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.

Thomas Smith

Topic: Gullah History - Early Legends
The Charles Town colony survived the upheavals of John Yeamans.  It began to resemble the experiment envisioned by Anthony Ashley Cooper, with more new settlers coming from England than Barbados. [1]

South Carolina did not have a commercial crop that returned profits to the grant’s proprietors, but settlers had developed some trade with Barbados in dried meat, animal skins purchased from friendly Native Americans, and slaves taken from hostile groups.  Many still preferred evading the Navigation Laws by patronizing pirates, and a vocal group continued to resent any interference in their lives by the proprietors who owned the land.

Joan Atkins may have been typical of the second generation of immigrants.  The widow arrived in the summer of 1684 with her four children and several servants.  She had sufficient resources to purchase 1,600 acres from Benjamin Waring ten days after she registered with the colony. [2]  He had arrived the year before with a large retinue, and claimed 700 acres. [3]

Her daughter Barbara and her husband and two sons may have lived there until early 1685 when Thomas Smith claimed 650 acres for the entire group. [4]  By then, he had had an opportunity to reconnoiter the area, for he selected land up river from Goose Creek at the junction of Back River with the Cooper.  Later that year, he protested a proposal to cut a canal through his land because he would lose marsh land he used to graze cattle. [5]

Raising livestock was the occupation for poor settlers who shipped four tons of dried meat to Barbados in 1680.  They began with their head-right claims and an animal purchased from another settler.  As the animals increased, they invested their profits in more land or, later, labor. [6]

Since colonist foraged their hogs and cattle on unclaimed woodlands along waterways, [7] they selected “high ground overlooking navigable streams” for their homes. [8]  Smith’s river location provided a natural pasture that needed no fences.

By 1687 he had accumulated enough capital to become active in politics.  James Colleton, the brother of the proprietor Peter Colleton, [9] was battling entrenched colonists who defied the proprietor’s rules.  As governor, he appointed a committee to recommend changes in the constitution, and included men he saw as allies.  Smith was one of the group. [10]

The proprietors’ interest in the colony fluctuated.  Many had died and been replaced by heirs or their agents; some had sold their shares. [11]  Cooper got embroiled in plots to prevent Charles the Second’s Roman Catholic brother James from succeeding to the throne.  He was in and out of jail between 1678 and his death in 1683. [12]

In 1681, Cooper began actively promoting Carolina as a refuge for Protestant dissidents in London, Dublin, the United Provinces, and the Palatinate.  It was in this period that Huguenots began moving to the north of Charleston [13].

Johan van Aerssen was granted 12,000 acres [14] to bring a group from Wernhout in Brabant.  Andrew Johnson and Carolyn Arena have shown Johan and his cousin, Cornelis van Aerssen, were planning a colony in Surinam to be supported by the one on the mainland. [15]  Unfortunately, Johan died in 1688, [16] before he could begin his part.

Soon after, the then widowed Smith married van Aerssen’s widow. [17]  He had her husband’s land grant transferred to him in 1689. [18]  This acquisition placed him among Charles Town’s elite.

James Colleton’s governorship straddled the years from Charles II to the ouster of James II by William of Orange.  When colonists rebelled against Colleton, the Proprietors made Smith a landgrave [19] in anticipation of naming him governor in 1690.  [20]   Instead, a man who had purchased a share in the grant took power until 1692. [21]  When the next governor left in November 1694, Smith rose to the office. [22]  It was more than anyone could handle. [23]  He resigned in November 1694, and died soon after. [24]

Smith may have been the first governor with the background similar to that of many of the settlers, but he only interests historians as a pawn in the conflict between the proprietors and the group who called themselves the Goose Creek Men.  They make no comment on his background, except to assume he was a dissenter. [25]

Few facts exist about Smith’s early life.  Agnes Leland Baldwin says he and the Atkins provided no information when they registered with the colony. [26]  His descendants, naturally, wanted to know more, and when details do not exist, legends fill crevices.

In 1855, Smith’s great-great-great-granddaughter published a family history that said Smith was born in Exeter, and emigrated with his brother James, who moved to Boston. [27]  Before he left England, Smith married a young baroness, the widow of “Bernard Schencking, whose brother Benjamin accompanied them.” [28]  They settled on the Back River where they “engaged in the art of arts, agriculture, without which man would be a savage.” [29]

Four generations of oral tradition had kept a few details — Smith knew someone named Benjamin and married an heiress — but interwove them with suppositions and received history.  Poyas took her recitation of Smith’s career from Ramsey. [30]

Her or Ramsay’s mention of Exeter prompted others to look for a suitable Smith ancestor.  They lit upon the heirs of George Smith.  This is the same Smith, mentioned in the post for 3 July 2022, who refused to honor the marriage contract of his daughter with George Monck.  George’s son Nicholas had five sons, one of whom was named John.  Compton Reade reprints the pedigree Nicholas registered in 1620, [31] and marks John has the “ancestor of the Landgrave of Carolina.” [32]

The only mention of a location in England was made by Joan’s son Aaron’s wife Mary.  She named a number of relatives in Chard and on the Isle of Wight. [33]  Chard was  a textile community over the border from Devon on the watershed between the Bristol and English Channels. [34]  It was near the area that bred Henry Walrond. [35]

Most of the genealogies for Smith that have been posted on the internet follow Reade.  Constance Fenimore Woolson tried to make the brother James into the ancestor of Abigail Adams in 1875. [36]  Another spent a great deal of space trying to avoid the term “incest” because Smith mentioned Joan as his mother.  While Alexander Salley warned about the problems with kinship terms in the seventeenth century, [37] they apparently did not think about “mother” being an endearment for “mother-in-law.” [38]

Genealogies depend of written documentation.  So far, no baptismal or marriage records have been found.  That may be because people only have looked in Exeter, and may not exist if his parents were dissenters.  However, until something is found, he remains one of the many men without history who arrived in Carolina, some as indentured servants, and some with the resources to hire them.  Woolson, the great-niece of another author of American legends, [39] calls Smith “one of Locke’s Carolina nobility.” [40]

End Notes
References to multiple historians are given in chronological order.  This follows the pattern established in the posts for 19 June 2022 and 10 July 2022.

1.  Yeamans and Cooper are discussed in the post for 21 August 2022.

2.  A. S. Salley, Jr.  “The Family of the First Landgrave Thomas Smith.”  The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 28(3):169–175:July 1927.  169.

3.  Joseph Ioor Waring.  “Waring Family.”  The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 24(2):81–100:July–October 1923.  81.

4.  Salley.  169.

5.  Michael J. Heitzler.  Goose Creek.  Volume One: Planters, Politicians and Patriots.  Charleston: The History Press, 2005.  83.  He says Smith lived on Goose Creek

6.  John Solomon Otto.  “Livestock-Raising in Early South Carolina, 1670-1700: Prelude to the Rice Plantation Economy.”  Agricultural History 61:(4):13–24:Autumn, 1987.  20.  Otto noted “given the small investment, livestock-raising provided a means of economic advancement for even the poorest settlers.” [46]

7.  Otto.  16.
8.  Otto.  18.

9.  James Colleton is the one mentioned in the post for 10 July 2022 who was born after his father, John Colleton, left Exeter.  Peter Colleton is discussed in the posts for 26 Jule 2022 and 21 August 2022.  J. E. Buchanan thinks it was another, Edward, was the one involved in the duel with the son of John Yeamans mentioned in the post for 21 August 2022. [47]

10.  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 A.D. 1687.

Edward McCrady.  The History of South Carolina under the Proprietary Government, 1670-1719.  New York: The Macmillan Company, 1897.  225.

11.  McCrady.  268–272.

12.  L. H. Roper.  Conceiving Carolina: Proprietors, Planters, and Plots, 1662–1729.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.  Chapter 5, Plots.

13.  Roper.  69–70.
14.  McCrady.  170

15.  D. Andrew Johnson and Carolyn Arena.  “Building Dutch Suriname in English Carolina: Aristocratic Networks, Native Enslavement, and Plantation Provisioning in the Seventeenth-Century Americas.”  Journal of Southern History 86:(1):37–74:February 2020.  Aerssen’s name and title often are misspelled.

16.  Brabants Historisch Informatie Centrum entry for Johan van Aerssen II on Netherlands Archiven website.

17.  Wm. Jas. Rivers.  A Sketch of the History of South Carolina.  Charleston, South Carolina: McCarter and Company, 1856.  170.  He calls him John D’Arens.

18.  McCrady.  266.  He calls him John d’Arsens, Seigneur de Wernhaut.

19.  The charter for Carolina granted by Charles II allowed the proprietors to establish a nobility so long as they used different titles.  Thus, the head proprietor was the palitinate.  Below him were landgraves and caciques.  Each title brought a right to land.  As in England, where the governor of a an overseas colony was expected to have a title, so too a governor was expected to be a landgrave.  As mentioned in the post for 21 August 2022, Yeamans gained his title when he was named governor of the Clarendon colony on Cape Fear.

20.  Hewatt.  Chapter 3, section Thomas Smith appointed governor.

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.  1:25.

McCrady.  231.

21.  Ramsay.  1:22.
Rivers.  155.
McCrady.  231.

M. Eugene Sirmans.  Colonial South Carolina: A Political History 1663–1764.  Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1966.  48.

22.  McCrady.  266.

David Duncan Wallace.  The History of South Carolina.  New York: American Historical Society, 1934.  1:124.

Sirmans.  53.

23.  Charles M. Andrews.  The Colonial Period of American History: The Settlements III.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937.  233.  “It was more than anyone could handle.”

24.  Hewatt.  Chapter 3, section John Archdale appointed governor.
McCrady.  267.

25.  Ramsay. 2: 113.  His source was probably a descendant of Smith, since he supports this section with a note that “a tradition has been regularly handed down among the descendants of Thomas Smith.”

Sirmans.  40 and 53.

26.  Agnes Leland Baldwin.  First Settlers of South Carolina, 1670–1700.  Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1985.  Atkins, 7; Smith, 217, 219.

27.  Elizabeth Anne Poyas as the Octogenarian Lady, of Charleston, S. C.  The Olden Time of Carolina.  Charleston, South Carolina: Courtenay and Company, 1855.  3.

28.  Poyas.  18.
29.  Poyas.  19.

30.  She specifically quotes Ramsay on Smith’s role in jury trials that Ramsay had attributed to Smith family tradition.  Since she was born in 1792, she was too young to be Ramsay’s source.  

31.  Nich. Smyth.  “Smyth.”  264–265 in The Visitation of the County of Devon in the Year 1620, edited by Frederic Thomas Colby.  London: Taylor and Company, 1872.  George’s father married into a family that traced itself back to Edward I.

32.  Compton Reade.  The Smith Family.  London: Eliot Stock, 1904.  56.

33.  Mary Atkins.  Will, 1684.  Quoted by Salley.  172–174.

34.  Clare Gathercole.  An Archaeological Assessment of Chard.  Taunton, UK: Somerset County Council.  Available on Somerset Heritage website.

35.  Henry Walrond is mentioned in the post for 17 April 2022.

36.  Constance Fenimore Woolson.  “Up the Ashley and Cooper.”  Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 52(307):1–24:December 1875.  She was a northerner who toured the south when she spent her winters in Saint Augustine, Florida. [48]  She borrowed from Poyas.

37.  Salley.  174.  “It would all be very simple but for the fact that at the time of making of these records brother-in-law was used interchangeably with half-brother and step-brother, and nephew was used interchangeably with cousin.”

38.  Aaron Atkins.  Will, 1684.  Quoted by Salley.  171.  He says “my brother in Law Mr Thomas Smith” and further identified him as the father of Atkins’ “two nephews Thomas and George.”  After disposing of his goods, he names “Tho: Smith my Deare brother” as his executrix.”

39.  She was a grand-niece of James Fenimore Cooper. [49]

40.  Woolson.  15.  John Locke was the secretary to Cooper, and responsible for writing much of the colony’s governing constitution. [50]

45.  “Thomas Smith (Governor of South Carolina).”  Wikipedia website.  This proposes that the son of Nicholas Smith of Exeter married Joan Atkins, mother of Thomas Smith’s wife.

46.  Otto.  21.

47.  J. E. Buchanan.  “The Colleton Family and the Early History of South Carolina and Barbados 1646-1775.”  PhD dissertation.  University of Edinburgh, 1989.  81–83.

48.  “Constance Fenimore Woolson.”  Wikipedia website.
49.  Wikipedia, Woolson.
50.  Roper.

Jack Yeamans in South Carolina

Topic: Gullah History - Early Legends
The first settlement in the Carolina land grant was made at Cape Fear by a group from New England in 1661.  When they abandoned their efforts, they left their cattle with local Natives. [1]  John Vassal led a rogue group from Barbados to settle the same area in 1664. [2]  As mentioned in the post for 26 June 2022, this was a time when the island was suffering from attempts by Charles II to assert his authority.

Soon after, John Yeamans led an authorized group that landed on Cape Fear in November 1665.  The voyage had been stormy, and many of their provisions were lost. [3]  Yeamans sent one ship to Virginia to get supplies, and, in late December, rode another back to Barbados, where he stayed. [4]

The colony failed in 1667.  Timing was bad.  Even before Yeamans set sail, Charles had declared war on the Dutch in March 1665.  That diverted ships away from trade, as well as forcing one of the proprietors, Anthony Ashley Cooper, to spend his time financing the war effort. [5]

The plague returned to England in June, [6] which gave some respite to the Dutch. [7]  Next, another proprietor, George Monck and Cooper were expected to handle the consequences of the fire that ravaged London in 1666. [8]

The Dutch won in 1667.  Edward Hyde, a third proprietor, was blamed, while Monck retired. [9]  The multiple roles assigned the proprietors of the Carolina grant suggests too few people were given too many responsibilities by Charles.

The only ones to profit from the Cape Fear venture were ship owners from New England [10] and Yeamans.  He gained a title.  Some like to see his baronetcy as the reward for his or his father’s loyalty to Charles I, [11] while others believe it signified his membership in the planter elite of Barbados. [12]  In fact, it was conferred because the charter for Carolina required that whoever served as a governor had to be an aristocrat. [13]

Cooper began developing new plans for a colony after a fourth proprietor, John Colleton, died in 1666. [14]  People in Barbados were less interested in investing in a second venture.  Large planters were changing their methods to make themselves less reliant on timber. [15]  As a consequence of the war, England had gained control of some Caribbean real estate which could provide wood and provisions while they were being prepared to grow sugar. [16]

In addition, Francis Willoughby had died in 1666, and his brother, William Willoughby became the island’s governor in January 1667.  He treated planters with more respect, so men no longer felt pressured to escape. [17]

One of the few who still had problems was Yeamans.  William Willoughby stripped him of his judgeship in 1668 after the Barbadian assembly investigated rumors Yeamans had murdered his wife. [18]  That same year, a son of John Colleton killed one of his sons in a duel.  If Yeamans hoped to gain by the forfeiture of the younger Colleton’s assets, he was disappointed.  John had placed the Barbados land in a trust. [19]

In 1669, Cooper persuaded the current proprietors to invest in sending three ships to Port Royale.  Joseph West was named governor and commander of the fleet until it reached Barbados. [20]  The proprietors specifically did not name Yeamans as governor, but sent a blank commission with instructions for him to provide a name. [21]

Yeamans sailed with the fleet from Barbados to Bermuda on a stormy voyage. [22]  He entered the name of Bermuda’s governor, William Sayle, in the commission, [23] and returned to Barbados. [24]

He finally moved to Carolina in 1671, when it was a burgeoning colony.  Why he chose that moment to immigrate is unknown, but again it may have been related to his continuing problems in Barbados.  Everyone notes he arrived with his slaves. [25]  His will, which he wrote just before embarking, indicated he only owned outright one woman and her three children. [26]  The rest had been gained through his marriage to the murdered man’s widow. [27]  He may have felt it prudent to remove them from the reach of Barbadian law.

Sayles died in March 1671, [28] and the colony’s council chose West as their governor.  By then, Monck had died and John Berkeley acceded to the position of head proprietor. [29]  When Yeamans arrived in May, he expected to become governor, [30] both because of his Cape Fear commission [31] and because he outranked all the settlers. [32]  When the council ignored him, he retreated [33] to his seventy-acre claim on Wappoo Creek [34] at its junction with the Ashley river south of Charles Town.

He finally became governor in August 1671 because of the constitution Cooper had written governing the colony. [35]  Few have been willing to suggest Yeamans did much to advance plantation agriculture in that role.  His history is too well known.  By the time of the Civil War, William James Rivers knew Yeamans did not establish a plantation colony with a slave work force.  Instead, “the toil of cultivating the fields was borne chiefly by white servants from England, or Indian slaves purchased from their enemies.” [36]

While still governor, West had ordered settlers to grow their own provisions instead of relying on stores sent by the proprietors. [37]  Further, he expected those who did not pay for their supplies to provide labor felling trees for shiploads of timber that could be sold to reimburse the proprietors. [38]

Yeamans saw those crops and stores, which still were controlled by West, as items to be exploited.  He bought produce from planters, who needed money, and expected West and the proprietors to feed them while he gained money shipping their goods to Barbados.  In 1672, Copper had written: “if to convert all things to his private profitt be the marke of able parts Sir John is without question a very judicious man.” [40]

The proprietors fired him, but Yeamans died in August of 1674 before the letters were received in Charles Town. [40]

Yeamans remains a cipher who has been used to advance theories.  Cooper knew Yeamans’ character, but still needed a governor, and he was being recommended by Peter Colleton.  Harriott Horry Ravenel knew “he was a bad Governor, oppressing the people by his extractions,” [41] but still needed a hero to justify the Civil War. [42]

Walter Edgar knew Yeamans’ personal ethics were materialistic, [43] but he turned that to his purpose: “for wealthier planters, such as Sir John Yeamans the chance to gain thousands of acres of land and a title, even if it be in the Carolina nobility, might have been appealing.” [44]

Lou Roper claims historians have followed Bernard Bailyn’s lead in emphasizing the desire for cheap land. [45]  In fact, it was Yeamans’ widow who claimed 1,070 acres. [46]

Few look at the actual man.  Yeamans was not born to the landed aristocracy in England, but was descended from a family of tradesmen in the port city of Bristol.  He was described as a merchant when he was given rights by the city. [47]   His behavior in South Carolina was that of a trader, not a planter, and certainly not that of an administrator imbued with principles of noblesse oblige.

End Notes
Histories by William James Rivers and Edward McCrady provide the best narratives.  Later historians may add details, but they do not devote the space they do to details.

1.  Wm. Jas. Rivers.  A Sketch of the History of South Carolina.  Charleston, South Carolina: McCarter and Company, 1856.  70.  Rivers is discussed in the post for 12 June 2022.

2.  “Barbadians Upon the Cape Fear.”  North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources website, 29 May 2016.

3.  Edward McCrady.  The History of South Carolina under the Proprietary Government, 1670-1719.  New York: The Macmillan Company, 1897.  80.  He is discussed in the post for 5 June 2022.

4.  McCrady.  81.

5.  L. H. Roper.  Conceiving Carolina: Proprietors, Planters, and Plots, 1662–1729.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.  19.

6.  “London Plague.”  Wikipedia website.
7.  “Anglo-Dutch Wars.”  Wikipedia website.
8.  Roper.  19.
9.  Roper.  20.
10.  Rivers.  82.

11.  McCrady.  63.  “After the success of the Parliamentary forces, he retired to Barbados.  There he still maintained the Royalist cause, and upon the Restoration, with twelve other gentlemen of the island, among them Sir John Yeamans [. . .] were knighted.”

Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel.  Charleston, the Place and the People.  New York: Macmillan, 1906.  7.  “He himself had warmly supported the royal cause in Barbados, already a thriving colony.  For so doing, he and Sir Peter Colleton, and some other gentlemen of like principles, had been made baronets.”  She is discussed in the post for 5 June 2022.

12.  Richard S. Dunn.  Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972.  81.  “Five Barbados sugar planters received knighthoods or baronetcies between 1658 and 1665.”  Dunn is profiled in the post for 19 June 2022.

Michael D. Bennett.  “Merchant Capital and the Origins of the Barbados Sugar Boom, 1627-1672.”  PhD dissertation.  The University of Sheffield, June 2020.  224–225.  “Perhaps the best example of the work this did to improve reputations is how several planters and merchants who had made fortunes on Barbados were knighted by both Cromwell and Charles I:  [...] John Yeamans, and Thomas Modyford who was made a baronet in 1664.  Of course, the wealth generated on Barbados is not the only reason why these men were knighted and made baronets: several of them were longstanding royalists and some lent money to the Crown soon after the Restoration.  But the prestige enjoyed by Barbados merchants and planters in London is part of the explanation behind their knighthoods.”

13.  Lords Proprietors of Carolina.  Letter to Sir John Yeamans, 11 January 1665.  “We have in the first place prevailed with his Majesty to confer the honor of a knight Baronet upon you.”  University of North Carolina, Documents of the South website.  The original is:

“Haveing receaved a good carrector of your abillityes and Inteagryty and of your loyalty to the kinge from Sir John Colleton, with an assurance that you will viggorously attempt the setling of a Collony or plantation to the southward of Cape Romania [. . .] wee have in the first place prevaled with his Majestie to conferr the honor of a knight Barronet upon you and your heires, to whome wee have given assurance that you will deserve the same.”

14.  Walter Edgar.  South Carolina.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998.  41.  Edgar is mentioned in the post for 19 June 2022.

15.  Laura Hollsten.  “Controlling Nature and Transforming Landscapes in the Early Modern Caribbean.”  Global Environment 1: 80–113:2008.  106–107.  She mentions burning bagasse, a “fibrous by-product left over after the canes had been pressed,” and more efficient distilling methods.

16.  Hollsten.  99–100.

17.  Charles Harding Firth.  “Willoughby, Francis.”  62:31–35 in Dictionary of National Biography.  Volume 62, edited by Leslie Stephan.  London: Smith, Elder and Company, 1900.  62:34.

18. P. F. Campbell.  “Editor’s Note” for E. M. Shilstone.  “Nicholas Plantation and Some of Its Associations.”  The article appeared in The Barbados Museum and Historical Society Journal 9:120+:1942 and was reprinted by Campbell in Chapters in Barbados History.  Saint Ann’s Garrison, Barbados: Barbados Museum and Historical Society, 1986.  59.  This is discussed in the post for 12 June 2022.

19.  J. E. Buchanan.  “The Colleton Family and the Early History of South Carolina and Barbados 1646-1775.”  PhD dissertation.  University of Edinburgh, 1989.  81–83.  One wonders how this affected Yeamans relationship with John’s eldest son, Peter.

20.  Rivers.  92.  Peter Colleton inherited the proprietorship when his father died.  His brother Thomas handled supplying the fleet with it arrived in Barbados.

21.  McCrady.  116.
22.  McCrady.  122.
23.  McCrady.  124.
24.  McCrady.  123.

25.  Rivers.  109.  “He was the first who introduced slaves into Carolina, whom he brought from Barbados, in 1671, to cultivate his plantation on the Ashley River.”

Dunn.  115.  “Starting with Sir John Yeamans in 1671, members of the big sugar-planting families brought gangs of Negroes with them.”

Wood.  23.  “Yeamans arrived from Barbados, bringing eight black servants.”  He adds these were not the first slaves in South Carolina.

26.  John Yeamans.  Will, 20 May 1671.  Reprinted by M. Alston Read.  “Notes on Some Colonial Governors of South Carolina and Their Families.”  The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 11(2)107–122:April 1910.  “I doe bequeath allsoe dureing my deare wifes life natural life these negroes following (vide) old Hannah & hir children Jupiter, little Tony & Joane.”

27.  Yeamans.  Reprinted by Read.  113.  “I give and bequeath unto my said wife all the negroes young and old that ..Berringer died possessed of and came to her afterwards by right of Administcon and to me by intermarriage.”

28.  Meaghan N. Duff.  “Sayle, William.”  South Carolina Encyclopedia website.  1 August 2016; last updated 26 October 2016.

29.  McCrady.  138.
30.  McCrady.  155.
31.  McCrady.  158.
32. Yeamans had been made a landgrave in March. [48]
33.  McCrady.  162.

34.  Henry A. M. Smith.  “Old Charles Town and Its Vicinity, Accabee and Wappoo Where Indigo Was First Cultivated, with Some Adjoining Places in Old St. Andrews Parish (Continued).”  Historical and Genealogical Magazine 16(2):49–67:April 1915.  61.

35.  McCrady.  158.
36.  Rivers.  111.
37.  Rivers.  106–107.
38.  McCrady.  164.

39.  Anthony Ashley Cooper.  Letter to Peter Colleton, 27 November 1672.  416 in 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.  Quoted by M. Eugene Sirmans.  Colonial South Carolina: A Political History 2663–1764.  Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1966.  28.

40.  Henry A. M. Smith.  “Sir John Yeamans, an Historical Error.”  The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 19(3):152–156:July 1918.  153–154.

41.  Ravenel.  7.

42.  The post for 5 June 2022 has more on Ravenel’s views of Yeamans as the son of a martyr to a noble cause.

43.  Edgar.  132.
44.  Edgar.  44.

45.  Roper.  9.  He wrote historians have followed Bernard Bailyn’s lead in arguing “the availability of land” provided “new individual opportunities—for investment as well as livelihood—that were supposedly unavailable in the metropolis.”  He cited an article by Bailyn [49] and one about him. [50]

46.  “Yeamans Hall Plantation – Hanahan – Berkeley County.”  South Carolina Plantations website.

47.  Yeamans’ early life is discussed in the post for 12 June 2022.
48.  Rivers.  103.

49.  Bernard Bailyn.  “Politics and Social Structure in Early Virginia.”  90–115 in James Morton Smith. 17th-century America.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959.  115.

50.  Gordon S. Wood.  “The Creative Imagination of Bernard Bailyn.”  16–50 in James A Henretta, Michael Kammen, and Stanley N. Katz.  The Transformation of Early American History.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991.  23.

Frederick Hilborn Talbot - Kum Ba Yah

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
Frederick Hilborn Talbot was a talented man lucky enough to attract the attention of people outside his family.  Like many parents, his mother thought he was special and worked to earn the money for his school fees. [1]  His uncle was the minister at the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church in British Guiana’s capital city of Georgetown [2] where Talbot became a soloist in the choir. [3]

While he was an adolescent Talbot began singing in Vesta Lowe’s choir, where again he became a soloist. [4]  His exposure to her led him to organize a youth choir named for the then current AME district bishop.  When William Reid Wilkes heard the group, he arranged a scholarship for Talbot to study at Allen University, the premier AME school in the United States. [5]

This led to a fellowship to the Yale Divinity School where he did field work for the Wesley Foundation.  Talbot recalls the foundation’s head, Douglas Cook, “made it possible for me to attend several ecumenical conferences and I soon developed a special interest in collecting folk tunes from around the world.” [6]  One of the conferences was the meeting of the Student Volunteer Movement in Athens, Ohio, where he became aware of the work of Lynn Rohrbough. [7]

Talbot’s first job after Yale was at Shorter College in Arkansas, [8] where he took over the English department when his cousin left for another position. [9]  Talbot then took classes at the Pacific School of Religion. [10]  It was in this period that he worked on the Guinea Sings project described in the post for 7 August 2022.

His musical style still was influenced by the arranged spirituals sung by Lowe [11] and by Allen University. [12]  Paul Robeson was the ideal when Talbot was young in British Guinea.  Vibert Cambridge said Cheddi Jagan used his recordings in his 1953 election campaign. [13]  Talbot’s bass-baritone voice [14] fit the aesthetic.

At this point, Talbot seems to have been pursuing an academic career.  His next position was with AME’s Payne Theological Seminary in Wilberforce, Ohio.  However, while he was at Payne, his uncle died in Georgetown and he volunteered to return to Guiana to serve the Saint Peter congregation. [15]  He said, when he returned, he began “incorporating Caribbean music and art forms into the liturgy.” [16]

Talbot had left British Guiana while independence was more a chimera than a reality, and had been “acculturated in the United States.” [17]  His wife was from the Virgin Islands with a master’s degree in Public Health from Yale. [18]  He obviously returned to visit his family, or else he would not have been involved with the Guinea Sings recording.

He returned to a country plagued by riots between descendants of African slaves and Indian indentured servants.  The United Kingdom introduced a new electoral system in 1964, and a Black, Forbes Burnham, led the government through independence in 1966. [19]  In 1971, Burnham asked Talbot to represent Guyana in the United Nations. [20]

Since the late 1940s, the AME hierarchy had been pressured to elect bishops born outside the United States, and, in 1948, elevated Ormonde Walker and Joseph Gomez. [21]  However, neither was assigned to the Caribbean district.  Wilkes was from Georgia. [22]

In 1971, someone sent a letter to the AME newsletter, The Christian Recorder, demanding a native bishop.  Talbot was elected in 1972, and assigned the Caribbean district. [23]  It was in this position that he hosted a district youth conference in 1973.  The church issued a commemorative album that included performances from artists from member countries.  An unidentified trio sang “Kum Ba Yah.”

Title
Kum Ba Yah

Performers
Vocal Soloists: unidentified young male trio
Vocal Group: children’s choir [24]
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano with stringed instrument

Credits
None given

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: even stress on syllables

Verses: those published by Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) – kumbaya, praying, crying, singing

Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: verse-burden

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5; same melody as that published by CRS
Tempo: quick

Basic Structure: solist supported by humming group alternates with group singing

Singing Style: one note to one syllable

Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: piano provides rhythmic accompaniment

Ending: sung slowly in chordal harmony, with divergent harmony on last line

Notes on Performance
Occasion: first meeting of the Caribbean Conference of Churches, 20–22 June 1973 

Location: Guyana

Microphones: The album cover says it was recorded live and that Radio Demerara made “their recording facilities available.”  It probably was taped using the station’s equipment, and then edited for the recording in their building.  Dave Braithwaite, who worked on projects for Ray Charles, [25] was the re-mix engineer.  The album itself was produced by The Dave Nelson Company in Los Angeles.

Cover: green with photograph of girl and flags of participating countries

Notes on Performers
Talbot served two four-year terms in the Caribbean, the maximum allowed by the church.  He then was assigned to the Georgia-South Carolina district.  After eight years, he spent four devoted to ecumenical affairs.  From 1992 to 1996 he was in the Arkansas-Oklahoma district, and for the eight years before he retired in the Tennessee-Kentucky jurisdiction. [26]

With the move into the bureaucracy in the United States he sacrificed some of his freedom to organizational politics.  When he was serving both the church and Guyana in the 1970s, some had complained he was “mixing religion and politics.” [27]  While he was in Georgia, he began working on a PhD from Columbia Theological Seminary.  He remembered this “radical and unprecedented step” was met with “consternation or wonderment, and it even strained the credulity of many.” [28]

It was while he was in Little Rock that Talbot published a book on liturgy, which included a résumé that tied his professional advances to his involvement with different forms of worship. [29]  In 2016, I contacted him to confirm he had heard “Kumbaya” at the Athens meeting.  When I asked him if he has sung “Kumbaya” elsewhere, he told me:

“I do recall leading a version of ‘Come by Here’ which is often referred to as ‘Kumbaya’.  ‘Come by Here’ is the American version sung in small rural American churches.  I often led both versions in the song as a young pastor in South Carolina and elsewhere. [30]

Talbot died in 2019. [31]

Availability
Album: “Kum Ba Yah.”  Partners in Mission.  16th A.M.E. Records 1001.  Released 1974.

End Notes
I would like to thank Andrew Franklin of Yale who helped me identify Frederick Talbot as the one Rohrbough called “B.Talbot” on the carbon copy of his letter that was reprinted in the post for 31 July 2022. [32]  I would also like to thank the Allen University alumni office who forwarded my inquiries to him.

1.  “Frederick Talbot.”  Lewis and Wright Funeral Directors website, April 2019.

2.  “Retired Bishop Frederick Hilborn Talbot, S.T.M., D.Min Appeal for St. Peter’s AME Church Restoration Fund.”  The Christian Recorder Online, 16 October 2015.  His uncle was David Patterson Talbot.

3.  Frederick Hilborn Talbot.  African American Worship.  Lima, Ohio: Fairway Press, 1998.  Reprinted by Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2007.  18.

4.  Talbot, Worship.  18.  Lowe is discussed in the post for 7 August 2022.
5.  Lewis and Wright.
6.  Talbot, Worship.  20.  Cook became head of SVM in 1958. [33]
7. The Athens meeting is discussed in the post for 31 July 2022.
8.  Talbot, Worship.  20.

9.  “Dr. David Arlington Talbot.”  Texas A&M University Commerce website.  David was the son of David Patterson Talbot.

10.  Talbot, Worship.  21.

11.  Talbot, Worship.  18.  He recalled that “along with great anthems and other choral arrangements, the choir interpreted Negro spirituals in a very moving way.”

12.  Talbot, Worship.  19.  At Allen, Talbot studied “voice and conducting” with John Wesley Hunter.  Hunter had graduated from Juilliard, and emphasized “high class music.”  Talbot remembers “excerpts from operas and a variety of anthems from famed composers were sung with style, but he also interpreted the Negro spirituals with pathos.”

13.  Vibert C. Cambridge.  Musical Life in Guyana: History and Politics of Controlling Creativity.  Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015.  126.  Jagan brought recordings back after he was a student at Northwestern University. [34]  Perhaps this contributed to the British view that Jagan was too close to the Communists.  Robeson’s association with the Soviet Union is mentioned in the posts for 17 August 2017 and 12 October 2017.

14.  Talbot, Worship.  23.  While at Saint Peter’s, Talbot entered the National Music Festival and won the “national award as bass soloist and later an award in the baritone class.”

15.  Talbot, Worship.  22.

16.  Talbot, Worship.  22.  This was after the Vatican changed its view of the liturgy in 1964 and folk elements were given legitimacy in masses.  This first is mentioned in the post for 25 November 2017.

17.  Dennis C. Dickerson.  The African Methodist Episcopal Church: A History.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.  492.

18.  “Sylvia Ross Talbot Ed.D Bio.”  The AMEC Supervisors Council website.  She later earned a PhD in Health Education from Teacher’s College, Columbia.

19.  “History of Guyana.”  Encyclopædia Britannica website; revised by Heather Campbell and Jack K. Menke on 12 November 2009.

20.  Talbot, Worship.  23.
21.  Dickerson.  488–489.

22.  Item on 1948 AME convention.  Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Indiana, 29 May 1948.

23.  Lewis and Wright.

24.  The last side of the double album includes songs from each country.  While a few performers are named, most are not.  It is possible the base group was the United District Choir.

25.  “David Braithwaite.”  Rate Your Music website.
26.  Lewis and Wright.
27.  Talbot, Worship.  23.

28.  Talbot, Worship.  25.  He noted that after he had broken the barrier, other pastors also pursued advanced degrees.

29.  Talbot, Worship.  15–26.

30.  Frederick Hilborn Talbot.  Letter, 18 October 2016.  As soon as he was ordained a deacon, Talbot was assigned the Little Mountain Circuit with churches in Chapin and Little Mountain. [35]  Chapin is a rail town about 25 miles from Columbia, where Saint John’s AME church was organized before 1892. [36]  Little Mountain is five miles farther on the rail line.  It has been the home of a folk festival sponsored by Newberry College since 1882. [37]  As mentioned in the post for 27 July 2022, Thomas H. Wiseman learned a variant of “Come by Here” in an AME church in Columbia, South Carolina.

31.  Lewis and Wright.

32.  Andrew Franklin.  Email, 21 September 2016.  “The man you’re looking for is Bishop Frederick H. Talbot.  He graduated from YDS with an M.Div. in 1957, which would mean he matriculated in 1955.  He is an AME Bishop in the Virgin Islands.”

33.  “Student Volunteer Movement.”  The Christian Scholar 41(3):433–434:September 1958.
34.  Cambridge.  118.
35.  Talbot, Worship.  19.
36.  “Chapin, South Carolina.”  Wikipedia website.
37.  “Little Mountain, South Carolina.”  Wikipedia website.

Guiana Sings - Kum Ba Yah

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
Lynn Rohrbough planned to send his Song Sampler “to music people of 200 organizations in every state and to correspondents in 60 overseas countries. [1]  The first consequence may have been a letter from Claire Lovejoy Lennon that disputed “Kumbaya” was from Angola.  As mentioned in the post for 18 October 2020, she was the first to tell him it was an African-American song.  She learned it before World War I in Georgia. [2]

The first surviving consequence of the 1955 Student Volunteer Movement convention, which was mentioned in the post for 31 July 2022, is a 1959 songbook associated with Frederick Hilborn Talbot.  I have no idea if Rohrbough remembered him from the convention before they began work on Guiana Sings.  I rather suspect that Talbot reminded him, and that is the reason Rohrbough told Shawnee Press that Talbot was the meeting’s song leader. [3]

The songbook was a more ambitious project for Rohrbough, perhaps stimulated by the activities of Vesta Lowe and others in British Guiana.  Cooperative Recreation Service (CRS) also issued a recording with an extract of Guianese songs. [4]  Some of the pages in the songbook, like the one above, have line drawings.

British Guiana, now Guyana, is located on the northern coast of South America.  It began as a Dutch colony that attracted English and Scots planters. [5]  Control of the area changed several times during the American Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, but finally was taken by the British in 1814. [6]

Sugar plantations dominated the lowlands from the beginning.  Since they were entering the business after methods had been perfected on Barbados and other Caribbean islands, owners were able to import the most modern equipment and be more competitive. [7]

Slave labor was used until Britain outlawed the practice in 1834.  During the next five years, before emancipation was complete, owners overworked their crews, since they no longer had an incentive to treat them well.  With abolition, African workers left and plantations returned to using indentured servants. [8]  After experiments with men from different areas, owners important help from India. [9]  Many stayed after their five-year terms and moved closer to the coast where they grew rice.  Today, descendants of African slaves make up 40% of the population of Guyana, and offspring of Indian servants represent 50%. [10]

The next major change occurred when sugar beets contributed 65% of the world’s sugar supply in 1900, up from 40% in 1875. [11]  Planters in British Guiana responded to lower prices by cutting wages and introducing more machinery.  The economic dislocations led to riots in 1905, [12] which, Vibert Cambridge said, accelerated the migration from the countryside into Georgetown.  This, in turn, led to changes in musical styles. [13]

The genesis of the song project probably was India’s independence from the British Empire in 1947.  Cambridge recalled the British governor began preparing the colony for its own liberation.  The local African and Indian elites believed it only would succeed if it were “constructed upon a foundation of cultural confidence. [14]

A new constitution in 1953 led to Cheddi Jagan’s election.  Britain considered him to be pro-communist and declared martial law. [15]

It was during this period when Guiana was occupied by British troops that the program director of the colony’s radio station, Rafik Khan, recorded some of the songs that appear on the record with introductions to some.  Although the liner notes give no information, the tapes may have been meant for a program on Radio Demerara. [16]

The songs were re-recorded in 1959 under Talbot’s direction, but Khan’s comments were retained.  Abbreviated versions appear with some of the songs in the CRS book.

Guiana Sings preserves the traditions derived from Africa.  The first group are work songs, primarily related to crewing boats or boat races.  These began developing in the late nineteenth century when Afro-Guyanese men worked in gold fields upriver from Georgetown and on timber grants in the interior. [17]

Many texts in the second half of Guiana Sings are gwe-gwe, also spelled “kwe-kwe,” [18] “Kweh-Kweh” [19] and “queh-queh.” [20]  Gwe-Gwe is a wedding ritual that developed from African roots in the colony.  “There is no known equivalent in African society and it is a practice that evolved in Guyana.” [21]

After the Guianese songs, Guiana Sings has religious songs, American Negro spirituals, and international songs.  The first ones are from Indonesia [22] and India. [23]  The rest come from a number of countries, not just the German-Czech tradition that dominated earlier CRS books.  “Kum Ba Yah” appears in the section of spirituals, and shares a page with “Jacob’s Ladder.”  The other two from the Song Sampler are the German “Echo Yodel” and the Palestinian “Shalom Chaverim.”

Title
Kum Ba Yah, with no mention of “come by here.”

Credits
The headnote has been changed to “Spiritual.”

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English

Pronunciation: the pronunciation note has been removed as John Blocher, Jr., requested. [24]

Verses: kumbaya, crying, singing, praying; same verses and same order as those published in Indianola Sings, which is reproduced in the post for 29 May 2022

Pronoun: Someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: four-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5; the melody is the same as Indianola Sings
Time Signature: 3/4
Tempo: slowly
Key Signature: no sharps or flats

Guitar Chords:  C F G7; the second line chords are different from the tablature distributed at the Buckeye Recreation Workshop, shown in the post for 24 July 2022.

Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Ending: none

Notes on Performance
Occasion: “this little book is dedicated to the 4-H Clubs of British Guiana”

Cover: parallel diagonal lines create diamond patterns, with some breaks to create large spaces; some of the larger spaces are filled with drawings; rows without large diamonds are filled with horizontal lines

Color Scheme: both cover and inside pages use green ink on light green paper; the Guianese songs are printed on heavier stock at the beginning and end of the songbook

Plate: made with music typewriter

Audience Perceptions
Cambridge remembered that

“about 15 years ago, one of my colleagues at Ohio University gave me the LP Guiana Sings that was used by his mother when she taught school in rural Ohio.  This is one of the most treasured items in my Guyana collection.  On that album we have recorded for posterity the voice of Rev. Fred Talbot.  The LP also features the voice of a young Rafiq Khan, then Programme Director of the British Guiana United Broadcasting Company, providing descriptions of the 13 folk songs on the LP.” [25]

Notes on Performers
The inside cover of Guiana Sings has a photograph of Vesta Lowe and a note she was a “collector of Guiana Folk Songs” and had been a “Rural Youth Instructor (4-H) in Agriculture Department, since 1956.”

Vesta Hyacinth Winifred Lowe [26]  was born in 1909  and lived in Manchester, [27] a rail stop on the Corentyne Coast Road from New Amsterdam to the Surinam border. [28]  She was one of the first graduates of the Teachers’ Training Center, [29] which was found in 1928. [30]  The young woman was working as a student-teacher in 1931 when she was sent to Tuskegee Institute by the Negro Progress Convention. [31]

Her parents were members of church choirs, and she was part of Tuskegee’s first choir. [32]  Previously, the school had sponsored male quartets that had recorded for Victor from 1914 to 1916 and again from 1926 to 1927. [33]  When she returned to Guiana, Lowe formed her first choir in 1939, which she named for Tuskegee’s choir director, William Dawson. [34]

She also began collecting songs, some of which her choirs sang.  In 1947, she presented a program “of Guyanese Folk Songs, in which the Qweh-Qweh Dancing [was] accompanied by African Tom-Toms.” [35]  Like Lydia Parish, she had found the best way to preserve traditions was to present them in publically acceptable venues. [36]

The Negro Progress Convention had sent her to Tuskegee to study Home Economics in hopes she could improve the lot of members.  However, the British colony was so poor, “she was never able to obtain a tenured position in the British Guiana civil service.” [37]  She worked on a number of projects, especially through 4-H, [38] until it was disbanded by the government in the early 1960s. [39]

Guiana Sings gives special thanks to two people besides Talbot on the inside cover.  Stanley Sutton was a county agent from Maryland.  He and his wife, the former Helen Shriley, spent the years from 1955 to 1957 in Guiana. [40]  He may be the one who hired Lowe, and also may have provided the money needed to pay CRS.

Charlotte Vandiver Churaman, then the Assistant Superintendent for Rural Youth Work, was from Burlington, West Virginia.  She met her husband, Oscar Churaman, when he was an agricultural student in the United States. [41]  His grandfather had been a cane cutter who migrated from Maharashtra, India. [42]  The couple lived in Guyana from 1949 to 1962.  She later was a professor in the Home Ecology Department of the University of Maryland. [43]  She may have done the detail work necessary to putting together the recording and songbooks.  Talbot did not, because his name is misspelled. [44]

Talbot is discussed in the post for 14 August 2022.

Availability
Book.  “Kum Ba Yah.”  23 in Guiana Sings.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service; individual songs copyrighted in 1959.

Graphics
“Where Me Go.”  Guiana Folk Song.  58 in Guiana Sings.  It includes a drawing of the sugar plant when it most resembles grass.

End Notes
1.  Song Sampler number 1, January 1956.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service, 1956.  B.

2.  Claire Lovejoy Lennon’s photograph appears on the Photo K tab, and references to her can be found in the index at the right.

3.  The post for 31 July 2022 quotes Rohrbough’s reference to Talbot.

4.  Guiana Sings.  7.5" recording at 33 1/3 rpm issued by World Around Songs, Informal Music Service of Delaware, Ohio.  Choral group led by Fran Thomas, with guitar by Prentiss Choate.  Talbot is one of the 12 singers, and may be the uncredited soloist.  The liner notes only say he was a “one time soloist of the Vesta Lowe Choir.”  Cambridge hints he was the singer.

5.  “Demerara.”  Wikipedia website.
6.  “British Guiana.”  Wikipedia website.
7.  Library of Congress.  “Guiana: History of the Economy.”  Country Studies website.
8.  Library of Congress.

9.  “History of Guyana.”  Encyclopædia Britannica website; revised by Heather Campbell and Jack K. Menke on 12 November 2009.

According to Wikipedia:

“Most Indo-Guyanese are descended from indentured laborers who migrated from North India, especially the Bhojpur and Awadh regions of the Hindi Belt in the present day states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand.  A significant minority of Indo-Guyanese are also descended from indentured migrants who came from the South Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.  However, among the immigrants there were also labourers from other parts of South Asia, such as Afghanistan, Nepal and northwestern India.” [45]

10.  Library of Congress.

11.  Charles S. Griffin.  “The Sugar Industry and Legislation in Europe.”  The Quarterly Journal of Economics 17(1):1–43:November 1902.  5.

12.  Mellissa Ifill.  “The 1905 Protests in British Guiana.”  Stabroek News website, 13 August 2009.

13.  Vibert C. Cambridge.  Musical Life in Guyana: History and Politics of Controlling Creativity.  Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015.  34.

14.  Cambridge, Guyana.  120.
15.  Britannica.
16.  Liner notes.
17.  Cambridge, Guyana.  35.
18.  Cambridge, Guyana.  12–13.

19.  Gillian Richards-Greaves.  Rediasporization: African-Guyanese Kweh-Kweh.  Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2020.

20.  Al Creighton.  “Kwe Kwe traditons in Guyana.”  Guyanese Association of Barbados website, 9 August 2009.

21.  Creighton.

22.  “Sarimandé.”  Indonesian Folk Song sung by Noramaj Sumakano of Java; English by Katherine Ferris Rohrbough; copyrighted in 1956 by Cooperative Recreation Service.  25 in Guiana Sings.

23.  “Chol Chol (On! On!).”  Old Bengali Song; translated by Amrit Varuah; English verse by Augustus D. Zanzig.  27 in Guiana Sings.

24.  This is discussed in the post for 15 July 2022.

25.  Vibert C. Cambridge.  “Vesta Lowe (1907 -1992).”  Stabroek News, 14 September 2003.  Ohio University was the site of the Student Volunteer Movement meeting mentioned in the post for 31 July 2022.  By one of those coincidences that dot history, Cambridge earned his PhD there in 1989 and has remained on the faculty.

26.  “Tenth Annual Assembly of Negro Progress Convention 1931.”  Reprinted on Guy Gen Bio Society website, 28 July 2006.

27.  Cambridge, Lowe.

28.  “Contract for Construction and Working of Steam Tramway in British Guiana.”  The Railway News 62:472:29 September 1894.

29.  Cambridge, Lowe.
30.  “Cyril Potter College of Education.”  Wikipedia website.

31.  Negro Progress Convention.  The NPC was an improvement organization in the tradition of Marcus Garvey. [46]

32.  Cambridge, Lowe.

33  According to the University of California, Santa Barbara, two of the six spirituals in Guiana Sings were recorded by Tuskegee vocal groups. [47]  Tuskegee Institute Singers, a double male quartet, recorded “Steal Away” in 1914 [48] and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” in 1915. [49]  The Tuskegee Sextet had recorded both spirituals in 1914. [50]  The male Tuskegee Institute Quartet recorded “Steal Away” in 1927. [51]

34.  Cambridge, Lowe.  The group was the Dawson Music Lovers’ Club.
35.  Cambridge, Lowe.

36.  Parrish is discussed in the post for 2 October 2018.  She wanted to do more than collect spirituals from Saint Simons Island in Georgia; she wanted to overcome the shame people felt about the past so they could value their heritage.  To this end, she organized singing societies that performed before appreciative white audiences.  Her hope was the praise would overcome the debasement that came from living in a racially stratified society. [52]  This is not meant to imply Parrish influenced Lowe.  Instead, it suggests that similar ideas emerge from similar conditions.

37.  Cambridge, Guyana.  110.
38.  Cambridge, Lowe.

39.  “A champion of community development…Waveney Dorsett is a ‘Special Person’.”  Kaieteur News Online website, 14 February 2016.

40.  “Stanley Sutton, Was County Agent.”  The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore, Maryland, 7 March 1984.  51.  Posted to internet by pekastal on 18 Mar 2019.  The United States had bases on the territory in World War II; [53] in 1955 it opened an office of the US Information Service. [54]

41.  “Charlotte Vandiver Churaman.”  Greenbelt News Review, Greenbelt, Maryland, 57(22):4:21 April 1994.

42.  “Oscar Churaman.”  Gini website, 15 December 2014.
“James Churaman.”  Gini website, 31 December 2014.  Oscar’s father.
“James Churaman, Singh (Sr).” Gini website, 10 January 2015.  Oscar’s grandfather.

43.  Greenbelt News Review.
44.  “Special Thanks To [. . .] Mr. Fred Talbutt.”

45.  “Demographics of Guyana.”  Wikipedia website.  Its sources are:

Helen Myers. Music of Hindu Trinidad.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.  30.

“Indian Diaspora.”  Indian Diaspora website.

46.  Nigel Westmaas.  “The Negro Progress Convention of Guyana (1922 – circa 1938).”  Stabroek News website, 22 August 2021.

47.  “Discography of American Historical Recordings.”  University of California, Santa Barbara Library website.

48.  Tuskegee Institute Singers.  “Steal Away.”  Victor B-15172.  31 August 1914.

49.  Tuskegee Institute Singers.  “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”  Victor B-16512.  20 September 1915.

50.  Tuskegee Sextet.  “Steal Away.”  Victor, not released.  23 June 1914.

Tuskegee Sextet.  “Swing Low.”  Victor, not released. documented, 23 June 1914.

51.  Tuskegee Institute Quartet.  “Steal Away.”  Victor BVE-15172.  29 January 1927.

52.  Lydia Parrish.  Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands.  New York: Creative Age Press, 1942.  Reprint edition, Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1992.  xxvi, 12, 17.

53.  Cambridge, Guyana.  95.
54.  Cambridge, Guyana.  136.

Student Volunteer Movement - Kumbaya

Topic: Kumbaya 1955-1961
The Student Volunteer Movement was the third organization that introduced “Kumbaya” before Lynn Rohrbough released his Song Sampler in January 1956.  It held a convention in Athens, Ohio, over the 1955–1956 holiday break.  Frederick Hilborn Talbot remembered “the song was sung alternatively by the gathering.” [1]

SVM was an offshoot of the activities of  William Taylor.  As the Missionary Bishop of Africa for the Methodist Episcopal Church North from 1884 to 1896, he organized the denomination’s first missions to Liberia, the Congo, Angola, and Mozambique. [2]  In 1886, the Chicago-based evangelist, Dwight L. Moody, organized a conference to support Taylor’s activities.  This led to the organization of SVM in 1888.  Their goal was to “evangelize the world in one generation.” [3]

Harlan Hatcher, president of the University of Michigan, noted “such quadrennial conferences have been held for more than fifty years, but this was the first one in which over half the students who attended were from countries throughout the world where the Younger Churches had been established during the past century.” [4]

Three thousand attended. [5]  Rosa Page Welch remembered “an African student led the conference in singing” the song. [6]

Rohrbough also attended.  He recalled:

“Rosa Page Welsh led the singing at the Athens SVM Convention; the Negro was F.Talbot; from B.Guiana; a Theo. student from Yale; we have tapes of all singing; and the Africans were from Kenya,Ghana.” [7]

Talbot did not specifically say he led the singing.  He was not from Africa, but from British Guinea, [8] then a colony of the United Kingdom on the northern coast of South America.  However, Welch, who was an African American from Port Gibson, Mississippi, [9] may have made an assumption based on context and skin color.

The identity of the singer is less important than how the individual learned “Kumbaya.”  It is possible the song leader had attended the Buckeye Recreation Workshop, or even been the one who introduced the song there.  It is less likely he learned it from Melvin Blake.

The most likely possibility is that Rohrbough, himself, was responsible.  His Song Sampler is dated January 1956.  No doubt he had proofs, and may even have had copies that were ready for mailing.  It also is likely he had some kind of vendor’s booth at the convention, where he may have distributed copies of the Sampler or the song to promote his business.  It is not likely he distributed the songbook itself to the entire crowd of 3,000.

Someone had given him $1,000 to distribute issues of the Sampler for one year. [10]  It included an article by Janet Tobitt on “You Can Lead in Singing,” and profiled her as a world traveler.  It claimed the selection of songs were ones “which have been popular at Paris Y Centennial, the Purdue Convocation, and Sing Sessions in Pennsylvania and Indiana.” [11]

The collection was a poor fit for a group with half its members committed to missionary work.  Eight of the twenty-one titles were religious in a broad sense, but few were actual hymns that could be used in formal sessions.

The other half of the attendees were international students from countries where Protestant church missionaries were active.  The U. S. State Department had begun promoting “educational exchanges with other nations” as part of Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy.  In 1940, the University of Michigan’s contacts were mainly in Latin America, with some exchanges with Turkey. [12]

After the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, the federal government began providing financial support for international students.  In 1957, Asher Lubotszky said a quarter of the foreign students at Indiana University had such support.  He indicated that the state-sponsored school had 500 students in 1957, up from less then 50 in the early 1940s. [13]

Protestant churches’ missionary efforts primarily had been directed toward countries with religions that were not based on the Bible.  The most populous such areas were in Asia, followed by Africa.  These were the nations targeted by the State Department.  At IU, Lubotzky said in the 1950s that “Europe and South America, which traditionally were important suppliers of international students, reduced in size” while the numbers from Asia increased more than those from the Middle East, and Africa. [14]

When people first look through songbooks, they look for ones that might be interesting.  Headnotes and titles are the first clues.  It is only later that individuals may look at each song carefully.

Only two of the songs in the Sampler were from Africa and two from the Middle East, while none came from Asia or Latin America.  One African song was a love song from white South Africa [15] and one from Turkey was a round in Turkish. [16]  That left the religious “Kum Ba Yah” and the round “Shalom Chaverim.” [17]

Title
“Come By Here” with “Kum Ba Yah” as the subtitle.  This is a continuation of the change introduced at the Buckeye Workshop in 1955 to make the song’s meaning more obvious and more familiar to individuals who were uncomfortable with nonsense or foreign words. [18]

Credits
Africa (Angola)

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: note that pronounced “Koom-bah-yah”
Verses: Kumbaya, crying, singing, praying
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none

Basic Form: four-verse song
Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none
Unique Features: none

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 3/4
Tempo: slowly
Key Signature: no flats or sharps

Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: vocal line only
Ending: none

Notes on Performance
Occasion: songbook created to publicize Cooperative Recreation Service
Cover: treble clef sign in circle at top left; otherwise just table of contents

Color Scheme: cover has brown ink on yellow paper; inside pages use brown ink on cream paper

Plate: made by Jane Keen

Notes on Performers
Rosa Page was born in 1900.  Her great-grandmother had been a slave who married a Creek. [19]  Her grandparents went to church meetings every night that rotated between the Baptist, Methodist, and Christian churches. [20]  Her father directed the local band in Gibson [21] until he joined the church. [22]

A neighbor, who was in a Methodist choir, was the first to teach her how to sing. [23]  Her training was erratic; it included a visit to a minstrel show where Bessie Smith was performing. [24]  A local minister’s daughter got her into a Christian Church college, [25] where she received more training.

After the war, Page moved to Chicago where she married E. C. Welch in 1927. [26]  There she had more training, and was offered a chance to sing at a Nebraska Student Conference of the church. [27]  This began a career as a song leader for large conventions.  She had 101 engagements in 1945. [28]  The first one for SVM may have been in 1952 in Lawrence, Kansas. [29]

In 1953 she went on a world tour [30] that took her to Asia, then the Belgium Congo [31] and Liberia. [32]  Eight years after the Athens meeting, she spent time as a missionary in Nigeria for the Church of the Brethren. [33]  Rather than letting her evangelize, local male missionaries expected to perform to raise money for them. [34]  Although her biography about this period is called “Kum Ba Yah,” it does not mention the song.                

Talbot is discussed in posts for 7 August 2022 and 14 August 2022.

Availability
Book.  “Come By Here/Kum Ba Yah.”  15 in Song Sampler number 1, January 1956.  Delaware, Ohio: Cooperative Recreation Service, Cooperative Song Service, 1956.

End Notes
1.  Frederick Hilborn Talbot.  Letter, 18 October 2016.
2.  Taylor is discussed in the post for 7 March 2021.

3.  “Student Volunteer Movement.”  Wikipedia website.  Moody is discussed in the posts for 17 January 2021 and 24 January 2021.

4.  Harlan Hatcher.  The President’s Report for 1955-1956.  Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan, 1957.  74.

5.  Hatcher.

6.  Rosa Page Welch.  Paraphrased by Shawnee Press.  Letter to Lynn Rohrbough, 14 May 1959.  Copy courtesy of Bruce Greene and World Around Songs.

7.  Lynn Rohrbough.  Letter to Shawnee Press, 4 June 1959.  Uncorrected typed carbon.  Copy courtesy of Bruce Greene and World Around Songs.

8.  “Frederick H. Talbot, 57 M.Div.”  Yale Divinity School Alumni Awards website.
9.  Oma Lou Myers.  Rosa’s Song.  Saint Louis, Missouri: CBP Press, 1984.  11.
10.  Song Sampler.  B.
11.  Song Sampler.  A.

12.  “75 Years of the International Center at the University of Michigan.”  University of Michigan website.

13.  Asher Lubotzky.  “Diplomacy, Diversity, and Dollars: How the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement Shaped International Student Policy at Indiana University, 1950-1970.”  Indiana University website, 20 August 2018.

14.  Lubotzky.

15.  “Sarie Marais.  South African Folk song from Jan Perewiet; English by Katharine Ferris Rohrbough.  Van Gorcum and Comp. N.V. 1948.  Aan den Brink, Assen, Nederlands.  10 in Song Sampler.

16.  “Rally Song.”  Turkish round from Janet Tobitt.  Yours for a Song.  15 in Song Sampler.

17.  “Shalom Chaverim.”  Palestinian round; English by Augustus D. Zanzig.  16 in Song Sampler.

18.  The Buckeye Workshop version is discussed in the post for 24 July 2022.
19.  Myers.  21.
20.  Myers.  17–18.
21.  Myers.  20.
22.  Myers.  23.
23.  Myers.  18–19.
24.  Myers.  22.

25.  Myers.  27.  The Christian Church is the name of a merged group of denominations founded after the Cane Ridge Revival.  They are discussed in the post for 8 November 2020.

26.  Myers.  33.
27.  Myers.  38.
28.  Myers.  75.
29.  Myers.  91.
30.  Myers.  94.
31.  Myers.  116.
32.  Myers.  124.
33.  Myers.  144.
34.  Myers.  148, 150.