Fact Friday 440 - The Forgotten Charlotteans: African American Slaves, Part 1
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"However humble an individual may be, we must forget that he is part of a whole, and may be known to all the citizens of a small town, especially if respectful and makes himself useful." - Dr. John Brevard Alexander, History of Mecklenburg County, 1740 to 1900.
Many of the stories of Mecklenburg County history revolve around military or political figures, whose names have been celebrated for centuries: Thomas Spratt, Captain James lack or Joseph Graham. The story of the Scots-Irish Presbyterians and their contribution to the development and growth of Mecklenburg County is well known, well researched and well documented.
Indeed, arguably, too much so. These men were of course part of the cultural and racial elite of their age; by which we mean that they were English-speaking, Protestant (Presbyterian, largely) white men. To decry them as "dead white males" (DWM) is popular in certain historical circles, but also ignorant and facile. Their importance and contribution to history does not diminish because of their ethnic background. Captain Jack did, in fact, carry treasonable resolves to Congress in the summer of 1775 (exactly which ones, the Mecklenburg Declaration, the Mecklenburg Resolves, or both, is the crux of the whole controversy). Joseph Graham did, in fact, stand and fight the British troops as they advanced into the cross-roads town in the autumn of 1780. Those are immutable facts.
But so is this. For every Jack or Graham, there are hundreds, even thousands, whose names we do not know and whose life stories are entirely lost. These are the enslaved African Americans who labored, built and shaped the economy and culture of Mecklenburg County, as surely as did the Scots-Irish. "One fact is undeniable," writes historian Dan Morrill. "Slavery was a fundamental component of the social hierarchy of pre-Civil War Mecklenburg County." But unlike many of the Scots-Irish heroes, the stories of these African American men and women are not known. They are the forgotten Charlotteans.
And while the early history of Mecklenburg County is often written as the story of the voluntary emigration of the Scots-Irish, it could with equal justice be characterized as the story of the involuntary emigration of the West Africans. So-called DWMs constituted, by rough accounts and at any one time, a large part of the population. For example, in 1860, whites composed approximately 60 percent of the local population (10,200 of 17,000); but of the military, civic and political elite they constituted virtually 100 percent. This means that African Americans, some freed men or women, but the vast majority slaves, constituted 40 percent of the overall population, "making Mecklenburg County one of the highest in terms of the number of bondspeople in the North Carolina Piedmont," according to Morrill. In 1860, for example, only 139 freed blacks lived near Charlotte. The rest were slaves, working as farmhands or domestic servants, tending horses, growing crops, or laboring in the goldmines. Ironically, the county that prided itself on declaring itself "free and independent" from Great Britain in May 1775 was the same county of which roughly half of the population was anything but.
And of these thousands of people, of their individual stories, we know almost nothing; not because their lives were without interest, or passion or importance. On the contrary. But because they were slaves, little was written of them during their lives; and since very few were literate, they kept no personal records which have survived, other than by word of mouth. And finally, until the end of the Civil War they were, of course, property. And there are few historians of personal property.
There are also few physical, tangible remains of the slave period in the area, beyond some scattered and barren graveyards. One, known as the McCoy Slave Burial Ground, stands in farmland just off McCoy Road in Huntersville. There is little there, other than a stone marker, erected in the early twentieth century, which contains the following inscription:
ERECTED BY
ALBERT McCOY'S
CHILDREN TO HIS SLAVES
UNCLE JIM AND HIS WIFE
LIZZIE
UNCLE CHARLES & FAMILY
"Lizzy's" real name was Elizabeth McCoy, and she was the nanny to the McCoy children. According to St. Mark's Episcopal Church, which maintains the cemetery: "Lizzie was mammy to Albert McCoy's (1843-1925) twelve children. She and her husband, Jim, had three children of their own who did not survive, but we are uncertain when they died. With so many questions looming, we can be certain of how very beloved she was. Lizzies stories, rhymes, and proses have been passed down for generations." The church estimates that there are 25-50 bodies in the cemetery, which was in use from 1840 to 1880. But, as is common with these sites, "there are no markers to indicate placement, names, and dates. Individual markers placed were sometimes large rocks, crockery, or crafted from wood which would have disintegrated many decades ago."
Another such spot is the Neely Slave Cemetery in the area of Steele Creek, so named for the Neely family. According to Morrill,
"Thomas Neely, who had arrived in southwestern Mecklenburg in 1754 and who owned fewer than ten slaves at the time of his death in 1795, was a generous, kind-hearted, and compassionate master. He made special provisions in his will for the welfare of his chattel labor. He stipulated that "our negro Joe... to be taught to read" and wanted his son to give "our negro wench Susy two days every week for the purpose of providing herself in clothing." Neely ordered that the "negro child Dinah ... to be learned to read," and even insisted that "none of my legatees may sell any of my negroes out of the family under penalty of losing their inheritance."
What kind-hearted and generous means in this context is hard to deduce. Perhaps Neely was "kind-hearted" by the standards of his time, perhaps not.
A handful of scattered slave cemeteries still exist in Mecklenburg County. Here is the McCoy slave cemetery in Huntersville (photograph by the author).
Mecklenburg County had hundreds of Thomas Neelys, and one could multiply this by thousands over the south as a whole. Some were perhaps good Christian men, many surely were not. Howe they treated their human property varied greatly.
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Sources:
"Eminent Charlotteans: Twelve Historical Profiles from North Carolina's Queen City," by Scott Syfert, 2018.
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“History is not the past, it is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history.” - James Baldwin