|
|
|
Researchers
seek
fuller
picture
of first
Africans
in
America
By
JESSE J.
HOLLAND
APNews.com
WASHINGTON
- The
first
Africans
to
arrive
in North
America
were so
little
noted by
history
that
many are
known
today by
only
their
first
names:
Antony
and
Isabella,
Angelo,
Frances
and
Peter.
Almost
400
years
ago,
they
were
kidnapped
and
forcibly
sailed
across
the
ocean
aboard
three
slave
ships —
the San
Juan
Bautista,
the
White
Lion and
the
Treasurer
— and
then
sold
into
bondage
in
Virginia.
Now
their
descendants,
along
with
historians
and
genealogists,
are
seeking
recognition
for a
group of
20-some
Africans
they
describe
as
critical
to the
survival
of
Jamestown,
England’s
first
successful
settlement
in North
America.
“We
need to
reclaim
our
history.
We need
to tell
our
story,”
said
Calvin
Pearson,
head of
Project
1619,
which is
named
after
the year
those
first
Africans
landed
near
what
became
Hampton,
Virginia.
A
few
historical
markers
and
records
mention
these
early
slaves,
but
there’s
been
scant
research
on their
lives.
Pearson
and
others
are
working
to learn
more.
Before
the
slaves
arrived,
Jamestown
was
starving.
“Basically
all of
those
people
were
right
off of
the
streets
in
England,”
said
Kathryn
Knight,
who in
May will
release
a book
titled
“Unveiled
- The
Twenty &
Odd:
Documenting
the
First
Africans
in
England’s
America
1619-1625
and
Beyond.”
Those
colonists
“didn’t
know how
to grow
anything.
They
didn’t
know how
to
manage
livestock.
They
didn’t
know
anything
about
survival
in
Virginia,”
Knight
said.
The
Africans
“saved
them by
being
able to
produce
crops,
by being
able to
manage
the
livestock.
They
kept
them
alive.”
The
slaves’
arrival
marked
the
beginning
of the
region’s
fractured
relationship
with
blacks.
More
than two
centuries
later,
Virginia
became
home to
the
Confederate
capital,
and in
the last
week its
governor
has been
pressured
to
resign
for
appearing
in a
racist
photo in
a 1984
yearbook.
The
new
arrivals
were
Catholic
and many
spoke
multiple
languages,
according
to Ric
Murphy,
an
author
and
descendant
of John
Gowan,
one of
the
Angolan
captives.
They
came
from a
royal
city and
“were
quite
informed
and
educated,
and
several
of them,
based
upon
what
they did
in the
latter
part of
their
years,
clearly
were
leaders
in the
community
in one
form or
the
other,”
Murphy
said.
“Many of
them
became
landowners,
which is
quite
different
from the
false
narrative
of what
an
enslaved
person
was.”
In
Jamestown,
historian
Mark
Summers
leads
tourists
down
paths
that
Angelo —
also
known as
Angela —
walked
after
being
sold to
a
Captain
William
Pierce.
Like
many of
that
first
group,
little
is known
about
her. In
fact,
her
entire
known
biography
“could
probably
fit on a
3x5
index
card,”
Summers
said.
But
being
able to
show
people
where
she
lived
and
walked
is a
spiritual
experience
for
some, he
said.
For
African-Americans,
“this is
the same
thing as
going to
Plymouth
Rock,”
said
Summers,
who
works at
the
Historic
Jamestowne
park.
“Here’s
a place
where
you can
stand
and say,
‘We set
foot
here,
and we
can
still
walk
this
ground.’”
The
first
Africans
were
among
more
than 300
taken
out of
the
Ndongo
region
of
Angola,
a
Portuguese
colony
of
mostly
Catholic
Africans,
on the
slave
ship San
Juan
Bautista
bound
for
Mexico.
That
ship was
attacked
and
plundered
by the
White
Lion and
the
Treasurer,
which
together
seized
about 60
slaves.
After
stopping
in the
Caribbean
and
trading
some of
the
slaves
for
provisions,
the
White
Lion
sailed
for
Virginia
with its
human
cargo.
Englishman
John
Rolfe,
who
would
later
marry
Pocahontas,
documented
the
White
Lion’s
arrival
at what
was then
called
Point
Comfort.
“He
brought
not
anything
but 20,
and odd
Negars,
which
the
Governor
and Cape
Merchant
bought
for
victualle,”
Rolfe
wrote in
a letter
in
January
1620,
meaning
that the
colony
purchased
the
slaves
with
provisions.
A
1620
census
showed
17
African
women
and 15
African
men in
Jamestown.
Although
sold
into
servitude,
many of
those
original
Angolans
fared
better
than the
millions
of
African
slaves
who came
to North
America
later,
said
John
Thorton,
a Boston
University
professor
of
African
American
studies
and
history.
“They
had a
better
chance
at a
better
future
than
almost
anybody
who
followed
them
because
they
were the
first,”
Thorton
said. “A
lot of
them
ended up
owning
property,
and they
ended up
owning
slaves
of their
own.”
By
intermingling
with the
English
colonists,
some had
children
who
ended up
passing
for
white
and
merging
into
early
colonial
society,
Thorton
said.
Some,
like the
Catholic
John
Pedro,
met with
tragedy,
Pearson
said.
Pedro
“ended
up
owning
quite a
bit of
land in
Virginia.
When the
English
Civil
War
broke
out, it
was
Protestants
versus
Catholics,”
Pearson
said.
Pedro
moved to
Maryland
to live
with
other
Catholics,
but he
was
captured
in a
battle
and
executed.
Others
fared
better.
Antony
and
Isabella
became
servants
for a
Captain
William
Tucker,
gained
their
freedom
around
1635 and
started
a
homestead
in Kent
County,
Virginia,
Pearson
said.
Around
1623,
they had
a son
named
William
Tucker
who
“became
the
first
documented
African
child
born in
English-occupied
North
America.”
Descendants
of
Antony
and
Isabella
are
buried
at a
Hampton
cemetery
that has
been in
use
since
the
1600s,
Pearson
said.
Knight
has a
different
interpretation
of those
early
records,
concluding
that
Frances
gave
birth to
Peter
first,
making
him the
first
African
child
born in
Virginia.
Described
in later
records
as a
“Negro
carpenter,”
Peter
married
and
received
his
freedom
with the
promise
of
paying
10,000
pounds
of
tobacco
to his
master
around
1676. He
made the
last
payment
in 1682,
Knight
said.
Murphy,
who
wrote
“Freedom
Road: An
American
Family
Saga
from
Jamestown
to World
War,”
said
it’s
important
for
black
people
to know
about
these
first
Africans
because
it
“helps
us have
more
ownership
of
American
history.”
Pearson,
whose
organization
plans to
honor
the
anniversary
of the
Africans’
arrival
on Aug.
24,
agrees.
“From
here, we
see the
beginnings
of the
Africa
imprint
on what
would
become
the
United
States
of
America.
It’s
worth
remembering.”
___
|
|
|
|
|
|