The Mays Family: Abraham Ashe

THE WELLSPRING.

By following the middle name of my late maternal grandfather down a genealogical rabbit hole, that of antebellum and postbellum African American naming conventions as a way to remember one’s roots, I recently discovered the identity of the English immigrant enslaver of my great-great grandfather Jim Mays (1847 – 1910) of Greenville, South Carolina. Tracing my roots to the hilly upcountry in the O’neal District, after which my grandfather was named, led to new insights that finally revealed the identities of his mother Mariah Few and her mother Sylvia Few, descendants of African slaves and William Few, a founding father and signer of the Declaration of Independence. I also learned that James Mays, the migrant from Surrey, England who arrived in the Americas as a sailor at the advent of the 19th century became a grocer, tavern owner, and planter, and first began purchasing enslaved people in the city of Charleston with an intriguing man named Abraham Ashe in 1807. Ashe’s free labor established Mays’ “American dream.”

New evidence reveals Abraham Ashe was born enslaved in Haiti about 1772, that he became a free man of color in South Carolina, a husband and father several times over, and the owner of several properties in Charleston until his death in 1842. Abraham was my 5x maternal grandfather. Abraham’s 18th century descendants are found enslaved in records in both Greenville and Charleston, and free before Emancipation in Philadelphia and New York. My research uncovers a dramatic turning point in my family history; when Abraham Ashe’s last enslaver James Mays left Charleston about 1825, Mays took two slaves, Abraham’s first family away to Greenville, leaving Abraham behind.

Abraham Ashe had many lives, in the West Indies and America, as a slave and free person of color, that spanned the Haitian revolution, War of 1812, Denmark Vesey’s slave revolt, the establishment of an abolitionist African Methodist church, all while navigating the rise of a precarious class of an African-descended elite in Charleston. Most astoundingly, he would use the institution to his gain, to secure his family. The same institution would threaten his family’s existence. His constantly evolving life, well-documented by virtue of being at the epicenter of the American slave trade, is an example of the diaspora wherein Charleston could be regarded as an extension of the West Indies, and the contradictions of being instrumental to white wealth played out in contracts and financial agreements that managed the lives of those around him, free and enslaved.

Abraham’s children lived on in three lines. One line lived as free people of color and nominal slaves in the hustle and bustle of one of the wealthiest port cities in America at the time. Another line, self-liberated, were industrious migrants in Free states, while the other quietly toiled enslaved in South Carolina’s “dark corner” near Greenville until the Civil War. Until now, no one living knew of Abraham Ashe’s existence or his remarkable legacy except his contemporaries.

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A CERTAIN NEGRO MAN.

After an early career as a sailor, the white Englishman James Mays, settled in Charleston, South Carolina in about 1804 then naturalized to become an American citizen in 1807. Just under 30 years had passed since the war of independence. Charleston was the busiest and wealthiest port in the Americas, a center of international trade with Europe and the many island nations and colonies of the West Indies. In fact, Charleston was founded by early colonial planters of France and Spain from Bermuda, but eventually fell into British hands. During the Revolutionary War, the British blockaded and invaded Charleston, securing the strategic port city for Loyalists, including formerly enslaved who fought for freedom. After two years of occupation, the Continental Army forced the British out. The fall was marked by a mass evacuation of over 4,000 loyalists whose properties were seized, and over 5,000 blacks who left with them, now free people of color. Reports state that approximately 14,000 people evacuated aboard approximately 130 Royal Navy vessels. When James Mays arrived, records show he quickly naturalized, completing his oath to show loyalty to his new country. He quickly set up shop at 3 Tradd Street in the heart of the city according to the city directory.

At the age of 26 in August 1807, James Mays purchased a “certain negro man slave” named Abraham from the wealthy white widow Elizabeth Ashe for $600. The bill of sale confirmed Mays was the same “grocer” appearing in the 1805 and 1806 city directory, and was witnessed by Elizabeth’s son from her first marriage Daniel Legare.

Presumably, Abraham, who took the surname “Ashe” after his last enslaver, labored for about three years for Mays. Abraham managed to gain his freedom by about 1810. We know this because he does not appear listed in James Mays’ household on the 1810 census in the column marked “slave” and not long after Abraham creates a new status appearing in financial records in Charleston archives. I surmise Abraham likely continued to work for the grocer or hired himself out in the city. He was probably freed by “private manumission” – a method by which an enslaver like Mays could grant freedom to a slave without going through the courts. This method was later outlawed by the South Carolina legislature. In 1819 James Mays, now 38, married 26 year old Elizabeth Bouchonneau also of Charleston. Elizabeth brought into the Mays household her sister Ann Felicity (19), and the enslaved girl, Cretia, whom the sisters shared equally. Cretia’s only mention in the records by name was in a bequest of Sarah Bouchonneau to her daughters Ann and Elizabeth. Cretia appears in the Mays household on the 1820 census (unnamed) as an enslaved woman between 14 and 25 years old. Also in the household is an enslaved girl under 14, probably Cretia’s infant daughter.

“I give and bequeath to my two daughters, Elizabeth and Felicity Ann Bouchonneau my negro girl (Cretia)…and it is my wish that the said Negro girl be hired out and that the Product of her wages Divided equal among my two daughters.” – Will of Sarah Hutchinson Bouchonneau, 1811

The Bouchonneau family were led by Charles Bouchonneau (1747 – 1803), a Frenchman who is first found in the 1790 census working as a scrivener on Meeting Street. Bouchonneau was a Huguenot refugee; the Bouchonneau are found in a Huguenot settlement among the records of Hillsborough in “New Bordeaux” as early as 1765 in Colonial South Carolina. The town of French refugees was abandoned after 1770. When Charles Bouchonneau died in 1803 he left Sampson, an enslaved man to be hired out and a boy, Jack, to be apprenticed to his son Isaac. Charles’ daughters were quite young when he passed and then inherited Cretia when their mother died a few years later.

The Mays household held two dower slaves when in 1820, the legislature passed a law forbidding the emancipation of slaves within the state except by an act of law; even a single emancipation effectively required a bill. This law was in response to the growing number of Free People of Color (FPOC) in South Carolina and the fears by whites of an uprising. These free blacks were several generations old, emancipated by private or public manumission, or born free, and they lived and worked alongside thousands of enslaved blacks who were hired out to use various skilled trades. Their labor was to produce wealth for their owners in the city or on large rice plantations in the surrounding wetlands or in building homes, furnitures, dress and boot-making. Free and enslaved even worked closely on the many ships taking port in the city.

The South Carolina General Assembly’s ban was in response to the growing power of FPOC who were openly expressing their desires against inequitable laws like the capitation tax by using petitions and their organizing power gained in various fraternal societies and churches. In 1820, a group of free negros and persons of color wrote a petition asking that they not be charged capitation tax because they already paid taxes on property they owned. They were being double-taxed. Free people of color had certain freedoms guaranteed under the state’s Bill of Rights, which included the freedom to petition, but it did not include suffrage (the right to vote). Their pleas to be taxed less went unanswered, largely because the city needed the money and whites were right to fear an uprising.

In 1822, while Abraham Ashe and James Mays plied their trades a plot was discovered amongst the enslaved people of Charleston and surrounding plantations, led by a wealthy carpenter and influential free man of color named Denmark Vesey.  Born a slave in St. Thomas, Denmark was traded in Haiti twice and then back to his original enslaver Captain Joseph Vesey who took him back to Charleston. Originally known as Telemaque, Denmark was educated and well-respected in his community. He became famous when he won a $1500 lottery in 1779, a sum significant enough to purchase his freedom of Capt. Vesey’s wife and start a carpentry business. He became a leader in the African Methodist church (A.M.E.) and when frustrated by his inability to purchase his wife and children out of slavery began to work with enslaved leaders and other FPOC to devise a plot to destroy the institution of slavery in South Carolina. 

Modeled on the Haitian revolt which had previously transfixed the slave south and transformed the West Indies between 1790 and 1805, the conspirators even wrote two letters to the black President of Haiti inviting their support. It was one of the largest planned slave uprisings in American history and was supposed to liberate thousands of participants. Denmark was betrayed more than once by loyal slaves; over 130 FPOC and dozens of conspirators were arrested and tried in show-trials. In the end, 34 men were hanged including Vesey, dozens more were banished outside of the state, sold into slavery. Both slaves and FPOC who rioted at the hangings were brutalized. The A.M.E. church that Vesey worshipped at was closed, raised to the ground, and the city approved a 150 strong militia to be housed at “the Citadel” just outside the city on Boundary street, not coincidentally in the heart of a free black neighborhood known as “Charleston’s Neck.” This uprising in the Summer of 1822 shifted the legislature’s mindset completely about the community of free people of color in Charleston.

There were many dire consequences for black institutions and people. The General Assembly passed an act prohibiting free blacks from returning to the state if they left it, effectively quarantining FPOC. Also, every free man of color over the age of fifteen had to get a white “guardian” who was to appear before the county court to attest to the free man’s good character and accept guardianship. I have found no records for whom Abraham Ashe’s guardian might have been – the South Carolina Archives does not have them for Charleston County, but there are clues in his later life as we’ll see.

Sometime between 1827 and 1830, perhaps mortified and inspired by the Denmark Vesey affair, or desirous to escape the hot humid swampy atmosphere in the low country, James Mays decided to relocate his family inland to the mountains in the O’Neal district north of Greenville township in South Carolina. This area was known as “the dark corner” because of its remoteness, and the law of the land was white supremacy. Though he retained his grocery in Charleston for several years. He may have been interested in distilling according to records. Using the profits from his grocery, which likely also included a tavern (notices in the newspaper invited James to reapply for a liquor license), James took his wife, sister-in-law, and his enslaved people with him, including Cretia and her daughter. Mays was 46. Abraham, a free man of color, age 55, was left behind. He may have continued to work the tavern for Mays or hire himself out, his profession wasn’t entirely clear, but Mays abandonment of Charleston would cost Abraham dearly.

ABRAHAM, CRETIA, AND ANN.

A genetic revelation leads me to believe that Abraham Ashe and Cretia Bouchonneau became partners, and had a child between 1819 and 1820, probably the same enslaved girl listed in the 1820 census in the household of James Mays and his wife Elizabeth Bouchonneau. Though Abraham Ashe gained his freedom from James Mays in 1807, he remained very close to James, he likely continued to work for him at the grocery and tavern at 3 Tradd Street for many years, and yet after the terror of the Vesey affair, he could not prevent his own enslaved family from being taken away when the Mays left Charleston. After more than a dozen years of acquaintance, this must have been seen as a terrible betrayal. As we’ll see, though Abraham raised money for other transactions, including purchasing enslaved people himself, James Mays and Elizabeth Bouchonneau-Mays were not willing to leave Cretia and her daughter behind with Abraham.

Recently, as I explored my Ancestry DNA matches of black descendants with roots in antebellum Charleston, I discovered a few cousins whose line stretches back to a postbellum black family with the same surname “Ashe”. This family were free people of color with connections to Col. John S. Ashe’s plantations just outside the city in St. Paul’s Parish. The head of household of the Ashe family in 1870 was a black sloop captain named Jacob Ashe from Toogoodoo Creek on Edisto Island. Was our common ancestor Abraham Ashe? The fact that these DNA match cousins are also related to several other known descendants of the enslaved woman Mariah Few of Greenville, Jim Mays’ mother, seems to indicate so.

The relocation of the grocer turned planter James Mays and his family to Greenville marked a tragic but seemingly inevitable split between Abraham Ashe and the Mays family exposing one of the worst consequences of American chattel slavery, the destruction of stable family relationships and interior lives of people of African descent. Despite the nominal freedom they could achieve, their lives and labor were truly not theirs to command, whether free or enslaved. Enslaved people had no right to resist; as chattel property they could be bought, sold, transported at will tearing apart mothers from children, husbands from wives, fathers from daughters. Neither the family bonds of enslaved or FPOC were recognized under South Carolinian law, only the whim of the master. Though blacks pursued workarounds – in 1815 free black Methodists were discovered pooling their money to buy enslaved congregants – there was never a guarantee that an enslaver would make a deal.

Just north of Greenville in the O’neal District, James Mays and his family were prospering by 1830, largely because he held 10 people in bondage working fields and mills to produce distilled alcohol for sale in Charleston. The Mays were members of Milford Baptist Church, including several of his enslaved. Among several names of James May’s enslaved people I documented there is a woman named Ann. In 1833, Ann was first mentioned in the Milford Baptist Church minutes notably for not receiving a baptism; she would have been about 27 years old. Richard, one of Mays enslaved, was received so perhaps Ann was not baptised because there was something disagreeable about her character, a critical judgement baptists observed. Baptist churches were strict about their laws for white and black members, for both enslaver and enslaved. In fact, just a few years later in 1837, the minutes show that Julius, another enslaved man of James Mays was actually excommunicated from Milford Baptist Church for adultery, which is unusual given his slave status. Perhaps Julius was married to Ann or even Cretia – from later records, I learned Julius’s estimated birth date was about 1805 and Cretia would likely be close in age. So what could have disqualified Ann?

Prior genetic genealogy research on my black Mays line of Greenville revealed that I was descended from an enslaved woman on the Mays plantation who was raped by a neighboring planter and enslaver named Hardy Jones Gilreath producing a mixed-race child. Despite having his own white wife, Gilreath was a serial rapist of several slaves he owned and apparently that included slaves of his O’neal District neighbor James Mays. It was well known then and in the present that Gilreath fathered several mulatto children. However, my research has recently added among those children my unidentified 3x great grandfather who with Mariah Few fathered my great-great grandfather Jim Mays named for his family’s enslaver, the Englishman James Mays. I now believe Hardy’s victim was none other than Ann, and that she was the daughter of Cretia and Abraham, perhaps named for Felicity Ann Bouchonneau. This may explain my genetic connections to other Ashe family descendants. If Ann Ashe was Jim’s grandmother, then Cretia and Abraham would be my 5th great grandparents. This lines up with the presence of a predicted 5th generation shared ancestor with my DNA match cousins who also descend from a line of black Ashe family members from Charleston.

Sadly, James Mays plantation book and records did not survive. The Milford Baptist Church minutes are the only records naming Mays enslaved in Greenville between 1833 and 1865 when he passed away. Much of my work has been to reconstruct my Mays family through genetic evidence between the records. Cretia Bouchonneau-Ashe and Ann Ashe probably died before Emancipation. I feel fortunate that the Mays took their enslaved to the church, and that the recorder of minutes thought to include them, otherwise there would be no extant material about them other than Sarah’s 1811 will to illuminate their lives. Cretia’s daughter Ann was the property of James Mays because slavery was matrilineal. If Cretia survived, she is not mentioned in the church minutes at Milford, but on the 1830 slave schedule of James Mays are two enslaved women over the age of 35. I imagine they are mother and daughter, Cretia and Ann. Unfortunately, I have no further information about Ann’s life or even the name of her unidentified mulatto son with her enslaver’s neighbor, only genetic echos. I have now enlisted the help of another descendant of Hardy Jones Gilreath who has researched his mulatto Gilreath ancestor for many years to help find the identity of Ann Ashe’s son. The search goes on.

I can only imagine the agony Abraham and Cretia must have felt upon realizing James Mays was planning to move his family and separate theirs. But what happened to Abraham Ashe? As a free person of color, could Abraham have moved to Greenville to live near his enslaved family? Did he even try to purchase his Cretia and Ann away from Mays? Or was he forced to abandon Cretia and start over? What life did he live as a free man of color in Charleston after the Mays removed to Greenville? I wanted to know the complete story of my 5th great grandfather, and whether his legacy lived on.

A FREE MAN OF COLOR IN CHARLESTON.

Not long after the English immigrant James Mays left his sailing days behind and opened a store in downtown Charleston on Tradd Street, he purchased a slave named Abraham Ashe (1772 -1842) from a wealthy elite Charlestonian, the widow Elizabeth Ashe nee’ Daniel (1739 – 1820). It’s unclear if there was any relationship between James and the Ashe clan or if James simply purchased Abraham on an anonymous auction block – Charleston’s streets had several, and to sell a slave was an ordinary affair, like purchasing a horse. The widow Ashe was in her late 60s and controlled a vast collection of plantations including prime property in Charleston, and of course, dozens of enslaved, from domestic to field workers, gained through two prominent marriages.

Elizabeth Daniel first married the planter Nathan Legare (1739 – 1782) of Charleston County in 1774. It was Legare’s second marriage – he was first married to Mary Barksdale (1743 – 1769). At about the same time, South Carolina picked its delegates to the first Continental Congress. By 1770, Charleston was the largest city in the southern colonies, driven by South Carolina’s plantation economy. It was the center of the Atlantic slave trade, with slaves making up about half the population. Charleston processed around 40% of African slaves brought to North America. Its wealth made it a target for piracy and competition from French and Spanish forces. During the American Revolutionary War, General Sir Henry Clinton’s Philipsburg Proclamation encouraged enslaved people to escape and join the British Army. Nearly 25,000 enslaved individuals in South Carolina fled, migrated, or died—around 30% of the enslaved population of the state. After the British captured Charleston in 1780, black Loyalists formed regiments to defend the city. When the British retreated in 1782, over 5,000 black individuals left with them. While many remained enslaved under Loyalist ownership, some secured freedom by escaping to British lines and resettled in Canada, the Caribbean, or Sierra Leone.

After Nathan’s death, Elizabeth Legare, now 44, married her cousin in 1783, the Hon. Capt. John Ashe Jr. (1742 – 1800). The captain was a lawyer and the elder son of Major General John Baptiste Ashe of New Hanover, North Carolina who was infamous for destroying a British garrison at Fort Johnston near Wilmington during the Revolution. Captain Ashe and Elizabeth Ashe lived at 12 Lamboll Street close to the Battery in Charleston.

“Married: On Thursday, the 23d ult., in Christ Church Parish, near this city, the Hon. John Ashe, Esq., elder son of the late Major-General Ashe, of North Carolina, to Mrs. Elizabeth Legare, relict of Mr. Nathan Legare, a lady possessed of every amiable qualification that can render the marriage state happy.” (Thursday, November 13, 1783.)

Capt. Ashe died before 1800 making Elizabeth a widow for a second time. When Elizabeth Ashe died herself in 1821 she willed her Lamboll street home and outhouses, along with her enslaved, to be sold to benefit her two daughters from her first marriage. The estate sale further advertised “24 Prime Country-Born Negros” and several house servants. The executors of the estate of Elizabeth Ashe sold three sets of slaves in June 1821 no doubt breaking up several families. 

While it’s not known how exactly Abraham Ashe purchased his freedom from James Mays, or whether he was manumitted privately, he became a free person of color between 1807-1810 and remained in the city of Charleston, likely in the employ of James Mays. We know now that he likely had a daughter with the enslaved woman Cretia, named Ann, but when the Mays left for Greenville, Abraham remained behind. 

Tracking him through census records, court records, bills of sale, land deeds, I learned that there was more than meets the eye to Abraham Ashe. Perhaps in his long service to Capt. Ashe and Elizabeth Ashe, he became educated and shrewd. Documents suggest he was born in Haiti, so we know he spoke French and English. Many of the enslaved who were refugees with their white plantation owners from Haiti to Charleston were educated, some were their mulatto children. Abraham may have been able to read and write; he signed his own name to several contracts. Throughout his life, he would do business with some of Charleston’s most established families and held status among the community of free people of color. His signature contained a flourish that marked him as singular, a person with a certain self-identified status. The “A” is prominently featured between his first and surname. The serif signature with the sharply pointed downward crossbar expresses pride, understanding, and a certain amount of panache. It feels foreign yet familiar, like a choice and a promise. It is Abraham’s brand.

Abraham Ashe doesn’t appear on the 1810 and 1820 census, but he is found in numerous financial and court records. After gaining his freedom, he would on three separate occasions purchase slaves himself between 1816 and 1835. That formerly enslaved people, or free people color would purchase slaves themselves is shocking. It would have been shocking to many self-liberated people at the time, to abolitionists in the North, even perhaps to whites from the interior slave states. For South Carolinians, who lived in an interdependent slave society however, this was not uncommon, especially among the small group of wealthier FPOC in Charleston who were often property owners and tradesmen. Sometimes free people of color purchased slaves for the domestic slave trade, domestic help, and sometimes they purchased family members to secure their freedom, making them nominal or slaves “in name only.” There were as many reasons as there were classes of people in antebellum Charleston.

Abraham appeared to purchase slaves at a very low rate with no evidence of trading indicating that some of his purchases may have been family members. I believe Abraham was likely hired out by Elizabeth Ashe and had some savings, because not long after he gained his freedom from James Mays, he began to purchase slaves. His first slave purchase was for an enslaved man named July for $50 on March 29, 1810 of Joseph Alexander. He even had his former master James Mays as witness to the purchase. The price for July would indicate a very elderly man, long past his prime making me wonder if July was a family member. The low price may have seemed a bargain, but in actuality, Abraham was swindled. 

A few weeks later Abraham Ashe petitioned the Court of Equity in Charleston regarding July. Ashe claimed he purchased July and received a Bill of Sale, which was recorded on the same day. Records of the legal case explain Joseph Alexander was the bona fide purchaser unaware of any claims against the property. However, the local Sheriff seized July after the sale due to a mortgage claim held by another man, John Findley, which was linked to the estate of the Reverend Bishop Smith, the first President of the College of Charleston. When Rev. Smith died, he held enslaved more than 200 people, July among them. Ashe argued that the executors of Bishop Smith’s estate, and others, lost their claim to July due to their negligence. Abraham petitioned the court for an injunction to prevent the sale of the property until claims could be properly investigated. In a precise several page petition made by Ashe he argued the executors’ failure to initiate legal proceedings within four years forfeited their rights, thus protecting Alexander’s ownership. It is unclear if he won his petition. I find no further records suggesting July was ever returned to Abraham.

Ashe’s petition was a turning point document. Here was a former slave, with his former enslaver as witness, purchasing a slave, then defending an unlawful seizure of his property in a written petition signed by “Bay” solicitor for the complainant and sworn before “W. H. G.” (William Hassell Gibbs). “Bay” was likely Honorable Elihu Hall Bay (1754 – 1838) who later filled the office of the Associate Justice of the Court of General Sessions and Common Pleas. Judge Gibbs (1754 – 1834) studied in London and was one of thirty Americans in London that petitioned the King against acts of parliament which was one of the factors in the Revolution. When the war broke out, he escaped London through Bermuda and returned to Charleston. His father was part of the Secret Committee of 5 of the Council of Safety in Charleston at the beginning of the revolution – a group of Charleston elites who preserved government during the revolution. Gibbs was a Captain during the war and admitted to the bar in 1783 and remained head of Chancery until 1825. 

In 1816 Abraham struck out to purchase another enslaved man named Mick for $400 from James Gibson, a coachmaker and planter on nearby Goose Creek. The purchase price suggested Mick was in his prime and more likely to be hired out by Abraham, if he wasn’t also a family member. Records show James Gibson hired out an enslaved girl to the local orphanage in 1804. It was difficult and challenging to learn Abraham was participating in the slave trade clearly to benefit himself. Of course Abraham had his whole life seen people of color purchasing slaves in Haiti or in Charleston as a norm. How had Abraham raised the money? How did he deploy Mick? There are no ready and easy answers, but Mick may have also been permitted to hire himself out which would enable him to keep a portion of his wages. Blacks could not free enslaved people, if Mick had raised enough money, Abraham would have been prohibited from freeing him and Mick would be a nominal slave “in name only.” Since Mick doesn’t appear in Abraham’s probate in an inventory of property after his death, we can conclude Mick was either free, self-liberated, or dead by 1842.

A year later in 1817, Ashe had another transaction with the Honorable W.H. Gibbs. Ashe entered into a mortgage agreement with Gibbs when he was Master in Equity in Charleston, South Carolina. Ashe secured an $800 loan (with interest) using a Lot 18 on Boundary Street as collateral under a $1600 bond. If Ashe failed to repay, the Court had the right to take ownership of the property. The property was part of a large sale by the College of Charleston along Boundary Street. Abraham was identified as a “free person of color” on the bond agreement. Other FPOC made similar purchases of the college at this sale. This was a business transaction built on some level of trust in Ashe’s ability to payback the loan. Perhaps in his service to John Ashe, the lawyer, Abraham picked up an understanding that he had access to the Court to help materialize his plans. These records, petition, bill of sale, and mortgage bond demonstrate that Abraham was made familiar with his rights under the law, the opportunities he had as a free man of color (and the extent to which he could use them), and that he was willing to utilize and challenge Charleston’s systems to defend his limited rights. It shows tremendous agency that matched his mark.

On the 1830 census, Abraham Ashe is no doubt recorded as the free man of color between the ages 55 and 100 years old. A free man of color between 24 and 35 years also lives with him, and 3 boys under 10, along with free women between 24 and 35 and 55 – 99,  and two girls under 10. There are also 4 enslaved in the home, 2 women between 24 and 35, and 1 male between 10 and 23. It’s likely some were different family units, and boarding with Abraham. The household’s size and makeup was not uncommon for Charleston. Free people of color and enslaved mixed freely in the city. Slaves were often hired out from plantations, and living on their own in the city, sending wages back to their enslavers, renting rooms from local FPOC. Families might consist of both free and enslaved, and free people of color who owned property often boarded. It can be hard to distinguish families without further records.

Though I believe the enslaved woman Cretia Bouchanneau may have been his earliest identified partner, Abraham marred twice more later in life. The first documented wife was a woman named Clary. She is identified on a contract of indenture of a mulatto boy Sam in 1830. For $100 Abraham and Clary were both to have indenture “until the boy reaches 21 years of age.” This record shows Abraham’s intention to hire out to raise income, though for what labor is unclear.

Incidentally, another free woman of color known as Clara Ashe was head of the household that consisted of 20 other FPOC and one male slave between 10 and 23 years old as listed on the 1820 census. It is the same year Abraham Ashe is not listed on the census, though we know he is in the city and living at his property on Boundary street. On the 1850 census she is listed as 105 years old, born in Africa. Her last address was in the household of John Simons, another free man of color, and very likely her son-in-law. Simons may have been married to Clara’s daughter, Clarissa (1785 – 1833). Clarissa may be the same woman Col. John S. Ashe sold to William H. Gibbs in 1813 for 5 shillings, clearly an inside trade with other motives beyond the usual slave trading, a mistress or illegitimate child perhaps? According to records Clara Ashe died between 90 and 105 years old in 1853. Abraham’s wife Clary probably died before 1831 or 32.

On his third and last purchase of enslaved people in 1835, Abraham Ashe agreed to pay $400 for the enslaved woman Susannah and her three children; William, Clarissa, and Tyra all held in bond between Joseph Allen Smith and Thomas Middleton. Records eventually helped identify this grouping as being very special to Abraham.

In all his dealings, he became a property owner, an enslaver, he knew the law, why didn’t Abraham purchase Cretia and Ann? I think the answer is simple. James Mays and Elizabeth Bouchanneau wouldn’t sell them. Mays was not a large slaveholder and Cretia and Ann would have been instrumental to their household. The Bouchnanneau’s were French and Cretia probably also spoke the language. To Elizabeth and Felicity Ann, Cretia would have been their ultimate servant, as an appendage and servant to their needs, inseparable.

STATUS AND DEBT.

How did Abraham Ashe, this once enslaved person rise to the ranks among Charleston’s elite free people of color? In certain records, he signs his signature in full. In another, he uses a flourish with “A” in the center of his signature. Abraham was clearly educated, could possibly read and write, and was a shrewd negotiator who understood the law and how to use the courts. He was familiar with contracts and understood business. Was it a level of station gained as being formerly enslaved by the Ashe family that lent him his status? Was he perhaps a valet or assistant to the Hon. Capt. John Ashe Esquire? His familiarity with the law and financial agreements suggest Abraham may have learned a lot from his enslaver Capt. Ashe. He may have also had the guidance of the refugee community of free blacks from Haiti in Charleston, and the patronage of white Haitian refugees.

Historian Bernard Powers writes in Black Charlestonians, A Social History, 1822-1885, “Elite free persons of color formed a highly group conscious and exclusive segment within the larger free Afro-American population. They had an appreciation for Charlestons’ aristocratic traditions but this did not necessarily lead to a disavowal of racial pride or heritage. As an artisan-elite, they were imbued with the Protestant ethic and confidently embraced the idea of self-help as the vehicle for individual and group advancement.”

I’m not certain why Abraham Ashe doesn’t appear regularly on local capitation tax records, as required by all Charleston’s free people of color who annually paid $2 to the city. Digitized capitation records begin after 1840 and are incomplete. However, there is an example according to Powers where a free person of color was made exempt from taxation by the Mayor. Frustratingly, Abraham Ashe also does not appear in Charleston City Directories from 1816 – 1830, which included other FPOC and their occupation. Yet records show he became a property owner in Charleston by 1820. Did he hire himself out? Did he apprentice? I have yet to find his trade and occupation. The City of Charleston retains records of income statements of slave hires including self-hires from 1800 – 1865 that I have yet to explore.

In 1817, in a financial arrangement between Abraham Ashe and a white Charlestonian merchant and lawyer, William Hasell Gibbs, Ashe agreed to pay Gibbs a sum of $800 with interest, as stipulated in a bond. In case of default, Gibbs was granted the right to occupy and possess the property that Ashe mortgaged from the College of Charleston, two lots, 18 and 19 with a loan he secured from Ann Legare, the white daughter of his former enslaver Elizabeth Ashe. The agreement was signed and sealed on April 22, 1817. 

In short, Ashe made a mortgage bond and records show Ash paid principal and interest to Ann Legare from 1821 to 1827 annually. Gibbs and Ann’s brother Daniel Legare were witnesses. Ashe’s lots on Boundary street were next door to lots owned by the Brown Fellowship Society, a society for free people of color who identified as “mulattos” descendants of black and whites in Charleston. The Fellowship was the earliest known black fraternal group in Charleston dating to 1790. It had just 50 members who each paid $50 to join and had to go through 3 rounds of voting to be inducted. To avoid the scrutiny of whites, discussing politics was forbidden. The elite society included Jehu Jones, a well known minister and innkeeper whose hotel was frequented by whites and blacks; Richard Holloway was a FPOC from Maryland who settled in Charleston. Holloway was also part of a benevolent charitable society that operated schools for black orphans called the Minor’s Moralist Society in the Neck. Like Ashe, Holloway also purchased “college lands” when the College of Charleston sold some its land on Boundary Street in 1817.

As a free man of color who owned property that included the enslaved, Abraham Ashe held a high status among black Charlestonians. He clearly used his status when in 1818, he and over a dozen other Methodists of color petitioned for the creation of their own cemetery in the village of Wragg Borough, north of Boundary Street (date unknown). Brown Fellowship Society members Charles Corr, and Malcolm Brown, were fellow petitioners for the burial ground. Just before in 1816, the majority of black methodists in Charleston, numbering in the thousands, left the white segregated Methodist church in one fell swoop to establish their own independent African methodist church.

They were no doubt influenced by the knowledge of the establishment of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. Powerful “class leaders” white and black maintained strict attendance of Methodists and scholar John Saillant believed this level of surveillance on blacks, free and enslaved, maintained secular and spiritual power over blacks in Charleston. The same group formed an independent methodist church and it was their second petition to have their own burial ground that Abraham joined. The petition was also signed by Bishop Morris Brown. It passed in the House but failed in the Senate. According to Saillant, Brown was working in the city secretly to establish an outpost of the AME as well. Not coincidentally, Denmark Vesey became a homestyle class leader and preacher of radical liberation theology at this time at the African church. Charleston’s white leaders moved to break up this church in 1818 and arrested dozens of members.

Throughout his life, Abraham Ashe often had to deal with powerful white figures in Charleston society; they were elite whites who included planters, lawyers, traders, merchants, state representatives and judges. For example, he did business with Thomas Middleton III, of the same family behind Middleton Place, at which between 2,600 and 3,200 slaves labored from 1738 to 1865. James H. Ladson, a well-known attorney, was an executor and appeared twice in key roles in Abraham’s dealings suggesting a certain amount of patronage. Ladson was also a planter of cotton and rice and held over 200 enslaved people in his lifetime. Ladson famously used religious instruction to gain obedience from his enslaved. He was also a consul to the Danish and Director at the State Bank. Ladson was also a proponent of “States Rights” and served as the vice-president of the Great Southern Rights and Southern Co-Operation Meeting in Charleston in 1851.

Though Abraham doesn’t appear in capitation tax records, his appearances on the financial records show he was a landlord in 1821, renting to a “Mrs. Wilson.” Scrupulous, he arranged to have some of her goods sold to pay back rent. The Constable’s sale was advertised in the Southern Patriot. Neither Abraham nor Wilson were referred to as “colored” in the ad, though it was the norm.

Ashe himself had a history of difficulties as a property owner that led to several actions in Charleston’s Court of Equity. Abraham got into trouble over property in Charleston’s Ward 3 that he mortgaged after securing a loan from Ann Legare, the daughter of his one-time enslaver Elizabeth Ashe in 1821. The loan was against one of two lots of land he purchased that were formerly owned by the College of Charleston, lot 17 and 18 on the corner of Coming and Boundary Street. Presumably Mrs. Wilson lived in one of them. Though he agreed to make regular annual payments to Legare, Abraham was wildly inconsistent, only ever paying about $600 against the $1200 mortgage loan in odd sums. Legare eventually sued him in the Court of Equity in 1841.

“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.”

Ashe’s lots on Boundary Street, later renamed Calhoun Street, were originally owned by the College of Charleston and was bounded by Benjamin T. Huger to the South, Walter Knox, to the East. Huger, a free person of color, tailor and Brown Fellowship Society member, had lot 17 surveyed in 1835 because he believed Ashe’s lot trespassed on his own land. Incidentally, Huger himself had 14 FPOC and 8 enslaved in his household on the 1830 census – probably boarders. The Brown Fellowship Society owned lots on the opposite side of Huger’s land.

In 1836, Abraham Ashe found himself before the Supreme Court of South Carolina over his debts where he managed to get the better of the situation. The case of John A. Cook vs. Abram Ashe involved a lawsuit over an account of $115.50. Ashe argued the debt was barred by the Statute of Limitations. The key witness, Thomas Legare, testified that Ashe acknowledged the debt and promised to pay in installments but could not specify the amount or details. Cook confirmed the accuracy of his account records.

The court determined that Ashe’s general acknowledgment of the debt did not specifically revive accounts from 1827 and 1828, which were already barred by the statute. Only accounts from 1829 and 1830, still within the four-year limitation, could remain enforceable. A new trial was ordered unless Cook agreed to reduce the judgment by $88, representing the barred accounts, leaving about $26 recoverable for the more recent accounts.

When in 1841, Ashe’s debts finally caught up with him, the Equity Court granted Ann Legare’s petition and Lot 18 and 17, on Boundary Street, was foreclosed, seized by the Court of Equity and sold in a sheriff’s sale which advertised “two lots and small wooden houses…known as Nos. 107 and 109.”

ABRAHAM’S LEGACY.

A few days before Christmas, Abraham Ashe died a year later on the 18th of December in 1842 at the age of 70. According to death records he died of dropsy or edema, a swelling of his limbs symptomatic of heart disease or kidney failure. His death record states he was “free”, born in December 1772, and was buried at the African Burial Ground. He lived almost twice the average lifespan of a free white man of his time, and three times the average lifespan of a slave. Ashe bequeathed his entire estate to his lawyer, James H. Ladson. Ladson dutifully invited all debtors to come forth, but there was nothing left of material value in Ashe’s estate except his enslaved.

When the probate was conducted, William $300, Maria $200, and Abram $150 were inventoried by Ladson in June 1843. J. M. Hume, owner of Hopsewee Plantation on the Santee River, George H. Ingraham, and Alonza J. White (slave trader), respectively, were witnesses and most likely appraisers of the inventory. Did the men have their eye on Abraham’s invaluable legacy for purchase themselves? The values associated with these enslaved people, William, Maria, and Abram, are a tell-tale sign that they were not yet “prime,” still just children. Was William the son of Susannah, the enslaved woman Abraham purchased in 1835? Was Abram, named for Abraham Ashe? Susannah was not listed. Had she died?

I wondered what happened to the children but the paper trail grew cold. Ladson was an enslaver himself and participated in several sales of enslaved people as a purchaser between 1843 and 1847, but there are no records of the sale of William, Maria, and Abram, not even in the “disposal” of Ashe’s property. I felt that any answers about the outcomes of these individuals might lie in records in the distant future, after the Civil War and emancipation of the nation’s enslaved blacks. Certain records, like those of the Freedmen’s Bureau often captured the very first details of untold thousands of formerly enslaved. I reasoned that I might find the children by searching for references to Abraham Ashe after 1865 during Reconstruction of the union. 

After finding references to only the white Ashe family of Charleston, led by Col. John A. S. Ashe in the Bureau records, I feared the worst.

I moved on to a recordset I seldom use, the Freedman’s Savings Bank records. A search for “Abraham Ashe” immediately came back with results. Abraham Ash (no “e”) appeared in one record in 1870. It was a revelation. This simple record offered a genealogist all he could hope for! It expanded Abraham’s story and legacy over multiple generations to the present day. The record extended his family’s story geographically far beyond the slave state of South Carolina to the free states of Pennsylvania and New York. The document was a testimony to the power of familial bonds and revealed the exciting identities of William, Maria, and Abram.

***

In 1870, a black woman named Maria Louisa Julius, age 38, wife of William Alexander Julius (a waiter) opened an account at the Freedmen’s Bank in New York City. Her address was 20 East 21st street in the heart of the Flatiron District in Manhattan, but she had grown up in Philadelphia according to the record. The private bank which was chartered at the Civil War’s close was supposed to assist the newly emancipated to establish their financial identity, deposit their earnings from new labor contracts and the bounties of US Colored Troops. At first the bank prospered, eventually collecting millions in savings from over 100,000 depositors that would be worth about US $1 billion today. Risky investments in railroad bonds and fraud heightened by the panic of 1873 helped the bank fail by 1874 dashing the hopes and savings of thousands of African Americans. Along with the retraction of the promise of 40 acres and a mule, the wonton rise of the violent retribution by whites in the South, and failure of Reconstruction freed men and women came to feel America was perhaps incapable of keeping its commitment to them as citizens. Yet, in the hope of a simple banking account, blacks placed their futures and recorded their pasts.

The account paperwork required Maria Louisa Julius to identify her parents, siblings, along with any other relevant details so they could access the account. On countless records this information can appear sketchy, often left blank, but Maria Louisa had a lot to share – it is as if her excitement in opening the bank account drove her to “overshare” using today’s slang.

On November 28, 1870, Maria Louisa Julius, a 38-year-old resident of New York City, recorded her details with the Freedmen’s Savings & Trust Bank. She lived at 2o East 21st street in the Flat Iron district. Born in Charleston, she reported that she was raised in Philadelphia, and was the wife of William Alexander Julius, a waiter. She wrote that her father, Abraham Ash, died 31 years earlier, and her mother, Susan, died a year later. She listed siblings, both alive and deceased. William (a machinist in Western California), Abraham (a boot maker in Philadelphia), Rebecca (married to Henry L. Price in Philadelphia), and Isabella (married to Thomas Peace in Charleston) were all living. Other family members, including Elizabeth and Christopher, were deceased.

The bank record confirms that William, Maria, and Abram, the enslaved property of Abraham Ashe that were inventoried after his death in 1842 thirty years earlier, were in fact his children, and that Susan was their mother. Recall that in 1835 in a tripartite agreement, Abraham Ashe agreed to pay $400 in bond to Thomas Middleton who purchased of Joseph Allen Smith (Izard) four enslaved people, Susannah and her children, William, Tyra, and Clarissa. Middleton was a trustee holding these nominal slaves.

“The bill of sale is made out to me with the understanding that when the amount of bond given by me for $400 for purchase of the within negroes is paid up by Abraham Ashe – then the right of property becomes vested in said Abraham Ashe.” 

Izard’s attorney was none other than James H. Ladson, Esq. Perhaps this is where Abraham Ashe first became acquainted with Ladson and why he entrusted him to be administrator of his estate, which included his children. Free people of color had to have “Guardians” in Charleston, white men and women who could vouch for them; perhaps Ladson was Ashe’s “Guardian.” Thomas Middleton (1797 – 1863) was the third son of Honorable Thomas Middleton, and grandson of Henry Middleton who established Middleton Place’s gardens after inheriting the plantation from his father-in-law John Williams. This Thomas Middleton was a merchant and lawyer, and a member of the powerful Middleton family who held vast plantations with hundreds of enslaved peoples across the region. His mother and first wife were Izards. Joseph Allen Smith Izard (1810 -1879) was the son of Joseph Allen Smith, a famous diplomat. Smith (who later used Izard as his last name) graduated from West Point, fought in the Seminole War and became owner of rice plantations including Recess Plantation on the Savannah Back River in St. Peter’s Parish, and appears to have shipped slaves out of the port of Savannah. He held property in Charleston as well.

We could stop once again to ponder how Abraham no doubt secured this remarkable deal between Charleston elites like Ladson, Middleton and Izard, and how Abraham came to have a wife and children with an enslaved woman purchased on his behalf in trust by Middleton. More intriguing is the connection between the two documents that appear to show Abraham’s purchases of enslaved people was likely focused on securing his family. Two records, the 1835 bond agreement and the 1870 Freedmen’s Bank Record forge a powerful connection across 35 years. Together they are a keystone that unravels the Ashe family life from slavery to freedom, before and beyond the Civil War. 

Bank records can be sparse, but Maria Louisa‘s went into great detail stating valuable information; Abraham and Susannah were her parents and several other siblings, including in-laws, were living or dead, and she shared their current locations in 1870. The 6 siblings known to her included William, Abraham Jr. “Abram”, Rebecca, Isabella, Elizabeth, and Christopher. By 1850 Rebecca was living in Philadelphia with her husband Henry L. Price, a carpenter. So was Abraham Jr. At the same time, Isabella was living in Charleston with her husband Thomas Peace. Elizabeth and Christopher had passed away before 1870 according to Maria Louisa. Her brother William, likely the eldest, was a machinist living somewhere in western California. Abraham Jr.  who went by “Abram” or possibly “Charles”, his middle name, was also living in Philadelphia with his wife Ann M. where he was a boot maker. 

Abraham Ashe must have met the $400 bond payment in full to Thomas Middleton for Susannah, and her children and therefore owned Susannah and all her increase, which would include her later born children, Maria Louisa and Abram, Elizabeth and Christopher. We can infer that their mother Susannah somehow became free or died before 1842 actually. She wasn’t mentioned in Abraham Ashe’s will or probate, she was not listed as property nor made an heir. Maria Louisa said Susannah died a year after Abraham. Abraham could not make his enslaved children his heirs either. Because of a 1820 South Carolina law, he could not have manumitted them. Enslaved family members became nominal slaves, in name only. Most likely Susannah, and her other 3 children, Clarissa, Isabella, and Tyra had achieved some other status and were no longer enslaved or the property of Abraham Senior. Perhaps they were married and living as FPOC in Charleston.

Apparently, Abraham’s first wife Clary died between 1832 and 1835 before Abraham entered into the bond to purchase Susannah. Susannah’s children William, Clarissa, and Tyra (as listed on the 1835 mortgage bond) were probably not Abraham’s biological children. According to Maria Louisa’s bank record, Susannah died a year after Abraham, between 1842-43. Some of the Ashe siblings were free, others still enslaved, so how did the enslaved orphans arrive in Philadelphia after their parent’s death if they were in the possession of James H. Ladson as estate inventory?

We know the Ashe children had a very strong incentive to leave Charleston, and slave states all together. In 1841, South Carolina’s legislature passed The Act to Prevent the Emancipation of Slaves. This Act prohibited testamentary emancipation, and it also voided all bequests to slaves, closing loopholes that enslavers with abolitionist tendencies had exploited for years to emancipate their slaves. Section IV states, “That every device or bequest, to a slave or slaves, or to any person, upon a trust or confidence, secret or expressed, for the benefit of any slave or slaves, shall be null and void.” 

In 1846, Charleston established a police force identifying serious punishments for both slave and free persons of color who resisted arrest, “twenty lashes on the bare back at the public market.” Also, capitation taxes increased from $2 to $5 annually for every free person of color over the age of 18. The freedoms FPOC enjoyed were dwindling as whites sought to curb their growth in reaction to the expanding nascent black freedom and growing abolitionism in free states like Delaware and Pennsylvania.

Did the elder Ashe siblings, go to James H. Ladson and broker a deal for their brothers William, Abram and sister Maria?

Though Charleston had been their home where the Ashes held high status that their father built up and strategically deployed to their benefit, that door had closed. With both their parents dead and no path to manumission, the future wasn’t bright for the Ashe children. Abraham’s lingering debts could put them on the auction block, separating them forever. I have no doubt that the eldest Ashe siblings and Abraham’s closest confidants, Ladson and perhaps men in the elite fraternal societies, or fellow church congregants conspired to arrange the escape of Abraham’s children from bondage.

***

Maria Louisa’s bank record revealed she had an older sister named Rebecca Ashe-Price (1822 – 1877). In 1850, Rebecca was living as a free person of color in Philadelphia when she first appeared on the census, classified as a “mulatto”, married mother of 3 with her husband Henry C. Price (1816 – 1872). At the time of her father’s death, she would have been about 20 years old. Since Rebecca wasn’t listed on Abraham’s inventory, I presume she was somehow free or unknown to the Probate Court (perhaps deliberately). We don’t know how old William was (I suspect he was at least a teenager) and other records show his siblings were much younger; Isabella was about 5 or 6, Maria Louisa, about 4 or 5, Abraham Jr. was about 3-4 years old. They were all just children. His siblings Clarissa and Tyra, first listed on the 1835 record were also not listed in the probate inventory. Elizabeth and Christopher, the other siblings mentioned by Maria Louisa, were either dead or free themselves.

Abraham Ashe surely knew his death would lead to dire outcomes for his family, and placing his infant children into the care of Ladson was likely a very canny move. He was relying on the stature and wealth of the attorney to devise a plan for his children, they may have even planned it together and involved the children’s older siblings.

Rebecca Ashe-Price, with her husband Henry C. Price, took their young enslaved siblings to Pennsylvania between 1847 and 1850. Henry was older, and already a FPOC, when he paid the the 1826 Capitation Tax in Charleston while living on Cannon Street. Both Rebecca and Henry were classified “mulatto” in the 1850 and 1860 census and “white” on the 1870 censuses of Philadelphia. I suspect the Price family used their very light skin and status as free people of color to pass unmolested out of Charleston with their children, Henry Jr. and Isabella (named after Rebecca’s sister) and the orphaned Ashe youth, William, Maria, and Abram. The Prices may have packed everything up and taken a train or wagon North or perhaps they booked passage on a steamship out of Charleston Harbor.

They likely traveled alongside their friend and neighbor, William Cooper (1781–1852) and his family, also from Charleston. The Coopers appears in the 1847 Quaker census of Philadelphia. By 1850, census records indicate that Rebecca’s sons, Jacob and Benjamin, and her youngest daughter, Susan, were all born in Pennsylvania.

James H. Ladson’s role remains a mystery. Were the orphans purchased of Ladson by their siblings? There is no bill of sale on record. Were they liberated by one of the siblings prompting the exodus? There were no Runaway Slave ads placed in the papers. I believe the key to the orphans story may lie with William Cooper. Cooper was a boot maker and also a member of the Brown Fellowship Society. His wife and children were also formerly enslaved. The Cooper and Price family lived in the same tenement in South Philadelphia according to the 1850 census. William Cooper was also a member of the Minor Moralist Society. Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne of the A.M.E. wrote in Recollections of 70 Years, about the society.

“As early as 1803 the Minors’ Moralist Society was established in the city of Charleston by James Mitchell, Joseph Humphries, William Cooper, Carlos Huger, Thomas S. Bonneau, William Clark, and Richard Holloway–all free colored men. Its object was to educate orphan or indigent colored children, and also to provide for their necessary wants. It consisted of fifty members, who contributed five dollars each at first, and paid thereafter the monthly sum of twenty-five cents each. As many as six children were at one time receiving its care and attention. It continued in existence until 1847, when, from the decease of many useful members and other local causes, it ceased to exist; not, however, without having done much good which continues to manifest itself both in Church and State.” 

Motivated by the mission of the Moralist society, I imagine that the Coopers and Price families worked together to devise a plan to secure the Ashe orphans’ freedom in the North, and that they all preferred their children to be raised in a free state. Cooper would have been sympathetic and eager to help; he purchased his second wife Hannah out of slavery, along with Hannah’s mother Lucretia, and her siblings July and Lavinia in 1829.

The Coopers were Presbyterian like other prominent FPOC – members of the Third Presbyterian Church in Charleston and in Philadelphia as well. The Price family were methodist. The foundations of Methodism though were anti-slavery and abolitionist, and the A.M.E. did not allow slaveholders. The A.M.E. and Quakers also worked with abolitionists to traffic fugitives out of slave states, including South Carolina. The A.M.E was active in Charleston and operated schools for free blacks until Bishop Alexander Payne of the church, himself a FPOC, was forced to leave the city in 1835 by worried white elites.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was an ever present threat. The Act was an attempt to enforce the Constitutional provision that required free states in the North to return fugitive slaves to the South. Slave catchers prowled the streets of every major northern city, especially Philadelphia.  Whether Henry and Rebecca brokered a deal with Ladson, or used their own status as free people of color to escape North, the two families eventually adjusted to life in the free state of Pennsylvania by 1850. Henry Price continued his work as a house carpenter and William Cooper as a boot maker. Since the Ashe children – William, Maria, and Abram don’t appear on the 1850 census, I assume they were in hiding-probably in plain sight.

Maria Louisa finally appears on record, well after Emancipation in New York. In 1876 Henry and Rebecca Price ‘nee Ashe purchase a 3 story tenement at 714 Wharton Street in South Philadelphia for $1100. As Episcopalians they attended the African Church of the Evangelist on Catherine Street. The Prices had 5 children and lived out the rest of their lives in Philadelphia in peace. William and Hannah Cooper both died in the 1850s and are buried at Lebanon Cemetery.

***

Abraham Charles Ash, Junior (1838 – 1920) appears on the 1860 census in Philadelphia before Emancipation. At the time his profession was “shoemaker” Abraham (who on some records was “Abram”) was probably apprenticed to William Cooper, Price’s friend and neighbor from Charleston, the black boot maker. He stated his birthplace as Pennsylvania not South Carolina. As a fugitive slave, he was probably attempting to avoid sharing information that might lead to his discovery and possible recapture.

Inspired by his own journey from bondage to freedom, Abram was moved to fight for the freedom of his enslaved brethren. In 1863, Abram Junior enlisted into the Union Navy in Philadelphia, proudly stating he was born in South Carolina. For over two years he served on three different vessels including the USS Monticello, USS Princeton, and USS Savannah. Before he enlisted in the winter of 1860, he married Ann Maria Jackson. Their first child was stillborn in 1863 and buried in Lebanon cemetery, their second attempt also ended in tragedy. Frederick lived only 17 months and is also buried in Lebanon. “Annie” and Abram were married for 50 years and appear to have had no further children.

Abram filed for a naval pension for his service during the Civil War and received it in 1891 according to the Philadelphia Enquirer. The pension application has been a wealth of information, including about his sister Maria Louisa. 

According to his US Naval Pension records, while serving as a sailor during the war, he slept on a zinc floor of the USS Savannah and not a hammock, and as a result suffered frostbite and rheumatism. His pension was increased over time from $6 to $12 a month. To secure an increase in the pension, Abram furnished a letter saying he came to Philadelphia from Charleston about 1848 and “went to Mr. William Cooper.” The record also states Abram was bound out to shoemaker Jesse Turner who lived on 2nd and Chestnut between 1850 and 1860 (Abram first lived in the home of William Cooper).  A 1903 letter from his sister Maria Louisa Julius who was living in Orange, New Jersey at the time is also included in the application. In the letter, Maria begged Abram and his wife Anna to move to New Jersey near her. She stated she did not have any dependents who could claim her life insurance upon her death. Maria chastised Abram for “being nearly 61 years old” and not yet being a “good Christian man.”

In one notable affidavit in the pension records, Abram states he was “born free” in Charleston and that his parents died before he left. The record shows otherwise, however. He was either ignorant of the facts of his birth status as a slave – or he felt it necessary to continue to hide the circumstances of his birth from the US government. Perhaps he thought it jeopardized his pension status in some way.

In fact there were discrepancies in his age. He reports being born in 1838 and 1842 separately during his pension negotiations – an error the Commissioner of the Pension office asked him to reconcile. Or perhaps he was growing senile. On one application document asking for the status of his family he stated that his wife had died in 1916, then put his wife’s name down under children, and that she was living in Mount Holly, New Jersey. Abram Ashe died in July 1920 and is buried at the Philadelphia National Cemetery under a veteran’s marker arranged by his widow Anna Jackson of Kater Street in Philadelphia according to records. It appears that is the end of his line.

***

Isabella Ash (1835 – 1883), another of Maria Louisa’s sisters, is found living in Charleston on the 1860 record before Emancipation. By then, she was clearly a free person of color – only her daughter Rebecca aged 6 at the time was living with her though. Thomas Peace was on the 1868 voter registration roll before appearing with his wife and family in the 1870 census. Isabella became a “Mantua maker” or dressmaker on Coming Street. Mantuas were formal 17th century gowns hand stitched by enslaved women that would return their wages to their owners. In 1870 after the Civil War’s close, Isabella Peace, once again advertised she was seeking patronage for her craft. Freedmen’s Savings & Trust bank accounts of her sons St. Julian and Eugene living at 24 Wall St. in 1868 show they too were entrepreneurial and eager to establish financial records after Emancipation. By 1880, Isabella was no longer sewing – she was paralyzed for over a year, and died not long after in 1883 at about the age of 55. Her husband Thomas died of old age in 1887 at age 80. St. Julian died young. Eugene, a barber, married and moved to Philadelphia. Rebecca, married and remained in Charleston. Isabell died at 55 of old age and is buried in the historic Charleston Cemetery district in the Unity & Friendship Society cemetery. The district includes the relocated Brown Fellowship Society cemetery as well.

Abraham Ashe’s son, perhaps the eldest, William Ash remains an enigma. His name is recorded in his purchase as a slave in 1835, inventory in 1842, then again in 1870 on the Freedmen’s Bank Account record of Maria Louisa Julius, but I can find no further mention of him. His precise location in California was not noted by his sister, other than that he was a machinist. William Cooper’s son William Jr. did move briefly to Sacramento, California about 1852 for work, but returned to Philadelphia. If William Cooper went with the family friend, there is no record.

Outside the Freedman’s Bank record, there are few records for Maria Louisa Ash, either under the married name Alexander or Julius, or her surname Ash. However, we know by November 1870, at age 25 she arrived in New York City where she was married to a man named William Alexander Julius. Her “dark brown” complexion distinguished her from her sister Isabella, listed as “mulatto” her whole life. Perhaps they were half-sisters? Julius may have also been the surname of Maria Louisa’s husband. In 1903 she wrote a remarkable letter to her brother, Abram, which he used in his US Navy pension application. The letter revealed she was living alone near Newark in Orange, New Jersey, without any heirs – apparently she was childless. She described herself as an “old woman” who could not get work washing, but with many friends. She hoped her brother and sister-in-law would claim her life insurance. Abram stated he attended her funeral in the pension application in 1912. She would have been 78. It’s a pity that Maria Louisa’s bank record could lead to so much information about her siblings and not more about her own early life. Did she also make the journey directly to Philadelphia with her siblings or was the family split up to better protect them from slave catchers?

ABRAHAM, REFUGEE OF SAINT-DOMINGUE.

By examining the life of the Ashe children, I’ve learned further remarkable facts about the early life of Abraham Ashe. On the 1880 census, Abram Ashe listed both his parents as being born in “Hayti” (Haiti). His sister Rebecca also ticked the box on the 1870 census record that her father was of “foreign birth.” Though they had come a long way out of slavery in Charleston, they had not forgotten their parents origins. Perhaps Rebecca was the knowledge keeper of the family. She would name her daughter Susan after her mother for example. Their parent’s reported origin in the former French colony of Saint-Domingue may explain the francophone names of Abraham’s children Isabella and Maria Louisa. Saint-Domingue was the French name for the island of Hispaniola before 1804. If Abraham Ashe Senior was first enslaved in Saint-Domingue and then brought to South Carolina as a refugee in the 1790s during the Haitian Revolution then the widow of Capt. John Ashe, Elizabeth Legare-Ashe, was not Abraham’s first enslaver. Abraham would have already lived a full life as a young French black on the island of Saint-Domingue. Was he a skilled tradesman in towns like Cap Francis or Port-au-Prince or was he a valet or house slave tending to a wealthy mulatto merchant, or was he a seaman working the ports transporting the ill gotten gains of the French colonists? Was he born free in Africa, enslaved and then taken to Saint-Domingue?

It is not well known today that Saint-Domingue was once the wealthiest colony of the “new world”, with wealth greater than all the British and Spanish colonies combined at that time. In many ways, the West Indies, Florida, and southern port cities like Savannah and Charleston were satellites of this powerful trade port. The mountainous island of Hispaniola was in fact cosmopolitan with well developed cities in nearly every bay, deep ports, and vast estates. Saint-Domingue produced so much wealth, the French gave up the entirety of Canada to secure their claim on the colony. When the Haitian Revolution took place between 1791 and 1804, different bands of enslaved people, free people of color (largely mulattos, but some Euro Africans as well), and maroons (self-emancipated blacks) joined together to overthrow the government in a series of bloody battles on the island lasting years. 

Over about a dozen years, white French and gens de couleur libres or free people of color – merchants, planters, traders lost control of the cities, then the sugar cane farms, and coffee plantations, and thousands of acres of land along with access to forced labor that made them wealthy. Becoming refugees on other islands due to the uprising, the French streamed into the US to southern ports like New Orleans and Charleston, taking their enslaved people with them as their primary, and only source of income. Of course, the US ended international slave trading in 1807 shutting the door to the legal importation of slaves, but not before many thousands of Haitian enslaved arrived unwillingly. Over 500 documented French refugees arrived in the port of Charleston in the 1790s but the numbers of enslaved they bought with them are not precisely known.

During the colonial era, Saint-Domingue had a diverse three-tiered society of Whites of French, British, and Spanish descent, mixed-race Africans and indigenous peoples, and Black people, both enslaved and free. It was a creolized society – one where the African diaspora historian Ira Berlin called “Atlantic Creole” could prosper under the right conditions living between and taking advantage of societal rules around race and religion. When they arrived in Charleston, French-speaking Catholics from Saint-Domingue significantly altered Charleston’s Protestant, two-tiered social structure (white/black) and their creolized culture threatened the white supremacist status quo – they were not exactly welcomed with open arms. Charlestonians feared they would bring the insurrectionist tendencies with them embodied in their slaves. In fact, the preeminent South Carolina historian Bernard Powers wrote in his book Black Charlestonians that about 15 French slaves led by two Haitians were implicated in a conspiracy to burn Charleston “as they had formerly done at St. Domingue.”

Despite the concern, many Charlestonians, part of French benevolent societies, embraced the refugees. It seems James H. Ladson, the attorney and executor of Abraham Ashe’s estate was sympathetic to the refugees of St. Domingo. In 1805 and 1806, as a member of the St. Cecilia Society, he financially supported several benefit concerts for Saint-Domingue orphans. Perhaps this predisposed Ladson to Ashe and made it possible for him to broker with Abraham’s daughter Rebecca to let her take her siblings North to freedom.

After he gained his freedom from the English merchant James Mays, Abraham Ashe could have sought to model himself after the elite French gens de couleur libres class who arrived with slaves and wealth. He might have wanted to imitate people like the Euro African family of Marie-Adélaïde Rossignol, a quadroon born in West African island of Goree who immigrated to Haiti, became a slave owner, before fleeing to Charleston where her family. Rossignols married into European immigrant families in Charleston and effectively “passed” into white life for generations. Or he may have considered styling himself after William Rollin, a Catholic mulatto from Saint-Domingue who ran a successful lumber business in Charleston, employing Irish labor. 

What we know is that Abraham aligned himself early on with the Episcopalians. His proximity to the members of the Brown Fellowship Society and interactions with them suggests that he became more “African American” though his Franco-African roots no doubt set him apart. He could traverse many spaces in the antebellum postcolonial world as an “Atlantic Creole”, as a former slave and purchaser of enslaved people, the world of free people of color with French West Indian roots, and into the emerging modern African American identity desperately seeking freedom.

CAPTAIN JACOB ASHE.

Captain Jacob Ashe (1850 – 1896), a sloop captain from Charleston, is the 3x great grandfather of several of my 4th generation Ancestry DNA match cousins. Captain Ashe and his wife Ellen “Nellie” nee’ Grant (1852 – 1906) lived at 11 Nunan St., 2 New St., 10 Smith Lane, and 4 Council St. throughout the 1870s and 80s. Together, Jacob and Nellie had seven children beginning in 1876. 

• John Jacob (1876 – 1895)
• Ellen Elizabeth (1879 – 1966)
• Mary Jane “Minnie” (1880 – aft. 1900)
• Lorine (1880 – aft. 1900)
• David (1882 – aft. 1900)
• Rosa (1893 – 1848)
• Jacob Jr. (1896 – aft. 1900)

Most records spell Jacob’s last name as “Ashe” with an “e”. Death records state he died about Nov. 20, 1896 and was classified as “brown” or a mulatto. He was born at “Togoodoo,” a northwest tributary of Toogoodoo Creek on Edisto Island, in St. John’s Parish, Colleton, but also the name of a major plantation there. Buried at Emanuel cemetery, his family were African Methodist Episcopalians. Based on the predicted genetic relationship of a mutual descendent, Capt. Jacob Ashe was very likely the grand child of Abraham Ashe, and my distant cousin.

Abraham was enslaved by Capt. John Ashe Esq., son of Major General John S. Ashe of North Carolina. Abraham was then held by Capt. Ashe’s widow Eliza Legare, before she sold him to James Mays in 1807. 

Given his prior enslavement by Capt. Ashe, Abraham may have spent time at Toogoodoo, probably in the mid-1790s through the early 1800s after arriving as an enslaved refugee from Haiti. He may have even had a child there with an enslaved woman producing one of Jacob’s parents, like his father. On the 1880 census was Jacob’s mother named Louisa Johnston, born about 1832 in Charleston. She could have been his mother-in-law too.

Abraham had three documented sons, William, Abraham Jr. and Christopher according to the Freeman’s Bank Record of his daughter Maria Louisa Ashe. Christopher and William do not have birthdates or date of deaths. Abraham Jr. left Charleston before he was of age to have children. Records show William was born before 1835 but living in California by 1870, and Christopher was deceased. I surmise Christopher didn’t survive childhood and was likely born after Abraham purchased his wife Susannah in 1835, making William the most likely candidate for Jacob’s father. William would have only been a teen, but still a young man by the standard of the day when Jacob was born in 1850.

As a sloop captain, Jacob Ashe likely traveled back and forth between area plantations delivering cotton and other products, probably from Toogoodoo Creek to Charleston’s many ports. Toogoodoo is closely associated with the plantations of the white Ashe family since the colony of Carolina. The lands originally called “Tooboo-doo” perhaps for its native name were in the Ashe family for at least 3 generations before Joseph Ashe (1758 – 1790) and his brother John Ashe Senior (1760 – 1825) resided at the place also called Ashe Point. He had several plantations at the time of his death in 1825, two of which were rice plantations with mills. His other plantations included Whooping Island, Russell’s Point (on Edisto), Pingree Island, Will Plantation (near Willtown), Moss Plantation, a mansion house in Charleston and several lots of land. Capt. Jacob Ashe was probably born on Toogoodoo plantation under the occupation of Col. Ashe. He was likely hired out or apprenticed as a sailor to learn the trade. He eventually would use those skills to become a sloop captain. 

Captain Jacob Ashe raised his family during that remarkable period known as “Reconstruction”, when radical Black Republicans were ascendent during a volatile period of governorship of the state and city. During Reconstruction in Charleston, Congressman Robert Smalls, the legendary self-liberated former slave and Civil War hero famous for stealing a Confederate ship, started a railroad enterprise between Charleston and Beaufort. Over 80 blacks were elected to the South Carolina legislature in 1868. A black man, Jonathan Jasper Wright, was elected judge of the South Carolina Supreme Court and Smalls was elected to fill his unexpired time in the state Senate in 1870.

Jacob Ashe became a member of Charleston’s “Special Police” in 1870 tasked with protecting the vote of thousands of blacks heading to the polls in South Carolina history. Black Republicans won 3 of the 4 seats in the House of Representatives and a Senate seat. In 1880 Capt. Jacob lived next door to several black sailors on Council Street: Captain Peter Allston, father and son Captain Henry L. Graddick, and Captain Henry Taylor Graddick. The Graddicks were FPOC before 1865. Capt. Graddick hosted Frederick Douglass in his only southern visit in 1888.

Tragically, Captain Ashe’s family had several early deaths. Jacob and Nellie’s eldest son John died at age 19 from Bright’s Disease. Then Jacob, himself died just a year later in 1896 – he was only 44. His wife Nellie died of apoplexy at 44 years old as well in 1902. She was last living in the neck at 90 Morris Street and is buried at Emanuel as well. Their daughter Ellen “Ella” Elizabeth married Joseph Nelson. Ellen and Joseph had 15 children, though not all survived to adulthood. Ellen lived a long life, to age 87. Joseph was a porter for the American Railroad Company when they lived in the Washington Heights neighborhood in Charleston in the early 1900s. In 1920, the family moved to Charlotte where Joseph worked as a cook, and at Southern Railway Company. Ellen’s younger sister Rosa Ashe married James Pinckney of Charleston.

Rosa was a cook and lived on rented premises on Calhoun Street which used to be Boundary Street when she passed in 1948. Her death certificate, signed by her sister Ella, spelled her father Jacob’s last name as Ashe with an “e”. Her husband James was a carpenter, and was once employed by the passenger rail company, Atlantic Coast Line Railroad as a boilermaker helper. They lived at Tobins Court Alley in Ward 9 for many years throughout the Great Depression. James died sometime before 1840 in his 60s. Rosa is also buried at the Emanuel cemetery.

THE LONG ARC BENDS.

The story of Abraham Ashe and his remarkable family doesn’t end here. Clues point to the possibility that the Haitian-born man was first enslaved in the port city of Cap Francais by the Afro-French descendant of the Bertrand family, merchants and planters in San Domingue from the 1870s up to the Haitian revolution.

When Martin Luther King said, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice, he never spoke truer words. In twenty years of family research, I’ve never encountered an ancestor story quite like this one. That Abraham would be enslaved in another country, live through the largest slave uprising in history, and the only uprising that led the the creation of a free state of formerly enslaved people, live life as an enslaved refugee in Charleston to a powerful elite white family, be sold to an English immigrant, and then become a free person of color who would go on to own land and purchase his enslaved family members to create a nominal freedom for them, well, it’s simply astounding. That Abraham and his second wife Susannah and their enslaved children were smuggled North to freedom after his death, and their son Abram Junior would go on to become a US sailor on three ships in the Civil War fighting for the freedom of all enslaved blacks and to preserve the Union, is the very definition of resilience. My hope is that by recovering and sharing Abraham’s journey, and the earliest history of my maternal family, my own descendants will find in their past legacy, the strength and lessons in resilience necessary to face the future where the American experiment is always being tested.

SOURCES.

• “Free Blacks and Mulattos in South Carolina.” Ancestry.com.
• Bill of Sale (1807, Slave: Abraham to James Mays, from Elizabeth Ashe, Widow of Nathan Legare, and Hon. John Ashe, Esq.). Charleston Public Records.
• Charleston Public Records. Enslavement Records 1832–1836. FamilySearch.
• Charleston Capitation Tax (1811–1860). FamilySearch.
• “Slaves at Little Edisto and Frogmore Plantations, Edisto Island, SC, 1858.” Fold3.
• “Middleton of South Carolina.” The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, vol. 1, no. 3, July 1900, pp. 228–262.
• South Carolina Historical Society. J.H. Ladson Papers.
• Salley, A. S., Jr., editor. Marriage Notices in The South-Carolina Gazette and Its Successors, 1732-1801. Joel Munsell’s Sons, 1902.
• “Digital Library on American Slavery: The Race and Slavery Petitions Project.” University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
• “Freedom on the Move Database.” Cornell University.
• “Haiti to Charleston.” Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston, charlestondiocese.org/bishop-jacques-fabre-jeune-cs/haiti-to-charleston/.
• City of Philadelphia Register of Wills Office. City of Philadelphia Register of Wills Office. secureprod.phila.gov/wills/.
• Powers, Bernard E., Jr. Black Charlestonians: A Social History, 1822–1885. University of Arkansas Press, 1994.
• Saillant, John, “BEFORE 1822: ANTI-BLACK ATTACKS ON CHARLESTON METHODIST CHURCHES FROM 1786 TO DENMARK VESEY’S EXECUTION,” Commonplace: the journal of early American life, accessed 1.10.25, https://commonplace.online/article/before-1822/.
• Gillikin, M. W. Saint Dominguan Refugees in Charleston, South Carolina, 1791-1822: Assimilation and Accommodation in a Slave Society. 2014. Doctoral dissertation, University of South Carolina, scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/3040.
• “Colonial Families of the USA, 1607-1775 for William Hasell Gibbs.” Ancestry.com.
• Force, Pierre, and Susan Dick Hoffius. Negotiating Race and Status in Senegal, Saint Domingue, and South Carolina: Marie-Adélaïde Rossignol and Her Descendants. McNeil Center for Early American Studies, 2018.
• “The Remarkable Rollin Sisters.” Searchable Museum, www.searchablemuseum.com/the-remarkable-rollin-sisters.
• “INDEMNISATION DES COLONS SPOLIÉS (Compensation for Dispossessed Colonists).” Sous-série F/12, Articles F/12/2740-2883 et F/12/7627-7632, Archives Nationales, Paris.
• Annuaire de la pairie et de la noblesse de France et des maisons souveraines de l’Europe (Directory of the Peerage and Nobility of France and the Sovereign Houses of Europe). Vol. 26, 1869.