I announced that this greatly expanded book by and about the Alabama Black McGruders was nearing publication. Ha ha! But this time it’s happening–available for purchase today on Amazon.

The Alabama Black McGruders tells the story of Charles McGruder Sr. (1829-c.1900) and his parents, Ned and Mariah McGruder. The enslaved black grandson of Ninian Offutt Magruder (1744-1803), a white enslaver, Charles was born in Alabama on the plantation of his white aunt, Eleanor Magruder Wynne. Through a series of events, Charles came to be exploited as a breeding slave and, according to oral history, fathered 100 children.

During the Reconstruction era, Charles and his last wife, Rachel Hill (1845-1933), acquired ownership of land, possibly with help from his white cousin, Osmun Appling Wynne (1804-1877), and established a McGruder homestead where Charles gathered many of his children. They, in turn, established family and community networks of solidarity that allowed them to withstand the rigors of KKK terror and Jim Crow oppression. Now scattered throughout the U.S., and abroad, the Alabama Black McGruders have preserved their oral history, expanded it through research, and maintained their family identity.

In addition to the story of Ned, Mariah, Charles, and Charles’s children, you will meet numerous descendants and learn of their contributions to American arts, education, government, law, science, medicine, and business. The narrative is augmented by nearly 200 pages of archival records, photographs, and newspaper clippings.

J.R. Rothstein, a family member and the principal author, has worked with a team of family historians and genealogists, other researchers, and editors, to craft and document this narrative of the family through multiple generations. I am honored to have worked on the manuscript, in a role that evolved into lead editor and chief nag, taking hundreds of hours over the past year and a half.

The current price of $19.99 for this hardback book of more than 500 pages won’t last–J.R. will need to raise the price considerably to break even–so order your copy now (and maybe another for your local library or historical society). At the moment the shipping time is long, but that may improve as more copies are purchased.

The Alabama Black McGruders…who may be your family, too

It is with great excitement that I announce publication of The Alabama Black McGruders: The Life and Ancestry of Charles McGruder Sr. by J.R. Rothstein. I congratulate Mr. Rothstein, and am proud to host this remarkable history on Magruder’s Landing.

A great-great-great grandson of Charles McGruder Sr., Mr. Rothstein has worked for years to piece together written records, oral histories, and DNA evidence to create both a plausible narrative of his life and origins and an open-sided platform for further research, debate, and community. Though born into slavery and suffering some of its most demeaning aspects, Charles McGruder Sr. and his wives succeeded in establishing a strong sense of family and a legacy of achievement that survives among many of their descendants.

The story presented here is by no means complete. One power of this document is Mr. Rothstein’s careful distinction between what’s known, what’s believed, what’s contested, and what’s possible. Don’t skip the footnotes! Often, that’s where the debate, the dilemmas, and the possible next steps may be found.

At every juncture, others are invited to step up into the unanswered questions and continue the work Mr. Rothstein has begun. (You will find his email in the history’s introduction and at its conclusion, and should feel free to use it.) Seven collaborators are acknowledged in the introduction, and the stories of many more are quoted in the text; still others, both black and white, generously shared their DNA. So this is, already, a community endeavor, and, as Mr. Rothstein has said to me, an American story.

From the introduction:

Charles Magruder was born a slave in North (or South) Carolina in 1822. According to some accounts, Charles would eventually sire over a hundred children, including fifty-two sons. Many of these children had large families of their own who had large families of their own. Hundreds, if not thousands, of his descendants, sometimes referred to as the “Black McGruders of Alabama,” would go on to populate Alabama and its adjacent territories during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This account, using DNA, oral history, and the written record, attempts to reconstruct the origins of this family and preserve the events of Charles’ life.

Mr. Rothstein goes on to state that this history is relevant only to McGruder descendants whose ancestors were held in slavery by the Magruder-Wynne families of Hale and Greene Counties, Alabama. This may be so; but taking into account Charles McGruder Sr.’s large number of descendants and the subsequent movement of African Americans out of the deep south into northern and midwestern states, it is likely that many black-identified McGruder descendants will be able to link their ancestors to this family tree. You will note in the document that many spellings of the name evolved, including MaGruder, McGruder, Mccruder, Mcgruda, McGouder, Mcruder, and Mcgruter. So pay attention! This could be your family.

Charles’ large number of children resulted from his use as a “breeder,” moved from plantation to plantation in order to sire more slaves–a practice that became increasingly common after the importation of slaves was abolished and, simultaneously, what we now call the Deep South–Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana–was opened for American settlement by the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Throughout the first half of the 19th c., every kind of domestic slave trade increased, including the movement of at least a million enslaved people from the Upper south–Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina–into the new territories, where the cotton gin and other mechanical and financial innovations made industrial-scale production both profitable and pitiless.

In Charles McGruder Sr.’s family, we see, for example, a movement from the Carolinas to Alabama. The parents of one of Charles’ wives, Rachel Hill, probably were born in Virginia, then taken farther south either by the white family who held them in bondage or by professional slave traders. Rachel’s birthplace is uncertain, so it’s possible that she, as a child, made this arduous journey along with her parents.

Here is Charles McGruder Sr.’s line, as it can be traced from Alexander Magruder, the Immigrant:

Alexander the Immigrant > Samuel Magruder + Sarah [surname debated] > Ninian Beall Magruder + Elizabeth Brewer > John Magruder + Jane Offutt > Ninian Offut Maguder + unknown enslaved woman > Ned McGruder + Mariah [surname unknown] > Charles McGruder Sr.

Charles was born on the estate of Eleanor Magruder Wynne. Her father, Ninian Offutt Magruder, had passed Ned McGruder to Eleanor in his will. Most likely, she was Ned’s half-sister and Charles’ aunt.

This is the truth of family in the days of slavery. In our times, let’s allow the Magruder/McGruder family story to take on new breadth and inclusiveness, literally new life.

Congratulations, again, to Mr. Rothstein and to all who made his achievement possible.

The Alabama Black McGruders: The Life and Ancestry of Charles McGruder Sr.

& don’t forget the Magruder/McGruder Facebook groups:

Magruder / McGruder Family Genealogy

African American Magruder/McGruders (and descendants and relatives)

& other resources linked in the sidebar of this page…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A review of Trafficke…and what came next

I am happy and impressed when anyone takes the time to actually read Trafficke, much less review it. I was exceptionally pleased when I learned Jon Curley had reviewed it on Galatea Resurrects, an outstanding venue for engagements with poetry books and projects. Jon brings great historical depth to his review, and writes more eloquently than I do about why and how the method and poetics of Trafficke matters. I was so pleased by his words that it took me a couple of times through to realize that our family’s 200 years of slave holding–the book’s ultimate ethical challenge–was never mentioned. Take a look at the Galatea page now and read the ensuing comments and discussion. Sean Pears (a brilliant young writer now working on a PhD in Poetics) took the lead; Karen Branan chimed in; Jon responded with generosity and insight; and I added my thoughts. Taken together, this is an outstanding way to review a book and to keep bringing hard truths to consciousness. We all have to learn, and sometimes we have to learn in public. I’m grateful to Jon, Sean, & Karen, and to Galatea Resurrects for providing the forum. http://galatearesurrection26.blogspot.com/…/trafficke-by-su…

Plantations as Complex Historic Places

…the most recent post from Our Folks’ Tales, Andi Cumbo-Floyd’s blog “dedicated to telling the stories of enslaved people, free people of color, and the descendants of these individuals.” You’ll also find there good pages of links for African American history and genealogy. I’ve added this blog to the links on this site. I also left a long comment in response to this entry re: plantations, and invite you also to share your thoughts. More conversation on this topic is currently happening on the Coming to the Table Facebook group.

 

Book launch! The Ties That Bind: From Slavery to Freedom

I am thrilled to announce publication of James Bacon’s The Ties That Bind: From Slavery to Freedom–a book long in the making, shaped with skill, determination, and love.

In 1857, William Bowie, an enslaved man and skilled carpenter, was manumitted by the will of Roderick M. McGregor, of Prince George’s County, Maryland. Roderick’s birth name was Magruder, but in 1820 his father, John Smith Magruder, petitioned the state legislature to change the surname of his children to McGregor. Because Maryland law, by that time, forbade the manumission of slaves, Roderick’s will instructed his executor (his brother Nathaniel M. McGregor) to take William Bowie, his wife Matilda, and four of their children–Thomas, Nathaniel, Margaret, and Boston–to Washington DC, where they were to be hired out to work for a year, thereafter to have their freedom, a house, and a horse and cart. Once that was done, William Bowie received in cash the balance of the $500 Roderick McGregor had allotted to his welfare.

At that time, all members of the Bowie family were illiterate and had lived their entire lives in slavery. In 1913, just fifty-five years later, William A. Bowie, eldest son of Nathaniel Bowie, co-founded with John W. Lewis the Industrial Savings Bank, the most sound and successful black-owned bank in Washington, D.C.

And that is only one of the remarkable stories told in this book. From the Bowie family come tales of flight and capture, separation and reunion, Civil War service and multiple aliases, successful businesses and long marriages. On the other side of his family, James Bacon is descended from some of New Jersey’s earliest black property-owners, and important conductors on the Underground Railroad.

I have corresponded with James Bacon almost from the inception of this web site, and know him to be a dogged and thorough researcher. As you read this book, remember that behind every paragraph lie years of searching and careful recording; of corroboration and double-checking; of searching for graves and for documents; of squinting through miles of microfilm, then embracing the dazzling new world of online genealogy. Thanks to such efforts, The Ties That Bind: From Slavery to Freedom is, in itself, a reunion of the lost and the loved.

Just one footnote, for readers of the American Clan Gregor Society yearbooks… You may have read in an early article by C.C. Magruder, about the descendants of John Magruder of Dunblane (a grandson of Alexander Magruder the Immigrant, and Roderick McGregor’s great-grandfather), that Roderick freed all his slaves. This is far from true. He freed only William and Matilda Bowie, along with four of their children. Also to his credit, he had earlier purchased Matilda from a distant Maryland plantation in order to reunite her with William. However, the rest of the Bowie family, along with many others, remained in bondage, and an unusually large number of enslaved men are known to have run away from Roderick’s Prince George’s County plantations over the years. When recaptured, some of those men were sold, as were (apparently) several women or girls for whom there is no record of running away. These included two sisters in the Bowie family, who were not reunited with their siblings, nor with each other, for upwards of sixty years.

So while we celebrate the rise of the Bowies and other families, and while we give thanks for moments of conscience or expedience that led to the isolated acts of manumission that helped them on their way, let’s not forget the wider context of enslavement: an economic system entirely dependent on the institutionalization and social acceptance of crimes against humanity.

On this site, you can read about William & Matilda Bowie, Runaways from Roderick McGregor, Interrelations among these families, as well as the wills and estate inventories of Roderick McGregor and his father, John Smith Magruder. All these pages will be updated, as time allows, in response to publication of The Ties That Bind.

The Ties That Bind: From Slavery to Freedom is available from Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions. Buy it! Read it! 

Reading from Trafficke this Sunday 2/28, Bethesda

Don’t forget: this Sunday, 28 Feb 2016: 2:00-3:30, I’ll be reading from Trafficke, with Karen Branan, author of The Family Tree (Simon & Schuster, 2015). @ The Writers Center, Bethesda, MD. Unknown to each other until we met at a gathering of Coming to the Table in 2014, we each spent 20+ years researching our families’ history–in my case, Alexander’s true Scottish origins and the history of slave-holding among his descendants/my ancestors in Maryland; in Karen’s case, a “kinship lynching” within her family in Jim Crow Georgia. I’m a poet, she’s a journalist, and as fate would have it we are distant cousins, both descended from Ninian Beall in Maryland. (I haven’t yet figured out if Karen is also descended from Alexander…) Please come out and join the conversation. Free parking on Sundays in the lot across the street from The Writers Center.

4508 Walsh St
Bethesda MD 20815
301-654-8664

GPS users please note: Enter “Chevy Chase” as the city…though, really, it’s Bethesda.

Read about The Family Tree on Karen’s web site–including rave reviews.

Michael W. Twitty: I Can’t Hide Mine, Please Don’t Hide Yours: An Open Letter to Ben Affleck

By now (courtesy of WikiLeaks) most of the world has heard that when actor Ben Affleck appeared on Finding Your Roots, with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., he persuaded Gates and the other producers to omit the revelation that his third great-grandfather, Benjamin Cole, owned slaves in Savannah, Georgia. For the show, it was a missed opportunity not only to illustrate the true complexity of our history but also to demonstrate that each of us has a choice in our own actions. Affleck’s slave-owning ancestor is on his mother’s side, while his mother herself was an activist who traveled to Mississippi during one of the most dangerous phases of the Civil Rights movement.

Among the hundreds of responses to the outing of Affleck’s secret, here is one of the best, by Michael W. Twitty at Afroculinaria. Even more amazing are the family stories posted in the comments that follow. Really, it’s like poking an anthill: just one good jab and the truth of our history comes pouring out.

Afroculinaria

Dear Ben,

Its unfortunate because of a massive internet hack we are in this particular place discussing your ancestral past. It’s horrible that your private matters were exposed because of something beyond your control. That’s untenable in any situation, but we need to address something right quick…this slavery thing.  You were embarassed, and that’s reasonable given the situation and the circumstances that produced it. But Ben Affleck, take it from a Black guy; with a platform like yours, don’t you dare be embarrassed to come from an ancestor who held enslaved people. Because….We need to know.

I don’t think many Black people really understand the profound guilt, shame or embarassment some white descendants of slave holding families feel. It’s not just that many assume personal responsibility for the past or that they grasp that their privilege or power is not just based on perceptions based on skin color.  Clearly these…

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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.