African Runaway Slave Ballads

Subject: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: JedMarum
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 09:55 AM

I am curious what Mudcatters know about ballads from the Civil War days about runaway slaves.

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: Deckman
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 10:13 AM

Jed, I really doubt that this song will help, but with research, it might. I can remember a fragment of a song I learned from Walt Robertson. He credited it to the singing of Ethel Beers. It is extremely moving, when sung slowly. I think the title is: "Bring My Savior To Me." Again, I don't know if it fits your subject, but you might check into it. Cheers, Bob

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: Vixen
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 12:49 PM

Jed, I don't know *anything* about runaway slave songs, but it seems to me that slaves who ran away wouldn't necessarily want to sing about it, (for fear of recapture) and those who were left behind wouldn't be *allowed* to sing about it. Such a song, I think, would have to be so circumspect in its lyrical content that it might easily be mistaken for something else (say, a spiritual...)

Just my $0.02, your mileage may vary...

By the way, your "Streets of Fall River" gets heavy rotation in my car... Great Disk!

V

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: Amos
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 01:29 PM

I believe Follow the Drinking Gourd was very much on that topic.

A

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 02:15 PM

Aan interesting thing, not specifically about songs, but about runaway slaves. There is a new program on PBS called History Detectives fashioned after the successful BBC show, House Detectives, I think. Anyway, on one of their recent shows they investigated an old story that the Charles W. Morgan at Mystic actually had runaway slaves among its whaling crews.

Through their research, the team did prove the co-owners of the ship were indeed abolitionists and that three persons of "wooly hair" served on similar ships, one of them from VA, all of whom signed with an "X" making it likely that the Morgan also had runaways serving aboard. They felt sure that the one from VA was probably a runaway. They went on to explain that runaway slaves were known to sign on, if possible, with whaling ships, as the 3-5 year journey kept them safe from the bounty hunters who would take them back for a reward, if they could catch them.

You can see video highlights by scrolling down on this page to Charles W. Morgan and clicking on the link in the "post-it" note area.

They also did one on a house purported to be that of the notorious Patty Cannon NOT a nice woman slaver!

kat

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: JedMarum
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 02:23 PM

BINGO, Kat!!

I had a germ of an idea for a story like that to us in my Civil War show when I saw tha PBS program you mentioned. So I've started working on a song that tells the tale.

I haven't decided yet if I'll make it specific to one of the fellows from th Charle W Morgan - but it will probably be about a fellow from the Charle W Morgan.

Actually, I'm well underway, and the song is writing itself ... but I've been researching a few ideas, includng musical styles, lyrical styles (hence my query in this thread) - but I believe I've made both those decisions. Now I'm just fleshing out the story.

Subject: LYR ADD: Praise and Thanks!
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 03:11 PM

Here is one from Port Royal, collected in 1861, before most slaves were freed. The type of song that you ask for, as someone has already noted, would be very rare if it exists at all. Oblique references in religious songs about the freedom in Heaven to come are the closest to what you request. Songs like the "Drinking Gourd" are very doubtfully of the period and have much myth attached.
I have titled this one so that it can be indexed.

Lyr. Add: PRAISE AND THANKS!

Oh, praise an' tanks! De Lord has come
To set de people free;
An' massa tink it day ob doom,
An' we ob jubilee.
De Lord dat heap de Red Sea waves
He jus' as 'trong as den;
He say de word: we las' night slaves;
To-day, de Lord's freemen.
We'll hab de rice an' corn:
Oh. nebber you fear, if nebber you hear
De driver blow his horn.

Collected by John Greenleaf Whittier at Port Royal, 1861, "At Port Royal, 1861," pp. 244-245, Atlantic Monthly, 9 (Feb. 1862). Sung by Negro boatmen. Reprinted in Epstein, Dena J., 1977, "Sinful Tunes and Spirituals," pp. 257-258.
(Added to Spirituals Permathread)

Subject: LYR ADD: A Few More Beatings
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 18 Jul 03 - 03:43 PM

Kat's idea is a good one. A little known fact is that some slaves were hired aboard cargo vessels by their masters. Other crewmen included free blacks. Most of this was on river traffic. I would think that over time, some of these slaves escaped.

Here is perhaps the oldest Negro song that talks of freedom, by a former slave who was alive at the time of the Nat Turner insurrection. The song was collected by Lydia M. Child and published in 1836.

Lyr. Add: A FEW MORE BEATINGS

A few more beatings of the wind and rain,
Ere the winter will be over-
Glory, Hallelujah!
Some friends has gone before me,-
I must try to go and meet them-
Glory, Hallelujah!
A few more risings and settings of the sun,
Ere the winter will be over-
Glory, Hallelujah!
There's a better day a coming-
There's a better day a coming-
Oh, Glory, Hallelujah!

Child wrote of the singer, Charity Bower: "With a very arch expression, she looked up as she concluded and said, "They wouldn't let us sing that. They thought we was going to RISE, because we sung better days are coming."
Child, Lydia Maria, "An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans called Africans." New York, J. S. Taylor, 1836.

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: katlaughing
Date: 19 Jul 03 - 12:16 AM

Jed, you might also find the poems/songs of Paul Laurence Dunbar of interest. He wasn't born until 1872, but the song/poems he collected in Howdy honey, howdy presumably came from earlier times, though I don't know if they'd be specific to runaways. I think that site has the entire contents of that book, if not and there is one of the pieces you want to read, let me know and I will copy it into here. If you do a search on him or the book title, here, you will find one of the songs, Bury me under the willow, already posted.

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 19 Jul 03 - 01:35 AM

Do you mean- Bury Me Beneath the Willow? This song is Appalachian and Ozark, probably not known in slave songs. Not by Dunbar.
You could mean his "Death Song" from Howdy, Honey, Howdy, which mentions willers, but I think it is original.

Thanks for the great Dunbar reference. I am glad you linked it and have bookmarked it.

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: katlaughing
Date: 19 Jul 03 - 09:21 AM

Yes, his Death Song is the one I meant. Thanks. BTW, it was Masato who found that link and first posted. I just have the original book.:-)

kat

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: wanderhope
Date: 06 Aug 03 - 09:06 AM

I have done some amateur research on this over the years, helped much by some information I received decades ago from James Cone (I was a mere babe at the time of course :>). There was, as we know, a set of symbols and euphimisms which slaves used to faciliate escape and connection with the underground railroad. One was sung by a house slave, and led with "can't hear nobody pray," which suggested that everybody in the house was asleep. "steal away" (a song attributed to Nat Turner by some), was supposed to waft through the air as someone came to guide the slaves away from where they lived. Of course, "Wade in the Water" was a teaching song ("God's gonna trouble the water" mean that it was harder for dogs to track, and "Drinking Gourd" was a song specifically about instructions on escape from either Alabama or Mississippi: "When the sun comes back and the first quail calls", for instance, refers to early spring). I'm always looking for other such songs. Songs referencing Moses refer to Harriet Tubman, of course, and references to chariots, trains, etc. reference the UR. Also, the Jordan River was alternately the Ohio or the St, Lawrence River (depending on before or after the fugitive slave law was enacted). I have maybe 10-12 songs that may apply.

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: Charley Noble
Date: 06 Aug 03 - 09:35 AM

Hmmm. Don't know if the sea shanty "Alabama John Cherokee" fits in here. The verses in multi-cultural fashion describe how "An Indian man from Miramashee" was made a slave in Alabam, and how "He run away every chance he can." It's an unusual shanty and usually thought of as the usual sailor nonesense, or gallows humor, but likely this was the only way the issue could be raised. Alabama John Cherokee in later verses is signed by his masters to a whaling ship where his further attempts to escape are brutally surpressed, he's chained and starved to death, but at night his ghost comes back to haunt the crew.

Some version of this shanty has been discussed and posted in the threads if you're interested.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: GUEST,Pinetop Slim
Date: 06 Aug 03 - 11:10 AM

At risk of thread creep: Some of the earliest runaway slaves found refuge with Native Americans -- I've seen mention of Seminole, Creek, Cherokee and Choctaw; suspect other. Have any Catters seen evidence of an African influence on the music of Indians of the eastern United States?

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Aug 03 - 11:31 AM

When the Cherokee were moved from northen Florida to Oklahoma, the government left behind the black folks who found the Indian lands a refuge. At that time, the tribe was almost one third black, and would eventually have lost all relationship to the American native peoples. Something to ponder.

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 06 Aug 03 - 02:35 PM

Often forgotten is the fact that Cherokees and some others in the civilized tribes had Negro slaves. Some moved with them to Indian Territory when they were cleared from their farms and homes by prejudice and politics. There is a hamlet in Oklahoma that was started by these slaves.

As shown by several threads, the direction and guide songs exist mostly in the minds of people who have not studied the world of the American slave and think that slaves had the intelligence level of a mentally challanged mule. There are several narratives written or orally communicated by escaped slaves, and the information they used was more complex. Assertions about these "guide" songs are nearly all 20th century.
The world of the slave was much broader than many presume. House slaves knew the household gossip and information and passed it on. Slaves drove haulage for the plantations, worked on the steamboats (even sailing vessels), were hired out by the owners for a variety of jobs, some quite skilled, usually had once-a-week get-togethers at which information could be passed along. Even the lowest of the field hands had contact with house slaves and often with slaves from nearby plantations. The information that they had would be much more complete and not diseminated by song.

Of course there would be "signals" about "passage" on the underground railway, but these could be anything and were undoubtedly changed for each opportunity and passed by word of mouth, to be changed for the next opportunity. Moreover, only very small groups attempted the trip- in secrecy from the majority of the slaves in the area.

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: Margaret V
Date: 06 Aug 03 - 02:59 PM

Jed, if you're particularly interested in runaway slaves serving on board ships, you might find the following two books useful:

W. Jeffrey Bolster, BLACK JACKS: AFRICAN AMERICAN SEAMEN IN THE AGE OF SAIL (Harvard U. Press)

Graham Russell Hodges & Alan Edward Brown, eds., PRETENDS TO BE FREE: RUNAWAY SLAVE ADVERTISEMENTS FROM COLONIAL AND REVOLUTIONARY NEW YORK AND NEW JERSEY (Garland Publishing)

It was a common worry among slaveholders that captives would join a ship's crew; many African Americans were skilled in various seafaring trades (not just sailing but sailmaking, ropemaking, shipbuilding, coopering, cooking, language translating, etc.), and many captains were anxious enough to put together a crew that they didn't ask too many questions.

I have been directing a project to reinterpret a museum site in New York's Hudson Valley, Philipsburg Manor, and in the process have found some interesting references to runaways from the Philipse family who sailed off as far away as Madagascar in the late 17th century. PM me if you want to know more.

Margaret

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: greg stephens
Date: 06 Aug 03 - 03:10 PM

I'm no American historian, I just have a Brit folkie interest in the subject. But may the great songs of runaway convicts(I am thinking particularly Of Old Riley and Lost John) have started life in a slavery context? Anybody shed any light on that?

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: Barry Finn
Date: 06 Aug 03 - 03:22 PM

Hi Charley

Alabama John Cherokee (Hugill places this to be from the days of slavery) is probably not far off from the story/song. For sailors of color the late 1700's into the earlier half of the 1800's was a far better & easier time for the Black & Indian seafarer. As the Civil was approched & after when Jim Crow went to sea their numbers went down while their treatment got worse.

Many slaves in New England lived with the Mashpee Indians of Cape Cod & other places like Chappequiddick, Gay Head & Christentown, Martha's Vinyard & end up intermarrying. Captain Paul Cuff of Nantucket, a wealthy merchant & shipowner was of African & Indian backround. His son commandered the Rising Star & skippered an all black crew. Paul's 2 son-in-laws & nephews were also sea captains. Captain Absolom S Boston, Skipper of the whaler Industry 1822, (also crewed by all blacks) was the son of Captain Prince Boston (of African decent) also came from a prominent Nantucket maritime family, he married a women of of Indian/African decent, Paul Cuff's granddaughter. Crispus Attucks (see Boston Massacre) of African/Natick Indian decent, sailed as harpooner aboard a whaler. The well known (in his time) Captain Samson Occan was also of African/Indian decent. Captain Moses Vose, of African decent) married a Mustee indian women, their children 'followed the sea'. The Indian sailor had it a bit better than the Black, if they carried Indian id's, they did not fall under the same laws as slaves or freemen though without proof of being an Indian or of Indian decent they could land in the same hell as the slave. Although the canoe is thought of as having Native American origins it's origins are in Africa.

I guess I thread creeped this one.

Barry

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 06 Aug 03 - 04:10 PM

Columbus found the canoe (native and Spanish canoa) in use in Haiti. Parallel designs are widespread- Africa, northern Hemisphere, Africa- the canoe cannot be said with certainty to have its origin anywhere, beyond the generalized American-Asian-African-Polynesian regions; vessels moved with paddles rather than oars are found throughout.

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: greg stephens
Date: 06 Aug 03 - 04:44 PM

WEll they certainly had them in Lancaster(England) because I've seen the one they dug out of the bog from 4000BC or something. Could have come from Polynesia I suppose, but it's a long way.

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 06 Aug 03 - 05:50 PM

Sorry, Greg, didn't mean to slight our ancestors. They probably built canoes with the best of them.

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: SINSULL
Date: 06 Aug 03 - 09:01 PM

Oh Freedom! Sweet Freedom!
Freedom is for me.
And before I'd be a slave I'd be buried in my grave
And go home tho the father and be free.

Story of a young slave whose mother was promides that he would be freed upon her death. Instead, he is put up for auction before she is cold in the ground. He runs.

Lyrics tomorrow. I'm too tired tonight. Maybe someone else can post them and the author.

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: marthabees
Date: 06 Aug 03 - 09:10 PM

Guest Q -


You wrote: Songs like the "Drinking Gourd" are very doubtfully of the period and have much myth attached.

What you are saying about The Drinking Gourd (and other such songs) runs counter to my research which began in the 1970's at a lecture by an African-American woman who was academically credential-ed, and then later by the woman who sings bass in Sweet Honey In The Rock (forgive me, I can't remember her name).

I am open to learning more about this. I know how non-facts with frequent retellings become "truths" - witness Hitler's Big Lie and the Bush43 Administration (oops, thread creep). Can you cite some sources that would back up your statement?

Thanks,
Martha

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 06 Aug 03 - 10:54 PM

Much speculation has come from people with "impeccable credentials."
First, let me say that I inherently distrust material that has no antecedents. "Follow de Drinkin' Gou'd" is unknown before the collection of a fragment in 1912 that had no real relationship to escaping. I tend to agree with the thoughts of McGrath (thread 17760, 01 Oct 01 0703AM). Also see posts by Masato Sakurai and other posts giving more information in the same thread.
Moreover, any slave not familiar with the North Star must have been exceedingly stupid, as I have written before in one of these threads.
The collection of the song "from an old Negro" in College Station, Texas (site of Texas A & M College, a large university of the State system) seems suspicious. Anyone following the North Star from that area would have ended up in Indian Territory. As I have also suggsted before, directions on the "railway" would be passed by word of mouth or through directions scratched in the soil that could be erased after their comprehension. They would be more specific than anything in these nebulous songs. During the period of the underground railway, most directions were to the next "station" where further instructions would be received.
I want to reread Dobie's comments in his book, and may add more later when I find my copy.

Can I cite sources that back up my statement? Only to the point that interviews and writings of former slaves tell a different story- namely, the careful transmission of specific information. Do you have anything in the 19th century writings that support your views? Everything I have seen is anecdotal and 50 years or more after the fact.

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: Nerd
Date: 07 Aug 03 - 12:32 PM

I'm with Q on this one. I'm a folklorist. I think the folklore about slaves running away is fascinating. It includes stories about songs like "follow the drinking gourd." It includes the tale that "Hush Puppies" were named because they were fed to the hounds hunting runaway slaves to keep them quiet. It includes a whole new complex of material about quilts that has convinced many people for a few years now.

BUT:

There's very little evidence for any of it. It's very PC, because it suggests how smart the escaping slaves were: they could code and decode messages, pass them on in secret, escape detection, etc. But, as many have pointed out, you couldn't actually use "Follow the Drinking Gourd" to escape unless someone explained to you at length what each image meant. Once you're having extensive conversations of that kind, the coded nature of the song becomes much less useful. Same goes for quilts used to direct people on the UR (the evidence for which is even slimmer, and the hushpuppies story is plain nonsense. It's on the same order as Ring Around the Rosie being about the plague.

There are some smart people with a lot invested in stories of this nature. Bernice Johnson-Reagon of Sweet Honey is one of them, as is Tukufu Zuberi from History Detectives. But I think a lot of scholars would be more critical, especially in private where the non-PC nature of their comments wouldn't hurt them.

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 07 Aug 03 - 01:49 PM

Harriet Tubman would be amazed at the misinformation being diseminated about her efforts and organization. Much of it has developed in the last fifty years, put out by well-meaning people who fail to investigate and document long-after-the-fact anecdotes.

Unfortunately, these myths are being taught as fact in some schools. One example is the website by Barbara Tyree, supposedly for "intermediate" Social Sciences, at: http://trackstar.hprtec.org/main/display.php3?track_id=9740. Or Click on:
Tubman

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 07 Aug 03 - 01:54 PM

Site doesn't recognize 9740, but type Tubman in he Search blank and scroll down to Tyree.

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: GUEST,Jerry
Date: 07 Aug 03 - 09:19 PM

I learned a song from Dick Swain years ago that fits this category (sort of). Dick believed it was not truly a slave song but one created by abolitionists. Goes to the tune of "Oh Susannah".

Well I'm on my way to Canada that cold and dreary land,
For the sad effects of slavery I can no longer stand.
I've served my master many a day without a dimes reward
'Til now I'm forced to run away to seek a home abroad.

Chorus
Farewell, Master, don't think hard of me,
For I'm on my way to Canada where all the slaves are free.
Oh righteous Father, wilt thou not pity me,
And aid me on to Canada where all the slaves are free.

The hounds are baying on my track, old master runs behind
Resolved that he will bring me back before I cross the line.
But I've embarked for yonder shore where a man's a man by law
And the iron horse will bear me o'er to shake the Lion's paw.
   
   Chorus

Well I heard Queen Victoria say that if I would forsake
My native land of slavery and come across the lake,
Then she'd be waiting on the shore with arms extended wide
To give us all a peaceful home beyond the flowing tide.

   Chorus

I don't recall when or where Dick found this.

Jerry

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 07 Aug 03 - 10:08 PM

The song appeared in "Harriet, the Moses of her People," published by Sarah Bradford in 1886, (first title- "Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman") describing the life of Harriet Tubman, pp. 49-50 (of the 1900 reprint). Said to have been sung by Harriet Tubman.
Dialect is removed from the version given by Jerry, above, e. g., "De hounds," etc. No tune is given.
The chorus is varied after each verse:

Cho. 1
Farewell, ole master, don't think hard of me,
I'm traveling on to Canada, where all de slaves are free.

Cho. 2
Oh, righteous father, wilt thou not pity me,
And help me on th Canada, where all de slaves are free.

Cho. 3
Farewell, ole Master, don't think hard of me,
I'm traveling on to Canada, where all de slaves are free.

The first edition of the book made $1200, which was given to Harriet Tubman to lift a mortgage on her little farmstead in New York, which she had purchased with the help of Secy. Seward (of Alaska purchase fame).

Another fragmentary song from Harriet Tubman (same source):

Glory to God and Jesus too,
One more soul got safe.

Glory to God in the highest,
Glory to God and Jesus too,
For all these souls now safe.

Another fragment, same source- said to have sung by Harriet Tubman as some 800 slaves were rowed out in the Combahee River, and loaded aboard Yankee gunboats commanded by Col. Montgomery, to be carried to Beaufort. Tubman, during the War, was a spy and information gatherer.

Of all the whole creation in the East or in the west,
The glorious Yankee nation is the greatest and the best.
Come along! Come along! Don't be alarmed,
Uncle Sam is rich enough to give you all a farm.
Response- Glory!

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: Marion
Date: 11 Aug 03 - 03:52 AM

Jed, here's a book you should know about:

The Underground Railroad, by William Still, 1871.   The copy I have was republished in 1970 by Johnson Publishing Company Inc., Chicago, as part of the "Ebony Classics" series.

William Still of Philadelphia was the son of slaves, and was deeply involved in helping fugitives. The book is 800 pages of personal stories, mostly of successful escapes, with some stories about recaptured slaves and some focusing on the conductors. The accounts are very detailed and many include reprinted letters, or "reward" ads published by slaveowners. In the introduction Still explains that he hoped that book would be helpful for separated families trying to find each other again, and that he wrote only about the cases he had personal knowledge of.

I haven't come across any mention yet of songs or of fugitives working on ships - but there's still 600 pages to go. I'm sure you'd find some stories to write about - just don't pick the same ones I do, eh?

Marion

PS The good people at William Still Underground Railroad Foundation will sell you a copy.

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 11 Aug 03 - 01:51 PM

Put William Still in Search at American Memory, and you will find that his book, "The Underground Railroad, a Record ..." is on-line. It is the revised edition of 1879 and includes a portrait.

Put Underground Railroad in Search, and more material will be found. This also picks up Still's book.

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 11 Aug 03 - 08:23 PM

No ballads, but a lot of information on the underground railroad. At American Memory, on line, or directly from Univ. Michigan website, www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=moa;idno=ABT8668: Levi Coffin
"Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the reputed president of the underground railroad...." Western Tract Society, 1876, 712 pp. Cincinnati. He was a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers).

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: bhb
Date: 12 May 06 - 05:19 PM

refresh

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: GUEST,ifor
Date: 13 May 06 - 04:02 AM

Many slaves took heart from the fight by slaves to free themselves in Haiti in he face of the most terrible cruelty.
The Pentangle recorded Haitian Fight Song by ,I think Thelonius Monk and of course there is Wordsworth remarkable poem To Liberty about Toussaint L'Overtoure the leader of the slave uprising.
Ifor

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 May 06 - 08:39 PM

Any record of what the Royal Ethiopian Regiment - made up of freed and runaway slaves - used as a regimental march in what became the American War of Independence?

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: katlaughing
Date: 13 May 06 - 08:49 PM

Found an interesting chronology of military service HERE.

In a quick look at google, a Project Guttenberg narrative mentions "Marching Along." I haven't read the complete text, there are no line breaks, but I think it was in reference to the Civil War. The link doesn't lead to it, but the "cached" does at this addy.

kat

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 13 May 06 - 09:33 PM

Of the 800 blacks who were formed into the Ethiopian Regiment in Virginia under Lord Dunmore, 500 died, mostly of disease.
A sad story. Some went on to the Black Pioneers, who were disbanded in Nova Scotia.
Two websites have reliable history-
1. Black loyalists, Canada's Digital Collection.
http://collections.ic.gc.ca/BlackLoyalists/story/revolution/ethiopia.htm
2. Loyalist Institute.
www.royalprovincial.com/military/rhist/ethiopian/ethlist.htm

Subject: RE: African Runaway Slave Ballads
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 13 May 06 - 09:38 PM

Remnants of the Ethiopian Regiment also were found on Gwyn Island by American troops. These 'black banditti' were listed under their owners names; possibly they were returned. The website is under construction and much remains unclear to me.