Kin: Rooted In Hope by Carole Boston Weatherford

In Kin, author Carole Boston Weatherford tells the story of her family, descended from ancestors brought to America via the Atlantic Slave trade.

As a teenager, Weatherford was uninterested in her past, and more concerned with life in the present. She knew her great-great-grandfather Phillip Moaney had been enslaved but that was the extent of knowledge of her ancestry. Before Alex Haley's mini-series, "Roots" few Black people considered exploring their ancestry back to Africa. With his book and the television show that changed.

At Wye River, a plantation named Wye House includes Long Green, a village of tradespeople, sailors, sawyers and boat builders. At Long Green, enslaved people lived and loved, having both shackles and bonds that linked them. Life is hard: they sleep on bare planks with only one blanket and the food is not good.

Wye House is the jewel in the Lloyd family's crown. Its Puritan patriarch, Edward Lloyd emigrated from the British Isles to America in 1645. He eventually settled in Maryland colony, and was granted land by Lord Baltimore, Charles Calvert. Wye House states that it is an "agricultural factory" powered by hundreds of Black slaves. The house states:

"I am proof of the wealth

that America's founding families could amass

by enslaving laborers and marrying money...

I witnessed more cruelty than I care to recall

The sin of slavery haunts my every hall..."

The Lloyd's 1781 ledger contains an earliest known ancestor including the name of twenty-one-year old Isaac Copper. The ledger is a record of the Lloyd's property including cattle, farming equipment and slaves: their names, ages, occupations but also infirmities and quality. All are property, even the people.

Weatherford's great-grandpa James Henry Moaney never told her that his father (her great-great-grandfather) Phillip has been enslaved and that his father-in-law, Isaac Copper was also enslaved at Wye House but fought in the Civil War.

A litany of Lloyd's from Edward Lloyd III (who lived from 1711 to 1770) to Edward Lloyd VII (1825 to 1907) speak about life at Wye House and in the Maryland area. Edward Lloyd III is concerned about "the French corrupting enslaved people with promises of freedom" while his son Edward Lloyd IV switches sides during the Revolution. He now owns two-hundred-sixty Blacks. As the Lloyd's influence grows, Colonel Edward Lloyd V (1779 to 1834) becomes  a state senator and eventually Maryland's thirteenth governor and a U.S. Senator. A boy called Frederick listens and learns outside the schoolroom window as Lloyd's children are tutored. 

Edward Lloyd VI (1798 to 1861) owns over four hundred Blacks, worth more than twenty-eight thousand dollars. He trusts his overseers "to wield the lash and report runaways."  Unable to support so many slaves at Wye House, Lloyd moves some slaves south to Mississippi, taking them along as punishment and selling some. Edward Lloyd (1825 to 1907) sees all of his slaves freed as a result of Emancipation. In 1881, that boy called Frederick, Frederick Douglass returns to Wye House where he makes peace with the slaver Thomas who repeatedly beat him.

Frederick Douglass (1818 to 1895) was brought to Wye House by his grandmother when he was six-years-old. He lived with Captain Anthony who he learned was his father. He was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey and he was enslaved. He was "a ship caulker, abolitionist, orator, and publisher of the North Star newspaper. After the Civil War, a public servant who rose to become minister of the Republic of Haiti." Frederick Douglass writes about Isaac Copper, a Doctor of Medicine and a Doctor of Divinity, and a confirmed cripple who taught Douglass and other children how to say the Lord's prayer. It is Douglass's written account of Wye House that leads the author  to an Isaac Copper, the man she knew who leaned heavily on a cane. He was not the Isaac Copper who fought in the Civil War but likely his son. The Isaac Copper in the ledger of 1781 was likely born c.1760 or 1763. Weatherford wonders how he came to be owned by the Lloyds in a poem filled with many questions.

From this point on, the life of the children of Isaac and Nanny Copper, other slaves at Wye House are told, including some who flee as the Civil War approaches. And after freedom, it is the Coppers who work at building Black villages during the Reconstruction era, their industriousness and their determination to make a better world for their children and grandchildren.

 Discussion

Kin is author Carole Boston Weatherford's family's story, begun in Africa and told in America. It is a story mostly lost in the mists of time, with just enough hints and records to form an understanding. The setting spans the mid-1600's to the early 1900's, in Talbot County on Maryland's Eastern Shore, at Wye House, the state's largest slave plantation and in the Black Reconstruction-era villages of Unionville and Copperville. 

Before Alex Haley's famous "Roots" mini-series, many African Americans never considered tracing their own "roots" back to Africa. For many, their roots go back only a few generations, before the darkness of the past closes in. For Weatherford and her son, they could only trace their family back five generations. And so with what information she could glean from records, library records and historical societies, from databases of slave ships and records from Wye House, Weatherford has pieced together a story, giving voice to her ancestors who were enslaved but who, when freed after the Civil War, played an important part in the founding of several Black Reconstruction-era villages. 

Kin  is written in verse, featuring many different voices, including several Isaac Coppers whom Weatherford believes are her ancestors: Young Isaac Copper and his wife Nanny, some of their eight children including Marena, Prissy and Polly Copper as well as sons Henry (born 1800) Isaac Copper II (born 1798), and Isaac Copper III who fought in the Civil War and became a founding father of a Black village. 

Other poems give voice to Colonel Lloyd, Daniel Lloyd son of Colonel Lloyd whose companion was Frederick Douglass, Edward Lloyd IV's wife Elizabeth Tayloe Lloyd, house servant Daphne, Chicken Sue who cares for the poultry, the servant Katy who once worked in the Great House Kitchen but now cooks for her people because she's too old. Then there are poems in the voice of  former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Francis Scott Key composer of The Star-Spangled Banner and Harriet Tubman,

Chesapeake Bay, Wye House, the Wooden Case Clock, and the ship The Rachel also lend their voices, all having no say in their involvement in the Atlantic slave trade.  The Rachel laments being involved in the slave trade:

 "I am no vessel for sweet memories...

I bore thirty-seven Blacks into bondage

in the British colonies, having lost but one

Black captive enroute from Antigua

Yet my belly is full of regret..."

The ship mentions it is like the enslaved teenager, Rose who bore Captain Bruff two sons: "I had no more say in carrying cargo than Rose did in bearing those children." .

Each of these poems piece together a part of the story, from the beginnings of Wye House, the generations of the Lloyd family who enrich themselves through the slave trade and move up the social class ladder, the ships that brought the enslaved to America, the enslaved who lived, suffered and worked the plantation, those who ran away sometimes successful sometimes not, the enslaved who fought in the Civil War and who returned free men to rebuild their lives and communities. 

The poems portray life as a slave: the beatings for the slightest infractions, long hours of back-breaking work in the fields, little food, one set of clothing and shoes that once worn out meant going naked, the rape and forced pregnancy of young enslaved girls, and separation of families as children and parents are sold off sometimes for extra money, sometimes as punishment. In contrast, the life a slaveholder like the Lloyds was one of opulence, enriched by the free work of the enslaved. Many poems describe Wye House as one that included beautiful furniture "mahogany table draped in fine lace and set with English crystal, china, and silver", and expensive carriages, saddles and harnesses. The family ate delicious food  and sipped "fine wines shipped from across the ocean".  

Wye House was a house of many mirrors, of all types, that witnessed the goings on in the plantation. Those mirrors saw all the occupants of the house, including the enslaved. Weatherford notes this in several poems including "My Question For the Looking Glasses" and in "Missing Faces" The mirrors are "...forever neutral as generations dart past or pose to ponder reflections." The author also noticed that while the oil paintings, etchings and silhouettes remain as memorials to the Lloyds, there is nothing to remember the generations of enslaved who passed through the house.  In Missing Faces, Weatherford writes, "Absent are the visages of my ancestors" who "hanged the Lloyds' framed conceits," While the decor endures, Weatherford writes, "...But the faces of my kin have vanished. Erased."  And so through her poetry, Weatherford gives voice to some of those enslaved at Wye House, and allows us to see them through the artwork of Jeffery Boston Weatherford.

Carole Boston Weatherford has written a thought-provoking novel-in-verse about slavery in Maryland, at the state's largest slave plantation, imagining what life might have been like for her enslaved ancestors. It's evident from the extensive Bibliography at the back of the novel, that she has done considerable historical and genealogical research. This research, as is often the case, leads only to more questions which Weatherford expresses in her poetry.

What might have given more clarity to the genealogy of the author's family as she understands it to date,  is a cast of characters and perhaps a family tree that outlines her connection to the Coppers. From the novel's poems, Weatherford reveals that her great-great-grandfather Phillip Moaney was enslaved and that his son, her great-grandfather James Henry Moaney, born in 1872, seven years after the end of the Civil War (1865) was born free. His father-in-law was Isaac Copper who was enslaved at Wye House, and fought in the Civil War. For whatever reason, James Moaney never spoke about Isaac Copper being enslaved. Weatherford assumes that the practice of naming children after kin continued throughout the passing generations - a reasonable assumption given the number of Isaac Coppers in the ledgers. This is a custom common to many families.

Kin: Rooted In Hope also portrays one of the consequences of slavery: the loss of family roots that often cannot be reclaimed. Our heritage connects us to the past, to our culture, our beliefs and our identity. Knowing our past helps us to understand who we are and develop resiliency as we see how ancestors dealt with difficult life situations. For Weatherford, knowing that her ancestors were significant contributors to life for Blacks in the Reconstruction Era was likely encouraging and a source of intense pride. Despite the hardship they had endured, they built something good out of slavery and the ruins of war. They formed a sense of community and connection that continues to this day.

The beautiful artwork, done on scratch board adds considerably to the story, capturing the many emotions of various characters and embodying  the darkness of slavery. The cover art is exquisite, the purple background suggesting royalty and the title in gold, as many of the enslaved came from what was known as the Gold Coast of Africa, including many African kings. Kin: Rooted In Hope is a book that asks its readers to pause and think about those that came unwillingly before, ripped from land and home, and yet persevered, bringing a rich cultural to what would become America. 

Book Details:

Kin: Rooted In Hope by Carole Boston Weatherford
New York: Atheneum Books For Young Readers     2023

202 pp.

African Town by Irene Latham & Charles Waters

It is 1859. Eighteen-year-old Kossola, which means "I do not lose my fruits anymore." is the eldest child of his father's second wife Iya. Kossola, a young Yoruba man living in the village of Bante, is enjoying market day. It is a day when people come from all over to buy goats, cows, yams, fufu, and much more. Bante is enclosed on all sides by tall walls.

Kossola has been training for four years to be a soldier, preparing to be initiated  into oro, the secret society of men and highest levels of the Yoruba religion. He is marked as a soldier, to track, hunt and protect, by having his cheek marked with a knife, and his front teeth chipped so that he has a circle shaped opening. As a soldier, Kossola is to guard one of the town's eight gates. One night he hears rustling and sounds the alert for the people to hide in the woods. He later learns that an attack was thwarted.

Afterwards, Kossola learns that he will begin the oro initiation ceremony. He and the other initiates and men spend nine days outside Bante. He hasn't yet completed his initiation when his nineteenth birthday comes but Kossola is already thinking of taking a wife. The girl he's interested in is Aderonke.

Meanwhile, across the ocean, Captain Timothy Meaher, almost fifty years old, hosts a dinner aboard the Roger B. Tancey. He and his guests discuss "Congress's refusal to reopen the international slave trade" which  they believe is absolutely necessary to make their businesses profitable. Attending the dinner are Mr. Deacon, who is a New York City businessman, Mr. Ayers also a Northeasterner who makes pills, and a Louisiana farmer named Mr. Matthews. It is Matthews who suggests that slaves can be brought in illegally and he's willing to bet one hundred dollars on this. But Captain Timothy is willing to wager a thousand dollars that he can smuggle slaves into Mobile, Alabama without the authorities discovering them.

So Captain Timothy, unable to take the time to make the journey himself, hires Captain William Foster, a younger man and a Canadian to do just that. They secure a ship, the Clotilda. Foster suggests they sail to Ouidah in Dahomey, along West Africa's Slave Coast to collect their "cargo".

J.B who grew up an orphan and has worked on ships since the age of ten, learns that Captain Foster is hiring for the Clotilda and is hired on. He feels good that it will be a regular shipping job because he doesn't want to work on any slave ship. Meaher meanwhile decides he will hire a tugboat skipper, Hollingsworth to bring in his cargo so that he can hide them in the swamps before selling them off.

The Clotilda is almost five years old, made of oak and pine planks held together with iron. It knows that Foster and Meaher are lying when they tell people the ship will be carrying lumber. With all the supplies that have been loaded, the Clotilda knows there is enough for a shipload of Africans and is horrified to be part of the illegal slave trade. The eleven-man crew boards along with Foster who sneaks aboard gold and has also falsified papers indicating they are travelling to St. Thomas with lumber.

The journey is filled with troubles from the very beginning. The gold Foster has hidden in the ship causes the the compass to malfunction sending the Clotilda off course. For forty days and nights the ship endures repeated storms including a cyclone and is pursued by two Portuguese man-of-war. One of the crew, J.B. discovers he has signed onto a "slaver" and is furious. He and the other crew rebel and force Foster to offer to pay them double to continue the voyage. In Portugal, Foster bribes the American consul and the Portuguese officials to look the other way.

In Africa, King Glele sends out his warriors to hunt down prisoners to sell and sacrifice to honor their ancestors, including his recently deceased father. They attack Bante, capturing Kossola and many others and murder their king. On the march to Dahomey, Kossola meets Kupollee, another Yoruba man who is roped to him. They are taken to Glele's palace surrounded by an iron fence adorned with human skulls. Gumpa, a nephew of Glele doesn't approve of what he's doing, so Glele has him imprisoned along with the Bante captives and eventually sent to the barracoon.

All of the captives are put through a sorting process, some are left behind but most are sent to Ouidah where they will be forced onto the Clotilda, which lies in wait for them. Those to be sent to America include Kossola, Abile, Kehounco, and Kupollee. At Ouidah, the captives are poked and prodded in every way by Captain Foster and those chosen as slaves are placed in canoes to be taken aboard the Clotilda. They do not realize they are not merely prisoners but now slaves who will never see their homeland nor their families again in this life.

Discussion

African Town is a beautifully crafted novel-in-verse about a real historical event, the smuggling of one hundred ten Africans from Dahomey, now known as Benin, in 1860 to Alabama. The novel covers the events beginning in Mobile, Alabama and Bante, African in 1859 up until the death of Captain William Foster in 1901. 

Although the novel is a work of fiction, the events portrayed in the novel really happened: Timothy Meaher made a bet he could circumvent the law forbidding the bringing in of slaves to the United States from Africa. To that end, he hired William Foster to sail to Ouidah in the Clotilda under false pretenses. The Africans who ended up on the Clotilda were captured by fellow Africans and sold to Foster for transport across the Atlantic. They were then  sold to various buyers in Alabama after being hidden in the swamps surrounding Mobile. 

After the Civil War, those slaves now free, eventually came to create African Town, building their own homes, a school and businesses, demonstrating their remarkable resiliency, determination, frugality and business acumen. Amazingly, to this day the Meahers continue to be a very prominent family in Mobile, Alabama and although Timothy Meaher's great-grandson Robert Meaher admits slavery is wrong, he is appallingly quick to deflect the blame to others. 

To tell this story, Latham and Waters use fourteen different characters including the ship, Clotilda. The major characters include Kossola, Kupollee, Abile, Gumpa, Kehounco, Glele, Timothy Meaher, and William Foster. The authors used the survivors' original African names as this was what was what they requested be done for an earlier publication. They drew on a wealth of information from journals written by both Meaher and Foster and by interviews given by the survivors including Kossola.

African Town utilizes various poetry forms and styles for each of the fourteen characters, and thankfully the authors describe each type in a section at the back titled Poetry Forms/Styles. The poetry of Latham and Waters is evocative, capturing a many of the emotions one would expect from men, women and children who have been ripped away from their homes, their lives and their families. 

Many of the poems capture the sadness, fear, loneliness and confusion of the captured African men and women. One of the characters, James Dennison who was already a slave, watches as the new Africans are brought to the plantation. "When I go to sleep each night, I can hear their cries pierce the lilac skies with loneliness and pain that breaks the moon open."

But the poetry also captures the comfort, support and love they show one another on the journey across the ocean under unbearable conditions and throughout their lives. Helping one another was key to surviving the trip across the Atlantic in the cramped, filthy hold of the ship. Abile and Kehounco join together to support one another, "We may be only two, but dignity is easier to muster as a team. My heart settles when she grips my hand." Abile states in the poem, Sisters By Choice.

Their resilience and determination to survive, their refusal to allow the white men to take away their humanity, is especially seen in the characters of Kossola and Gumpa. In a poem, Brotherhood, Kossola states,
"...But de affection
I feel for Kupolle, Ausy,
and de other men is much
de same - a sense of brotherhood,
like we know de same secrets.
De sailors may have stripped
and chained us, left us in de hold
for weeks, but we're still breathing.
We're all warriors and survivors."

Even after the Civil War when they are free, the survivors refuse to be broken. Initially they plan to return to Bante in Africa and work hard, are frugal and save. When that plan never materializes, the group moves on to other options. They decide to "Make our own Africa". Gumpa suggests that "If we cannot escape this exile, then we are owed land to build our own community, to take our African customs and apply them in this country among ourselves." When Timothy Meaher refuses to give them land, they strategically work to buy land from him and other white people, once again working to help themselves and their children. Soon their dream of their "own Africa" comes to fruition in African Town. 

African Town is an engaging novel, that focuses not so much on the horrors of what actually happened in the last act of enslaving a group of people from Africa to America, but more on the incredible resiliency, courage and determination of the people who endured such evil. It is a remarkable testament to the character and humanity of the Clotilda survivors.

To help their readers put the story into context, Latham and Waters have included an introduction by Joycelyn M. Davis, descendent of Oluale (Charlie Lewis and Mary Lewis), a map showing the voyage of the Clotilda, a detailed Author's Note, More About the Characters (those living after 1901), a note on Africatown Today, A Selected Time Line, Glossary, Poetry Form/Styles, and various resources for further research. 

The following articles may be of interest:

American's last slave ship stole them from home: https://vk.com/@new_forwardls_ru-americas-last-slave-ship-stole-them-from-home-and-it-couldnt

Clotilda: Last American slave ship is discovered in Alabama: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/clotilda-the-last-american-slave-ship-found-in-alabama

"Last known slave ship is remarkably well preserved, researchers say": https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/25/us/clotilda-slaveship-africa-alabama.html

Book Details:

African Town by Irene Latham & Charles Waters
New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons Ltd.   
438 pp.