The Mays Family: Early Origins of the Mays of Greenville

PART 1. The Name is the Clue.

Moon’s Place in the O’Neal District.

What’s in a name? To African Americans descended from enslaved people who were in turn descended from free people in West Africa of many nations, everything. African names did not just signify personal identity, but tribal and regional identity as well; the Yoruba, Wolof, Mandinka, Akan, Fon, and Igbo were all different ethnic groups stolen and sold into slavery, each with different languages and cultures. There were many Africans with Portuguese names sold into slavery who had converted to Catholicism and spoke Portuguese as Portugal was the first European enslaver in West Africa. During the 400 years of slavery, as African names were stripped away, enslaved peoples were given first Spanish, then English names as a practical management tool over an expanding global workforce of colonization and dispossession. Over time, even surnames were omitted to further leash the slave to the master. Escaped slaves or slaves sold away might take a new name but incorporate a geographical place as a way of reclaiming power over their identity. They might also take the name in the hopes they might find a way home someday to families they were forced to leave behind. After Emancipation, the freeing of over 3 million black people mostly in the South, a few blacks renamed themselves but most kept the surname of a former enslaver. This is where the surname Mays originates in my mother’s paternal family.

I’ve learned that the very name of my late grandfather Arthur O’Neal Mays (1913 – 2001) holds a secret to the origins of our earliest recorded Mays family origins. That clue connects several families from antebellum Greenville, South Carolina, black and white. The Mays, Walker, Few, Gilreath surnames align on the paternal Mays line recovered from dusty archives and digital databases, and years of genealogy sleuthing. My grandfather’s unusual middle name O’Neal is a compass of sorts pointing backwards in time, across generations to a time not long after the revolution in the piedmont of South Carolina. Art, as my grandfather was called, was born in Greenville in the Gantt District in 1913 on his grandmother Harriet May’s farm to Van Mays and Elivra Higdon. His grandfather Jim was born about 1847, enslaved. Jim passed away 3 years before Art’s death at the age of 63. Art was just 6 years old when his parents joined the Great Migration out of the South, leaving behind the crippling life of Jim Crow with all its indignities for black people, for the promise of industrial jobs and more opportunity in the North. Though the Mays landed in Cleveland, new research has revealed the earliest geographical location of the African American Mays on record, and their earliest enslavers. By combining traditional document-based research and genetic genealogy of several “genetic networks” between white and black lineages in 18th-century South Carolina, I cracked a code to a cypher passed down through generations.

In the ancestral hunting lands of the Cherokee, a few miles north of Greenville, just east of Paris Mountain, renamed for Richard Pearis the early loyalist settler, is a fertile set of valleys along the Saluda Gap, nestled between the Enoree River and South Tyger River. Not far from the main highway between Greenville and Spartanburg, the area was populated by independent communities made up of farms, mills, and plantations and towns like Milford, Chick Springs, and Traveler’s Rest, but at their center was an area first known as “Moonville.” Today, the manmade Lake Robinson covers the fields and cabins of several plantations my ancestors were forced to cultivate for several different white enslavers in the Blue Ridge along the Tyger River. The antebellum farms were led by the Few, Walker, Gilreath, and Mays families. These high land millers, planters, and farmers adopted enslaved labor to carve out a life in the mountainous and cool valleys along the northern border of South Carolina, far from the hot swampy lowcountry around Charleston. In fact, Greenville and the surrounding area became known for its resorts for wealthy Charleston elites trying to beat the heat. The springs, hollers, and woods were first and second homesteads, and eventually the foundation for a new community spread across the many districts.

In 1825 the “Greenville” district was expansive stretching from the Saluda River to the edge of the Glassy Mountains in the Blue Ridge. Spartanburg was to the East. Over time, Greenville was subdivided into 15 districts. The Northern districts included Bates, Cleveland, Highland, Glassy Mountain, Greer, and Saluda…and O’Neal. Here was my grandfather’s middle name, pointing to a Greenville District I had never heard of before.

O’Neal District was named for John Belton O’Neal (1793-1863), a judge for South Carolina’s supreme court. O’Neal famously wrote “The Negro Law of South Carolina” in 1848 preaching humane treatment of the enslaved. Yet in his hypocrisy, the Judge held in bondage over 150 Africans himself. Of course, the book was denounced by the planter class and elites as abolitionist drivel.

I have written about how I used both genetic and traditional genealogy to unearth the identity of my 4x maternal grandmother Mariah Walker (1825 – d. before 1900), originally enslaved in Greenville, South Carolina. Mariah was the mother of two sets of families; the Mays and Walkers. The Mays boys came first and included her sons Sam Mays (1843 – d. after 1900), Oliver Mays (1845 – d. after 1900), and my great-great-grandfather Jim Mays (1847 – 1910). I discovered this largely by researching genetic connections with DNA matches on Ancestry.com, and exploring family history records of associated families. Mariah’s second family, according to various records was with a man named Pleasant Walker (1825 – d. about 1890). Together they had 10 more children between 1852 and 1871.

In conversations with my late cousin Pat Thompson (1939 – 2024), our Mays and Sherman family historian, she often lamented not being able to go further than Jim Mays. Family lore suggested Jim did not even know the identity of his parents himself. Though I’m currently researching the Mays, I couldn’t do it without my Walker descendant cousins testing on Ancestry that helped recover Jim’s connection to his mother Mariah. My research over the last several years debunked that myth and recovered important details during the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War. First, Jim and his family appear on the record living in the Gannt District, southeast of downtown Greenville as farmers – living close by both his mother’s first and second families, the Mays and Walkers. Henry Mays lived next door in 1870 and by 1880 Mariah and her family also lived on the White Horse Pike in Gannt. Both families also came together to found Mt. Pleasant Church on White Horse Pike during the turn of the century. The Mays and Walkers even had a funeral home business together in the early 1900s in Greenville. I imagined the condition of the Mays sons’ father was probably challenging. He was either a white man or an enslaved mulatto. The exact history of the lineage faded as the family turned away from the painful legacy of slavery. Or Jim’s family simply held a secret so close that their descendants did not speak about it.

According to cousin Pat Thompson and other researchers, the Mays family origins were associated with a Greenville plantation near “Moons.” Exactly which Moon’s, was however unclear. Records in historic Greenville newspapers show “Moonville” may have referred to multiple villages around Greenville rooted in different plantations owned by related enslavers with the surname Moon. Several plantations across Greenville owned by members of the Moon family who originally settled in the area in the early 1800s by William Moon (1768 – 1833), son of Gideon Moon Sr. (1720 – 1781). The Moons were originally from Lunenburg, Virginia. Their extensive holdings and plantations in Virginia, and then South Carolina’s highlands from Grove to Mountain View, began first across none other than the O’Neal District, before expanding to Grove and Gannt Districts.

I had learned the name O’Neal references a Greenville district, and now, the Moons could be found in the very same district! Two areas of interest quickly emerged. The first was “Moonville Gin” on Saldua Gap State Road about 15 miles north of Greenville near Greer (now Highway 101), known first as “Moon’s Place.” Newspapers also mentioned “Moonville” about 9 miles south of Greenville in Piedmont which seemed too far. Were the Mays from Moonville in O’Neal, from an actual Moon family plantation?

Returning to my grandfather’s paternal family surname, I started combing maps of the area for farmsteads owned by a Mays family. Though there were several planters with the surname “Mays or Mayes” across Greenville throughout the 1800s, my research showed only one of them lived adjacent to a plantation owned by Gideon Moon, son of William Moon, the source of “Moon’s Place” in O’Neal. His full name? James Mays, born in England, he was a naturalized immigrant who lived in O’Neal district from about 1820 to 1865. He bore the same name as my 3x grandfather. None of these discoveries felt random, each felt like breadcrumbs leading me down a path.

Given the names and location, I knew I had found the right Moonville. I wanted to understand the entire community, to learn about this Englishman James Mays, his friends and neighbors, planters, millers, slave, and free. This “Moonville” along the South Fork of the Tyger River could hold vital information about Jim Mays and his family. I would need to thoroughly examine James Mays’ life and those of his neighbors. During the circuitous route family history research often takes, and after many months, I was surprised to find that Mariah Walker’s origins did indeed begin in O’Neal, but not on the Moon plantation, and not with James Mays. It began on the plantation of their neighbor just upriver, a man named William Few.

Mariah and Sylvia on the Few plantation.

I first hypothesized that Jim Mays’ mother, my 4x maternal grandmother Mariah’s maiden name was “Choice” in an article I wrote 5 years ago, The mays Family, One Step Closer to Home. I based my assumption on records about her eldest family members found on the 1870 household census. In the years after the fall of the Confederacy, when traditional planter life in the South was upended by the emancipation of millions of enslaved people, free black families were desperate to reunite. If they didn’t know where to find each other they asked agents in the new Freedmen’s Bureau to enquire; their pastors and community leaders placed thousands of ads in newspapers asking for the whereabouts of kin sold away. Though there is no official record listing Mariah’s surname as Choice, the elders in the 1870 census enumeration of the Mariah and Pleasant Walker families included Alec Choice and Sylvia Choice. I presumed Alec and Sylvia were Mariah’s parents and not her husband Pleasant Walker’s parents based on the surname. The elder Choices were also married and had been living in destitution on a plantation in Gantt District, according to the Freedmen’s Bureau records.

The Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees task in Reconstruction America was to provide food, shelter, clothing, medical services, and land to displaced rural and impoverished Southerners, including newly freed Africans. According to the website Lowcountry Africana, “The major activities of the Freedmen’s Bureau in South Carolina generally resembled those conducted in other states. The Bureau issued rations and provided medical relief to both freedmen and white refugees, supervised labor contracts between planters and freedmen, administered justice, and worked with benevolent societies in the establishment of schools.” South Carolinian Freedmen were in dire need at the war’s end. “By mid-summer 1865, with help from the offices of the Commissary General of the Army, the Quartermaster General, and the Surgeon General, Saxton provided more than 300,000 rations, clothing, and medical supplies to nearly 9,000 destitute persons.” The Bureau also made tens of thousands of new records of the suddenly free Black population of South Carolina.

Based on his surname, Alec Choice may have come off the plantation of a prominent Greenville planter named Col. William Choice Jr. (1796-1877). Col. Choice was the son of a Revolutionary War soldier who settled in Greenville in 1784. The Choices were all enslavers. After the Civil War, Alec and Sylvia were first listed on a record by the Freedmen’s Bureau living in destitution on a plantation in the Gantt District. They were already quite old. Alec was first listed as 65 years old, then 75. By the 1870 census, which was self-reported, he declared himself to be 100 and native born in Africa. Sylvia was 60 years old and together they had moved into the home of Mariah and Pleasant Walker. However, a surprising document made 67 years later showed I had more to learn about Sylvia.

In a 1937 Social Security application by Mariah Pleasant’s son John T. Walker, he wrote that his mother’s maiden name was actually “Few.” Because surnames of formerly enslaved were often the same as an enslaver, it was an indication that Alec or Sylvia had a one-time enslaver named Few. This simple name became another incredible detail that would unlock Mariah’s origin story. Like the name O’Neal, I looked for connections in the O’Neal District. I looked for the name Few.

Examining the planters of the Moonville neighborhood on O’Neal District maps throughout the 1800s, I immediately found the name Few on farms, a chapel, even a bridge across the Tyger River. The prominent Few family established themselves in Greenville around 1820 after he migrated from Orange County, North Carolina. The Fews also lived upriver of Moon’s Place, and the English American miller named James Mays! The Few homestead was on the northerly border of O’Neal and stretched into the High Land District along the South Fork of the Tyger River. Led by William Few (1771 – 1853) and his wife Susannah (maiden name’ Tubbs), the earliest Fews in the region were farmers and enslavers. William Few was the son of the infamous James Few, known as “the Regulator,” a pre-American Revolution insurrectionist who was hung by the Tories (English loyalists in America).

James Few was also the grandnephew of William Few Jr., (1748 -1828) a signer of the Constitution at the Continental Congress. There is evidence of the Few family holdings all over O’Neal; slaves on Slave Schedules; land, all over maps of the area including Few’s Chapel and Few’s Bridge on the Tyger river, now just north of the artificial Lake Robinson. Few’s Bridge was built with slave labor and later covered. Newspaper articles revealed that Few’s Chapel was the result of Reverend William Patton preaching at William Few’s log home in 1833 where the family went through a religious conversion. Though Patton was an abolitionist, William Few did not free his slaves. Most likely, Few’s enslaved would have been forced to worship alongside the family. The permanent church was built in 1874 on land donated by Few’s sons.

The Fews were Quakers who purportedly came from England with William Penn, and the family was said to originally hail from Wales. William Few and Susannah Tubbs permanently settled in Greenville around 1832, but they had several children before arriving in South Carolina as well.

William Few Sr. and Susannah (Tubbs) known children were: 

• Sarah Few,  (m. John Donahue)
• James Few, b. 1790 – 1860 (m. Lucinda West)
• Malinda Few, b. 1796 -1867
• William Few Jr., b. 1797 -1848 (m. Sarah Ferguson)
• Rachel Few, b. 1797 – 1883 (m. Kendrick)
• Matilda Few, b. 1800 – aft. 1850 (m. John Weaver
• Mary Elizabeth “Betsy” Few, b. 1801 -1897 (m. Vinson Jenkins)
• Susannah Few, b. 1803 – 1884  (m. Alston W. Kendrick)
• Benjamin Few, b. 1805 – 1888 (m. 1st Mary Bramlett, 2nd Elizabeth Woodward)
• Ignatius B. Few, b. 1807 – 1890 (m. Axy Few)
• Ephraim L. Few, b. 1810 – 1885 (m. 1st Elizabeth Bramlett, 2nd Amanda Loftis)
• Mary, b. 1812 – (m. John H. Walker)
• Levina Few, b. 1813 – 1885 (m. 1st John P. Shockley, 2nd Robert Tomason)

Susannah Tubbs-Few died in 1816. William Few remarried. With his second wife Nancy Chastain (1789 – d. after 1834) he had two more children:

• Martha “Patsy” Few, b. 1823 – 1878 (m. William H. Gilreath)
• Celia Few, b. 1817 – 1885  (m. Allen Reese)

To more thoroughly explore this planter family, I wondered if I could once again rely on the wills and probate records of enslavers who died before emancipation to connect my ancestors to their plantation. Slaves were often “inventoried” among household objects and farm instruments and given a value. William Few Senior’s 1853 will became a treasure trove of pre-emancipation information. The will revealed the surnames of a dozen of his children. It included Few’s daughters’ married surnames (rarely enumerated before the 1850 census unless women were widowed head of households). The will also gave a clear description of Few’s 200 acres of land to be given to his daughters, Lavina, Rachel, Malinda, and Mary; adjacent to his son Ephraim’s farm.

“…The tract of land I now live on contained in the following boundaries Beginning at the bridge on South Tiger River running with the road leading to Greenville Court House up said road to a sycamore tree in the law on the South Said of said land – being the ing sycamore nearest my stables Thence a Smith East course until it strikes the corner of the fence near or on the branch, being Ephraim Few’s spring branch thence a North course to a chesnut near the meeting house Thence North West course to a spanish oak thence to West course along my old original line to the River, thence down the River to the beginning the same containing two hundred acres and no more the above land I have.”

The will could weave together all my theories and research like the center of a spider web…or lead to a frustrating dead end. In the way wills and inventories of slaves often do, I had to pause while reading the document to take a walk across the room to settle my thoughts before I could continue. With my heart beating in my ears, I realized I had experience with what was to come next.

As I read on, name after name of the enslaved men, women, boys, girls on the Few plantation unrolled like brittle parchment. Few detailed by name over twenty-two enslaved people in his estate to be divvied up among his 13 children and extended family. Among the names was a revelation!

Few gave as inheritance “one negro woman Mariah and the negro boy Sam” to his daughter Lavina; he further willed “one negro woman Sylvia and a negro girl Charlotte” to his daughter Betsy Jenkins. Few’s will held both my 3x great grandmother’s name Mariah and her likely son Sam (Mays), my 4x great grandmother Sylvia and Charlotte (possibly her daughter)! Here was a new powerful source document connecting Sylvia Choice (maiden name Few) to her daughter Mariah, and to her first and second enslavers. It also showed which specific daughters inherited my ancestors making it possible to continue to track their lives before emancipation. Sylvia and Mariah Few’s enslaved community would have had many relations; siblings, cousins, parents, children – they were all split up by the planter’s death in 1853.

The enslaved community held in bondage by William and Susannah Few, my ancestral community, was vast. William Few Senior would have been a planter, not just a farmer, with so many enslaved lives working his land and mills. In 1850, William Few’s estate was worth $6000. At his death, he was able to pass on significant generational wealth stolen from my ancestors, as well as an enslaved labor force to help secure the next generation’s legacies. Though its unclear what debts his estate had to clear, it does appear many of the enslaved passed to his children.

The enslaved of William Few Snr. and Susannah Tubbs-Few listed in William’s will in 1853 include:

• Alfred (20 years old) b. 1843 given to son James Few
• Jesse (negro man) to daughter Melinda Few
• Emily (6) (negro girl) to daughter Melinda Few
• Jane (a negro woman) to daughter Rachel Few
• Abigail (a negro girl) to daughter Rachel Few
• Hannah (a negro woman) to daughter Mary Few (willed to Mary) to go to granddaughter Malinda Catherine
• Mariah (a negro woman) to daughter Lavinia Few
• Sam (a negro boy) to daughter Lavinia Few
• Bob (negro man) to son Benjamin Few
• Toney (negro man) to son Benjamin Few
• Wynne (negro man) to son Benjamin Few
• Manda (negro girl) to son Benjamin
• Lewis (negro man) to son Ephraim Few
• Caroline (5) (negro girl) to son Ephraim Few
• Rafael (negro man) to son Ignatius Few
• Cummings (negro boy) to son Ignatius Few
• Alisey (negro woman) to Matilda Weaver
• Betty (negro child) to daughter Matilda Weaver
• Sylvia (negro woman) to daughter Betsy Jenkins
• Charlotte (negro girl) to daughter Betsy Jenkins
• Eliza (negro girl about 16 years old) to daughter Celia Reese
• Unnamed small negro girl (to be selected) to daughter Martha
• Peter (negro boy) to daughter Susannah Kendrick

DNA connects the enslaved to the enslaver.

Checking Ancestry’s online DNA database for the surname “Few” with ancestry in North Carolina and South Carolina, among my own thousands of DNA matches who’ve tested on the platform, I found several maternal matches including, white descendants of Wiliam Few Sr. of Greenville, his Few’s ancestors in North Carolina, and remarkably, matches to ancestors of his wife Susannah Tubbs. Some of the Few DNA match descendants even hailed from the Few family’s point of arrival in the British colonies in Chester, in the Pennsylvania colony. The astounding detail in the will and emerging genetic relationship of my Few DNA matches seemed to support that I was a maternal descendant from a child of William Few and Susannah Tubbs.

Using the will and carefully researching William’s male sons, and based on the pedigree triangulation of shared match names and the strength of the genetic matches, I surmise that Mariah’s mother Sylvia, who was born about 1800 – 1805, identified on the Few plantation and willed to Betsy Jenkins ‘nee Few, was assaulted by one of the male Few heirs sometime between 1815 and 1825 resulting in the birth of Mariah (sharing Few and Tubbs alongside her African DNA). Mariah’s birth is put at about 1825 but her last census record says its as late as 1835. The dates swing wildly and she could have easily been born earlier. I believe the the likely father is William’s first son James Few (1790 -1860). In fact, a DNA match cousin of mine is a direct descendent of James.

James Few and his wife Lucinda West moved to Dickson, Tennessee by 1820. He was granted 6 acres in 1827. In 1830 he held 3 slaves (1 male between 10 and 23 years old, and 2 females between 10 and 23 years old). In 1839 he was granted 400 acres of land by the state. Alfred, an enslaved man, was given to James as part of his inheritance, but there’s no record Alfred left the Few estate to be transported to Dickson County, Tennessee in 1853. By the time of James Few’s death in about 1860 he had about $2000 of land, and $7000 of personal property, most of it tied up in 6 enslaved people.

Did William and Susannah Few know Syvia’s child Mariah was their son James’s daughter? Almost assuredly. There would have been few secrets on the farm. Whether by rape or forced breeding between slaves, increase on a plantation was a source of wealth and opportunity. Adding to the trauma, infants were often taken from their enslaved mothers to decrease attachments and could be raised by cousins, siblings on the plantation or other properties, mulatto children were often sold away.

William’s other sons all lived and farmed next door to each other; William Jr., Benjamin, Ignatius, and Ephraim Few were all enslavers and inherited their lot of slaves from their father’s estate after his death around 1853. During Reconstruction, Benjamin and his siblings entered into several Freedmen’s Bureau contracts with the formerly enslaved of the Few family to provide board, food, clothing, shoes, tools, and horses, and pay in exchange for farming their lands. In 1866, Benjamin contracted with a freedman named Lewis Few for $4 a month. If Ben didn’t pay, the agreement held a lien on his crop as a failsafe. Lewis was very likely the same man given to to Ephraim Few as part of William Few’s 1853 will. Ben also contracted with the freedmen Winn and his wife Caroline to farm corn. Caroline was probably the same “negro girl” William Few left to Ephraim. Ben also contracted with Fany to have her daughter Mary as a servant agreeing to provide food, clothing, and shoes, and he agreed he would return her to her mother after one year of service. He also contracted with a freedman named Calvin and a woman named Polly as well. Ben’s brothers James, Ephraim, and Ignatius made similar agreements. Ben witnessed a contract between his sister Betsy Jenkins and a freedman named Saul too. Cummings, a freedman, entered into a contract with his former enslaver Ignatius Few as well.

Ephraim Few entered into a contract with a “freedman of color” named “Jim” in March 1866. For 6 bushels of corn, room and board, two suits of clothing, and a pair of shoes, Jim bound himself to a year of work. Benjamin Few witnessed the agreement. The month before, Ephraim entered into a similar agreement with a freedman named Samuel. Were these freedmen, Jim and Samuel, Mariah Few’s sons, Jim and Sam Mays? Possibly. Both Jim and Sam adopted the Mays surname by the 1870 census and were reunited in the O’Neal district after the Civil War.

In another detail of the interconnectedness of the Mays and Fews families, the English American miller James Mays lived next door to the Jenkin’s homestead in Milford. Mary Elizabeth “Betsy” Jenkins (1801 – 1897), who inherited Mariah’s mother Sylvia, and possibly her sister Charlotte, was already an enslaver of two according to the 1850 slave schedule. The two were a 65 year-old man and 3 year-old female slave; they made an odd pair suggesting the 3 year-old’s mother had recently died. Betsy’s younger sister Celia who was married to Allen Reese also lived nearby. At the time of her father’s death, Betsy Jenkins was widowed and the stepmother of 5 living children in 1850. A DNA match cousin of mine appears to directly descend from an ancestor of her late spouse Vinson Jenkins. This could suggest Sylvia’s family were already enslaved on Jenkins’ farm before the will and subject to the enslavers’ depredation. After she was widowed, Betsy Jenkins was living in Milford on the 1860 census and working as a housekeeper to the Rev. William Crane of Milford Baptist Church. Milford Baptist Church was an important center of town life, as we’ll see.

The paper trail grew even longer after William Few’s death. Tapping the new FamilySearch full-text experimental search tool that uses AI to decipher and translate non-indexed documents, I found one that revealed Few’s heirs relinquished their rights to three enslaved women inherited by his daughters Rachel and Malinda. The enslaved were named Jane, Abigail, and Emily. In the statement, for the sum of $10, the Few heirs gave up all their rights to these girls in 1856. It was in the document that I also noticed William’s daughter Lavina must have married not long after her father’s death.

Between 1853 and 1860, Betsy Few’s younger sister Lavina (1813 – 1885) married John Peter Shockley (1838 – 1912). The Shockleys were planters who lived in central Greenville on Brushy Creek but also had family holdings in the O’Neal District. Mariah and her son Sam would also have moved out of the familiar Few estate away from family and south to Brushy Creek. I’m sure Mariah was devastated to be separated from her family but held hope she would see them again when her enslavers visited their own family to the North. The death of William Few and marriage of his daughter Lavina explains how the Walker and Mays were forcibly migrated 16 miles south to the Gantt District around 1856 from Moonville.

Unfortunately, the statement of revoking the Few heirs’ rights appears to be the only record containing Lavina and John Peter Shockley together as a couple. She may have divorced Shockley because some unsourced records list her as having married Robert Thomason, and having died in 1885 and then being interred at the Few cemetery in Greer.

John Peter Shockley’s youngest son William Thomas (1833 -1881) also connects Mariah Few to the Shockleys after emancipation. John Peter Shockley was an enslaver – in 1850 he had 16 enslaved people on his plantation, and 14 people on his Brushy Creek farm near White Horse Pike in the Gantt District in 1860. He was wealthy, holding $4000 in real estate and $5300 in personal wealth. He appears to have married several times, having at least four children before marrying Lavina Few. During Reconstruction, Mariah’s husband Pleasant Walker struck a deal with a Shockley. A Freedmen’s Bureau contract shows Pleasant agreeing with Shockley’s son William Thomas to share crop rented land on White Horse Pike near Brushy Creek. Mariah’s relationship as Shockley’s former slave was the likely source of the deal. In 1870, my 3x great grandfather Jim Mays and his family live next door to Peter Shockley’s son in Gantt.

The move from O’Neal to Gantt meant Mariah had to leave behind two of her children and join another enslaved community miles to the South. Though Mariah’s boys were born after Sam, between 1845 and 1847, they weren’t listed in William Few’s inventory. That doesn’t mean they weren’t on the plantation. Note that a yet “unnamed” enslaved girl was to be chosen by his daughter Martha in the will. That could mean there were more enslaved children on the plantation who were not directly willed to William’s children. It could simply be that James and Oliver were to remain estate property on the plantation. It’s also possible Jim and Oliver were sold away, apprenticed, or hired out by the time of William Few’s death in 1853.

The discovery or rather “recovery” of the Few genetic network has revealed so much. Sylvia and her husband, the children’s families – the Mays and Walkers; were eventually reunited in the Gantt district in Pleasant and Mariah Walker’s home according to the 1870 census, but not all of them. I have not found Mariah’s sister Charlotte named in any further documents. The DNA discoveries corroborate newly found document-based evidence that Sylvia Few, her daughters Mariah and Charlotte, and her grandson Sam were enslaved by William Few. Evidence shows a network of enslaved kin across O’Neal plantations owned by the Few family, Jenkins and Shockleys. It revealed that the Jenkins were Sylvia’s last enslaver the Shockleys were Mariah’s last enslavers, and how my black Few ancestors came to be forcibly migrated from O’Neal to the Gantt District. Freedmen’s Bureau contracts show that the Few family, once enslavers, had to make new contracts with their formerly enslaved. Genetic genealogy also revealed that increasingly common yet still bone-chilling fact that once again, my ancestor’s enslaver, was also my ancestor. Yet despite the revelations, these discoveries do not explain the origin of the Mays surname. While the white planter James Mays and Few family weren’t related, they were very close neighbors. How had Mariah’s sons Jim and his brother Oliver come to also adopt the Mays surname and not Few? Their brother Sam left the Few estate with his mother but later took the surname Mays as well. He may have been reunited with his brother Jim sharecropping for Ephraim Few in 1866. Was the Mays surname tied directly to the identity of their father? Was their biological father enslaved on the James Mays plantation nearby in Milford?

PART 2. Mays the Enslaver, Gilreath the Ancestor.

Recovering Jim May’s paternal ORIGINS.

I set out to explore the surname Mays in Greenville during the same time Mariah was enslaved on the plantation of William Few in O’Neal. Of the several Mays living in Greenville during this period, according to the 1850 Slave Schedule and census, only one Mays family lived in O’Neal – and it turned out he was a close neighbor to William and Susannah Few in Milford. This particular Mays family was headed by an English American planter named James Mays (1781 – d. 1865 in Greenville). As we’ll see, using genetic genealogy, I’ve come to believe that Sam, Oliver, and Jim, were the children of an enslaved man on the Mays plantation and took his enslaver’s surname. Census records reveal Few’s neighbor James Mays was an Englishman born about 1781 in the borough of Epsom in Surrey, just South of London. Court records show he was 25 years old when naturalized in November 1807, his occupation listed him as. “mariner” though I believe he was living and working in Charleston at least a year earlier. Around the time Mays appears in the records of early 18th century Charleston, the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in England became law, making it illegal to engage in the slave trade throughout the British Empire, partly as a result of a twenty-year parliamentary campaign by the Church of England’s William Wilberforce. Charleston was the center of importation of slaves for over a hundred years at that point, drawing English, Scottish, Irish, French and West Indian immigrants. During its earliest days as a colony, South Carolina, “incentivized enslavers to immigrate, offering 10-20 acres of free land for every enslaved Black person that a white migrant forcibly brought to the colony,” according to A History of Racial Injustice.

“The kidnapping, trafficking, and sale of Africans escalated dramatically in Charleston between 1803 and 1807. Anticipating a constitutional ban on the Transatlantic trade beginning in 1808, traffickers in Charleston imported more than 40,000 kidnapped Africans during these five years alone. The 88 kidnapped Africans trafficked into Charleston on this day in 1807 would be some of the first of more than 21,000 kidnapped Africans who would be brought through Charleston in 1807, accounting for 95% of the total Africans trafficked into the U.S. in 1807.” – January 07, 1807: A Ship Named “Fair American” Delivers 88 Trafficked Africans into Charleston, South Carolina, A History of Racial Injustice

Almost half, some 40% of African Americans earliest ancestors were forcibly brought to America through the port of Charleston, first through the Middle Passage from Africa to the West Indies, and then on to the southeastern coast of the English Colonies, and later, directly from Africa to Charleston’s Sullivan’s Island. On the island, Africans who survived the terrible journey were quarantined for 10 days. The inhumane cargo was examined, sorted, and then shipped to markets for sale by scrupulous traders, sold from the decks of ships across several wharves. Over 1000 cargos of Africans passed through Charleston, making it by far, the largest place of slave trading over hundreds of years, right up to the abolishment of the American translatlantic trade in 1808. The expansion of America with the addition of Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana territories drove an urgent expansion of “new negros” into the port of Charleston at Gadsden’s Wharf. It was within a few short years of the transatlantic slave trade’s end that James Mays first arrived on America’s shores.

Records show a James Mays established himself as a licensed “retailer” living at No. 3 Tradd Street (formerly South Street) about 1806 near Charleston’s French Quarter in St. Michael’s Parish and later, at 20 Meeting Street. Mays was secretary of the Grocer’s Friendly Society in 1821, a mutual aid group that likely provided insurance and debt protection for its members.

At about the start of his career as a grocer in South Carolina, in 1807, James Mays purchased a slave according to a bill of sale for $600, a negro man named Abraham in August. The bill of sale named Mays a “grocer.”

In the 1820 census, James has an enslaved girl between under 14 and a woman between 14 and 25. Abraham was not listed. Both were purchased of the widow Elizabeth Ashe (1753 – 1820) (nee’ Daniel), a wealthy heiress, daughter of John Daniel and Nancy Ashe. She first married Nathan Legare (1739 – 1782), then Capt. John S. Ashe, elder son of the Major General Ashe of North Carolin in 1783. Capt. Ashe died before 1800 making Elizabeth a widow once more. The Ashes lived at 12 Lamboll Street close to the Battery. When the widow Elizabeth Daniel-Ashe died, she willed her 24 “Prime Country Born Negros,” home and outhouses be sold to benefit two of her daughters.

The enslaved man Abraham who was sold to James Mays is very likely the same man known as “Abraham Ashe” who became a free man of color between 1807 and 1810. Abraham likely worked his way to freedom and achieved a “private manumission.” Though I have not found an agreement of manumission, James Mays was a witness when the free person of color Abraham Ashe purchased an enslaved man July from Joseph Alexander in 1810 for the sum of $50. A typical sum of $400 – $500 would support the value of the enslaved as a “prime hand” or a teenage boy or young man capable of carrying out the highest level of work on a plantation or mill. The low amount suggests Abraham was purchasing a family member, Alexander was a very willing seller, and Mays was supportive. Abraham purchases Mick in 1816 and is also found indenturing an enslaved boy named Sam in 1830. Abraham’s wife Clary is mentioned.

In 1830 Ashe had 9 free people of color in his household and 4 enslaved people. He had already become a property owner in 1822, mortgaging land from his former enslaver Elizabeth Ashe’s daughter Ann Legare. In 1835, Abraham Ashe was to provide a $400 bond to Thomas Middleton to support the purchase of 4 enslaved people (possibly the enslaved listed in the 1830 census); Susannah and her three children, Clarissa, Tyra, and William. I suspect they were the family of one of Ashe’s enslaved. Middleton purchased all four for just $500, and Ashe’s bond was low – suggesting a sweetheart deal with another purpose other than profit.

Ashe was later involved in a lawsuit with the widow Ann Legare for a debt of $1200 on rent on two homes. He had become a property owner. The Court of Equity ruled against Ashe and in 1841, Abraham lost his land in a sheriff’s sale, two lots with “small wooden houses” on Boundary Street were put up for auction.

Ann Legare seeks the court’s assistance in collecting a debt from Abraham Ashe, “a free colored man.” Ashe became indebted to the petitioner in the amount of $1,200 in 1822. He mortgaged a lot of land in Charleston to secure the bond, which has recently become due. Legare now complains that Ashe “refuses” to pay her and has set up “various pretexts to delay and defeat your Oratrixes just claim.” Legare asks that the mortgage on the land be foreclosed and that Ashe “be Decreed to pay to your Oratrix all such sums of money as may appear to your Honors to be due to your Oratrix.” – Petition of Ann Legare, June 1841, Court of Equity.

Abraham Ashe died in 1842 of dropsy (edema) and is buried at the “African Burial Grounds” – there were several in the city of Charleston. Abraham’s descendent may be Capt. Jacob “James” Ashe who captained a sloop in 1880. His wife Nellie Grant-Ashe is buried at Mother Emanuel cemetery. In his will, Abraham left his entire estate to James H. Ladson (1795–1868), a magistrate and major planter who by 1850 owned over 200 slaves producing 600,000 pounds of rice each year on his La Grange and Fawn Hill plantations. Ladson was the scion of a prominent planter-class family with holdings in Charleston. It’s unclear why Ladson, a man of such prominence, was named executor of Ashe’s small estate. Ashe did not manumit his enslaved in his will. Ladson inventoried and posted Ashe’s estate to clear the man’s debts.

Ladson inventoried three slaves, William, Maria, and Abram. Sadly, each were purchased by different slave traders. If they were family, they were split up. *Update – see The Mays Family: Abraham Ashe to learn what happened to the children.

James Mays lived several years in Charleston and there on October 20, 1819 married Elizabeth Bouchanneau. A year later his family appeared in the 1820 census. In their eventual departure for Greenville, the Mays, like many lowcountry middle to upper-class Charlestonians, probably sought to escape the heat and humidity of the summers for the cool mountain weather of the highlands above Greenville with second homes, usually small plantations, mills, and farms. From mariner to grocer to landowner, Mays appeared to settle in Greenville as a miller and farmer full-time after 1825, though maintained ties to Charleston. James Mays maintained his grocery at 20 Meeting Street in Charleston as late as 1830.

The Mays family included enslaved who were part of Elizabeth’s dower. His wife Elizabeth was the daughter of a Frenchman, possibly a Huguenot named Charles Bouchanneau, and Sarah (of Hampstead) from Charleston. The Bouchanneau’s were acquainted with the Ashe family according to early documents. In 1805, Charles witnessed a sale of an enslaved male James to Samuel Barksdale Jones by Hannah Ashe, widow of Samuel Ashe. In 1812, Charles Bouchanneau’s will instructs that his three daughters, Mary Brown (husband Isaac), Elizabeth, and Ann Felicity, were to receive 1/3rd of his estate upon the death of his wife Sarah. Sarah was to inherit Charles’ two slaves, Sampson and Jack. Jack, a boy, was to be bound to his son Isaac to learn the carpenter trade, and Sampson was to remain a gardener.

Before her marriage to James Mays, Elizabeth Mays inherited from her mother in equal parts, “the negro girl Cretia” with her sister Ann Felicity in their mother Sarah’s 1813 will. Elizabeth’s younger sister Ann Felicity went to live with her and James and later appears in the 1850 census of the Mays family as single. Elizabeth Mays appeared to have passed away between 1850 and 1857. In a sale of land in ’57, “Ann F. Mays” testified as James May’s “wife.”

Mays prospered. He acquired and sold large tracts of land along the Tyger River over twenty years and established the “May’s Mills” according to records, probably milling corn and other grains. Perhaps because he also had a license to sell liquor in Charleston he may have been a distiller too. A mill would require land on a body of running water. In an 1838 case before the Greenville Court of Equity, James Mays was a defendant in a case brought by his neighbor Samuel Jones. Jones wanted damages to his land because Mays had built a dam. The dam was likely built by his enslaved. James ultimately provided 7 and a half acres of land in restitution. William Few, his neighbor, was one of 4 men who arbitrated the case. The document is the only source of James Mays’ signature.

Mays also built a bridge to ford the Tyger River that bore his name. In 1838, for $1200 James Mays bought 250 acres south of the Tyger River on the South Fork north of Greenville from James Harper of Charleston, known as “Harper Place.” In 1839, Mays bought an additional 70 acres south of the Tyger River from a man named John Wesley Gilreath (1806 – 1881), son of Jesse Gilreath (1759 – 1830). Wesley purchased the estate from his siblings who inherited stakes in the land after his father’s death for $500. A man who I would learn is pivotal to our O’Neal origins, Hardy Jones Gilreath (1788 – 1868), was a witness to the sale of the Gilreath estate to James. In 1843, James sold the Harper Place track to a local preacher Rev. Samuel Crane for $900. In 1859, Mays sold 100 acres of land on the South Fork of the Tyger River to Wiliam Few’s son-in-law, Allen Reece, along the road leading to Mays Mills. Reece was the husband of Celia Few, daughter of William Few Sr. Celia had inherited at least one negro girl, Eliza when her father passed in 1853. In 1845, Mays sold 100 acres more of his land to America Fowler.

Hardy Jones Gilreath and his mulatto sons.

Hardy Jones Gilreath…the Gilreath name felt familiar! I was certain I had seen it before, not just among James Mays’ papers. I recalled seeing that William Few’s daughter Martha had married one William Henry Gilreath. The Gilreaths were all over the 1882 Greenville map of the O’Neal district. Out of curiosity, I checked Ancestry DNA matches and immediately found several DNA match cousins ranging from the 5th to 8th generation (4th cousins), both black and white, who appeared to descend from William Wesley Gilreath Sr. (1730-1795) and Mary (Arrington) Gilreath (1731-1788), originally from Wilkes County, North Carolina. After the American Revolution, Capt. William Wesley Gilreath Jr. (1753-1835) migrated to Greenville with his family, collecting on his land bounty. His brother Jesse Gilreath (1774 – 1828) was a patriot too and migrated to Greenville as well. The families settled from Travelers Rest to Milford around 1800. Their brothers Alexander (1755 – 1853) and William Alexander (1750) stayed behind in Wilkes. William Gilreath Sr. died in Newberry, South Carolina about 1794 (his will stated he sold some of his land on Crab Fork in Wilkes, but he left the rest of his lands to his various sons in North and South Carolina).

William Gilreath Jr.’ married Sarah Jones (1765 – 1833). All of his children appear to have all been born in Wilkes, but only his son Hardy Jones Gilreath had migrated to Greenville.

• Henry Jeremiah Gilreath, b. 1781 – 1842
• Martha “Patsy”, b. 1785 (m. Hicks)
• Hugh Gilreath, b. 1782 – 1816
• Mary Susanna Gilreath, b. 1784 – 1840
• Hardy Jones Gilreath, b. 1788 – 1868
• William Hilliary Gilreath, b. 1790 – 1872
• Delilah Gilreath, b. 1795 (m. McCoy)
• Rebecca Gilreath, b. 1798 -1876
• Susanna Gilreath, b. 1800 – 1899

Jesse Gilreath was married twice. Several of his children were born in Greenville after his migration.

• Isabella Gilreath, b. 1799 – 1855 (m. Pollard)
• Alfred Gilreath, b. 1801 – 1863 (m. Epidotia Brock b. 1803 – 1843, m. Mariah Shockley)
• John Westley Gilreath, b.1806 – 1881
• Hannah Gilreath, b. 1808 – 1890 (m. Justus)
• George Holton Gilreath, b. 1810 – 1896
• Jabez Franklin Gilreath, b. 1812 – 1855
• Nelson Gilreath, b. 1814 – 1889
• Caleb Gilreath, b. 1817 – 1884

These new Gilreath matches also shared many of my Mays matches, including one or two mystery matches in Traveler’s Rest, with unfamiliar surnames, like Brock. Turns out Jesse’s son Alfred Gilreath married Epidotia Brock of Travelers Rest. Her father David Brock was an enslaver, and the 1850 Slave Schedule shows Alfred as enslaving four. Alfred later married a Shockley. The Gilreath, Few, and Shockley families were also interconnected! Lastly, I wasn’t very surprised to find that local historian Lou Turner had written that the Gilreaths first lived at Moon’s Place on the State Road. Recall family oral history had stated our earliest ancestors were known to first come off “Moonville.” It was this very same land, that James Mays purchased to farm from Jesse Gilreath’s son John Westley Gilreath in 1839, witnessed by Hardy Jones Gilreath.

The Gilreaths were also founders of Jackson Grove Methodist Church just 8 miles West of Milford in 1832 in Traveler’s Rest. This was an important find that turned out to be instrumental in connecting the Gilreaths biologically to an enslaved man on or near the Mays plantation. Though there is just oral history, it was well known and passed down through the generations that Hardy Jones Gilreath, the son of William and Sarah Gilreath, had a black enslaved mistress and concubine named Matilda.

The History of Jackson Grove United Methodist Church 1831 – 1981 by Lou Alice Flynn Turner and Doris Coleman Gilreath is a critical document capturing the story of the white and black community around Moon’s. Turner and Gilreath’s research charts the story of many founding families who were trustees.

Jesse Gilreath of North Carolina settled about half a mle below South Tyger River near O’Neal in 1796. Two sons – Alfred and Wesley – served among the first trutees of Jackson Grove. Hardy Jones Gilreat, who came from Wilkes County, N.C., bought some 800 acres between the Enoree River and Childer’s Beaver Dam, a branch of South Tyber in 1824. Gilreath lived at Moon’s on the State Road in 1826, was appointed to the office of Road Commissioners. Later, he built with slave labor a home on McElhaney Road, where his great-granddaughter, Ruth Gilreath, lives now.”

– History of Jackson Grove United Methodist Church 1831 – 1981.

Hardy Jones Gilreath was among the original leaseholders and trustees. William Few Snr. was a co-author of the church by-laws with his son-in-laws John Weaver and Vincent Jenkins.

Reviewing Ancestry.com, and my own DNA matches out of curiosity, I immediately discovered I had several African American DNA match cousins who descend directly from William Gilreath Jr. through his son Hardy Jones Gilreath and Matilda! Records show a male named Asa “Ace” Gilreath was born about 1844 when Hardy was 55. Matilda’s mulatto son Asa Gilbreath was known in the Travelers Rest community for his farming acumen. He married Laura Davis. Though the black congregants of Jackson Grove started their own church, St. Luke’s, Ace’s black descendants actually reunited with their white Gilreath cousins at Jackson Grove again over 140 years after slavery in reconciliation in 2009. In a poignant meeting, black and white descendants acknowledged Hardy Jones Gilreath as their common ancestor. According to the historians Turner and Gilreath, among the formerly enslaved buried in Jackson Grove are Matilda Gilreath (Hardy’s concubine), Kathleen Gilreath White; Jim, infant son of Ace and Laura Davis Gilreath, among over 47 other white Gilreath family members.

Unsurprisingly, Ace was not the only black son Hardy Jones had with an enslaved woman. Records revealed Hardy also had a mulatto son Andy with another enslaved woman named Carlee Snow. Andy and his wife Lucinda Snow migrated to Arkansas after 1880. Andy’s death certificate indicated he was a veteran of the Civil War though I have not found his service record yet. He likely joined under a pseudonym. His descendants have shared his picture on Ancestry.com.

Hardy Jones’s white son William Henry Gilreath later married William Few’s daughter Martha sometime between 1850 and 1860. The discovery of this new genetic Gilreath network was weaving a web of connections in the O’Neal community between the Mays, Gilreath, and Few families that made me completely rethink the impact of James Mays’ innocuous land purchases from his neighbors. In 1850, examining the census shows Mays immediate neighbors were Allen Reece, son-in-law to William Few, Elizabeth Jenkins, daughter of William Few and enslaver of my 4x great grandmother Sylvia Few and her daughter Charlotte, and Wesley Gilreath, 1st couson of Hardy Jones Gilreath. One has to envision an interconnected community of enslaved working these lands, with relationships across the farms.

Enslaved people often had family, husbands and wives on neighboring plantations, though a relationship was always in danger of dissolution. During estate sales after the death of an enslaver, the enslaved were often sold in lots to clear debts, often at the same time as the land. They were often displaced and separated by being willed down to children with land. Sometimes they were sold to neighbors. Enslaved families were often broken up after Christmas when the year’s debts came due to a plantation owner, debts cleared with black bodies of children, mothers and fathers.

After the war, Reconstruction offered new ways for families to find dignity in contracts with their former enslavers in ways that could often reunite families. Freedmen often contracted with their former enslaver first, or someone they knew and trusted in the local community right after the Civil War ended. As I shared, Benjamin Few and his brothers contracted with freedmen left to them in the 1853 will of William Few. Elizabeth “Betsy” Jenkins like her brothers, entered into contracts with freedmen, including a man named Phillip, who was formerly enslaved by John Wesley Gilreath. Her brother Ephraim Few contracted with two freedmen named Jim and Sam, likely the brothers Jim and Sam Mays.

Was it possible that besides land, James Mays had also purchased from John Wesley Gilreath one or more of Jesse Gilreath’s enslaved people to work the land of their former master? Could this mysterious unidentified enslaved ancestor have been a descendent of a Gilreath, but adopted the Mays surname (his last enslaver) and become the father of Mariah Few’s children, Sam, Oliver, and Jim? Here was a plausible theory!

The Gilreath tract was directly adjacent land owned by the Moons, and near the Mays tract. The Moons, Mays, and Gilreath family were neighbors.. Very likely, the two enslaved communities on the Mays and Gilreath plantations were already connected families, likely through marriage. Mays might have well milled corn and other grain for his neighbors for a fee. But what did I know about the enslaved people of James Mays and Jesse Gilreath? Is there any other knowledge about this community that could shed light on their shared lives and therefore the lives of their enslaved people?

Milford Baptist Church and the Mays in the Minutes.

Beyond census records, deeds, and bills of sale, I uncovered the life of the white Mays family and that of their enslaved people illuminated in documents about their religious life too. In 1938, the Works Progress Administration had several cultural history projects in the South, including transcribing church records in the state of South Carolina. In the O’Neal district, Milford Baptist Church minutes from 1832 to 1869 were identified and transcribed by the WPA. The church was built in 1829 and began services in 1832. Within the minutes, the white planters and millers of the area, including the Mays family’s spiritual life and interactions with their community are revealed. Recordings show interactions between church leaders and James Mays, his wife Elizabeth, and his sister-in-law and later 2nd wife, Felicity from 1836 through the 1860s. Notations in the minutes range from baptisms to dramatic excommunications. Invaluable in African American genealogy research, church minutes can often reveal enslaved congregrants social lives before the Civil War and connect them directly to their enslaver. The Milford Baptist Church minutes did just that as more of the Mays enslaved were named; Richard, Julius, and Ann. In fact, Richard, is one of the first congregants mentioned in the church minutes records. The minutes show that Richard shared a Christian experience and was thus received in 1832.

Enslaved people were encouraged to join their enslavers’ churches during the second great revival of Methodism which took place after the failed self-liberation attempt by the free man of color Denmark Vesey and over 100 enslaved people in 1822. Vesey was a well-off free man of color and carpenter who was manumitted in 1799 when he was known as “Telemaque.” Vesey and his conspirators planned the largest slave uprising in history to begin in Charleston, but he was betrayed by another enslaved man. The plan would have enlisted 9,000 enslaved people! After Vesey’s rebellion was brutally put down with over 60 summary executions, slave laws in South Carolina became much stricter. The state increased the powers and duties of patrols, which were tasked with monitoring the movements of enslaved people, enforcing curfews, and breaking up any unauthorized gatherings. 

The Negro Seamen Act of 1822 required that free Black sailors from northern states be imprisoned while their ships were docked in Charleston. This was done to prevent them from spreading ideas of freedom and rebellion to the enslaved. Meetings of Black congregants were required to have a white person present to supervise, and large gatherings were discouraged or outright banned. Southern theologians developed a pro-slavery theology, arguing that slavery was beneficial for both enslaved people and their masters.

It was likely Elizabeth Mays and her sister Ann Felicity Bouchonneau who first drew the family to Milford Baptist Church formed on the grounds of a large public meeting. In 1832 Elizabeth presented a letter of dismissal from her original church, the Baptist Church of Charleston. This enabled her family to be accepted as members. In 1833, James had Richard his enslaved man baptized, and another enslaved woman Ann belonging to James “did not receive it” (the baptism). It was not uncommon for enslavers to wield religion as a tool to control their enslaved. An enslaved people read into the bible and sermons their own hopes for salvation and freedom, but often only in death. Specialized slave bibles espoused the goodness of slavery and obeisance to masters, omitting any passages speaking to equality, freedom, or salvation through rebellion.

The 1830s were the era of the great church revivals where churches became a center of daily life featuring daily sermons and often acapella singing of hymns. But Churches also moderated the daily behavior of its members. Members who did not attend were openly chastised. Members who did not obey the teachings of the church and follow the commandments to be chaste were publicly identified and punished. In January of 1836, James Mays got into a dispute with a fellow member Ben Harper. The minutes read that Mays and Harper got together and settled their dispute. However, the settlement was not to Mays’ satisfaction and he protested by skipping church all through May. As a result, he was excommunicated in June. His wife and sister-in-law stayed on. Not coincidentally, descendants of John Peter Shockley, my 3x great grandmother’s enslaver Mariah, were also members of Milford Baptist Church.

“Julius, a Black Man belonging to James Mays,” was found guilty of adultery and excommunicated from the church on July 1, 1837, according to the minutes. Julius had a partner out of a slave marriage, was it Ann? Also, it was unusual to see a slave marriage officially recognized by the church since they were often illegal and nonbinding. At about the same time, Elizabeth Mays received a letter of dismissal, electing to leave the church as well. It seemed the Mays family and their enslaved were not among the favored Milford congregants.

In the 1840 Mays household James, his wife, and sister-in-law are indicated by age on the census. Also indicated by age is a white male between the ages of 20 – 29 years, perhaps a son, but more likely an overseer. I have not been able to ascertain the name of this male. Also listed are 9 enslaved people, 6 males, and 3 females. Presuming they were all still living, it’s possible Cretia, Sampson, Julius, Richard, and Ann were among them. These recovered names replace the anonymous hash marks of Slave Schedules and bring these ancestors out from the obscurity and purposeful anonymity of slavery into recorded history.

In the 1850 US census, the number of Mays’ enslaved increased even further to 11. 

• Female, 50
• Female, 50
• Male, 50
• Male, 50
• Male, 35
• Male, 25
• Male, 15
• Male, 40
• Female, 20
• Male, 4
• Male, 2

On the Tyger River at Milford, May’s neighbors also attended Milford Baptist Church according to the minutes. Eliza Ann Gilreath, wife of Jabez Gilreath received a dismissal letter in 1840. Hardy Jones Gilreath, the son of William Gilreath Jr. donated for renovations, though Hardy’s family eventually settled at the Jackson Grove Church. Hardy Jones fathered children with at least two of his slaves producing mulatto children; with a woman named Matilda, an enslaved son, Ace Gilreath; and with an enslaved woman named Carlee a son named Andy. Either infraction would have been grounds for excommunication but it was not in the minutes. Ace was well-known in the community, but after Emancipation Andy moved his family far west to Arkansas.

After reviewing several Gilreath descendent DNA match family trees, and conducting my own pedigree triangulation, there is strong evidence to support that Hardy Jones Gilreath was my biological 4x great grandfather. I can not identify the enslaved woman Hardy assaulted by name, or her mulatto son. It could have been Matilda or Carlee Snow, or an enslaved woman on the Mays farm. As an enslaver and planter over 40 years he grew his slaveholding from 3 people to include 27 people in bondage according to census and slave schedules, most likely through “breeding” his enslaved. He became incredibly wealthy by 1860 with $1200 in real estate, 400 acres of land, and $35,000 in personal wealth as a farmer and local Road Commissioner.

Probably before Ace and Andy, with an enslaved woman on his plantation, Hardy Jones produced a mulatto child who was very likely sold to the James Mays plantation (hence the Mays surname). Unfortunately, I do not have a complete inventory of Mays enslaved, but we can eliminate the dower slave Sampson who was inherited from Mays’ wife’s family, and Abraham whom James purchased in Charleston who became a free man of color. Given his age and position, Hardy was not the white man, an overseer, on the Mays plantation identified in the 1840 census. Had Hardy’s enslaved mother and mulatto son been sold to the Mays plantation? I have not found a record and or archive of Hardy Jones Gilreath’s letters, though the daybook from his store survives. If Hardy’s mulatto son was still on the Mays plantation in 1850, he could have been the child of either the second 50 year old man or the likely the 35 year old man indicated on the 1850 slave schedule, born about 1815. Mariah’s husband on the Mays plantation may have been either Julius or Richard. Down the road in the village of Traveler’s Rest, Hardy’s mulatto sons Ace and Andy Gilreath, may well have never known they had an older half-brother toiling away, enslaved by James Mays.

After his excommunication, one would have thought James Mays would never step foot in Milford Baptist Church again, but 20 years later he returned. After the death of his first wife Elizabeth in 1858 he asked to petition the church and was accepted. He remarried Elizabeth’s sister Ann Felicity Bouchonneau though she died just two years later in 1860, and is buried in the churchyard.

In 1857, the Greenville Enterprise reported that while Hardy Gilreath was Treasurer of the Commission on Roads and Bridges in Greenville, he paid his cousin Wesley Gilreath for repairs on Few’s Bridge, and at May’s Mills. Wesley was supplying blasting powder, iron bolts and conducting bridge repair all around Greenville. Hardy was also a Justice of the Peace and used “Esquire” in his name suggesting he secured a license to practice law. Another of Hardy Jones Gilreath’s enslaved, a man named Abe, was arrested in November 1859 for the murder of a free negro named James Greer, tried and hung in 1860 with “three thousand people” present including blacks and whites according to the Greenville Enterprise.

In December 1862 Hardy Jones sold his negro woman “Jane and her children, Mary, Catherine, and Henry” to his daughter Harriet Nancy Gilreath for a dollar out of his “love and affection.” In February 1863, he repeated the act and sold his negro girl “Jennie” to his daughter Nancy Howell. His son John H. Gilreath managed the trust for both sales, suggesting Hardy was becoming infirm at that time. I have not found a will or probate for Hardy Jones, but in 1868, his son John H. petitioned the court of Greenville to execute his estate meaning Hardy more than likely died intestate. Because he died after emancipation in 1868, his over two dozen enslaved would not have been inventoried as part of the estate regardless. Hardy’s son John purchased the interest of his brothers Hugh and William in the Gilreath homestead according to Greenville Enterprise, and Hardy’s widow remained in the family home.

In 1860, James Mays reported the death of his wife Ann Felicity Bouchonneau, again showing he maintained connections in Charleston.

In the 1860 Slave Schedule, James Mays’ slave holdings had increased to 12. At that time, Mays was approximately 80 years old and his personal estate was valued at $4000, his real estate at $5000.

The Mays enslaved listed by sex and age in the 1860 Slave Schedule included:

• Female, 70
• Male, 65
• Male, 35
• Male, 33
• Male, 12
• Male, 10
• Female, 8
• Male, 6
• Male, 4
• Male, 2
• Female, 1
• Female, 1 ½

What is odd about the 1860 slave schedule is that there are several children, 8 under the age of 12, but no adult women of child-bearing age on the list! Perhaps there was a mother on the farm, the youngest child being 1 year old, who passed away within at least the last year. The Mays farm would have been reeling from the loss of such a central figure, including the loss of the mistress, Ann Mays. This could be the reason James Mays took a rather drastic action a year later.

In 1861, as reported in the Charleston Courier, James Mays of Milford, Greenville District was wed to Eliza Coleman of Charleston by Rev. Dill. James would have been quite the octogenarian at 80 years old. Perhaps since James Mays had no heirs, he sought to remarry quickly, out of necessity, to secure his legacy. Eliza Coleman was a “widow” herself, according to the Milford church minutes at the time of the marriage. Elizabeth Coleman-Mays was later received by the Milford Baptist Church in June 1868.

PART 3. The Mortgage of Jim

A Strange Document and New THEORY.

In genealogy research, breaking down a brickwall is often a game changer. Hardy Jones Gilreath, a contemporary and close neighbor of James Mays, was also a common ancestor, just like William Few. James Mays farmed land previously owned by Hardy’s uncle Jesse Gilreath. The Gilreath connection to the Few and Shockley family through marriage made sense given the nature of the tight-knit mountain mill community. However, one more remarkable pre-1870 record emerged to make an astonishing connection between the English American enslaver, and a black man named “Jim.” Using the new full-text experimental search tool on the genealogy website FamilySearch to explore unindexed source material from historical databases I found another, intriguing, yet perplexing document. 

To set the scene, in 1858, a young senator from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln captured the nation’s attention during debates over slavery and its expansion into western states. The same year the US Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott v. Sanford. Their ruling? Blacks in the US, even free ones, born free or emancipated, were not American citizens. Southern planters and slaveowners started to use the slogan “King Cotton” to describe their unified power and ability to secede; to prove there was no fear from a war with the North over slavery because their wealth in slaves would sustain them, maybe even force aide from the United Kingdom or other top cotton markets. The “Bleeding Kansas” skirmishes between settlers on the Western frontier over the issue of slavery were well underway. A year later, John Brown would lead former slaves, free men of color, and white anti-slavery freedom fighters in an invasion of Virginia in Harpers Ferry.

In the 1850s, a few miles south of the enslaved community living on James Mays farm, the city of Greenville was a booming but volatile mix of a growing merchant class, and planters with slaves. The Southern Patriot published a description.

“There are in the town of Greenville 25 merchants, many of whom sell from $20 to $50,000 worth of goods in the course of a year, and on as reasonable terms as they can be purchased at retail in Charleston. We have frequently heard this remark made by our visitors from the lower country during the summer season. The cheapness of living and of house rent should enable them to do this. And there is no village in the whole State where the merchants are more thoroughly businessmen in all the branches of commerce. Our mechanics, too, constitute a numerous and most respectable class in our town, and not surpassed anywhere, in point of character, intelligence, industry, and skill. There are in this place 12 carriage makers, 12 blacksmiths, 10 carpenters, 5 brick masons, 5 cabinet makers, 8 shoemakers, 6 saddlers, 5 painters, 18 clerks, 12 tailors, 5 landlords, 10 lawyers, 5 physicians, 2 dentists, 4 or 5 harness makers, 1 baker, 2 millers, 5 schoolmasters, 1 grocer, 1 bookbinder, 1 portrait painter, 2 watchmakers, 1 druggist, etc.”

Greenville was a town on the move, growing into a powerful center of commerce fueled by mills and factories on their plentiful rivers. On January 13, 1858,  a woman named Malinda Boram provided a mortgage bond to James Mays “in the penal sum” of $600 conditioned for the payment of $300. A penal sum is to be paid as a penalty under the terms of a bond. The reason for the mortgage is not specified. Was it against a loan for cash, land, or supplies? For the “better securing of the payment” Malinda; “do bargain and sell in plain and open market to deliver unto the said James Mays a negro man named Jim.” Witnesses to the deed are O’Neal district neighbors E.A. Lloyd and W.H. Hudson. No age or other detail is given about “Jim” other than his sex.

Who the heck was Malinda Boram? I have not found a single other record about her. Examining the 1859 mortgage document closer, it occurred to me that Malinda Boram did not have a living husband. A husband would have to testify to having no claim against the slave Jim in the same mortgage. So either Malinda was born a Boram or widowed with the surname Boram because the mortgage doesn’t mention Malinda being married at all.

Malinda may have married into or been a direct descendant of the Borroum family. The name is chronically misspelled across dozens of documents (Boram, Borroum, Borrum, Borem). The Borroums lived in Edgefield District and Greenville Districts from 1790 until about 1825 in Greenville, and up to 1760 in Edgefield. The pioneer settler William Borrum (1733 – 1817) of nearby Edgefield had several children; Beverly (1763 – 1847), Peterson (1773 – 1869), Higdon (d. 1807), and a daughter Sarah (Boyd). Beverly was a county judge in Greenville before migrating with most of his family to Lafayette County, Mississippi. Other family members migrated to Georgia and Alabama. Beverly also named one of his sons after his brother Peterson. His grandfather William left 7 enslaved people in his 1817 will to his sons. The will of Justice Beverly Borroum shows that he left his son Willis A.J. Borroum property and slaves, a sawmill, gristmill, stock, and farms in Greenville (though Willis had already settled in Georgia). Beverly also had a son named Peterson who also died in 1845 in Mississippi. In 1841 Willis conveyed the Greenville inheritance in full to Peterson Borroum of Edgefield (his Uncle), who lived with 17 slaves on an Edgefield plantation according to the 1840 census.

Could this “Jim,” mortgaged by Malinda Boram possibly be my great-great grandfather Jim Mays? A sum of $600 would support the value of the enslaved as a “prime hand” or a teenage boy or young man capable of carrying out the highest level of work on a plantation or mill. Jim was born about 1847 according to records (or as early as 1840 if you use the 1910 census) where he is also described as “mulatto”…the son of a white man.

Jim wasn’t listed in William Few’s will but Jim’s brother Sam was alongside his mother Mariah. If he was Mariah’s son, how had Jim come to be in the possession of one, Malinda Boram, and who was she?

I speculate that Malinda Boram may have actually been a member of William Few’s family, quite possibly his daughter, Malinda Few. Born in 1796, Malinda was old enough to have possibly been married to a Boram (Borroum) and then widowed. In 1850, Malinda Few was living, unmarried, in the Few household with her father not too far from James Mays plantation with her sisters working as a seamstress. William Few had 24 enslaved people on his plantation in 1850 according to the slave schedule. When Malinda’s father died in 1853, 22 of the 24 slaves were divvied up amongst the children, but no mention of a boy named James or Jim is in Few’s will. Malinda inherited 2 slaves and then gained 4 more when her siblings gave up their claim. In the 1860 census, Malinda, the eldest, is the head of the household as the matriarch. She managed about 200 acres (55 acres for farming), but her enslaved labor force are entirely women. According to the slave schedules she had 9 people in bondage, only 1 male infant, but no male to father the child. Very likely Malinda relied on hired enslaved hands or her siblings’ enslaved workforce to farm the land. Her sister Rachel, also a seamstress, lived with her, and Rachel’s daughter also named Malinda. Malinda would also have inherited her father’s debt and has a large estate to manage. She may have needed a loan from her neighbor James Mays, securing the debt with her most valuable asset, a male slave. Still, there’s no record yet supporting the theory that Malinda Boram is Malinda Few.

There’s also no record Malinda Boram ever paid the remaining $300 to James Mays, the owner of May’s Mills. Frustratingly, I have not found a single additional record for Malinda Boram among the record sets from court docs to censuses, but I am not without hope. The full-text search tool on FamilySearch is only available on a few databases, perhaps as more become available, the mystery will unravel.

Civil War comes to Greenville.

Almost 2 years after Malinda Boram mortgaged Jim to James Mays, the state of South Carolina voted to secede from the United States. Even though Greenville was against nullification generally and tended toward staying in the Union, fiery speeches by the new local university president Jim Furman and others demanded secession. For so long, Greenville was a sleepy summer vacation town for lowcountry residents escaping the heat, humidity, and mosquitoes of the coast. Then it became a booming center of commerce and trade. It is incredible that Greenville managed to avoid being part of any major battles during the Civil War and was only largely used by the Confederacy as a “soldier’s rest” and minor weapons depot. So the war wasn’t a great event in Greenville like it was on the coast where great blockades and naval battles took place.

During the close of the Civil War, in the Spring of 1865, the Confederate state of South Carolina, was defeated. Greenville actually avoided all the major skirmishes and was left largely intact. Yet some black men did self-liberate to join the US Colored Troops. Searching records, I found 35 black soldiers who were born in Greenville, South Carolina who enlisted from 1863 through 1865 all over the South in Florida, Tennessee, Mississippi. They were infantry, calvary, artillery and were as old as 40 and young as 17. Perhaps they were inspired by the creation of the First South Carolina Volunteer Infantry raised in 1862 by President Lincoln from largely Gullah men of the South Carolina and Georgia sea islands.

Greenville was occupied by the Union Army and nearby Anderson actually had US Colored Troops patrolling the streets and farms. In 1866, primary school classes began for black children and adults who wanted it. The provisional governor of South Carolina was calling for “oaths of allegiance” from the white men and traitorous rebs. Greenville had a branch of the Freedmen’s Bureau but the USCT left Greenville by September. The Freedmen’s Bureau captured contracts between the former enslaved and planters, often setting up sharecropping agreements. In 1868, Greenville elected and sent a delegation of free blacks and whites to write a new state constitution that codified the end of slavery in South Carolina, provided free public education, property rights for women, and suffrage – the vote for black men – though racial terror would continue to disenfranchise black people. In 1869, Greenville was finally chartered as a city.

The English American planter and miller James Mays died on Christmas Eve in 1865. He was buried in the Milford Baptist Church Cemetery. Mays left a third of “the valuation of a tract of land” to his 3rd wife Elizabeth. He bequeathed the tract of land he lived on to Rev. James K. Dickson and had Dickson pay a legacy to Elizabeth. However, two-thirds of the estate, “the residue”, was left to Dickson, an Irishman, former enslaver, and friend. In fact, after emancipation, Dickson would later himself enter into a contract with a freedman named Henry, to farm his lands in 1866 according to Freedmen Bureau records. The will of James Mays makes no mention of children, a sign that the unidentified man in the 1840 census was probably just an overseer. He left $50 to a nephew named John Chalk. He also appointed “my friends Washington Taylor and James Dickson” executors of his estate. Washington Taylor was a nearby “model farmer” who kept a lifelong journal that is now in the Furman University collection.

The widow Elizabeth Coleman Mays is not found in the 1870 Greenville census though Taylor and Dickson are. Perhaps Elizabeth remarried or went to live with her nephew’s family since James arranged to give the land to Dickson, or she returned to her family home in Charleston.

No mention is made of Mays’ enslaved people in the will probably because just months before his death they became free people of color when South Carolina fell to Union forces. The Mays estate must have been substantially smaller without the wealth of 12 slaves, though many likely stayed on as tenant farmers. I have not located a probate record. The last physical record of May’s plantation is the location of “May’s Bridge” on the Tyger, just west of Milford Church, on the 1882 Map of Greenville. Today, Mays Bridge still Road runs through Milford, across the South Tyger River in Greer.

Julius Mays, formerly enslaved by James Mays, can be found in the Freedmen’s Bureau records having adopted his enslavers’ English surname. His listed age indicates he was born about 1805. In the 1867 record the free man is listed as destitute, living on the J.K. Dickson beat, “living without any provisions.” Also in the same beat are two elders from the Few plantation (Sam, 80; Lucy, 80).

John Peter Shockley Sr. died on November 11th, 1869, according to the Brushy Creek Church minutes. To my disappointment, Lavina Few Shockley never appeared in the minutes, nor did her enslaved by name, like my 3x great-grandmother Mariah or her son Sam. After the war, all the enslaved members of Brushy Creek were dismissed in August 1867 in order to leave and form their own church.

No further antebellum records speak of “Jim” who was mortgaged to James Mays in 1859. Evidence in antebellum African American research is often indirect and circumstantial. The enslaved did not write family trees before 1870, and so we rely on genetic genealogy, traditional methods like the F.A.N. Club; researching friends and acquaintances of enslavers, enslaved, and free blacks – every member of the community – to qualify our assumptions. African American naming conventions also left clues as to where an enslaved person may have come from. 

My grandfather’s full name is Arthur O’Neal Mays, no doubt named for the district his people were first enslaved in. My working theory that Malinda Boram was very likely Malinda Few, a widow who lived with her Few family after the death of her Boram husband, and led the farm after her father William Few passed away – needs quite a lot of work. If true, Malinda likely knew her father’s enslaved granddaughter Mariah was her biological niece, and Mariah’s sons Jim and Oliver were still on the Few farm when Malinda mortgaged Jim against a debt with her neighbor James Mays. Mortgaging Jim to Mays would have also conveniently removed a family embarrassment from the plantation; a move that could only happen after William Few’s death. Malinda may have also known Jim’s father was already living on James Mays’ farm. Jim might have even requested the transaction himself, a not uncommon practice among enslaved people who implored their masters to be reconnected to family through purchase. His mother Mariah and brother Sam were already willed away and living in the South in Gantt.

Our heritage is the journey, not the destination.

In this journey to examine the origins of the Mays family and answer where the surname Mays came from, I have once again stumbled upon previously hidden European ancestry. I have uncovered white ancestry before. The story of my paternal 4x great grandparents Cornelius Bobo and Emma Brown of Claiborne County, Mississippi, was inextricably tied to their enslaver, my 5x great grandfather Andrew Jackson Bobo. The story of my paternal 5x great-grandmother Harriet Nevils-Riggs of Bulloch County, Georgia, revealed her half-sister Dicey was her enslaver after her white biological father made Harriet a dower gift.

The estimate of European ancestry in modern African Americans varies, but studies using genetic analysis have provided some insights. On average, African Americans have approximately 20-25% European ancestry. Due to the complex history of migration, slavery, and intermarriage in the United States, the percentages vary; numbers can fluctuate based on regional and individual differences. For example, a 2015 study in the American Journal of Human Genetics found that the average African American genome is about 73.2% African, 24% European, and 0.8% Native American. 

Sexual assault was a tool of terror, white supremacy, and a driver of economic growth for farmers who used black people for free labor generating generational wealth out of bondage. Increasing wealth through property was the American dream; the promise of liberty from both England and later the Union itself. Exceptions abound, but the systemic violence of slavery was brutal and commonplace. For example, Mary Chesnut, a white South Carolina plantation mistress, kept detailed diaries during the Civil War. Her entries frequently mentioned the sexual exploitation of enslaved women by white men. Chesnut observed the hypocrisy and abuse within the slave-owning class, noting how enslaved women were forced into sexual relationships and childbearing. In 1855, a Missouri court tried an enslaved woman named Celia for the murder of her enslaver, Robert Newsom. Newsom had repeatedly raped Celia since she was 14, and she eventually killed him, claiming self-defense. The case highlights the sexual violence and lack of agency experienced by many enslaved women. Sally Hemmings famously entered into a deal with her enslaver, the founding father and US President Thomas Jefferson. The assaults began for Sally at a young age but she found agency in her relationship with Jefferson producing increasing freedom for her family. Celia was found guilty of killing her enslaver because according to Missouri law, she wasn’t a citizen, or even a woman, just property her ‘Master’ could do with what he liked. She was hung.

In an antebellum genetic network of planters, millers, and enslavers, the enslaved community, with its slave marriages across plantations, and sale of slaves to neighbors, inheritance of slaves through dowers; an entire community of white and black people would often become genetic relatives. This is the untold secret history of American slavery being revealed through genetic genealogy today, how intertwined enslaver and enslaved truly were.

Exploring the O’Neal District and the origins of the Mays family, from Charleston to farms and plantations across the towns of Moonville, Milford, Traveler’s Rest, and Greer, I’ve recovered a tangled history with as many twists and turns as the South Tyger River itself. While I’ve found Sylvia and Mariah Few before 1870 in the record, I also learned Mariah’s father was the son of her enslaver William Few. I’ve discovered the origins of the Mays surname, exhausting the genealogical standard of proof by connecting a newly discovered white 4x great grandfather, Hardy Jones Gilreath, to an English American enslaver named James Mays who bought Gilreath land.

A genetic outline of Jim May’s father, a ghost really, may have been an enslaved son of Hardy Gilreath and later sold to James Mays. He may have been called Julius Mays, and he had two mulatto brothers Ace and Andy Gilreath. I recovered the moment when Mariah Few and her son Sam were split from their family on the Few plantation and forcibly taken from O’Neal because, as chattel property, she was passed down to William Few’s daughter Lavina after she married into the Shockley family and moved to the Gantt District to the South. I learned my 4x great-grandmother Sylvia Few had two enslavers, William Few, and his daughter Betsy Jenkins; and that she may have had another daughter, Charlotte. I also believe I’ve uncovered Jim’s first appearance on the historical record in a mortgage document between James Mays and Malinda Boram (Few), as well as his first legal act of agency in a contract between him and the Few family two years after the Civil War ended in 1867.

Three years later, as a free man, Jim Mays moved South. His mother Mariah is in the next district of Grove. In 1870, he is married and tenant farming on White Horse Road in Gantt Township. Next door are his in-laws Joseph (aged 40) and Marie Sherman (aged 49), also tenant farmers. However, by 1880, Mariah Few-Walker and her family have also moved closer to her son Jim, to Gannt Township. One Henry Mays (1835 – d. ?) perhaps another brother or cousin, lives next door.

Adding this new ancestry to my family tree will undoubtedly create new connections across the various genealogical tools like Ancestry and MyHeritage, among Black and White DNA cousins; perhaps opportunity will arise for new meetings with my newfound relations, maybe even some reconciliation. I’ve learned so much about James Mays the miller, but it feels incomplete. I’m astonished that DNA could identify an ancestor that probably lived enslaved on the Mays plantation. Even if he is nameless still, he is a bridge between Maria Few and her son Jim Mays. I anticipate more discoveries about my new Gilreath family line, especially the black Gilreath descendants. Reflecting on the fact that some of these family members have already reunited, I’m not alone in wanting to recover the story of Moonville and the truth of Jim May’s father. O’Neal District, the source of my grandfather’s name and the shared roots of the Mays, Few, and Gilreath families, has more yet to tell us.

SOURCES.

• Thompson, Pat. “I Came By Way of Somebody.” Family history of Mays, Sherman, Ladson. 2004. 6th Edition.
• “Citizens Of Greenville District, Petition To Amend The Laws On Usury.” South Carolina Department of Archives, accessed Apr. 2024.
• “United States, Freedmen’s Bureau Ration Records, 1865-1872.” Database with images. FamilySearch. FamilySearch.org, accessed May 2024.
• Milford Baptist Church. “Minutes, 1832 -1869.” Transcribed by Works Progress Administration, 1938. FamilySearch.org, accessed May 2024.
• “Petition 21384102.”South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, South Carolina, Records of the Equity Court, Bills. Microfilm: Order #273, Reel D1269. Accessed at Digital Library on American Race and Slavery online, Sep. 2024.
• “Charleston Daily Courier.” 2 Jul. 1842.
• “Will of William Few Snr.” Ancestry.com, accessed May 2024. 
• “Will of Betsy Green.” Database with images. FamilySearch. FamilySearch.org accessed Jul. 2024.
• Charleston. Public Records 1803–1808, Enslavement Records 1803–1808
• “Reunion Reunites Black and White.” South Carolina Methodist Advocate, 2 Oct. 2009. Accessed June 2024.
• Turner, Lou Alice Flynn, “History of Jackson Grove United Methodist Church, 1831 – 1981.”
• “Greenville Enterprise,” Local News, Dec. 4, 1874. Genealogybank.com accessed Jul. 2024.
• “Charleston Daily Courier” 1861. Newspapers.com accessed Jul. 2024.
• “The Southern Patriot” (Charleston, S.C.) 1825-1848. Newspapers.com accessed Sep. 2024.
• “A full descriptive map and sketch of Greenville Co.” Kyzer, Paul B., 1882. Library of Congress, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3913g.la000837, accessed Jul. 2024.
• “Greenville District, South Carolina Copy 1” Mills, Robert, 1781-1855. Baltimore, F. Lucas, Jr. for Mill’s Atlas, 1825. Library of Congress, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3913g.la002134 accessed Jul. 2024.
• “A History of Racial Injustice.” Essays on People and Events in American History, database online, accessed September 2024.
• Ancestry.com. U.S., Freedmen’s Bureau Records, 1865-1878 [database online]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2021.
• Motes, Margaret Peckham. Free Blacks and Mulattos in South Carolina 1850 Census. Baltimore, MD, USA: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2002.
• “The Genetic Ancestry of African Americans, Latinos, and European Americans across the United States” Bryc, Katarzyna et al. The American Journal of Human Genetics, Volume 96, Issue 1, 37 – 53.