Topic: Early Versions - Performers
Family traditions have perpetuated details about early African-American religious beliefs and practices in Pamlico County, North Carolina.
One of Ray Credle’s ancestors moved from Edgecombe County to Stonewall "sometime between 1870 and 1875." [1] Young Thomas was born in 1840, [2] just as cotton was becoming the cash crop in that county and the number of slaves increasing. Many of the new bondsmen probably came from Virginia. [3] Thomas’ wife, Polly Mary Foster, was born in Norfolk in 1837. [4]
In the early decades, Edgecombe County experienced the same conflicts between Free Will Baptists and Particular Baptists as Pamlico County. The later dissension between Missionary Baptists and Primitive Baptists was more severe in Edgecombe. [5] In 1897, Thomas was one of the founders of the Mount Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in Stonewall. [6]
While the family became Baptists, Polly never lost her earlier beliefs. Credle learned from a newspaper article that "she claimed to have talked with spirits each day for three days prior to her death and on Sunday the 4th day she told her son that the spirits would come that day and that it would be the last day. She sat out in front of her house on Sunday, bathing in the sun, talking with her friends, and sat up late Sunday night talking to her people and right before midnight she called her son and told him the time has come for her to leave him, told him good-bye, and died in a few minutes thereafter." [7]
The first known relative of Bill Smith to live in Pamlico County was Tamer. She was born around 1760 in Hyde County. William Gibbs sold her to Archibald McCotter around 1800. He left her to his son, Burney McCotter, [8] who was Clifton’s great-grandfather. [9]
In the late 1860s, Jacob McCotter either wouldn’t or couldn’t negotiate with freedmen living in New Bern’s African-American community of James City and recruited laborers in Hyde County. They include Smith’s ancestors. [10]
In 1884, McCotter was an elder in the Concord Disciples of Christ church, near Florence. The congregation included seven African Americans. One was Thamor. [11]
Tamer’s great-grandson, Willie Gibbs married Indiana Moore in 1890. Her mother, Joanna Warner Moore, told her great-granddaughter "they use to pray for their freedom, but they couldn’t let the people that owned them see them or hear them. So they would put their heads down into a big iron pot that they use to wash clothes, and pray and pray and pray." [12]
Joanna was born in 1863 in Hyde County, [13] so she wasn’t talking from first hand experience. However, the knowledge of iron pots seems to have been widespread. The post for 29 September 2019 hypothesized the ritual developed from Igbo traditions among slaves imported primarily into Virginia.
In 1920, the Edgecombe county historian noted "the old trick played on the master by turning a huge pot, the mouth upon the floor of the master’s residence in order to deaden the noise while the negroes danced, was considered a part of the slave’s right." [14]
Union soldiers landed in Hyde County in 1863 to ferret out a group of Confederate guerillas. As they marched on March 10, "Negroes, with all the goods they could collect, left ‘ole massa’ to come with us; sometimes in whole families, with the ‘picaninnies’ strapped to their backs, and most of the captured ox-carts were given to the women and children to ride in." [15] When they "passed the plantation of Judge Donald" on March 11, many of his 400 slaves followed them. [16] They returned to New Bern on March 14. [17]
If Moore’s family was not near the raided area, they certainly would have learned about it, and asked for the same kind of deliverance.
End Notes
1. Ray Credle. "From Hyde County To Pamlico County." Ancestry website. "The Thomas Family Moved" page.
2. Credle. "Descendants of Young Thomas" page.
3. J. Kelly Turner and Jno. L. Bridgers, Jr. History of Edgecombe County, North Carolina. Raleigh: Edwards and Broughton Printing Company, 1920. 160.
4. Credle, Descendants.
5. Turner. Chapter 12. "Baptists."
6. Credle. "Churches" page.
7. Credle. "Family Stories 2" page. His source was an "interesting letter about her that was received by The New Bernian Newpaper from a prominent Stonewall business man."
8. Sonny William Smith. "In Search Of Rodger 1710-2004." Genealogy website. 28 July 2004. Page 6.
9. Clifton McCotter’s line of descent: Hezekiah > Archibald > Burney > Benjamin Franklin > John Lawrence > Clifton. [18] He was one of Julian Boyd’s students.
10. Smith. Page 6.
11. Charles Crossfield Ware. Pamlico Profile. New Bern: Owen G. Dunn Company, 1961. 25.
12. Smith. Page 6. The great-granddaughter was Indiana Jones. Her sister, Ann Marie, was Smith’s mother.
13. Smith. Page 30.
14. Turner. 178.
15. John A. Reed. Diary entry, 10 March 1863. History of the 101st PA Veteran Volunteer Infantry. Chicago: L. S. Dickey and Company, 1910. 69. He was a private. Kay Midgett Sheppard brought this to my attention. [19] Ed Boots of the Civil War Plymouth Pilgrims Descendants Society provided her with a copy.
16. Reed. Diary entry, 11 March 1863. 69.
17. Reed. Diary entry, 14 March 1863. 69.
18. Information on the various McCotters is from Ancestry, Find a Grave, My Heritage, NC Gen, and Wiki Tree websites. Some more detail on Clifton appeared in the post for 6 February 2019.
19. Kay Midgett Sheppard. "Hyde County." NC Gen Web website. Last updated 29 June 2019.
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