A HISTORIAN'S 



remember that merely a half-dozen other 

 slave writings are known to have arisen 

 from tidewater North Carolina. Between 

 1 843 and 1 852, Harriet Jacobs of Edenton, 

 Moses Grandy of Camden County, and 

 Thomas H. Jones of Wilmington published 

 autobiographies after escaping from the 

 South. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, 

 Jacobs' narrative, has been belatedly 

 recognized as a classic of American literature. 



In addition, William H. Robinson of 

 Wilmington, William Ferebee (once a 

 Currituck slave waterman), and William 

 Henry Singleton (a slave at Garbacon 

 Creek in what is now Carteret County, then 

 part of Craven County) all published 

 memoirs after the Civil War. Except for 

 Jacobs' Incidents and Singleton's Recollec- 

 tions of My Slavery Days, these slave 

 narratives can be found only in the largest 

 university libraries and are not readily 

 available to the general public. 



Parker provides insight into tidewater 

 life — and not just slave life — that cannot 

 be found anywhere else. Parker worked for 

 a great variety of small planters and 

 yeoman farmers, including the poor sort of 

 backwoods farmer who barely scratched 

 out a living on the edge of the Great Dismal 

 Swamp. This is a part of Albemarle society 

 long overshadowed by the great planters 

 and wealthy merchants, whose family 

 records we have inherited and whose 

 homes are preserved in historic districts. 

 Parker's memoir cuts through that thin 

 upper crust of Albemarle society and lets us 

 see into the heart of daily life for black and 

 white, slave and free. 



Allen Parker's story begins in Chowan 

 County over a century and a half ago. Born 

 about 1 840, he was the son of slaves Millie 

 Parker and Jeff Ellick. He lived on a 

 modest plantation owned by Peter Parker in 

 the Chowan community, a rural neighbor- 

 hood located eight miles north of Edenton 

 (then the largest seaport on Albemarle 

 Sound) and bordered by Bear Swamp, the 

 Great Dismal Swamp, and two blackwater 

 rivers, the Chowan and the Yeopim. "The 



country around Chowan was not very 

 thickly settled," Parker wrote in Recollec- 

 tions, "the land being divided up into farms 

 or plantations, upon which was raised 

 wheat, indian corn, rye, oats, peanuts, 

 sweet-potatoes and sometimes rice." 



Peter Parker died when Allen was a 

 baby. He left the slave boy and his mother 

 to his infant daughter, Annie, with the 

 stipulation that Millie and Allen should be 

 "hired out" by her guardian until she was an 

 adult. The guardian auctioned off the slaves 

 to other individuals for a year at a time. The 

 hirers got the slaves' labor; Peter Parker's 

 estate got the proceeds; Millie and Allen 

 were supposed to get food and clothing. 

 Like many slaves in the Albemarle Sound 

 vicinity, Allen Parker moved annually from 

 master to master. 



I do not know if I can put into words 

 the excitement, almost the sheer joy, 

 that a historian feels at discovering 



a document like Parker's Recollections. 

 I find these discoveries just as exhilarating 



as paddling into a swamp wilderness 

 or exploring a remote barrier island 



after a big storm. A whole new world 



opens up before you — you never know 

 what wonders and surprises will be 

 revealed in that uncharted territory. 



He never labored for truly prosperous 

 planters, but at times, he was leased to 

 relatively wealthy men. Darias White, for 

 instance, employed 40 slave loggers and 

 teams of mules and oxen in a local swamp, 

 where they harvested old-growth hardwoods 

 for shipbuilding timbers. More often, Parker 

 worked for one-mule farmers who could not 

 afford to own a slave or even to hire slaves 

 except after exceptionally good harvests. 



During his childhood, Allen Parker 

 lived among several "good masters," 

 hardworking men with whose families he 

 shared meals. Within the boundaries of his 

 enslavement, these masters treated him 

 decently. He had a special fondness for a 

 small farmer and storekeeper named George 



Williams, recalling that he played with 

 Williams' children and learned some of their 

 school lessons: "I had many good times 

 playing with the other children[,] for whatever 

 the grown white people might think about the 

 colored people, the little children did not 

 know any difference when they were 

 allowed to play with the slave children." 



Young Parker also worked for brutal, 

 malevolent masters who beat him, kept him 

 hungry, and tried at every turn to subdue his 

 spirit. A farmer named Small was among the 

 worst. He beat Allen's mother severely and 

 worked her day and night in the fields and in 

 his kitchen while she was still breast-feeding 

 a new baby. Confronted with men so vile, Allen 

 and his mother ran away several times, seeking 

 refuge with other slaves or white friends. 



When the Civil War broke out, Parker 

 was among the thousands of slaves who 

 escaped from tidewater plantations to Union 

 territory. The Union army captured the Outer 

 Banks and most of the state's seaports by 

 early 1862, and Albemarle slaves staged a 

 colossal boatlift to freedom behind Union 

 lines. While other Albemarle slaves 

 confiscated sloops or built makeshift rafts 

 and sailed to Union outposts as far away as 

 Roanoke Island and the Outer Banks, Parker 

 did not have to travel so far. He rowed out to 

 a Union gunboat that had come up the 

 Chowan River. 



During the Federal occupation, Parker 

 served in the Union navy on the North 

 Carolina sounds. He later worked at a 

 Beaufort sawmill before departing the South 

 as a merchant sailor. He eventually settled in 

 Worcester, married and raised a family while 

 working as a street peddler. 



Recollections of Slavery Times may be 

 most important for describing the daily 

 rhythms of slave life in the Carolina 

 tidewater. Parker neither neglects nor lingers 

 over slavery's terrors. Instead, his genius is 

 in chronicling the details of daily life. He 

 spends four pages simply describing a typical 

 slave cabin — its construction; the composi- 

 tion of its beams, mortar, roof, chimney, 



Continued 



COASTWATCH 



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