Condemned to a life eternal?

Is it simply because churches recorded and preserved documents, that clergymen stand out in my tree? Without having compared my family history to yours, I feel as if I have been preceded by an inordinate number of 'men of the cloth.' Perhaps reading has long appealed to my ancestors, particularly when compared to toiling in the fields. Peer-reviewed research by Buttery and Roberston indicates spirituality may emerge from genetic code. My sister is deeply religious. We descend paternally from Rev. William Hardesty (1776-1846) who was with Methodism as it institutionalized. At least a dozen pastors inform our maternal line. The martyr John Rogers (1500-1555) is among them: Anglican prebendary at St. Paul's Cathedral in London, he helped translate and edit the first English Bible. Cardinal Reginald Pole ordered Rogers burned at the stake after trial for such heresy. 

This blog sprang from research on adventurers pioneering into Kentucky as the nation broke into revolution. These headstrong ancestors were not a cross-section of society. Remarkable tales of self-reliance and personal initiative indicate a breed of individualists. Initial settlers were isolated over extended periods of time from tidewater institutions which were attending to other matters. I do not take for granted that these men pulled a mantle of republican self-government over their efforts, nor how quickly they placed religious activity at the center of community. For all I know, religiosity tamed wilderness when women began arriving in larger numbers.

Virginian Rev. Andrew Tribble (1741-1822) had run afoul of the law when colonial authorities in Orange County indicted him for preaching Baptist doctrine. Tribble carried himself, his strict beliefs, and his family to the frontier. My 4x gr-grandfather 'Old Ironsides' will get his own Hard Honesty post at some point.
[2018 Update: A. Tribble, T. Jefferson: Men’s Opinions and Beliefs Depend Not on Their Own Will is out for peer review.]

This entry follows a post on Thomas Burris (c1722-1789). A peeved Col. George Washington suspected martial discipline, appropriately applied, might condemn Burris "to a life eternal!" In hell, I assume. I here depict Burris' children's migration into Kentucky. By marrying his daughter, Sarah Ann Burris (1753-1830), Preacher Tribble became adjunct to his father-in-law's legacy in afterlife. 

The Burris brood carried civilizing effects of religious practice westward, into primitive conditions.

Daughters of the American Revolution [citing pages 757 & 8 in Abercrombie and Slatten’s Virginia Revolutionary Public Claims, Vol. III] credit Thomas Burroughs, husband of Frances Tandy (1730-1816), with providing unspecified ‘material aid’ to patriots engaged in Revolution. Many assert Burris, who'd lost an arm during colonial interests' French and Indian War, continued combat during Revolutionary War. I am willing to share in the contention that his son, Thomas Burris Jr. (c1757-1836) is the more likely candidate. But I honestly don’t know.

A veterans' pension record indicates a Thomas Burris mustered in as a Private on 23 February 1776. All service, which seems to have concluded November 1779, was within the Third Virginia Regiment of Foot. The subject moved back and forth between at least four companies. He twice served - as Corporal - in Captain John Francis Mercer's company. The transient nature of this Burris' service stands out among records I review. Perhaps this is the rambunctious Tom Burris, Sr. Or a combination of father-and-son war records, fused together.
[See note on Burris Revolutionary Service.]

Thomas Burris, Sr. is forged – in folklore if nowhere else – from a warrior tradition. His legacy; no doubt cultivated by wife Frances, a woman of some refinement; is greater than that, however.

The Thomas Burris, Sr. estate contained a lot of land. 

John Francis Mercer (1759-1821)

During the French and Indian War, Burris, Sr. had served under Captain George Mercer, elder brother of the above John Francis Mercer. Their father John had been one of the first to join George Fairfax [cited in correspondence here], George Washington's half-brothers and other wealthy Virginia planters, in forming the Ohio Company of Virginia. By 1763 George Mercer acted as London agent for this group of wealthy land speculators. No doubt distinctly separated by class, Burrises and Mercers were in close and certainly intimate proximity over time.

Burris, Sr.'s 1789 estate included thousands of acres of land in a part of extreme western Virginia known as Kentucky. He accrued it either by reward for service or through speculation. To best capitalize on such ventures, Ohio Company contracts required inducing a specific number of settlers to create agrarian economy on granted land. Burris was not a high-level investor organized to do such, but he likely understood land values appreciate as settlement inspires demand for adjacent parcels. Perhaps his heirs simply wanted new opportunity.

Thomas Burris, Sr. married Frances Tandy in 1750. They’d had four daughters by the time Burris lost his arm. Of the four, my 4x-great grandmother Sarah Ann married Pastor Tribble in 1768. Absent an unknown first wife, it is almost assured that ‘Sallie’ bore her first child a month past her 16th birthday. Ten years after the Burris/Tribble marriage, Sarah Ann's sister Frances Tandy Burris (1762-1828) married William Bush (1746-1815). Those who don’t know the exploits of Daniel Boone companion 'Billy' Bush miss out on a colorful character. In his father Phillip's will, dated 10 May 1771, William is said to have been "absent for some time past and not heard of.”
[See note on Phillip Bush will.]

Bush had been making history. In 1770 he labored tenaciously to help cut Boone's Trace into Kentucky. His work opened Transylvania Company lands to settlement and speculation.

Without citation, a 'Tribute to Captain Billy' reports, "When his father died in 1772, Bush returned to Virginia with every intention of settling down and becoming a respectable citizen. He married Frances Tandy Burrus.”Age 16 in 1778, bride 'Franky' was half the groom’s age.

On 18 March 1780, Thomas Burris Sr. executed a pair of land warrants, apparently for two, thousand-acre parcels. On the same date, Andrew Tribble obtained a warrant for 500 acres of Kentucky land. 
[Survey below.]

William Bush had been busy. His parents initially Episcopalian, Bush had fully embraced Baptist doctrine well before luring family members west to land he’d explored north of the Kentucky River. Across from Fort Boonesborough. Several accounts declare Bush willing to give away parcels from his claim, to entice settlement. Possession of that land was still being contested by Native warriors when, in the summer of 1780, the adventurer Bush led five brothers and a sister out from Orange County, Virginia. Included in this contingent were "some of the best families of Virginia," according to Baptist hagiography. "There were five married daughters and three sons of Thomas Burris, a rich planter of Virginia, the sons and the husbands of four of the daughters all being brothers-in-law of Captain Billy Bush.”
[See History of the Churches of Boone's Creek Baptist Association of Kentucky, by S. J. Conkwright, 1923; pg. 20.]

The Bush/Burris migration is a story of resilience. Billy Bush forged ahead of the caravan, to scout conditions around Boonesborough. In time, forty-four pioneers in his wake ran out of road. No longer suitable for wilderness terrain, they likely bartered their wagons away at Fort Chiswell, about nine miles east of present Wytheville, Virginia.

Bush was waiting when, in December 1780, the group arrived at Black’s Fort on the Holston River in the Wolf Hills of western Virginia. Near present-day Abingdon. Though the quote lacks his phrasing, Bush is to have conveyed that "... troubles with the Indians at that time rendered it impolitic and unwise to proceed farther."
[See A History of Kentucky and Kentuckians, by E. Polk Johnson, 1912; pg. 1700.]

Re-created Holston-era blockhouse

Indigenous Cherokee and Muscogee (also seen as Creek Confederacy) had united with Tories to serve under coordinated command. They had attacked the isolated outpost in July four years prior. After causing many casualties, warriors had driven all militia out from garrisons west of the fortification.The noncombatant Bush/Burris band was vulnerable. Families wintered-over near the refuge of what was probably not much more than a blockhouse behind a stockade.

"... within one month after their arrival at Holston, a part of the colony organized themselves into a church and held regular services, with Elder Robert Elkin as their pastor. The name of this church at that time, if it had one, has not survived, but after the departure from Holston, it has been rightly named a Travelling Church, for led by her pastor she held regular church services and transacted church business." [See Conkwright; pp. 19-20.]

Behind this group migrated followers of Baptist Pastor Lewis Craig. As they had come over 'in a body' from Virginia, I contend this contingent rightly deserves appellation of 'Travelling Church.' "The moving train included church members, their children, negro slaves and other emigrants (who, for better protection, had attached themselves to an organized expedition), between five and six hundred souls." At least 200 were adult members of Upper Spottsylvania Church. "It was the largest body of Virginians that ever set out for Kentucky at one time. And not only the members but nearly everything else pertaining to Craig's Church was going. Its official books and records, its simple communion service, the treasured old Bible from the pulpit -- nearly everything in fact but the building itself ..."
[See The Travelling Church, by G. W. Ranck, 1891; pg. 13.]

"Attracted by glowing accounts which were given by returning explorers of the beautiful scenery, the unexcelled productiveness, and the abundance of wild game of the charming region beyond the mountains, and revolting against the ecclesiastical persecution and domination of the State Church authorities of Virginia, the larger number of the members of this church, having been, at their own request, constituted into an independent church, and taking along with them the pastor and the old church book, began their long and tedious journey to the "foreign land." Carrying their women, children, and baggage on horseback, they travelled [sic] through the wilderness for 600 miles. Famine, cold, fatigue, and sickness impeded their journey. The wild beast and treacherous Indian made perilous their march. Winter, with its ice, snow, and mud, tested their patience and tried their strength. Many times during their journey, when a halt was called, did they engage in religious services. Many times did the primeval forest of the Dark and Bloody Ground resound with the hymns of Zion; the vales which formerly had reverberated with the scream of the catamount or the war whoop of the infuriated savage, now for the first time echoed with the hallelujahs of the saints."
[See Kentucky Baptist History 1770-1922, by W. D. Dowlin, 1922; pp. 31-32.]

The Craig group arrived at Black's Fort to find the Bush party had been in temporary settlement for at least nine months. A chronicler describes the Bush Colony from a point of view held by fellow Virginia Baptists:

"For nearly a year they had experienced that "hope deferred which maketh the heart sick" -- nearly a year of such waiting as had to be endured at an exposed and isolated station whose gallant defenders often during the Revolution had barely enough provisions to keep them alive. And Craig's church waited also, and while it waited its pastor preached again and again, and there were baptisms, washing of feet and many prayers." [See Ranck, pg. 22.]

Ranck describes reconnaissance the Craig group had received at Fort Chiswell, about sixty miles behind them:

"The disquieting reports they had heard at Fort Chiswell [of fresh signs of Indians and outlawed Tories] were confirmed. Kentucky and the road leading to it was beset by savages and they must do like other emigrants who had arrived at the Wolf Hills before them -- camp as best they could and wait for a safer time to start again."

Following General Gates' defeat in the August 1780 Battle of Camden, the southern wing of the Continental Army had disintegrated in South Carolina. Partisan struggles broke out. "The tories upon the waters of the Holston were now as dangerous and hurtful as the Indians," declared John Haywood.
[See The Civil and Political History of the State of Tennessee from its earliest settlement up to the year 1796, by John Haywood, Arthur St. Clair Colyar, 1891; pg. 76.]

Though Craig's were 'Separatist' Baptists, and the Bush Colony 'Regular' Baptists, it appears Elder Lewis Craig ordained Brother Robert Elkin. On 26 September, 1781 the Elkin group from Orange County is to have constituted itself, drawing up a membership list. It is apparent that 25 of the 41 original members were women. Captain Bush was in residence, with his wife Franky and six other adults in his family. The list does not include any other Burris family members. It is possible that the Burris clan dropped out of Craig's group, to wait in safety. Perhaps the Burris clan were present, but chose not to constitute themselves in an Elkin congregation. (Elders Tribble and Elkin were to have a divisive falling out - over church doctrine - by the end of the decade.)

I'm always amazed when I read accounts where bands of men in short order felled trees and 'cabined in' for the winter, or in advance of an impending attack. Says Ranck, "Huts were erected and occupied, but the undaunted pioneers determined all the same to start again as soon as possible and such poor preparations as circumstances permitted were made for the winter travel to which they might be subjected. Bullets were moulded, ammunition gourds replenished, venison 'jerked,' pack-saddles repaired, extra deer-skin moccasins made, clothing given especial attention, and every effort was made to strengthen the sick and feeble for the hardships yet to come." Gambling the odds of survival greater as warriors and partisans were less likely to campaign in wintertime, Craig and his party set off in late October or early November.
[See Lewis Craig, the Pioneer Baptist Preacher, His Life, Labors, and Character, by Lewis Thompson, 1910; pg 24.]

The Bush Colony would remain in limbo, encamped on the Holston River, for another two years. Caution was on the wind. In the spring of 1782, Regular Baptist Preacher John Gerrard had been organizing congregations in what is now Hardin County, Kentucky for more than a year when he set out hunting. "He was never afterwards heard of and is supposed to have been murdered by the Indians."
[See A History of Kentucky Baptists, Volume I, by John H. Spencer, 1886; pg. 17.] Elder John Taylor, in his History of the Ten Churches, wrote, "It was a gloomy thing at that time [1782] to move to Kentucky." Raising crops on the banks of the Holston seemed a wise choice for the Bush Colony.

Spencer lamented conditions at the intended destination:

"The year just closed [1782] had been fraught with many dangers, trials and sorrows. One preacher, out of nine, had fallen a victim to savage barbarity, and many other settlers of the country had perished in the same manner. The imigrants [sic] had been compelled to remain in forts most of the summer, so that they had raised but little grain, and now set in the winter, always dreary enough to the poor, but doubly gloomy when the snow covers the fresh graves of murdered husbands and fathers. Many poor widows and orphans, hundreds of miles from all their old friends and surrounded by an almost boundless wilderness, every acre of which teemed with deadly danger, were weeping and shivering in rude log cabins in Kentucky. How much they needed the comforts of a holy religion, to encourage them amid their deep despondency." [See Spencer; pg. 40.]

Some of the Burris clan were in a 'delicate' condition. While encamped on the Holston, Franky Bush bore her first child, Elkanah, on 1 June 1783. Two days later, sister Sallie bore her seventh surviving child, Silas Burris Tribble. As many as twenty-seven Burris-Tandy grandchildren were displaced in the hinterlands, in temporary quarters near Black's Fort. [See note depicting Burris Family head count.]

All told, the Bush Colony had raised three crops of corn before, on 1 September, 1783, they were finally summonsed onward. “Upon receiving this news, Wolf Hills was made to rebound with the sounds of rejoicing, such as had not been heard since the surrender of Cornwallis” (in 1781). [See Conkwright; pg. 19.] Bush’s oldest brother had died at Black’s Fort: Josiah left a pair of shoemaker's pincers, an old sword, some old books (including a Bible and old hymn book), pipe and tobacco box, Negro man John, and Negro man Solomon. Josiah’s widow Sarah and their children pressed on to Kentucky, presumably with their captives.

When the contingent arrived at Craig's Station (also 'Cragg's Station,' near what is now Lancaster, Kentucky) sometime in the spring of 1784, "they found empty cabins awaiting them. Craig and his colony of Baptists had moved near Lexington, Kentucky." The last leg, a winter journey of more than 200 miles, must have been grueling. Due to "the badness of the weather and our scattered situation, nothing of importance was done" by church members until April. On 3 April 1784, we find the first preserved record of the band holding services ... in the cabin of their pastor, Elder Elkin. "William's brother Phillip Bush [Jr.] was elected clerk. Joseph and Mildred Embree were received into the church by letter,” [See Conkwright; pp. 21-22.] documentary evidence of a second Burris daughter in proximity to William Bush. Joseph Embree (c1727-1818) had married Mildred Burris (c1750-1797) c1765.

Old Stone Meeting House

On 27 November 1784, the first meeting of the Howard’s Creek Baptists was held at William Bush's cabin. By 1787 these pioneer Baptists erected their first meeting house, “made of logs and with portholes for defense against Indians. According to tradition, while one part of the congregation kept watch at the portholes, the rest worshiped," says Conkwright. According to Hatton, here: "There was a secret cellar under the pulpit for powder, shot, and guns." A map of farms before 1800 shows how the Bush Colony settled around the church, which also served as a fortress. On the same lot, they built the Old Stone Meeting House, known since 1790 as Providence Church.

The legacy of Thomas Burris, Sr. extended beyond thousands of acres in Kentucky. It exceeded the 641 pounds, 17 shillings, 4 pence in his estate and split eleven ways in 1800. He left for posterity more than a beast by the name of Jack, the negro boy Absalom, negro woman Nan, negro girl Sukey, negro boy Ben, negro boy Duke, negro girl Agnes, negro girl Dinah, negro girl Violet, negro girl Alice ... and the unnamed slaves wife Frances held in trust for her heirs. (Frank had escaped captivity when Frances drafted her 1816 will.)

The Frances Tandy-Thomas Burris legacy includes spousal choices made by their daughters.

Frances Tandy Burris and her husband William Bush were able to expand the foothold of Christian teaching while simultaneously warring with Natives who opposed their territorial expansion. They were able to inspire community among men of tremendous self-reliance, and to encourage that those relationships be based on values that wartime struggle in a wilderness might have otherwise eroded.

"... strong, brave men, with hearts full of love and faith, ... were ready to dare every danger, to pray in the rude cabins of weak and timid christians, [sic] to cheer and encourage despairing mourners, and to warn reckless sinners of their awful danger." [See Spencer; pg. 39.]

The Traveling Church had persevered against almost unimaginable environmental challenges. They had braved Native contention for the land they sought. Beyond necessity and innate character, Spencer also attributes their resilience to the experience of resisting oppression by the dominant culture. Men like Tribble "had been tried in the relentless fires of persecution and purified as silver. Inured to hardhips and dangers, they had lost the sense of earthly fear, and were prepared to surmount every difficulty ..."

Sarah Ann Burris's husband, Rev. Andrew Tribble, would pastor Tate's Creek and Unity churches. A son credited 'Old Ironsides' with more than 2,000 baptisms. Tribble also diligently grew his flock by fostering an organized structure of mutually-supportive Associations, or communities of like-minded believers.

Also in the migration was daughter Jane Burris (1759-1811) who had - in 1776 - married Elder James Quisenberry (1759-1830). Quisenberry would organize the Cane Springs Meeting House and pastor the Red River and Friendship congregations in rural, nascent Kentucky.

Mildred Burris's husband, Elder Joseph Embree, would become a Deacon in Bush's Howard's Creek/ Providence Church in 1788.

The Tandy-Burris spiritual legacy emerged in succeeding generations, particularly among grandchildren born to Sallie and Rev. Andrew Tribble. The year following Burris' death, Nancy Tribble (1788-1862), married David Chenault (1771-1831). Brother Chenault served four churches over a period of fifty years. A Burris-Tribble son, Peter Burris Tribble (1774-1849), also took on the role of Baptist preacher. [See Spencer; pp. 130 & 207.]

These men, by and large, both preached and toiled in their fields. Chenault, who served for twenty years as as Justice of the Peace in Madison County, Kentucky is to have refused compensation for his pastoral duties. In his book Raccoon John Smith: Frontier Kentucky's Most Famous Preacher, John Sparks quotes Chenault: "A man who preaches for money is a gospel peddler." Chenault considered his biblical teachings "as free as the water that runs in the branch." He was known to follow this up with, "but if you've got any poor calves or colts ... run 'em down to my farm."

- § -

In January 1783 Daniel Boone surveyed 500 acres in what was then Fayette County, Virginia, now Clark County, Kentucky for Tribble. His client was Rev. Andrew Tribble. The parcel at Howards Lower Creek adjoins that of a Thomas Burrus.

NOTES ~

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Bold face indicates the author's direct ancestor.
Thomas Burris service in the Revolution.

From a certificate of service, furnished by the Chief of the Records and Pension Office, Washington:

“It appears from the records of this office that Thomas Burris enlisted February 23, 1776, as a private in Captain William Washington's Company, 3rd Virginia Regiment of Foot, Revolutionary War, and his name appears on the muster rolls of that organization to July, 1777. He is reported with the rank of Corporal on muster rolls, as follows: Captain John Francis Mercer's company of this regiment to and including May, 1778; Captain Robert Powell's company, 3rd and 7th Virginia (consolidated) regiment from May, 1778, to September, 1778; Powell's company, 3rd Virginia regiment, for October, 1778; Mercer's company, 3rd Virginia regiment to April, 1779; and Captain Valentine Peyton's company, 3rd Virginia regiment, to November, 1779.”

Some credibly report Burris mustered out as a Sergeant. This wartime record would be congruent with a summer 1780 departure for Kentucky by Thomas Burris, Jr.

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The 1771 will of Phillip Bush

Virginia records contain two interesting entries. On 6 March 1745, "William Bryan of St. Thomas Parish, Orange County, sold to Philip P. Bush of the same, in consideration of five shillings and the rent of one ear of Indian corn yearly ..." The deed was witnessed by Zachary Taylor (1707-1768) a first cousin on my maternal grandfather's line and the Virginian who would become grandfather of the future President in 1784. Family lore portrays the James Madison who witnessed Bush’s 10 May 1771 will as another future President: born 16 March 1751, Madison would have been twenty years old at the signing.

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Burris Family Head Count
Thomas Burris and Frances Tandy had eleven surviving children between them. Daughters Fanny (c1747-1825) and Elizabeth (1751-1841) were married and settled and did not participate in the migration. Young Mourning Burris (1774- bef 1860) also remained in Orange County, Virginia ... with her widowed mother Frances. All but Elizabeth would die in Kentucky, however.

In addition to Frances Tandy (Burris) Bush and Sarah Ann (Burris) Tribble, three other daughters of Thomas Burris and Frances (Tandy) Burris and were to have migrated together. Mildred (Burris) Embree had borne her sixth child, Mary/ Polly, on 2 Oct 1779. The group left Orange County, Virginia the following summer. Mary Burris (1756-1788) had married in 1733: she had already borne Lewis Perry (1753-1833) perhaps three sons before the group set out. Jane Burris likely gave birth to Frances, her third surviving child, while encamped at Black's Fort on 22 February 1782. If birth records are correct, Jane bore another child, Joel, before they reached Kentucky ... and after leaving the Black's Fort.

In addition to Thomas, Jr. two other Burris/ Tandy sons made the journey. Thomas and wife Elizabeth Stevens (1758-1836) married in 1778; they may have had a second or third child in 1782, en route. Brothers Roger Tandy Burris (1769-1828) and William Tandy Burris (1770-1830) were the youngest family members to travel and were unmarried teens upon arrival in Kentucky.

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The Impatient Man at My Elbow

My 5x gr-grandfather, Thomas Burris (c1722 – 1789), made sacrifices in what Americans call the French and Indian War. He fought from darn near the inception of hostilities. According to Hawthorne in the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Vol. III (pg 107), Burris “fought at the Battle of the Meadows in early July 1754, and was one of the number ‘who received the present of a Pistole from the Country as an acknowledgement of their gallant behavior upon that occasion.’” Of 400 Virginians engaged in service to The Crown, 17 were killed and 43 wounded (a 15% casualty rate in nine hours of combat). According to an unknown book; found in Burris Family Folders at the public library in Winchester, Kentucky: “George Washington personally presented [Burriss] with a pistol for bravery. The citation is in Washington's handwriting. He is referred to as Sgt. Burrus.”
See note: A Pistole was probably not a weapon.

It's incontrovertible that the 22-year-old Col. George Washington knew Private Burris, ten years his senior. Both a Thomas Burris and Thomas Bhurras are listed on a roll for the Virginia Regiment which surrendered Fort Necessity to the French and their native allies that summer. Washington, however, sternly and suspiciously noted that he was uncertain whether some of his troops arrived in camp after the battle.

19^th century rendition of Fort Cumberland in 1755.

This gruesome letter, from Lt. Col. Adam Stephen, to Washington (in charge of Virginia troops at Fort Cumberland on the Potomac River (right), where routed Virginians had retreated and been joined by Marylanders) describes how Burris became a casualty between 9am and noon on 25 Sep 1755. Another man "who would not venture to Run" was captured. Wounded by a tomahawk, “Burris was lucky enough to escape.”

Maryland Gazette, 2 Oct 1755

Burris was tomahawked the year following the Battle of the Meadows at Fort Necessity. It is likely that the regimental surgeon, Scotsman James Craik (1730-1814), performed the amputation. The Maryland Gazette (Annapolis), dated 2 October 1755, has an account of this affair (left). Stephen’s incident report does not mention a wound to the head.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania now occupies the land on which the French Fort DuQuesne stood. Young Washington was one of British General Edward Braddock’s two aides in an attack on Fort DuQuesne. Private Burris had likely seen action at Braddock’s Defeat/ Battle of the Monongahela/ Battle of the Wilderness on 9 July, 1755. He served in Company M, under Capt. George Mercer, maternal cousin to George Mason.

The National Archives have done an excellent job of  cross-referencing Burris entries in their collection of Washington's papers. Following the hyperlink trail, I met with some consternation their next revelation. In this letter, Col. Washington - while at his headquarters in Winchester, Virginia - writes Stephen, his second-in-command, about the ‘villain Burrass:’

6 September 1756 –  [Cpl. Philemon Waters and Thomas Burris both served in Mercer’s company.] “Waters and Burrass behaved extremely ill when they were sent down last. If I could lay my hands on them, I would try the effect of 1000 lashes on the former, and whether a General court-martial would not condemn the latter to a life eternal! I shall not at this time enumerate the different kinds of charges laid to both—but desire you will enquire minutely of Mr Burrass what he did with the mare he brought from Fort-Cumberland: She was a creature belonging to the Heirs of Theobald, [poss. Michael Teabolt] caught by Captain Ashby for me. I intended to have had her appraised, and allowed the heirs her full value. She was first carried to Fort-Cumberland, then brought down by that villain Burrass, and here sold or swapped—I want to know to whom, that I may get her, & do as I first intended.” 

Washington carries on for many paragraphs, explaining how he wants plunder handled in the future.

It was on 25 May 1757 that the Virginia House of Burgesses resolved that the Treasurer pay £10 out of Public Money ‘in his hands’ to Burris “as a Recompence for the Loss of his Arm in the Service of his Country,” which was, at that time, more likely Virginia than England.

Journals of the House of Burgesses, page 478. Entry for 25 May 1757.

I'd like to think it a tribute to Burris' character that, despite wounds received, he persevered in wartime service. Fitting his abilities to military need, he was chosen to act as a courier. Because some correspondents referred to the messenger, my ancestor remains in the historical record.

Commisary officer Maj. John Carlyle writes Washington from Alexandria. The one-armed Burris is apparently back in good graces: he had delivered Washington’s letter written on 27 August. Five days later, we have this reply.

1 September 1758 – “It is Extream Wett Weather & Burriss In his Shirt I recolected I had the Suit of Cloaths that was At Williamsburg I therefor Lett him have them to Carrey Up & Deliver to You.”

What service was Burriss then performing for his country? Was he modelling a fine suit of clothes? More likely he stood; tired, wet and bedraggled; in worn buckskins. Carlyle had added fineries to his saddlebag.

Also dated 1 September 1758 is a letter destined for Washington from his mentor, George William Fairfax, penned at Fairfax’s plantation Belvoir. He begs off in the second sentence, writing,“… I dont care to detain the bearer.” 

Near the end of this rather short note, Fairfax writes:

“And being call’d upon by an impatient Man at my Elbow, which I hope will be a sufficient Apology to conclude with all our Compliments …”

In the curator’s notes we find:

“The impatient man was Thomas Burris who brought down from GW at his camp the two [now] missing letters to Fairfax (dated 22 & 27 August) as well as the missing letter of 27 Aug. to John Carlyle, and the missing letter to Humphrey Knight referred to in Knight’s letter of 2 September. Burris got back to Fort Cumberland from Alexandria and Winchester on 11 Sept. with letters from Alexandria and environs, written by John Carlyle (1 Sept.), George William Fairfax (1 Sept.), Sarah Cary Fairfax (1 Sept., missing), Humphrey Knight (2 Sept.), John Patterson (2 Sept.), and probably John Kirkpatrick (3 Sept.), and with letters from Winchester and environs written by Charles Smith (7 Sept.) and perhaps by Christopher Hardwick (3 Sept.).” 

The unmarried Washington was supposedly sweet on Fairfax’s wife, Sarah (Cary) Fairfax. It is not unlikely that the missing note from her was deemed too personal to survive. A purported love letter from Sally, dated 12 September 1758, is thought to be a forgery. The date of the missive fits the scheme of things, however.
See note: Convergence on the Cary clan.

On the cover of a letter, written 2 September 1758 by Humphrey Knight at Mount Vernon, to be delivered to Washington, was the notation: “Sr I was obli[ged] to let Bu[rris] have 2.6 shillings before [he] would go away: H.K.” Knight, reporting the plantation’s profitability to its owner, may have sought to highlight fiduciary responsibility to his employer. Burris seems not only impatient, but insistent.

Washington's map of route between HQ & Ft. Cumberland.

These curator’s notes give readers a sense of the time Burris was investing, and how far he traveled between collection points. It may have taken ten days to get from one end of the circuit they've described to the other. 
(See Google map here.) 

Washington's map (right) relays his perception of the geography Burris operated in, when close to the front lines. Missives from landed gentry do little to describe the risks he faced as a wartime courier.

On 7 Sep 1758 Capt. Charles Smith writes Washington from Fort Loudoun, which was under Smith's authority.

“I was oblig. to keep Burris one Day after he came from Alexandrey, there being many Gentlemen at cort wanting to write to ther friends at camp & withall to send the Last Papers up. I have kept a hors Burris Wrode Down here very Poor, which most People says he is yours …” 

Memories of ‘sharp dealing’ may have lingered in Smith’s assessment of Thomas Burris’ character. The consequences of being caught trading in horseflesh a second time could have been deadly for Burris. The selection of able mounts might indicate Burris' desire to succeed in his task ... in difficult terrain.

Smith continues about the horse more than a week later:

18 Sep 1758 – “The Horse that Burres rode Down is a Light bay about 14 Hands high, favours a horse I have seen you have no brands, only some white hairs Groing on the top of his Neck the Reason of my Stoping him—Burres first told me he was Your’s, & you Lent him & afterwards Offered him for Sale, hardwick says he Does not know him to be Yours.”

From the curators:

“Thomas Burris brought GW’s letters down from Fort Cumberland to Winchester and Alexandria in late August. Smith took this horse - the ‘Light bay’ - from Burris on Burris’s return from Alexandria to Winchester [en route] to Fort Cumberland. This was the same “villain Burrass” who in 1756 “sold or swapped” one of GW’s [Teabolt’s estate’s] horses …” 

Is there an aspersion here, cast by curators in the National Archives?

A month later, Smith continues to contend with the ‘Light bay.’ He writes Washington on 12 October 1758, “I have sent the Horse I Stopt from Burris to Your Quarter …” The man responsible for Washington's Bullskin Plantation reports he does not recognize the horse as Washington's.

Thomas Burris, Sr. had married Frances Tandy (1730-1816) in 1750. They’d had four daughters (including my 4x gr-grandmother Sarah) by the time Tom lost his arm in 1755. Two more children were born between his trauma and the inception of Burris’ courier service. Daughter Jane was likely conceived in late September or early October of 1758, around the time Burris disappears from this set of records.

North American hostilities between France and Britain ended in 1760. Frances bore Thomas two more sons and two daughters in peacetime. Thomas lived out his days in Orange County, Virginia, but Frances and the children migrated to his Kentucky lands after his death. [See Condemned to a Life Eternal.]

Notes ~
Burris' Pistole:
A Pistole was probably not a weapon. It was likely a Spanish doubloon, perhaps in addition to ‘bounty money’ of £2 8p Burris received for service from 29 July – 29 September 1754. A 'Pistole' is also colloquialism for a land patent greater than 100 acres. I’ve found no land records for Burris/ Burras/ Burrace/ Burroughs/ Bhurass/ Birris/ Burrows from that era. His 1788 will, however allocates more than 2000 acres in Kentucky, perhaps granted during the revolutionary era.

Mapmaker and surveyor George Washington aspired to follow Fairfax into land speculation. According to Loudermilk, the 'New Store' in Stephen's 1755 account of Burris' wounds (above) was a storehouse or magazine, situated by the Ohio Company of Virginia and protected by Fort Cumberland. Those with access to men like Mercer and Washington had opportunities to cash in on westward expansion. In 1767 Washington acquired the land on which the Battle of The Meadows was fought. He kept title to the 234-acre tract that he called 'Mount Washington,' until he died.

Side Note on Sarah Cary:
Sarah Cary (1730-1811) and I both are to have descended from Col. Thomas Randolph (1683-1729) and wife Judith Fleming (1689-1743). Cary’s great, great-grandparents are my 6x great-grandparents … via Randolph lines that lead, individually, to each of my maternal grandparents.

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He is the Goods

Rev. Andrew Tribble (1741-1822) was a Baptist preacher who was so revered by our family that at least six individuals in my tree were likely named in his honor. A cousin and fellow researcher recently informed me that history also records an African American performer by the same name.

My mother has long held that skill sets pretty much overlap: any good sermonizer probably had to make a career decision on whether to go into acting instead.

'Tribble' is an interesting appellation. What I find startling is that, although their lifespans did not overlap, both Andrew Tribbles lived in Madison County, Kentucky. The African American Andrew Tribble (1879-1935) was born there to Alice (likely Scutter or Scudder, b c1855), who was widowed by 1880 when she and sons Amos and Andrew were boarding in the village of Union. (Amos and Andrew, we'll return to that.)

There's high likelihood of a relationship between the two Andrew Tribbles. Tantalizingly, at the bottom of the 1880 Madison County census page is listed the unmarried (white) Columbus N. Tribble (b c1812), grandson of 'my' Rev. Andrew. He's farming beside (black) Jacob Tribble (b c1836), Jacob's wife, and nine juveniles (all described as 'servants' ... even to the one-year-old). Tribbles (and Scudders) are in close proximity. Online family trees peter out, failing to name the black Andrew Tribble's father. Knowing what I do about Jeremiah Turner, I realize it's quite likely I'm cousins with this 'new' Andrew Tribble.

Evocative of Ball's The Sweet Hell Inside, I learn that, as a child, Andrew Tribble performed in the 'The Original Pickaninny Band,' who found success with a composition In Old Kentucky. He was married, singing and dancing in Chicago when, aged 25, his career as a funnyman took off. Soon he was appearing in drag costume and was cast in The Shoo-Fly Regiment, one of the first all-black musicals to hit Broadway (1908). In his 1988 book, The Ghost Walks, Henry Sampson quotes a contemporary reviewer as saying Tribble's spinster character, 'Ophelia Snow from Baltimo', "was exceedingly well done. All must give it to Tribble, he is the goods."

1931

In short order, Tribble was touring Europe as 'Babe Johnson' in Captain Rufus. He's credited with dozens of roles in his 40-year career. In 1931, Tim Moore (who played 'The Kingfish' in Amos ’n Andy) "and his vaudeville straight man, Andrew Tribble, performed one of their funniest routines in Oscar Micheaux's first talking picture, The Darktown Revue," reported George Tyler in his column 'Harlem Rambles,' in Baltimore's Afro American.

And we are back to Amos and Andy, a duo that - in 1928 - was one of the first comedy series heard on radio. The black sitcom had nothing to do with Amos and Andrew Tribble. Written and voiced by Charles Correll and Freeman Gosden, the duo lured a huge and sustaining audience by pretending to be a pair of hapless Georgia farmworkers, transplanted to Harlem. The lead characters of this tremendously successful broadcast were all African American. Correll voiced Andy while Gosden voiced both Amos and The Kingfish, according to Wikipedia.

Did you know Amos 'n Andy were originally white?

After failing to find a film audience by appearing in black makeup, Gosden and Correll hired black talent when they began televising the program. See the clip here.

Instead of wading into debate about whether Amos 'n Andy were derisively stereotypical, a conversation in vogue since Bishop W. J. Walls began a full-fledged crusade against the characters in 1930, we will return to the cross-dressing Tribble. In the 2001 anthology, African-American Performance and Theater History, Annemarie Bain takes serious the comedian, calling Tribble's work, "a determined break from constraints imposed by gender roles in society."

In 2003, professors Hill and Hatch, in their Oxford-published History of African American Theatre, cited Sylvester Russell, whom they termed 'easily the most severe black critic of the era.' Russell wrote for the African American newspaper Freeman, at Indianapolis: “Mr. Andrew Tribble [is] the greatest protean artist his race has ever produced … Watermelon Time was a perfect fit of a song, in which Mr. Tribble wore salmon silk, something wonderful in quality, that outshone anything in the female contingent."

Critics took the genre seriously, often earnestly detailing vapid story-lines. R. W. Thompson’s 1910 Freeman review declared “Andrew Tribble, a Washington favorite, plays ‘Babe Johnson’ … with a naturalness that stamps him as the best impersonator of female comedy roles in the business, and the house was in a con-stant roar all the time he was on the stage. His costumes were up to date, and his ‘hobble skirt’ was a wonder to behold. Mr. Tribble was given a big ‘hand’ nightly."

Bain spends several pages on Tribble: "In his female impersonations, Tribble seems to have relied on the comedic elements solely. He was not presenting the prima donna character of white minstrelsy, whose allure was in the convincing portrayal of her realness." "Gender impersonators such as Tribble were primarily comic in purpose and did not in any way thrive on the ambivalence of whether or not Tribble was truly a man or a woman."

Tribble's work arose from historical traditions of white, ante-bellum 'minstrelsy.' Adding African syncopation to European melodies like highland reels and Irish jigs, lyrics parodied African American vernacular. Think of the songs Dixie,* and Carry Me Back to Ole Virginny,** as well as the titles All Coons Look Alike To Me, and She's Gettin' Mo' Like The White Folks Every Day. White mintrelsy became wildly popular, and was given its place in legitimate theater. Reublin and Maine, at The Parlor Song Academy describe how white men singing 'coon songs' "exploited every conceivable black characteristic, real or imagined, for its comic possibilities. African-American aspirations to a place in society, food preferences, the imagined inclination for crime, and gambling all were exploited." Minstrelsy continued all through the reconstruction period.

Later, in the same era when Tribble was performing, my gregarious maternal grandfather went to town and - smearing burnt cork on his face - sang, danced and (as has been passed down to me) engaged in slapstick comedy with other local talent before fellow Methodists or Masons. Minstrel shows were originally performed by white males in 'blackface.' These performances relied on black culture for inspiration, yet fiercely denigrated people of color.

To recap: we have white men pretending to be black fools. Then we have a black man, also in parody, pretending to be a woman. Both talent pools conspired to satirize women. Bain says - as women sought the vote - Tribble's impersonations were one way of dealing with women's changing social roles. Hill and Hatch observed a new, burgeoning population escaping their misery in minstrel laughter, music and mockery: "In the flush of this stimulant, the immigrant’s status was lightened by the knowledge that he was ‘free, white, and twenty-one.” To that congregation we might add 'male.'

It's a strange milieu. In Ragged But Right: Black Traveling Shows, Coon Songs, and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz (2009), Abbott and Seroff caution readers: "Minstrelsy has become another ‘forbidden’ subject, lately reduced to a metaphor for historical racism in popular culture. But do not confuse the African American minstrel companies of the ragtime and blues era with their nineteenth century white predecessors. Black minstrel companies stole the audience away from the pale imitators, thus opening a pathway of employment for hundreds of musicians, performers, and entrepreneurs." They dip into the Freeman to cite a black critic who called Bob Cole and Billy Johnson (African American producers who ushered Tribble to national prominence) “a credit to the race,” declaring, “It has always been the motive of Messrs. Cole and Johnson to elevate the Negro on the stage, by laying aside the stereotype style of Negro performances and opening up a new field for the more ambitious Negro on the stage." At times if not always, Cole and Johnson's touring troupe were all black. "Minstrels managed to broadcast the latest trends in racial music, dance and humor throughout the South," where they were sometimes banned.

Said Will Marion Cook, African American violinist turned composer and musical director of the turn-of-the-century hit Clorindy: “Negroes were at last on Broadway, and there to stay. Gone was the uff-dah of the minstrel! Gone the Massa Linkum stuff! We were artists and … nothing could stop us.”

I've found one quote directly attributed to Andrew Tribble (The New York Age, 24 Dec 1908). From that:

"I never go on the stage unless I try to do my best. That, somehow, has always been my motto, and I have been well paid for sticking to it."

Tribble was playing 'Miss Lilly White' in Cole and Johnson's The Red Moon at the time. I cannot discern from the image (above, right) whether a black man was portraying a white woman in this role. But my mind boggles as I gather from several sources that black minstrelsy followed at least one custom established by whites: Tribble was known to perform in blackface.

So, let me see if I have this right. At the dawn of the Jazz Age, African Americans were highly compensated for going into blackface and mocking white actors who had been pretending to be black. Tribble, in blackface, pretended to be Lilly White.

"According to legend, Tribble died while performing on stage in Baltimore in 1935" wrote humorist Travalanche in 2019. See more at Drag Star of Darktown.

Communally-expressed humor can take public dialogue to subjects it otherwise might not entertain. Ministers and minstrels both seek to alleviate suffering. Sometimes they offer relief that is a detriment to others.

1894 - The Original Pickanniny Band, likely featuring Andrew Tribble.

*Dixie became an anthem of Confederate succession prior to the Civil War. White minstrel composer Daniel Decatur Emmett received royalties for this popular hymn ... as an Ohioan in New York City. Talk about cultural appropriation, Lincoln ordered Dixie played the day following Lee's surrender, saying, “Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insist that we fairly captured it.” Hill and Hatch offer the possibility that not only was Dixie written by a Yankee, but that credit might go to Emmett's African American neighbors, Ben and Lew Snowden. Their Ohio tombstone reads, "They taught Dixie to Dan Emmett."

**Carry Me Back to Ole Virginny was written in 1878, about the time of Tribble's birth. It is credited to James Bland, an African American minstrel born in New York. In 1940 this work, with its romanticized view of slavery, became Virginia's State Song. In 1994 the Virginia Senate proposed amending some lyrics, replacing 'darkeys' with "dreamers" and "Massa" with "my loved ones." The bill failed. In 1997 Governor George Allen signed legislation making this minstrel ode the 'State Song Emeritus.'

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UPDATE:
From an Andrew Tribble researcher:

A Deliberately Forgotten Woman

I am researching Maj. Squire Turner (1793-1871) for the 1849 campaign my great, great grandfather's half-brother ran, as he sought to represent Madison County in a Kentucky State Constitutional Convention. Any nugget of information seems particularly valuable, for Turner is not well represented in today's historical record. It is not as if my 3x, great-grandfather's son didn't leave a paper trail: having organized the direct election of all state officials, and reigned in the legislature's authority to go into debt; Turner became the guiding light behind a massive effort to subsequently codify all of Kentucky's laws into a single document. Through his legislation and law practice, Squire Turner created mountains of paperwork. Eastern Kentucky University has lost track of a collection of Turner's papers. Centre College, in Danville, Kentucky, has no record of his acceptance speech, nor any institutional knowledge as to why they venerated Turner with an honorary law degree. Barely an obituary survives into the digital age.

Squire Turner was adamantly pro-slavery. Hewing to the nation's founding compact, Turner was a property-rights man. Though the actual wording should be attributed to someone else, Turner would no doubt agree with a report made after the 1850 Constitution massaged Kentucky's legal relationship with slavery: Turner is often credited with 'enshrining the rights to property (slaves) as higher than divine law.'

I recently found this link to a Kentucky Gazette report of a Turner voting in the Kentucky House in 1819. It was not 'my' Squire Turner, but his uncle (and mine) Cornelius Turner (1770-1835), from Warren County, Kentucky, who served from 1816-1820 before being elected to the Kentucky Senate. The Gazette reported that - after the state senate deadlocked - Cornelius Turner voted in the Kentucky House to send Col. Richard Mentor Johnson (c1780-1850) to the U.S. Senate.

Ever heard of Richard Mentor Johnson?

He was already nationally renowned in 1819, having been credited with killing Shawnee Chief Tecumseh (1768-1813) at the Battle of the Thames, during the War of 1812. His 1819 appointment to the U.S. Senate was a stepping stone: in 1837 the Senate elected Johnson to be the ninth Vice-President of the United States. Johnson played a nominal part in Martin Van Buren's first administration.

It seems Johnson, like Squire Turner, has not fared well in remaining current in historical chronicles. Both were popular men later judged ignominious. Both held views on race that were considered disturbing. Both were slaveholders ... yet Johnson held his slaves perhaps more closely.

By the time of his appointment to the U.S. Senate, Johnson had fathered two daughters by Julia Chinn (1780-1833). Sometime after his father died (1815) Johnson had inherited Chinn from his father's estate.

From Wikipedia:

"As his prominence grew, [Johnson's] interracial relationship with Julia Chinn, an octoroon slave, was more widely criticized. It worked against his political ambitions. Unlike other upper class leaders who had African American mistresses but never mentioned them, Johnson openly treated Chinn as his common law wife. He acknowledged their two daughters as his children, giving them his surname, much to the consternation of some of his constituents."

Johnson gave his daughters more than just his surname. He gave them land. His 1834 biography (propaganda including lyrics to a drinking song designed to popularize the 'gallant patriot's' bid for the Vice-Presidency) makes no mention of Julia, or daughters Imogene Malvina and Adaline Chinn Johnson. A wedding announcement in the Lexington Observer and Kentucky Reporter (based in Fayette County) addressed the sensitive issue after Adaline married Thomas W. Scott in 1832:

"This is the second time that the moral feelings ... of the people of Scott County have been shocked and outraged by the marriage of a mulatto daughter of Col. Johnson to a white man, if a man, who will so far degrade himself; who will make himself an object of scorn and detestation to every person that has the least regard for decency, for a little property; can be considered a white man."

"How long will the people of Scott County - of Kentucky - permit such palpable violations of the laws of their state to be committed with impunity? How long will the moral and religious part of the community suffer such an indecent and shocking example to be set for their sons and the rising generation, before they put their veto upon them? Before they consign to private life at least, if not to infamy, those who encourage such violations of the laws both of God and of man? The laws of Kentucky forbid, under heavy penalties, a white man's marrying a negro or mulatto, or living with one in the character of man and wife."

In 2007, David Mills, writing in the Huffington Post, made some contemporary observations about Richard Mentor Johnson's position in family trees. It seems that many who descend from the nation's ninth Vice- President are unaware of their relationship to him: intervening generations of storytellers - wanting not to claim their descendancy from a woman of color - simply relinquished their claims upon a war hero and semi-successful political aspirant. (Time once voted Johnson the nation's forth-worst Vice-President in history.)

It's admittedly complicated, but their are reasons to admire Julia Chinn. An assumed descendant declared Johnson's captive chattel "an excellent Châtelaine for his home," as she is known to have wined and dined the aristocratic French revolutionary, the Marquis de Lafayette, when he visited the plantation in 1825. Chinn managed Johnson's business affairs during his absences in the nation's capital. Dedicated genealogists might be put off by the fact that, as miscegenation was then illegal, documentary proof of the marriage becomes problematic. Others may be put off by the fact that Chinn exercised a master's rights over slaves in her role as Johnson's plantation manager. Indeed, Johnson gave slaves as part of his daughters' dowries.

Admiration for Richard Mentor Johnson comes in a mixed bag as well. He educated his daughters, provided them with superior social graces and economic advantages. Mills declares them "bona-fide, fully vested white people." However, according to Johnson's official Senate biography:

"When Lewis Tappan asked the vice-president to present an abolition petition to the Senate, Johnson, who owned several slaves, averred that "considerations of a moral and political, as well as of a constitutional nature" prevented him from presenting "petitions of a character evidently hostile to the union, and destructive of the principles on which it is founded.""

More extraordinary, following his wife's death in 1833, Wikipedia reports Johnson began a relationship with another family slave. When she left him for another man, Johnson had her captured and sold at auction. He then began a relationship with her sister.

Johnson paid a political price for bearing an interracial family. New York papers ridiculed Johnson's domestic situation, and the Democrats' constituency as well.

A racist attack on Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate Richard M. Johnson.



Johnson's lifestyle choices also bring into relief a side of Abraham Lincoln you may not be aware of. According to Clifton Porter II, blogging as Undercover Black Man, 'Honest Abe' exploited Johnson’s relationship with Chinn, to score points against Stephen Douglas during the legendary Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858.

"Lincoln asserted, to the applause of his audience, that “I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races… nor qualifying [Negroes] to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people…”"

Porter reports Lincoln saying:

"I do not understand that, because I do not want a negro woman for a slave, I must necessarily want her for a wife. [Cheers and laughter.] My understanding is that I can just let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never have had a black woman for either a slave or a wife …

I will add to this that I have never seen to my knowledge a man, woman or child who was in favor of producing a perfect equality - social and political - between negroes and white men. I recollect but one distinguished instance that I ever heard of so frequently as to be entirely satisfied of its correctness – and that is the case of Judge Douglas’ old friend Col. Richard M. Johnson." [Laughter.]

Johnson had died eight years earlier, months after Kentucky's new state constitution went into effect. One provision in the 1850 constitution provided that "no slave shall be emancipated but upon condition that such emancipated slave be sent out of the state." [See page 137.]

Johnson's daughter Adaline had died in 1836. Among first-degree family, only daughter Imogene survived Kentucky's gallant patriot. Although Johnson willed vast property to his daughter, Imogene was prevented from inheriting her father's estate: the Fayette County Court considered her illegitimate and without rights. Upon Johnson's death, the court ruled that "he left no widow, children, father, or mother living."

Julia Chinn is depicted as an octoroon, or 1/8 black (i.e., she had one black great-grandparent). If so, Johnson's grandchildren - also deemed ineligible for their inheritance - would have been 1/32 black. To connect those grandchildren to a black ancestor is to travel as far back in a family tree as I must go, to claim relationship to my 2nd great-grandfather, James Berry Turner (1820-1867), half-brother to the above Squire. While that relationship seems a long road into a distant past, and while white supremacists were willing to reach that far back to besmirch Julia Chinn and Richard Mentor Johnson, it is the same distance I must travel from the 21st century, to claim relationship to James Berry Turner, who - contrary to his half brother's agenda - sought to nominate emancipationists to Kentucky's 1849 constitutional convention.

Got empathy?

It’s an informal, intimate moment. I've given a ride home to a young mother of two. ‘LC’ has spent (as in donated) her evening to help organize a grass-roots attempt to eliminate racial profiling by Portland Police. It’s been six years since police killed unarmed, mother-of-two Kendra James at a traffic stop. In a few months an unarmed father, Aaron Campbell, will be executed during a welfare check by police. Campbell’s mother will lose two sons that day; one to heart disease and another – despondent over his brother’s death – to a police sniper acting outside his chain of command.

Campbell’s will be the fourth police homicide of an unarmed black man or woman in the preceding several years of Portland’s long history of disparate treatment of people of color. Like the victims, LC too is a person of color. It is deep concern that has brought her away from her family to plan a campaign to get Portland City Council to change police policy.

My companion turned to me to say, “As a mother, it is so important to get this right.” LC began reflecting on the challenges of physically disciplining her boys.

It would be years before I was exposed to Dr. Joy DeGruy’s work: Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome— America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing. I was then only superficially aware of the abject brutality that slavery invoked. Writing this today, my own family history research has revealed to me a staggering capacity for inhumane treatment of slaves. Genial stories about ‘Uncle’ Dave and ‘Aunt’ Mary have receded in importance. I've read warnings from my Christian, slave-owning antecessors. They cite the the ill effects of slaveholding to be the corruption on morals that such absolute, life-and-death domination has on character. Slave-holding kin explain that such power corrupts their neighbor's character.

“You know, they used whips on us,” says LC meekly. She is torn. She doesn't want her parenting style to be a continuation of the physical coercion that has shaped African American culture.

“But, if I don’t get this right,” she says, meaning if undisciplined children run afoul of the law, “the police will kill my boys.”

And I am stunned. I have glimpsed across the divide of my White Privilege. I am a parent, flying by the seat of my pants: at no point have I felt it necessary to contemplate that my failures in fathering bear the remotest possibility of such lethal consequences. As a parent, I care about this issue in a new way.

I informed myself. I now know that Portland over-polices LC’s neighborhood. The odds are far greater that her children will encounter law enforcement than mine. In fact, the police target LC’s children. The City of Portland’s own stop data has consistently shown racial disparities since they began collecting it in 2004: people of color are twice as likely to be stopped than whites; once stopped, they are twice as likely to be searched (an amplified effect). Yet people of color searched by Portland Police in 2010 (latest available figures) are a third less likely to have contraband.

Based on false assumptions, and society’s massive expenditures in a War on Drugs, my country now systemically hunts her children. [While white youth experience drug-related emergency room visits thee times more frequently than black youth, and whites (ages 12-17) are a third more likely to have sold drugs; and while the use of drugs has long been about par for white youth and those of darker pigmentation, black children (about 16% of that population) make up 58% of the youth cohort committed to state prison as adults.]

Even if she gets it right, and LC’s children grow up well-disciplined and productive members of society … beyond the sphere of criminal activity … they run a much higher risk of death at the hands of police than my fair-skinned children ever will.

But who cares?

Looking for images of Kendra James, as Portland memorializes the ten-year milestone of her homicide (where, as with Aaron Campbell, no one has been punished): I was directed to The Empathy Blog. In an analysis of missed empathetic opportunities during a public forum following James’ death, the author decried “re-activating histories of violence, victimhood and hatred.”

“a re-telling of the Kendra James incident that raised memories of old familiar stories of white on black violence, and evoked resonances of rape and slavery … began the collapse of the opportunity for empathy.”

I don’t know what to do with my empathy. My vicarious experience of KC’s fears led me to an intellectual identification with the debilitating effects of racism. I was spurred to take public risks and work for the passage of a Police Plan to Address Racial Profiling in 2009.

But, in this online community of well-meaning folks committed to understanding and evoking empathy, I find no appreciation for historical trauma ... a condition I'm reasonably certain resonates in the lives of people not too far removed from the author. The depiction of ‘victimhood’ is an affront to compassionate people who understand the unremitting continuum of racial injustice.

Data from the Multnomah County Health Department gives longitudinal evidence of racial disparities in health outcomes. “How can this be?” I wondered, at first disbelieving. “Doctors are among the most caring people in my community.” But it is true; for a variety of reasons, care providers demonstrate racial bias. Our brothers and sisters suffer needlessly.

I am in a dilemma. I know empathy would be a highly effective tool, to motivate those in the dominant culture to end such injustice. I am pretty sure contributors to The Empathy Blog see themselves as do most Portlanders: as just and compassionate ... progressing toward an ever more equitable future. Time and time again, however, I get the sense that well-meaning members of the dominant culture want to leap past truth and embrace reconciliation. It is difficult for them to countenance that the most fortunate among us pay to perpetuate police, courts, county health providers (not to mention schools, the housing authority, employment opportunities and training initiatives) that perpetuate racially unequal outcomes.

White people’s advantages are often invisible to them. It requires some study, and a society bent on documenting them, before disparities can be made obvious in a structured way. 

For me, a sense of moral indignation was a prerequisite to becoming sufficiently motivated to make apparent what had been invisible to me. White people who have not achieved intimacy with the victims of racism are, I fear, less likely to so engage. When those in the dominant culture dismiss as 'old' and 'familiar' fears and pain that resonate in the here and now, I suspect they are unlikely to achieve empathy that will lead to dismantling racism. This reinforcing behavior leaves most of my fellows distant and uniformed of serious, ongoing social ills. 

Seeing how pervasive it is, I struggle now with the idea that structured racism is not inadvertent. Racial disadvantages do not remain simply due to entropy. I had thought empathy would be a vital component in spurring well-meaning folks to move from denial and into remedial action ... to press against all that reinforces racism. When I find myself in a center of advocacy for empathy, however, and infer that victims or their survivors should ‘get over it,’ I find myself discouraged. Contemporary attitudes and policies both have straight line connections from America’s one-time embrace of slavery. I don’t think everyone has to untangle those lines with historical accuracy, but I join in the demands of the Coalition of Communities of Color in their well-researched Unsettling Profile:

We seek for those in the White community to end a prideful perception that Multnomah County is an enclave of progressivity. Communities of color face tremendous inequities and a significant narrowing of opportunity and advantage. This must become unacceptable for everyone.

We in the dominant culture must learn to stop waving away the hurt. We must learn to care.

2003 Memorial for Kendra James, I-5 Overpass, NE Skidmore St., Portland, OR

Fiddling with Cato

"What about the women?" asked my [then] wife, after being subjected to a long, drawn out depiction of ancestral exploits. Subsequently sensitive to the fact that the dominant culture - keepers of the record - leaves many persons' histories unrecorded, I find it particularly rewarding when I encounter documentation left by people of color.

Reading 'The Negro In Kentucky,' written by G. W. Jackson and published in 1940 by the Negro Educational Association Journal, I assumed I'd discovered a non-white voice declaiming the merits of my subject, Monk Estill.

"In accounts of Indian raids, slaves are reported as loyal and daring. In the battle of Little Mountain, when pioneers fought with the Wyandotte Indians in 1782, the bravery of Colonel William [Captain James - RDH] Estill's slave Monk, inspired the pioneer warriors as nothing else in the battle did. He was an expert in making gunpowder and such an interesting preacher that the whites and blacks from Shelby and surrounding counties flocked to his meetings."

I leave aside reference to loyalty, and the author's statistics demonstrating that, "The Kentucky Negro has done his bit in the wars of the nation," while America prepared to enter World War II. It's true, but historical timing seems to drive this emphasis on fighting and preaching for the Lord.

I'll also leave aside the frustrations of Ted Franklin Belue, who contributed the entry concerning Monk in the 1992 Kentucky Encyclopedia, and who wrote me that editors reported Monk being a Baptist preacher ... despite his objection as a subject matter expert, and absent any proof on the editors' part.

Jackson's article referenced one of Monk's contemporaries, and my interest was piqued:

"The first Christmas party in Kentucky would have ended in dismal failure but for the fiddling of Cato Watts, a Negro servant who had come to Louisville with one of the families in the George Rogers Clark expedition."

Interesting, the term 'servant:' Cato was a slave. It also seemed odd that - when describing African American 'contributions' to Kentucky history - Jackson would leap past the sacrifice of Twetty's slave, killed by Native warriors before Boone's party ever cut their way to the future site of Boonesborough.

Nevertheless, since false (or at least unsupported) accounts abound ... of Monk in possession of musical talent ... I was keen to research Cato Watts.

From Reuben Thomas Durrett, attributed to his 1894 work, The Romance of the Origin of Louisville, I draw the version I call 'Uncle Cato,' where we are encouraged to see slaves as indolent, and gentle in their acceptance of forced subservience.

"A source of pleasure to the islanders was a fiddle in the hands of Cato Watts, a slave who belonged to Captain John Donne. Cato would play for hours in the shade of the trees while young and old joined in the Virginia Reel, the Irish Jig, and the Highland Fling. When Sunday came, however, the fiddle was silent and all joined in the singing of hymns."

Again with the emphasis on Christianity: this historian wants us to know the value the group placed on religion. It is true, that slaves worshiped with whites. Thirty-one years later, in 1809, Giles preceded by four years my 3x-gr-grandfather, Capt. Whitfield Early (1777-1865) into a Baptist congregation in Boone County, Kentucky. Giles, slave to Early, transferred his membership from a Virginia church.

Mildred J. Hill, in her History of Music in Louisville, gives an 1896 depiction of the Christmas party (on Corn Island, a crude settlement at the Falls of the Ohio, as Louisville was not yet in existence):

"This is the first mention of music of any kind in Louisville; and, as it is a story of happiness, contentment and good-fellowship, it makes a pleasant starting point for a pleasant subject."

The most recent account I discovered, of 'Cato Watts - the first Slave in Louisville,' shocked me. In observation of Black History Month, 2013, examiner.com posted this account of Cato's life:

... he was hanged.

The article - calling us to mind our history - runs but two paragraphs. Basically, "Little was known about Watts ... he was hanged." No fiddle playing. No birth or death dates, but their reporting does hyperlink Cato Watts to the illustrious slave-owner George Rogers Clark.

At family history sites, presumably-white descendants of Capt. John Donne have preserved an historical record of their ancestor's demise (no mention of fiddle playing discovered). They report that "Cato claimed the death was an accident." It might seem reasonable for descendants to then declare, "Cato was charged in the murder of John Donne and hung for the offence," except that Virginia law (then in effect in what is now known as Kentucky) prevented people of color - free or not - from testifying against whites. Or testifying at all in such cases.

J. Blaine Hudson, in a 1999 paper for the august, Louisville-based Filson Club Historical Quarterly, looked further into the historical record than examiner.com or Donne descendants. In his pre-trial hearing, "The above named Cato Watts was led to the Bar, and upon Examination says that he knocked the said Donne down but that it was not with the intention to kill him."

Uniquely, Hudson combined histories of Cato's status as first black resident, his fiddle playing, and the subsequent homicide. Though 'first slave in Louisville' accounts are often linked to his execution, my assessment is that Cato Watts is best remembered for saving Christmas ... with a particularly sentimental, fictionalized 2003 account here.

In a 1976 article by Robert A. Burnett, in another issue of the Filson Club Historical Quarterly, something poignant comes to light about that festive occasion in primitive conditions on Corn Island:

"Jean Nickle, a Frenchman ... entertained the party with his fiddle, playing dances then the rage in Paris, but these were too sophisticated [described as too 'scientific' in an 1893 account] for pioneers unaccustomed to the music of a Paris salon. The evening was saved when Nickle gave the slave, Cato Watts, some strings to replace the worn ones on his fiddle and Watts enlivened the party with popular tunes of the frontier."

Folklore depicting the first celebration of the birth of Christ in Kentucky could be used to indicate that pioneers lacked sophistication. In this story line, the rough justice subsequently handed out to Cato Watts would be reinforced for its barbarism.

In a sentence following how the Frenchman Nickle yielded fiddle playing to Cato "who soon had himself and the dancers in a paroxysm of joy," Durrett's 1893 account declares Monk's contemporary was, in addition to being the first slave in what is now Louisville ... in addition to being the man who saved the first Christmas in those environs ... Cato Watts, property of John Donne, was also the first man ever hung in Louisville.

"He killed his owner as he claimed by accident, but was tried and hung for the crime. He was hanged to the limb of a large oak tree which stood on ... the public square on which the court house now stands. The hanging was in 1787, and much to the sorrow of the young people who enjoyed his music at their dances."

Monsieur Nickle graced Louisville with a dancing school in 1786. In 2012, an Electronica/Worldbeat/Jamba band was performing in Louisville under the name of Cato Watts.

Cato Watts, from Stories of Old Kentucky, 
by Martha C. Grassham Purcell, pg 114; c1915

When Authority Speaks

When I first heard the term, I thought 'post-racialism' was a straw man: I saw no way Americans could take the position, that by simply electing a mixed-race President, that racial injustice had been swept away. There is too much evidence to the contrary.

Out here in Portland, Oregon, we're still refining the collection of 'stop data,' and the work continues to demonstrate our police bureau engages in racial profiling. Racial injustice did not conclude with the election of Barack Hussein Obama. Though it's been a century and a half since Oregon was created as a white homeland, disparities in policing, housing, and health and educational outcomes are still very much in evidence in the nation's fifth-whitest city.

For quite a while, regressive policymakers have have called affirmative action into question, changing the frame from attempts to remedy centuries of racial discrimination to look at issues of fairness in the here and now. Quotas circumscribing opportunity are unfair in a democracy, particularly when viewed in the lens of immediacy. Set-asides in hiring and educational opportunity for historically deprived constituencies seem fairer when seen on a landscape of centuries of denied opportunity, however.

I'm troubled by a recent surge of academics beckoning post-racial society. This conversation may arise from desires that the US Supreme Court strike down provisions of the 1968 Voting Rights Act ... protections against a full-fledged return to the racist vote suppression that characterized much of this country for a century. Rather than look to data to inform us whether parties with histories of inhibiting voters have reformed themselves, spin doctors simply change the frame of reference. Justice Antonin Scalia tells us the continuation of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act represents the "perpetuation of racial entitlement," hinting that 'time is up:' there is no need to 'perpetuate' this new disparity. Scalia is blatantly undemocratic in describing anyone's right to the ballot as an entitlement.* If counter-revolutionary forces can change the discussion from our history of repression to appreciate immediate effects of chosen remedies, the idea of what is 'fair' will change as well.

It's become important to place civil rights victories in the past, to frame the abandonment of affirmative action goals as 'mission accomplished.' Dr. Audrey Kobayashi will lend her status as Past President of the Association of American Geographers to call attention to Race: An idea past its time in the discipline of geography? at the AAG's national convention this summer.

In Foreign Affairs magazine this month, titled Capitalism and Inequality, Jerry Z. Muller does not mention race by name when he says the cure may be worse than the disease to use "... government policy to close the gaps between individuals and groups by offering preferential treatment to underperformers ..." The Catholic University Professor repeats the 'injustice among the rest of the population' refrain. He condemns 'mandated rewards:' "More grave is their cost in terms of economic efficiency, since by definition, they promote less-qualified individuals to positions they would not attain on the basis of merit alone."

"Face it folks," Muller seems to say, "these are less qualified individuals, not an under-caste who've been systemically denied educational opportunity, growing up in households who, because of their color, have been systemically denied economic opportunity."

Muller does continue: "Similarly, policies banning the use of meritocratic criteria in education, hiring, and credit simply because they have a 'differential impact' on the fortunes of various communal groups or because they contribute to unequal social outcomes will inevitably impede the quality of the educational system, the work force, and the economy." I read 'unequal social outcomes' as 'social injustice:' Instead of employing education to improve the merit of a people historically discriminated against - who remain deprived of equal opportunity in classroom size, environment and quality of tools - we should turn a colorblind eye. We should look for resident merit in applicants.

And I thought about these voices of authority, steering the conversation on racial aptitude. It is not the first time that scientists and academicians have helped frame perceptions about race-based capacities in the dominant culture.

I am researching an historical moment in 1849, when radical emancipationist Cassius Marcellus Clay disemboweled Cyrus Squire Turner (1819-1849, my first cousin 3 times removed) during a debate Clay was having with Turner's father Squire Turner (1793-1871, my great-grandmother's paternal uncle). Certified smart people were framing the merits of people of color in that period as well.

When publishing his diagnostic term 'Drapetomania' in De Bow's Review, Dr. Samuel Adolphus Cartwright reached into ancient Greek to remind readers that the concept of 'runaway slave' has been with us since ancient times.

Like the jurist and and academics above, Cartwright lends an authoritative voice to help readers pursue the most effective policies, or measures, suggesting, "It may not be unworthy a great statesman to inquire, if what is true in Medicine may not be true in Government, and to investigate the question whether the laws and free institutions, so beneficial to the white man, may not be detrimental and deteriorating to the negro?"

In her book on mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness, Michelle Alexander shows how white supremacist policy makers no longer need cite race; we've criminalized so much of the Black Experience, we can discriminate by means of criminal 'justice' systems. In a new era of Jim Crow laws, the right to vote, to serve on juries, and to be free of legal discrimination in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits is now denied on the basis of criminal history. The needs of white supremacists are met at the expense of national consensus.

It seems a continuation of generations-old attempts to regulate the behavior of people of color.

*Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act pertains to districts with histories of discrimination (like Texas where, since 1980, every initial attempt to gerrymander voting districts has been rejected as discriminatory).