Those of you who have read my blog Daniel Walker Williams perhaps recall that this ancestor, my second great grandfather, left the Marshall County, Mississippi plantation where he was a slave and traveled with his "wife" and children to Memphis, Tennessee to a contraband camp.
Despite this intense and awesome transition from slavery to freedom, I would have to say that Grandfather Daniel and his family were in the right place at the right time. Leaving Mississippi would allow him to become beneficiary of the goals of several Union leaders--Ulysses S. Grant, John Eaton, Lorenzo Thomas, and Samuel Thomas--both to raise black troops and to develop a class of black landowners.
This post is not about Grandfather Daniel's experiences in Memphis per se. I can only outline broadly his activities. Rather, this post questions what he must have known in order to make the various decisions that resulted in success for his family. Questions include how he and his wife Nancy made the decision to leave Mississippi, what might have been the specifics of their condition and their general mindset, why and how did they manage to take their children with them, what were the early days in the camp like, how proactive were they, what was the nature of Grandfather Daniel's enlistment in the USCT, what were his activities or duties, and why did he choose to stay in Memphis after the war ended?
Sound like a book outline? Certainly. I don't try to answer all of these questions in this one post. Again, what I'm after is how Grandfather and Grandmother Nancy made certain decisions. I want to know, if I possibly can, the degree to which they were acting on faith, on impulse, or from their own critical thoughts. Of course, these questions may seem impossible to answer, but I intend to try to get at them basically by looking at all of the evidence at my disposal. I cannot do this in one post, but I can perhaps do it in several.
So let me begin by saying that my own instinct tells me that the universe brought together two movements, that of the Union Army and that of the slave who aimed to be free. The coming together of these two forces was like a marriage more evenly yoked than anyone may have realized. I'm suggesting that even though slaves who sought Union lines have been described as destitute there were just as many slaves who were able and ready to be free, who in very many ways entered into this "union" with much to offer.
If you've read another recent blog, Register of Freedmen, then you know that I have found these ancestors on a register, probably compiled at President's Island (in Memphis). You know as well that Grandmother Nancy is listed there with four of her children and that Grandfather Daniel is not listed. Grandmother, who provides the surname Williams, reports that the owner of her family is William Hull. Asked her occupation during slavery, she reports "farm."
What I want people to see and what I want to be able to see myself (this is so important as a descendant of Daniel and Nancy) is the slave's agency, first, in going to Memphis and, second, in the answers provided here. For instance, Grandmother, perhaps for the first time in her life, is asked her name! Her whole name, which is to be recorded. Owned by Mr. Hull, she could have taken that as her surname, but she obviously chose not to. To both herself and her children she gives the Williams surname. What does this tell us? Quite a lot, I think.
The choice of this surname tells us that she has chosen for whatever reason to identify with an earlier owner rather than with Mr. Hull. Because we know Grandfather Daniel also to have taken Williams as his last name, we can surmise that he and Grandmother considered themselves to be married. And the fact that they traveled to Memphis together as a family is an indication of their view of marriage and family within the context of slavery. A second fact, that this family seems to be more or less intact, may suggest that in relative terms certainly they are emotionally healthy, able, again, to move into Memphis and take advantage of what may be offered there.*
Through the ages of the children, information also provided on the register, I have dated the year of the record as 1862. It was also in that year that Grant's troops battled over northwest Mississippi, coming right through Marshall County. Arriving in Memphis in this year, this family would have been some of the earliest inhabitants of the camp, which is to say that they would have had a definite hand in building it themselves. I have therefore reasoned that while Grandfather Daniel would not be mustered into the USCT until the following year, his absence from the register indicates that he is already being used by the Department of Freedmen, which would be his assignment on record.
The right place at the right time? Later, I plan to argue that coming to Memphis in November of 1862 probably means that Grandfather Daniel was one of the black men with whom John Eaton wrote that he had to bargain to harvest cotton left in the fields.** And according to Eaton, this early work put more than a little money in the pockets of a select group of freedmen.
At the same time, I do not overlook the fact that in the coming cold the freedmen were yet homeless. Who can imagine what housing was provided a wife and four children and dozens, if not hundreds, of others in the same condition? The sad truth is that Grandmother Nancy did not make it out of the camp. She died there, in what year I am not sure, but she lived long enough to free her children. Afterwards, the children were likely taken care of by other freedmen and women, one of whom, eighteen-year-old Ellen Woods, also appears on the register. After the war, she would become Grandfather Daniel's new wife.
One of the reasons that I'm so interested in describing powers that informed my ancestors' decisions and also powers that brought about the window of opportunity that existed in joining the Union lines is that I feel connected one hundred and fifty years later to what I take to be the same energy that motivated and sustained them. In "Register of Freedmen," I mention for instance that I did not go to the National Archives recently to search for my family's owner or for their inclusion on the register. I wasn't even sure that such a record existed. Yet, time, place, and body came together so easily to bring about my knowlege of its existence. The next thing I knew their names just appeared on a screen before me. When this sort of thing happens--and it happens again and again in genealogical work--one cannot help but be convinced that there is energy in the universe in support of these projects. Well, I am convinced that this same sort of energy spoke to Grandfather and Grandmother, and, who knows, maybe to their children as well, saying, "Get up. Pick up your mat and walk!"
*One child, who would have been about three years old in the presumed year of this register (1862), is missing. His presence at this time remains a mystery.
**John Eaton, Jr. Grant, Lincoln, and the Freedmen, Reminiscences of the Civil War, New York: Longman Green, and Co., 1907.
Despite this intense and awesome transition from slavery to freedom, I would have to say that Grandfather Daniel and his family were in the right place at the right time. Leaving Mississippi would allow him to become beneficiary of the goals of several Union leaders--Ulysses S. Grant, John Eaton, Lorenzo Thomas, and Samuel Thomas--both to raise black troops and to develop a class of black landowners.
This post is not about Grandfather Daniel's experiences in Memphis per se. I can only outline broadly his activities. Rather, this post questions what he must have known in order to make the various decisions that resulted in success for his family. Questions include how he and his wife Nancy made the decision to leave Mississippi, what might have been the specifics of their condition and their general mindset, why and how did they manage to take their children with them, what were the early days in the camp like, how proactive were they, what was the nature of Grandfather Daniel's enlistment in the USCT, what were his activities or duties, and why did he choose to stay in Memphis after the war ended?
Sound like a book outline? Certainly. I don't try to answer all of these questions in this one post. Again, what I'm after is how Grandfather and Grandmother Nancy made certain decisions. I want to know, if I possibly can, the degree to which they were acting on faith, on impulse, or from their own critical thoughts. Of course, these questions may seem impossible to answer, but I intend to try to get at them basically by looking at all of the evidence at my disposal. I cannot do this in one post, but I can perhaps do it in several.
So let me begin by saying that my own instinct tells me that the universe brought together two movements, that of the Union Army and that of the slave who aimed to be free. The coming together of these two forces was like a marriage more evenly yoked than anyone may have realized. I'm suggesting that even though slaves who sought Union lines have been described as destitute there were just as many slaves who were able and ready to be free, who in very many ways entered into this "union" with much to offer.
If you've read another recent blog, Register of Freedmen, then you know that I have found these ancestors on a register, probably compiled at President's Island (in Memphis). You know as well that Grandmother Nancy is listed there with four of her children and that Grandfather Daniel is not listed. Grandmother, who provides the surname Williams, reports that the owner of her family is William Hull. Asked her occupation during slavery, she reports "farm."
What I want people to see and what I want to be able to see myself (this is so important as a descendant of Daniel and Nancy) is the slave's agency, first, in going to Memphis and, second, in the answers provided here. For instance, Grandmother, perhaps for the first time in her life, is asked her name! Her whole name, which is to be recorded. Owned by Mr. Hull, she could have taken that as her surname, but she obviously chose not to. To both herself and her children she gives the Williams surname. What does this tell us? Quite a lot, I think.
The choice of this surname tells us that she has chosen for whatever reason to identify with an earlier owner rather than with Mr. Hull. Because we know Grandfather Daniel also to have taken Williams as his last name, we can surmise that he and Grandmother considered themselves to be married. And the fact that they traveled to Memphis together as a family is an indication of their view of marriage and family within the context of slavery. A second fact, that this family seems to be more or less intact, may suggest that in relative terms certainly they are emotionally healthy, able, again, to move into Memphis and take advantage of what may be offered there.*
Through the ages of the children, information also provided on the register, I have dated the year of the record as 1862. It was also in that year that Grant's troops battled over northwest Mississippi, coming right through Marshall County. Arriving in Memphis in this year, this family would have been some of the earliest inhabitants of the camp, which is to say that they would have had a definite hand in building it themselves. I have therefore reasoned that while Grandfather Daniel would not be mustered into the USCT until the following year, his absence from the register indicates that he is already being used by the Department of Freedmen, which would be his assignment on record.
The right place at the right time? Later, I plan to argue that coming to Memphis in November of 1862 probably means that Grandfather Daniel was one of the black men with whom John Eaton wrote that he had to bargain to harvest cotton left in the fields.** And according to Eaton, this early work put more than a little money in the pockets of a select group of freedmen.
At the same time, I do not overlook the fact that in the coming cold the freedmen were yet homeless. Who can imagine what housing was provided a wife and four children and dozens, if not hundreds, of others in the same condition? The sad truth is that Grandmother Nancy did not make it out of the camp. She died there, in what year I am not sure, but she lived long enough to free her children. Afterwards, the children were likely taken care of by other freedmen and women, one of whom, eighteen-year-old Ellen Woods, also appears on the register. After the war, she would become Grandfather Daniel's new wife.
One of the reasons that I'm so interested in describing powers that informed my ancestors' decisions and also powers that brought about the window of opportunity that existed in joining the Union lines is that I feel connected one hundred and fifty years later to what I take to be the same energy that motivated and sustained them. In "Register of Freedmen," I mention for instance that I did not go to the National Archives recently to search for my family's owner or for their inclusion on the register. I wasn't even sure that such a record existed. Yet, time, place, and body came together so easily to bring about my knowlege of its existence. The next thing I knew their names just appeared on a screen before me. When this sort of thing happens--and it happens again and again in genealogical work--one cannot help but be convinced that there is energy in the universe in support of these projects. Well, I am convinced that this same sort of energy spoke to Grandfather and Grandmother, and, who knows, maybe to their children as well, saying, "Get up. Pick up your mat and walk!"
*One child, who would have been about three years old in the presumed year of this register (1862), is missing. His presence at this time remains a mystery.
**John Eaton, Jr. Grant, Lincoln, and the Freedmen, Reminiscences of the Civil War, New York: Longman Green, and Co., 1907.
