Black Families of Edgefield Plantation – Woodville, Mississippi: Part 10 (Final)

Part 10 (Final). The Black Families of Edgefield – A 100-Year History

The 100-year history of the Black Families of Edgefield is just one of the untold stories of Africans enslaved on early Mississippi plantations. The beginnings of the Edgefield community trace back to 1776 when Charles Percy first arrived in Woodville with an estimated nine enslaved Africans. Percy later purchased Africans off ships arriving from Africa and the Caribbean Islands, and he acquired others from the upper South U.S domestic slave trade. In previous discussions I have mentioned the likely African origins of three of the earliest Edgefield ancestors.

•                 Hamlet Percy – Igbo people from present day Southeastern Nigeria

•                 Congo Minor – Kongo nation from present day Congo

•                 Quaquo [Kwaku] – Akan & Ewe people from present day Ghana

The growth of the three earliest Edgefield families started with the distribution of twenty-three people to Sarah Percy in the division of the Charles Percy estate. Sarah Percy inherited more enslaved people after the death of her first husband John Ellis of Natchez. After she died, her second husband Nathaniel Ware sold the plantation and enslaved people to John Connell. After Connell’s death, his widow Eliza Chinn of Kentucky married J.C. Patrick. 

After 1843 there were no estate inventories containing the names of those enslaved on Edgefield but the 1850 and 1860 U.S. Federal Slave Schedule for J.C. Patrick lists a total of 194 and 260 enslaved individuals, respectively. In 1860 J.C. Patrick became one of the largest slaveholders in Wilkinson County.

I have identified the households, families, and interrelated community of Edgefield. The personal stories of these enslaved persons are not known but the conditions under which they lived is clear. Forced into family unions and work groups, these families, with some individuals coming from advanced agricultural societies in Africa – cleared the forest, plowed the soil, and planted and harvested the indigo and cotton crops. After emancipation they emerged from 90 years of chattel slavery on the same plantation with family names and family structures in place. 

Finally, a return to the community memory passed down by Samuel Booker Minor, great-great-grandson of Congo and Sally Minor, for a concise history of Edgefield.

“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 [S.C.] and married a widow and he [Patrick] came into possession of it. Well, the Percy’s, they come here, they was the ones brought his half-white/colored family with him on an ox-wagon from West Baton Rouge.”

And now the descendants of the Edgefield Black Families — Blake(s), Minor, Percy, Turner, Plains, Anderson, Henderson, can call the Edgefield ancestors by their names so that they will always be remembered.