The relationships between the African-American Thorpes mentioned in the post for 16 June 2019 are unknown. [1] Nancy and Ed probably were siblings, but may have been first cousins. Floyd could have been the child, cousin, or nephew of either, or might have been related to an entirely different family on Harris Neck who took the Thorp name.
Nancy told Lydia Parrish her grandmother "came from Africa and was old in 1862." [2] Ed told WPA interviewers in 1937 [3] that his grandmother "come from Africa and her name was Patience Spalding" ("come from Africa and uh name wuz Patience Spalding.") [4]
Ed was described as "eight-three years old," [5] which means he was born around 1854. If Patience came from Thomas Spalding’s Sapelo Island plantation, then it’s possible her son or daughter [6] was sold to one of the Thorpes on Harris Neck after Spalding died in 1851. [7] Patience may have rejoined her kin during the Civil War, possibly in 1862. [8]
When the Lincoln announced his intent to blockade Confederate ports in April 1861, [9] rebel soldiers were sent to Saint Simons [10] and Sapelo islands. [11] After Union forces took Port Royale, South Carolina, in November, residents were told to leave. [12 ]
Thomas Spalding’s daughter-in-law, Mary Bass Spalding, superintended the evacuation of Sapelo. William McFeely thinks she used boats to ferry slaves to the mainland, then marched them to a plantation she’d rented in Baldwin County near the state capital of Milledgeville. [13]
Confederate soldiers were moved from Sapelo to Savannah, and the Union took over. In February 1863, a group of soldiers found "7 superannuated contrabands and one cripple" in "an old hut." [14] McFeely believed Bass Spalding may have left anyone behind who was not able to work and walk 200 miles. [15]
Patience may have been one of the abandoned. She then may have joined others on the island who put together a raft or other crude boat to get to safety on the mainland. From there she must have made her way to Harris Neck.
She was a Muslim who continued her prayer regimen after she joined Ed’s family. He remembered:
"When my gran pray, she kneel down on the floor. She bow her head down three time and she say ‘Ameen, Ameen, Ameen’." ("Wen muy gray pray, she kneel down on duh flo. She bow uh head down three time an she say ‘Ameen, Ameen, Ameen’.") [16]
Ed also told WPA interviewers that his grandmother had told him about "conjuring in Africa" where "there was some what could fly" ("cunjuh in Africa" [17] where "deah wuz some wut could fly.") [18]
The post for 9 June 2019 mentioned the incident near Sapelo Island when some Igbo slaves drowned themselves in 1803. That remained part of the lore of the island. [19] Shad Hall, told WPA interviewers:
"Those folks could fly too. They tell me, there was a lot of them that were brought here and they weren’t much good. The master was fixing to tie them up and then whip them. They say, ‘Master, you ain’t going to lick me,’ and with that they ran down to the river. The overseer he sure thought he would catch them when they got to the river. But, before he could get to them, they rose up in the air and flew away. They flew right back to Africa. I think that happened on Butler’s Island."
"Doze folk could fly too. Dey tell me deah’s a lot ub um wut wuz bring heah an dey ain much good. Duh massuh wuz fizin tuh tie um up tuh whip um. Dey say, ‘Massah, you ain gwine lick me,’ and wid dat dey runs down tuh duh ribbuh. Duh obuhseeuh he sho tought he ketch um when dey git tuh duh ribbuh. But fo he could git tum um, dey riz up in duh eah an fly away. Dey fly right back duh Africa. I tink that happen on Butler Ilun." [20]
Hall was the great-grandson of Bilali Mohamed, the Muslim mentioned in the post for 9 June 2019 who managed the Sapelo Island plantation for Thomas. Scholars, who have studied him, think there is no reason to believe he was the only Muslim on the plantation. [21]
Most Muslims caught in the slave trade were Fulani, like Bilali. They [22] were living in southern Mauritania around the time of Christ, and could have been descended from cattlemen living there in the second and third millennia BC, according to François de Medeiros. [23] When the French attacked their religious leaders on the Sénégal river in the 1720s, the Fulani moved south to Futa Jallon. [24]
Not all Fulani were Muslims, and when the Muslims raided the non-Muslims for slaves, the pagans retaliated. Fulani of every belief were sold to slave traders.
The more serious problem for both groups was their livelihood depended on herds of cattle, which lived on the grasses in the chartreuse Sahel that existed between the ivory desert and the lime-green-savannah on the above map.
Desertification was moving the boundary with the Sahara south, and the cattle were following their food supply. Clive Spinage noted a severe drought between 1738 and 1756 that reached from the Sahel to the Guinea coast was "probably the most severe ever recorded." More droughts occurred in the Sahel between 1770 and 1774. One in 1790 again reached the Guinea coast. After a few wet years, drought returned between 1795 and 1800. [25]
When the Fulani migrated east to find better grasslands, they often were seen by nearby settlements as sources of wealth to be taxed. This, in turn, led to more conflicts, which led to more people being sold to slave traders at the time when men like Thomas were buying slaves after the American Revolution.
Map
"Map of Potential Distribution of Vegetation Macrogroups of Africa." United States Geological Survey, Global Ecosystems website.
End Notes
1. The relationships might be discovered by looking at the manuscript census for Harris Neck for every decade between 1870 and 1920.
2. Lydia Parrish. Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands. New York: Creative Age Press, 1942. Reprint edition, Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1992. 50.
3. The WPA’s Drums and Shadows did not indicate when the interviews were conducted. However, the Federal Writers project began asking about superstitions after John Lomax provided them with a questionnaire in 1937. [26] The federal project ended in 1938. [27] The University of Georgia Press in Athens published the Georgia Writers Project’s Drums and Shadows in 1940. The Savannah project was directed by Mary Granger.
4. Drums. 114.
5. Drums. 114. It isn’t known if this Ed Thorpe is the same Eddie Thorpe quoted by Parrish in the post for 16 June 2019, or another person.
6. Neither Nancy nor Ed indicated if Patience was a maternal or paternal grandparent.
7. Thomas Spalding was discussed in the post for 9 June 2019. He did not like to sell slaves, and, when necessary, did not like to break up families. That inhibition may not have extended to middle-aged adults, especially if they were on nearby plantations and could visit. When he wrote his will in 1848, he had some debts he hoped could be paid by future crops. His biographer did not indicate if he succeeded. [28]
8. Nancy may not have known the date in 1862, but she could easily have figured it out by discovering the dates for national events that occurred at the same time she first remembered Patience.
9. George Alexander Heard. "St. Simons Island During the War Between the States." The Georgia Historical Quarterly 22:249–272:1938. 250.
10. Heard. 251.
11. Ray City, Georgia, Community Library. "Berrien Minute Men on Sapelo Island: Part 6." Ray City History website. 21 October 2017.
12. Heard. 252.
13. William S. McFeely. Sapelo’s People: A Long Walk into Freedom. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1994. 64. His source was a letter written by the wife of one of Mary Bass Spalding’s sons. Ellen Barrow Spalding wrote: "they had been moved en masse to a rented plantation in Baldwin County, Georgia, near Milledgeville, when they refugeed to that place." [29]
14. Samuel Pellman Boyer. Naval Surgeon, Blockading the South, 1862–1866. Diary edited by Elinor Barnes and James A. Barnes. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963. 72. Entry for 21 February 1863.
15. McFeely. 66–67. Boyer also found abandoned slaves on Saint Catherine’s Island. He wrote they were "left behind simply because they were not fit for much labor. Rather a rough procedure. Old Smart says his ‘massa’ took all his children and grandchildren along with him except one." [30]
16. Drums. 115. Bilali’s great-granddaughter, Katie Brown, remembered his wife, Phoebe, would say "Ameen, Ameen." [31] Sylviane Diouf said "Ameen is the Muslim equivalent to amen." [32]
17. "Cunjuh" was defined as "magical practice, the casting of spells." [33]
18. Drums. 115.
19. Douglas Chambers traced the knowledge of the Igbo incident on Sapelo Island. [34] Michael Gomez analyzed the tales published in Drums. [35]
20. Drums. 156.
21. Gomez [36] and Diouf have discussed the Muslim communities of Sapelo and Saint Simons islands.
22. "Fulani" is the Hausa term. "Fula" is the Portuguese. "Fulbe" is the currently preferred synonym. [37]
23. B. F. de Medeiros. "The Peoples of the Sudan: Population Movements." 119–139 in Africa from the Seventh to the Eleventh Century. Edited by M. El Fasi. Paris: UNESCO, 1988.
24. Futa Jallon was discussed in post for 13 January 2019. A map showing its location was published on 24 March 2019.
25. Clive Spinage. African Ecology: Benchmarks and Historical Perspectives. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2012. 159–161; quotation, 159.
26. Diane Trap. "Slave Narratives." Georgia Encyclopedia website. 12 September 2007; last updated 2 August 2018.
27. Wikipedia. "Slave Narrative Collection."
28. E. Merton Coulter. Thomas Spalding of Sapelo. University: Louisiana State University Press,1940. 299–300.
29. Ella Barrow Spalding. Letter to Charles Spalding Wylly. August 1914. Reprinted in The Journal of Archibald C. McKinley. Edited by Robert K. Humphries. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1991. 239.
30. Boyer. 205–206, entry for 23 November 1863.
31. Drums. 150.
32. Sylviane A. Diouf. Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas. New York: New York University Press, 2013 edition. 88.
33. Drums. 229.
34. Douglas B. Chambers. "Ebo Landing: History, Myth, and Memory." Nebula.Wsimg website. 2015.
35. Michael A. Gomez. Exchanging Our Country Marks. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998. 117–120.
36. Michael A. Gomez. "Africans, Culture, and Islam in the Low Country." 103–130 in African American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry. Edited by Philip D. Morgan. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010.
37. Wikipedia. "Fula People."
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