I have a very loose writing routine that is becoming more and more refined. If I am able to get out of the bed by 3 AM or 4 AM, I write. More recently I journal in my notebook first. I keep my writing journal handy, it comes with me everywhere I go because there are moments when inspiration hits and it is a small flame that most be protected, and kept burning. I journal ideas, musings, and random facts. Inspiration and motivation can be fleeting. It can be as sudden as an ignited flame and then instantly it is smothered by distraction or some other convention of every day life.
Since I work a full time job the early mornings is the best time for me because my mind is less cluttered and clouded by conversations, emails, and other peoples problems that seem to swirl in my mind at the end of a work day. It is the best time for me to concentrate because it is quiet and everyone is sleep. No demands on my time, my time is my time to do with what I choose. After I journal I work on the book, or another project idea, or a post for my blog. I usually reserve research for the weekend. I read everyday. Audible and Libby are Godsends. They allow me to listen to books in the car during my commute to work and home. I try to make it to the library at least once or twice a month for my writing group, and/or a writing craft workshop. There is a wonderful county library near where I live that has a writing center, with a resident book whisperer you can schedule time with, reserve a private room, or attend a writing workshop. It is the William N. Skirball Writers’ Center at the South Euclid-Lyndhurst Branch.
I have to admit I do get stuck in my writing. I don’t see it as writer’s block but more like I don’t know what the next move is. I usually find my way through by studying the writings of other authors, or exploring the craft of writing through writing exercise and prompts. This can sometimes feel like an exercise in futility but it is necessary. Consider it writing CrossFit or writing calisthenics (wasn’t sure how to spell that–thank goodness for spellcheck and Google). I am currently part of an author study group that was offered by Literary Cleveland, a nonprofit organization and creative writing center that I joined this past year. Backwoods and Bloodlines: The Novels of Jesmyn Ward, facilitated by instructor Dr. Brenda Smith, has provided me a space to discuss craft with other writers and book lovers. The benefits of author study groups is it is an inexpensive way to study the craft of writing without paying for a MFA degree in creative writing.
I used to write in isolation. For years I would write and that was it. I wasn’t sharing my writing or gleaming wisdom from other writers. Isolation is part of the process but it shouldn’t be the entire process. Find a local writing group and community, you will need the support. My writing group meets once a month at the library and our facilitator, Jason Harris, provides us with these amazing writing prompts. There are so many creative ways to get the creative juices flowing. The last few months I have been exploring creative nonfiction writing. A Crash Course in the Lyric Essay by Randon Billings Noble was one of the writing prompts we used for one of our Saturday writing group sessions. Writing groups can also hold you accountable and committed to a regular writing routine.
Finally, on those mornings early in the AM, before the birds are chirping, and the sun as yet to emerge from the horizon, when I am the most fruitful, and my voice comes through with bell ringing clarity, and I have a lead–a most wonderful creative idea, I am inspired, and hopeful that I can finish this damn thing, or at least be a better writer.
Claudia Rankine is a Jamaican born, award winning poet author, and essayist. She writes about race in a way that illuminates what it feels like to exist in Black skin against the backdrop of White America. She is a master surgical physician with words, cutting through flesh, muscle, down to the bone–making visible the trauma caused by systemic racism.
In her 2014 book Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine explores systemic racial injustices that can sometimes be elusive and subtle, or violent and intrusive to Black bodies through poems, essays, photographs, and art. Rankin describes these everyday microaggressions and violent acts of hatred through shared histories and experiences, collected stories, and personal encounters. She gives us words to help navigate the complicated terrain of systemic racism in the United States and better understand how it takes shelter in Black and White bodies.
I could find my own thoughts in her words and stories, as a Black woman working in the field of education, the many microaggressions, slights, and dismissals I had experienced over the years had taken a toll on my sense of being in the world. These experiences I put away and left unaddressed in order to continue on. I swallowed all the rage until it became part of me, digested it until it was released as a palpable sigh. I continued to repeat the same cycle, starting over and over again, when every place is the same place. Citizen: An American Lyric asks us to reflect honestly on the historical record and consider what America is and what it means to be a citizen. It asks us to tale personal accountability for the type of world we want to belong in.
At our last meeting I promised I would share the list of creative nonfiction writers I learned about during my Creative Nonfiction Workshop: Using A Whole Body Approach in Crafting Personal Narratives with Athena Dixon. So, as promised here is the list.
How to Sit: A Memoir in Stories and Essays by Tyrese Coleman teases with the lines of fiction and nonfiction while telling the story about a young woman’s grief, identity, and transition into womanhood.
People I’ve Met From the Internet by Steven Van Dyck takes the form of a very long annotated list, exploring Dyck’s coming of age as a queer man during the growing popularity of internet chatrooms in the late 90’s.
My Body is A Book of Rules by Elissa Washuta is a memoir about a young woman grappling with mental illness and sexual assault.
The Big Book of the Dead by Marion Winik provides a portraiture of death through short vignettes that describe the dead in chronological order and remembrances.
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn is a memoir about Flynn’s chance encounter meeting his father for the first time at a homeless shelter, where he worked as a caseworker.
Everything’s Trash, But It’s Okay by Phoebe Robinson delves into a cultural critique of overwork culture, body image, and contemporary feminism through personal anecdotes and humor.
Negative Space by Lilly Dancyger uses essays and the art work of her late father to explore her own memory and grief as a young adolescent girl.
Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski is an informative guide on how to improve your sex life.
Why Wakonda Matters by Sheena C. Howard features a collection of essays that analyzes the film Black Panther through the lens of modern psychology, and its cultural impact on the Black community.
When Chicken Heads Come Home to Roost by Joan Morgan. Morgan coined the term, Hip Hop feminism in 1999 when the book was released. The book juxtaposes the contemporary Black female identity against the cross over of Hip Hop into mainstream culture.
Sincerely,
Shannise Jackson, Writer in Progress
PS: I have only finished two of the books from the list, but took the time to look up summaries and provide you with a synopsis of each book.
Hannah Crafts, The Bondwoman’s Narrative is the earliest known novel by an African American woman who was a slave. Crafts true identity was hidden from the public primarily because of the time period in which it was written, and also because of the circumstances surrounding Crafts ability to be able to compose her own narrative and because she was a runaway slave. Hannah Crafts book, The Bondwoman’s Narrative is a personal introspection dressed in prose, prose that reveals an intelligence and cleverness never thought to be embodied by a slave woman. Crafts exposes the immoral and horrific nature of slave handlers and traders, purchasers, and all those who benefitted from the selling and purchasing of Black bodies.
Photo of Harriet Adams Wilson, Wikipedia
Harriet Adams Wilson’s, Our Nig is an autobiographical account of a free Black woman who was abandoned by her white mother at the age of six to indentured servitude to a white family in the 1830’s. Until the discovery of Hannah Crafts, The Bondwoman’s Narrative, Wilson’s Our Nig was considered the first published novel by a Black woman.
Families in Tent City in Fayette County, TN, ca. 1960 Courtesy Special Collections, University of Memphis Libraries, Fair use image
My great grandmother, Frances, was living with family during this time. According to Social Security records her last known residence was in Oakland, Tennessee, a small town in Fayette County, just 14 miles south of the farm she lived on with her husband and children, and about 15 miles east of Tent City. She lived long enough to see the Civil Rights Movement in Fayette County in 1960, when 1400 hundred Blacks registered to vote in segregated county. J. F. Estes, a lawyer from Memphis, John McFerran, and Harpman Jameson went to Washington D.C. to persuade the Justice Department to intervene on behalf of the sharecroppers in Fayette County who were being targeted because they registered to vote.
Three years prior the 1957 Civil Rights Act was passed, prohibiting the use of intimidation, and interfering with a person’s right to vote. In 1958 Harpman Jameson and John McFerran founded the Fayette County Civic and Welfare League to help promote civil, economic, and political progress for Black residents of Fayette County. By this time most of Francis’s grandchildren had moved north to escape the oppressive conditions of the south. She remained with her four surviving children and their families. I can imagine this time in our history was a frightening and exciting time for her to witness, especially since she was almost 100 years old. It is almost like she stuck around to see what the young folks were up to.
White landowners evicted sharecropping families from their homes because they had registered to vote. Shepherd Towles, a black landowner allowed the evicted black sharecroppers to set up tents on his land. They called it Tent City and Freedom’s Village. It housed over 200 hundred families. These families were being blacklisted from purchasing goods and food during the Civil Rights Movement in retaliation for trying to register to vote. White supremacist groups like the Klu Klux Klan and White Citizens Council terrorized blacks in Fayette County. Families lived in Tent City for almost three years in sub par conditions. Robert Hamburger, author Our Portion of Hell, documents the struggle for civil rights through oral history by interviewing and tape recording the stories of the McFerrans, the Jamesons, and other sharecropping families.
John McFerren recounts events surrounding the struggle for the right to vote in Our Portion of Hell. McFerren, Estes, and Harpman brought a law suit against the Democratic Party. They traveled to Washington D.C. and met with the Attorney’s General Office. The landowners were indicted but this was only the beginning of Fayette County’s voting rights struggle. An editorial was written in the Fayette Falcon, threatening the eviction of a thousand black families (Hamburger, 2022, p. 17).
The Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change at the University of Memphis tells the story of Fayette County’s struggle for the right to vote through the exhibit, Uplift the Vote. The exhibit showcases the testimonies of local civil rights leaders and activists like John and Viola McFerran, who share how they overcame social, political and economic oppression in Fayette County during the Civil Rights Movement of the 60’s. Mary Williams a local sharecropper remembers her family’s first night sleeping in Tent City. She says it was early winter and the ground had begun to freeze and they had to put cardboard down but when the ground thawed the cardboard became wet and muddy. She says it took days to dry.
She passed away April 4, 1968, just a month after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. She had witnessed the murder of her youngest son, Weldon Boyland, and her husband, Jim Boyland’s imprisonment and death in the Western State Insane Asylum. My guess is it was about the land. The land that was rightfully inherited by a mulatto heir. She birthed thirteen children into this world, outlived most of them, watched her grandchildren flee northward in hope of a better life. She witnessed victories like the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. I want to imagine that she heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s. last speech at Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. His last speech was broadcasted on all three major networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC). That she saw the future and her immortality through the generations that had come after her.
I’ve Been to The Mountain Top was the title of Dr. King’s last speech before his assassination. In 2024 this speech hits different than when I heard it before. It resonates with not only the humanity and morality of the United States being called into question but the global community as well. It is prophetic and King’s call to urgency somehow still is a sounding alarm almost 60 years later.
This holiday season my writing and research as led me to an exploration of slave narratives from the Federal Writer’s Project, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Documenting the American South, and listening to The Bondwoman’s Narrative by Hannah Crafts, and Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig on Audible. Call it serendipitous if you will, but the descriptions of the Christmas Holiday season has been a reoccurring theme through out my exploration of these narratives. I also have made personal connections to my own family history, through a discovery of a marriage license of my third great grandparents, who were married on Christmas Day in 1879. The importance of these narratives provides me with purpose and deference for those who came before me.
The Federal Writer’s Project
The Library of Congress has archived and made digitally available the Works Progress Administration Writing Project. The interview of former slaves was one of these writing projects. Hundreds of former slave were interviewed. The interviews were recorded and then transcribed. I recently read through some of these interviews and I learned so much about our ancestors. The narratives and stories gave me great insight into what they were thinking, how they felt, and how they survived one of the greatest crimes against humanity with creativity, resilience, and faith.
In one of its most famous projects, Federal Project Number One, the WPA employed musicians, artists, writers, actors and directors in arts, drama, media, and literacy projects.[1] The five projects dedicated to these were the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP), the Historical Records Survey (HRS), the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), the Federal Music Project (FMP), and the Federal Art Project (FAP). In the Historical Records Survey, for instance, many former slaves in the South were interviewed; these documents are of immense importance to American history. Theater and music groups toured throughout the United States and gave more than 225,000 performances. Archaeological investigations under the WPA were influential in the rediscovery of pre-Columbian Native American cultures, and the development of professional archaeology in the US.
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration (WPA). At the conclusion of the Slave Narrative project, a set of edited transcripts was assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. In 2000-2001, with major support from the Citigroup Foundation, the Library digitized the narratives from the microfilm edition and scanned from the originals 500 photographs, including more than 200 that had never been microfilmed or made publicly available. This online collection is a joint presentation of the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs divisions of the Library of Congress.
Milly Henry Tells Her Story
It was during my research of my family’s genealogy that I discovered Volume 11, North Carolina of the Federal Writer’s Project: Slave Narrative. The earliest documented ancestors I have found were either born slaves in North Carolina or lived there as planters. One of the first slave narratives I read was an interview with Milly Henry. Her story was significant to my family’s history as slaves. Milly Henry was a slave of Buck Boylan, who was the youngest son of William Montford Boylan. William Boylan and several of his sons were considered large slave holders with Boylan owning more than one hundred slaves. Milly Henry’s interview discloses the temperament of slave holders during the height of the Civil War. It also is historical documentation of the Boylan’s in Mississippi and North Carolina.
(1936) Federal Writers’ Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 11, North Carolina, Part 1, Adams-Hunter.[Manuscript/Mixed Material] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/mesn111/.
One of My Earliest Documented Ancestors
I cannot speak to the accuracy of Milly Henry’s account of that day but I try to imagine it. Five hundred slaves were forced to migrate from Mississippi to North Carolina by horse and carriage, and by foot. Even the birds of the air, governed by only nature and God, are free to migrate from north to south. Milly’s only family, her grandmother, is left behind to die. July Boyland, the mother of my third great grandfather was also documented as the property of the Boylan family . Weldon E. Boylan had already inherited July and her family a decade before the Civil War in Fayette County, Tennessee. July Boyland made her journey from North Carolina to Tennessee with one of William Montford Boylan’s two sons, Alexander McCulloch Boylan and James Boylan somewhere around the 1830’s. They would remain in Tennessee during the Civil War. I wonder if July like Milly, had to leave family behind because it wasn’t profitable for their enslaver to take them. I wonder where I would be, what dreams were deferred, what psychological and physical trauma would have been avoided if ancestors were free to build a family, a life, and to pursue happiness; if not for the legacy of slavery and white supremacy.
So many stories untold and lives thrown and tossed about like a bag of yield from a crop. Milly goes on to tell her story. In her recollection of this memory she says they reach North Carolina and would remain there working on the Crabtree Plantation for a year before North Carolina surrenders. She hears news from another slave from Mississippi that her grandmother had died. Milly would live to see her own liberation but her grandmother would die a slave.
Christmas and the Birth of Baby Jesus, A Time of Celebration and Liberation
The Slave Narratives give many insights into how they celebrated life, what they ate, the clothing they had, and how they chose to survive. I found several recurring themes throughout many of the narratives. These themes were Christmas and the Civil War. As I celebrate this Holiday Season and in remembrance of my ancestors I dedicate this post to Jim and Francis Boyland.
Fayette County, Tennessee, Marriage Certificate for Jim Boyland and Francis Coe.
Christmas was one of the few days many slaves did not have to work. They would use the opportunity to create their own celebrations and meaning out of the holiday. If the slaves were rewarded for their obedience they would receive candy, clothes, gifts, food, liquor, and be allowed to marry. This day was also a day used for escape. Since they didn’t have to report to work during this time and slave owners were preoccupied with their own celebrations, Christmas was an opportune time to escape.
The excerpt from Documenting the American Southdiscusses the significance of the Christmas holiday to the slave experience. It describes traditions like how slaves and children would capture individuals and hold them until they showered them with gifts. There is one account where a slaved saved enough money to purchase their freedom from these very gifts given on Christmas day. The use of Christmas as an opportunity to escape was also connected to Harriet Tubman’s rescue of her own family. Christmas represented physical and spiritual freedom and slaves drew inspiration from the story of the birth and life of Christ, as well as hope for a better future. Several historical accounts are provided to illustrate these points in the excerpt.
As We Close Out 2023 and the Last Day of Kwanzaa
As we close out the year and the last day of Kwanzaa let us collectively remember the self determination of our ancestors and that despite the circumstances in which they came to this country they found purpose and the will to survive. The Federal Writer’s Project and Documenting the American South provides access to the public to explore the history of slavery in the United States through first person accounts. Take some time to explore these stories and share your own family’s story.
The Buncombe Turnpike through North Carolina’s mountains was built between 1824 and 1828 along the Drover’s road. Image courtesy of the Madison County 4H GeoTech Club, 2007
From North Carolina to Tennessee
In 1818 William Montfort Boylan Sr. purchased Wakefield Plantation. According to the National Registry of Historical Places, William Boylan senior also owned plantations in neighboring Chatham and Johnston County. My fourth great grandmother July probably trekked through the Buncombe Turnpike, constructed in 1824, or the Coffle Routes led by Armfield and Waller. Either way she was among some one hundred thousand slaves who were forced to migrate in one of the largest and profitable domestic slave trading routes.
The Buncombe Turnpike was a 75-mile route from the South Carolina and North Carolina border, through the Blue Ridge Mountains, and into Tennessee. July Boyland and one of the Boylan heirs, more than likely Alexander McCulloch (1804-1834), would continue on into Tennessee, moving towards western Tennessee and settling in Fayette County where he would eventually die on October 1, 1834. The journey more than likely happened between the years of 1824-1834. Interestingly enough, Alexander McCulloch Boylan’s son, Willie Boylan would precede him in death one month prior on September 1, 1834. Willie Boylan (1829-1834) was only five years old when he died. July presence in Western Tennessee is documented on a probate court record for the County Court of Fayette County, Tennessee in April of 1854. Alexander McCulloch Boylan death is also documented in Fayette County, Tennessee on a grave stone in October of 1834, twenty years prior to the probate court record. The probate court document also lists Alexander Boylan as the father of W.E. Boylan and A.P. Boylan.
Probate Court Deed, Court of Fayette County, Tennessee 1854
Slavery’s Trail of Tears
Domestic slave trade is often overlooked. The transportation of slaves from the tobacco south to the cotton south was a lucrative business for firms like Franklin and Armfeld. Edward Ball, lecturer at Yale University and author of the book Slaves in the Family (1998), writes about the largest migration of people in North America. His article, Retracing Slavery’s Trail of Tears was published in the Smithsonian Magazine in 2015. Ball discovered a note while researching some old letters at the Library of North Carolina. The note was written by James Franklin, a slave dealer from Virginia, explaining how much it would cost to move several hundred enslaved men, women, and children from Virginia to Mississippi. The journey would take about three months in the summer heat. Ball retraces Franklin and Armfield’s route.
Illustrated map by Laszlo Kubinyi. Map sources: Digital Scholarship Lab, University of Richmond; Edward Ball; Guilbert Gates; Dacus Thompson; Sonya Maynard
“This forced resettlement was 20 times larger than Andrew Jackson’s “Indian removal” campaigns of the 1830s, which gave rise to the original Trail of Tears as it drove tribes of Native Americans out of Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama. It was bigger than the immigration of Jews into the United States during the 19th century, when some 500,000 arrived from Russia and Eastern Europe. It was bigger than the wagon-train migration to the West, beloved of American lore. This movement lasted longer and grabbed up more people than any other migration in North America before 1900 (Ball, 2015).” The Coffle Routes covered about 20 miles a day, about 1800 miles total.
The threat of being sold down river to work in the deep south was used to keep slaves in line. July Boyland could have been taken from North Carolina and purchased by the Boylan’s in Tennessee or she was given to Boylan’s sons, Alexander and James to help spread their enterprise in Western Tennessee. In 1861 William Montfort Boylan finalized his last will and testament, which details slaves and money to purchase land in Tennessee to be given to Weldon E. Boylan and Alexander P. Boylan, his grandsons. July Boylan is not mentioned but Maw Abraham, Susan and her children and grandchildren (who were already in Tennessee), and all the slaves on his Johnston Plantation. These same names are also listed on the 1854 Fayette County probate court deed for W.E. Boylan and Alexander Boylan.
W.E. Boylan and A.P. Boylan were listed as orphans and the children of late Alexander McCulloch Boylan on the same 1854 probate court deed. Just four years earlier in an 1850 census record taken in Memphis, Tennessee, 19-year old W.E. Boylan is listed with a Pleasant Boylan, whom I believe to be A.P. Boylan. This would make Weldon Boylan’s birth year around 1831. He is mentioned on multiple records as either Weldon Boylan or WE Boylan. A University of North Carolina list of graduates, places Weldon E. Boylan, graduating class of 1854 along with his father, Alexander McCulloch Boylan, several uncles and cousins.
William Montfort Boylan 1777-1861
William Montfort Boylan was a prominent newspaper publisher and planter in Raleigh, North Carolina. The political upheaval caused by the Revolutionary and Civil War would have a lasting impression on my family’s history and the wealth and legacy of the Boylan family. Southern planter is another name for an enslaver. Southern planters maintained cultural practices of the British nobility and obtained their wealth by enslaving the descendants of Africa to toil the land where they planted cash crops like cotton, tobacco, rice and sugar for free. It was another form of a caste system that separated society based on race, social standing, land ownership, and wealth. In 1796 William Boylan would make his way to North Carolina from New Jersey to run his uncle’s newspaper, the North Carolina Minerva. During the early 1800’s Boylan would divest himself from the newspaper publishing business and establish himself among the Southern Planter class.
He would acquire several plantations in Wake County, Johnston County and Yazoo, Mississippi. Slave deeds provided by the North Carolina Registers of Deeds have records of the purchase of human property that undoubtedly provided the free labor that maintained his plantations and made them profitable for William Boylan and his heirs. They are documented as being one of many large slaveholders because they owned over one hundred slaves. For the past year I have been trying to place my ancestors and the Boylan family in the same place at the same time and verify them through documents. Well, I found proof I have documents. I just knocked down a major brick wall in black family ancestry. Alexander Boylan owned land and slaves in Fayette County, Tennessee, he lived and raised a family there, died and was buried there. A probate court record was filed in Fayette County, Tennessee in 1854. Alexander McCulloch Boylan, one of the eleven children by William Montfort Boylan and Elizabeth Stokes McCulloch Boylan of North Carolina, had died and left a will leaving his land and property (slaves) to his two sons, W.E. Boylan and A. P. Boylan. Alexander McCullough Boylan was born in 1804 and died in 1834. His sons were minors at the time and would not receive their inheritance until 1854, almost twenty years later.
The sons of Alexander Boylan would inherit a little over 1400 acres of land and 63 slaves, ranging from ages 2 to 57. Weldon Boylan was just twenty-three years old when he received his inheritance that included owning the bodies and lives of my ancestors. July, Millie, and Sally, are listed in Alexander’s last will and testament. I now know that July Boylan was probably Jim Boylan’s grandmother and that Sally Boylan was his mother. Millie and Sally were probably sisters. Federal Slave Census records were taken in 1850 and 1860, they did not list the name of slaves. The only other way to locate a list of slaves by names is in wills, the trick is being able to locate a will in a county probate court. Most county court documents from the 1800’s do not have an archived digital copy. It is a miracle that I was able to find one that connected directly to my ancestors.
July Boyland 1790-Unknown
July trekked about 1800 miles from North Carolina to Western Tennessee, either by the coffle routes or the main routes by land and sea. She may have traveled over land through the Blue Ridge Mountains, or traveled North through Kentucky and down the Ohio River. A few years back I visited the Blue Ridge Mountains with my mother and daughter.
Shannise Jackson, Blue Ridge Mountains Parkway
A dear friend took us on a hike to the Skinny Dip Falls, located on Mount Pisgah. Mount Pisgah located within the Blue Ridge and Smokey Mountains is about 5700 hundred feet above sea level, and expands across the borders of Buncombe and Haywood County. I always found the Blue Ridge Mountains alluring and finally I was going to step foot on that mountain. We hiked half a mile uphill and then descended down to a beautiful waterfall. My friend told me the water had healing qualities because it came from the core of the mountain, traveling over igneous, ancient metamorphic rocks. People would make the trek just to carry bottles of it back home. It was in the dead heat of summer but the water was almost freezing cold. I had relocated to Charlotte, North Carolina back in 2006, and for ten years I would drive back and forth between North Carolina and Ohio to visit family, looking at the haze of blue and green that dominated my view. . At the time I had no idea my ancestors ever lived in North Carolina until I started researching their history. I don’t no for sure which route July may have taken but I cannot deny that there was something divine about my journey. A year after we visited Skinny Dip Falls, Tropical Storm Fred flooded the area and washed out the pool of water we had dipped in.
Alexander and James Boylan were both buried at Somerville Cemetery in Somerville, Tennessee in Fayette County. Alexander McCulloch Boylan (1804-1834) may have passed away soon after settling into Tennessee and his brother James would be buried in the same cemetery eight years later. Scores of Boylands are documented as being in Fayette County as early as 1834 up until now.
July Boylan’s name is not just a name it is an omen, a prayer and prophecy of poetic justice and restoration. July is the seventh month in the calendar. The number seven also has great mythical, mystical and biblical significance. It is hell fire and brimstone, and full of beauty as well as fury. She birthed four generations of July babies into the universe. Freda Boyland, July 27, 1889; Ethel Bumpas, July 8, 1914; Stanley Jackson, July 10, 1952; Shannise Jackson, July 14, 1973. She scorched the earth behind her and crossed over into Jordan. The work of unearthing the stories of our ancestors is divine work.
I envisioned her in my mind as this mysterious woman, maybe a griot or a medicine woman. I dreamed about her and I saw magic, invisible but eminent. She was standing within a thicket of cotton, her eyes looking ahead through time, searching for remnants of herself, wrapped inside Freda—Ethel—Annie—Rose—and me. She was the color of black gum bark and the ocean, whose roots ran deep, connecting this land to the land that was before the great voyage. In her I saw Africa-Senegal-the Congo.
Behind her eyes was a great secret, things unspeakable but only known by holy beings. The Good Book says, Honor your mother and father, so that your days maybe long. Was she honorable? I think she was; but honor is not something we categorize and label, as if we knew the great secrets she carried. I think she was a traveler like my mother. The journey of living between light and shadows, for as long as you can, deserves honoring.
I see her sitting on the porch, just after a fresh summer rain, and right before the sun takes a final bow. She puts a little bit of chewing tobacco in her mouth, sips on her splash of Tennessee Whiskey. She was a Baptist or at least her funeral was held at the Pleasant Grove Baptist Church. Most folks were Baptist in the South. I don’t profess to know if she was religious; but I won’t measure a person’s faith or lack of by how often they went to church. I do believe she was a person of great faith; she would have to be to survive on this earth for over one hundred years. I don’t even know if she was a drinker or chewed tobacco. I remember reading about this elderly black woman who was 101 years old. They interviewed her and she said she had a glass of bourbon every night.
1880 Fayette County, Tennessee Census Record
According to Social Security records Francis was born October 31, 1862 and died in 1968. The obituary printed in a newspaper in Somerville, Tennessee where she lived has her death year as 1968 and her age is 110 years old; but this would have meant her birth year was 1858 and multiple census records documents her birth year as being 1862. This is common, especially for former slaves because they didn’t keep birth records for slaves. I think maybe her family confused her birth year with her husband, Jim Boyland. On an 1880 census record, Jim is listed as 22 and Francis is listed as 18. If Jim would have lived to 1968, he would have been 110. I believe Francis actual age at the time of her death was 106 years old, which is also confirmed on a social security application. She lived through the slavery, the Civil War, reconstruction, Jim Crow, WWI, the Spanish Flu epidemic, the Industrial Revolution, the Great Migration, The Great Depression, WWII, and the Civil Rights Movement.
Frances and Jim were married on Christmas day in 1879 and they had 12 children. Between 1880 and 1900 they had 9 children, Alberta would be their last child and she was born in 1904. Interesting fact; during the 1880’s the marriage age in 37 states was 10 years old, and the age of consent in Delaware was age 7. White landowners preferred to enter contracts with a head of household, who was married and with the prospects of having children who would be farm laborers. This would make marrying early more attractive for blacks and whites. I would like to think that Jim and Francis fell in love and rushed off to get married on Christmas day because it was romantic.
I made a recent discovery that I think is important to my family’s genealogy. I was able to locate a cemetery where my third great grandfather was more than likely buried. The record is from Find a Grave, a virtual cemetery where people can share burial and final disposition information about their family, friends and famous people. What makes this find so special is the Williamson Cemetery is located blocks away from where Jim Boyland and his family lived, which is documented on a 1920 Census Record. It can be located on Google Maps. It is called the Littlejohns-Williamsons Cemetery.
Slave Cemeteries
There is a wonderful article written by Lora Terry about cemeteries in west Tennessee. In the article Terry explores the institution of burying the dead through religion and slave culture. You can find cemeteries all over Somerville and Fayette County, hidden on what used to be land owned by slave holders. Although graves of slaves are often times unmarked and separated from the slave holder some are still there because they are in remote areas like the grave of my great grandfather. These grave sites were known as slave cemeteries that eventually evolved into African American cemeteries. Remains can be found on several dozen farms and plantations owned by the planter class who had settled in the area in 1830. Hobart Ames a tool manufacturer and grandson of Captain John Ames, purchased the 20,000 acres of land in 1901. The land stretches from Fayette County to Hardeman County. The Ames Company was established in 1774 by Captain John Ames, a blacksmith who invented the first American shovel. According to the article, Burying the Peculiar Institution, the land of at least five planters who once occupied the Ames Plantation contains the remains of some of these slave cemeteries.
Religion and Slave Culture
Terry claims that the south and the mortuary practice of slaves is an untapped historical resource for scholarly research. Though slaves were forced to assimilate to an Anglo-Christian religious belief system they still clung to their African spiritual traditions, creating Afro-Christianity, a hybrid religion. These traditions would take form in burial practices like having a second funeral after the dead was buried, secret prayer meetings, or the belief in the supernatural. Southern Christian burial traditions placed the deceased head to the west and their feet to the east when they were buried because in the bible on God’s return the trumpet would be blown in the east. If a person died a disgraceful death they were buried with their head and feet pointing north and south or face down. Graves were decorated with broken glass and pottery.
Littlejohns-Williamson Cemetery
Littlejohns-Williamson Cemetery
James “Jim” Boyland was buried at the Williamson Cemetery along with his three children who are also listed in the Find a Grave data base. Even though the Littlejohns-Williamson Cemetery is not located on the Ames Plantation it is in West Tennessee near the border of Fayette and Hardeman County. I have looked for other people who may have been buried here but there is little information about the cemetery. I was able to locate an ArcGIS Storymap that pinned the small cemetery in the same area as the Williamson Chapel Baptist Church, Williamson School, Williamson Chapel Cemetery and Knights of Pythias Lodge. The Places, Perspectives: African American Community-building in Tennessee, 1860-1920 story map was created by students from Middle Tennessee State University in collaboration with the Center for Historic Preservation. It marks the locations of numerous black communities, churches, schools and farms dating back to the 1800’s, as well as slave cemeteries. The icons on the story map tells you what building was located there. The cross icon can be a church or a cemetery. The flags are schools and the building with the pillars are lodges. When you click on the icons it displays records that are connected to the building and the location. The Littlejohns-Williamson Cemetery has unmarked graves of my ancestors and by looking at the images from Google Maps, the cemetery on the surface looks like a field of grass.
Martha “Mattie” Gooden Boyland
Lenora Boyland, Julius Boyland, Welton Boyland and Martha “Mattie” Gooden Boyland were all buried in the Williamson Cemetery. This find has helped me verify other historical information I have discovered about the Boyland family and the community they belonged to. It turns out Martha Boyland married Monroe Gooden Jr., the son of Monroe W. Gooden, one of fourteen African American men elected to the Tennessee General Assemby following the Civil War. A 1930 Census Record states that she divorced him and moved in with her mother, Francis Boyland along with her three children. It can become confusing at times, especially with the different spellings of surnames and first names, and inaccurate birth dates on census records, marriage licenses, and death certificates. I try to verify information with mutiple sources, at least three in most cases. Mattie is recorded on two census records, one listing her as the wife of Monroe Gooden Jr. and then ten years later she is listed as divorced with children. I also have her listed in other census records as Mattie Gooden Boyland. The first clue came from the burial listing at the Williamson Cemetery, where she is listed as the wife of Monroe Gooden Jr. In an article about African American Legislators, Monroe W. Gooden Sr. is said to have been buried in the Patterson Cemetery which is also located in the same Brewer community as the Williamson Cemetery. It seems as though Mattie divorced her husband after her father and brother died. Mattie passed away in 1952, she was sixty years old.
Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918
Leora Boyland was born May 25, 1897 and she died of influenza on May 30, 1918 on her 21st birthday. She was the eighth child of Jim and Francis Boyland. That same year Lenora’s two brothers Welton and Julius would be sent overseas to fight in World War I. Weldon and Julius would be drafted on September 12, 1918, four months after the death of their sister. Imagine sending two of your sons off to war after losing your daughter. In local newspapers and historical journals, the deadly disease is said to not have hit Memphis until the Fall of 1918. The Boyland’s family lived in an African American rural farm community in Somerville, Tennesee. Tennessee had almost eight thousand deaths from the disease and an estimated 40 million people died worldwide. There were two reported waves of the disease. The second wave was called the Spanish Flu and is said to have entered the United States somewhere between August and September.
Brick Walls
One of the problems I faced in my research was finding a connection between Jim Boyland and the Boylan family. I was looking for a connection that could be verified by a physical document. The Slave Schedules only listed the names of slaveholders and not slaves. I was left with trying to place the Boylan family in West Tennessee, this is known as a brick wall in genealogy research. Then there it was, a photo of a headstone on Find a Grave, a headstone belonging to James Boylan, the son of William Montfort Boylan Sr., of North Carolina, and he was buried in Somerville, Tennessee in 1842 at the Somerville Cemetery. James Boylan was the eighth child of William and Elizabeth Stokes McCulloch Boylan. The headstone would help me find another clue that would explain the 1860 Slave Census that list WE and AP Boylan as owning 81 slaves in Fayette County, Tennessee. James Boylan died in 1842 before the 1860 Census, but I also discovered a Weldon Boylan on the 1850 and 1870 Census. On the 1870 Census, Weldon Boylan is listed as white, and is the only white person with that surname listed in that record set. It says Weldon was born in North Carolina in 1832 but he is not listed as James Boylan’s child anywhere. He is listed with a person with the initials A. P. Boylan on the 1860 Slave Schedule.
James Boylan’s head stone is a trapezoid with four faces, one side of the face says James Boylan died November 11, 1842, son of William and Elizabeth Boylan, of North Carolina. Alex & Prissilla is etched on another side, where it is written Willie Boylan died September of 1834, age 5 years, son of Alex & Prissilla. I did a search for Alexandria Boylan in Family Search and although the search results did not turn up anything on an Alexandria Boylan in Fayette County, Tennessee, it did turn up something on Find a Grave. The third face to James Boylan’s headstone says, Alexander M. Boylan died October 1, 1834, age 30 years, son of William & Elizabeth of North Carolina. Although Find a Grave is not considered as viable a source as the federal or state census or a state vital record it does provide a clue that can help a researcher overcome obstacles in their ancestry search. The grave of Alexander Boylan did eventually lead me to a probate court document that listed property and slaves by first name that were the inheritance of his heirs, W. E. Boylan and A. P. Boylan. July Boylan is listed as one of those slaves, she also shows up on an 1880 census record as living in the household of Jim Boyland. Although she is listed as his mother, I believe she was his grandmother. A James Boylan is listed on an 1870 census record, as a 10-year-old with a woman 30 years old named Sallie Boylan. On the Find Your Grave site it is documented that Jim’s first name was James and Jim was a nickname. He is listed as James “Jim” Boyland on the FInd Your Grave site. This makes more sense since July Boyland’s age on the 1880 census record is 90 years old, which would have made her 70 years old when Jim Boylan was born in 1860. There is never a sure method of determining the ages of enslaved people during this time. Census record keepers often time made clerical errors, or the enslaved people themselves were unsure of their age. This only solidifies the miscare and treatment of Blacks during this time. The information however does place several of William Montford Boylan’s heirs in Fayette County, Tennessee during the same time my ancestors was their. It also connects one of my ancestors as being the property of the Boylan family.
Death Certificates
Death certificates are also verifiable resources that provide a wealth of information. My second great grandmother’s death certifcate was a key find because it connected me to her future and it connected me to her past. Freda (Freddy) Boyland was Jim Boyland’s sixth child. On her death certificate it says she died of uteran cancer “careinomi uteri”. Ethel Lomax also known as Nanny signed the death certifcate. She was Freddy’s eldest daughter and my first great grandmother. Her parents, Jim Boyland and Frances Coe are also listed on this death certificate. Just one document can provide a portal into the past that connects the past to the present and the future.
There is an old saying the mothers of the church would say, “Tell the truth and shame the devil.” This cultural colloquialism has its roots in biblical scripture. Mark 4:22 For nothing is hidden except to be revealed; nor has anything been kept secret, but that it would come to light (that is, things are hidden only temporarily, until the appropriate time comes for them to be known).
Our nation cannot truly heal until we have shined the light on the racial history of slavery. I remember watching Jordan Peele, the director for the movie Get Out, on Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr. Peele said something that was very profound, “This whole thing about a post-racial society, well how is that even possible when these stories haven’t been told.” It is the epitome of the saying, “Tell the truth and shame the devil.” It answers the question; how do we get to a post-racial society. We get there by shining the light on the things that are evil. The voices of our enslaved ancestors, who witnessed horrors untold are calling out from the dead and they will be heard.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. from the documentary show, Finding Your Roots, explains in this particular episode that many slaves kept the last names of their enslavers what this means for anyone researching their family genealogy as a slave. He says, “If you can find them in the 1870 Federal Census you can then look for white people within that same county, with the same last name on the 1850 and 1860. Then you would look for their name on the 1860 attached slave schedules, approximating the age of your ancestors on the 1870 census, leading to some incredible discoveries. If you can identify the name of your ancestor’s owner you can then look for your ancestor’s first name, in bills of sales between slave owners, estate records, wills, in deeds filed at the time of the owner’s death. And sometimes, though it is hard to believe, you’ll get lucky. And you will be able to catch a glimpse of your ancestor’s life under slavery.”
Family Folklore
This is exactly what I was able to do when I started researching my maternal family line. I started out with the name of the person who enslaved my family on my mother’s side. My grandmother had told me this name when I was just twelve years old and I never forgot it. We were looking at some old photographs and I was holding in my hand a photo frame with a picture of my grandmother inside. The back of the frame was cracked and the photo slid out along with another photo of a little boy. I held both photos in each of my hands, looking back and forth at them. My grandmother is light complicated with fine curly black hair but I know she is black. The photo of the little boy confused me. I asked, “Who is this white kid?”
My grandmother looked over at me and said, “That was my great uncle.” “He was lynched for owning land.” “His father was the white plantation owner.”
My mouth fell open in a gasp, I didn’t completely understand what she was saying to me. This information shook my entire twelve-year-old world. I knew what slavery was, I had watched Roots with her like we always did. My sister and I would come downstairs from our house to hers and we would gather in her room with ice-cream floats and watch movies like The Ten Commandments, or Roots. Back then there were only three or four channels and usually there was only one big movie showing that week. It would be summertime and we would be out of school. I lived upstairs with my stepfather and my mother. The house was split into three separate houses and my grandmother lived downstairs on the right side and Mrs. Coates lived beneath us. I just never imagined that my family were slaves or that it was so close, only a few generations ago. My grandmother had met some of our enslaved ancestors and she knew them by name. I was holding a photo of one them in my hands. I was intrigued and overwhelmed by curiosity. I needed to know more. “Granny, what was the name of the people who owned our family?” “Who lynched your great uncle?” “What is lynched?” I peppered her with a dozen questions all at once and she answered them all.
“The white people who owned my family last name was Boilen.”
“Boilen?” I thought it was spelled like boil and I never thought to ask her how to spell the last name, that would cost me a year of research.
“Yes baby, Boylan.” She chirped. “When I was a little girl, we would visit my grandmother in Somerville.” “My mother’s mother came from a family of nine children.” “I remember my great grandmother; she was coal black and her titties stood straight up like those African women in National Geographic magazine.” “She didn’t speak, she just stared out onto the land.” “See, she was born a slave and her name was Francis Coe.” “Her daughter, my grandmother was called Freddie but her name was Freda.” “Francis married Jim Boyland in 1879 on Christmas Day.” “Welton Boyland was the baby of the family and he inherited his father’s land after his father was taken away to Western State Hospital.” “Whites in Fayette County didn’t like that a black man owned land.”
And so, they took Jim Boyland in the winter of 1923 and only God knows what really happened to him. Three years later Welton was murdered but the family story is he was lynched. They took a rope and tied it around his neck and strung him up to hang from a tree until he died.
I looked back down at the photo, “He doesn’t look black.”
“He’s Black, his father Jim was a mulatto and his mother and grandmother were slaves and they had children by the white men who owned them.” “They were owned by the son and grandson of William Montfort Boylan of North Carolina.”
I looked at her with disbelief. It was unconceivable for me at the time but I would come to understand it better by and by.
In that same episode of Finding Your Roots, Henry Louis Gates Jr. reveals Jordan Peele’s ancestry. He tells him about his second great grandmother and how she was sold away from her family at the age of twelve. Gates asks Peele if he could imagine what it must have been like to be separated from her parents after all of those years. Peele responds, “No. It’s crazy and you wonder what that does to a…psychology of a family…generations down…I mean…that kind of trauma has to live on in some way.”
Gates then ends the segment by saying, “Retrieving lost stories can be an act of restoration, not only of our ancestor’s resilience but of the resilience of an entire human community.”
Trauma and the Psychology of Black American Family
Those stories that Henry Louis Gates Jr. talks about, the ones he reveals in his PBS documentary series, Find Your Roots can be difficult to hear. They can unearth hidden trauma that has been passed down for generations. Jordan Peele called it the psychology of a family. There often times isn’t a word or terminology for it but we know it when we see it and feel it in the core of our being. It has been best captured in a new genre of film making and storytelling. It can be categorized as American horror, dark fantasy horror or speculative fiction. Over the last few years, we have seen stories of racial horror and history told in films like Get Out, the HBO series, Lovecraft Country, or Them. There is something about horror films that make the most horrific and violent acts more palatable, digestible for the human consciousness. I was fascinated by horror films as a teenager. I would stay up late at night with a bowl of popcorn and grape Kool-Aid and watch films like Jason, Halloween, and Freddy Kruger all by myself. I like the feeling of being terrified but also knowing deep down inside it wasn’t real. The monstrous demonic villain would be defeated by the end of the movie.
The difference between your typical American horror film and racial horror films like Them, is we know historically Black people actually experienced these things. Them is an American horror anthology series created by Little Marvin and executive produced by Lena Waithe. The series tells the story of the Emory family who migrate west from the south to California during the Great Migration to escape the brutal killing of their infant and rape of the mother and wife played by Deborah Ayorinde. The story’s prologue begins with the traumatizing scene of two white men and an elderly woman pays a visit to the Emory family while Lucky, the mother is home alone with her infant child. The elderly woman steps to the door and is unassuming at first, she then gains entrance into the house and Lucky is ambushed by the three visitors. The scene’s climax starts to build as the elderly woman has taken hold of Lucky’s baby and the two men grab her and hold her down. You know something horrific is about to happen and then somehow the terror you normally feel when watching horror films turns into something else. The camera flashes back and forth between the rape of the mother and brutal killing of the baby. I fast forward the scene. I couldn’t digest what I was watching it was too much trauma to view. Trauma that wasn’t fiction but the experience of so many of our ancestors. The Emory family move west to Los Angeles to an all-white neighborhood and they seem fine at first but the psychology of the family has been shattered and they will never be the same again.
Author Heather Andrea Williams depicts similar horrors in her book Help Me Find My People. The only difference between William’s book and shows like Them and Lovecraft Country is the time period and her book is not a work of fiction. Help Me Find My People explores African American family separation after the Civil War by using slave narratives, want ads, public records and diaries. There are scenes similar to the one in the series Them and these stories are heart breaking but they must be told.
White Fragility and the Plot to Silence the Untold Stories of Our Ancestors
The terms “critical race theory” and “racial history” have come to be equated with being divisive and promoting racial supremacy of marginalized people of color. Now isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black. Somehow right-winged conservatives have weaponized the teaching of Black History to be a personal attack against white people. Telling the stories of enslaved people and the oppression they experienced in this country for over four hundred years is not an indictment to punish white people. It is however, a call to restore what was lost as a result of systemic and institutional oppression of Black people since the inception of this country. Restoration can come in many forms but it must not be confused with retribution. Restoration is the healing of the mind and soul of a people who were stolen, beaten and broken. Restoration is honoring the voices of those who could not speak, learn, read, write or live free. Restoration is saying their name.
47 bills have been filed in the past two years in 23 state legislatures, that limit how schools teach and discuss topics like race, gender and sexuality, and specific segments of US history. Republican governors in Alabama, Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah have signed into law some of these bills. Fights have broken out in school districts across the country. Specialty groups, think tanks and conservative organizations have joined forces in warning parents about critical race theory and working with law makers to write legislation restricting the teaching of racial history and critical race theory.
Terry Gross, host of Fresh Air on NPR interviews researcher Jeffrey Sachs, who has been tracking legislation for PEN America, a writer’s organization dedicated to free speech.
The Healing
It is time for the Black community and the Black family to tell the untold stories of our ancestors and to complete the healing process. The past must be confronted, the trauma named, and the process of restoration to finally come to fruition. Every family story is different but there are similarities. There is no cookie cutter guide to healing and overcoming trauma but there is one component that is the same and that is telling the story.
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