Black Families of Edgefield Plantation – Woodville, Mississippi

PART 1. Interview With Samuel Booker Minor

On December 26, 1998, I drove to the home of my cousin Samuel Booker Minor on Wayside Road in Woodville Mississippi.

As I was driving, I thought about as a young kid how me and my brothers went down these winding roads with our grandfather Henry Blakes in his forest green pick-up truck, for the final 2 weeks of our summer-long stay with our grandparents.  As he was turning s-curves down the all too familiar winding roads at 80 mph, he would always say, “Now when you boys start driving, don’t drive as fast as I’m driving.”  

For years, I was told by my kinfolk to go talk to Booker Minor if you want to know about the history of the Edgefield Plantation community in Woodville.  Although I was not skeptical of what I was told, I was cautious about what to expect. 

I called earlier that day and asked for an interview with Cousin Booker. He was ready when I drove up to the house. Greeted by his nephew, Halle Minor, I entered the house, exchanged greetings, handed him a bottle of Old Spice after shave lotion as a gift and sat down with my tape recorder to interview him.  I told him when my father died, my mother would always have us take our Grandpa Henry, a Christmas gift – a bottle of Old Spice for Christmas.

We were the only ones in the house and as I sat down at the table with him, he was eating a large plate of Christmas food — stuffed bell peppers, cakes and pies, which he continued to eat throughout the more than 3-hour interview.  He said Halle’s mother, Ma Bea, who was a great cook, had cooked it for him. We talked for a while and I told him how my grandmother, Ma Bess, was a great cook also.  He talked about syrup, which his family used to make with the mill they owned, and how the modern-day food, especially the biscuits,  didn’t taste the same.

We talked for a while longer and he wanted to know who I was.  I told him who my parents were, that I grew up in Baton Rouge but came to Woodville and spent the summers with my grandparents, and now I lived in Dallas.  I had just driven in from my grandmother’s house on Donegal Road.  He knew all the older branches of my maternal family who now lived on the former James Alexander Stewart Plantation, or as Booker Minor called them “Stewart People” – the Veal, Lewis, McQuerter, and Payne families.  He wanted to know who was still alive since he had been in a wheelchair for some years and didn’t get out much anymore. Once I told him I was Nathaniel Blakes’ son, he knew more about my family than I would ever know, and likewise, they knew more about him than he would tell.

Most importantly, he also wanted to know if I was doing this interview for a family history project or for a school project or work.  Once I established that I was doing this because I wanted to know the history of the family, he was ready to talk.

He told me who he was and when he was born and the oral history of the Edgefield families for generations.

“I make my 95 on the 29th of February next two months. I was born 1900 and 4 on the 29th day of February… I was born on Edgefield, my Daddy was born on Edgefield…

“Ned Percy’s daughter Anna she was the niece of my grandma Anna, her sister’s child… She married Anannias Blakes.  She said her grandpa, her Daddy or grandpa, was telling her about it. See we was Percys, but by marrying and marrying we come to be Minors and Turners. The girls marry out of the family you see, and that’s where they bring these different names…” 

“…when you marry, your plantation don’t matter. Your husband would carry you… or maybe your wife would carry you to live with her people, or maybe you would bring her to live with your people…  See, my mother she was raised over there on Woodstock – the Hollands, her mama was a Holland, and her daddy was a Self – Dave Self. And daddy went and married her, and he brought her on over here on Edgefield.”

During the interview, I shared with Booker Minor that I had just returned from Guinea, West Africa in January 1998. On my trip to Africa, I heard the family historians – djelis or griots, playing their musical instruments called Koras, reciting generation after generation of family history. Reflecting back on this interview, it dawned on me that he was following the same tradition, reciting from memory, in cadence, generation after generation of family history.

He talked about and was most proud of his granddaddy, Papa Pharaoh Minor and his grandmother Anna Turner, and her sister Ma Celeste, who was my great grandmother.  He talked about Ma Celeste’s husband Henry Blakes, who he called Old Henry, the father of my grandfather, who he called Little Henry Blakes.  On and on he talked about the long history of the families on the Edgefield plantation.  Fortunately, much of the early and recent Edgefield family history he told me about has been written down in excellent family reunion books by my cousin Susie Minor Boudreaux.

I was here to record and hear it all first-hand,  to understand the proud legacy of these families, to make my own connection and to own it – all the family history, good and bad.

I had done some preliminary research on the  Blakes, Turner, James, Percy and Minor families – mainly census research back to 1870, and I had asked a few questions around the family.  I wanted to know how the name Percy was affiliated with our family.  My great-grandfather Henry Blakes, born in 1855, was listed as the 22-year-old son of Hannah Percy in the 1880 census, and so far, no one could tell me what the connection was. I wanted to know about the Percy connection. 

After talking for a while, I popped the question.

“How are we connected to the slaveholder Percy?

And this was his answer:

“Now listen! They tell me in slavery time this Edgefield track of land here, this section of land, you know the government was letting it out to them soldiers, and this here fellow from West Baton Rouge, this Edgefield track of land was deeded to him. 

You know it just went from family to family until Dr. Patrick came from New York and married a widow and he (Patrick) came into possession of it.  Well, the Percys, they come here, they was the ones brought his half-white/colored family with him on an ox-wagon from West Baton Rouge.”

And just like that, Samuel Booker Minor told me, as I have now come to understand, the foundational  history of the Blakes, Minors, Turners, Percys, Plains, Andersons, Youngs, Palmers and other related families on Edgefield Plantation in Woodville Mississippi as he remembered it.  From around 1777 when Charles Percy, the first slaveowner arrived, the plantation was passed down from “family-to-family” or slaveowner-to-slaveowner, until 1865, the death of the last slaveowner Dr. J. C. Patrick.

The interview went on and it was about to get dark outside.  He told me he had an extra bedroom and asked me if I wanted to spend the night.  I told him I had to return back to Dallas the next morning, so I declined. As the old folks often warned, he was going  to “talk you to death.”  

After making it back home after the interview my job was easy.  If I wanted to know the connection of the Percy name to my family story, all I had to do was take the next 10 years or so and find out exactly what the hell he was talking about!  

And that’s exactly what I did.

Next: The House of Percy