The descendants of Charles McGruder, an enslaved man forced to be a breeder

[get these nets]

McGruder roots: Families trace lineages back to a single enslaved man
March 2021

Lucille Burden Osborne, known by some as Miss Lucille, refuses to give cruelty the last word in her story.

At 95 years old, she grew up in the same house as family members who’d survived slavery, including her great-grandmother Rachel McGruder. Her great-grandfather, Charles McGruder, had also been enslaved.

ABC
Lucille Burden Osborne

As she grew up, Osborne had heard people speak about her great-grandfather, but people rarely spoke about the fact that he is the patriarch to most Black people from Alabama with the surname McGruder.


“Evidently old man Charles McGruder must have been an important person to the community because we would hear his name many, many times,” said Osborne. “But nobody seemed to want to discuss how Charles fit into that slave situation, and it seemed like everybody would whisper when they were talking about Charles.”

Lucille Burden Osborne

She went on, “So this is what stands out in my mind -- that he must have been the big daddy … because during his early years, he was considered a [slave] breeder.”

Congress banned the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in 1808. No longer able to import enslaved Africans, many owners forced people like Charles McGruder to procreate.

“Slave owners owned enslaved women's wombs, and they owned the products of enslaved women's wombs. And that was foundational to how white southerners understood and conceptualized slavery,” said Chris Bonner, a history professor at the University of Maryland. “Charles McGruder’s story reflects that sense of what slavery was.”

Marie McGruder, 58, told ABC News her great-great-grandfather “was basically rented out to go from plantation to plantation to breed with other African women.”

J.R. Rothstein said that his great-great-great grandfather may have had up to 100 children, but that the records confirm he had at least 40. Of those children, he said each of them had about a dozen of their own children, who then went on to have a dozen more.

ABC
J.R. Rothstein is uncovering his family’s roots in a new book.

He has since been dedicated to uncovering his family’s roots in a new book, called “The Alabama Black McGruders,” while he works as a real estate attorney and investor.

Bonner said that while the number of children Charles McGruder had is “shocking,” it doesn’t mean “that enslaved people didn't value family.”

After Charles McGurder was emancipated following the Civil War, he chose to make a homestead for the women and his children. It was an act of love for people connected to him through a vicious crime, because, ultimately, they were still his family.

After a decade of sharecropping, he purchased land in 1877 for $1,500 -- the exact same market value he commanded as an enslaved person. The family still owns part of that land today.

Jill Magruder is a descendant of the white Magruders who once owned Charles McGruder. Magruder is the original spelling of the McGruder last name. After emancipation, Charles McGruder registered to vote and changed the spelling of his family’s surname as an act of independence and to signal a new beginning, his family believes.

Jill Magruder

Most white relatives still carry the original spelling of the last name Magruder.

Through Family Tree DNA, Magruder said she was able to definitively link her branch of the family tree to Charles McGruder. The test showed an exact match between Magruder’s brother and Charles McGruder’s great-grandson, which confirmed that the two are indeed related.

ABC News connected Magruder with a small group of Black McGruders to talk about their shared family history.

ABC
One family traces its lineage back to a single enslaved man, Charles McGruder.

“I know as a white Magruder, or just as a white American, you hear the stories about a slave owner having children with a slave woman, and there’s some kind of denial about that,” Jill Magruder said.

During the reunion, the McGruders passed around public records that confirmed Osborne’s memories of her great-grandfather, showing her for the first time the price placed on the lives of the people she knew and loved.

Osborne, a former Detroit school teacher, is a graduate of Alabama State University, an HBCU where she also joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, and the University of Michigan. An avid quilter, Osborne said she captures her story within the family tradition that she said was passed down through generations to her. She said her family’s legacy makes her proud to be who she is.

Lucille Burden Osborne

“They were once a slave and now they are free, so look at the legacy you got,” said Osborne. “If [they] made it through here, you can do even better.”

 

[get these nets]

Entry on a blog by a descendant of Alexander Magruder. A white indentured servant from Scotland who was brought to America in the 17th century.

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The Alabama Black McGruders…who may be your family, too

It is with great excitement that I announce upcoming of The Alabama Black McGruders: The Life and Ancestry of Charles McGruder Sr. by J.R. Rothstein. I congratulate Mr. Rothstein, and am proud to host this remarkable history on Magruder’s Landing.

A great-great-great grandson of Charles McGruder Sr., Mr. Rothstein has worked for years to piece together written records, oral histories, and DNA evidence to create both a plausible narrative of his life and origins and an open-sided platform for further research, debate, and community. Though born into slavery and suffering some of its most demeaning aspects, Charles McGruder Sr. and his wives succeeded in establishing a strong sense of family and a legacy of achievement that survives among many of their descendants.

The story presented here is by no means complete. One power of this document is Mr. Rothstein’s careful distinction between what’s known, what’s believed, what’s contested, and what’s possible. Don’t skip the footnotes! Often, that’s where the debate, the dilemmas, and the possible next steps may be found.

At every juncture, others are invited to step up into the unanswered questions and continue the work Mr. Rothstein has begun. (You will find his email in the history’s introduction and at its conclusion, and should feel free to use it.) Seven collaborators are acknowledged in the introduction, and the stories of many more are quoted in the text; still others, both black and white, generously shared their DNA. So this is, already, a community endeavor, and, as Mr. Rothstein has said to me, an American story.

From the introduction:

Charles Magruder was born a slave in North (or South) Carolina in 1822. According to some accounts, Charles would eventually sire over a hundred children, including fifty-two sons. Many of these children had large families of their own who had large families of their own. Hundreds, if not thousands, of his descendants, sometimes referred to as the “Black McGruders of Alabama,” would go on to populate Alabama and its adjacent territories during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This account, using DNA, oral history, and the written record, attempts to reconstruct the origins of this family and preserve the events of Charles’ life.

Mr. Rothstein goes on to state that this history is relevant only to McGruder descendants whose ancestors were held in slavery by the Magruder-Wynne families of Hale and Greene Counties, Alabama. This may be so; but taking into account Charles McGruder Sr.’s large number of descendants and the subsequent movement of African Americans out of the deep south into northern and midwestern states, it is likely that many black-identified McGruder descendants will be able to link their ancestors to this family tree. You will note in the document that many spellings of the name evolved, including MaGruder, McGruder, Mccruder, Mcgruda, McGouder, Mcruder, and Mcgruter. So pay attention! This could be your family.

Charles’ large number of children resulted from his use as a “breeder,” moved from plantation to plantation in order to sire more slaves–a practice that became increasingly common after the importation of slaves was abolished and, simultaneously, what we now call the Deep South–Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana–was opened for American settlement by the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Throughout the first half of the 19th c., every kind of domestic slave trade increased, including the movement of at least a million enslaved people from the Upper south–Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina–into the new territories, where the cotton gin and other mechanical and financial innovations made industrial-scale production both profitable and pitiless.

In Charles McGruder Sr.’s family, we see, for example, a movement from the Carolinas to Alabama. The parents of one of Charles’ wives, Rachel Hill, probably were born in Virginia, then taken farther south either by the white family who held them in bondage or by professional slave traders. Rachel’s birthplace is uncertain, so it’s possible that she, as a child, made this arduous journey along with her parents.

Here is Charles McGruder Sr.’s line, as it can be traced from Alexander Magruder, the Immigrant:

Alexander the Immigrant > Samuel Magruder + Sarah [surname debated] > Ninian Beall Magruder + Elizabeth Brewer > John Magruder + Jane Offutt > Ninian Offut Maguder + unknown enslaved woman > Ned McGruder + Mariah [surname unknown] > Charles McGruder Sr.

Charles was born on the estate of Eleanor Magruder Wynne. Her father, Ninian Offutt Magruder, had passed Ned McGruder to Eleanor in his will. Most likely, she was Ned’s half-sister and Charles’ aunt.

This is the truth of family in the days of slavery. In our times, let’s allow the Magruder/McGruder family story to take on new breadth and inclusiveness, literally new life.

Congratulations, again, to Mr. Rothstein and to all who made his achievement possible.

The Alabama Black McGruders: The Life and Ancestry of Charles McGruder Sr.

& don’t forget the Magruder/McGruder Facebook groups:

Magruder / McGruder Family Genealogy

African American Magruder/McGruders (and descendants and relatives)

====================
@xoxodede @Dorian Gray

 

[invalid]

Mr. McGruder probably has 100k+ descendants at this point.

The sad part is, if you're going from farm to farm across three states making kids, the descendants of those unions will probably never be able to make the connection to Mr. McGruder. Always having a perpetual question mark in his place.

I'm glad that the black and white branches have been able to reconcile. Sounds alot like my great grandfather's family down in Atlanta. The white side was always acutely aware of them, especially since they both share a unique surname held by no other family in America. By the 60's, they had started to openly recognize the black side and by the 70's the black and white sides were having joint family reunions.

 

[skylove4]

The atrocities of what we went through are just simply unimaginable.

This horror inflicted on our people is the main reason we shouldn’t be conservatives or moderates, because these political leanings are the same as the people who held us in this condition and would do it again today in a heartbeat.

When crackers talk about family values this is how they see our families . Like livestock to do with, what they please

 

[Coco Loco]

Everyday we get more and more information about just how vile and disgusting most of these people are/were. I truly don't know how anyone who isn't white can still hold majority of them up as upstanding people. The most dangerous, harmful and disgusting people to ever walk this earth are white.


With that said, I am proud to be black and a descendent of enslaved people. No other race of people have been through literal hell, survived it and went on to be as great as we are even with the bs we STILL have to endure.

 

[ThatTruth777]

The atrocities of what we went through are just simply unimaginable.

This horror inflicted on our people is the main reason we shouldn’t be conservatives on moderates, because these political leanings are the same as the people who held us in this condition and would do it again today in a heartbeat.

When crackers talk about family values this is how they see our families . Like livestock to do with, what they please

It was (is) a real life horror movie.

 

[skylove4]

It was (is) a real life horror movie.

Ain’t this the truth. These crackers know if we all wake up and realize what they have done and still do, it’s over for them

 

[Silver Surfer]

Wow

 

[Sccit]

Everyday we get more and more information about just how vile and disgusting most of these people are/were. I truly don't know how anyone who isn't white can still hold majority of them up as upstanding people. The most dangerous, harmful and disgusting people to ever walk this earth are white.


With that said, I am proud to be black and a descendent of enslaved people. No other race of people have been through literal hell, survived it and went on to be as great as we are even with the bs we STILL have to endure.

 

[⠝⠕⠏⠑]

Everyday we get more and more information about just how vile and disgusting most of these people are/were. I truly don't know how anyone who isn't white can still hold majority of them up as upstanding people. The most dangerous, harmful and disgusting people to ever walk this earth are white.


With that said, I am proud to be black and a descendent of enslaved people. No other race of people have been through literal hell, survived it and went on to be as great as we are even with the bs we STILL have to endure.

I have to cleanse my mental palate of shyt like this just to deal with this sorry ass country everyday. There's an abyss of hatred I feel I'm on the edge of and it just gets bigger and bigger every second.
Its suffocating sometimes.

 

[Brer Dog]

 

[skylove4]

I have to cleanse my mental palate of shyt like this just to deal with this sorry ass country everyday. There's an abyss of hatred I feel I'm on the edge of and it just gets bigger and bigger every second.
Its suffocating sometimes.

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.
-James Baldwin

 

[No..Money..Mo..Problems]

Bu bu but slavery was forever ago

 

[Flywin Lannister]

The real key is that if it is up to many white people, this is what we’d go back to.

So many hold a grudge today that we are free, so they can’t enslave us but they can make our lives super hard, arrest us, kills us, not hire us..

 

[L2014]

Aaron Mcgruder