2004 (cont'd)
Hugh Lowry White’s father moved his household from Pennsylvania to Virginia in 1790 because Pennsylvania had decided to emancipate its slaves that year and, apparently, old William White had no intention of letting that happen to his household. It’s quite possible, interestingly enough, although there are conflicting stories about this, that old William himself came to the colonies as an indentured servant chased out of Ireland by the British, when the Scotch-Irish lost their take-over attempt. So it would seem on the surface odd that he had become so heartless so rapidly after arriving, but that he had slaves, we know, and that he moved to Virginia, we know, and unfortunately, that’s the kind of information I was often stuck with -- bare-bones facts with no explanation for any of them.
William’s son, James, was a master businessman who quickly distinguished himself as a representative for somebody else’s entrepreneurial endeavor, and then struck out on his own to seek his fortune, which he fairly quickly began to find. Hearing about the salt wells in the region that eventually became Clay County, Kentucky, James convinced his brother, Hugh Lowry White, who had not amassed his own fortune as yet, to move there in 1803 and oversee a salt manufacturing business for the two of them. They began buying up land in the mountains at a price intended to encourage the development of the area, and by 1840, Hugh was the richest individual in the county, owning $88,000 worth of land and holding $105,400 in personal property -- including 38 slaves.
By 1850, the White family interests were producing 250,000 bushels of salt annually and selling them for anywhere from $1 to $5 each. To do this required a great deal of highly dangerous, back-breaking labor and this labor was done by slaves -- 162 of them in 1850, mostly men, who were held in bondage by eight households and represented approximately one-third of the total slave population in Clay County. In addition to the slaves they held personally, the Whites hired other slave-holders’ slaves, as well, some from as far away as Tennessee, for a yearly amount of $50 to $150 (paid to the slave-holder), but some slave-holders, in the interest of not losing their “property” inadvertently, would contract that their particular slaves could not be used to do the most dangerous types of work.
Slaves drilled salt wells, dug coal, cut timber for fuel, tended furnaces and boiling salt kettles, constructed barrels; built, loaded, and piloted boats; grew crops, and raised and slaughtered animals for use and for sale. As many as one hundred wagons of salt in a train could be seen rolling out of Clay County on a routine basis in 1835, each one pulled by six horses or three yoke of oxen. Even as the Civil War was beginning in 1861, and the death knell for slavery had been sounded, the Whites still held 110 slaves worth $129,935.
As industrial slaves rather than domestic slaves, the African-Americans held by the White family in Clay County lived in what amounted to slave communities, typically crowded into a row of small shacks behind their “master’s” house. The seventy-one slaves held by Hugh’s sons James and Daugherty White, for example, lived nine to a shanty. And they were much more likely to have their lives disrupted by being sold or having their loved ones sold than those living in other types of settings.
According to Billings and Blee,
“…Clay County’s county seat, Manchester, was a bustling slave marketing center. Here, slave traders, salt manufacturers, and farmers crowded around an auction block from which slave men, women, and children were bought, sold, and leased. One former slave remembered seeing lines of slaves standing on an outdoor elevated wooden platform erected in the city center while an auctioneer gave ‘a general description of [their] ability and physical standing’ and traders beat them with long whips ‘to see if they could jump around and wuz strong.’” (p.211)
Henry Lucas, who served the Whites as an overseer, reported that the slaves liked James, but did not like Daugh, who used to get on a stump when he whipped them. Nevertheless, in 1937, Mrs. Amelia Jones, a former slave living at the time in London, Kentucky, just a few miles west of Manchester, was quoted as saying:
“…I was born eighty-eight years ago in Manchester, Kentucky, under a master by the name of Daugh White. He was a southern Republican and was elected as congressman by that party…He was the son of Hugh White, the original founder of Whitesburg…
“Master White was good to the slaves. He fed us well and had good places for us to sleep, and didn’t whip us only when it was necessary, but didn’t hesitate to sell any of his slaves. He said, ‘You all belong to me and if you don’t like it, I’ll put you in my pocket,’ meaning, of course, that he would sell that slave and put the money in his pocket.
“The day he was to sell the children from their mother, he would tell the mother to go to some other place to do some work and, in her absence, he would sell the children. It was the same when he would sell a man’s wife. He also sent him to another job and when he returned, his wife would be gone. The master would only say, ‘Don’t worry. You can get another one.’”
According to Mrs. Jones, in separate incidences, she lost both her father and her twelve-year-old sister to the auction block, after which they were handcuffed and marched away to southern plantations. Though she had enough to eat, Mrs. Jones reported that she had no privileges, and that most masters in Clay County treated their slaves cruelly, underfeeding them and beating them often. The fact that she didn’t call separating families from each other without warning a cruel act, even seventy-two years after her ordeal was over, is a testimony to the internalized socialization of oppression, embedded so deeply in the consciousness of the oppressed that it’s often there forever. One can only imagine what Mrs. Jones would have described as a cause that would make a whipping “necessary.” And, of course, she failed to mention -- or was not quoted as mentioning -- the other common practice among slaveholders of raping their “property” to produce more of it.
Records indicate that Hugh’s son, James, named for his illustrious uncle, not only had a total of twelve children by two successive wives, but routinely had children by his slaves, as well. In 1858, for example, two of James’ slaves presented him with babies on the same day, while James was in his fifties and his wife was also pregnant! One of his brother Daugh’s sons was so dark, it’s said that his nickname was “Nig.” Even among the broader population of European-American, free Black and mulatto families, the White family was often implicated in complicated genetic patterns, which are now almost impossible to trace, other than by what is left of oral histories, because they often gave the children last names other than their own. In one case, a mulatto woman was forced to sign a legal paper promising that she would make no legal claim to a child she had birthed to one of the White family members, but the child was not even named in the document, leaving no future record of its identity, its existence, or its whereabouts.
In fact, when the Civil War was over and slaves throughout the south were mandated to appear at courthouses to report their birth years and parents’ names in the attempt to create records of them as citizens, no such records were ever collected in Clay County. One cannot assume why this was so, but since members of the White family were often in positions of decision-making authority related to matters of the court, it would not be hard to imagine that they simply did not feel that making official records of paternity among the former slaves would serve their best interests -- or their reputations. A great deal of money, a great deal of power, and a fixation on honor can typically produce such scenarios as appear to have been common in Clay County among the White family for the better part of a century in the 1800’s.
African-Americans who were emancipated in Kentucky during the years before the War were not in much better shape than those who were still in bondage. They could be snatched by bounty-hunters, taken south, and enslaved or re-enslaved, regardless of their being free when taken. Their children -- as young as two-years-old -- could be arbitrarily seized by the courts and forced into “apprenticeships” in service to European-American families, just because their own families were poor. And they had to carry papers attesting to their status, observe curfews, be gainfully employed or go to jail, and, in general, be very, very careful all of the time not to upset anyone who looked White.
Thinking back to my own experiences in the town of Manchester, a town where I could and did, as a three-year-old, walk anywhere alone and without fear, I realize now that the safety I enjoyed was completely attributable to my heritage and my name, though I would have had no way of understanding that at the time. I remember one incident when an African-American man had reached out to me in what was unquestionably, I think now, with all I know, a friendly greeting. I panicked, being very young, and ran from the stranger, who must, then, have panicked himself. I still recall us racing down the street full-tilt, me bellowing at the top of my lungs and him trying frantically to allay my fears by reaching out his arms and calling out to me over and over, “I wouldn’t hurt you! I wouldn’t hurt you!” I was terrified, but under the circumstances, in 1950 in Clay County, Kentucky, he must have been twice as afraid as I was. I wonder if he was subsequently accosted in some way for that unfortunate situation over which he had absolutely no control.
When the Civil War came, my ancestors heard the call and, as they had in the Revolutionary War and against the Native Americans who were, after all, only trying to protect themselves from intruders, the Whites and the Garrards donned uniforms and joined the fight. As individual family members made their choices, each family found itself with members on the side of the Union and the Confederacy both, creating yet again controversy and drama within and among the relatives.
Col. Daniel Garrard’s house was said to be the regular information depot for the rebel army in Clay County, but his son, Theophilis Toulmin Garrard (better known as T.T.) fought for the North. Nevertheless, demonstrating the conflicted loyalties of the time and place, T.T. was quoted as saying at one point after the Emancipation Proclamation, “If I’d known Lincoln was going to free the slaves, I’d have fought for the Confederacy instead of the Union.”
As if there wasn’t already enough animosity between the two branches of the family, the federal government decided that, since it couldn’t seem to keep the Confederate forces from accessing the salt wells, it would simply destroy them. So, according to a sign that stands 2-1/2 miles south of Manchester today,
“On Oct. 23, 1862, 22nd U.S.A. Brig. including 1st, 2nd, and 20th Ky. Infantry moved here in wake of retreating C.S.A. forces. 500 men worked 36 hours to destroy salt works mainly owned by unionists, but used by Confederates. Loyal U.S.A. citizens were allowed to remove salt enough for their own needs on taking oath none of it would be used to benefit the Confederacy.”
James White wept, saying, “I am ruined for the Union.”
But, while cannon balls were driven into the ground to staunch the flow of salt water at the White’s Goose Creek Salt Furnace and other White family wells, these locations could eventually be re-opened. The Garrards, on the other hand, with their overall leaning toward the Confederacy, had their well-heads blown up, rendering them permanently useless. Needless to say, this increased and broadened the enmity between the two families.
But there was always something creating havoc between them anyway. For example, in 1859, when my great-great-grandfather John E. White went up to Owsley County and eloped at the age of twenty-one with Elizabeth Garrard Brawner, Col. Daniel Garrard’s seventeen-year-old granddaughter, all hell broke loose. The couple had to ride hard by horseback one hundred twenty-five miles, it’s said, stopping only for meals and a change of horses. Then they were married in Tazwell, Tennessee, before they could be stopped.
As dramatic as all of this sounds, however, and Grandpa John Ed, as he was called, was a pretty dramatic guy, already known for his hot temper and his love of whiskey, not to mention his reputed murder two years earlier of a Garrard-supported jailor, none of these stories held a candle to the one I came across and then couldn’t follow up on. According to John Ed Pearce in Days of Darkness: the Feuds of Eastern Kentucky:
“…On March 1, 1859, Dillon (or Dillion) Hollin was born to a mulatto woman of that name. Everyone knew, and the principals did not deny, that John Ed [White] was the father. Their back-door romance had been going on for some time, and John Ed wanted to marry her, but the Whites begged, threatened, and raised so much trouble that John Ed gave up the idea, though he admitted paternity and supported Dillion.”
I had originally heard about Dillon Taylor White Hollin from a distant cousin, who had done a great deal of tracking of the White and Garrard genealogical information. When I responded with some excitement, he was quick to suggest that the term “mulatto” could mean any mixture of blood lines.
“Oh, no,” I corrected him. “According to the dictionary, mulatto only means half Black, half White.”
“But Dillon’s granddaughter has blond hair and blue eyes,” he countered.
“Well, she may have blond hair and blue eyes,” I wrote back, “but her Granddad was part Black, just the same.”
To be continued...
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