Gravestone of the Day: Frankey and Judey

Frankey and Judey, 1732, NCBG, Newport, RI

Here lieth two

Negro Sarvants

to Mr Edward Baner

Frankey died Sepr:

ye 14th 1732 & Judey

died ye [22?]

Gravestone of the Day: Peter Hart & Jubaafford Greenhill-Hart

Peter Hart & Jubaafford Greenhill-Hart, 1763 & 1755, NCBG, Newport, RI

In Memory of

Peter Son of

Michael &

Jane Hart

died Novr ye

5th 176[3] in ye

[10?]th Year of

his Age

In Memory

of Jubaafford

Daughter of 

Harford Green

hill & Jane

Hart died Janr

[5th 1755]*

Peter and Jubaafford were the children of Jane Hart, a slave in Newport, Rhode Island. I don't know for sure which Newport slaveowner owned Jane and her children, but he/she was probably a member of the extensive Hart family, one of the largest and oldest Jewish merchant families in Newport.

The name that caught my eye here was Jubaafford. Google reveals no other Jubaaffords, Jubaffords, Jubaafords, or Jubafords whose records have made it to the internet. Juba is a tricky word to pin down; it is variously a term associated with African-American music, dance, and performers, a name for leftover food, and the Akan name for girls born on Mondays.

It is probably impossible to know for certain how Jubaafford Greenhill-Hart came by her name, but I will venture a tentative speculation. If her father's name was Harford, it seems possible that Jubaafford may be a compound name: Juba + Harford = Jubaafford. Venturing even further out onto the overreaching tendrils of conjecture, it is possible that Jane could have been the slaveowner-given name of an African-born woman named Juba, in much the way that Phibba was often mangled into Phoebe. Even if Jane Hart was named Jane at birth, any name containing "Juba" would be read as a link to West African cultural continuity in a city where many of the most prominent slaves (Newport Gardner/Occramar Mirycoo, Jack Mason/Salmar Nubia) were African-born. To me, Jubaafford seems like a name that is meant to do a lot of work by linking a child to West African language and culture, as well as preserving a link to a paternal name even when slavery prevented the establishment of legally-recognized families and surnames.

Thoughts? Other explanations?

*According to the Rhode Island Historical Cemeteries Transcription Project, Jubaafford was born around 1749 and died in 1755.

Gravestone of the Day: Patience Borden

Patience Borden, 1811, Providence, RI

PATIENCE BORDEN,

commonly called Sterry,

A free woman of Colour, and

humble disciple of JESUS,

She gave to the first Baptist

Church in this Town,

of which she was a member,

230 dollars, as a fund for

the relief of the Poor of Colour

of that Church;

She died

April 1st, 1811,

in the 33d year of

her age.

J.J.F.

This is one of my all-time favorite gravestones. It is an excellent example of the kind of gravestone that free African Americans commissioned for themselves in the first decades after emancipation. Patience Borden's gravestone highlights her spiritual, financial, and charitable accomplishments (rather than her dependence) and allows her to claim sovereignty over her name.

African Burial Ground National Monument Opens in New York

On Saturday, the visitor's center at the African Burial Ground National Monument opened in Lower Manhattan. The museum and memorial mark the location of a graveyard used by New York's enslaved and free black communities between 1690 and 1790. In the 1990s, construction uncovered more than 400 bodies, which have been catalogued, studied, and reburied beneath the new monument.

The New York Times has a lengthy review of the new museum. The author, Edward Rothstein, is a bit skeptical of some of the exhibits' politics and questions whether the conclusions on display are supported by the evidence. I haven't visited yet, so I can't really speak to his specific criticisms, but I know that it can be very tempting to over-interpret evidence in graveyards. Still, I wish that Rothstein had interviewed some of the attendees about what the memorial meant to them. As he notes in the first sentence of his review, "Cemeteries are at least as much for the living as the dead." That's very true, and I do not necessarily think that that is a bad thing. It is the main contention of my dissertation that colonial American graveyards were political spaces from the first, so it is unsurprising that they still are today.

I'm not a great lover of New York (too big for me), but I'm excited about visiting this memorial. Wouldn't it be great if we could get a visitor's center for God's Little Acre in Newport?

Pat Robertson on the Haitian Revolution

Apparently, the most successful slave rebellion in the history of the American colonies succeeded because its leaders made a pact with the devil. Juan Cole offers an informed dissection of this racist version of history.

Donate to the Red Cross here.

Fun Fact of the Day

In 1790, 84 of the 573 households in Plymouth, MA were headed by women. That's 14.66%.

Three households (.52%) were headed by black men (Cato Howe, Prince Goodwin, and Plato Turner).

Abe and Jeff, Brothers at Last

I have found ten black/biracial families with sons named Abe Lincoln and Jeff Davis in the 1870 and 1880 census records. All of them lived in the ex-Confederate South.

I won't pretend to know why anyone would name brothers Abe and Jeff, but I will offer a few observations:

• In most cases, the children were born after 1865, suggesting that parents, rather than slaveowners, may have chosen these names.
• In those cases where one of the brothers was born during the war, it is always Jeff, not Abe.
• This pattern does not seem to be peculiar to any particular state, but it does seem to be limited to newly freed slaves in the ex-Confederate South.

I am a firm believer in the proposition that names convey meaning, but I'm not sure what the message is here. Is this a case of two names that "go together" because of ubiquitous pairings in news items and popular songs?

I can only suggest one political motivation that makes some sense:
I remember once reading a WPA slave narrative (admittedly, not the very best source) in which an elderly ex-slave characterized Lincoln and Davis as partners in bringing about the war that brought on freedom. He didn't distinguish between their motives — he argued that their quarrel created the necessary conditions for emancipation. If that was a wide-spread idea, it might account for the Abe-Jeff pairs.

Examples!

Alabama:
Moris, Jeff Davis (b. 1865) and Abe Lincoln (b. 1870)
St. Stephens, AL
(Abe Lincoln is on the top of the next page of the census)

Arkansas:
Caffee, Jeff Davis (b. 1865) and Abe Lincoln (b. 1865) twins
Troy, Arkansas

Mississippi:
Bush, Jefferson (b. 1867) and Abraham L. (b. 1869)
Noxubee Co., MS

North Carolina:
Powell, Jeff Davis (b. 1866) and Abraham L. (b. 1867)
Tarboro, NC

Tenessee:
Mason, Jeff D. (b. 1869) and Abe L. (b. 1865)
Montgomery Co., TN

Walker, Jeff Davis (b. 1863) and Abe Lincoln (b. 1865)
Giles Co., TN, 1880 Census

Texas:
Baylis, Jefferson D. (b. 1863) and Abe L. (b. 1867)
(brother Andrew J)
Marion, TX

Bolan, Jeff Davis (b. 1866) and Abraham L. (1866) twins
Colorado Co., TX

 Robinson, Jeff Davis (b. 1864) and Abe Lincoln (b. 1867)
Liberty Co., TX

Virginia:
Broadnax, Jeff D. (b. 1861) and Abraham L. (b. 1865)
Drewryville, VA

 

Chronology of Confederate Naming

Merely counting the number of children named Jeff Davis or Stonewall Jackson does not tell the whole story. These names waxed and waned in popularity over time. Examining the chronology of naming patterns may help us determine whether certain explanations are plausible or unlikely.

Some names were much more popular during the war than afterward. These charts show the birthdates of black men and boys named Jeff Davis (or Jefferson Davis or Jefferson D.) who appear on the 1880 Census*:

As you can see, "Jeff Davis" was a much more popular name for black children during the war than afterward. The initial dropoff was dramatic, though the name gained slightly in popularity over the next decade.**

Another name that was much more popular during the war than after was "Stonewall." Like Jeff Davis, Stonewall gained in popularity after its initial dropoff — it actually made more of a comeback than Jeff Davis. This chart includes people named "Stonewall" and "Stonewall Jackson":

These two charts have similar patterns, so they can be considered convergent for the purposes of testing theories about naming practices. But what do we do with this one?

In the immortal words of Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the other. Whatever explanations we come up with for why black men and boys were given the names of Confederate heroes must account for the fact that different names had starkly different patterns of popularity.

*A few notes of caution: I did not include black men named "Jeff D." because a large percentage of them were born before the war, indicating that this name may not have been intended to honor Jefferson Davis. It is also possible that the 1880 Census underreports people named Jeff Davis during the war and its immediate aftermath because some may have died and others may have elected to go by other names later in life.
**Since this graph includes only people who were alive in 1880, it is possible that the name did not actually gain in popularity, but that fewer children born in earlier years were still living in 1880.

Jeff Davis, General Lee, and Stonewall J

When I first found Lavinia Meekins in the census, I thought that her family might be unique. After all, how many black Southerners had children named after Confederate heroes?

Actually, quite a few.

The more I looked, the more I found. So far, I have looked at the 1870 and the 1880 census records for all 11 ex-Confederate states. Here is what I've found*:

I was surprised to find 325 black children named Jefferson Davis in the 1870 census — I was expecting to find no more than a dozen. To put these numbers in perspective, there are about 2,000 white Southerners named Jefferson Davis in the 1870 census.

One interesting thing about this chart is the tremendous drop in the name "Jefferson Davis" between 1870 and 1880. It seems unlikely that more than half of the black children named Jeff Davis died in the intervening decade, especially since most of them were older than 5 in 1870, so they had a better chance of survival than infants. Did many of the boys named Jeff Davis decide to go by another name when they reached the age of 15 or 16?

Unfortunately, it is difficult to track any Southerner from census to census. I count 166 black Stonewalls in 1870 and 161 in 1880, but there is very little overlap between the two lists. This makes it difficult to generalize about the rising or falling popularity of a name over time. In my next post, I'll try to tackle this problem.

These three names seem to be the most popular, but a few others crop up from time to time. The 1870 census shows handfuls of black Southerners named Pickett, Longstreet, Wade Hampton, General Forrest, Zollicoffer, and Braxton Bragg. I haven't run the numbers on "Forrest" and "Beauregard," but, in initial searches, both seem to be almost as popular as Stonewall and Lee.

I won't overburden this post with specific examples, but here are a few notable examples of Confederate names given to black children during and after the war:

Secession Bants, b. 1862, Fredonia, AL
(one of four black children — two boys, two girls — named Secession, 1870 Census)

Confederacy Johnson, b. 1862, Livingston, VA

brothers, Zollicoffer Robinson, b. 1862 and General Lee Robinson b. 1864, Lancaster, KY (not included in statistics)

the McCullough family of Fairfield Co., SC:
Wade H. (b. 1862), Jefferson D. (b. 1863), Braxton B. (b. 1862), Beauregard (b. 1866)
(They have a little brother named Dempsey — any suggestions?)

*In this graph, "Jefferson Davis" includes black or biracial men and boys named "Jefferson Davis," "Jeff Davis," and "Jefferson D." living in the ex-Confederate states. "Stonewall Jackson" includes men and boys named "Stonewall Jackson," "Stonewall," and "Stonewall J." "Robert E. Lee" includes men and boys named "Robert E. Lee," "Robert Lee," "Bob Lee," and General Lee."

Black Children, Confederate Heroes

While working on a post about babies named after presidents, I came across Lavinia Meekins, a black woman in Virginia whose three young sons were named Jeff Davis (b. 1861), Robert E. Lee (b. 1864), and Andrew Johnson (b. 1867). I found this pretty confusing. Why would a black woman name her boys after the Confederate President, a Confederate hero, and the man who killed Reconstruction?

I knew I would need some context to make sense of this. Was Lavinia Meekins a single eccentric? Are these names part of a pattern? I dug into the census and found some surprising things.

I'll break this research up into several posts because the information is a little hard to digest all at once. I haven't made sense of the data yet and I'm not sure I can do that without some sources other than the census. Here are some of my initial observations:

• Lavinia Meekins was not a lonely eccentric. Many black parents in the Confederate states named their children after Confederate heroes during the war years — Jeff Davis, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, etc.
  
• Fewer black parents named their children after Confederate heroes after 1865. White Southerners continued to give Confederate names to their children into the 20th century.
• Some Confederate names (Jeff Davis, Stonewall) dropped off rapidly after 1865. Others (Robert E. Lee) gained in popularity after 1865.
  
• At least nine families have one child named Jeff Davis and another named Abe Lincoln. Sometimes they are twins. 
• Many white Southerners named their children after Northern heroes — U.S. Grant, Sherman, Lincoln, etc.
  

Over the next few posts, I will report on what I have observed, but I'm going to hold off on drawing broad conclusions for the moment. It would be simplistic to assume that just because an enslaved woman named her child "Jeff Davis" that she necessarily supported the Confederate cause. Off the top of my head, I can think of several alternative explanations:

• Perhaps masters named children and enslaved parents had no say in the matter. That would explain the sharp decline in these names after 1865.
• Perhaps enslaved parents named their children after Confederate heroes to feign docility. If this were the case, I would expect parents to rename/nickname the child after the war, which doesn't account for names on the 1870 census (unless feigning docility was still necessary during Reconstruction).
• Perhaps some slaves really did support the Confederate cause. In any group of 4 million people, you're bound to find a range of political opinions. It's not hard to imagine that some people might prefer to preserve the status quo rather than gamble on an uncertain future.
  
• Perhaps people named their children names from the news, regardless of the political associations. You see this in recent naming patterns when awful hurricanes cause bumps in popularity for their names.
• Perhaps census-takers have odd senses of humor.
  

Let me say it again — these aren't my conclusions. They're initial musings and possibilities. If you have other interpretations of the forthcoming, I'm eager to hear them. I do believe that the names people give their children are markers of their values — I'm just not sure what they're trying to convey in these cases.

Data and Discussion:

• Jeff Davis, General Lee, and Stonewall J
• Chronology of Confederate Naming
• Abe and Jeff, Brothers at Last
• Unionist Naming in the Postwar South
• Beyond the Census (Coming Soon!)

Should President Obama Honor Confederate Soldiers?

Apparently, several historians have written a letter to President Obama asking him to discontinue the nearly century-old tradition of placing a wreath at the Confederate Memorial at Arlington on Memorial Day. Over at Civil War Memory, Kevin Levin argues that the letter strikes the wrong tone and should be ignored.

I would be perfectly happy to see Obama's staff "forget" to order the wreath for this particular bit of Lost Cause nostalgia, but that's not really his style. It seems much more likely that President Obama could be persuaded to add an extra stop on that Memorial Day wreath-laying tour — I suggest a trip to the African American Civil War Memorial before the Arlington excursion.

Anyone can start a tradition. If Obama lays a wreath for secessionists, which I assume he will, let him also lay one for the freemen who fought for Union and liberty. Hopefully, his successors will continue to do so for the next century.

more photos via

Born in Africa

Over at Civil War Memory, a recent comment thread touched on the issue of slaves who endured the Middle Passage and lived to see emancipation. This experience was not uncommon in parts of the North — in Newport, for example, Salmar Nubia and Occramar Mirycoo were among the African-born men who led a repatriation effort after Rhode Island passed gradual emancipation in 1784. In the South, several decades separated the end of the legal international slave trade and emancipation, so the question is this: How many African-born ex-slaves lived in the South after the Civil War? And a follow-up: How many were born after the end of the legal international slave trade in 1808?

In the 1870 census, 2,178 Americans are listed as having been born in Africa. Of these, 938 were born in or after 1810. Some of these people may have been sailors or the children of missionaries, but many of them were probably brought to the United States on illegal slave-trading voyages or smuggled in through Mexico.

Here are a few examples:

Quilla Hutchinson, Camden, AL, born in Africa, 1847:

George African, Sumter Co., Georgia, born in Africa, 1845:

Zena Jack, New Orleans, LA, born in Africa, 1812:

Mingo Abney, Saluda, SC, born in Africa, 1844:

Abo Shiloah, Brazoria Co., TX, born in Africa, 1815:

We know for sure that ships carried illegal cargos of slaves to North American after 1808 (see the cases of the Antelope in 1825 and the Echo in 1858). I don't know whether anyone has done a careful study of African-born Americans during the reconstruction era, but the 1870 census has plenty of rich material for someone who might like to look into the matter.

It also strikes me that the 1870 census would be an interesting source for those looking at the late antebellum domestic slave trade — the birthplaces of different family members might yield some good data about pre-war slave trade routes as well as post-war mobility and family reconstruction.

Bodies Politic

I recently finished reading John Wood Sweet's Bodies Politic: Negotiating Race in the American North, 1730-1830 (2003). In part, this book is a project of recovery — Sweet points out that while "American came to present itself as a white nation," the reality was that "it was, and had been from the start, diverse, hybrid, and multiracial" (10). His basic argument is that racism in 18th-century New England was not a matter of cultural misunderstanding — in fact, as people of color converted to Christianity and assimilated other aspects of European culture into their daily lives, they found themselves even more reviled by their white neighbors. Over the course of the century, "stubborn, essentialist identities of race . . . supplanted a potentially mutable form of difference — culture" (108). The larger point is one that is often difficult for proud New Englanders to swallow: even though the Civil War pit North against South, the war and its memory "has obscured underlying similarities that derive from a shared legacy of colonialism" (11).

I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in American History, particularly if that interest is focused on southern New England. Sweet's title says "the American North," but what he really means is Rhode Island with some eastern Massachusetts and a smattering of Connecticut. That was great for me — I love Rhode Island history —but readers looking for Pennsylvania or Maine will be disappointed.


Bodies Politic is a thick book (409 pages), but an easy read. Sweet employs many engaging vignettes to make his points, which makes this a great book for the casual reader or for the academic looking for some arresting anecdotes for lecture.

The one scene that stayed with me after reading this book was the opening paragraph of Chapter Four:

When Paul Revere set out on his midnight ride in April 1775, one of the first landmarks he passed was the body of a long-dead slave — a figure that represented, no less than the Sons of Liberty themselves, a colonial family drama of abused paternal authority, emasculating enslavement, and rebellion. Revere knew the body by name. Mark's remains, suspended in a metal gibbet overlooking the road, had been greeting travelers for some twenty years — since 1755, when he was hanged. His accomplice, Phillis, was burned at the stake. Their crime had been killing their master, Captain John Codman of Charlestown.

I was already somewhat familiar with the case of Mark and Phillis because all the graduate students have been talking about Blindspot lately, but I hadn't really assimilated the image of the gibbet into my mental picture of late colonial Boston. When I think heads on spikes or bodies suspended near the road, I'm thinking 17th-century Ireland or the Caribbean, not Stamp Act-era Boston. You won't see any gibbets in the John Adams miniseries, that's for sure. Now, I have adjusted the image in my mind, though I can't quite imagine what a 20-year-old exposed corpse looks like. Blanched bones? Strips of ragged cloth? A pile of dust?

African-American Stonecarvers of Newport

Yesterday, I argued that Pompe Stevens and Zingo Stevens were two different men.

Today, I will examine claims that Zingo Stevens was a master stonecarver and that he carved the gravestones dedicated to his three wives. At this point in my investigation, I believe that it is very likely that Stevens did some stonecarving or, at the very least, assisted in the production of gravestones by shaping, smoothing, transporting, or erecting gravestones. His will identifies Stevens as a "bricklayer" and his involvement in a 1779 suit with Gabriel Allen, the Providence-based stonecutter, indicates that he was almost certainly involved in the business in some capacity. Still, I have not seen evidence that suggests that Zingo Stevens was an accomplished master carver who carved many stones for Newport's Africans and African Americans.

The uncritical attribution of several African-American gravestones to the conflated Pompe/Zingo carver is the result of researchers’ unfamiliarity with gravestones and the methodology of carver attribution. After concluding (erroneously) that Pompe and Zingo were one and the same, thus establishing that Zingo was a stonecarver who worked “under the name ‘Pompe Stevens’,” many have supposed that Zingo Stevens must have carved the headstones dedicated to his three wives, Phyllis (d. 1773), Elizabeth (d. 1779), and Violet (d. 1803). If he carved those stones, they conjecture, he must have carved many others.


The problem is that these authors ignore material evidence and provide no documentary evidence to bolster their claims. The stones attributed to Zingo Stevens are clear examples of John Stevens III's work — many are even signed by him! I am perfectly willing to believe that Zingo Stevens' work as a stonecutter has gone unrecognized and is part of the body of work commonly attributed to John Stevens III, but anyone making that argument will have to present compelling evidence that contradicts or complicates the JSIII signatures and the ledger records that identify John, not Zingo, as the carver of specific stones.

Many researchers, including Akeia Benard, Keith Stokes, and Theresa Guzman Stokes, believe that Zingo Stevens was a prolific master stonecarver. At Colonial Slave Cemetery, the Phillis Stevens stone is specifically attributed to Zingo Stevens:

This detailed marker is carved by Zingo Stevens, the African stone carver in Colonial Newport. He wold survive three wife's [sic] and personally carve each of their stones along with several of their children.

Although Stokes and Guzman Stokes do not provide any citations for this claim, many others have repeated it and expanded upon it. We know that Zingo Stevens belonged to John Stevens and that John Stevens carved gravestones, and can infer that Zingo probably helped John in the shop in some way. It's a big leap from that evidence to concluding that "the Lyndon family commissioned a stone from Zingo . . . Phyllis's [sic] image is carved on the stone dressed in traditional African dress." Yet, many have made the leap and kept on running.

After consulting with Ron Potvin, special collections librarian for the Newport Historical Society, Karen Lee Ziner wrote an article for the Providence Journal-Bulletin (available through Lexis-Nexis) in which she confidently claims that “many African-Americans became master stonecutters through apprenticeships at [the John Stevens] shop . . . Zingo Stevens, in fact, became the official gravestone cutter and engraver for African-Americans who were buried in [the NCBG].” Evidence?

One amateur taphophile has gone so far as to attribute the Dinah Wigneron stone (1772) to Zingo Stevens, despite the fact that the words, “Cut by John Stevens junr” are clearly visible at the bottom of the epitaph. Evidence?

Unfortunately, I have seen no documentary evidence to support these claims, and the material evidence flatly contradicts them.

No extant gravestone bears Zingo Stevens' signature, though there are at least 32 stones in God’s Little Acre signed by other carvers (29 by John Stevens III, 2 by Pompe Stevens, 1 by Henry Bull). The absence of signed gravestones does not prove that Zingo Stevens was not a carver, but several authors have claimed that he did indeed sign gravestones. These are the same people who claim that Pompe and Zingo Stevens were the same man, so all stones signed by Pompe are credited to Zingo.

Furthermore, the gravestones most often attributed to Zingo Stevens — those belonging to his three wives — are entirely consistent with the work of John Stevens III, the talented son of Zingo’s owner, whose signed and unsigned work is abundantly present in this section of the graveyard. The Phyllis [Lyndon] Stevens stone is a three-quarter effigy of mother and child, carved in John Stevens III’s signature style of lightly-inscribed, detailed portraiture. The Elizabeth Lyndon stone is a good example of his “Phoebe” style, and the lettering is consistent with his signed work.  By all current standards of carver attribution derived from formal analysis, both of these stones are almost certainly the work of John Stevens III.

Compare the Phyllis Stevens stone (1772) to the Pompe Brenton stone (1772), which is signed by John Stevens III:

Phyllis Stevens (1772) (note: This stone is made of poor quality slate and is badly deteriorated):

Pompey Brenton (1772):

Note the similarities: the clouds, the 3/4 portraits, the eye shapes, the light inscision, etc. For other examples of John Stevens III's work, see Alan Ludwig's Graven Images, pgs. 327-8.

Claims that Zingo Stevens carved the stones in God's Little Acre are often accompanied by claims that his carvings exhibited African survivals. Some interpret Phillis' image as wearing "traditional African dress." Others see kente cloth and pectoral necklaces. Others claim that Zingo Stevens was responsible for the "distinctly African features" of some of the portrait stones. Yet, I am not convinced that Zingo Stevens carved any of these stones, especially those specifically signed by John Stevens III. If these motifs are present (some clearly are, others are debatable), what does it mean that John Stevens incorporated them into his work? Remember, he and his Christian colleagues are also responsible for those Hebrew epitaphs in the Touro cemetery.

Compare the Violet Hammond stone (1772)from God's Little Acre to the Sarah Rogers stone (1776) from the white section of the NCBG:

The letter forms are consistent (if more deeply gouged in the latter case), the soul effigies are similar, they both have the same four-petaled flower motif, and, most importantly, both are signed by John Stevens III. Since we know that JSIII was an active carver in this time period, it would take a strong argument with good documentation to overturn the assumption that he was primarily responsible for the carving of these stones. So why do some attribute the Hammond stone to Zingo Stevens?

Of course, a good argument might be made that Zingo Stevens’ unacknowledged work is so integral to the work commonly attributed to his owner’s son that any attribution to John III implicates Zingo, but no one has bothered to do the tedious formal analysis necessary to disentangle “the age-old dilemma of what to attribute to the master when a helper might be at work with him.”  The only attempt at formal analysis has come from Tashjian and Tashjian, who noted in passing that the Phyllis [Lyndon] Stevens effigy seems “stiff and even awkward” in comparison with John III’s other work, indicating that it “may have been carved by someone other than John Stevens III,” though any lack of grace could also be attributed to the unusually poor quality of the slate used for this stone.

Any historian is free to argue that Pompe Stevens and Zingo Stevens are the same man, just as anyone may argue that Zingo Stevens carved the gravestones of his wives and others in God’s Little Acre. Indeed, it is quite possible that he did carve some stones or parts of stones, or that he assisted in shaping, finishing, or erecting the finished products.  However, anyone wishing to make these claims must argue them, rather than presenting them to the unwary reader as established fact. The impulse toward celebrating a reclamation of African identity is understandable, as is the allure of imagining Zingo Stevens as the sole artist behind the most graceful and expensive gravestones dedicated to African Americans in Newport. Yet, in embracing these suppositions uncritically, those who make these two errors substitute a simple, triumphant story of resistance and African survivals for the more problematic tale of collaboration and uneasy intimacy that emerges from the available evidence. Worst of all, by focusing their attention on Zingo and the misattributed stones, they overlook the very real, identifiable, and important work of Pompe Stevens.

Graphing Gravestones

Posting will be intermittent over the next few weeks as I am currently caught in the holiday/end-of-semester vortex and must direct every impulse to write toward strictly productive ends.

I've been reading an excellent study  of God's Little Acre by James C. Garman of Salve Regina University. It's called "Faithful and Loyal Servants: The Masking and Marking of Ethnicity in the Material Culture of Death," and was Garman's M.A. thesis at UMass. One of his analytic techniques is comparing the size of gravestones among several groups over time. I've created a graph using his measurements:

As you can see, in the earliest of the three periods, gravestones for white adults were similar in size, while enslaved adults' stones were about the same size as white children's. In the middle period, African American adults have slightly larger headstones than before, though that may be due to the practice of averaging larger stones for free people with smaller stones erected for slaves. By the final period, black men's gravestones are almost as large as white men's and the ratio of men:women:children is similar among both blacks and whites.

The one piece of data that is still a bit puzzling to me is the lack of growth in black women's stones between the second and the third period. Gravestones increased in size for all groups, but black women saw the least growth (3%) while black men saw the most (36%).

I think this probably has to do with the activities of the Free African Union Society, a mostly male organization which sponsored funerals (and perhaps gravestones) for its members. My main question about this data: What can gravestones tell us about how men and women in Newport might have experienced/expressed/understood freedom differently?

Give Us A Flag

A few months ago, I posted the lyrics of "The Marching Song of the First Arkansas," a song ostensibly written by a white officer serving with the 1st Arkansas USCT. I am of the opinion that the officer, Captain Miller, merely transcribed the lyrics after hearing the soldiers sing the song on the march (argument here).

Today, in honor of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw's 171st birthday, I present a song written by a private serving with Company A of the 54th Massachusetts (my source does not give his name):

Give Us A Flag

Frémont he told them when the war it first begun,

How to save the Union, and the way it should be done;

But Kentucky swore so hard and old Abe he had his fears,

Till every hope was lost but the colored volunteers.

Chorus:

Oh! give us a flag, all free without a slave,

We'll fight to defend it as our fathers did so brave:

The gallant Comp'ny "A" will make the rebels dance;

And we'll stand by the Union if we only have a chance.

McClellan went to Richmond with two hundred thousand brave:

He said, 'keep back the niggers' and the Union he would save.

Little Mac he had his way, still the Union is in tears,

Now they call for the help of the colored volunteers.

Old Jeff says he'll hang us if we dare to meet him armed:

A very big thing, but we are not at all alarmed;

For he first has got to catch us before the way is clear,

And 'that's what's the matter' with the colored volunteer.

So rally, boys, rally, let us never mind the past:

We had a hard road to travel, but our day is coming fast;

For God is for the right, and we have no need to fear:

The Union must be saved by the colored volunteer.

(Some sources add the following verse, but it does not appear in The Negro in the American Rebellion (1867), and I don't have access to the original source, the Boston Transcript. I can't confirm its authenticity at the moment, but I don't doubt that it may be original — poems in 19th century newspapers generally go on at some length.)

Then here is to the 54th, which has been nobly tried,

They were willing, they were ready, with their bayonets by their side,

Colonel Shaw led them on and he had no cause to fear,

About the courage of the colored volunteer.

In Small Things Forgotten

I'm packing up my books this week in preparation for a move next month. In the packing, I came across a book that is near and dear to my heart: In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early America by James Deetz.

I received this book as a high school graduation gift from a family friend who is an archaeologist. At the time, I was planning on studying 19th-century America, and this book was my first nudge toward an earlier era.

In Small Things Forgotten is a light introduction to Deetz' work on the material culture of colonial New England. His historical argument is that colonial Americans forged new vernacular cultures out of Old World traditions and local conditions, but his larger point is that historical archaeology can offer substantial evidence of historical actors' "worldviews."

Deetz opposes the (now somewhat outdated) idea that either migration or transportation across the Atlantic was so traumatic that it erased any Old World cultural survivals. He finds substantial evidence that African-American material culture was substantially different from Anglo-American material culture in ways that cannot be explained by differences in wealth, supporting the idea that enslaved people retained aspects of West African culture well into the 19th century. These difference include a 12-foot rather than a 16-foot standard measurement, traditions of grave decoration, distinctive methods of building construction, and the survival of West African pottery forms. Unlike David Hackett Fischer, Deetz does not argue that colonial Americans transported their traditions wholesale. Rather, he argues for the creation of new vernacular cultures, more like Peter Wood's argument in Black Majority.

I love this book because it has something for everyone. It is written in a casual, accessible style that won't scare off a popular audience. The individual chapters offer primary evidence and gentle arguments in essay formats that are short and useful — perfect for high school or introductory undergrad reading assignments. Professional scholars with a background in material culture might not find much to chew on, but more traditional historians could benefit from an introduction to the possibilities of historical archaeology. All in all, more useful than many more "serious" tomes.

Retouching History

(Images in this post via unless otherwise noted.)

If you are in the mood for a little righteous anger this morning, head over to RetouchingHistory.org, where Jerome Handler and Michael Tuite have documented a disturbing example of how some Confederate sympathizers have used Photoshop to distort documents relating to the service of African-Americans in the Civil War. (Also check out Handler and Tuite's other project, "The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record.")

The above image was widely distributed as a recruitment tool and is based on a photograph of African-American federal troops taken in Philadelphia around 1864:
There are several details that confirm that these are Union soldiers. First, the white officer is clearly dressed in a US Army uniform. Second, several of the soldiers are wearing US belt buckles and eagle breast plates, the former most visible on the sixth private from the left, the latter on the bearded soldier at center-right. Third, they are wearing Union insignia, including company letters and infantry horn insignia, on their forage caps (see the fifth private from the left).

But wait, I thought that Union soldiers wore dark blue. Why are their coats so light?
Behold, the Union military-issue great coat:

Ok, so we've shown pretty conclusively that these are UNION soldiers. But hey, if you crop out the officer, blur the insignia, add some misleading text, you get the first and only photograph of the fabled 1st Louisiana Native Guard, CSA!
After that, make some prints, slap it on a website, and all of your neo-Confederate friends can pat themselves on the back, knowing that the South was always more righteous than the North and the war had nothing to do with slavery.

From the Archives

Well, ok, not really this is not really from "the archives," unless you count Google Books.

In my wanderings, I came across an 1864 book called Songs of the Soldiers that includes the fabulous "Marching Song of the First Arkansas," which the editor attributes to Capt. Lindley Miller. Miller, a white officer, served with the 1st Arkansas U.S.C.T and is said to have written the song, though his comments suggest that he may have transcribed and submitted it rather than authoring it. The editor includes this footnote:

Captain Miller says the "boys" sing the song on dress-parade with an effect which can hardly be described; and he adds that, "while it is not very conservative, it will do to fight with."

While it is possible that Miller wrote the song either alone or in collaboration with some of his comrades, these remarks seem to indicate that he heard his troops singing, thought the song was worth writing down, and sent his version to the editors of the book. If this is indeed the case, I wonder whether there may have been other, even less "conservative," verses that Miller either did not hear or did not transcribe. Oh, to be a fly on that parade ground!

Look past the dialect and see the power, anger, and pride:

Marching Song of the First Arkansas

OH! we're de bully soldiers ob de "First of Arkansas,"
We are fightin' for de Union, we are fightin' for de law,
We can hit a Rebel furder dan a white man eber saw,
As we go marchin' on.

Glory, glory, hallelujah, &c.

See dar! above de center, where de flag is wavin bright,
We are goin' out of slavery; we are bound for Freedom's light,
We mean to show Jeff Davis how de Africans can fight!
As we go marchin' on.

We hab done wid hoein' cotton, we hab done wid hoein' corn,
We are colored Yankee soldiers now, as sure as you are born;
When de massas hear us yellin' dey'll tink its Gabriel's horn,
As we go marchin' on.

Dey will had to pay us wages, de wages ob their sin,
Dey will had to bow their foreheads to their colored kith and kin,
Dey will had to give us house-room, or de roof shall tumble in!
As we go marchin' on.

We heard de proclamation, massa hush it as he will;
De bird he sing it to us, hoppin' on de cotton-hill,
And de possum up de gum tree, he could n't keep it still,
As he went climbing on.

Dey said, "Now colored bredren, you shall be forever free,
From de first ob January, eighteen hundred sixty-three;"
We heard it in de riber goin' rushin' to de sea,
As it went soundin' on.

Father Abraham has spoken, and de message has been sent,
De prison-doors he opened, and out de pris'ners went,
To join de sable army ob de "African descent,"
As we go marchin' on.

Den fall in, colored bredren, you'd better do it soon;
Don't you hear de drum a beatin' de Yankee Doodle tune?
We are wid you now dis mornin', we'll be far away at noon,
As we go marchin' on.

My favorite line is from verse 6: "We heard it in de riber goin' rushin' to de sea." Although this could mean many things, and is, in part, a continuation of the natural imagery in verse 5, I think this line could also be read as referring to the "river" of self-emancipating slaves who heard about the Emancipation Proclamation when they were already part of an unstoppable movement.

What I like best about this song is that is far cleverer than most of the musical dreck that was published during the Civil War. Most of the songs and poems of the period were pretentious, glib schlock, but this song has more than one wry turn of phrase. My favorite is, "Dey will had to pay us wages, de wages ob their sin," which starts out as simple declaration of the privileges of free labor, and then pivots on the synonym and ends Romans 6:23, "For the wages of sin is death." They'll take their money with a side of righteous revenge, thankyouverymuch.

Wordplay aside, the song's imagery is powerful. In verses 5 and 6, the whole world seems to be rejoicing over emancipation. I also like the image of floods of freemen streaming out of prison and straight to the recruitment office.

After finding this, I seemed to remember hearing a recording of this song many years ago. I poked around a little and found an mp3 on iTunes from Sparky and Rhonda Rucker's "The Blue and Gray in Black and White." As soon as I heard it, I recognized it - my parents must have a copy of the cassette somewhere. Check it out - it's worth hearing.

African-American Gravestones of Rhode Island

I love gravestones. I know lots of people do, but it was really gravestones that got me into this whole colonial America/material culture thing.

I grew up in eastern Connecticut, where colonial-era graveyards are a staple of the landscape, and I spent many hours wandering around in them. My mother participated in a project to document all of the graves of Civil War soldiers in our area, and my brothers and I would often spend weekend afternoons searching local churchyards for soldiers and men who were the right age for service. I always found the older stones particularly fascinating. Just writing this makes me want to put aside my paper prospectus, grab my camera, and head out to the nearest boneyard for a joyful afternoon.

Since I cannot justify that at the moment (damn you, homework!), I'll post some photos from Rhode Island. These are from the African-American sections of Newport's Common Burying Ground (Bull), Providence's North Burial Ground (Borden), and a cemetery in Bristol, RI (Burt).

Newport's merchants were rich enough to erect expensive gravestones for their slaves (you'll see the same thing in Marblehead), so the Newport Burying Ground is one of the best places to see funeral art commemorating 18th-century slaves. If you get a chance to visit, the African-American section is at the bottom of the hill near the corner of Van Zandt Ave and the appropriately named Farewell St.

The most interesting of these three stones is Patience Borden's. One can imagine that Borden may have written the epitaph herself, making sure that her identities as a free person, a Christian, and a wealthy, benevolent woman would be remembered by the community. If you are in Providence, you can find Patience Borden's monument (along with those of a few dozen other free and enslaved African-Americans) in the North Burial Ground about 100 ft to the west of the Stephen Hopkins monument.

Photo credits to Robert Emlen, who taught me the value of a well-composed slide.