Hezekiah Maham’s Rice Plantation

Topic: Gullah History - Early Legends
Joseph Johnson, mentioned in the post for 13 November 2022, said all that was known about Hezekiah Maham before the American Revolution was that he was the son of Nicholas and had worked as a “respectable overseer to Mrs. Sinkler, of St. John’s Parish.” [1]

Mrs. Sinkler most likely was Jane Guérard, the widow of the immigrant James Sinkler.  Sinkler, born Sinclair in Caithness, Scotland, died in 1752. [2]  Her grandson, Samuel DuBose, remembers she purchased Lifeland from the widow Mary Jameson.  Her husband died in 1766. [3]  Lifeland was located two plantations east of John Palmer’s Richmond. [4]

Maham was well enough established to be granted land in 1771. [5]  By then, he was 32 years old with two daughters, Nancy [6] and Mary. [7]  DuBose, mentioned in the post for 13 November 2022, remembered Maham’s land was south of Richmond. [8]

We have more precise information about Maham’s land because his sister’s grandson erected a nearly indestructible monument to him. [9]  The cemetery is a landmark on the U. S. Geological Survey map for Pineville. [10]  It may not have been considered prime land at the time, because it was too far removed from the river.  A 1793 advertisement claimed it had had “about 500 acres of high land, with about 40 acres of very rich rice swamp.” [11]  The height saved it from inundation when the river was dammed to produce electricity for the area north of Charleston in 1942. [12]  The monument now is 50' above sea level.

Richard Porcher was able to examine a 1929 plat of the land [13] and also was able to visit.  He saw a swamp that had been enclosed by banks to serve as a reservoir for a rice field. [14]  While Porcher could not swear Maham grew rice, Maham’s ledgers indicate he did grow “rice and indigo as well as corn, peas and oats.” [15]

When war was in the air, Maham was elected to the first Provincial Congress in 1875, where he was elected a captain in Isaac Huger’s first regiment of riflemen in 1776. [16]  While Huger was active in repelling the first British attack on Charleston that year, Maham’s name does not appear as an active combatant. [17]

The next major battle occurred in the fall of 1779 when the British took Savannah.  Maham was there under Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. [18]  Walter Edgar indicates that little more occurred after planters accepted parole as the price of maintaining their lands. [19]  The number of men active in military units fell from 2,400 in 1777 to less than 800 in 1780. [20]

Maham was next away from his farm in the winter of 1780 when he was providing information on British movements. [21]  Charles Town surrendered in August of 1780, and many in Saint Stephen’s Parish accepted parole to save their estates. [22]

The area became treacherous as men responded to fears of British reprisal.  Peter Sinkler saw his property destroyed because a brother-in-law betrayed him.  He was taken to Charleston where he died in prison from typhoid fever. [23]  John Palmer was taken prisoner, [24] while Thomas Cordes only survived being hung when his brother-in-law intervened.  The British general was using his in-law’s plantation as headquarters. [25]

Maham became active with Francis Marion in the spring of 1781. [26]  Then, he was constantly in battles.  His wife may have been able to keep the fields productive with the aid of their slaves. [27]  He remained unmolested until March 1782 when a runaway slave betrayed his presence. [28]

While Maham ended the war in better condition that his neighbors, he still was deeply in debt. [29]  Crops had been bad in 1783. [30]  His wife died in January of 1784, [31] and his daughter Nancy married in February. [32]  Floods inundated the area, destroying crops in summer. [33]  In September, 1784, a deputy sheriff in South Carolina attempted to serve him with a writ.  He not only refused the papers, but forced the man to eat the document. [34]

His indebtedness did not concern his fellow citizens.  Saint Stephen’s sent him to the state convention that ratified the constitution in 1785.  He voted for it, along with Samuel DuBose, John Palmer, and John Peyre.  Thomas Cooper and Thomas Palmer voted no. [35]

His stand against debt collectors was treated with ridicule by William Gilmore Simms in an 1854 novel.  In Woodcraft, Maham is changed into Porgy, an insouciant scion who has mortgaged his property “which had been transmitted to him through three or more careful generations” to support a life of alcoholic leisure.  He is saved from the consequences of his rash actions by  Charles Cotesworth Pickney. [36]

Simms’ background was not that much different from that of Maham.  His father had migrated from County Antrim in Ireland, [37] and settled in Charleston.  After his wife died, he went west.  The infant Simms was raised by his maternal grandmother, who told him stories about the Revolution. [38]  Jane Singleton’s grandfather had been among those leaders who were sent to Saint Augustine by the British in 1780, [39] but her father’s exploits may have been exaggerated.

Patrick O’Kelley, a participant in war re-enactments, [40] only mentions Captain John Singleton once.  In July 1781, Thomas Sumter [41] left him behind with the artillery when he advanced on the British at Quinby Bridge.  Maham’s dragoons “charged through the fatigue party and into the howitzer, driving [the British] artillery men from the gun.” [42]

Simms makes Porgy so fat he can’t dismount his horse, and worries his trousers will split in company.  The horse Maham was riding at Quinby Bridge was shot from under him. [43]  Soon after, Singleton and his men killed ten marauders in an ambush. [44]

Simms made his first attempt at fame in 1825 when he wrote a poem commemorating the death of Pinckney, which drew little attention. [45]  During the crisis of 1832, he did not support succession, [46] but by the eve of the Civil War he had change his views.  Woodsmoke was seen by some as an answer to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. [47]

Legends had outpaced history by then.  Pinckney’s grandfather Thomas [48] had been on that same pirate ship, mentioned in the post for 13 November 2022, that brought the ancestor of Maham’s wife to South Carolina.  Later, Edward McCrady, whose father was raised by Johnson’s father, [49] went to great lengths to prove the ship could not have been illegal. [50]  The legendary origins of South Carolina lay in the aristocracy of Barbados and England, not with men like Maham who, to quote Johnson, rose through their own “good conduct from this station to distinction and honor in the history of his native State.” [51]

End Notes
1.  Joseph Johnson. Traditions and Reminiscences, Chiefly of the American Revolution in the South.  Charleston, South Carolina: Walker and James, 1851.  286.

2.  “James Sinkler.”  Ancestry website.  She probably was descended from one of the first Huguenot settlers, Jacques Guérard.  However, her names does not appear in Guérard genealogies. [52]

3.  Mary Cantrey married William Jameson.  After he died in 1766, she married Thomas Sumter. [53]

4.  Samuel DuBose.  “Reminiscences of St. Stephen's Parish, Craven County and Notices of Her Old Homesteads.”  35–85 in A Contribution to the History of the Huguenots of South Carolina.  Edited by T. Gaillard Thomas.  New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1887.  45.  DuBose and Palmer/Pamor are introduced in the post for 13 November 2022.  Palmer was married to the daughter of Maham’s great-aunt Ann Maham Cahusac.

5.  “Maham Plantation – – Berkeley County.”  South Carolina Plantations website.

6.  I found little information about her other than the notice of her marriage mentioned in note 32 below.

7.  John J. Simons III.  “The Early Families of the South Carolina Low County.”  Roots Web website; may no longer be available.  He indicates Mary was born in 1768.

8.  Dubose, Reminiscences.  44–45.
9.  Johnson.  292–293.

10.  United States Geological Survey.  “Pineville Quadrangle South Carolina.  7.5 Minute Series.”  2014.

11.  Advertisement in Charleston City Gazette, 21 February 1793.  Cited by Richard Dwight Porcher, Jr., and William Robert Judd.  The Market Preparation of Carolina Rice.  Columbia, South Carolina: The University of South Carolina Press, 2014.  21.

12.  Sharron Haley.  “Legacy of the lake.”  Central SC website, 11 July 2004.

13.  J. P. Gailland.  “Map of Richmond, the Farm, Hampstead, Johns Run, Tower Hill and part of Bluford Plantation, owned by the Est. of Robert Marion.”  Reproduced by Porcher.  22.

14.  Porcher.  21–22.  What cannot be known is if the banks and canals were used by Maham or were created by a later owner.

15.  H. Maham, Ledger, 1765-1794.  Cited by Thomas R. Wheaton, Amy Friedlander, and Patrick H. Garrow.  “Yaughan and Curriboo Plantations: Studies in Afro-American Archaeology.”  Report for National Park Service, Southeast Regional Office, April 1983.  302.

16.  Johnson.  286.

17.  Patrick O’Kelley.  Nothing but Blood and Slaughter: The Revolutionary War in the Carolinas.  Volume 1, 1771-1779.  Blue House Tavern Press, 2004.

18.  Kelley.  1:313.

19.  Walter Edgar.  South Carolina.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998.  231–232.  This is discussed in the post for post for 6 November 2022.

20.  David Ramsay.  The History of South-Carolina.  Charleston, South Carolina: David Longworth, 1809.  Reprinted as Ramsay’s History of South Carolina.  Newberry, South Carolina: W. J. Duffie, 1858.  2:182.

21.  Patrick O’Kelley.  Nothing but Blood and Slaughter: The Revolutionary War in the Carolinas.  Volume 2, 1780.  Blue House Tavern Press, 2004.  2:29, 35.

22.  Dubose, Reminiscences.  66.

23.  DuBose, Reminiscences.  7–8, 46–47.  Peter was the grandson of the immigrant Sinker, and the uncle of DuBose.

24.  DuBose, Reminiscences.  59.
25.  DuBose, Reminiscences.  51.  Cordes is mentioned in the post for 13 November 2022.

26.  Patrick O’Kelley.  Nothing but Blood and Slaughter: The Revolutionary War in the Carolinas.  Volume 3, 1781.  Blue House Tavern Press, 2005.

Patrick O’Kelley.  Nothing but Blood and Slaughter: The Revolutionary War in the Carolinas.  Volume 4, 1780.  Blue House Tavern Press, 2005.

27.  George Haig.  Will, 4 January 1790.  Charleston County Public Library.  Vivian Kessler placed a copy on SC Gen Web website on 26 March 2006.  He left his wife, the former Mary Maham, the “use during her natural Life of all the Negroes I got from Col. Hezekiah Maham.”  They married sometime between the death of his first wife 1778 and the birth of Mary’s son, Maham Haig, in 1786. [54]

28.  Johnson.  287–288.

29.  A great deal has been written by historians about the credit crises that followed the end of the American Revolution when British merchants wanted immediate payment on notes issued during the war.  DuBose says: “when peace was restored every planter was in debt; no market crops had been made for years; and where the river swamp was their sole dependence, even provisions had not been made.  It was not a season therefore merely of embarrassment; ruin stared many in the face.” [55]

30.  Edgar said there were three bad harvests in a row from 1783 to 1785. [56]

31.  Mabel L. Webber.  “Marriage and Death Notices from the South Carolina Weekly Gazette (Continued from April).”  The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 8(3):143–148:July 1917.  146.  She spelled the name Mayham.

32.  Nancy married John Waties of Georgetown in 1784. [57]  He was with the Williamsburg Township Militia in 1780, [58] and Marion’s Brigade of Partisans in 1781. [59]

33.  John Palmer said the freshets began in 1784 and lasted until 1796. [60]  DuBose said they began after the war and lasted ten years. [61]

34.  Chuck Leddy.  “Will America Please Come to Order?”  Christian Science Monitor website, 23 October 2007.  Maham may still have been in debt when he died in 1789.  As mentioned above, his land was offered for sale in 1891, and his one son-in-law bought slaves from the estate. [62]

35.  Debates which Arose in the House of Representatives of South-Carolina on the Constitutions Farmed for the United States.  Charleston, South Carolina: A. E. Miller, 1831.  83.  This Samuel DuBose was the father of the chronicler.  John Palmer, mentioned above, died in January of 1785, so this may have been his son, John Gendron Palmer Jr. [63]

36.  William Gilmore Simms.  Woodcraft, 1854, republished by Norton in  1961 with an introduction by Richmond Croom Beatty.

37.  kwmtex.  “William Gilmore Simms.”  Find a Grave website, 7 January 2021.  This is the entry for Simms’s father of the same name.

38.  “William Gilmore Simms.”  Wikipedia website.
39.  Ramsay 1:212.
40.  The cover biography says hs retired from the U. S. Army Special Forces.
41.  This is the same Sumter who married Mary Cantrey Jameson.
42.  O’Kelley.  3:291–296.  Quotation from 3:296.
43.  O’Kelley.  3:296.

44.  O’Kelley.  3:299.  His source was Lyman Draper.  Thomas Sumter Papers, Draper Manuscript Colletion, State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Draper lists Singleton as a Major.  O’Kelley says Singleton killed 10 men alone, but that seems unlikely, given the weapons of the time.  He does mention the group.

45.  William Peterfield Trent.  William Gilmore Simms.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1896.  Reprinted by BiblioLife of Charleston, South Carolina in 2009.  144.

46.  Mary Ann Wimsatt.  “William Gilmore Simms, 1806-1870.”  Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, edited by Charles Reagan Wilson and William Ferris.  Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.

47.  Wikipedia.  Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in 1852 by John P. Jewell in Boston.

48.  Names in the Pinckney family are confusing because they were reused.  Thomas, the immigrant, married Mary Cotesworth.  One of their sons, Charles, married Elizabeth Lucas.  They had two sons, Charles Cotesworth, who died in 1825, and Thomas, who married Rebecca Mott.  Josephine Pinckney was the great-granddaughter of this Thomas.  Lucas is mentioned in the post for 13 January 2019  as the person who introduced indigo.  Mott is mentioned in the post for 16 January 2019 as an individual who sold her indigo lands and bought new land for flood irrigation of rice.  Josephine is mentioned in the post 204 as a member of the Society for the Preservation of Spirituals.  Samuel DuBose, Jr., is mentioned in the post for 16 January 2019, as the great-grandfather of DuBose Heyward, who also was a member of the society.

49.  “Major Edward McCrady, Jr.”  Antietam AOTW website.

50.  Edward McCrady.  The History of South Carolina under the Proprietary Government, 1670-1719.  New York: The Macmillan Company, 1897.  260–261.

51.  Johnson.  286.

52.  William Francis Guerard.  “A History and Genealogy of the  Guerard Family and Related Pope and Woodward Families of South Carolina from 1679-1980.”  Square Space website, 1873.

53.  “Mary Jameson or Gemstone / Sumter.”  Geni website, 28 April 2022.

54.  Peter Beauclerk Dewar.  Burke’s Landed Gentry of Great Britain.  Volume 1.  The Kingdom in Scotland.  Stokesley, UK: Burke’s Peerage and Gentry, 2001.  582.

55.  DuBose, Reminiscences.  66–67.
56.  Edgar.  246.
57.  Webber.  147.
58.  O’Kelley.  2:350, 2:384.
59.  O’Kelley.  3:58, 3:115, 3:177.

60.  John Palmer.  “A Statistical Account of St. Stephens’ District.”  2:291–295 in Ramsay.  2:293.

61.  Samuel DuBose.  Address to Black Oak Agricultural Society, 27 April 1858. 3–33 in Thomas.  10.  “For the period of ten years no income was realized on account of freshets” after the war.

62.  George Haig, Will.  He left his wife the use of the slaves he received from Maham’s “Estate since his Death.”  When he died, Haig owned land in Saint Paul Parish, Lexington County, Spartanburg County, and in Georgia.

63.  John Britton Boney.  “John (Pamor) Palmer Sr. (1715 - 1785).”  Wiki Tree website, 20 July 2018; last updated 27 July 2022.

Hezekiah Maham’s Background

Topic: Gullah History - Early Legends
Robert F. W. Allston told readers in 1846 that Hezekiah Maham grew rice with a golden panicle on the Santee river in 1785. [1]  He did not give any evidence, and may have gotten his information from Joshua John Ward.  Ward was both Allston’s friend and the grandson of Maham’s sister. [2]

Earlier, in 1823, the South Carolina Agricultural Society appointed a committee to study the value of importing seeds.  It cited the Carolina Gold brought by Henry Laurens as a positive example. [3]  Laurens was a slave trader who purchased the Colleton family plantation in 1772. [4]  He spent the American Revolution as a diplomat in Europe, sometimes as a prisoner of war.  Richard Porcher notes he certainly would have been able to acquire a new strain of rice while he was abroad, but his ledgers provide no evidence that he did so. [5]

On the other hand, Maham’s plantation records do show he sold a barrel of rice to his neighbor, Thomas Cordes, in 1785. [6]  He probably did not specify the type because, then, rice was either good or bad (red).

Of course, the Huguenot aristocrat was the preferable progenitor of the post-war economy in South Carolina than was Maham.  His great-grandfather, Nicholas Mahum, registered with the colony in 1682, [7] and died in 1709.  The state appointed a guardian for his orphaned children, [8] which probably means they were indentured as soon as they were of age. [9]

One of Mahum’s sons, possibly Nicholas, had a daughter Ann in 1719.  She married John Cahusac in 1740. [10].  He was a Huguenot, but not part of the original migration. [11]  His father, Bertrand Cahvac, [12] of Lévignac, France, was naturalized as a British citizen in 1707. [13]  This would have made it easier for him to migrate to South Carolina where John was born in 1712. [14]

Both Ann and John died in 1761.  One source says she was living in Charles Town; [15] another says he was in Craven District. [16]  Craven then was Huguenot area north of the capital. [17]  I found no mention of who raised their minor children.

One of their daughters was Sarah, who married Edward Jerman. [18]  Another, Mary Ann, wed John Palmer. [19]  Sarah’s granddaughters were the second and third wives of Palmer’s son, Thomas. [20]

Jerman and the Palmers were born in Saint James, Santee Parish, which was established in 1706. [21]  The first settlers were Huguenots who settled along lower part of the river.  Later immigrants settled the upriver frontier, which was separated as Saint Stephens Parish in 1754. [22]  Jerman may have been the grandson of George Jerman, who arrived as an indentured servant with John Godfrey in 1670. [23]

A little more is known about the Palmers.  Their immigrant ancestor was Joseph Pamor. [24] Like Maham, the Pamor name is not traditional.  Both may have been French names that were changed when Huguenots fled to England and Ireland so long before that their immigrant ancestors were anglicized by the time they moved. [25]  Nothing more can be traced.  Louise Palmer Towles has tried to make some sense of the fragments of Pamor information that have survived, but admits John, the one who changed the spelling, but not the pronunciation, is the first to leave a solid documentary trail. [26]

Ann Maham Cahusac’s brother Nicholas may have had the son named Nicholas who was the father of Hezekiah.  He married Anne Guerín when he was 19. [27]  Marie and Mathurin Guerin arrived before 1700. [28]

Hezekiah married again in 1766 when he was 26 years old.  Mary Palmer was the daughter of Thomas Palmer. [29]  His father was Jonathan Palmer who married in 1692 on Saint Helena Island at the southern end of the state. [30]  Agnes Leland Baldwin could not decide if the John Palmer who was a gentleman and woolen draper was the same man as the Palmer who arrived on the Loyal Jamaica in 1692.  The first came with a well-to-do family unit. [31]  The second was a seaman on a ship that had been a privateer before being purchased in Jamaica and sent to Charles Town where it was grounded and treated like a pirate vessel. [32]

John was allowed to settle in South Carolina after Joseph Palmer and John Guppel vouched for him. [33]  Guppel was a Huguenot cabinet maker [34] who came from Languedoc.  Palmer probably was the immigrant Pamor.

The reason for dwelling on the diverse heritage of Maham family in-laws is that standard histories of South Carolina mention the early immigrants.  However, once the colony becomes establish, they tend to focus on the cultural and political activities in Charles Town.  Areas like Saint Stephen’s parish are eclipsed by settlements on the Piedmont.  All that remains are memoirs of early settlers.

Samuel DuBose was six years old [35] when Maham died, but his family had been in Saint Stephen’s Parish since his great-grandfather moved there. [36]  In his memoir of the area, he recalled events that occurred in the area during the Revolution were:

“too unimportant to have found a place in history; but we are near Eutaw and Quinby; we are on the highway that led from Charleston to nearly all the scenes where great deeds were performed; the armies of both friend and foe camped near us, and marched near us, and the people who lived in those days had countless incidents to relate, all of which possessed a local or an individual interest, and I cannot but regret that their memory has perished.  We are in the midst of sacred territory; about us armies were encamped, houses were burned, men imprisoned and brutally murdered; but as these were merely incidents to more stirring and important events, they have escaped the notice of the historian, and we now tread the ground without a thought of the scenes that were enacted upon it.” [37]

Joseph Johnson’s father was a blacksmith who pushed for separation from the United Kingdom in Charles Town. [38]  During the siege of 1780, William served in the artillery under Thomas Heyward, Jr. [39]  When the city fell, he was taken captive and sent to Saint Augustine. [40]  Joseph was a toddler during the war, but heard details “from the lips of our parents and friends.” [41]  He too regretted that “historians of the American Revolution all lived on or near the sea coast—many of the sturdy sons of the forest were therefore unknown to them.” [42]

What little we know about Maham comes from the writings of DuBose and Johnson.

End Notes
1.  Carolina Gold rice is discussed in the post for 6 November 2022.
2.  Ward is discussed in the post for 6 August 2023.

3.  Thomas Pickney, John D. Legare, Elias Horry, Nathaniel Heyward, and Charles E. Rowland.  “Report of the Committee [. . .] Importing Foreign Seeds, Plants and Implements of Husbandry,” 25 July 1823.  The American Farmer 5(24)187–188:5 September 1823.

4.  “Mepkin Plantation – Moncks Corner – Berkeley County.”  South Carolina Plantations website.  Its source is John Beaufain Irving.  A Day on Cooper River.  Charleston, South Carolina: A. E. Miller, 1842.  83 in 2010 reprint by Kessinger Publishing of Whitefish, Montana.  Laurens career as a slave trader is discussed in the post for 13 January 2019.  John Colleton was an original proprietor of the colony.  His youngest son, James Colleton, owned Mepkin.  John is discussed in the posts for 17 April 2022, 26 June 2022, and 3 July 2022.  James is discussed in the posts for 11 September 2022.

5.  Richard Dwight Porcher, Jr., and William Robert Judd.  The Market Preparation of Carolina Rice.  Columbia, South Carolina: The University of South Carolina Press, 2014.  23-24.

6.  H. Maham.  Ledger, 1765–1794.  44.  Cited by Thomas R. Wheaton, Amy Friedlander, and Patrick H. Garrow.  “Yaughan and Curriboo Plantations: Studies in Afro-American Archaeology.”  Report for National Park Service, Southeast Regional Office, April 1983.  301.

7.  Agnes Leland Baldwin.  First Settlers of South Carolina, 1670–1700.  Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1985.  152.

8.  A. S. Salley.  “Abstracts from the Records of the Court of Ordinary of the Province of South Carolina, 1700–1710.”  The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 13(1):56-63:January 1912.  62.

9.  George Rogers noted church wardens apprenticed orphans in the parish of Prince Frederick Williams in the 1750s and 1760s. [43]

10.  John Britton Boney.  “Ann Stall (Maham) Cahusac (1719 - 1761).”  Wiki Tree website, 21 July 2008; last updated 4 January 2022.

11.  The surname is not reported by Baldwin as existing before 1700 in South Carolina.
12.  “John Cahusac (1712 - 1761).  Ancestry website.

13.  William A. Shaw.  Letters of Denization and Acts of Naturalization for Aliens in England and Ireland 1701 — 1800.  Manchester, UK: Sherratt and Hughes, 1923, for Huguenot Society of London.  60.

14.  There’s another entry on Ancestry for “John Cahusac (1720-1760) which seems to make some assumptions that he was son of Bertrand Cahusac of Tarn, France.

15.  Boney, Ann Maham Cahusac.
16.  Both Cahusac entries mention Craven District.
17.  “Craven County, South Carolina.”  Wikipedia website.
18.  Jackie.  “Edward Jerman / Sarah Cahusac (F3615).”  Singleton Family website.

19.  Louise Palmer Towles.  A World Turned Upside Down: The Palmers of South Santee, 1818–1881.  Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1996.  1-2.

20.  Towles.  19.

21.  Matthew A. Lockhart.  “St. James Santee Parish.”  South Carolina Encyclopedia website, 1 August 2016; last updated 25 August 2022.

22.  Matthew A. Lockhart.  “St. Stephen’s Parish.”  South Carolina Encyclopedia website, 1 August 2016; last updated 25 August 2022.  The changing names of districts makes it difficult to know if people moved or just their political residences changed.

23.  A. S. Salley, Jr.  Warrants for Land in South Carolina.  Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, volume 1, 1910.  Reprinted as A. S. Salley, Jr., and R. Nicholas Olsberg.  Warrants for Land in South Carolina, 1672-1711.  Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1973.  97.  Edward’s father was Ralph. [44]  I found nothing about Ralph’s parentage or George’s family on the web.

24.  Towles.  1.

25.  Typical of the confusion is the House of Names website, which thinks Maham is MacMahon, and that the name appeared in County Clare.

26.  Towles.  1.  The comment on pronunciation was made by  John Britton Boney.  “John (Pamor) Palmer Sr. (1715 - 1785).”  Wiki Tree website, 20 July 2018; last updated 27 July 2022.

27.  “Hezekiah Maham.”  Ancestry website.
28.  Baldwin.  109.  There also were Guerris and Guerrians.
29.  “Catherine Farwell.”  Ancestry website.
30.  “Jonathan Palmer.”  Roots Web website.
31.  Baldwin.  177.
32.  “British Ketch ‘Portsmouth’ (1665).”  Three Decks website.

33.  Edward McCrady.  The History of South Carolina under the Proprietary Government, 1670-1719.  New York: The Macmillan Company, 1897.  261.
 
34.  Luke Beckerdite.  “Religion, Artistry, and Cultural Identity: The Huguenot Experience in South Carolina, 1680–1725.”  Chipstone website.  His original name was Jean Guibal.

35.  Darlene.  “Samuel DuBose Jr.”  Find a Grave website, 21 April 2007.

36.  “Isaac DuBose, II.”  Geni website, 6 August 2022.  Isaac settled at Milford, which was one property over from that of Maham.

37.  Samuel Dubose.  “Reminiscences of St. Stephen's Parish, Craven County and Notices of Her Old Homesteads.”  35-85 in A Contribution to the History of the Huguenots of South Carolina.  Edited by T. Gaillard Thomas.  New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1887.  62-63.

38.  Joseph Johnson.  Traditions and Reminiscences, Chiefly of the American Revolution in the South.  Charleston, South Carolina: Walker and James, 1851.  30.

39.  Johnson.  64.  Patrick O’Kelley identifies Heyward’s company. [45]
40.  Johnson.  32.
41.  Johnson.  vi.
42.  Johnson. v.

43.  George C. Rogers.  The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina.  Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1970; reprinted by Georgetown County Historical Society.  71.

44.  Jackie.

45.  Patrick O’Kelley.  Nothing but Blood and Slaughter: The Revolutionary War in the Carolinas.  Volume 2, 1780.  Blue House Tavern Press, 2004.  2:41.

The Second Introduction of Rice

Topic: Gullah History - Early Legends
The American Revolution disrupted South Carolina’s economy.  Because of the Navigation Acts, it only had one market for its crops, and one pool of creditors and shippers.  During hostilities, England found other sources for its indigo and rice.  The East India Company’s indigo producers monopolized the market after the war. [1]

Planters, who previously had grown rice, or had continued to do so on a small scale, returned to it.  However, freshets often destroyed the crops between 1784 and 1796. [2]  These floods inspired Nathaniel Heyward to experiment with methods to control the tides that daily flowed over coastal lands in 1788.  Once he proved the effectiveness of flood irrigation around Beaufort in southern South Carolina, planters moved from the inland swamps in the northern part of the state to the narrow band of land influenced by the tides. [3]

Inland, farmers converted their indigo lands to cotton after Wade Hampton proved it would grow around Columbia, South Carolina, in 1799. [4]  In the interim, in the period immediately after the war, farmers did what they could to survive.

One problem was finding rice seeds to plant.  The war had affected different parts of the colony at different times.  In 1778, British troops took Savannah, Georgia, and advanced north toward Charles Town.  Planters were given the choice of submitting or having their lands destroyed. [5]  After that, those who had not been plundered were able to resume some form of normal operations.

The British succeeded in taking Charles Town in May 1780.  Again, people were given the option of accepting parole as prisoners of war, or risk being looted. [6]  Francis Marion rallied dispirited rebels, who harassed the British troops as they tried to pacify the country from Charles Town to the far west. [7]  Planters still were being plundered when the war ended. [8]

Growers, like Heyward, in the southern part of the new state resumed their old ways. [9]  They still had their stores of rice with white seed-heads.  Nathaniel Greene surprised the British near Dorchester, and forced them toward Charles Town in late 1781.  David Ramsay remembered “by this means all the rice between Edisto and the Ashely rivers was saved.” [10]

Those in the north, who moved from the inland swamps to the coast, adopted new ways.  Not only did they adopt flood irrigation, but they also built rice mills powered by animals or water. [11]

Robert Allston, who became one of the most prominent planters in the Winyah Bay area, believed Hezekiah Maham was the man who introduced the particular variety of gold-hulled rice in 1785 that soon became the primary crop. [12]

No one asks where Maham obtained his rice.  Instead, the question has become what made it special.  Anna McClung and Robert Fjellstrom analyzed contemporary seeds to determine one section of one gene was unique.  This particular one affected the amount of starch in grain. [13]  In 1983, researchers for the Carnegie Institution discovered the Wx or waxy gene controlled amylose content in maize pollen and kernels. [14]  The gene since has been found in wheat, barley, millet and rice.  In rice, the Wxa allele is associated with dryland indica and Wxb is found with wetland japonica. [15]

McClung and Fjellstrom searched for the Carolina gold allele in the National Plant Germplasm System, and found it appeared in less than 1% of the samples. [16]  When they scanned the data base for the closest match, they found one grown in Ghana.  However, that did not mean the rice came from Africa.  It well could have come from South Carolina through trade. [17]

The one with a golden panicle is a subspecies of the Asian Oryza sativa not the African Oryza glaberrima.  That subspecies, Indica, developed in India, [18] and was spread west by Arab traders. [19]  Portuguese traders may then have spread Indica.  It eventually was found in Madagascar, replacing the Javonica brought there centuries before from Malaysia.  It also displaced the African Glaberrima wherever the Portuguese introduced it. [20]

The rules of genetics did not stop some from proclaiming the single DNA match as proof Carolina Gold was introduced by slaves. [21]  However, the mere fact that the variety has not been found anywhere else suggests it was the result of a rare mutation, much like the more common one that produces the weedy, red rice. [22]

McClung’s team since has attempted to recreate gold seed from the white that is known to have been common in South Carolina, and continued to be grown around Beaufort.  Glenn Roberts says it took “a 36 month subtropical and tropical year round program.  They increased this seed to breeder, then to foundation seed, then passed it to experienced [. . .] growers to move the pure [seed] into first year production only to discover a red out-cross in the subsequent pure Carolina Gold production rice harvest.” [23]

The random, but constant, appearance of the red-skinned rice may be less the result of genetics than environment.  A group of Japanese scientists found both the Wxa and Wxb existed in both Indica and Japonica, and that the distinction between the two occurs during the encoding process when a nucleotide that follows the pattern AGGT mutates to AGTT. [24]

The purity of the gold rice in the northern part of South Carolina probably occurred because planters did not save their own rice for the next year’s crop.  The red seeds still were produced as probability theories would insist. [25]  They were removed from seed intended for market by the mills that husked the grain.  However, seed corn was not husked because the rice deteriorates after the protective shell is removed. [26]

In 1911, the United States Department of Agriculture noted that farmers who could not use flood irrigation became the ones who provided the seed.  The red rice and weeds were removed when it was husked with older methods. [27]  One suspects they also trained the men who were hired as overseers. [28]

End Notes
1.  G. Terry Sharrer.  “Indigo in Carolina, 1671-1796.”  The South Carolina Historical Magazine 72(2):94-103:April 1971.  102.  He argues England’s wars produced more incentives for planters than the subsidy that existed from 1848 to 1777.

2.  David Ramsay.  The History of South-Carolina.  Charleston, South Carolina: David Longworth, 1809.  Reprinted as Ramsay’s History of South Carolina.  Newberry, South Carolina: W. J. Duffie, 1858.  1:293.  For more on freshets, see the post 16 January 2019.

3.  Heyward is discussed in the post for 16 January 2019.
4.  The introduction of upland cotton is discussed in the post for 25 August 2019.
5.  Ramsay.  1:182.

6.  Walter Edgar.  South Carolina.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998.  233.

7.  Edgar.  235.  Marion now is known as the Swamp Fox.
8.  Edgar.  238, 243.
9.  Heyward’s reaction to mills is mentioned in the post for 16 January 2019.
10.  Ramsay.  1:249.
11.  See the post for 16 January 2019 for more on the introduction of mills.

12.  Robert F. W. Allston.  “The Rice Plant.”  De Bow’s Commercial Review of the South and West 1:320-357:1846.  326.

13.  Anna McClung and Bob Fjellstrom.  “America’s Golden Treasure.”  Texas Rice 5(6):5-6:August/September 2005.  Summary of a paper given at a symposium in Charleston, South Carolina, sponsored by the Carolina Gold Foundation in August 2005.

14.  M. Shure, S. R. Wessler, and N. Federoff.  “Molecular Identification and Isolation of the Waxy Locus in Maize.”  Cell 35:225-233:1983.

15.  Shinsuke Yamanaka, Ikuo Nakamura, Kazuo N. Watanabe, and Yo-Ichiro Sato.  “Identification of SNPs in the Waxy Gene among Glutinous Rice Cultivars and Their Evolutionary Significance during the Domestication Process.”  Theoretical and Applied Genetics 108:1200-124:2004.  In a simple understanding of genetics, the specific color of an eye, blue or brown, is called an allele of the gene that controls color.

16.  McClung and Fjellstrom.

17.  Erik Stokstad.  “American Rice: Out of Africa.”  Science website, 16 November 2007.  Report of paper by Anna McClung given at the American Society of Agronomy 2007 meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana.

18.  T. T. Chang. “Domestication and Spread of the Cultivated Rices.”  408-417 in Foraging and Farming: The Evolution of Plant Exploitation.  Edited by David R. Harris and Gordon C. Hillman.  London: Routledge, 2016.  The obvious difference between Indica and Japonica is that the grains of the latter stick together when cooked, while they remain separate in the first.

19.  Andrew M. Watson.  Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World.  Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993.  17.  Cited by Richard Dwight Porcher, Jr., and William Robert Judd.  The Market Preparation of Carolina Rice.  Columbia, South Carolina: The University of South Carolina Press, 2014.  10.

20.  Porcher.  11.

21.  Stokstad.  “Judith Carney of the University of California, Los Angeles, says a Ghanaian origin of Carolina Gold fits with the idea that Carolina Gold arrived in the colony as food on slave ships and was then planted by the slaves.”  Carney is discussed in the post for 13 January 2019.

22.  Early attempts to explain the appearance of red rice are mentioned in the posts for 18 September 2022 and 25 September 2022.

23.  Glenn Roberts.  “Carolina Gold Rice: Pure Seed, Fame, Fourtune & Hurricane Rita.”  Carolina Gold Rice Foundation Newsletter, January 2007.  Ellipsis were CGR for Carolina Gold Rice.

24.  M. Umeda, H. Ohtsubo, and E. Ohtsubo.  “Diversification of the Rice Waxy Gene by Insertion of Mobile DNA Elements into Introns.”  The Japanese Journal of Genetics 66:569-86:1991.

25.  Allston said that sometimes rice fields became “contaminated with either grass-seed or red-rice, as not to reward sufficiently the labor bestowed on its culture.”  Instead of abandoning them, he argued planters should introduce a regime of leaving a field fallow every four years.  Then, he reported “all the rusty, red grains of rice, which have been lying dormant in the mud for years, were thrown out and exposed to the fructifying influence of the sun, vegetate, and are utterly destroyed by the frost before the time for planting the next crop.” [29]

26.  J. H. Easterby.  “Introduction.”  1-49 in  The South Carolina Rice Plantation as Revealed in the Papers of Robert F. W. Allston.  Chicago: University of Chicago, 1945; reprinted by University of South Carolina of Columbia in 2004.  40.

27.  W. E. McLendon, G. A. Crabb, Earl Carr, and F. S. Welsh.  “Soil Survey of Georgetown County, South Carolina.”  513-562 in Field Operations of the Bureau of Soils, 1911.  Washington, DC: United States Department of Agriculture, 1914.  520.

28.  The post for 16 January 2019 summarized a study on the characteristics of overseers.  The census data that was used could only identify men by state of birth.

29.  R. F. W. Allston.  “On the Cultivation of Rice.”  The Southern Agriculturist 3(7):241-246:July 1843.  244-245.

The Second Introduction of Rice

 Topic: Gullah History - Early Legends
The American Revolution disrupted South Carolina’s economy.  Because of the Navigation Acts, it only had one market for its crops, and one pool of creditors and shippers.  During hostilities, England found other sources for its indigo and rice.  The East India Company’s indigo producers monopolized the market after the war. [1]

Planters, who previously had grown rice, or had continued to do so on a small scale, returned to it.  However, freshets often destroyed the crops between 1784 and 1796. [2]  These floods inspired Nathaniel Heyward to experiment with methods to control the tides that daily flowed over coastal lands in 1788.  Once he proved the effectiveness of flood irrigation around Beaufort in southern South Carolina, planters moved from the inland swamps in the northern part of the state to the narrow band of land influenced by the tides. [3]

Inland, farmers converted their indigo lands to cotton after Wade Hampton proved it would grow around Columbia, South Carolina, in 1799. [4]  In the interim, in the period immediately after the war, farmers did what they could to survive.

One problem was finding rice seeds to plant.  The war had affected different parts of the colony at different times.  In 1778, British troops took Savannah, Georgia, and advanced north toward Charles Town.  Planters were given the choice of submitting or having their lands destroyed. [5]  After that, those who had not been plundered were able to resume some form of normal operations.

The British succeeded in taking Charles Town in May 1780.  Again, people were given the option of accepting parole as prisoners of war, or risk being looted. [6]  Francis Marion rallied dispirited rebels, who harassed the British troops as they tried to pacify the country from Charles Town to the far west. [7]  Planters still were being plundered when the war ended. [8]

Growers, like Heyward, in the southern part of the new state resumed their old ways. [9]  They still had their stores of rice with white seed-heads.  Nathaniel Greene surprised the British near Dorchester, and forced them toward Charles Town in late 1781.  David Ramsay remembered “by this means all the rice between Edisto and the Ashely rivers was saved.” [10]

Those in the north, who moved from the inland swamps to the coast, adopted new ways.  Not only did they adopt flood irrigation, but they also built rice mills powered by animals or water. [11]

Robert Allston, who became one of the most prominent planters in the Winyah Bay area, believed Hezekiah Maham was the man who introduced the particular variety of gold-hulled rice in 1785 that soon became the primary crop. [12]

No one asks where Maham obtained his rice.  Instead, the question has become what made it special.  Anna McClung and Robert Fjellstrom analyzed contemporary seeds to determine one section of one gene was unique.  This particular one affected the amount of starch in grain. [13]  In 1983, researchers for the Carnegie Institution discovered the Wx or waxy gene controlled amylose content in maize pollen and kernels. [14]  The gene since has been found in wheat, barley, millet and rice.  In rice, the Wxa allele is associated with dryland indica and Wxb is found with wetland japonica. [15]

McClung and Fjellstrom searched for the Carolina gold allele in the National Plant Germplasm System, and found it appeared in less than 1% of the samples. [16]  When they scanned the data base for the closest match, they found one grown in Ghana.  However, that did not mean the rice came from Africa.  It well could have come from South Carolina through trade. [17]

The one with a golden panicle is a subspecies of the Asian Oryza sativa not the African Oryza glaberrima.  That subspecies, Indica, developed in India, [18] and was spread west by Arab traders. [19]  Portuguese traders may then have spread Indica.  It eventually was found in Madagascar, replacing the Javonica brought there centuries before from Malaysia.  It also displaced the African Glaberrima wherever the Portuguese introduced it. [20]

The rules of genetics did not stop some from proclaiming the single DNA match as proof Carolina Gold was introduced by slaves. [21]  However, the mere fact that the variety has not been found anywhere else suggests it was the result of a rare mutation, much like the more common one that produces the weedy, red rice. [22]

McClung’s team since has attempted to recreate gold seed from the white that is known to have been common in South Carolina, and continued to be grown around Beaufort.  Glenn Roberts says it took “a 36 month subtropical and tropical year round program.  They increased this seed to breeder, then to foundation seed, then passed it to experienced [. . .] growers to move the pure [seed] into first year production only to discover a red out-cross in the subsequent pure Carolina Gold production rice harvest.” [23]

The random, but constant, appearance of the red-skinned rice may be less the result of genetics than environment.  A group of Japanese scientists found both the Wxa and Wxb existed in both Indica and Japonica, and that the distinction between the two occurs during the encoding process when a nucleotide that follows the pattern AGGT mutates to AGTT. [24]

The purity of the gold rice in the northern part of South Carolina probably occurred because planters did not save their own rice for the next year’s crop.  The red seeds still were produced as probability theories would insist. [25]  They were removed from seed intended for market by the mills that husked the grain.  However, seed corn was not husked because the rice deteriorates after the protective shell is removed. [26]

In 1911, the United States Department of Agriculture noted that farmers who could not use flood irrigation became the ones who provided the seed.  The red rice and weeds were removed when it was husked with older methods. [27]  One suspects they also trained the men who were hired as overseers. [28]

End Notes
1.  G. Terry Sharrer.  “Indigo in Carolina, 1671-1796.”  The South Carolina Historical Magazine 72(2):94-103:April 1971.  102.  He argues England’s wars produced more incentives for planters than the subsidy that existed from 1848 to 1777.

2.  David Ramsay.  The History of South-Carolina.  Charleston, South Carolina: David Longworth, 1809.  Reprinted as Ramsay’s History of South Carolina.  Newberry, South Carolina: W. J. Duffie, 1858.  1:293.  For more on freshets, see the post 16 January 2019.

3.  Heyward is discussed in the post for 16 January 2019.
4.  The introduction of upland cotton is discussed in the post for 25 August 2019.
5.  Ramsay.  1:182.

6.  Walter Edgar.  South Carolina.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998.  233.

7.  Edgar.  235.  Marion now is known as the Swamp Fox.
8.  Edgar.  238, 243.
9.  Heyward’s reaction to mills is mentioned in the post for 16 January 2019.
10.  Ramsay.  1:249.
11.  See the post for 16 January 2019 for more on the introduction of mills.

12.  Robert F. W. Allston.  “The Rice Plant.”  De Bow’s Commercial Review of the South and West 1:320-357:1846.  326.

13.  Anna McClung and Bob Fjellstrom.  “America’s Golden Treasure.”  Texas Rice 5(6):5-6:August/September 2005.  Summary of a paper given at a symposium in Charleston, South Carolina, sponsored by the Carolina Gold Foundation in August 2005.

14.  M. Shure, S. R. Wessler, and N. Federoff.  “Molecular Identification and Isolation of the Waxy Locus in Maize.”  Cell 35:225-233:1983.

15.  Shinsuke Yamanaka, Ikuo Nakamura, Kazuo N. Watanabe, and Yo-Ichiro Sato.  “Identification of SNPs in the Waxy Gene among Glutinous Rice Cultivars and Their Evolutionary Significance during the Domestication Process.”  Theoretical and Applied Genetics 108:1200-124:2004.  In a simple understanding of genetics, the specific color of an eye, blue or brown, is called an allele of the gene that controls color.

16.  McClung and Fjellstrom.

17.  Erik Stokstad.  “American Rice: Out of Africa.”  Science website, 16 November 2007.  Report of paper by Anna McClung given at the American Society of Agronomy 2007 meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana.

18.  T. T. Chang. “Domestication and Spread of the Cultivated Rices.”  408-417 in Foraging and Farming: The Evolution of Plant Exploitation.  Edited by David R. Harris and Gordon C. Hillman.  London: Routledge, 2016.  The obvious difference between Indica and Japonica is that the grains of the latter stick together when cooked, while they remain separate in the first.

19.  Andrew M. Watson.  Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World.  Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993.  17.  Cited by Richard Dwight Porcher, Jr., and William Robert Judd.  The Market Preparation of Carolina Rice.  Columbia, South Carolina: The University of South Carolina Press, 2014.  10.

20.  Porcher.  11.

21.  Stokstad.  “Judith Carney of the University of California, Los Angeles, says a Ghanaian origin of Carolina Gold fits with the idea that Carolina Gold arrived in the colony as food on slave ships and was then planted by the slaves.”  Carney is discussed in the post for 13 January 2019.

22.  Early attempts to explain the appearance of red rice are mentioned in the posts for 18 September 2022 and 25 September 2022.

23.  Glenn Roberts.  “Carolina Gold Rice: Pure Seed, Fame, Fourtune & Hurricane Rita.”  Carolina Gold Rice Foundation Newsletter, January 2007.  Ellipsis were CGR for Carolina Gold Rice.

24.  M. Umeda, H. Ohtsubo, and E. Ohtsubo.  “Diversification of the Rice Waxy Gene by Insertion of Mobile DNA Elements into Introns.”  The Japanese Journal of Genetics 66:569-86:1991.

25.  Allston said that sometimes rice fields became “contaminated with either grass-seed or red-rice, as not to reward sufficiently the labor bestowed on its culture.”  Instead of abandoning them, he argued planters should introduce a regime of leaving a field fallow every four years.  Then, he reported “all the rusty, red grains of rice, which have been lying dormant in the mud for years, were thrown out and exposed to the fructifying influence of the sun, vegetate, and are utterly destroyed by the frost before the time for planting the next crop.” [29]

26.  J. H. Easterby.  “Introduction.”  1-49 in  The South Carolina Rice Plantation as Revealed in the Papers of Robert F. W. Allston.  Chicago: University of Chicago, 1945; reprinted by University of South Carolina of Columbia in 2004.  40.

27.  W. E. McLendon, G. A. Crabb, Earl Carr, and F. S. Welsh.  “Soil Survey of Georgetown County, South Carolina.”  513-562 in Field Operations of the Bureau of Soils, 1911.  Washington, DC: United States Department of Agriculture, 1914.  520.

28.  The post for 16 January 2019 summarized a study on the characteristics of overseers.  The census data that was used could only identify men by state of birth.

29.  R. F. W. Allston.  “On the Cultivation of Rice.”  The Southern Agriculturist 3(7):241-246:July 1843.  244-245.

Larry Eisenberg - Kum Ba Yah

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
In early 1957, Lynn Rohrbough was still in close touch with men who had supported his Cooperative Song Service (CRS) in the 1940s.  In January, Larry Eisenberg wrote him to say he was planning “to stay over after the ACA meeting, and will be happy to come out to the Rohrboughs on Saturday afternoon.” [1]

The two men met in 1936, when the twenty-year-old Eisenberg went to the National Conference of Methodist Youth in Berea, Kentucky. [2]  They became colleagues in the 1940s when Eisenberg was working for the denomination’s Youth Department in Nashville, Tennessee. [3]

Eisenberg left the department in 1952, and had been spending the interim years writing books on recreation that were published by the YMCA [4] and teaching social recreation to missionaries at Scarritt College. [5]  He had just begun working as a pastor in southwestern Virginia in late 1957. [6]

One event where he worked was an experiment in race relations sponsored by the Presbyterian and Congregational churches [7] at Davidson College in North Carolina.  Students from Black colleges, like Talladega, were given an opportunity to visit white schools where, it was hoped, the two groups would meet socially [8] and thus overcome some of the barriers in the South where only 15% of the whites believed in integrated schools. [9]

In addition to Eisenberg, Pete Seeger was invited to perform.  This event must have been reported in the local and school newspapers, but I have found nothing posted to the web.  This description is based on the memories of Eisenberg and Seeger.

One reason it would have been reported was its notoriety.  Davidson had become a textile mill town in 1890 [10] that attracted displaced white farmers. [11]  When the college finally agreed to enroll students from the Congo in 1962, five local business announced they would not serve them. [12]  Eisenberg had been told “the town even has vigilantes.”  He added, “so far as I know, nothing happened.” [13]

Seeger remembered that “a Methodist minister and recreation leader, Rev. Larry Eisenberg introduced the song in North Carolina.” [14]

Eisenberg probably learned “Kumbaya” from the Song Sampler, or some other CRS publication sent to him by Rohrbough. [15]  At that time, the heading still claimed it came from “Africa (Angola).”  He may have mentioned this in his introduction.  Seeger wrote that, “within a couple of years” of being published by CRS, “it was being sung in the USA as ‘an African song’.” [16]

Seeger recalled the Talladega students responded: “Why, we know this song! [. . .] It’s ‘Come by Here, Lord, Come by Here!’” [17]

The first question that arises is what would have prompted the visiting students to publically argue with Eisenberg.  They knew they were guests in a community that was hostile to the aspirations of African Americans.

One possibility is that they already were angry that white rock-a-billy performers, like Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis, [18] were making money by copying recordings made by Black artists.  They probably knew Presley had appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show on 26 October 1956 [19] singing “Hound Dog.” [20]  Some, at least, may have been known his recording was a cover of one released by an African-American blues singer, Big Mama Thornton, in 1953. [21]  This would have made them especially sensitive to hearing one of their religious songs being characterized by a white man as “African.”

Seeger altered the text slightly and began singing “Kumbaya” in his concerts. [22]  In October 1957, he told members of the University of Chicago’s Folklore Society:

“There was a missionary who came back from East Africa, Angola. [23]  And taught this song to us and a lot of people started singing it around the country.  Introducing it as an African spiritual.  Lo and behold someone was singing it down in North Carolina and people there said we know this song, it’s ‘Come by Here’.” [24]

In late December Seeger performed “Kumbaya” at a concert in Carnegie Hall.  When Folkways released a recording in early 1958, Seeger had added details in the liner notes that imagined the song in Africa:

“A missionary returned from Angola, East Africa several years ago with this song.  He had no translation for the title.  ‘It’s just a spiritual sung by people around the mission’.” [25]

Seeger, or his representative, had done the research needed to prevent a copyright dispute.  He noted:

“The song was published in one of the small camp songbooks put out by that remarkable man, Lynn Rohrbough, who in an Ohio barn prints millions of songbooks and recreation handbooks for churches, Y’s, and camps throughout the world.” [26]

Seeger was struck by there being two descriptions of the song’s origins and assumed both were true.  He then tried to explain how that could be.  In October, he speculated:

“I’m not sure how it got to Africa.  But just yesterday I was reading a book.  [. . .]  He worked at the mission.  Name was Cole.  Reverend Sam Cole.  Maybe he was the one who taught them the song.” [27]

This was repeated with more precision in the liner notes:

“How it got to Africa in the first place no one knows for sure.  Perhaps it was the Rev. Sam Cole, whose autobiography was published in 1957.  [. . .]  Perhaps he took the song there.” [28]

Samuel B. Coles was an African American who had worked in Angola as a missionary for the Congregational Church from 1923 to 1953, with breaks in the United States for sabbaticals and World War II. [29]  He died in March 1957 and was buried on Long Island. [30]  His autobiography was published posthumously. [31]  The NAACP’s The Crisis published a review in its October issue, [32] just before Seeger’s appearance. [33]

Seeger’s tale of two missionaries — the one who took it to Africa and the one who brought it back — entered tradition along with “Kumbaya.”

Notes on Audience
Davidson College published profiles of its graduates for their fiftieth reunion.  Most of the white men had followed the professions for which small, liberal arts colleges were known: law, medicine, the ministry, and business.  They were asked what they most remembered from their college years.  The answers were what one would expect: friends, fraternities, dances, and sports.  A number had been in the male chorus.

No one mentioned this event.  Pete Seeger was not well known, unless one followed the activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee.  It had condemned Seeger in 1955 as a Communist and demanded he testify.  The committee did not formally charge him with contempt until March 1957. [34]

However, three men remembered a performance by Louis Armstrong.  That was the concert mentioned most often by the alumni. [35]

Notes on Performers
Eisenberg is profiled in the post for 9 February 2020, and mentioned in the ones for 1 November 2020, 4 November 2020, 3 October 2021, and 13 March 2022.  His photograph appears of the Photo_K tab.

Seeger and his family are discussed in the posts for 11 August 2019, 18 August 2019, and 6 October 2019.

While Seeger remembered meeting Eisenberg at Davidson, Eisenberg recalled they had met during the summer of 1957 at the Idyllwild Arts Foundation in California. [36]  They later collaborated on a Folkways recording of playparties. [37]  He said he “made 50 whole dollars from that.” [38]
 
End Notes
1.  Larry Eisenberg, Brentwood, Tennessee.  Letter to Lynn, 29 January 1957.  Copy courtesy of Bruce Greene and World Around Songs.  ACA was the American Camping Association.  Today, the American Camp Association holds its national conferences in different cities in February.

2.  Larry Eisenberg.  “It’s Me, O Lord.”  Tulsa, Oklahoma: Fun Books, 1992.  51.
3.  Eisenberg, It’s Me.  54, 62.

4.  Eisenberg and his wife, the former Helen Park, published The Family Fun Book in 1953, How To Help Folks Have Fun in 1954, How To Lead Group Singing in 1955, and The Omnibus of Fun in 1956.  All were issued by the YMCA’s Association Press in New York City.  Eisenberg recalled: “Eventually I finished eight books for Association before they went out of the book publishing business.” [39]

5.  Eisenberg, It’s Me.  62.  Scarritt College is mentioned in the post for 16 May 2021.

6.  Eisenberg, It’s Me.  63.  While he was at Chihowie, in Smyth County, he led a charismatic revival that involved faith healing. [40]  Some of the events are described by Brad Scott.  “A Sketch of the History of Charismatic Influence in 20th Century Holston Methodism.”  The United Methodist Church, Holston, Virginia, Conference Historical Society website, 5 October 2017.

7.  Talladega was supported by the American Missionary Association, [41] which was closely associated with the Congregational Church. [42]  Davidson was established in 1837 by The Concord Presbytery of North Carolina. [43]  The two reformed denominations had maintained close ties since Jonathan Edwards brokered a Plan of Union in 1801 that allowed the two churches to combine flocks on the Ohio frontier and use whichever clergymen were present. [44]

8.  I read a memoir on the internet that I didn’t save and haven’t been able to relocate by a Talladega student who described these exchanges.  One of her comments was that the African Americans were far more interested in attending these meetings than were white students.

9.  “Brown v. Board: Timeline of School Integration in the U.S.”  Learning for Justice Magazine, #25, Spring 2004, posted on its website.

10.  “Davidson, North Carolina.”  Wikipedia website.
11.  “Town History Timeline.”  Davidson, North Carolina, town website.

12.  Rick von Unwerth.  “Five Local Businesses ‘Won’t Serve Them’.”  Davidsonian, Davidson College, 3 March 1961.  Reprinted by Caitlin Christian Lamb.  “‘Thereby Hangs a Tale’: The Winding Path to Integration at Davidson.”  Her website, 10 February 2016.

13.  Eisenberg, Letter.

14.  P. Seeger.  “Notes on Background of Songs.”  Pete Seeger and Sonny Terry.  Folkways Records FA2412.  Recorded 27 December 1957, released 1958.

15.  Eisenberg probably did not attend the Student Volunteer Movement meeting and certainly would not have been at the Methodist Church’s national conference in Minneapolis.  This first is discussed in the post for 31 July 2022.  The second is described in the post for 9 October 2022.

16.  Seeger, 1958.
17.  Seeger, 1958.

18.  Jerry Lee Lewis recorded “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” in February 1957 [45] and appeared on The Steve Allen Show on 28 July 1957. [46]  It had been recorded on 21 March 1955 by Big Maybelle [47] for Okeh Records. [48]

19.  “Hound Dog (Song).”  Wikipedia website.

20.  Elvis Presley.  “Hound Dog.”  RCA Victor 47-6605.  Recorded in New York City on 2 July 1956; released 13 July 13 1956.

21.  Big Mama Thornton.  “Hound Dog.”  Peacock Records 1612.  Recorded in Los Angeles on 13 August 952; released March 1953.

22.  Seeger’s version is discussed in the post for 6 October 2019.

23.  Technically, Angola is on the western coast of central Africa.  One can only call it East Africa, if one assumes west Africa is the section between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic and therefore, everything else is east.  Most divide that part of the continent into north, central, and southern sections, and reserve the word “east” for the countries bordering on the Indian Ocean.

24.  Pete Seeger.  “Kumbaya.”  Pete Seeger Live ’57.  Goldenland Records MP3, 2013.  Thomas Stern identified this as a tape from a performance for the Folklore Society of the University of Chicago, 13 October 1957. [49]

25.  Seeger, 1958.

26.  Seeger, 1958.  Once he learned CRS had published the song, he or his representative would have contacted Rohrbough for permission to make the recording.  This sentence sounds like the kind of promotional materials the company might have sent him.  The linear notes say “courtesy of Coop. Recreation Serv.”

27.  Seeger, 1957.
28.  Seeger, 1957.

29.  My article on the origin tales associated with “Kumbaya” [50] discusses Coles and other Black missionaries who served in Angola: Susan Collins, Martha Drummer, and Bessie Fonvielle McDowell.  The first two were at the Methodist mission in Angola where Melvin Blake later served. [51]  The last was the wife of Coles’ mission’s founder.

30.  Marvin & Samme Templin.  “Samuel Bracy Coles.”  Find a Grave website, 29 December 2011.

31.  Samuel B. Coles.  Preacher with a Plow.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1957.

32.  J. W. I.  Review of Preacher with a Plow.  The Crisis 512:October 1957.  James W. Ivy edited the magazine. [52]

33.  It is remotely possible Coles was at the Davidson meeting.  His daughter’s husband was from Alamance County, North Carolina, [53] and they were living in Durham when they died years later. [54]  In 1970, the couple was reported to be in Liberia. [55]  If they were in North Carolina in 1957 and he was visiting them, Coles might have gone to Davidson.  He had graduated from Talladega.

34.  For more on the accusation against Pete Seeger, see the post for 18 August 2019.

35.  Quips and Cranks 50th Reunion Edition, Class of 1956, edited by Hollis F. Cobb.  Davidson, North Carolina: Davidson College, 2006.

36.  Idyllwild is mentioned in the post for 8 July 2018.

37.  Pete Seeger, Mika Seeger, and Rev. Larry Eisenberg.  American Playparties.  Folkways Records FC 7604.  Released 1959.  Mika, Seeger’s daughter, would have been eleven years old when the record was released.  Most of the songs had been published by Rohrbough.

38.  Eisenberg.  63.
39.  Eisenberg, It’s Me.  62.
40.  Eisenberg, It’s Me.  9-13.
41.  “Talladega College.”  Wikipedia website.
42.  “American Missionary Association.”  Wikipedia website.
43.  “Davidson College.”  Wikipedia website.

44.  Sydney E. Ahlstrom.  A Religious History of the American People.  New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1972.  456.

45.  “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.”  Wikipedia website.
46.  “Jerry Lee Lewis.”  Wikipedia website.
47.  Wikipedia, Shakin’.

48.  Big Maybelle.  “Whole Lot of Shakin’ Goin’ On.”  Okeh 4-7060.  Released September 1955.  Quincy Jones was the director.  [Discogs website entry]

49.  Thomas Stern.  Reply to query “Pete Seeger Live ’57.”  Mudcat Café website, 2 May 2016.

50.  Patricia Averill with John Blocher, Jr.  “‘Kumbaya’ and Dramatizations of an Etiological Legend.”  Voices 46:26–32:Spring–Summer 2020.  A copy of the final draft is available on the Academia.edu website.

51.  Blake’s time in Angola is discussed in the post for 7 March 2021.
52.  “The Crisis.”  Wikipedia website.
53.  RTerry.  “William Allen Hill.”  Find a Grave website, 17 November 2011.
54.  RTerry.   “Laura Coles Hill.”  Find a Grave website, 11 April 2012.

55.  RTerry, William Allen Hill.  “Mr. Hill had a long and distinguished public service career as an educator at the collegiate and public school levels.  His education career included work in the United States and Liberia, West Africa.”  The name was too common to find references online that identified him more.

Variants of the Rice Origin Tale

Topic: Gullah History - Early Legends
Alexander Salley, who became state archivist for South Carolina, [1] reprinted eight versions of Fayrer Hall’s origin tale that was quoted in the post for 18 September 2022.  Each has been retold by others.  Still others have tried to combine them into a single tale, emphasizing different elements.  The history of the history has moved from some attempts to explain a confusing situation, the varieties of rice found in South Carolina, to syntheses that compounded the confusion.

The first person Salley mentioned was James Glen, governor between 1743 and 1756, [2] who reprinted Hall’s version in 1761.  He emphasized chance and the irrelevance of the proprietors when he added (motif 3 in the list with End Notes) “it was not done with any previous Prospect of Gain, but owing to a lucky accident, and a private experiment.”  The (4) gift motif was expanded when he added it was done “for the benefit of Mankind.” [3]

In 1766, when conflicts between the crown and the colony were escalating after the Sugar Act of 1764, Gentleman’s Magazine of London published an account by Peter Collinson, a friend of Charles Dubois, which contained many of the same motifs as Hall. [4]

The (1) individual responsible for introducing the rice was the treasurer of the East India company, and the recipient was (5) Thomas Marsh, a Carolina merchant, after they (3) happened to meet in a coffee house.  Dubois (4) gave Marsh (6) a “money bag” of (2) East India rice.

Since the quantity was so small, (9) more rice was brought by a Portuguese slave trader who (4) gave, but actually bartered, some of the ship’s provisions for fresh produce.  The (3) unexpected rice (8) made men more sure rice could be a viable commodity.

However, (9) the planters still didn’t have enough, and, in 1713, the colony paid bounties to captains who brought rice.  One shipment came (2) “from the Streights, probably Egypt” or Milan.  Another bounty was paid for rice that came with a slave ship from (2) Madagascar. [5]

Salley found no record of the bounties, and believed the London writer was thinking of the gratuity paid to John Thurber. [6]  What Salley didn’t mention was that the Portuguese and Madagascar ships were probably smugglers who provided cheap goods to Charles Town the way the pirates had.  He did mention rice itself was smuggled to Portugal in 1708, and sold for fish that then was sent to London. [7]

Collinson and Du Bois both were London cloth merchants and avid gardeners.  Collinson imported plants collected by John Bertram and sponsored Mark Catesby plant hunting trip to Carolina in 1722.  [8]  Du Bois also was treasurer of the East India Company.  He used that position to encourage plant explorations and import plants from India. [9]

In 1772, as rebellion against royal authority was brewing in France, a contributor to Guillaume Thomas Raynal’s history of European trade with the two Indies emphasized that the introduction was (3) “purely fortuitous,” the result of a ship returning from the (2) East Indies that (3) “happened to be cast away” and (6) “some bags” were (4) “taken from the ship.”  Even so, “a trial was made of sowing them, which (8) succeeded  beyond expectations.” [10]

During the American Revolution, in 1779, a Tory minister living in exile in London, Alexander Hewat, [11] replaced the adventurer, Henry Woodward, with an idealized royal governor, Thomas Smith. [12]

According to Hewat, soon after Smith became governor, (3) a “fortunate accident happened” when (1) a brigantine from (2) Madagascar (3) touched on Sullivan Island outside the Charles Town harbor.  Smith met with the captain who (4) “made him a present of a (6) bag of seed rice.”  Smith (7) divided the rice between “Stephen Bull, Joseph Woodward, and some other friends.” [13]

Hewatt then mentioned (9) DuBois to explain (11) “the distinction of red and white rice.” [14]

The location of the accident and the identity of the planters have been elaborated.  Sullivan’s Island was the location of the fort William Moultrie built that repulsed the first British attack on Charleston in 1776, [15] while Hewat was close to the last royal governor of the colony, William Bull. [16]  Stephen Bull was William’s son, and his son, William’s grandson, also Stephen Bull, married Elizabeth Woodward. [17]  Salley couldn’t identify Joseph, who was not descended from Henry. [18]

In 1798, after years of battle and intrigue to secure the French revolution, Raynal reissued his history and the current contributor said “opinions differ” on the introduction of rice, and he no longer thought it mattered if it came with a shipwreck, was sent by England, or brought by slaves, because what mattered was South Carolina was ideally suited to grow rice. [19]

In 1802, another governor, John Drayton, published his version, which now gave “good government” a role.  He said the first shipment of 1688 was an unprofitable variety, and it was only in 1696 that a larger, whiter variety was introduced. [20]  The last is a trait associated with the rice of Hezekiah Maham, [21] and Drayton may have been contrasting the rice that existed after the revolution, with that from before.

Drayton’s second introduction came when the (1) captain of a brigantine from (2) Madagascar (4) “presented” a (6) bag to the (5) governor (7) “who divided it between several gentlemen.”  He adds, Mr. DuBois (9) “sent another parcel” which explains “the distinction which now prevails, between white and gold rice.” [22]

In 1809, David Ramsay deliberately introduced new elements.  He suggested Thomas Smith “had been at Madagascar before he settled in Carolina” and that he was “an old acquaintance” of the captain of a (1) vessel from (2) Madagascar which (3) “being in distress, came to anchor near Sullivan’s Island.”   The (1) ship’s cook (4) “presented” Smith with (6) “a small bag of rice.” [23]

This time it’s Smith himself who (8) proved that rice could grow “luxuriantly.”  He (7) distributed his “little crop” “among his planter friends”   Salley said Ramsay went so far as to alter Edward Crisp’s 1704 map of Charles Town to mark the spot in Smith’s garden where the rice first grew, apparently unaware that the area could not have supported rice because it only had access to salt water. [24]

Ramsay had been an active patriot during the war, jailed in Saint Augustine by the British. [25]  His more colorful version may have been influenced by Parson Weems’ attempts to create a dramatic past for the young republic with his books on George Washington [26] and Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox. [27]  The later was published in 1809, based on notes by Peter Horry, but had been repudiated by Horry. [28]

Many recent writers have read some, or all of the accounts mentioned by Salley, and created their own syntheses, usually within a contemporary framework.  For instance, Richard Shulze, who is growing heirloom Carolina Gold rice at his Turnbridge Plantation, has elaborated the accident:

“A Liverpool-bound brigantine sailing from (2) Madagascar was (3) badly damaged by a storm and blown off course; it set into the port of Charles Towne for repairs.” [29]

and the nature of the gift

“Dr. Henry Woodward apparently (4) befriended the captain” [30]

From there, the modern skeptic questions the traditional facts, noting “the ship, which was of American origin, was probably not trading legally as the British law at that time forbade trade outside of the colonies and the British Isles.” [31]

He repeats Ramsay’s idea filtered through Salley that “Woodward proceeded to grow this in his garden in the city” [32] before suggesting it was more likely he planted the seed at “the more suitable property on the Abbapoola Creek.” [33]

He then notes not enough time passed between the summer of 1685 when the ship entered port and Woodward’s trip to the frontier where he died for him to (8) “produce a very good crop, which he then (9) distributed to his friends.”  He concludes “he probably never had the opportunity to fully appreciate (10) the new industry that he was so instrumental in spawning.” [34]

Who provided the rice may not be as important as who actually planted the first successful crop.  This is not part of the legend.  All that can be deduced is a date.  Richard Porcher says the first recorded export was to Jamaica in 1695. [35]  Woodward had been dead at least five years by then.  Thurber was active between 1694 and 1697. [36]

End Notes
Motifs found in origin tales that explain the introduction of rice to South Carolina.  These are introduced in the post for 18 September 2022.

1. Someone, usually unnamed
2. From Madagascar
3. Through some accident, usually a shipwreck
4. Gave, usually as a sign of gratitude
5. To Woodward, or some other prominent person
6. A peck or some other small amount of rice
7. Which was distributed free to the other planters
8. Who proved rice could grow in the colony
9. A second introduction
10. Is responsible for the spread of the crop
11. And the visible variations in the rice

1.  Roberta VH Copp.  “Salley, Alexander Samuel.”  South Carolina Encyclopedia website, 1 August 2016; last updated 25 October 2016.

2.  “List of Colonial Governors of South Carolina.”  Wikipedia website.

3.  James Glen.  A Description of South Carolina.  London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1761.  Quoted by A. S. Salley, Jr.  “The Introduction of Rice Culture into South Carolina.”  Bulletin of the Historical Commission of South Carolina.  Columbia, South Carolina: State Company, 1919.  Bulletin 6.  14.

4.  Peter Collinson.  “An Account of the Introduction of Rice and Tar into our Colonies.”  Gentleman’s Magazine 36:278–279:June 1766.  Quoted by Salley. 14.  Reprinted by Carolina Gold Rice Foundation’s The Rice Paper, January 2007.

5.  Collinson.  Quoted by Salley.  15.
6.  Thurber was mentioned in the post for 18 September 2022.

7.  John Lloyd, St. Nicholas-Lane.  Letter to William Popple, Secretary of the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, 30 December 1708.  Quoted by Salley.  7–8.  The original is in the British Public Record Office, Proprieties, Board of Trade, Volume 9, p. 49.

If pirates were responsible for introducing rice, as the legends claim, they may have remained important customers.  Salley tries to date the introduction of rice by the fact it was not mentioned as an export in 1694. [37]  However, the Navigation Act may have driven customers like ship’s captains and piraes, to buy supplies in places that evaded London.

8.  “Peter Collinson (Botanist).”  Wikipedia website.

9.  Margaret Riley.  “‘Procurers of plants and encouragers of gardening’: William and James Sherard, and Charles du Bois, Case Studies in Late Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century Botanical and Horticultural Patronage.”  PhD dissertation.  University of Buckingham, 2011.

10.  Abbé Raynal.  Philosophical and Political History of the Possessions and Trade of Europeans in the Two Indies.  Amsterdam: 1772.  Quoted by Salley.  23.  This is the English language edition; the French title is Histoire des deux Indes.

11.  Hewat is discussed in the post for 12 June 2022.
12.  Smith is discussed in the post for 11 September 2022.

13.  Alexander Hewatt.  An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia.  London: A. Donaldson, 1779.  Volume 1, chapter 3, section The Planting of Rice Introduced.  Quoted by Salley.  20.

14.  Rice has a white husk.  Sometimes, when it goes to seed, it appears with a red one.  The red often is called “weedy” rice since it was not deliberately planted.  Until Gregor Mendel discussed probabilities of gene occurrence, the two colors were a mystery to be explained.  The genetics are discussed in the post for 6 November 2022.

15.  “Fort Moultrie.”  Wikipedia website.

16.  Edward McCrady.  The History of South Carolina under the Proprietary Government, 1670-1719.  New York: The Macmillan Company, 1897.  443.  “Hewatt was intimate with the family of Lieutenant William Bull.”

17.  Joseph W. Barnwell.  “Dr. Henry Woodward, the First English Settler in South Carolina, and Some of His Descendants.”  The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 8(1):29–41:January 1907.  30.  “Stephen Bull, the grandson of the first Lieutenant Governor Bull, had married Elizabeth Woodward, the only daughter of Richard Woodward (grandson of Dr. Woodward).”

18.  Hewatt.  Quoted by Salley.  20.

19.  Abbé Raynal.  Philosophical and Political History of the Possessions and Trade of Europeans in the Two Indies.  London: A. Strahan, 1798.  6:59.  Quoted by Salley.  23.

20.  John Drayton.  A View of South Carolina.  Charleston, South Carolina: W. P. Young, 1802.  Quoted by Salley.  21.

21.  Maham is discussed in the posts for 13 November 2022 and 20 November 2022.
22.  Drayton.  Quoted by Salley.  21.

23.  David Ramsay.  The History of South-Carolina.  Charleston, South Carolina: David Longworth, 1809.  Quoted by Salley.  21.

24.  Salley.  22.  The copy of Ramsay’s history available online does not contain a map. [38]

25.  W. Curtis Worthington.  “Ramsay, David.”  South Carolina Encyclopedia website, 20 June 2016; last updated 28 November 2016.

26.  M. L. Weems.  A History of the Life and Death, Virtues, and Exploits, of General George Washington.  Georgetown, DC: Green and English, 1800.

27.  M. L. Weems.  The Life of Gen. Francis Marion.  Philadelphia: Mathew Carey, 1809.

28.  “Weems, Mason Locke.”  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography Vol. 6. Sunderland-Zurita, edited by James Grant Wilson and John Fiske.  New-York: Appleton and Company, 1900.

29.  Richard Schulze.  Carolina Gold Rice: The Ebb and Flow History of a Lowcountry Cash Crop.  Charleston, South Carolina: The History Press, 2005.  23.

30.  Schulze.  23.
31.  Schulze.  23.
32.  Schulze.  23.
33.  Schulze.  26.

34.  Schultze.  26.  He claims Woodward “came down with the fever at an Indian village and was evacuated to his plantation where he died at age forty.

35.  Richard Dwight Porcher, Jr., and William Robert Judd.  The Market Preparation of Carolina Rice.  Columbia, South Carolina: The University of South Carolina Press, 2014.  17.

36.  Guy Mannering Fessenden.  “Burials at Warren and Barrington, R. I.”  The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 48:442–444:October 1894.  Quoted by Salley.  13.  Fessenden discovered Thurber was buried in Warren, Rhode Island, and noted he had brought the rice from India between 1694 and 1697.

37.  Salley’s source was John Houghton, who published A Collection for the Improvement of Husbandry and Trade.  He cites volume 2.  The periodical’s publisher was London’s Randal Taylor.

38.  Reprinted as Ramsay’s History of South Carolina.  Newberry, South Carolina: W. J. Duffie, 1858.  Discussion of Smith and rice is on pages 2:113–114.

Rice’s Origin Tale

Topic: Gullah History - Early Legends
Thomas Smith, mentioned in the post for 11 September 2022, governed at the time when South Carolina did not have a commercial crop.  Without a steady flow of income, settlers traded with pirates for hard currency [1] and, according to Peter Wood, occasional lots of slaves. [2]  Their tolerance changed when pirates disrupted the movement of their commodities.  Eugene Sirmans claims Smith was the “first governor to enjoy a lasting success in suppressing the pirate trade.” [3]

Rice, the first successful staple crop, was introduced at least three times: first in the early years of the colony, again after the revolution when planters needed to replace their lost seed grain, and then again when Joshua John Ward made his improved selection available in 1844. [4]

The first occurred before there were many written records and has become the subject of folk history; the second is remembered in family tradition, and the third, a commercial transaction, was recorded for all to know by the participants.

Alexander Salley found the only public record of what became the folk tradition was a 1715 entry in the journal of the House of Commons noting the body had agreed to pay a gratuity of one hundred pounds to John Thurber for “bringing the first Madagascar Rice into this province.” [5]

He found the first narrative explanation appeared sixteen years later in a pamphlet he attributed to Fayrer Hall, who had served in expeditions against pirates in 1718. [6]  Hall wrote the introduction of rice

“was owing to the following Accident.  A Brigantine from the Island Madagascar happened to put in there; they had a little Seed Rice left, not exceeding a Peck or Quarter of a bushel, which the Captain offered and gave to a Gentlemen of the Name of Woodward.  From Part of this he had a very good Crop, but was ignorant for some Years how to clean it.  It was soon dispensed over the Province; and by frequent Experiments and Observations they found out Ways of producing and manufacturing it to so great Perfection, that it is thought it exceeds any other in Value.  The Writer of this hath seen the Captain in Carolina, where he received a handsome gratuity from the Gentlemen of that Country.” [7]

The basic motifs of the folk narrative, told in several variants, are that:

1.  Someone, usually unnamed
2.  From Madagascar
3.  Through some accident, usually a shipwreck
4.  Gave, usually as a sign of gratitude
5.  To Woodward, or some other prominent person
6.  A peck or some other small amount of rice
7.  Which was distributed free to the other planters
8.  Who proved rice could grow in the colony

Item 1.  In the first retelling, the identity of Thurber was reduced to a sea captain, who was now the one from Madagascar.

Item 2.  Between the time Charles II granted Carolina to eight proprietors in 1663 and Thurber’s petition, Madagascar was not controlled by any western power.  When the Portuguese arrived, Swahili-speaking traders were shipping rice and slaves to the African and Arabian coasts. [8]  The Europeans made a few cursory attempts that primarily resulted in disrupting existing trade networks without replacing them. [9]  French attempts begun in 1643 [10] and English experiments in 1649 [11] ended in massacres.

The only westerners who visited the island after that were pirates.  Charles had used privateers as part of naval offence against Spain and Dutch. [12]  Later, peace treaties forced him to forbid Carolina from consorting with them. [13]  In 1683, Thomas Lynch, the governor of Jamaica, began discouraging pirates [14] who, he claimed, moved to the northern Carolina coast. [15] Alexander Hewat says Robert Quarry, governor for a few months in 1685, welcomed them to Charles Town in 1685. [16]

Charles’ brother, James II, became more assertive, [17] and dispatched a small fleet to Jamaica to arrest pirates in 1687. [18]  James Colleton then was governor of Charles Town, and he assured the proprietors that no “pirates nor other Sea Robbers” had been allowed in port. [19]  This, apparently, was when the pirates, now aware of Jamaica’s need for slaves, moved to Madagascar. [20]

With another turn of fortune, James was ousted by William of Orange in 1688, and Colleton by Seth Sothell in 1690. [21]  Sothell again welcomed pirates in Charles Town. [22]

Item 3.  Hall used the word “accident” to suggest the introduction was a chance, not deliberate act.  From the first the proprietors wanted to develop a colony and listed rice as one of the crops that was both suitable to the climate and congruent with the throne’s desire to establish a completely self-sufficient mercantile economy. [23]  In 1672, William Jeffereys sent a barrel of rice “for the prop. acct of the Lords Proprs of Carolina” which was received by the governor. [24]

Many of the early settlers never accepted the legitimacy of the proprietors and had thrown off their power in 1720.  The use of the word “accident,” like the hidden reference to pirates, may have been an attempt to suggest the proprietors had nothing to do with the introduction of rice as a crop and, by extension, the success of the colony.

Item 4.  The gift of rice may have alluded to some bribe paid by pirates to an authority in Charles Town.  It also may have been another attempt to contrast proper behavior with that of the proprietors.  The third governor of the colony, John Yeamans, shipped his surplus food to Barbados where he could make a profit rather than sell it to the settlers he’d brought with him who didn’t have enough to eat. [25]

Item 5.  Woodward is assumed to have been Henry Woodward.  He had come to the area on the exploratory voyage of 1666 [26] and stayed with the Natives on Port Royale sound. [27]  He was captured by the Spanish the next year. [28]  When Robert Searle raided Saint Augustine in 1668 Woodward escaped and stayed with the pirates until shipwrecked on Nevis in 1669. [29]

He returned to the area with the expedition that founded Charles Town in 1670, and explored the interior. [30]  As mentioned in the post for 21 August 2022, the proprietors were not happy with the progress of the colony and one, Anthony Ashley Cooper, planned a new venture on Edisto Island in 1674. [31]  He hired Woodward to establish trade relations with the Westo. [32]

Cooper may have snared Woodward into his political campaign against Roman Catholics, mentioned in the post for 11 September 2022.  In 1677, just before Cooper was jailed the first time, Woodward signed an agreement with Cooper and three of the proprietors’ heirs [33] to work as their agent for a 20% commission of the profits. [34]  Cooper later promoted a Scots settlement near Edisto. [35]  After Cooper’s death in 1683, Woodward supported the Yamasee and Stuart Town against the proprietors.  Woodward died sometime between 1685 and 1690. [36]

His ambiguous loyalties to pirates, proprietors, rebellious settlers and native Americans made him a figure suspect to all.  He’s the element in Hall’s narrative that became the least stable.

Item 6.  The quantity of rice usually struck the narrator as too small to explain the spread or variations in the crop, and so a second introduction was often mentioned, much like the story of Seth resolves problems of ancestry introduced by the fight between Cain and Abel.  Hall suggested that

“Mr. Du Bois, Treasurer of the East-India Company, did send to that Country a small Bag of Seed-Rice some short Time after, from whence it is reasonable enough to suppose might come these two Sorts of that Commodity, one called Red Rice in Contradistinction to the White.” [37]

This addendum introduces the remaining motifs in the origin tale:

9. A second introduction
10. Is responsible for the spread of the crop
11. And the visible variations in the rice

End Notes
1.  Pirates were mentioned by Alexander Hewat in the first history of the colony, [38] and the information was elaborated by William James Rivers. [39]  Edward McCrady went to some lengths to dispute the importance of piracy, while also trying to document its extent. [40]  Most recently, Eugene Sirmans addressed it in the context of factional politics. [41]

2.  Peter H. Wood.  Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carlina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion.  New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1974.  44.

3.  M. Eugene Sirmans.  Colonial South Carolina: A Political History 1663–1764.  Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1966.  54.

4.  Ward is discussed in the post for 6 August 2023.

5.  Commons House of Assembly of South Carolina.  Journal, 16 February 1715.  Quoted by A. S. Salley, Jr.  “The Introduction of Rice Culture into South Carolina.”  Bulletin of the Historical Commission of South Carolina.  Columbia, South Carolina: State Company, 1919.  Bulletin 6.  9.

6.  Salley.  10.

7.  Fayrer Hall.  The Importance of the British Plantations in America to this Kingdom.  London: J. Peele, 1731.  Quoted by Salley.  10.

8.  R. K. Kent.  “Madagascar and the Islands of the Indian Ocean.”  849–894 in Africa from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century.  Edited by B. A. Ogot.  Paris: UNESCO, 1992.  859.

9.  The Cambridge History of Africa. IV: From c. 1600 to c. 1790.  Edited by Richard Gray.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.  231.  Kent said the Portuguese lost interest after 1620. [42]

10.  Kent.  864.  The French fort lasted until 1674.

11.  Alison Games.  “Oceans, Migrants, and the Character of Empires: English Colonial Schemes in the Seventeenth Century.”  Library of Congress conference on Seascapes, Littoral Cultures, and Trans-Oceanic Exchanges, 12 February–15 February 2003.  Visitors to the colony found slain bodies in 1650.

12.  After Charles I was executed, his son Charles commissioned privateers to attack English ships. [43] After he was crowned Charles II, he expected privateers to pay for his war with the Dutch by seizing their ships. [44]

13.  Wm. Jas. Rivers.  A Sketch of the History of South Carolina.  Charleston, South Carolina: McCarter and Company, 1856.  138.  147.  He mentions the 1670 Treaty of Madrid, which recognized England’s claim to Jamaica in exchange for suppressing “piracy in the Caribbean.” [45]

14.  Mark G. Hanna.  “Contesting Jamaica’s Future, 1655–1688.”  In Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570-1740.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.  Online version does not have page numbers.

15.  Edward McCrady.  The History of South Carolina under the Proprietary Government, 1670-1719.  New York: The Macmillan Company, 1897.  204.

16.  Alexander Hewatt.  An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia.  London: A. Donaldson, 1779.  Volume 1, chapter 2, section “The toleration of pirates in Carolina.”  Quarry served from 1 July 1685 to Oct 1685. [46]

17.  Rivers.  147.
18.  Hanna.

19.  M. Eugene Sirmans.  Colonial South Carolina: A Political History 1663–1764.  Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1966.  45.  Colleton is mentioned in the post for 11 September 2022.

20.  Angus Konstam and Roger Michael Kean.  Pirates: Predators of the Seas.  New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2016.  219.

21.  Sothell was not named, but was alluded to in the post for 11 September 2022.
22.  Sirmans.  50.
23.  Salley.  5.
24.  Salley.  5.
25.  Yeamans’ tenure as governor is discussed in the post for 21 August 2022.

26.  McCrady.  83.  This account is based on the papers of Anthony Ashley Cooper, [47] which became public in 1897. [48]  Thus, Woodward is not mentioned by Hewat or David Ramsay, [49] and only briefly by Rivers.

27.  McCrady.  90.
28.  McCrady.  123.

29.  Joseph W. Barnwell.  “Dr. Henry Woodward, the First English Settler in South Carolina, and Some of His Descendants.”  The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 8(1):29–41:January 1907.  31.

30.  Barnwell.  32.

31.  L. H. Roper.  Conceiving Carolina: Proprietors, Planters, and Plots, 1662–1729.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.  48 and 174 note 144.

32.  McCrady.  177.  The arrangement was rejected by later settlers who precipitated a war that exterminated the tribe and replaced them with the Savannah. [50]

33.  George Monck died in 1669, and his son inherited his share of the proprietorship.  Edward Hyde died in 1674, and Sothel had purchased his part.  John Colleton still was represented by his son, Peter Colleton. [51]

34.  Rivers.  122.
35.  Roper.  73–81.
36.  Barnwell.  32.
37.  Hall.  Quoted by Salley.  11.
38.  Hewatt, Toleration of Pirates.  Hewat is discussed in the post for 12 June 2022.
39.  Rivers.  138.  He is discussed in the post for 12 June 2022.
40.  McCrady.  201.
41.  Sirmans.  40.
42.  Kent.  863.
43.  This is discussed in the post for 17 April 2022.

44.  Gijs Rommelse.  “Prizes and Profits: Dutch Maritime Trade during the Second Anglo-Dutch War.”  International Journal of Maritime History 19(2):139–159:2007.  Cited by “Anglo-Dutch Wars.”  Wikipedia website.  The war is mentioned in the post for 21 August 2022.

45.  “Treaty of Madrid (1670).”  Wikipedia website.
46.  “List of Colonial Governors of South Carolina.”  Wikipedia website.
47.  Barnwell.  30.

48.  Landon Cheves.  “The Shaftesbury Papers and Other Records Relating to Carolina and the First Settlement on Ashley River prior to the Year 1676.”  South Carolina Historical Society.  Collections 5:1897.

49.  David Ramsey.  The History of South-Carolina.  Charleston, South Carolina: David Longworth, 1809.  Reprinted as Ramsay’s History of South Carolina.  Newberry, South Carolina: W. J. Duffie, 1858.  He is discussed in the posts for 10 July 2022.

50.  Alan Gallay.  The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670–1717.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.  55.

51.  McCrady.  268.