Page 44 →The Peace Family

The traditional narrative of the history of the College of Charleston includes caricatured descriptions of a man called “Tom” or “Thomas” Peace. The first reference to include both his first and last names occurs in 1855, on a receipt that he signed for his pay, but there are numerous earlier references to a “Tom” or “Thomas” who is almost certainly the same person.⁵ The fact that Peace signed for his wages might suggest that he was legally free at that time, but this is almost certainly not the case. After the passage of Act No. 2236 in 1820, it was impossible for an enslaved person to be freed without an act by the South Carolina Legislature, and no such record is extant.⁶ The earlier records, as we will see, indicate strongly that he was enslaved when he began working for the college in 1829, and there is no reason to believe that he was officially emancipated before 1863. The records also indicate that Peace and his family were removed from their home in 1855, when the college began construction on new facilities. From city records, we learn that Peace married a free Black woman, Isabella, and that they had five children, three of whom survived into adulthood: Rebecca, St. Julien, and Eugene.⁷ Additionally, Thomas and Isabella had at least seven grandchildren and at least three great-grandchildren. Census records indicate that their descendants lived in Detroit, Boston, Chicago, and Charleston.

A funeral notice published in the Charleston News and Courier by members of the Unity and Friendship Society, a prominent African-American burial society in Charleston, reports that Thomas Peace died three years to the month after Isabella.⁸ In that notice, N. T. Spencer, secretary of the Unity and Friendship Society, summoned members “to attend the funeral of [their] late brother Thomas Peace.”⁹ Peace was buried at the Unity and Friendship Page 47 →Society cemetery located on Cunnington Avenue adjacent to several other large burial grounds such as the Friendly Union, Humane and Friendly, Magnolia, Bethany, and Lawrence cemeteries.¹⁰ The cemetery—maintained by the Brown Fellowship Society, another prominent African-American burial society—also relocated to this area after remaining members sold the Society’s lots to the Catholic Diocese of Charleston for the expansion of Bishop England High School in 1945. Since 2005, this same hallowed ground has been occupied by the College of Charleston’s Marlene and Nathan Addlestone Library.¹¹

One year after Peace’s death, his eldest daughter, Rebecca, wrote a beautiful, poetic tribute to her father:

The death of this good and true man has left a void not only in the home circle but in the community where he lived and labored for four score years, filling responsible positions with honor and retaining the confidence of those reposing trust in him. His courtesy endeared him to all with whom he came in contact and his entire demeanor stamped him an honest man. Devotion to duty was his Polar star from which he never severed. A consistent Christian for half a century, he adorned his profession by an exemplary life. The loss of his beloved wife cast a gloom over the evening of his days, which was intensified by the sad taking of his son without a moment’s warning. Alas, the beautiful rod broken, and the state of his declining days removed, nature succumbed and his buoyant spirits gave way under the shock. Solaced by the care and affection of a devoted daughter, he gently passed away to be forever with the Lord.¹²

This memorial is very different from the recollections offered in the earlier obituary. It is more personal, loving, and exceedingly tender. It mentions the tragedies of losing his wife, Isabella, in 1883 and his son St. Julian in 1886, citing these as reasons for his decline. Rebecca’s words affirm many of the personal characteristics mentioned in the earlier memorial, but they also call attention to the strength of Peace’s faith and his devotion to his family. No longer the caricature “Old Tom,” Peace becomes a recognizable man, someone whose worth and purpose exceed the service he provided for his employer.

Few other facts about Thomas Peace’s life are extant. As slavery scholar Saidiya Hartman poignantly notes, “the archive yields no exhaustive account” of the lives of enslaved and marginalized people such as Thomas and Isabella Peace.¹³ There are no birth records, no childhood addresses, Page 48 →and few clues about extended family. Still an honest and repair-driven effort to reconstruct the Peace story is possible if using a Black feminist epistemological approach alongside critical theory and more traditional historical research methods. At times, these approaches provide evidence that is more probable than certain. These limitations notwithstanding, careful analysis of the historical record, however scant, yields a fuller picture of Thomas Peace and his family. It also documents his relationship with the College of Charleston.

College records establish that starting in January 1829, the treasurer, Charles Fraser, paid a woman named Ann Wagner twenty-four dollars “for Tom’s wages, 3 months.”¹⁴ According to a city directory published in 1831, Ann Wagner resided at 52 St. Philip Street at the heart of campus in the antebellum era.¹⁵ Tom was hired to “ring the bell, keep every part of the college clean together with the yard, cut the wood and make fires in the winter, keep the philosophical apparatus clean, and be in constant attendance when not otherwise engaged to do the duties of a messenger.”¹⁶ In April 1829, the college increased the payment to include two dollars per month for “Tom’s lodging,” suggesting that Wagner may have rented accommodations for Tom and that the college reimbursed her for those expenses. Thereafter, Wagner received ten dollars per month, paid in quarterly installments of thirty dollars for Tom’s labors and lodging through 1838.¹⁷ In 1838, the College transitioned from a private to a municipal entity. Subsequent changes in accounting and budgeting operations likely explain why receipts from Tom’s wages were no longer recorded. However, in March of that year, members of the board of trustees, which now included the city council, reauthorized administrators to “engage Mrs. Wagner’s boy, Tom, for the use of the College.”¹⁸ These records demonstrate that the college employed at least one enslaved person, Tom, whose wages were paid to his enslaver. Further evidence suggests strongly that this enslaved person, identified only as “Tom,” is Thomas Peace.

At the time of his death, Peace was said to be at least seventy-five years old, which would make him at least seventeen years old in 1829, certainly old enough to be hired out for a job that required a measure of self-sufficiency.¹⁹ We can also be certain that Thomas Peace was enslaved during the early decades of the nineteenth century. Had Peace been free, his name, age, occupation, and other demographic information would have been recorded in capitation records, which the city used to collect taxes on free Black persons.²⁰ Capitation taxes essentially penalized free Black people for earning wages for labor that would otherwise have been unpaid. In this way, the taxes Page 49 →reinforced the racial subjugation of individuals who occupied what historian Bernard Powers calls an anomalous status “dictated by the region’s commitment to slavery.”²¹ The city had financial and ideological incentives to keep capitation records current and complete. The absence of Thomas Peace’s name provides strong evidence of his enslavement and reinforces the speculation that Ann Wagner hired out his services to the College of Charleston. As Tiya Miles points out “endeavoring to reconstruct any history, but especially the histories of the marginalized, requires an attentiveness to absence as well as presence.”²² In this case, his absence in tax records evidences his enslaved status.

The minutes of the College of Charleston’s board of trustees provide additional evidence. In 1843, those documents note not only that Tom was working at the college but also that he needed housing.²³ Ann Wagner, it should be noted, died in 1843. As we will see, she left considerable debt, and her estate was liquidated shortly after her death. The evidence suggests that Tom remained the property of the Wagner family until her death. The fact that his living arrangements became unstable at the same time as Wagner’s home was sold provides compelling evidence that the enslaved Tom, whose labor was sold beginning in 1829, is the same man who needed housing in 1843.

Furthermore, in the course of campus expansion and construction in 1855, the college removed Thomas and Isabella Peace, along with their children, from their home. The fact that the Peace family was living until that time in housing located on the campus of the college further substantiates that Thomas Peace had once been enslaved by Ann Wagner. The college assented to Tom’s living on campus at her death only to revoke the arrangement twelve years later. Cumulatively, the evidence makes it all but certain that the Thomas Peace who died in 1887 was the same person who began working at the college in 1829.

Municipal and archival records allow us to fill in more gaps. Because Thomas Peace was enslaved during most of his life, there is little documentary evidence of his ancestry. According to capitation tax records, however, his wife, Isabella Peace, was a free woman of color living in Charleston as early as 1843. Contrary to the common white and patriarchal custom of women taking the surnames of their husbands upon marriage, Tom, a man born into slavery and possessing a first name only, with no generational wealth and property to convey, chose to adopt the family name of Isabella and her ancestors, all free women of color making their lives in Charleston.

Page 50 →There were at least six free women of color bearing the last name “Peace” living and working in Charleston from as early as 1790 up until the 1860s.²⁴ Given their ages and the proximity of their dwellings listed in capitation tax records, it is likely these women were grandmothers, aunts, sisters, and perhaps even mother to Isabella Peace. There is, of course, an abundance of records for Ann Wagner, and these provide important insights for Peace’s life. If, as historian Stephanie McCurry holds, “historical visibility is everywhere related to social power,” locating Thomas Peace outside of the institutional archives of the College of Charleston requires investigating documentary footprints left by members of the elite white family that enslaved him.²⁵

The widow of a wealthy lawyer and planter, Ann Wagner (née Hrabowski) became the head of household while her three sons were minors. As a result, she played a significant role in negotiating her family’s business affairs, which included publicly buying and selling enslaved people and conducting real estate transactions for dwellings located near the college campus. Wagner was born in St. Augustine, Florida, on October 2, 1769, and died in Charleston on March 5, 1843.²⁶ In 1788, she married George Wagner, and the couple had at least four children: John, George Jr., Effingham, and States. Like many white families in the antebellum South, the Wagners accumulated wealth through the systematic oppression and enslavement of Indigenous and African-descended people.

George Wagner died in 1808, leaving Ann to manage the family’s affairs until her sons came of age. For a time, Ann maintained the family residence located at 101 Broad Street, a relatively affluent section of Charleston. Ann also retained significant status, as evidenced by the label “planter” assigned to her in the 1809 Directory for the District of Charleston, Comprising the Places of Residence and Occupation of the White Inhabitants. It was uncommon for a woman to be designated “planter,” and she almost certainly inherited the title from her recently departed husband. The designation “planter” also served the interests of her brother Richard Hrabowski, the compiler and publisher of the city directory for the year 1809.²⁷

In 1814 and 1818, Ann Wagner corresponded with her family, most often, her son Effingham, while traveling up and down the eastern seaboard visiting family and friends. She wrote of attending parties, enjoying elaborate dinners, and visiting friends at their country homes, noting in one letter, “I have not had time [to write more often] for the very great attention of my friends are such that we are not allowed to have one hour to spare.” Her days, she further noted, were “spent in one continuous roar of laughter and good humor.”²⁸ Wagner’s 1814 trip took her to Petersburg, Virginia; Providence, Page 51 →Rhode Island; Boston, Massachusetts; and parts of New York. She shared news of family and friends, social outings, and experiences. However, the family was experiencing financial pressures. Wagner wrote to Effingham, who by this time had taken on responsibility for the family’s finances, asking whether he had “sold the rice,” collected income from rental properties, and, most significantly, received wages for the services of people the Wagner family enslaved.²⁹ Wagner also wrote that “it gives me some uneasiness to know that you have so much trouble with my business but I hope you will be able to make out.” From her rooms in Boston, she lamented: “I see so many things here that I should like but fear my limited funds will not hold out.”³⁰ Hoping that Effingham would “be able to make [her] a remittance soon,” Ann turned to discussing not only the wages of the people she enslaved but also Effingham’s management and supervision of those people. She felt “great pleasure to hear they behave so well” and asked Effingham to “tell Paul I will bring him a handsome present and he shall be rewarded for his good behavior.” Wagner closed her letter by instructing Effingham to also tell “the rest of them,” the enslaved people, how “pleased” she was “to hear they behave so well.” In a postscript to this letter, she singled out an enslaved person named Thomas, writing “I hope Thomas is a good boy. If he is, I will bring him a new hat.”³¹ This brief mention very likely provides the earliest reference to Thomas Peace. Although whites often applied the term “boy” to any enslaved man regardless of age, here it seems probable that “Thomas” actually was a child at the time. Wagner’s promise of a gift suggests that she may have had some fondness for young Thomas and saw him as being somewhat different, apart, or exceptional from other enslaved people in the household. On the basis of his estimated age at his death, Thomas Peace was likely born in or a few years before 1812, which would make him a toddler or young boy in 1814.³²

Wagner’s financial struggles culminated in a significant liquidation of her assets in 1816. According to the Charleston City Directories, she sold her posh residence at 101 Broad Street and relocated to St. Philip Street, a more working-class neighborhood near the college.³³ In February of that year, a bill of sale recorded in Charleston District indicated that Wagner and her two eldest sons, John and George Jr., sold fifty-three enslaved people to one Henry McAlpin.³⁴ If her earlier correspondence suggested a somewhat benevolent relationship with her “servants,” this action demonstrates her willingness to participate in the cruelty of chattel slavery. Wagner used the profit from the sale, nearly twenty-two thousand dollars ($21,857.14), “for myself and as guardian for Caroline, Emeline, Clara, and Eugenia Wagner, Page 52 →Henry Coming, and Effingham Wagner.”³⁵ The names of the people sold were Jack, Nanny, Sampson, Susan, Diane, Jack, Betsy, Emba, Nelly, Paris, [Fortimor], Hector, Jenny, Caesar, Marian, William, Tom, Hester, Bob, Robin, April, Hetty, Venus, Juba, Bella, Binah, Peter, Joe, Johnny, Harriot, Nanny, Jupiter, Sarah, Hercules, November, Chloe, Will, Eve, Cindy, Jimmy, Philis, Judy, Dinah, Esoph, Dick, Loena, Dick, July, Frank, [Fortimor], Philis, Comba, and Old Lady.³⁶

In 1818, Ann Wagner traveled to Fishkill, New York, to attend the wedding of her eldest son, John, who was working at West Point Academy. During her visit, she wrote separate letters to her other two sons, Effingham and George Jr., inquiring about the possibility of gifting John and his new wife, Lydia, “two or three thousand dollars out of the principal of my estate” to “make a beginning in his profession and life.”³⁷ During this trip, Wagner also visited New York, Philadelphia, and Providence. Again, she frequently inquired about the “conduct” of the people enslaved by the Wagner family as well as their wages. In a letter written from New York City in May of 1818, Wagner expressed “hope that all things go on well and that the servants are obedient and give no trouble for I shall be much hurt if they do.”³⁸ Her words express the inherent contradictions of enslavers. To raise money, Wagner willingly sold enslaved people, not only treating them as commodities but also undoubtedly separating family members and friends. In her correspondence, she projects a personal relationship with the same people she considered property. In the following months, Wagner repeated her inquiries about the “servants’” obedience and the collection of their wages. From Fishkill, Wagner wrote, “I hope the negroes conduct well and you received their wages punctually”; from Providence, she remarked, “I hope the servant’s wages have been punctually paid and that they give you as little trouble as possible.”³⁹

Ann Wagner died at the age of seventy-three from apoplexy in March of 1843.⁴⁰ Her estate inventory listed household goods and furniture in great detail, and every item she owned was sold to pay debts attached to her estate. Column after column enumerated chairs, clocks, plates, pots, silver cutlery, and more.⁴¹ There is not a last will and testament on record for Ann Wagner; she likely died intestate. These circumstances make it difficult to know exactly what became of “Tom” or Thomas. The record in the board of trustees’ minutes referring to Thomas needing a home in 1843 strongly suggests that he was still associated with both Ann Wagner, or at least the Wagner family, and the college at the time of her death.⁴²

Page 53 →Documents related to Ann Wagner’s oldest son, Dr. John Wagner, provide more evidence of Tom’s possible whereabouts in the late 1830s and early 1840s. John Wagner graduated from Yale University and studied medicine in New York, Britain, and France before returning to South Carolina to set up a medical practice.⁴³ In Charleston, Wagner was a well-known surgeon. In 1829, he was appointed assistant chair of pathological and surgical anatomy at the South Carolina Medical College. Several years later in 1832, he was promoted to full chair of surgery, a position he occupied until his death from an enlarged liver in 1841.⁴⁴ In this role, Wagner participated in the inhumane practice of using enslaved people’s bodies to demonstrate surgical techniques. In her research on “medicalizing blackness,” historian Rana Hogarth has discovered several advertisements published by Dr. John Wagner in Charleston newspapers soliciting the patronage of “slaves and coloured persons, laboring under surgical diseases and accidents.” Hogarth demonstrates that the “unfortunate slave patient who went to Wagner’s infirmary was not a recipient of care but rather a teaching apparatus.”⁴⁵

This inherently depraved practice, not uncommon among physicians in the English-speaking Atlantic World, did not lead to Wagner’s success. His death, most likely due to alcoholism, left his wife, Lydia, and six children destitute. In May of 1842, Wagner’s widow petitioned the Court of Equity of the State of South Carolina for authorization to sell Wagner’s pew at St. Michael’s Church, as his other assets, with the exception of “some house servants,” had already been sold to reduce his sizable debts. His principal liabilities were owed to his own brother, Effingham. Lydia Wagner’s petition indicated that the “house servants” were already mortgaged to her brother-in-law and, therefore, she “pray[ed] to be authorized to sell the pew and apply the proceeds to the payment of her late husband’s debts.”⁴⁶

John Wagner’s estate appraisal was not recorded until May of 1843, just after his mother’s death. It is probable that Effingham Wagner balanced the family budget in 1843, consolidating assets and debts from his mother and brother at the same time. Whatever the case, when it was eventually inventoried and appraised, John Wagner’s estate included seven enslaved people, quite possibly the “house slaves” to whom Lydia Wagner referred in her petition. Included in the list is “Thomas.”⁴⁷ If this person is Thomas Peace, he was likely engaged by both Ann and her son, John Wagner, at different intervals in addition to his duties at the college.

Several months later, in December 1843, seven enslaved people from the Wagner estate were sold at public auction. Multiple creditors traded in Page 54 →the bonds they held over John Wagner’s estate for ownership of Abraham, Phoebe, Harriette, Hannah, Betsey, James, and Thomas.⁴⁸ One creditor, F. W. Capers, purchased Thomas for two hundred twenty dollars. At the time, Capers had just resigned as a member of the faculty at the College of Charleston to join that of The Citadel Academy. Capers was an alumnus and valedictorian of the College of Charleston’s class of 1840.⁴⁹ As a student, Capers may have interacted with the man known as “Tom, the janitor.”

As mentioned earlier, from 1838 to 1855, the college’s cash receipt ledger ceased to document expenses such as salaries and wages. The quarterly funds paid for Tom’s labor vanished from those records, but his association with the college continued. On October 14, 1844, the board of trustees “resolved that Thomas the Janitor of the College be allowed to occupy the building on the premises during the pleasure of the Trustees-he repairing it and making it habitable, at his own expense.”⁵⁰ At this point, Thomas had worked at the college, perhaps with concurrent duties in Wagner family households, for fifteen years. It was in the college’s best interest to provide a solution to the housing instability that Peace experienced. It is also likely that as he aged and his tenure at the college lengthened, Peace edged away from the status he occupied as a younger person—that of an enslaved person—and closer to that of a free person of color. This trend is well established by scholars of free Black urban life in nineteenth-century South Carolina. Marina Wikramanayake, for example, argues that the “conditions in the city of Charleston yielded a peculiar class of blacks who operated in a … state of limbo, neither slave nor free. As increasing urbanization offered more opportunities for employment, it had been the practice of slaveholders in the cities to allow slaves to ‘hire their own time.’ … Such slaves were afforded a higher degree of laxity than the usual and often lived away from their owners.”⁵¹ Whatever autonomy Thomas Peace enjoyed was tied to his labors at the College of Charleston.

The precarity of Peace’s provisional freedom and living conditions eventually led to crisis. In 1855, the college displaced Thomas Peace and his young family from their home at the center of campus to make way for what would become the institution’s first freestanding library on the grounds of the iconic greenspace colloquially referred to as “The Cistern.” The development of that area of campus was part of a large expansion that had begun before the Civil War. The primary classroom building, now known as Randolph Hall, was enlarged and expanded from 1850 to 1851. At the same time, the college constructed the building known as “Porter’s Lodge,” designed by architect Edward Brickell White, along George Street to “aggrandize” the new south-facing entrance to campus.⁵² Several years later, on January 20, 1855, Page 55 →the college embarked on efforts to construct a new library building located on the west side of the modern day “Cistern” known as “College Green.”⁵³ It is likely that the Peace family was displaced in this early stage of the construction. The library was formally opened on July 24, 1856.⁵⁴ Because the Peace family home stood in the path of these changes, the college demolished it without ceremony.

In October 1856, Peace submitted a petition to the Charleston City Council requesting two hundred dollars for the loss of the home he had “fitted up at his own expense.” According to city council proceedings, the removal of the house took place without Peace’s consent and was “detrimental to his pecuniary interests.”⁵⁵ A subcommittee of the city council denied Peace’s request. Noting only that Peace “derived the benefit of his expenditure from the occupancy of the building,” the committee members disregarded the labor and money that Thomas and Isabella Peace had invested in their home. The affluent (and all-white) council members also ignored the fact that such a loss for someone like Thomas Peace, with a young family straddling the limits of slavery and freedom, would be a cruel hardship. Instead, the committee stated that Peace should be “regarded in no other light than as a tenant at will.”⁵⁶ Outside of the significant harm the College perpetrated in displacing Peace and his family in 1855, we cannot say exactly when, where, and by whom he was treated fairly or unfairly. However, it is very likely that his bodily autonomy became increasingly attached to his role at the College of Charleston and connections to the elite white administrators, faculty, and students there. Again, as a Black man living in the tenuous space between slavery and freedom, finding alternative employment would have been difficult for Peace before legal emancipation.

Although conditions have changed, new iterations of the same restrictions on job opportunities persist at the College of Charleston. In her 2008 investigation of working conditions and experiences of Black service workers at the college, Kaylee Rogers conducted interviews that document how persistent this precarity is for many Black employees. The past, regrettably, is present. As one worker explained, “A lot of people are not getting paid what they should … not getting paid what they’re worth … brought in because they can’t get a job nowhere else … [They] get stuck in the system.”⁵⁷

Thomas Peace spent his life and made a family with his wife, Isabella, a free woman of color who was born around 1830 and worked as a seamstress and Page 56 →mantua maker.⁵⁸ The process of uncovering more about Isabella’s early life and lineage—including determining at what point her ancestors became free—is both similar to and different from that of reconstructing Thomas Peace’s early life. Traditional records rarely document the lives and experiences of nonwhite, marginalized, and oppressed people such as Thomas and Isabella Peace. As Marisa J. Fuentes notes, an incomplete archive, dependent on the “conditions under which our subjects lived,” greatly limits “our ability to recount.”⁵⁹ Michel-Rolph Trouillout extends the point by demonstrating how social power structures create “silences” around marginalized populations that persist throughout “the process of historical production.”⁶⁰ The limitations of the archive, many of which stem from the unequal distribution of power, render it wholly inadequate for preserving records of marginalized lives. For this reason, Fuentes urges historians to “resist the authority of the traditional archive that legitimates structures built on racial and gendered subjugation.”⁶¹ Yet without the archival materials preserved by the very people who enslaved and oppressed the Peaces, it would be even more difficult to reconstruct their lives. One can resist the authority of the flawed archive while deriving benefit from its contents. In the case of Isabella Peace, state-produced records such as capitation tax rolls and municipal birth and death records both document and erase her life.

Isabella was almost certainly born free. In the eighteenth century as Amrita Chakrabarti Myers demonstrates there were a number ways Black women could emancipate themselves and their families, including purchasing themselves and their kin, filing affidavits with the courts, drafting wills, engaging in extralegal trusts, and building alliances with persons who could help them on their “quest for liberty.”⁶² Many manumissions, however, remain untraceable because “owners and laborers alike believed it was unnecessary to formalize such deeds.”⁶³ By the time Isabella was born in 1829, these opportunities had almost entirely vanished. In the early nineteenth century, white fears became especially acute, in large measure because of uprisings in so-called “slave societies,” such as Haiti, Jamaica, and Virginia. An explosive growth in Charleston’s free Black community—from five hundred eighty-six people in 1790 to fourteen hundred seventy-four people by 1820—further fueled these fears.⁶⁴ Most significantly, the state legislature passed the Act of 1820, which made manumission possible only by an act of law. The Act also prohibited migrations of free persons of color into and out of the state.⁶⁵ Black children, however, could still be born free under the doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem, or “the offspring follows the belly.” This doctrine, originally established in 1662 by the Virginia Assembly, ensured the Page 57 →enslavement of children born to enslaved mothers. It also “incentivized the rape of enslaved Black women by their white enslavers.”⁶⁶ Although intended to subjugate Black people, it could also provide for their freedom. Isabella’s mother, the evidence suggests, must have been a free Black person, and that freedom transferred to her daughter at birth, as it would later to Isabella’s children.

Isabella Peace paid capitation taxes from 1843 until 1864, which is to say from the time she was fourteen until she was thirty-five. The records for these taxes document that she lived on Wentworth and Society Streets in 1843 and 1844, respectively. From 1845 to 1851, she lived on St. Philip Street. It was during this time that she likely began a relationship with Thomas Peace, who was living on the campus of the college. In the capitation tax book dating to 1852, Isabella Peace is listed as living at the corner of College and George Streets.⁶⁷ In 1855 and 1857 (there is no extant capitation tax book for 1856) Isabella Peace was living at 24 Laurens Street, which coincides with the Peace family’s displacement from their campus home in early 1855 as a result of the construction of the new library.⁶⁸

In her book on marriages between enslaved and free Black people, historian Tera W. Hunter notes that women “made up a greater percentage of free black populations” because they were “manumitted more often than men.” Because of this demographic imbalance, free Black women were “forced to seek spouses outside their cohort, including among the enslaved.”⁶⁹ As was the case with Thomas Peace, “slaves able to hire themselves out and live independent of their masters were most likely to be in positions to marry or engage in intimate arrangements with free blacks.”⁷⁰ This “uneven achievement of freedom meant that many blacks found themselves related to or married to unfree people,” in what Hunter calls “mixed-status marriages,” which were part of a “larger pattern of irregular marriages … among slaves, quasi-free people, and poor populations across the color line.”⁷¹

Isabella established herself as a successful mantua maker and seamstress. She also apprenticed several enslaved women. In an 1855 letter to his daughter, a local attorney named David Lewis Wardlaw reported that he had “placed” two enslaved women, Lizzy and Martha, with Isabel Peace, whom he described as a “colored mantua-maker, wife of Reverend Peace, colored janitor of the Charleston College.”⁷² It is likely that, in addition to having the help of Lizzy and Martha, Isabella Peace also took pains to teach them the seamstress trade in Charleston.

The fact that Isabella established and expanded her own business is remarkable. As Tera Hunter points out, antebellum culture restricted free Black women largely to “domestic labor in private homes.”⁷³ White women had opportunities to work in shops and factories producing “candy, clothing, textiles, paper boxes” and other commodities, but the “range of job opportunities for black women” was even “more narrow than for black men.”⁷⁴ Isabella Peace and her descendants were part of a small segment of the population able to move away from domestic work and into more desirable, and presumably lucrative, jobs in the needle trade and later, as we will see, in the classroom.

Page 58 →

Page 59 →Because the first recorded generation of free Black Peace family members in Charleston straddles the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it will be helpful to outline the number of ways in which Black people came to occupy this so-called “free” status during the age of slavery. Although sparse, records for members of the free Black Peace family go back as early as 1827 and include death certificates for two women in the same generation. This first generation of free Black Peace family members included a woman called Pender Peace, who was born in Charleston in the year 1737 and died on September 2, 1827, of “old age.”⁷⁵ Another woman called Molly Peace was born in 1743 and died on September 13, 1831.⁷⁶ These women lived to be ninety and eighty-eight years old, respectively.

Barbara Peace, who was born in 1790 and died sixty years later in 1850, is the sole member of the second generation of the free Black Peace family documented in the extant historical record.⁷⁷ Four women, Julia, Emily M., Sarah G., and Isabella, belonged to the third generation of the free Black Peace family in Charleston. Isabella Peace was born in 1829 and lived to be almost fifty-five years old, passing away in 1883.⁷⁸ One young man, Joe Peace, was also part of this third generation. Born in 1829, Joe Peace was enslaved by Molly Peace. He died at the age of eleven in 1831. He was buried at the Bethel Graveyard.⁷⁹ Given his age and the common circumstances under which free Black people often kept their families—consisting of both enslaved and free people—together, it is very likely that Joe Peace was Molly’s grandson, nephew, or another such relation. The fourth generation consisted of Thomas and Isabella Peace’s five children: Rebecca, Thomas Jr., Eugene, Isabella, and St. Julian. Two of their children, Thomas Jr. and Isabella, did not survive childhood. Death records indicate that Thomas Jr. died on February 25, 1860, at the age of seven from tonsillitis. He was buried at the First Baptist Colored Cemetery. Young Isabella died on May 10, 1862, from whooping cough. She was only one month old and was buried at St. Patrick’s Cemetery.⁸⁰

Except for Rebecca, who was born between 1853 and 1855, all the Peace children were born during the Civil War. A note adjacent to Rebecca’s name in the 1870 census indicates that she attended school and was able to read and write. Rebecca attended the Avery Normal Institute, which was located on St. Philip’s Street, in the same neighborhood where Thomas and Isabella Peace started their family. The school, originally named the Saxton School, was founded in October 1865, during the Reconstruction era by the American Missionary Association and led by Francis L. Cardozo. It became the Page 60 →Avery Normal Institute on May 5, 1868. At its inception, the school served one thousand children, nearly a quarter of Charleston’s Black school-aged population.⁸¹ Rebecca and her siblings were among the first students to matriculate at the school. Rebecca graduated in 1873 and according to notes jotted in the margins of the commencement program, her teachers and administrators “hope[d] she may teach in this school soon.”⁸²

In 1876, the twenty-six-year-old Rebecca married Benjamin Hurlong of Alabama. The young couple lived with members of their extended family at 12 Nassau Street in Charleston. Other members of the household included Thomas Peace, who worked as a porter at South Carolina Loan and Trust, Isabella Peace, Julian Peace, and Eugene Peace. Both Julian and Eugene worked as barbers.⁸³ According to the 1878 and 1879 city directories, Rebecca was a teacher and Benjamin was a barber at the posh Pavilion Hotel.⁸⁴ Tera Hunter notes that “few black women were able to escape common labor and enter professions such as teachers.”⁸⁵ Rebecca’s accomplishments were remarkable and would not have been possible without the education she received at the Avery Normal Institute and her parents’ encouragement and direction.

Rebecca’s teaching career, however, did not last long. From 1878 to 1879, she taught at a school “named for the antislavery Union colonel Robert Gould Shaw and leased to the City of Charleston by its trustees on the condition that it employ at least some black teachers.”⁸⁶ She may have stopped teaching to care for her four children: Isabelle, Raymond, Granville, and Ada, all of whom grew up in Charleston. Benjamin Hurlong died in 1900, when their youngest child, Ada, was eight years old and attending school with her brother Granville.⁸⁷ At this time, Rebecca began working as a seamstress using skills she learned from her mother. As both a teacher and seamstress, Rebecca, like Isabella, was among the growing ranks of Black women laboring outside domestic service. Opportunities for Black women, however, were still severely limited, and progress, although real, was slow. In the city of Atlanta, for example, “the proportion of black women in domestic work dropped from 92 to 84 percent” between 1900 and 1910.⁸⁸ Rebecca died in 1935.

Thomas and Isabella’s second child, Eugene Peace, was born in 1861. According to the census taken of Charleston residents in 1861, the Peaces then lived at 40 Coming Street.⁸⁹ Like other members of his family, Eugene worked as a barber. According to city directories, in 1878 and 1879, he worked for J. W. Aveilhe, and from 1881 to 1883, he worked with Black barber George A. Lord at 484 King Street.⁹⁰ He married Elizabeth “Bettie” Tomlinson around 1882. Page 61 →Both were literate.⁹¹ By 1889, Eugene and Bettie had relocated to Philadelphia. A baptismal record for a son, Harold St. Julian Peace, was recorded at the Crucifixion Episcopal Church on August 31, 1889.⁹² Eugene and Bettie had two more sons while living in Philadelphia: Eugene LeRoy (called LeRoy), born October 1892, and Robert Tucker (called Tucker), born in 1898. Sometime during the first decade of the twentieth century, Eugene Peace’s family relocated to New York City. Eugene died sometime around 1909. The 1910 census indicates that Bettie was a forty-eight-year-old widow who had been married for twenty-seven years. Their sons, Harold, LeRoy, and Tucker, lived with their mother in an apartment located at 125 West 133rd Street in Manhattan. Bettie worked as a trained nurse in a private home. At age twenty, Harold worked in the card room at a club. Seventeen-year-old LeRoy worked in the cloakroom of a club, perhaps the same one as his brother. Young Robert, twelve years old, was likely still in school.⁹³

St. Julien Peace, Thomas and Isabella’s third child, was born in July of 1863 and likely attended the Avery School along with his sister, Rebecca, and brother Eugene. By the age fifteen, he was working as a barber with his brother-in-law, Benjamin Hurlong, at the Pavilion Hotel.⁹⁴ An advertisement in the 1877 city directory claimed that the Pavilion was a “first-class hotel … situated on Meeting Street on one of the widest, handsomest, and busiest thoroughfares of the city within steps of the largest wholesale houses and connected by street railway with the Railroad Depots, Post Office, Banks, etc.” The advertisement boasted that the clerks were “competent and polite,” and the servants were “quick and attentive.”⁹⁵

Tragically, St. Julian Peace died of an accidental gunshot wound early in the morning on March 6, 1886, at the Pavilion Hotel. He was only twenty-three years old. Preparing for the day, hotel workers were startled by the sound of a pistol coming from the engine room of the hotel. The Charleston News and Courier reported that co-workers found St. Julian Peace “lying on the floor with his head in a pool of blood, unconscious but still living.”⁹⁶ A doctor did “all in his power to relieve the wounded boy, but in vain.” Witnesses overheard a conversation between engineer A. T. Doyle and porter Peter White over the “respective abilities of Buffalo Bill and Dr. Carver as marksmen.” White summoned his friend St. Julian Peace, and the two men engaged in a friendly tussle. Peace playfully brandished a razor, placing the back of the blade toward White’s throat. White then “put his hand in his pocket and pulled out his pistol.” Moments later, witnesses heard the shot and saw Peace fall to the ground. In the aftermath, “White seemed more affected by grief at having slain his friend than by any fear of Page 62 →consequences to himself.”⁹⁷ St. Julian Peace was buried at the Unity and Friendship Cemetery.

Without question, Thomas Peace left a favorable impression on many faculty members and students. Alumnus James De Bow includes “Tom” in a sentimental reflection of his college days:

In the old campus, and under the shady mulberries how often met to discourse on many a theme pertaining more to aught else in the world than the coming recitation or lecture till Tom, whose fame belongs to the college, and shall descend as an heirloom when his ghostly shadow only may glide through those halls, sounded from his belfry, and the noisy tread of feet told of a new shuffle of classes and of our hour.⁹⁸

De Bow’s representation seems mostly innocent and charitable. Tom remains in the background of his description, almost a part of the scenery, but his well-deserved fame, De Bow assures the reader, will endure long after his death.

Other depictions of Thomas Peace are far more sinister. They either erase Peace or distort the nature of his relationship with the college. As a result of institutional and cultural colonialism and the collective legacies of slavery, the actual Peace family story disappears from the published histories of the College of Charleston.⁹⁹ Until recently, in fact, highly mythologized historical narratives that champion the accomplishments of faculty, students, and administrators, most of whom were white and male, occupy the bulk of the institution’s historical imagination. As discussed at the beginning of the essay, the obituary published in the Charleston News and Courier hid the college’s exploitive behavior and normalized oppressive racial hierarchies under a panegyric veneer. This was far from the only attempt to appropriate Peace’s life for disreputable purposes.

James H. Easterby’s 1930 history of the college, for example, omits the fact that “Tom’s” wages were not paid directly to him but, instead, to his enslaver. In this foundational history of the College of Charleston, Easterby writes “with the erection of the ‘new College edifice’ (Randolph Hall) in 1828 the trustees had thought seriously of purchasing a ‘servant,’ but the idea seems to have been forestalled by Mr. Adams. A short time later he reported that he had hired a janitor at $100 per annum.”¹⁰⁰ Easterby holds that “it is Page 63 →not improbable that [this janitor] was the Tom Peace whose faithful services were still winning the approbation of the faculty and students in the early [eighteen] fifties.”¹⁰¹ Using the common euphemism “servant,” Easterby first obscures the college’s participation with enslavement and then misrepresents Peace’s biography to support his claim.

A few years later, a highly fictionalized Thomas Peace appears as a character in Emmett Robinson’s play, Lewis Gibbes—A Legend for Tomorrow. To celebrate the centennial anniversary of the college’s conversion from a private to a municipal institution, a large cast of students, alumni, and community members enacted the play “on the evening of May 10, 1937.”¹⁰² The play centers on Gibbes, who served as professor of mathematics, astronomy, and chemistry from 1837 until 1892. The preface acknowledges that the story was a “legend based on certain incidents taken from the life of Lewis Reeves Gibbes and the history of the College of Charleston.”¹⁰³ The author also admits to taking liberties with some aspects of the plot where “securing the exact picture of the period” would be impossible. In the absence of direct evidence, Robinson was “guided by [his] own imagination” and “let the ideals of the theme carry through to achieve a dramatic result.”¹⁰⁴ The play celebrates a romanticized southern past, repeatedly referring to Charleston as the “Athens of the South,” which is to say an exclusive arena dominated by the intellectual pursuits of white men such as Lewis Gibbes and Charles Fraser. When Gibbes arrives in Charleston to begin his academic career, Charles Fraser’s character muses, “[Y]ou see, Lewis, it is for such men as ourselves to see that our city becomes an example of well-rounded community life. It is our duty to emulate the noble Greeks in our love for our native city. We must cause her to put on the beautiful garments of literature and science.”¹⁰⁵

Tom Peace’s character opens the play. The scene takes place on a street near the Cooper River and depicts Black workers preparing for the arrival of a passenger ship, “scattered about in small groups singing a work-spiritual.”¹⁰⁶ Peace’s character, portrayed by Willam H. Grimball Jr., enters the stage, carrying a letter, and speaks in Gullah dialect with a dock worker named Sam. Stage directions scribbled in the margin of the typescript call for “Negro spirituals being sung at [curtain] rise.”¹⁰⁷ The racial division could not be clearer. Literature, science, and the classical heritage belong to white intellectuals. Hard work and presumed comforts of spiritual music belong to Blacks. Each, as depicted in this play, knows their place, and each benefits from the separation of spheres. During the early to middle parts of the twentieth century, many white writers and singers in Charleston performed Page 64 →similar versions of Black life to reinforce the white supremacist norms of the antebellum era. By appropriating Black music and language, all-white groups such as the Society for the Preservation of Spirituals, reinscribed racist ideas and policies while glorifying life and culture during a bygone era.¹⁰⁸ Emmett Robinson appropriates Thomas Peace’s life for exactly this purpose.

Robinson, however, goes further than many of his contemporaries. The play not only offers Black characters functioning as happy subservients but also stokes racial fears by presenting a subplot that includes a rebellion of enslaved people. The same actors who played the parts of Tom Peace and Sam also played the parts of the “first and second negro insurrectionists.”¹⁰⁹ This doubling of roles no doubt reduced production costs. It also reinforced white constructions of Blackness. Under white control, Black people serve as happy, docile workers; outside that control, they threaten social order. Having the same actor play Peace and a violent insurrectionist, the organizers of the play suggested that Thomas Peace’s civility and purpose originated in white social structures. The fictionalized Thomas Peace promotes the very ideology that oppressed the real Thomas Peace and his family.

The mistreatment and misrepresentation of Thomas Peace did not end in the 1930s. In a 1961 news article, John G. Leland repeats Easterby’s falsehoods and introduces another: that the building now known as Porter’s Lodge served as a “residence for the janitor.”¹¹⁰ Leland writes, that Peace was hired at the salary of one hundred dollars per year by Jasper Adams, president of the college, in 1828, after Adams “refused to go along with a proposal by the trustees to ‘purchase a servant’ for the college.”¹¹¹ Leland further tells his readers that Adams “was a member of the well-known New England Adams family and was opposed to slavery.”¹¹² His claims are misleading on two accounts. First, Leland perpetuated a fabricated notion that Peace lived in Porter’s Lodge when, in fact, we know that Peace and his family occupied a smaller building that was demolished not long after Porter’s Lodge was constructed in the 1850s. Second, according to the minutes of the board of trustees discussed earlier, it was Adams who went to the board to request purchase of a “servant.” Much like the five leaders who came before him (Bishop Robert Smith, Thomas Bee Jr., George Buist, Elijah Ratoone, and Nathaniel Bowen), Adams participated in the buying, selling, and hiring out of enslaved laborers. In fact, two bills of sale show Adams purchasing and selling enslaved people. In 1829, Adams purchased “a female slave Nancy and her girl child Sarah Ann” for three hundred sixty dollars from Elizabeth Adcock. In 1838, Adams sold an enslaved family—Peter; his wife, Sillah; and their children, Sulley and Peter—to George A. Eggleston for fifteen Page 65 →hundred dollars.¹¹³ Adams was certainly not opposed to slavery. Leland simply whitewashes his participation in systemic oppression and makes the college appear more innocent than it was. In a 1968 article, Leland reiterated these falsehoods, again referencing Jasper Adams’ antislavery leanings and Peace’s salary (which the historical record proves went directly to his enslaver, Ann Wagner) with a “fringe benefit” of living in Porter’s Lodge beginning in 1828.¹¹⁴

Biased twentieth-century narrators, such as Robinson and Leland, obscure the actual historical record, which reflects racial, gender, and socioeconomic inequities and lend credence to cruel power structures. At the same time, they make the College of Charleston into something it was not. Uncovering the actual lives of Thomas and Isabella Peace and their descendants reveals how the accepted historical record so often contradicts itself, eroding its own claims to legitimacy while calling for a more expansive use of information that exists outside of traditionally accepted source materials.

At times, the silences and omissions of the historical record leave us with more questions than answers. Historians must mine evidence from the past, including that which exists “along the bias grain,” to demonstrate how institutions such as the College of Charleston would not exist in their current forms without the contributions of people who were historically marginalized.¹¹⁵ Moreover, had the labors of men and women such as Thomas and Isabella Peace been properly acknowledged, compensated, and valued, they may not have been erased from the institution’s historical memory. It is time to mark their names and publicly acknowledge the contributions of the people whose labor, forced and then stolen, constructed and shaped this institution.

This research, and that of a growing number of scholars on campuses around the world, interrogates historical evidence and sources using a lens that centers the experiences of historically marginalized and oppressed people. Subsequent discoveries and conclusions must be leveraged to support restorative justice dialogue and efforts to reconcile ourselves with the persistent legacies of slavery and dispossession in our communities. As a leading scholar of the role that higher education played in perpetuating slavery and racism, Leslie Harris argues that while “these histories are not a complete answer to the sometimes confounding racial situations in which colleges and universities find themselves, uncovering them goes a long way toward Page 66 →making clear how embedded issues of race and racism are in our institutions—and how covering them up has done no one any favors.”¹¹⁶ Expanding dialogue and narratives around the past through critical evaluation of archival evidence—troubling the archive, we might say—must inform substantive changes in structural power dynamics rooted in white supremacy.

Mary Jo Fairchild oversees all research, access, and instruction services for Special Collections and Archives at the College of Charleston Libraries. Fairchild holds master’s degrees in history and in library and information science, and she is a certified archivist. Her research interests revolve around archival public services, access and representation in archives and cultural heritage spaces, and critical pedagogy using primary sources in archives and special collections.

1. 1. “Peace to His Ashes,” Charleston News and Courier, April 27, 1887, 12.
2. 2. In 1887, the board of trustees paid tribute to “Old Tom, the janitor,” using the same language found in the Charleston News and Courier, including the words “boasted that he had Indian blood in his veins and his physiognomy justified the claim.” College of Charleston Board of Trustees Minutes, Volume IV, 602, College of Charleston Archives: Historical Records, Mss 202.00, College of Charleston Libraries, Charleston, SC.
3. 3. College of Charleston Board of Trustees Minutes, Volumes II, III, and IV, College of Charleston Archives: Historical Records, Mss 202.00, College of Charleston Libraries, Charleston, SC.
4. 4. Tiya Miles, All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, A Black Family’s Keepsake (New York: Random House, 2021), 89.
5. 5. Cash Receipt Book, 1855–1859, College of Charleston Archives: Historical Records, Mss 202.00, College of Charleston Libraries, Charleston, SC On October 2, 1855, the treasurer of the college wrote a receipt for thirty dollars in wages for three months of work The receipt is signed “Thomas Peace,” in a different hand Thereafter, Peace signed receipts for his wages on a monthly ($10) basis through April 1857 Thomas Peace’s name did not appear in cash receipt books again until 1871 From February 1871 to March of 1874, the treasurer of the college recorded three receipts, totaling twenty dollars, signed by Thomas Peace for “services rendered in carrying summonses, notices, etc for the Board.”
6. 6. Act No 2236, “An Act to restrain the emancipation of slaves, and to prevent free persons of color from entering into this state, and for other purposes,” ratified on December 20, 1820, See David J McCord, Statutes at Large of South Carolina; Edited Under Authority of the Legislature, vol 7 (Columbia, SC:A S Johnston, 1840), 459–60.
7. 7. “United States, Freedman’s Bank Records, 1865–1874,” database with images, FamilySearch, https://www.familysearch.org.
8. 8. Page 67 →The Unity and Friendship Society was established in 1844 and provided sick and burial insurance to members See Kimberley Martin, “Community and Place: A Study of Four African American Benevolent Societies and Their Cemeteries.” Master’s thesis, Clemson University, 2010 https://open.clemson.edu/2014.html 17–18, 40, 42.
9. 9. “Peace,” Charleston News and Courier, April 27, 1887, 12.
10. 10. Martin, “Community and Place,” 17–18, 40, 42.
11. 11. J W Joseph, “Of Sterling Worth and Good Qualities”: Status and Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century Middle Class Charleston: Archaeological Investigations at Site 38CH1871, Marlene & Nathan Addlestone Library, College of Charleston (Stone Mountain, GA: New South Associates, 2004), 16.
12. 12. “Peace,” Charleston News and Courier, April 26, 1888, 8.
13. 13. Saidiya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts,” Small Axe: A Journal of Criticism 12, no 2 (2008): 10.
14. 14. College of Charleston Board of Trustees Minutes, Volume II, p 313, College of Charleston Archives: Historical Records, Mss 202.00, College of Charleston Libraries, Charleston, SC.
15. 15. Morris Goldsmith, Directory and Strangers’ Guide for the City of Charleston and Its Vicinity (Charleston, SC: Printed at the Office of The Irishman, 1831), 116.
16. 16. Kaylee Rogers documents the persistent overrepresentation of African Americans in the service sector at the College of Charleston and “consequently how racial hierarchies are reproduced within the local labor market.” In an anonymized interview, one worker told Rogers “They walk by us like we don’t exist We’re invisible. We are overworked, and underpaid.” See Kaylee Rogers, “Overworked and Underpaid: ‘Black’ Work at the College of Charleston,” Chrestomathy: Annual Review of Undergraduate Research 7 (2008), 227–47. In her National Book Award–winning work that tells the stories of enslaved women and their descendants in South Carolina using material culture as the primary evidence, scholar Tiya Miles points out that “endeavoring to reconstruct any history, but especially the histories of the marginalized, requires an attentiveness to absence as well as presence.” See Miles, All That She Carried, 302. There are no birth records for Thomas and Isabella Peace We learn about Thomas and Isabella Peace from institutional archives, letters of enslavers, municipal tax collectors, and newspaper publishers.
17. 17. College of Charleston Board of Trustees Minutes, Volume IV, p 602, College of Charleston Archives: Historical Records, Mss 202.00, College of Charleston Libraries, Charleston, SC.
18. 18. College of Charleston Board of Trustees Minutes, Volume II, 313, College of Charleston Archives: Historical Records, Mss 202.00, College of Charleston Libraries, Charleston, SC.
19. 19. College of Charleston Board of Trustees Minutes, Volume IV, 602, College of Charleston Archives: Historical Records, Mss 202.00, College of Charleston Libraries, Charleston, SC Sadly, enslavers hired out people they enslaved at very young ages See also Jonathan D Martin, Divided Mastery: Slave Hiring in the American South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 64–65.
20. 20. Page 68 →See Judith M Brimelow and Michael E Stevens, State Free Negro Capitation Tax Books, Charleston, South Carolina, ca 1811–1860 (Charleston, SC: Department of Archives and History, 1983).
21. 21. Bernard Edward Powers Jr., Black Charlestonians: A Social History, 1822–1885, 36–37.
22. 22. Miles, All That She Carried, 302.
23. 23. College of Charleston Board of Trustees Minutes, Volume III, 32, College of Charleston Archives: Historical Records, Mss 202.00, College of Charleston Libraries, Charleston, SC.
24. 24. “South Carolina Deaths and Burials, 1816–1990,” database with images, Family-Search, https://www.familysearch.org.
25. 25. McCurry, Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households, Gender Relations, and the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1995, 37.
26. 26. Biographical and Historical Research on the Wagner family, Vertical File 30–01 South Carolina Historical Society.
27. 27. Richard Hrabowski, Directory for the District of Charleston, Comprising the Places of Residence and Occupation of the White Inhabitants (Printed by John Hoff, for Richard Hrabowski, 1809).
28. 28. Ann Wagner to Effingham Wagner, Fishkill, New York, 1 June 1818, Cheves and Wagner Family Papers #147, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
29. 29. Ann Wagner to Effingham Wagner, Providence, June 20, 1814, Cheves and Wagner Family Papers #147.
30. 30. Ann Wagner to Effingham Wagner, Boston, July 17, 1814, Cheves and Wagner Family Papers #147.
31. 31. Ann Wagner to Effingham Wagner, Boston, July 17, 1814, Cheves and Wagner Family Papers #147.
32. 32. Ann Wagner to Effingham Wagner, Boston, July 17, 1814, Cheves and Wagner Family Papers #147.
33. 33. Abraham Motte, Charleston Directory and Strangers’ Guide for the Year 1816 Including the Neck to the Six Mile House Charleston, SC: Printed for the purchaser, 1816.
34. 34. “South Carolina, Charleston District, Bill of sales of Negro slaves, 1774–1872,” database with images, FamilySearch, https://www.familysearch.org.
35. 35. “South Carolina, Charleston District, Bill of sales of Negro slaves, 1774–1872,” database with images, FamilySearch, https://www.familysearch.org.
36. 36. “South Carolina, Charleston District, Bill of sales of Negro slaves, 1774–1872,” database with images, FamilySearch, https://www.familysearch.org.
37. 37. Ann Wagner to George Wagner, Fishkill Landing, New York, 1 June 1818, Cheves and Wagner Family Papers #147.
38. 38. Ann Wagner to Effingham Wagner, New York, 13 May 1818, Cheves and Wagner Family Papers #147.
39. 39. Ann Wagner to Effingham Wagner, Fishkill, New York, June 1, 1818, Cheves and Wagner Family Papers #147; Ann Wagner to Effingham Wagner, Providence, RI, August 15, 1818, Cheves and Wagner Family Papers #147.
40. 40. Page 69 →[Death Record for Ann Wagner, March 1843], Charleston City Death Records, 1821–1926, database with images, FamilySearch, https://www.familysearch.
41. 41. “South Carolina, Charleston District, Estate inventories, 1732–1844,” database with images, FamilySearch, https://www.familysearch.or.
42. 42. College of Charleston Board of Trustees Minutes, Volume III, 32, College of Charleston Archives: Historical Records, Mss 202.00, Charleston, SC: College of Charleston Libraries.
43. 43. Joseph Ioor Waring, A History of Medicine in South Carolina, 1825–1900 (Columbia, SC: R L Bryan Co., 1967), 313.
44. 44. Nathan Smith Davis, Contributions to the History of Medical Education And Medical Institutions In the United States of America, 1776–1876: Special Report (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1877), 32; [Death Record for John Wagner, 1841], Charleston City Death Records, 1821–1926 Department of Archives and History, Columbia, database with images, FamilySearch, https://www.familysearch.org.
45. 45. Rana A Hogarth, Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780–1840 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 181–84.
46. 46. “Petition of Lydia Wagner, May 31, 1842,” database with images, Race and Slavery Petitions Project, https://dlas.uncg.edu.
47. 47. “South Carolina Probate Records, Bound Volumes, 1671–1977,” database with images, FamilySearch, https://www.familysearch.org.
48. 48. “Inventory of the Estate of John Wagner,” South Carolina Probate Records, Bound Volumes, 1671–1977, Charleston Inventories, Appraisements, and Sales, 1839–1844, Vol A, 548 Columbia: South Carolina Department of Archives and History.
49. 49. James H Easterby, A History of the College of Charleston, Founded 1770 (Charleston, SC: College of Charleston, 1935), 101; Salley, “Captain William Capers and Some of His Descendants,” The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 2, no 4 (1901),” 288.
50. 50. College of Charleston Board of Trustees Minutes, Volume III, 32, College of Charleston Archives: Historical Records, Mss 202.00, College of Charleston Libraries, Charleston, SC.
51. 51. Wikramanayake, World in Shadow: The Free Black in Antebellum South Carolina (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1973), 11 See also E Horace Fitchett, “Status of the Free Negro,” The Status of the Free Negro in Charleston, South Carolina, and His Descendants in Modern Society: Statement of the Problem.” Journal of Negro History 32, no 4 (1947): 430–51; Fitchett, “The Origin and Growth of the Free Negro Population of Charleston, South Carolina,” Journal of Negro History 26, no 4 (1941): 421–37; Richard C Wade, Slavery in the Cities: the South, 1820–1860 (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1967); and Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, Forging Freedom: Black Women in Antebellum Charleston (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).
52. 52. Robert P Stockton, Historic College of Charleston Buildings and Structures: An Evolutionary History (Charleston, SC, 2006), 26–27.
53. 53. Stockton, Historic College of Charleston, 25.
54. 54. Page 70 →Stockton, Historic College of Charleston, 26–27.
55. 55. “Abstract of the Proceedings of Council,” Charleston Mercury, October 29, 1856, 1. In the petition, Thomas Peace is referred to as “a free colored man.” Wikramanayake holds that the “conditions in the city of Charleston yielded a peculiar class of blacks who operated in a state of limbo, neither slave nor free. See Wikramanayake, World in Shadow, 11. Because of financial and leadership challenges, the College of Charleston transitioned from a private to a municipal institution in 1837. As a result, the mayor and city aldermen became members of the college’s board of trustees. The college remained under municipal governance until 1949 when administrators sold the public charter to a private board of trustees for a nominal fee to avoid integration. See Easterby, History of the College of Charleston, 90–95, and Nan Morrison, History of the College of Charleston, 1936–2008 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011), 60.
56. 56. “Committee on Public Institutions, Buildings and Grounds,” Charleston Daily Courier, November 13, 1856, 4.
57. 57. Rogers, “Overworked and Underpaid,” 233–34.
58. 58. The 1883 death certificate for Isabella Peace indicates she died at the age of fifty-five, which would mean she was born in 1828 or 1829.
59. 59. Marisa J Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 7.
60. 60. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 26.
61. 61. Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives, 12.
62. 62. Myers, Forging Freedom, 40.
63. 63. Myers, Forging Freedom, 41–42; see also Robert Olwell, Masters, Slaves & Subjects: The Culture of Power in the South Carolina Low Country, 1740–1790 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).
64. 64. Charleston, SC, City Council, H William De Saussure, and J L Dawson Census of the City of Charleston, South Carolina, for the Year 1848, Exhibiting the Condition and Prospects of the City, Illustrated by Many Statistical Details (Charleston, SC: J B Nixon, 1849), 3–4.
65. 65. For a discussion of the events leading up to the Act of 1820 and its immediate aftermath, see Myers, Forging Freedom, 60–61 For a discussion of white Charlestonian’s fears of insurrection due to influence of people coming from the Caribbean, especially Haiti, during this time see Powers, “Denmark Vesey,” 17–37; and “The Act of 1820,” in McCord, Statutes at Large, vol 7, 459–60.
66. 66. Roberts, “Race,” 38, 50 See also Hunter, Bound in Wedlock, 65.
67. 67. “South Carolina, Charleston, Free Negro Capitation Books, 1811–1860” (Columbia: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 2022)
68. 68. “South Carolina, Charleston, Free Negro Capitation Books, 1811–1860” (Columbia: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 2022).
69. 69. Hunter, Bound in Wedlock, 92.
70. 70. Hunter, Bound in Wedlock, 92.
71. 71. Hunter, Bound in Wedlock, 91.
72. 72. David Lewis Wardlaw and Sarah Margaret Wardlaw Smith, Letter to Sally Wardlaw, Charleston, South Carolina, 1855 (Columbia: South Caroliniana Library, Page 71 →University of South Carolina) This is the only known reference to Thomas Peace as a reverend.
73. 73. Tera W Hunter, To ’Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors After the Civil War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 26.
74. 74. Hunter, To ’Joy My Freedom, 26.
75. 75. “South Carolina Deaths and Burials, 1816–1990,” database with images, Family-Search, https://www.familysearch.org.
76. 76. “South Carolina Deaths and Burials, 1816–1990,” database with images, Family-Search, https://www.familysearch.org, Molly Peace, 1831.
77. 77. “South Carolina Deaths and Burials, 1816–1990,” database with images, Family-Search, https://www.familysearch.org, Barbara Peace, 1850.
78. 78. “South Carolina Deaths and Burials, 1816–1990,” database with images, Family-Search, https://www.familysearch.org, Isabella E Peace, 1883.
79. 79. “South Carolina Deaths and Burials, 1816–1990,” database with images, Family-Search, https://www.familysearch.org, Joe Peace, 1831.
80. 80. “South Carolina Deaths and Burials, 1816–1990,” database with images, Family-Search, https://www.familysearch.org, Isabella Peace, 1862; Thomas Peace, 1860.
81. 81. Edmund L Drago and Marvin Dulaney, Charleston’s Avery Center: From Education and Civil Rights to Preserving the African American Experience (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2006), 49, 58.
82. 82. Drago and Dulaney, Charleston’s Avery Center, 58.
83. 83. A E Sholes, Sholes’ Directory of the City of Charleston (Charleston, SC: Walker Evans & Cogswell, 1879), 190.
84. 84. Sholes, Sholes’ Directory, 1879, 408.
85. 85. Hunter, To ’Joy My Freedom, 26.
86. 86. Blain Roberts and Ethan J Kyrtle, Denmark Vesey’s Garden, 156.
87. 87. United States of America, Bureau of the Census, Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1900).
88. 88. Hunter, To ’Joy My Freedom, 111.
89. 89. Census of the City of Charleston, South Carolina, For the Year 1861 Illustrated by Statistical Tables Prepared under the Authority of the City Council by Frederick A Ford (Charleston, SC: Steam-Power Presses of Evans & Cogswell, 1861), 71.
90. 90. Sholes, Sholes’ Directory, 189, 190; A E Sholes, Sholes’ Directory,1883, 520.
91. 91. According to census data, Eugene and Elizabeth “Bettie” had been married for eighteen years in 1900 This would mean they married in 1882, probably in Charleston They both could read and write.
92. 92. “Pennsylvania, Philadelphia City Births, 1860–1906,” database with images, FamilySearch, https://www.familysearch.org.
93. 93. United States of America, Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1910).
94. 94. Sholes, Sholes’ Directory, 1877, 190.
95. 95. Sholes, Sholes’ Directory, 1877, 96.
96. 96. “Razor and Revolver,” Charleston News and Courier, March 7, 1886, 8.
97. 97. “Razor and Revolver, 8.”
98. 98. Page 72 →De Bow, “The Light of Other Days,” Debow’s Review, Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial Progress and Resources 6, no 3 (1848): 237 According to College records, James De Bow graduated in 1843 with honors.
99. 99. These include Easterby’s History of the College of Charleston and Morrison’s History of the College of Charleston.
100. 100. Easterby, History of the College of Charleston, 140.
101. 101. Easterby, History of the College of Charleston, 140.
102. 102. Emmett Robinson, “Lewis Gibbes—A Legend for Tomorrow,” Lewis R Gibbes papers, Mss 0020 (Charleston, SC: College of Charleston Libraries, 1937), 12 In 1837, the College of Charleston was “revived and placed under the patronage of the city government.”
103. 103. See biographical note for Lewis R Gibbes, College of Charleston Special Collections, http://findingaids.library.cofc.edu/repositories/2/resources/86.
104. 104. Robinson, Lewis Gibbes, preface.
105. 105. Robinson, Lewis Gibbes, 13.
106. 106. Robinson, Lewis Gibbes, 1.
107. 107. Robinson, Lewis Gibbes, 1.
108. 108. See Kyrtle and Roberts, Denmark Vesey’s Garden, 196–224; Ibram X Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (New York: Nation Books, 2016), 1–11.
109. 109. “Students and Alumni Give College Play This Evening,” Charleston News and Courier, May 10, 1937, 5.
110. 110. John G Leland, “The College of Charleston Lodge to Link Old and New,” Charleston News and Courier, January 9, 1961, 9.
111. 111. Leland, “College of Charleston.”
112. 112. Leland, “College of Charleston.”
113. 113. “South Carolina, Charleston District, Bill of Sales of Negro Slaves, 1774–1872,” Jasper Adams, February 2, 1829, and July 13, 1838; Records of The Secretary Of State, Recorded Instruments, Miscellaneous Records (Main Series), Bills Of Sale Volumes, 436, (Columbia: South Carolina Department of Archives and History).
114. 114. John G Leland, “Coeds Conquer College Bastion,” Evening Post, October 24, 1968, 13.
115. 115. Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives, 78.
116. 116. Leslie M Harris, “Higher Education’s Reckoning with Slavery” (Washington, DC: American Association of University Professors, 2020) https://www.aaup.org/article/.

• Brimelow, Judith M., and Michael E. Stevens. State Free Negro Capitation Tax Books, Charleston, South Carolina, ca. 1811–1860. Charleston, SC: Department of Archives and History, 1983.
• Charleston, SC, City Council, H. William De Saussure, and J. L. Dawson. Census of the City of Charleston, South Carolina, for the Year 1848, Exhibiting the Condition Page 73 →and Prospects of the City, Illustrated by Many Statistical Details. Charleston, SC: J. B. Nixon, 1849.
• Charleston, SC, City Council, and F. A. Ford. Census of the City of Charleston, South Carolina, for the Year 1861. Charleston, SC: Evans & Cogswell, 1861.
• The Charleston City Directory, 1782–1870, Microfilm Reel One, 1782–1838; Reel Two, 1840–1870. Charleston, SC: Charleston Library Society, 1951.
• Cheves and Wagner family papers, #147. Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
• College of Charleston Archives: Historical Records, Mss 202.00, Charleston, SC: College of Charleston Libraries. http://findingaids.library.cofc.edu/repositories/2/resources/554.
• “Committee on Public Institutions, Buildings and Grounds,” Charleston Daily Courier, November 13, 1856.
• De Bow, James. “The Light of Other Days.” Debow’s Review, Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial Progress and Resources 6, no. 3 (1848): 236–40.
• Drago, Edmond L., and Marvin Dulaney. Charleston’s Avery Center: From Education and Civil Rights to Preserving the African American Experience. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2006.
• Easterby, James H. A History of the College of Charleston, Founded 1770. Charleston, SC: College of Charleston, 1935.
• Fay, Thomas C. Charleston Directory, and Strangers’ Guide, for 1840 and 1841: Embracing the Names of Heads of Families; Firms and the Individuals Composing Them; Together With All Persons in Business, and Their Residences, Alphabetically Arranged: Also, Each Street, and Numbers Where Practicable, With the Names of the Occupants Respectively Noted-Thereby Answering the Purpose of a Cross Index. Charleston, SC: T. C. Fay, 1840.
• Fick, Sarah and Julia Eichelberger, “A History of St. Philip Street,” Discovering Our Past: College of Charleston Histories. https://discovering.cofc.edu/items/show/12.
• Fitchett, E. Horace. “The Origin and Growth of the Free Negro Population of Charleston, South Carolina.” Journal of Negro History 26, no. 4 (1941): 421–37.
• Fitchett, E. Horace. “The Status of the Free Negro in Charleston, South Carolina, and His Descendants in Modern Society: Statement of the Problem.” Journal of Negro History 32, no. 4 (1947): 430–51.
• Fuentes, Marisa J. Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive.Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
• Goldsmith, Morris. Directory and Strangers’ Guide for the City of Charleston and Its Vicinity. Charleston, SC: Printed at the Office of The Irishman, 1831.
• Harris, Leslie M. “Higher Education’s Reckoning with Slavery.” Washington, DC: American Association of University Professors, 2020. https://www.aaup.org/article/higher-education%E2%80%99s-reckoning-slavery.
• Hartman, Saidiya. “Venus in Two Acts.” Small Axe: A Journal of Criticism 12, no. 2 (2008): 1–14.
• Hogarth, Rana A. Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780–1840. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017.
• Page 74 →Hunter, Tera W. Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017.
• Hunter, Tera W. To ‘Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors After the Civil War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
• Kendi, Ibram X. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. New York: Nation Books, 2016.
• Kennedy, Cynthia M. Braided Relations, Entwined Lives: The Women of Charleston’s Urban Slave Society. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.
• Johnson, Doria, Jarrett Drake, and Michelle Caswell, “From Cape Town to Chicago to Colombo and Back Again: Towards a Liberation Theology for Memory Work,” Reflections from the 2016 Mandela Dialogues. Houghton, South Africa: Nelson Mandela Foundation, 2017. https://www.nelsonmandela.org/news/entry/reflections-from-the-2016-mandela-dialogues.
• Joseph, J. W. “Of Sterling Worth and Good Qualities”: Status and Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century Middle Class Charleston: Archaeological Investigations at Site 38CH1871, Marlene & Nathan Addlestone Library, College of Charleston. Stone Mountain, GA: New South Associates, 2004.
• Le Guin, Ursula K. “Pandora Converses with the Archivist of the Library of the Madrone Lodge at Wakwaha-na.” In Always Coming Home, edited by Todd Barton, 314–317. New York: Library of America, 2019.
• Martin, Kimberley. “Community and Place: A Study of Four African American Benevolent Societies and Their Cemeteries.” Master’s thesis, Clemson University, 2010. https://oatd.org/.
• Mazyck, Arthur. Guide to Charleston Illustrated: Being a Sketch of the History of Charleston, S. C. with Some Account of Its Present Condition, with Numerous Engravings. Charleston, SC: Walker, Evans & Cogswell, 1875.
• McCurry, Stephanie. Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households, Gender Relations, and the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1995.
• Mears, Leonard, and James Turnbull. The Charleston Directory: Containing the Names of the Inhabitants, a Subscriber’s Business Directory, Street Map of the City, and an Appendix, of Much Useful Information. Charleston, SC: Walker and Evans, 1859.
• Miles, Tiya. All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, A Black Family’s Keepsake. New York: Random House, 2021.
• Morrison, Nan. A History of the College of Charleston, 1936–2008. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011.
• Motte, Abraham. Charleston Directory and Strangers’ Guide for the Year 1816 Including the Neck to the Six Mile House. Charleston, SC: Printed for the purchaser, 1816.
• Myers, Amrita Chakrabarti. Forging Freedom: Black Women in Antebellum Charleston. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.
• Olwell, Robert. Masters, Slaves & Subjects: The Culture of Power in the South Carolina Low Country, 1740–1790. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998.
• Powers, Bernard Edward Jr. Black Charlestonians: A Social History, 1822–1885. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1994.
• Page 75 →Powers, Bernard Edward. “Denmark Vesey, South Carolina, and Haiti.” In Fugitive Movements: Commemorating the Denmark Vesey Affair and Black Radical Anti-Slavery in the Atlantic World, edited by James O’Neil Spady, 17–37. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2022.
• Purse, R. S. Charleston City Directory and Strangers Guide for 1856. New York: J. F. Trow, 1856.
• “Razor and Revolver,” Charleston News and Courier, March 7, 1886.
• Roberts, Blain, and Ethan J. Kyrtle. Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy. New York: The New Press, 2018.
• Roberts, Dorothy. “Race.” In The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones, Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman, and Jake Silverstein, 45–61. The New York Times Company, 2021.
• Robinson, Emmett. “Lewis Gibbes—A Legend for Tomorrow,” Lewis R. Gibbes papers, Mss 0020. Charleston, SC: College of Charleston Libraries, 1937.
• Rogers, Kaylee. “Overworked and Underpaid: “Black” Work at the College of Charleston.” Chrestomathy: Annual Review of Undergraduate Research 7 (2008): 227–47.
• Salley, A. S. “Captain William Capers and Some of His Descendants.” The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 2, no. 4 (1901): 273–98. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27574968.
• Sholes, A. E. Sholes’ Directory of the City of Charleston. Charleston, SC: Walker Evans & Cogswell, 1879.
• Sholes, A. E. Sholes’ Directory of the City of Charleston. Charleston, SC: Walker Evans & Cogswell, 1883.
• Sholes A. E. Sholes’ Directory of the City of Charleston for 1877-’78: Containing a List of the Inhabitants Their Residence and Occupation; a Classified Commercial Directory; a Complete Record of City Officers Churches Courts Secret Societies Military Organizations &c.; Also a Full and Complete List of Officers of the State and National Governments. Charleston, SC: Walker Evans & Cogswell, 1877.
• Sinha, Manisha. The Counter-revolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
• South Carolina, Charleston City Death Records, 1821–1926. Database. Family-Search. Columbia: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 2024. https://FamilySearch.org.
• South Carolina, Charleston City Death Records, 1875–1899. Database. Family-Search. Columbia: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 2024. https://FamilySearch.org.
• “South Carolina, Charleston, Free Negro Capitation Books, 1811–1860.” Database with images. FamilySearch. Columbia: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 2024. https://FamilySearch.org.
• Stockton, Robert P. Historic College of Charleston Buildings and Structures: An Evolutionary History. Charleston, SC, 2006.
• “Students and Alumni Give College Play This Evening,” Charleston News and Courier, May 10, 1937.
• Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995.
• Page 76 →US, Delayed Birth Records, 1766–1900, and City of Charleston, South Carolina, US, Birth Records, 1877–1901. Columbia: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 2024 https://FamilySearch.org.
• “United States, Freedman’s Bank Records, 1865–1874,” Roll 21, December 19, 1865–Dec 2, 1869, accounts 1–319, 2151–3824 (image 432 of 697), NARA microfilm publication M816. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1970.
• Wade, Richard C. Slavery in the Cities: the South, 1820–1860. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1967.
• Wardlaw, David Lewis, and Sarah Margaret Wardlaw Smith. Letter to Sally Wardlaw, Charleston, South Carolina. 1855. Columbia: South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina.
• Waring, Joseph Ioor. A History of Medicine in South Carolina, 1825–1900. Columbia, SC: R. L. Bryan Co., 1967.
• White, Deborah Gray. “Ar’n’t I a Woman? and the Changing Historical Archive.” Panel presentation at the Different Archives, Different Histories conference, University of Illinois Chicago, Institute for the Humanities, October 30, 2020. https://huminst.uic.edu/conferences-2/different-archives-different-histories/.
• Wikramanayake, Marina. A World in Shadow: The Free Black in Antebellum South Carolina. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1973.