Creating Their Own Ground
Thus, a four-county community of colored cousins – some tied to slave relatives, others fighting to maintain their own slave-holding way of life -- faced the daunting task of single-handedly establishing for themselves a new place in the changed society. There would be no assistance. The White community had largely closed to them. The ex-slave community did not yet have the acumen to navigate its own way.
In most of the counties, these constraints led isolate leaders to lobby their neighbors and local government to recognize them as Indian. Although this did not gain them entry into the ruling class, it removed them from the wrath directed at freed slaves. In Robeson County and Sampson County, strong, influential spokespersons arose. (Columbus County followed suit several decades later) The people were denied entry to the White public school system, but refused to attend the schools established for freed slaves. They established their own school systems, paying for them out of their own pockets as they simultaneously (and – ultimately – successfully) petitioned the government to pay for the three-way segregation.
The ‘Indian schools’ were paramount in keeping the isolate culture alive. Students learned the three R’s of Reading, ‘Riting, and ‘Rrithmetic, and also learned the oral history of their people. They learned that they were not freed slaves and they learned why keeping that distinction was crucial to not becoming Jim Crowed. They began to call their leaders ‘chief’. They began to re-discover Native American traditions that were not a part of their own oral legacy – borrowing dances and reverence for objects such as the eagle feather from west-of-the-Mississippi tribes. They chose names for themselves based on the old Indian-named waterways in their counties.
Over time, the status of the Sampson, Robeson, and Columbus county people as Native American has solidified. They have become known as the Coharie, Lumbee, and Waccamaw Indians respectively. They have gained state recognition, many other uninterrupted tribes affiliate with them, and they are well on their way to federal recognition
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Choosing Sides
The people in Pender County did not lobby to maintain themselves separate from freed slaves. This is an interesting phenomenon – as the Pender people and Sampson people were probably the closest linked in terms of bloodlines and day-to-day association. From the late 1700’s onward, the people consistently chose mates from each others’ community. Families regularly moved back and forth between the counties as they inherited land from elders, or simply found better opportunities. They belonged to the same churches. Their churches belonged to the same convention – Kenansville Eastern Missionary Baptist Association. They were essentially the same people. Yet the Sampson cousins were the forerunners of the Southeastern NC movement to establish a separate place in society for ex-free-colored people, while the Pender cousins made no moves towards that direction.
As this drama unfolds, the ‘one drop’ rule was in full effect in the United States. The Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896 Louisiana ruled that Mr. Plessy – seven-eights White and one-eight Black– could be segregated to the colored rail car under the now famous ‘separate but equal’ opinion. Although the isolate people were so thoroughly and historically mixed as to make exact percentages unattainable, Plessy v. Ferguson shows that if there was a shadow of doubt, or a far-distant African ancestor, one was subject to Jim Crow laws.
Therefore, as the Sampson cousins began to solidify their new status, the linkage between the counties began to atrophy and each person had to choose a side. Census records show isolate families disappearing from Pender County in the 1870’s and 1880’s. Most of these families reappear in Sampson County, and are counted as Coharie when the Coharie published their history.[2] Somewhat later – around 1902 – the Coharie churches are no longer reflected in the minutes from the Kenansville Eastern Missionary Baptist Association. They had pulled away to establish their own
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Accepting a New Yoke
By the early 1900’s the Pender people – although still genetically the same as their Indian cousins – began to be called Negro. By the 1920’s and 30’s as “Negro” people began to migrate to the North to avoid the still-present Jim Crow, PenderROCK people were in the crowd. Now, the people began to marry other Negroes and were no longer a racial isolate. They merged effectively into the Negro/Black community.
Why did PenderROCK people lose their status as historically free people and submit to Jim Crow laws that were not originally intended for them?
One might argue that they had more African ancestors.
That is unlikely in the late 1800’s. Sampson and Pender County were essentially the same gene pool. As late as 1917, a dispute over inherited Jacobs land in Pender County necessarily included Coharie as plaintiffs.
PenderROCK people did have a greater genetic debt to the family of Benjamin Williams. Williams was a free person of color originally from Sampson County circa 1840. Oral history and the physiology of his descendants attest that the Williams’ looked no different from others in the clan. Yet oddly, the Williams family was not recognized as Coharie in their lineage books, which could lead one to the conclusion that they were more European and African than tri-racial.
Two facts cause one to discount that theory. First, several Coharie families appear to have started out as bi-racial. Secondly, certain of the Williams descendants were included in the Coharie rolls. Some families split, with one set of siblings identifying as Coharie and the other set becoming ‘colored’.
It appears that actively making the choice to stake a new claim and name for oneself – and sticking with the decision – was the deciding factor.
As a PenderROCK icon, New Hope Missionary Baptist Church’s role in the people’s decision cannot be overestimated. Southeastern Carolinians were poor, pragmatic, Spartan people. Church was the only outlet they allowed themselves other than work. The church was their sole venue to meet and greet and court and write and read and lead – and save their souls.
From Kenansville Eastern Missionary Baptist Association minutes it appears that New Hope Missionary Baptist Church was probably formed 1902-1912. Until the 1970’s or so, practically every family in the church had PenderROCK lineage. From the earliest minutes, the Walkers, Messicks, Merritts were the deacons of the church. Jacobs began to assume leadership roles in the late 1920’s. Love Grove Church may have been the predecessor to New Hope; research is still open in this area. If not Love Grove, one may be certain that the people worshipped somewhere in the Cypress Creek/Piney Wood Road neighborhood prior to 1902.
The fact that New Hope Missionary Baptist Church -- a PenderROCK congregation -- has never had a PenderROCK pastor is striking.
PenderROCK produced more than its fair share of ordained ministers, but they all pastored other churches (including Coharie churches). True, the day-to-day authority in rural churches rested with the Deacon Board, but pastors had a higher level of visibility, respect, the ability to move across communities and negotiate between groups, and the propensity to interact with regional government.
Thus, in their only formal structure – the church – the PenderROCK people never had a PenderROCK leader speaking for them.[3]
After Reconstruction disenfranchised and Jim Crowed the ex-slaves, colored churches played a critical role of benevolence in the community. Especially in Southeastern NC, the people were struggling. In urban areas, fraternal organizations were partners in helping people to find jobs, encouraging them to save money, and assisting in burial and food expenses when necessary. In the rural areas, the church was alone. One may assume that Kenansville Eastern Missionary Baptist Association and New Hope Baptist Church played that role in Pender County. Minutes reflect monies paid to recent widows by the Association (including Coharie widows). Therefore, the PenderROCK people would have been included by the Association and by their pastor in the problems and issues of slave descendants. Poor and uneducated themselves, small wonder that it did not feel foreign to them and they began to identify with the freedmen.
Conversely, the Coharie churches had Coharie pastors. There was probably little economic difference between the people at this time. They both had land – inherited from their joint-ancestors; they both were subject to the depressed economy and the repression of being hired after White people. So the Coharie churches had benevolence work to do as well. However, the Coharie pastors would have been in the position to understand their options and keep the people from being classified as ‘Negro’ – even if that meant pulling away from their kin.[4]
Another key difference between the PenderROCK people and their cousins in Sampson, Robeson, and Columbus counties is that the other cousins coalesced around two institutions: church and school.
As noted earlier, more widespread literacy and strong cousin/teacher/leaders enabled the Sampson and Robeson people to see a way around the crippling Jim Crow laws that were applied to freed slaves and historically free people of color. Their self segregation began in their schoolhouses – refusing to attend ‘Black’ schools and unable to attend ‘White’ schools, they established their own and fought relentlessly to have the schools and pupils recognized by North Carolina as distinct and separate.
PenderROCK people did not establish their own schools. The Jacobs land lies across the unruly Cypress Creek. Around 1915 or so, the Jacobs paid their Sampson cousin, Geneva Brewington, to live with them and teach their children so they would not have to navigate the creek. But for the most part, PenderROCK people were educated by the state-run school system for non-Whites. Love Grove School (its connection to the early Love Grove Church still under investigation) was the elementary school. PenderROCK people lived on contiguous land and were the bulk of the non-White neighborhood around Cypress Creek and Piney Wood Road. As late as the 1930’s only one family of children in Love Grove School was not PenderROCK. Still, this was considered a ‘Negro’ school by state and local educators. One may be sure that PenderROCK history was not in the curriculum. High school education did not become the norm for PenderROCK people until the middle of the twentieth century. By then, they were firmly a part of the Negro community and the colored C.F. Pope High School was their destination.
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Footnotes
[01] Some of the people made a fifth choice: not Coharie, Lumbee, Waccamaw, or colored=Negro; but becoming White over time. The West had opened up. People were stage-coaching to the other side of the Mississippi to homestead and ‘settle’ the West. Even as the U.S. government was driving their (distant) Indian cousins like cattle from western NC, GA, SC, to west of the Mississippi in the ‘Trail of Tears’, some of the isolate people were taking the same route as homesteaders. Identifying as Indian obviously was not the best choice for these settlers. Over time, they married other settlers and identify as White.
[02] In a brilliant move, the Sampson County cousins published at least three documents of their lineage. These pamphlets essentially spell out ‘who’s in and who’s out’, and successfully buttressed the case for a separate school system and protection from Jim Crow. One sees that the barriers between Pender and Sampson were still fluid in the early decades. Pender people are included in the documents and listed as Coharie if they had moved to Sampson and proclaimed themselves ‘Indian’.
[03] Taylor Jacobs (abt. 1845-1925) is conceded by the PenderROCK elders who knew him, as the leader of PenderROCK people. After the side-choosing was complete, most of the Jacobs-surnamed people in PenderROCK were descendants of Taylor or of James Owen Jacobs. Taylor Jacobs was called ‘the big man’ ‘leader’ ‘head’ in several interviews with different elders. He probably occupied the same position as the men who came to be known as ‘chief’ in the Coharie and Lumbee communities. However, there is no oral history of Taylor being active in the church, and he was illiterate. Thus his access to information and his platform for affecting change were both severely limited.
[04] All of the ex-free persons of color could legally vote. The Grandfather Clause allowed one to vote if his grandfather was eligible. This effectively ruled out the freed slaves, but enabled the isolate people to stay on the rolls. Voter registration records in Pender, Sampson, Robeson, and Columbus Counties show that the people did vote. However, one might imagine that in the Indian churches, voting was encouraged and discussed. At New Hope, one must wonder how much attention a non-PenderROCK pastor – himself ineligible – would pay to encouraging his flock to vote
