Franklin Roosevelt’s programs that hired writers and artists subsidized the collection of American folklore. The Federal Writers Project, which employed Ruby Pickens Tartt, [1] collected oral histories from African Americans born into slavery. The Farm Security Administration sent photographers to temporary villages it had established for migrants from Oklahoma.
In 1940, Robert Sonkin joined Charles Todd in California where they recorded songs in FSA camps. [2] The next year, Sonkin went to Gee’s Bend, Alabama. [3] The African-American tenant farmers, who lived on a spit of land in the Alabama River, had been left at the mercy of the Red Cross when a local store owner seized their portable goods in payment for debts in 1932. [4] The federal government became involved in 1936. [5]
Rehoboth was about 20 miles away on the only road from the Gee’s Bend peninsula. [8] The oldest person buried in one Rehoboth cemetery was Joel Godwin. [9] Family historians believe he moved to the area in 1840 from Johnston County, North Carolina. [10] That was located up the Neuse river from New Bern on the piedmont. [11] Nothing more is known, about him or any slaves he may have brought with him.
The other documented cemetery in Rehoboth had no information, other than inscriptions from the stones. The earliest born settlers were named Christian, Harwood, Malone, Roach, and Vincent. Harwood and Roach were identified as physicians. None of their names appeared after the Civil War, [12] and none appeared in Tom Blake’s list of large slaveowners in Wilcox County in 1860. [13]
Some items in an Alabama history suggest Rehoboth was an antebellum community center with a church and school on dry land, perhaps providing healthy residences for men who owned plantations on the river bottoms. For instance, Lee McMillan was born in Gee’s Bend in 1865 and "educated in the schools of Rehoboth." He became a newspaper publisher in the county seat of Camden. He married the daughter of John Humphries Malone who lived in Rehoboth before the war [14] and was buried there in 1914. [15]
Similarly, W. T. Price migrated from Virginia in 1817. Moving from town to town, he taught school in Rehoboth between 1851 and 1861. He then became a lawyer in Camden, but maintained a home in Rehoboth. [16]
Once the road from Gee’s Bend to Rehoboth was improved, African Americans gravitated toward it in clusters of houses shown on the maps. [17] Sonkin stopped at the Oak Grove Church, which was located midway between the two points on the main road. He recorded the congregation singing "Lord, won’t you come by here" and "This Little Light of Mine."
The stones in its cemetery are recent. The oldest is from 1973. The burial ground probably is older, but the markers may not have survived with legible names. The names that do exist suggest individuals from Gee’s Bend moved to the area. They included Pettway and Irby. [18] William Irby married Pettway’s daughter. [19]
However, not every one who was part of the Oak Grove community was from the Pettway plantation. Other last names in the cemetery were Calhoun, Spencer, and Young. James M. Calhoun owned 80 slaves somewhere in Wilcox County in 1860, while William F. Spencer reported 110. Three Youngs had 61, 42, and 52. [20]
The communities in Wilcox County were south of Selma in Dallas County. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, Francis X. Walter bought quilts made by women in Gee’s Bend to sell it New York. Following the success of this venture, the woman organized a marketing cooperative, not unlike the ones that had been promoted by the FSA. [21]
The women since have been interviewed by museums. Their biographies suggest that while Gee’s Bend was physically isolated, individuals married people from outside the community and settled in what was called Rehoboth. Whether that was the community center, or just somewhere along the road is not known.
For instance Polly Mooney was from Gee’s Bend, but married a Bennett and lived in Rehoboth [22] where white Bennetts had been buried after the Civil War. [23] Similarly, Hannah Wilcox lived in Rehoboth where her son married America Irby and her granddaughter was Mensie Lee Pettway. [24]
Flora Moore grew up in Rehoboth where her mother was Creolo Young and her cousin was Estelle Witherspoon. [25] Both their last names appeared in the Oak Grove cemetery. [26]
People from Rehoboth, no doubt, also married people from other parts of Wilcox and nearby counties. Each household was one part of a series of overlapping kinship circles in which songs, like those recorded by Sonkin, could move from camp meetings to individuals who lived too far away to attend. They might have reached Selma, or more likely to Sumter County to the northwest where Ruby Pickens Tartt collected the same song. Its county seat was 66 miles from Camden.
Sonkin probably did not walk into the Oak Grove church alone and set up his cumbersome recording equipment in July. He was raised as an orthodox Jew in the Bronx, and was a speech specialist at City College. [27] One wonders if he would even have known the proper protocols.
He probably was taken by someone living in the FSA community. While he had experience as a field worker, they had spent even more time with nosey outsiders who sometimes brought them some benefits.
Availability
Recording: Oak Grove Church, Reboboth, Alabama. "Lord, won’t you come by here." Collected by Robert Sonkin. July 1941. Archives of American Folk Song.
Graphics
1. United States, Department of the Interior. Geological Survey. Crumptonia Quadrangle, Alabama. 1974. Gee’s Bend is the claw at the bottom. The map was drawn after the river was damned and much of good farm land flooded.
2. United States, Department of the Interior. Geological Survey. Catherine Quadrangle, Alabama. 1974. The small squares are homes or other buildings.
3. United States, Department of the Interior. Geological Survey. Camden North Quadrangle, Alabama. 1974. The small squares are homes or other buildings.
End Notes
1. Tartt’s WPA work was mentioned in the post for 23 January 2019.
2. "The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Collecting Expedition." Library of Congress website.
3. Amy Palmer and Judy Ng. "Robert Sonkin Alabama and New Jersey Collection." Washington, D. C.: Library of Congress, American Folklife Center, December 2005.
4. John Beardsley. "River Island." 20–33 in The Quilts of Gee’s Bend. Sponsored by Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Atlanta: Tinwood Books, 200. 23.
5. Beardsley. 26.
6. Wikipedia. "Boykin, Alabama." Boykin is the current name for Gee’s Bend.
7. B. J. Smothers. "Mark Harwell Pettway." Ancestry website. 6 August 1999. Rehoboth was renamed Alberta, perhaps because there’s another Rebobeth in Alabama near Dothan.
8. Beardsley. 20.
9. Mary Foster Nichols. " Joel Godwin." Find a Grave website. 11 December 2009.
10. S. Godwin Carpenter. "Godwin." Ancestry website. 26 December 1998.
11. Thomas J. Lassiter and T. Wingate Lassiter. Johnston County: Its History since 1746. Smithfield, North Carolina: Hometown Heritage Pub., 2004. Excerpts on JohnsonNC website.
12. "Rehoboth Cemetery Memorials." Find a Grave website.
13. Tom Blake. "Wilcox County, Alabama: Largest Slaveholders from 1860 Slave Census Schedules." RootsWeb website. February 2002.
14. Thomas McAdory Owen and Marie Bankhead Owen. History of Alabama and Dictionary of Alabama Biography. Chicago: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1921. 4:1134.
15. Charlotte Graves. "John Humphries Malone." Find a Grave website. 16 July 2012.
16. Owen. 4:1389-1390.
17. Beardsley. 12.
18. "Oak Grove Cemetery Memorials." Find a Grave website.
19. "Will of Mark H. Pettway." Transcribed by B. J. Smothers. Wilcox County Genealogy website.
20. Blake.
21. Beardsley. 32.
22. William Arnett and Paul Arnett. "On the Map." 34–49 in Museum of Fine Arts. 44.
23. Rehoboth Cemetery.
24. Arnett. 43.
25. "Quilts Portfolio." Museum of Fine Arts. 170.
26. Oak Grove Cemetery.
27. Wikipedia. "Robert Sonkin."
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