Black Families of Edgefield Plantation – Woodville, Mississippi: Part 2

Part 2. The House of Percy

A couple of years after my interview with Booker Minor in 1998, I found a book at the Southern Methodist University Library in Dallas written by Bertram Wyatt-Brown titled The House of Percy: Honor, Melancholy, and Imagination In A Southern Family (1994). The book gives a detailed account of the earliest arrival of the Percy families in North America.

Charles Percy was born in 1740 in Ireland and later served in the British Army.  He traveled between North Carolina and St. Eustatias, a small Dutch-occupied island in the Caribbean near the island of St Kitts/Nevis, and then to Pensacola Florida by 1776.  From there he sailed into the Natchez Region, which, at that time, was called British West Florida, a colony of Great Britain from 1763 until 1783 when it was captured and ceded to Spain.

I found what I was looking for on page 28 of the book.

“As a veteran of the Royal Army, Percy was eligible for a grant of “family land,” and in 1777 Peter Chester, the current governor of British West Florida, and his Council at last awarded him 600 acres. The size of the grant suggested that he may have brought with him nine dependents, doughtlessly slaves, perhaps ones brought with him from North Carolina or from St. Eustatius. The track was located on the right bank of Bayou Sara, near a settlement later called St Francisville, not far from the border that later separated the future American states of Mississippi and Louisiana.”

“In 1779, Percy petitioned the governor for yet another tract. Later through an American marriage, he acquired still more property near Opelousas, St. Landry Parish. There he raised large herds of cattle. At intervals he sold the livestock on the New Orleans market for the West Indian trade. Thus he eventually came to hold three plantations, one near St. Francisville (Louisiana) on Bayou Sara, which he called Abluses, another at Opelousas, and the third, his residence, which he called Northumberland House, on Buffalo Creek. His chief area of concern became the Buffalo Creek landholding. The property was located about six miles east of the Mississippi, not far from an old French redoubt whose name under British authority was Fort Panmure. It was fifteen or so miles below Natchez, in the future Mississippi County of Wilkinson.”

This is the written account that backs up the oral history that was passed down by generations of Black Families on Edgefield Plantation and on to Booker Minor.

A small portion of Percy’s Wilkinson County lands included the site that would later be called Edgefield Plantation, north of  Woodstock Plantation on Wayside Road in Woodville.

Percy, like many of the British soldiers and United States Revolutionary War soldiers, were given huge acres of land for participating as agents of war and colonizers for the European nations. Once they received these large tracts of other native people’s land, they turned to chattel slavery to provide free labor for their profit and wealth. They began buying African captives and conditioning them through physical, mental and psychological terror to work the land “for life.”

A census for the Natchez District (then occupied by Spain) that was taken on June 14, 1792 listed the Charles Percy family household of 6 people, with 4000 arpents of land (3300 acres) and 22 slaves – 19 black and 3 mulattoes.

It is estimated that Percy came into Wilkinson County with 9 enslaved Africans.  Based on his travels, they were possibly brought from either North Carolina, the island of St Eustatius, Pensacola, Florida or New Orleans.  Where did he purchase the rest of the men and women to work the land and build these Plantations?

A compilation of Percy’s transactions taken from the Databases for the Study of Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy lists Africans he purchased as they arrived on ships from Africa, or after a brief stop in the Caribbean Islands. Charles (Carlos) Percy purchased a total of 9 enslaved Africans from New Orleans and Baton Rouge slave traders during the Spanish period.

• 1 child (no name listed) – newly arrived from Africa into New Orleans on a ship named San Josef; ship Captain Jayme Badia; which stopped on the island of Martinique.   Purchased from slave trader Narcisco Alva.
• 4 African males – Hamlet (born around 1762), Cato, Dick, and Apolon, who were newly arrived from Africa and previouly owned by Percy’s Woodville neighbor Francis Pousset. Purchased from slave trader Laclan McNeal.
• A family of 3 — Catto, Sarah and their son Mayor.  Bought from the George Proffitt Estate sale in Baton Rouge.
• A 22-year-old man named Marcos (born around 1771). Purchased from slave trader Jaun Mapother.

In January 1794, a “melancholy” Charles Percy committed suicide by tying a large pot around his neck and jumping into a nearby creek in Woodville.  All the folks from Woodville are familiar with the name of the creek, and the part of town now known as Percy Creek.

Unfortunately, the Plantation records of Charles Percy have never been found.  Fortunately, Percy left a will.  A will that would require the detail inventory and distribution of his most valuable property -– the African men, women, and children, whom he enslaved.

Next: The Founding Black Families