The African Americans, Many Rivers to Cross – Episode 4: Gone to Oklahoma

Last night, the fourth episode of The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross aired on PBS.  This episode, entitled Making a Way Out of No Way (1897-1940), highlighted the relocation of more than 6 million African Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North, Midwest, and West from around 1910 to 1970.  This mass relocation became known as the Great Migration. African Americans left the South in droves, removing themselves from the harsh and racist climate of Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Texas.  Even in my own family, my maternal grandmother, Minnie Davis Reed, who was the youngest child of nine children born to John Hector Davis and Mary Danner Davis, had six of her own siblings to relocate to Chicago Illinois, Evanston Illinois, and Benton Harbor Michigan. Grandma Minnie and her brother, Uncle Fred Douglas Davis, were the only two to remain in the South. They both opted to live their last years in Memphis, Tennessee, just 35 miles north of their hometown of Como, Mississippi.

Conditions were so volatile in my home state of Mississippi, that from 1910 to 1920, the state experienced the largest migration of its African-American citizens to northern states than any of the ten southern states.  Sources note that of the approximately 473,000 African Americans that left the South in that decade alone, nearly 130,000 were from Mississippi.  From 1940 to 1960, about a million other Mississippians, nearly 75 percent of them African-American, departed the state permanently.  Many of them relocated to Chicago and Detroit, especially.  So many Mississippians had moved to Chicago that I often heard the city being called “New Mississippi.”  Chicago’s African-American population tremendously grew from 40,000 in 1910 to over 230,000 in 1930.

However, little is spoken about a small sector of the migrating African-American population who chose to go west to Oklahoma during the 1889 Land Rush of Oklahoma, occurring about 20 years before the start of the Great Migration.  On March 3, 1889, President Benjamin Harrison announced that the government would open the 1.9 million-acre tract of Indian Territory for settlement at noon on April 22nd. Anyone could join the race for the land, but jumping the gun was not permitted. During those 7 weeks after Harrison’s announcement, over 50,000 land-hungry Americans quickly began to gather around the borders of Oklahoma to take advantage of the new land.  By nightfall on April 22, they had staked thousands of claims either on town lots or quarter section farm plots. The towns of Norman, Oklahoma City, Kingfisher, Guthrie, and others sprung into being almost overnight.  This is considered to be the largest land rush in American history, and within a month after April 22, five banks and six newspapers were established. By 1900, African-American farmers owned about 1.5 million acres of land in the Oklahoma territory. A number of African-American towns in Oklahoma were also established, such as Boley, Langston, Lincoln, Taft, etc.

One of those many land-hungry settlers in 1889 was my great-grandmother’s second oldest brother, Mack Danner (1859-c.1910).  Whether or not Uncle Mack was one of those 50,000+ who setup a tent on the border the night before April 22 is a matter of speculation, but he, his wife Annie, and their children had settled near Guthrie, Oklahoma sometime between 1889 and 1892. This was evident from the 1900 Logan County, Oklahoma census. Their son, Alexander (Alex) Danner, was born in Panola County (Como), Mississippi in Jan. 1889, but their next child, Laura Danner, was born in Oklahoma in May 1892.

1900 Logan County, Oklahoma census

The census-taker erroneously spelled the family’s last name as “McDanna”. Also, it was noted in this census that Uncle Mack Danner owned land.

I have been fortunate to meet and get to know a number of Uncle Mack Danner’s descendants after learning of their existence. The family had settled in Omaha, Nebraska by 1918. One of those descendants is my cousin, the late Dorothy Danner West, a granddaughter of Uncle Mack Danner, who shared the following photos of the family that were taken in Oklahoma and Nebraska.

Uncle Mack Danner (1859-c.1910)

Picture taken before 1910 in Guthrie, Oklahoma

Uncle Mack Danner’s wife Annie McGee Danner and their 10 children

Guthrie, Oklahoma

Two of Uncle Mack Danner’s sons who were killed in Oklahoma by a man who feared for his life from the two brothers

Uncle Mack Danner’s son, Alex Danner, who was the last child born in Mississippi in Jan. 1889 before the family moved to Guthrie, Oklahoma

Uncle Mack Danner’s daughter, Laura Danner Lowe, and her son, Artis Lowe. She was their first child who was born in Oklahoma in May 1892.

Uncle Mack Danner’s in-laws, Mack Henry McGee & Julia Hinkles McGee, who accompanied them to Oklahoma from Panola County, Mississippi

Omaha Sen. Edward R. Danner, youngest son of Mack and Annie Danner, was the lone African-American legislator in the Nebraska Unicameral during the U.S. Civil Rights era of the 1960’s.

Pictures by the late Dorothy Danner West

The African American Blogging Circle is a group of genealogy bloggers who are sharing their family stories, seen through their own personal lens, from the PBS series, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross.  Click here for a list of the participating bloggers and check out their stories.

Watch Episode 4

The African Americans, Many Rivers to Cross – Episode 1: From Africa to Virginia to Mississippi

On this past Tuesday, the first episode of The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross series aired on PBS with great anticipation from many historians, history buffs, and genealogists.  The first episode was appropriately titled The Black Atlantic because it encompassed the historical experiences on the other side of the Atlantic – in our wonderful motherland of Africa – that led to the creation of the “African American.” Skip Gates highlighted historians’ claim that the first Africans that touched American soil arrived in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619.  This episode also focused on Edward Ball’s remarkable research of a 10-year-old enslaved girl from Sierra Leone. She was stolen and transported to Charleston, South Carolina in 1756. After being purchased by planter Elias Ball, she was given the name “Priscilla.” These were just two segments of this first episode, but they will serve as the overarching theme of this blog post, From Africa to Virginia to Mississippi.

I recently became a resident of the state of Virginia.  As I explore the rolling hills of this beautiful state, I often wonder how many of my enslaved ancestors were transported here directly from West Africa or from the Caribbean via West Africa.  Transatlantic slave trade data, in which I will expound upon in this post, suggests that many were. In fact, most African Americans – descendants of enslaved people brought to American shores – had a number of family lineages that began here in Virginia.  Some of those lineages may have started back as early as 1619 in Jamestown, Virginia, but many of those lineages began later as enslaved Africans were most heavily transported into the state from 1676 to 1776.  In essence, my moving to Virginia felt like I was almost completing the circle, although the American beginnings were filled with austere hardships. My completion of that circle will come one day when I revisit a nation in West Africa, stand in the vicinity of where a known African ancestor was born, and touch the soil they were taken away from.

The matri-lineage of three of my Virginia-born ancestors has been linked back to West Africa via DNA analysis by African Ancestry, Inc.  My father’s great-great-grandmother, Caroline Morris of Warren County, Mississippi, was born around 1820 in Greensville County, Virginia.  Her matri-lineage matched the Tikar people of Cameroon.  Perhaps, my “Priscilla” was Caroline’s maternal grandmother or great-grandmother?  My mother’s great-great-grandmother, Fanny Barr, was born somewhere in Virginia around 1790. She was sold down south to Abbeville, South Carolina by 1810, and later taken to Pontotoc County, Mississippi in 1859, where she died at the old age of near 100.  Her matri-lineage matched the Yoruba and Fulani peoples of Nigeria. Perhaps, another “Priscilla” in my family tree was Grandma Fanny’s maternal grandmother?  My mother’s 4X-great-grandmother, Jenny Boyce, is believed to have been born here in Virginia around 1765. Jenny is my “mitochondrial (mtDNA) ancestor,” and my mtDNA matches the Fulbe (Fulani) people of northern Cameroon; their origins began in northern Nigeria.  Perhaps, my third “Priscilla” of many was Grandma Jenny’s mother and stolen from Nigeria? 

Was it coincidental that my three DNA-tested lineages from Virginia have been linked back to Nigeria and neighboring Cameroon?  My answer is not necessarily.  Why?  Well, let’s see what transatlantic slave trade facts and statistics reveal in a nutshell.

African Origins of Virginia Slaves

Historians have estimated that nearly 100,000 Africans were disembarked on Virginia shores; many were directly from Africa. Consequently, Virginia ranked second among the areas where slave traders imported at least 30% of all Africans that were imported into North America. South Carolina ranked first. The African “hotspots” where Virginia slave traders obtained most of their human cargo included the Bight of Biafra region, the Angola-Congo region, the Gold Coast region (Ghana), and the Senegambia region. The following chart gives the percentage of Africans imported into Virginia from identifiable African regions [Source: Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), 157.]:

 The Bight of Biafra (modern Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon)

Senegambia (modern Senegal and the Gambia)

The Gold Coast (modern Ghana)

Bight of Benin (modern Togo and Benin)

Windward Coast (modern Côte d'Ivoire / Ivory Coast)

See a great African ethnic groups map at this link.

Other Virginia Facts:

The five river districts in Virginia that were the primary entrances where many enslaved Africans were disembarked were the following:

a.     the York River district

b.    the Rappahannock River district

c.     the South Potomac River district

d.    the Upper James River district

e.     the Lower James River district

(Map source)

By the time slavery ended in 1865, more than 500,000 enslaved Virginians had been transported to the Deep South states (Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, etc.). Historians have estimated that nearly 350,000 of that 500,000 had been traded rather than being transported by their enslavers who relocated to the Deep South (Tadman, Michael. “The Interregional Slave Trade in the History and Myth-Making of the U.S. South.”, 11-46).  Grandma Fanny Barr was one of them.  Both situations resulted in the permanent separation from family members whose circumstances allowed them to remain here in Virginia. There’s no wonder that my DNA segments, as well as many others, are matching people whose immediate families are from Virginia.  In many of our family histories, Virginia, as well as South Carolina, is no doubt Ground Zero in America.

One of my mother’s Virginia-based DNA cousins from 23andMe who is currently anonymous.

The African American Blogging Circle is a group of genealogy bloggers who are sharing their family stories, seen through their own personal lens, from the PBS series, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross.  Click here for a list of the participating bloggers and check out their stories.

Watch Episode One

When Compelling Pieces of Circumstantial Evidence Just Ain’t Enough for Me

     With relative ease, I traced one of my paternal lineages back to my great-great-grandfather, Peter Belton of Vicksburg, Warren County, Mississippi.  He was found living alone in the 1870 census.  That year, his reported age was 23 (born around 1847), and he was the only Belton in the county.  His reported birthplace was South Carolina.  I found him again in the 1900 Warren County census and his reported birth date and birth place were January 1840 in Mississippi   Because of these findings and no oral history about him, I ascertained that tracing him back even further would be quite a challenge.  Unfortunately, I was right.  A number of clues were unearthed, but I have been longing to find something that I consider concrete.

     Before I go into a few details about my research of Peter Belton’s history, let me present a brief synopsis about a very interesting and notable figure in Mississippi history.  His name is Capt. Isaac Ross of Jefferson County, Mississippi.  I believe Peter’s history is directly connected to this man.  Maybe one day soon, instead of using the terms “I believe”, I’ll be able to say, “The facts are.”  On the other hand, the circumstantial evidence that I will present just may be preponderantly adequate for some people to positively tie Peter to Capt. Ross.  I’ll love your personal feedback and opinion about the weight of this evidence.

       In a nutshell, Capt. Isaac Ross left Camden, South Carolina in 1808 and established a large plantation in Jefferson County that was known as Prospect Hill.  When he died in January 1836, his will stipulated that his plantation be liquidated and the proceeds be used to provide safe passage for his 200+ slaves to be freed and transported to Liberia in West Africa through the American Colonization Society (ACS).  His will also stipulated that his slaves be allowed to vote whether or not they wanted to go to Africa as free men and women.  It further stated, “Should the slaves refuse to go there, they (except those that have been specially named) are to be sold, and the proceeds paid over to the ACS, to be invested at 6 per cent, the interest to be employed for 100 years, in maintaining an institution of learning in Liberia, in Africa. If there shall be no government in Liberia, the said fund to be transferred to the State of Mississippi for a similar institution.”

     Not surprising, his heirs contested his will and battled it in state courts for nearly ten years.  Well, the enslaved Prospect Hill laborers grew very frustrated, and they orchestrated a revolt that burned the Ross mansion to the ground in April 1845.  Luckily, Capt. Ross’s will was finally upheld by law, and on January 7, 1848, the first group of 35 former Ross slaves left New Orleans on the Nehemiah Rich. A second group of 141 sailed out of New Orleans in 1849 on the Laura.  Both groups settled near the towns of Sinoe and Greenville in Liberia.  Their saga is told in Alan Huffman’s Mississippi in Africa: The Saga of the Slaves of Prospect Hill Plantation and Their Legacy in Liberia Today. 

     Let me now present the circumstantial evidence of why I believe one or both parents and/or a grandparent of Peter Belton may have been on Prospect Hill plantation. 

EVIDENCE A:  The estate of Mary Allison Belton, Jefferson County, Mississippi, 1823 & 1827

     In my quest to determine who Peter Belton’s last enslaver may have been, I quickly determined from census research that no white Belton families ever resided in Warren County. I could not even find any white Beltons in the neighboring counties of southwest Mississippi, although a number of African-American Belton families were found living in those counties – Jefferson, Franklin, Claiborne, and Adams County.  This seemed odd.  However, an explanation was soon found.  Turns out, there was indeed one white Belton who resided in Jefferson County up until 1823.  Her name was Mary Allison Belton; someone had placed a transcription of her will online which named 16 slaves.  Dated April 12, 1823, it also named two nephews, Isaac & Arthur Ross. 
   

     Very interestingly, Internet contacts revealed that Mary Allison Belton, the childless widow of John Belton of Camden, South Carolina, had moved to Jefferson County with Capt. Isaac Ross and his family.  Capt. Ross’s wife Jane Allison was her sister.  The nephews she mentioned in her will were their sons.  I soon found her estate record at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and an inventory dated Dec. 6, 1827 listed 20 slaves by name, age, and value.  Capt. Ross was the executor of her estate.  This was a major find, but unfortunately I have not been able to determine the names of Peter Belton’s parents.  Perhaps, someone on this inventory was his parent?  I look at this inventory in wonderment.

     1-  Bridget very old wench  nothing

     2-  Harry   ditto ditto           ditto  (ditto means same as above)

     3-  Fanny  54 years of age                                                           $100

     4-  Hector 52 years old Stepney 34 years old                                 800

     6-  Sam 31 years old Esaw 29 years old                                       1200

     8-  Jacob 29 years old Hector 27 years of age                              1200   

     10-  Jefferson 25 years old Ben 24 years old                                1200

     12-  Dinah 43 Mathew 7                                                               450

     14-  Mary 26 years old Laura 4 years old                                       500

     16-  Risse (?) 24  Irn alia worth nothing

     17-  Henderson 5 years of age  Peggy 24 years of age                   500

     19-  Thornton 6 years old  Adam  4 years of age                            400

                                                                                                       6350

EVIDENCE B:  Peter Ross and Hector Belton of Liberia

     Twenty-four letters were written by “Ross Negroes” in Liberia to ACS officials in the United States.  A man named Peter Ross wrote the most letters before he died after 1859, and many of them expressed his grievance over the Ross estate administrators’ failure to submit funds in accordance with the provisions of Capt. Ross’s will.  Seeing the name “Peter” among the “Ross Negroes” raised my eyebrows. 

     On October 12, 1849, a man named Hector Belton wrote a letter to John Kerr of the A.C.S.  He stated, “….Now my dear sir, knowing you were always kindly and friendly disposed towards me, even when Capt. Ross were alive, and I now am old and helpless, can’t work, let me intrude upon you, notwithstanding past events…”  Hector Belton was undoubtedly the 52-year-old Hector in the slave inventory of Mary Allison Belton’s estate, 1827 (see above). 

EVIDENCE C:  Location

     As I mentioned earlier, Peter was the only Belton in Warren County in 1870.  However, considering Warren County’s close proximity to Jefferson County, one can plausibly surmise that a connection to Capt. Isaac Ross’s slaves seems very possible.  Perhaps, Peter decided to migrate up to near Vicksburg when he became a free man?

EVIDENCE D:  Peter Belton’s Marriage Record

     In 1880, Peter married Mrs. Martha Wilkins (nee Miller) in Warren County.  On his marriage record, a man named Jack Ross was his bondsman.  Bondsmen on marriage records are often relatives or long-time friends. In fact, a bondsman named Wesley Johnson was part of my great-grandfather John Hector Davis’s marriage record. I later learned from an elder family member that Wesley was a first cousin to John’s father.  Seeing Jack Ross’s name on Peter’s marriage record was quite an eye-opener. 

EVIDENCE E:  James Belton’s Accounts

     An online contact encouraged me to get into contact with James Belton of McComb, Mississippi.  He descends from the Beltons who lived in Franklin County (see map above for its location).  Luckily, his contact information was in the phonebook and I called him up.  As a lover of family history, he was very happy to talk to me.  James didn’t know anything about Peter Belton of Vicksburg, but he shared the following interesting tidbits based on oral history told to him by his father, Julius Belton, who was born in 1888.

(1)   His father had two great-uncles named Wade & Edmond Belton who were part of the Prospect Hill uprising in 1845.  Edmond escaped to Louisiana.

(2)   Most of the slaves that Capt. Isaac Ross owned and transported to Mississippi in 1808 were obtained from the Belton Family of South Carolina.  Many of them were mulattoes and were known as the “Ross-Beltons”.

     These oral accounts have not been proven with documentation.  However, it establishes that the African-American Belton families in southwest Mississippi in 1870 are likely linked to the enslaved people on Prospect Hill plantation.  Yet, in my personal opinion, the circumstantial evidence have not been enough to positively prove that Peter Belton is linked to the “Ross-Belton” slaves of Prospect Hill as well. Or is it??  What are your thoughts?  More research will be done to try to determine Peter's parentage, which has been the major brick wall in this research.  I can’t let it go!  Stay tuned.

How “150 Years Later” Came To Be

 (See reunion documentary below.)

     150 Years Later: Broken Ties Mended takes the reader on the journey of solving my great-grandfather Bill Reed’s mysterious history.  I call it a historical mystery novel that incorporated a great deal of genealogy research....and patience.  I am still in awe of the amount of records and the types of fascinating records that fell into my lap during the years when I would often pray to God and ask Him to help me with this mystery. One of the unique records was a very revealing letter written by the slave-owner’s widow, Rebecca Reid Barr.  The stories that my family elders told me of Grandpa Bill’s experiences as a slave in South Carolina stayed fixated in my mind since high school.  Because of that, I felt that it was my life mission to unravel this mystery.  I never imagined in a million years that the ultimate outcome of solving this mystery would culminate into an unprecedented, emotional reunion....150 years later.

     You see, in 1859 near Abbeville, South Carolina, my 12-year-old great-grandfather was forever separated from his family. Grandpa Bill's father was sold away, and his mother, grandmother, and other family members were all transported away from the state soon afterwards. He never laid eyes on them ever again, and he and a younger sister Mary were soon sold to a local Reid slave-owner. Shortly after becoming free people, he and others left South Carolina on a wagon train pulled by mules and migrated to northern Mississippi.  Family elders remarked jovially of how they had been told that Mississippi was the “land of milk and honey with fat pigs running around with apples in their mouths.” Grandpa Bill died near Senatobia, Mississippi in 1937, at the age of 91, never learning the whereabouts of his family members, who were actually living not too far from him . . . in the same state!

     Before his demise, Grandpa Bill sat underneath his sycamore tree on his 300-acre farm and told his children and grandchildren many stories about his early years in South Carolina.  He was not a tight-lipped man, and my family elders remembered many stories that he shared, especially my late cousin and his grandson, Isaac Deberry, Sr. (1914–2009).  That overwhelmingly valuable oral history propelled the research and led to me solving this longtime mystery.  Despite the stories, no one knew why Grandpa Bill was separated from his family. No one knew where his family members ended up.  He told his family who his father was – a man named Pleasant Barr – and recounted the day he watched with great sadness as his father was placed on a wagon and forever taken away, but even Grandpa Bill never knew where he ended up, according to my elders.  And before I started to research it, no one could remember exactly where in South Carolina they were all from. 

     Ultimately, the mysteries were solved, many descendants were located, and a family reunion of a lifetime was held in Atlanta and in Abbeville, South Carolina beginning August 7, 2009, a day after my birthday.  Over 250 descendants came together for the first time.  My cousin and video producer, Kristina Hayes of Atlanta, produced this wonderful documentary about the reunion.  Yet, after the reunion, I pondered over the thought of writing a book about the entire experience – the good, the great, and the not-so-great.  The ancestors were tired of me pondering about it.  “You must do it” was the feeling that I was getting. 

     And so I finally gave in. On one Saturday morning in October 2009, I sat at my table and started writing.  The ancestors immediately took over and guided my fingers across the keyboard of my laptop.  How do I know that they guided this?  Well, even now when I pick up the book to re-read various parts, I honestly do not remember writing it.  That’s how I know.  The ancestors had intervened, and 150 Years Later was written in about five months and ultimately released on July 28, 2011. They wanted the story told, and I honored their wishes.  

Documentary:  Families Reunited After 150 Years of Separation, Part 1 of 5

 

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

(Total: 30 minutes)

Book website: www.150yearslater.com