Freedom Story: “They Stayed Put”

Lucy Milam Davis (1846 – 1927)

My great-great-grandmother

Today, exactly 150 years ago, the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, purporting to free enslaved African Americans in the Rebel states.  This important document made it legal for slavery to end when the Union won the Civil War two years later in 1865.  In commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, my last blog post on December 21, 2012 was a “freedom story” entitled “Y’all Are As Free As I Am,” that was based on a story passed down by my maternal great-grandfather, William “Bill” Reed of Senatobia, Mississippi.  However, I desired to write another one on this very day, 150 years later, to further commemorate and honor my once-enslaved ancestors who lived to see freedom. 

But one thing is different.  This second freedom story is not based on oral history.  Rather, this freedom story analysis is based on what I ascertained from my ever-growing knowledge of slavery and emancipation and is also based on research. I am highlighting my great-great-great-grandmother, Margaret “Peggy” Milam, for this commemorative story. Grandma Peggy was born into slavery in the hills of Williamson County, Tennessee in Franklin around 1829.  There, her first enslaver, Edward Warren, owned and operated a cotton gin.  However, Warren decided to move his family and slaves south to Marshall County, Mississippi during the 1830s.  He ran into financial trouble and was forced to sell Grandma Peggy, her Virginia-born parents Adam and Sarah, and three siblings to his cousin, James Warren Briscoe, on August 14, 1839 to pay off mounting debts.  Briscoe later sold Grandma Peggy around 1845 to Joseph R. Milam, who owned a farm in the adjacent county, present-day Tate County, Mississippi, near the Tyro community.  (See my April 2012 blog post ”Name Discrepancies Can Often Lead to More”, to read how I unearthed this history.)

Grandma Peggy Milam would go on to live the rest of her life in slavery on the Milam farm in Tate County. Shortly after April 9, 1865, the day General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, she received the great news that the Confederates were defeated in the Civil War and slavery was over. She became a free woman at the age of around 36.  Like all slaves, Grandma Peggy had to make a decision. Her “masser” Joseph Milam had recently died in 1862.  Will she and her children “stay put” or will they migrate to another area for a better life?  The answer was in the 1870 DeSoto County, Mississippi census (the area that is now Tate County).

Page 377B of the 1870 DeSoto County, Mississippi Census

Household 52 – Peggy Milam, five of her children, and two other people in her household

Household 53 – Household headed by Jack Roland

Household 54 – Household headed by Eunice Milam (white). She was the widow of Joseph Milam.

Household 55 – Household that contained Hector Davis, his wife, Lucy, their first-born daughter, Anna, and Lucy’s sister, Alice Milam. Alice and Lucy were Grandma Peggy’s daughters; Hector & Lucy Davis were my great-great-grandparents.

Household 56 – Household headed by Spencer Milam (black), who married Hector’s sister, Huldah.

Per the 1870 census above, Grandma Peggy Milam decided to “stay put.” She chose not to leave the Milam farm.  Since her former “slave mistress” Eunice Powers Milam was just two households away in 1870, she and her children most probably remained living in the same slave cabin when they became free.  As a relatively young mother with 10 children when she heard the words “You are now a free woman” in 1865, her options were few – very few. Years of servitude and enforced illiteracy ill-fitted many enslaved African Americans for the responsibilities of liberty.  Few owned anything besides the clothes on their backs.  How could she just pack up and leave with 10 children in tow?  What would she do in the big free world to support her and her big family?  Where would she go?

I ascertained that Grandma Peggy didn’t have a husband. My great-great-great-grandfather Wade Milam, the father of most her children, lived several miles away in Tate County with his Cherokee Indian wife Fannie and their young children. Because some of Wade and Fannie’s children were born around the same years as some of the children he had with Grandma Peggy, perhaps Wade and Peggy were forced to cohabitate in the same cabin on the Milam farm during slavery and produce children to increase Joseph Milam’s wealth, while Wade’s real wife Fannie and their children were on a nearby farm?  What else could serve as an explanation for Wade’s two families?  Nevertheless, Grandma Peggy decided that her best option was to “stay put” and continue living and laboring on the Milam farm. Perhaps, Eunice Milam paid her for her services?  Undoubtedly, she did what she thought was best for her family.  She died sometime between 1900 and 1910 in Tate County. She was able to enjoy over 35 years of freedom.

Page 300B of the 1870 DeSoto County, Mississippi Census

Wade Milam with his wife Fannie and their children in 1870; her birthplace is reported as “Cherokee Nation”.

Joseph Redding Milam

1811 – 1862

Source: The Tate County, Mississippi Heritage

Unearthing Hidden Jewels

Photo by Dennis Cox

Let me be frank. I cannot imagine going through life without having vast knowledge about the accomplishments of my own ancestors, the people whose blood flows through my veins.  In addition to having knowledge about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, and many other noted African Americans who are often commemorated during Black History Month, I want to know as much as I can about my past family members who made a difference in their communities in their own ways. I’ve been researching since 1993, and I realize that (1) I still have a lot to learn about their accomplishments, and (2) researching to unearth those hidden and untold “jewels” will be a life-long journey.  Recently, Angela Walton-Raji made these facts very evident!

While attending the AAHGS conference in Little Rock, Arkansas in October 2011, Angela, a renowned genealogist, historian, and my “genealogy buddy” for nearly 20 years, became fascinated by the buried accomplishments and life of Madam Martha “Mattie” E. Danner Hockenhull. Angela also happens to be the great-great-granddaughter of my great-great-grandfather Pleasant Barr’s second wife Amanda Young.  She had no idea that Mattie Hockenhull was my maternal grandmother’s aunt, my great-grandmother’s sister.  Instead of me sharing how researching Mattie Hockenhull led Cousin Angela back to me, check out her blog post, “The Search For and Discovery of Madam Martha Danner Hockenhull.”

I first learned about Aunt Mattie from my late and dear cousin, Vivian Ivory Jones, when I moved to Memphis, Tennessee in 1996. Cousin Vivian shared how Aunt Mattie had owned a beauty shop in Pine Bluff, Arkansas during the 1910’s and 1920’s. Aunt Mattie’s only child, Isaac Hockenhull, married the late great gospel singer, Mahalia Jackson, in Chicago, IL.  That was all that was basically shared with me about her. Then, Cousin Vivian, whose grandmother Frances Danner Howard was also my great-grandmother’s sister, pulled out the following picture of her.  Aunt Mattie was obviously a lady of style and elegance.

Madam Martha “Mattie” Ella Danner Hockenhull

(1873 – 1937)

Yesterday, I got a Facebook message from Cousin Angela. In addition to her findings that she revealed in her blog post, she recently found more about Aunt Mattie!  Not only did Aunt Mattie run her own beauty shop in Pine Bluff, Arkansas during the early 1900’s, not only did she publish a series of publications about beauty techniques in 1917 (see Angela’s blog post for pictures), not only was she the former mother-in-law of Mahalia Jackson, but this elegant lady, who was born just eight years after slavery near Como, Mississippi, also ran a correspondence school!  This additional fact was discovered in a 1917 edition of the Muskogee Cimeter, a black newspaper published in Oklahoma.  Excitingly, Angela also expressed the following, “Note that in 1917, she had a telephone! Most families did not get phones till the 1950’s! She was ahead of her time!” I am so proud to claim this lady as my great-grand-aunt!  One can only imagine what else will be unearthed, not only about Aunt Mattie, but about others with whom I share DNA. The same goes for you, too!

 1917 article from the Muskogee Cimeter newspaper; shared by Angela Walton-Raji

Many Thanks to Angela!

Unusual and Unexpected Research Findings: The Great Stuff We Stumble Upon!

Panola County, Mississippi Courthouse (northern), Sardis, Mississippi
 

Sometime ago, I called out sick from work (again!) and drove down to the northern Panola County, Mississippi courthouse in Sardis to conduct some research. I’d uncovered that my great-great-grandmother Polly Partee’s likely last enslaver was Squire Boone Partee, who had died in 1864. I used and underlined the word “likely” because I had found a preponderance of evidence that pointed to him which included the following:

(1)   Grandma Polly (born circa 1833 in North Carolina) and her children took the Partee name, and a white Partee family owned slaves in Panola County per the slave schedules: Squire B. Partee, 43 slaves (1850) and 71 slaves (1860);

(2)   Oral history from my late cousin Isaac Deberry, who remembered his mother telling him that Grandma Polly came off the “ole Partee place” where she had been a great cook during and after slavery;

(3)   In 1870, just five years after slavery ended, Grandma Polly was living adjacent to Squire’s widow, Martha Partee, per the 1870 Panola County census;

(4)   Grandma Polly named one of her sons “Squire”, but the family called him “Uncle Square”.

As you can see, I had very strong evidence, but I wanted documented proof. I wanted to find Grandma Polly's name in a pre-1865 document. Since Squire Boone Partee had died during slavery in 1864, my goal was to find his estate papers and hopefully find a slave inventory that recorded her and her children, including her daughter Sarah Partee Reed, my great-grandmother who was born around 1852.  Thankfully, I found his estate record, but a slave inventory was not found. I was terribly disappointed. However, as I browsed the papers in his estate record, I found something quite interesting!  Doctor visits to his plantation were recorded, and the entries included the names of some of the enslaved. 

This finding was quite revealing to me because I had assumed that nearly all enslaved African Americans on plantations throughout the South had their root doctors who used their own remedies to care for the sick.  As I discussed in the last chapter of Mississippi to Africa: A Journey of Discovery, when Africans were forcibly extracted from Africa, they brought with them their experience working with roots and herbs as healing agents.  Principally due to slavery and the unavailability of some traditional African plants, the remedies of root doctors, who were also called conjurers, root workers, and herb doctors, were a combination of some Native American and European folk remedies and the extensive African knowledge of medicinal root use.  In many cases, midwives were often the root doctors of the slave communities. 

Well, from 1860 to 1864, doctor visits to the white Partee family and their slaves were recorded, and the cost of each visit was charged to the estate. Visits to Grandma Polly were recorded numerous times!  Like Grandma Polly, some of the slaves were named, while a number of entries were “medicine for four negroes”, or “visit to Patsy and three negroes”, or “visit to Negro woman". One entry even stated, “Visit at night, woman in abortion”, who was apparently an enslaved woman who was losing her unborn child, a common occurrence. The doctor’s name was noted as Dr. H. B. Dandridge, who was recorded as a physician in the 1860 Panola County, Mississippi census.

The following are just 3 scanned pages of over 15 pages of recorded doctor visits. Slave names are underlined in red.  One should never wonder why people become quickly addicted to genealogy research when many of us encounter unusual and unexpected findings that add to the thrill of the search!

From March 2 to March 10, 1860, daily visits to Grandma Polly were made.

1861

1864