Turning Down The Pot

Dedicated to PHAROAH SANDERS (Oct 13, 1940 – Sept 24, 2022)

Pharoah Minor was born in slavery on Edgefield Plantation in around 1849 and died June 3, 1921. He was the son of Jimmy and Phoebe Minor. Jimmy was the son of Congo and Sal Minor. Pharoah married Anna Turner, the first child of Nelson and Adeline Douglas Turner to be born in Woodville, Mississippi, after they were sold away from their children in Richmond, Virginia, and brought to Edgefield Plantation in around 1847 by slaveowner J.C. Patrick.

Pharoah’s name is misspelled in the Edgefield Community 1870 Census as Clara, and he is listed as a female. Phoebe Minor never had a female child named Clara. In the 1880 census his name is spelled Farar, which is probably close to how his name was pronounced.

Samuel Booker Minor always spoke highly of his grandpa whom he called Papa Pharoah. In my interview with him in 1998, he talked about Pharoah Minor and the early religious beliefs at Edgefield.

“Now look, they didn’t raise money on a Sunday. And up there at Edgefield don’t you let nan nickel hit that church floor on a Sunday. You left that money at home. They could come there and shout and sing and pray all right, but you’d come there Thursday night and pay the money to the preacher.

That’s the way I was baptized, paying money on a Sunday. And, I don’t know, just before I married, I was amongst them old people and started to paying the preacher his money on a Sunday at Edgefield. Now, I don’t know when they started to giving the preacher his money at Mt. Olive on a Sunday. Them the only 2 churches I know was operating like that.

Old man Pharoah said you was polluting the church if you let a nickel fall on that floor [on Sunday]. He was kind of an industrious farmer, my grandpa Pharoah Minor.

And if he had a watermelon there, he would hit that watermelon, BAM! BAM!, BAM!, and he would divide it in four parts, and now look, you had to bite it out of there the best way you could. You couldn’t use no knife… you was sinning, abomination. [I am] talking about my grandpa now. He was the only one I know was that strict.

You couldn’t cut wood on a Sunday. Woodstock people cut wood on Sunday, but Edgefield people didn’t. You don’t use no axe on Sunday. They called themselves being strict religious people. If you’re going to have a chicken to eat tomorrow, you had to pick that chicken Saturday and cut him up. You could cook him Sunday, but you couldn’t kill him and pick him.

Old man Pharoah, he was born in slavery time. You know, they say them slaves prayed themselves off that slave list. They think prayers done that. They tell me they didn’t allow them – the boss man didn’t allow them to pray. And they would get the pot and go down the hill there somewhere and hide from him, and put they mouth in that pot and holler.

That’s what they tell me now, ha ha. Me and your people.”

[Alvin Blakes interview with Samuel Booker Minor, December 26, 1998]

Turning Down The Pot Michael A. Gomez in his book Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South writes about the aftermath of the Denmark Vesey rebellion in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1821, and the Nat Turner rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, in 1831, and why enslaved people would “steal away” and pray under a pot to avoid being heard by enslavers. Believing that the enslaved Africans would continue to use biblical references to pray and fight for their freedom, white slaveholders took charge of religious services to force-feed them a different message:  “Slaves, obey your masters, with deep respect and fear”

Banish the rain

Sampson Minor, the older brother of Pharoah, was born in slavery on Edgefield Plantation around 1842. He is a 1-year-old on the 1843 J.C. Patrick slave inventory. He married Lucy in 1860 and they are listed in the Edgefield Community 1870 Census. They had no children.

Samuel Booker Minor remembered this legendary story of Sampson Minor;

“They tell me I had an uncle — Papa Pharoah had a brother named Sampson Minor. And if it was raining he’d go out there and he would say ‘banish – banish’ — tell the rain to banish and it quit raining. That’s what they tell me, I didn’t see that. He had a reputation for that kind of prayer, my grandpa Papa Pharoah Minor’s brother.

They sent for him to pray over the high water down there in Fort Adams. Did you ever see the high water? Sometimes that water is more outrageous than it is at other times. But, however, every so many years they have the extreme high water. People come all out here — go to different places to put their cattle.”

[Alvin Blakes interview with Samuel Booker Minor, December 26, 1998]

Edgefield Community Memory

As I mentioned in Part 1 of the blog series on The Black Families of Edgefield, my interview with Samuel Booker Minor lasted 3 hours. I carried along a tape recorder and some 1870 and 1880 census sheets of the Edgefield Community families. Henry Blake, Pharoah Minor, Affy Blake and Adeline Turner are names that I now know well since my study of the evolution of the families since 1776.

Samuel Booker Minor (1904-2001) had the long memory. He remembered those who were born in slavery and lived into the early 1900s to tell him their stories. And he told me their stories.

It is through these stories, passed down for generations, that we can learn much about who we are.

Next: Remembering Adeline Douglas Turner and Affy Blake