War's End

Topic: Early Versions - Waccamaw Neck
Wars rarely end as scheduled with peace plans in place.  They stop when something unexpected occurs on the battlefield.

Sherman took Columbia, South Carolina, on February 17, 1865, while Charleston was taken that day by Quincy Adams Gillmore. [1]  Eight days later, on February 25, Allen K. Noyes took control of Georgetown at the lower end of the Waccamaw River.  On March 1, Colored units were stationed there. [2]

As troops moved north with Sherman, they informed slaves or slave owners.  Georgia Horry recalled that “Mr. Carmichael sent by the state.  Go to Brookgreen, Longwood, Watsaw.  Tell everting surrender.  Go to any located place.” [3]

Up country, where the Wards had taken their slaves, Ellen Godfrey told Genevieve Willcox Chandler: “Yankee officer come. ‘Where Mahams Ward and John J. Woodward?  Come to tell ’em take dese people out the dirt camp!” [4]

In many places, the immediate response of freed people was to break into the food stores and appropriate clothing and other plantation property.

Ward’s slaves were not near their plantations.  Godfrey recalled their problem was returning home.  “Put we in flat.  Carry back!  Put food and chillum in flat.  We been walk.” [5]  Going up “Three flat carry two hundred head o’ people and all they things.” [6]  On the return, “Three flat gone round wid all the vittles.” [7]

At night they camped where women cooked food for the next day.  By then it was December, with “snow on ground.” [8] Cook fires provided heat.

She remembered it was “easier coming home.  Current helped.  Going up against the current, only poles and cant hooks—tedious going.” [9]

All was not well, for at least one person died on the journey.  “Mother Molly die on flat.  Bury she right to Longwood grave-yard.” [10]

If one only read the accounts of white women like Elizabeth Blyth Weston, niece of Robert Francis Withers Allston, [11] freed slaves were uncontrollable.  She wrote Allston’s wife on 17 March 1865 that Robert’s third cousin, Martha Pyatt, [12] “went at once to George Town leaving everything Toney having not a change of clothes for her infant and I hear has not a servant.  Her house was given up to the Negroes at once.” [13]  Her plantations were north and south of Ward’s Brook Green. [14]

Weston added that Joshua John Ward’s sister “is anxious to go to Poplar Hill but her people refuse to move her.” [15]   Catherine Jones Ward had married Joseph Percival La Bruce, who died in 1827. [16]  One of their sons, Joshua Ward La Bruce, owned land on Sandy Island, [17] which lay across the Waccamaw River from Turkey Hill, The Oaks, Brook Green, and Richmond Hill.

Even Ben Horry recalled that, “after Freedom,” the wife of Joshua, son of Joshua John Ward, “Miss Bessie gone to she house in Charleston.” [18]

More objectively, revenge was more measured and according to African-based views of justice.

Ben recalls one driver at Brook Green manipulated job assignments to force himself on women.

“If one them drive want you (want big frame gal like you Lillie!) They give you task you CAN’T DO.  You getting this beating not for you task—for you flesh!” [19]

He continued: “The worst thing I members was the colored oberseer.  He was the one straight from Africa.  He the boss over all the mens and womens and if omans don’t do all he say, he lay task on ’em they ain’t able to do.  My mother won’t do all he say.  When he say, ‘You go barn and stay till I come,’ she ain’t do dem.  So he have it in for my mother and lay task on ’em she ain’t able to do.  Then for punishment my mother is take to the barn and strapped down on thing called the Pony.  Hands spread like this and strapped to the floor and all two both feet been tie like this.  And she been give twenty five to fifty lashes till the blood flow.” [20]

It is not clear if this slave actually was born in Africa.  The United States Census for 1860 only reported foreign birthplaces for free Blacks.  The legal trans-Atlantic slave trade ended in 1808, fifty-two years before the beginning of the Civil War.  The overseer could have been imported illegally, or plantation-born slaves may have used the term “African” as a pejorative for individuals who did not conform to the mores of local slave communities.

Ben’s relative, Miss Georgie, remembered the overseer’s name was Paris, and that he betrayed his owners to the Yankees. [21]  The Wards had buried their valuables [22] and “he go and show Yankee all dem ting!” [23]

She added:

“Ole Miss git order to have him kill and don’t harm none!  She ain’t one to see him tru all that thousand head o’ nigger for get ‘em.” [24]

Chandler noted that she had been “told that the cruel negro overseer was shot down after Freedom–blood still on ground (according to Uncle Ben) because he led Yankees to where silver, etc., was buried.” [25]  She added this was one incident she heard “from other old livers.” [26]

However, Ben did not connect it with theft.  He still recalled the wrong done his parents.  His mother was a “natural nuss for white people” [28] and Ben’s father was the driver. [29]  Still, “MY OWN DADDY DERE couldn’t move!  Couldn’t venture dat ober-sheer!  Everybody can’t go to boss folks!  Some kin talk it to Miss Bess.  Everybody don’t see Miss Bess.  Kin see the blood of dat over-sheer fuss year atter Freedom; and he blood there today!” [30]

End Notes
1.  George C. Rogers.  The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970; reprinted by Georgetown County Historical Society, 2002.  416.

2.  Rogers.  418–419.

3.  Georgie, statement provided by Ben Horry.  2:236–238 in Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves – South Carolina Narratives.  Compiled by The Library of Congress from interviews by the Works Projects Administration, Federal Writers’ Project.  Washington: Library of Congress, 1941.  2:237.

4.  Ellen Godfrey, interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chandler.  2:118–127 in Slave Narratives.  2:121.  Godfrey was a slave on Longwood, owned by Maham Ward.  John J. Woodward may be Maham’s brother Joshua Ward.  Their father, Joshua John Ward, owned many plantations when he died in 1853.  Union soldiers got their information from slaves.  The family is discussed in the posts for 6 August 2023 and 10 September 2023.

5.  Godfrey.  2:121.
6.  Godfrey.  2:122.
7.  Godfrey.  2:121.
8.  Godfrey.  2:121.
9.  Godfrey.  2:121.
10.  Godfrey.  2:121.

11.  Robert Francis Withers Allston is discussed in the post for 6 August 2023.

12.  Martha Pyatt was the third cousin of Robert.  He was the grandson of John Allston’s son William; she was the granddaughter of John’s son Josias. [30]

13.  Elizabeth.  Letter to Adele Petigru Alston, widow of Robert Francis Withers Allston, 17 March 1865.  Reprinted by J. H. Easterby.  The South Carolina Rice Plantation as Revealed in the Papers of Robert F. W. Allston.  Chicago: University of Chicago, 1945; republished by University of South Carolina, 2004.  206.

14.  On the eve of the Civil War, Pyatt owned 213 slaves on three plantations.  Turkey Hill and Oatland were south of The Oaks, which was immediate south of Joshua Ward’s Brook Green.  Richmond Hill was farther north on the Waccamaw. [31]

15.  Elizabeth.  Quoted by Easterby.  207.

16.  Saratoga.  “Catherine Jones ‘Mamma’ Ward LaBruce.”  Find a Grave website, 5 September 2008.

17.  “Oak Hill Plantation – Georgetown – Georgetown County.”  South Carolina Plantations website.

18.  Ben Horry, interviewed by Genevieve Willcox Chandler.  2:219–236 in Slave Narratives.  2:234.  He is mentioned in the posts for 6 August 2023 and 10 September 2023.

19.  Ben Horry.  2:223.  Lillie Knox, who was present at the interview, worked for Chandler.  For more on Knox, see the post for 25 December 2022.

20.  Ben Horry.  2:228.

21.  Georgie.  2:236.  For more on their relationship, see the post for 10 September 2023.

22.  Ben Horry.  2:225.
23.  Georgie.  2:236.
24.  Georgie.  2:236.
25.  Genevieve Willcox Chandler.  2:225 in Slave Narratives.
26.  Chandler.  2:225.
27.  Ben Horry.  2:224.

28.  Ben Horry.  2:226.  There may have been a rivalry underlying this incident.  On plantations, overseers directed drivers who directed other slaves.  Paris may have been jealous of Horry’s father, or Horry’s father may not have been as submissive as Paris would have liked.

29.  Ben Horry.  2:224.

30.  Robert Walden Coggeshall.  Ancestors and Kin.  Spartanburg, South Carolina: The Reprint Company, 1988.  172.

31.  Charles Joyner.  Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984.  Map on page 17, which is “based on map compiled by Henry A. M. Smith, May, 1923, in SCHM, 14 (1913), ff. p. 74.”  SCHM is the South Carolina Historical Magazine.