Joined: 31 May 2005 {Posts: 66 } Location: South Carolina
Posted: Tue 20 Sep 2005 16:34 Post subject: Barbadian South Carolina
For a good part of the last five years, I have been doing genealogical research on my family. I have been reading up on Barbadian South Carolina and I have found that I can trace my ancestry to Barbados and that my African ancestry may have come from the Congo Basin in Western Africa. The Congo Basin stretched from the Ivory Coast all the way to Cameroon. What I have read is fascinating. Were any whites engslaved in Barbados as well as in South Carolina? One of my aunts mentioned something to me about a white ancestor of mine who was enslaved, or maybe she was an indentured servant? I do know that I am part English and Scottish, but could I also be part Irish as well? Where can I find information on Marion County, South Carolina and Barbados, where I am from. It was once a part of the Georgetown district and later became Marion County around the time of the Civil War? Are you also a genealogist and I am interested in Iberian ancestry in South Carolina? Have any Iberians settled in Barbadoes and South Carolina?
Posted: Tue 20 Sep 2005 18:00 Post subject: Re: Barbadian South Carolina
gera2561 wrote:
Were any whites enslaved in Barbados as well as in South Carolina?
Yes. The most common current semantic difference between "indenture" and "slavery" is that the former was for a specific number of years (usually seven) and was not hereditary, whereas the latter was lifelong and hereditary. But before 1700, these differences were blurred and depended heavily on time, place, and the whim of the owner. Many Irish aristocrats and bourgeoise were sold into slavery to plantations in the West Indies during OliverCromwell's rule. (The poor Irish were simply slaughtered.) See http://republican-news.org/archive/1997/February20/20stkt.html, for example. In fact, IIRC, according to Hilary Beckles, who teaches history at the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies, in Barbados, the difference in English pronunciation between Jamaica and Barbados is due to the strong Irish cultural ancestry in Barbados. I can recommend some history books that discuss this, if you are interested.
gera2561 wrote:
Where can I find information on Marion County, South Carolina and Barbados, where I am from.
For early SC history, I recommend Frank J. Klingberg, An Appraisal of the Negro in Colonial South Carolina (Philadelphia: Porcupine, 1975) or Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina From 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion (New York: Knopf, 1974). For SC genealogy, see Margaret Peckham Motes, ed. Free Blacks and Mulattos in South Carolina 1850 Census (Baltimore: Clearfield, 2000).
For Barbados history, see Hilary Beckles, A History of Barbados: From Amerindian Settlement to Nation-State (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University, 1990). For Barbados genealogy, see Lila E. Salazar, Love Child: A Genealogist's Guide to the Social History of Barbados (St. Michael, Barbados: Family Find, 2000).
FYI, many if not most old SC families who originally came from Barbados have Irish ancestry.
gera2561 wrote:
Are you also a genealogist and I am interested in Iberian ancestry in South Carolina? Have any Iberians settled in Barbadoes and South Carolina?
I am not a genealogist. All I know about Iberians is that Spain established three colonies on the east coast, about 100 years before Jamestown. One was in Virginia, one in South Carolina and the third in Florida. The Virginia and South Carolina colonies were abandoned after a few years and the surviving colonisists apparently made their way to the Cumberland Plateau, starting the first maroon communities in the area. Florida, of course, continued as Spanish until much later.
Joined: 31 May 2005 {Posts: 66 } Location: South Carolina
Posted: Tue 20 Sep 2005 19:49 Post subject:
Thank you. You mentioned Irish families. My family surnames are Gerald, Owens, and Cribb. Are any of these Irish because I know that Gerald is the surname for my father's side of the family. Could you please give me more information on early South Carolina and Barbados history. What are Maroon communities and where is the Cumberland area?
My family surnames are Gerald, Owens, and Cribb. Are any of these Irish because I know that Gerald is the surname for my father's side of the family.
Sorry. Someone who is more genealogically knowledgable than I am would have to anwer this.
gera2561 wrote:
Could you please give me more information on early South Carolina and Barbados history.
Well, I gave the titles of a few standard histories. What information specifically, are you interested in?
gera2561 wrote:
What are Maroon communities?
Maroons are communities founded by runaway forced laborers in colonial times. To be precise, "maroons" is the term by which historians refer to them. Anthropologists use the term "triracial isolates" and sociologists call them "mustees" or "mestizos." In the colonial period, especially before 1700, involuntary forced labor was not associated with the color line, because the color line had not yet been invented. So runaways of European, Native American, and African ancestry fled to the Appalachians and lived in self-sufficient isolation from the plantation economy. More details are in Melungeon Conference Trip Report and in The Rate of Black-to-White “Passing”. The best small introductory account of the maroons is Brewton Berry, Almost White (New York: Macmillan, 1963).
gera2561 wrote:
Where is the Cumberland area?
The Cumberland Plateau is the region where western Virginia, western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, and eastern Kentucky all come together. It is the heart of Appalachia. In colonial times, it was home to the Cherokees. It then received successive waves of immigrants including: survivors of the failed Spanish coastal colonies, then maroons fleeing forced plantation labor, then Scots and Scots-Irish fleeing the aftermath of Bonnie Prince Charlie's failed rebellion, then Moravians fleeing religious persecution, then Germans fleeing civil war, then Irish fleeing famine. The blending of diverse cultures made this region uniquely creative, especially musically.
Last edited by fwsweet on Wed 21 Sep 2005 22:10; edited 2 times in total
Joined: 27 Nov 2004 {Posts: 1763 } Location: Hudson Valley, NY
Posted: Wed 21 Sep 2005 21:43 Post subject:
gera2561 wrote:
Thank you. You mentioned Irish families. My family surnames are Gerald, Owens, and Cribb. Are any of these Irish because I know that Gerald is the surname for my father's side of the family.
They are English surnames for the most part, however Gerald could be Irish as well. Many names are interchangable between England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland.
You find "Moore" in both England and Ireland.
Johnson is English, while Johnston is Scottish.
You will find McDonald in both Scotland and Ireland.
One of my favorite stories is about a researcher and an elderly black woman who descended from one of the original redlegs. She sang a beautiful lullaby for him, which was startling because she was singing it in old gaelic, which dated back to the time of the enslavement.
To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland is a good book on the Redlegs . According to it the Irish were mainly the wives and daughters of Wild Geese the defeated Irish soldiers allowed to leave Ireland. They were used as breeding stock with African slaves.
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