By the Rivers of Water

by Erskine Clarke

  25. Quotation: Georgia Writers Project, Drums and Shadows, 187. For Atlantic Creole, see Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 25–27. For recognition of the similarities between the language of the Gullah and the Pidgin English spoken in a Creole world of West Africa, see JLW to JB, 28 January 1834, CTS; Georgia Writers Project, Drums and Shadows, 123, 127.

  26. Quotations: Charles C. Jones, Jr., Negro Myths from the Georgia Coast, Told in the Vernacular (1888; reprint, Columbia, SC, 1925), 50, 37; Georgia Writers Project, Drums and Shadows, 176. For boatmen’s songs, see Charles Lyell, A Second Visit to North America, vol. 1, 244–245; vol. 2, 1–2; Dena J. Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War (Urbana, IL, 1977), 166–172; Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 591–594. For the purchase of supplies, see Estate of N. S. Bayard, 10 November 1825. For Anansi stories in the wider Atlantic world, see Philip Sherlock and Hazel Bennett, The Story of the Jamaican People (Kingston, 1998), 197. For Buh Rabbit and other Gullah stories, see Jones, Negro Myths.

  27. Quotation: Charles C. Jones, Thirteenth Annual Report of the Association for the Religious Instruction of the Negroes, in Liberty County, Georgia (Savannah, GA, 1848), 22. For Gullah dances, see Georgia Writers Project, Drums and Shadows, 133, 161. For the cultural significance of slave dancing, see Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 581–588, 592–593. Cf. the indigenization of dance forms in the Caribbean, drawing from African and European sources to create a distinct Caribbean dance. See Rex M. Nettleford, Caribbean Cultural Identity, The Case of Jamaica: An Essay in Cultural Dynamics (Kingston, 1979), 27–30.

  28. Quotation: Bell, Major Butler’s Legacy, 151–152.

  29. Georgia Writers Project, Drums and Shadows, 176. For the development of the banjo, See Dena J. Polachek Epstein, “The Folk Banjo: A Documentary History,” Enthnomusicology 19, no. 3 (1975): 347–371; Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 585.

  30. For the reach of the drums’ sound out to the sea islands and back, see Georgia Writers Project, Drums and Shadows, 118.

  31. Quotation: ibid., 160; cf. ibid., 122, 140. For slave use of drums, see Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 582–587.

  32. Quotations: Georgia Writers Project, Drums and Shadows, 146, 131. For slave funerals, see Raboteau, Slave Religion, 71–72, 83–85; Frey and Wood, Come Shouting to Zion, 51–54; David Hurst Thomas, et al., “Rich Man, Poor Men: Observations on Three Antebellum Burials from the Georgia Coast,” American Museum of Natural History, Anthropological Papers 54 (1977): 393–402.

  33. Quotation: Georgia Writers Project, Drums and Shadows, 142. See also pp. 147, 183.

  34. For witches among whites, see Diane Purkiss, The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations (New York, 1996). For the continuing white experience of hags in the Lowcountry, see Chapter 3, note 9. For leopard men, see Chapter 24, note 19. For Gullah witches, see Georgia Writers Project, Drums and Shadows, 124, 179, 139.

  35. Quotation: Georgia Writers Project, Drums and Shadows, 143. For other examples of Gullah charms, see ibid., 132, 155. Cf. “Journal of a Missionary to the Negroes in the State of Georgia,” Charleston Observer, 21 September 1833. See also Theophus H. Smith, Conjuring Culture: Biblical Formations of Black America (New York, 1994), 140–158; Michael Mullin, Africa in America: Slave Acculturation and Resistance in the American South and the British Caribbean, 1736–1831 (Urbana, IL, 1992), 68–92; John Thornton, “On the Trail of Voodoo: African Christianity in Africa and the Americas,”The Americas 44 (1988): 261–278.

  36. A massive anthropological literature seeks to understand or explain witchcraft, conjurers, and magic. A good entry point into the literature is Brian Morris, Religion and Anthropology: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge, UK, 2006). For the story of a slave conjurer in the Georgia Lowcountry, see Erskine Clarke, “They Shun the Scrutiny of White Men: Reports on Religion from the Georgia Lowcountry and West Africa,” in African American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry: The Atlantic World and the Gullah Geechee, ed. Philip Morgan (Athens, GA, 2010), 131–150. For Dr. Joseph Habersham’s visits to the Hutchinson Island settlement, see, for example, Estate of N. S. Bayard, 1 January 1825. The Bayard estate records contain no expenses for medical treatment for those on General’s Island. For root doctors and healing, see S. B. Abbott, The Southern Botanic Physician (Charleston, SC, 1844); Julia F. Morton, Folk Remedies of the Low Country (Miami, FL, 1974); Georgia Writers Project, Drums and Shadows, 147–148; Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 624–629.

  37. See James C. Scott, Domination and the Art of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT, 1990), 142–143, and for slave use of poisons in the Lowcountry, see Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 614–618.

  38. Estate of N. S. Bayard, 21 February 1827.

  39. “Indenture Between the City of Savannah and Nicholas S. Bayard, Doctor,” 6 November 1819, CCR; Georgian (Savannah), 3 June 1822. For the death of Esther Bayard with note on death of her husband, Nicholas S. Bayard, see Georgian (Savannah), 6 June 1822. For the history of malaria in the Lowcountry, see Randall M. Packard, The Making of a Tropical Disease: A Short History of Malaria (Baltimore, 2007), 55–61; Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion (New York, 1974), 87–88; Christian Warren, “Northern Chills, Southern Fevers: Race Specific Mortality in American Cities, 1730–1900,” Journal of Southern History 63, no. 2 (2000): 274–277; H. Roy Meterns and George D. Terry, “Dying in Paradise: Malaria, Mortality, and the Perceptual Environment in Colonial South Carolina,” Journal of Southern History 50, no. 4 (1984): 533–550. For a history of yellow fever epidemics in the nineteenth-century South, see Margaret Humphreys, Yellow Fever and the South (Baltimore, 1999), 5, 45–76. J. R. McNeill has written about the ways in which deforestation on sugar plantations created ideal conditions for mosquitoes, what he calls a “creole ecology.” The same is said of Lowcountry rice plantations. See J. R. McNeill, Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Great Caribbean, 1620–1914 (Cambridge, UK, 2010).

  40. See Estate of N. S. Bayard, 1827–1836. For “Old Adam and Old Toby,” see ibid., 25 January 1832, 10 January 1834. For Charles as a porter, see ibid., 18 January 1826, 15 January 1827. For garden and market, see ibid., 31 October 1825, 16 March 1836, 30 August 1836. For Paul, see ibid., 2 April 1831, 6 April 1831, 24 May 1831, 1 August 1832, 13 June 1833.

  41. For special treatment of Paul, see ibid., 1830–1836.

  42. For Paul’s wife and family, see Paul Sansay to JHBL, 16 January 1839, MSCS; Nicholas Bayard to JHBL, 18 September 1841, MSCS. For slave marriages in Savannah, see Johnson, Black Savannah, 115–118; cf. Wade, Slavery in the Cities, 117–121.

  43. For slave housing patterns, see Wade, Slavery in the Cities, 58–62; Wood, Women’s Work, Men’s Work, 129–131.

  Chapter Two: Many Mansions

  1. For Dr. Nicholas Serle Bayard, see “Died: Nicholas S. Bayard,” Savannah Republican Gazette, 30 October 1821. For a quick view of Bayard connections, see “Bayard Family” in Wikipedia. For an extended description of the family, see A. A. Hodge, The Life of Charles Hodge D.D. LL.D: Professor in the Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ (New York, 1880), esp. 1–19.

  2. For son Nicholas, see “Bayard, Nicholas James,” in The Children of Pride: A True Story of Georgia and the Civil War, ed. Robert Manson Myers (New Haven, 1972), 1462–1463. For Jane Bayard’s birth on Cumberland Island, see Hampden C. DuBose, Memoirs of Rev. John Leighton Wilson, D.D., Missionary to Africa, and Secretary of Foreign Missions (Richmond, VA, 1895), 42–43.

  3. For a brief history of the Independent Presbyterian Church, see “A History of IPC,” n.d., Independent Presbyterian Church, www.ipcsav.org/our-church/a-history-of-ipc/.

  4. Quotation: “Died: Nicholas S. Bayard,” Savannah Republican Gazette, 30 October 1821.

  5. Quotation: “Died,” Georgian (Savannah), 6 June 1822.

  6. For passenger list of the ship Garonne, see “Port of Savannah,” Georgian (Savannah), 4 July 1822.

  7. For Nicholas’s stay with the Hodge family a
nd details of the Hodge/Bayard family, see Hodge, The Life of Charles Hodge, 1–19.

  8. Ibid., 5.

  9. For examples of the close relationship with Bayard cousins, see JLW to JB, 20 July 1833, CTS; JLW to JB, 3 September 1833, CTS; JLW to B. B. Wisner, 2 September 1834, ABCFM.

  10. Estate of N. S. Bayard in account with N. J. Bayard, Administrator, 2 July 1822, 12 February 1824, 11 November 1824, 25 February 1825, 17 June 1825, 7 February 1826, SCCC.

  11. The Bayards were part of the “Old School” Presbyterian tradition and church. See Hodge, The Life of Charles Hodge, 1–19, for examples of the practices of their piety. For the most thorough statement of “Old School” theology, see Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (New York, 1873), vols. 1 and 2. For an introduction to “Old School” Presbyterians and their place in nineteenth-century religious life in the United States, see Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven, CT, 1972), 455–471.

  12. For the understanding of vocation, see Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, 639–723. For the roots of this understanding in Calvinist thought and practice, see Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA, 1989), 211–233. For its place in a Lowcountry slave society, see Erskine Clarke, Our Southern Zion: Calvinism in the South Carolina Low Country (Tuscaloosa, AL, 1996), 165–181; Erskine Clarke, Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic (New Haven, CT, 2005), 82–96, 278–280.

  13. For the role of human agency, see Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, 280–312. See, for comparison, Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, Richard Nice, trans. (Palo Alto, CA, 1990 [1980]), for a sociological approach to the relationship between a person’s social location and personal agency.

  14. Cf. Catherine Beecher, A Treatise on Domestic Economy for the Use of Young Ladies at Home (Boston, 1841); Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, The American Woman’s Home, or Principles of Domestic Science; Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian Homes (New York, 1869). Cf. for women in the South, Michael O’Brien, Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810–1860 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2004), 253–284.

  15. For the complex relationship between domesticity and women’s involvement in US Protestant missions, see Jane Hunter, “Women’s Mission in Historical Perspective: American Identity and Christian Internationalism,” in Competing Kingdoms: Women, Mission, Nation, and the American Protestant Empire, 1812–1960, ed. Barbara Reeves-Ellington, Kathryn Kish Sklar, and Connie A. Shemo (Durham, NC, 2010), 19–42.

  16. Estate of N. S. Bayard, 7 February 1826, 1 February 1830.

  17. Ibid., 1827–1832.

  18. For their growing questions about slavery, see JLW to JB, 24 October 1834, CTS; JLW to JB, 20 October 1834, CTS.

  19. Estate of N. S. Bayard, 1826–1833, passim.

  20. Quotation: Ernest Trice Thompson, Presbyterians in the South, vol. 1 (Richmond, VA, 1963), 429.

  21. “Centennial of the Independent Presbyterian Church, Savannah, Georgia,” Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society 10, no. 3 (1919): 126–130.

  22. For the words of the hymn, see “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains,” n.d., NetHymnal, www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/f/r/fromgrim.htm. For Lowell Mason, see Carol A. Pemberton, “Lowell Mason,” in American National Biography, eds. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York, 1999), vol. 14, 656–657.

  23. For Eliza Clay and Clay family, see “Clay, Eliza Caroline,” in Myers, ed. The Children of Pride, 1491.

  24. Carolyn Clay Swiggart, Shades of Gray: The Clay and McAllister Families of Bryan County, Georgia During the Plantation Years (Darien, CT, 1999), 1–33. For Clay involvement in the religious instruction of their slaves, see Thomas S. Clay, “Detail of a Plan for the Moral Improvement of Negroes on Plantations. Read Before the Georgia Presbytery. [Continued],” Charleston Observer, 2 February 1834. For the opposition to the Clay efforts, see Lacy K. Ford, Deliver Us from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South (Oxford, 2009), 463–470.

  25. For JB’s regular visits to Fair Hope, see JLW to JB, 21 June 1833, CTS.

  26. For Fair Hope plantation and the route from Darien to Fair Hope, see Buddy Sullivan, Early Days on the Georgia Tidewater: The Story of McIntosh County and Sapelo (Darien, GA, 2001), esp. 34–36, 257–258.

  27. For the slave population at Fair Hope and its surroundings, see ibid., 242. For the widespread use of carriages by whites in the Lowcountry, see Clarke, Dwelling Place, esp. 174–175, 216, 272–273. For the use of carriages generally, see The Museums at Stony Brook, 19th Century American Carriages: Their Manufacture, Decoration and Use (Stony Brook, NY, 1987), 34–65.

  28. For JB’s growing concern for the emancipation of her slaves, see JLW to JB, 29 January 1833, CTS; JLW to JB, 24 October 1833, CTS; Records of Superior Court, Chatham County, Georgia, 5 October 1838, Record Book 2W-2, SCCC. For JB’s heart being “fixed upon that injured and neglected people” of Africa, see JLW to JB, 29 December 1833, CTS.

  29. For JB at Fair Hope, see JLW to JB, 21 June 1833, CTS. For the landscape, see Charles Lyell, A Second Visit to North America, vol. 1 (London, 1849), 307–351. See William Bartram, Travel Through North and South Carolina, East and West Florida (New York, 1988 [1791]), 36–40, for descriptions of flora and fauna and for Bartram’s visit to a McIntosh plantation. For a map showing details of the immediate landscape around Fair Hope, see Sullivan, Early Days on the Georgia Tidewater, 722.

  30. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People, 422–424; Andrew F. Walls, “The American Dimension in the History of the Missionary Movement,” in Earthen Vessels: American Evangelicals and Foreign Missions, eds. Joel A. Carpenter and Wilbert R. Shenk (Grand Rapids, MI, 1990), 1–25.

  31. DuBose, Memoirs, 43. For Protestant mission societies not accepting single women in the early years of the mission movement, see Elizabeth E. Prevost, The Communion of Women: Missions and Gender in Colonial Africa and the British Metropole (Oxford, 2010), 1–27; Deborah Kirkwood, “Protestant Missionary Women: Wives and Spinsters,” in Women and Missions, Past and Present: Anthropological and Historical Perceptions, eds. Fiona Bowie, Deborah Kirkwood, and Shirley Ardener (Providence, RI, 1993), 23–42.

  32. Quotation: Georgia Writers Project, Savannah Unit, Works Projects Administration, [Mary Granger], Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies Among the Georgia Coastal Negroes (Savannah, GA, 1940), 176. For a word about the Bayard sisters seeking husbands in order to become missionaries, see JLW to SSW, 27 October 1832, CTS.

  Chapter Three: A Black River Home

  1. Hampden C. DuBose, Memoirs of Rev. John Leighton Wilson, D.D., Missionary to Africa and Secretary of Foreign Missions (Richmond, VA, 1895), 14–15. For Major John James, see George Howe, History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina (Columbia, SC, 1870), vol. 1, 407–409; Steven D. Smith, “John James,” in The South Carolina Encyclopedia, ed. Walter Edgar (Columbia, SC, 2006), 493. For Francis Marion, see Robert Bass, Swamp Fox: The Life and Campaigns of General Francis Marion (New York, 1959).

  2. For a vivid account of the first settlement, see excerpts from the diary of Robert Witherspoon found in Howe, History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina, vol. 1, 213–214. For the settlement, see Alexander Hewat, An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Colonies of South Carolina and Georgia (London, 1779), vol. 2, 63–64. For the historic character of the Black River, see Mary Crockett and Elise Schmidt, “Black River Eligibility Study for the South Carolina Scenic Rivers Program,” June 2001, South Carolina Department of Natural Resources. Mary Crockett of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources accompanied the author and Leon Carroll during a day’s float of the river on 12 May 2011, providing an account of the river’s social and natural history.

  3. James A. Wallace, “Historical Discourse, 1856,” in W. J. Cooper, History of Williamsburg Church (Kingstree, SC, 1981), 12–24; Howe, History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina, vol. 2, 250–251; James F
. Cooper, History of the Indiantown Presbyterian Church, 1757–1957 (n.p., 1957). The Indiantown congregation was on Black Mingo Creek, often called the Northern Branch of the Black River.

  4. DuBose, Memoirs, 11. For a picture of the Wilson house, see bulletin, “Centenary Exercises: John Leighton Wilson,” Mount Zion Church, March 24–25, 1909, CTS.

  5. Wilson “Births” and “Marriages” in Wilson Family Bible, CTS. See also Session Records and Deacons’ Book, MZPC; Hugh R. Murchison, “John Leighton Wilson,” 2, CTS; Jerry Fox Law, A History of Mt. Zion Presbyterian Church, 1809–2009, St. Charles, South Carolina (n.p., 2009), passim.

  6. For expansion of Wilson lands, see County Record D 127, 9 February 1812; EE 341, 1 September 1819; F 561, 6 March 1821, SCSC; and Last Will and Testament of William Wilson, Will Records 1 A, 13 May 1850, PCSC.

  7. For Wilson slaves, see Last Will and Testament of William Wilson. In 1844, after making gifts of slaves to his various children, William Wilson had thirty-six slaves, and his single daughter, Sarah, had twenty-six, all living at Pine Grove. See “Mt. Zion Church Bond for the Year 1844,” Deacons Book, MZPC. The Mt. Zion congregation had the unusual practice of taxing members according to the number of slaves they owned rather than through pew rents.