PRISCILLA Priscilla was a 10-year old African girl kidnapped from her home in Sierra Leone and taken to Charleston, South Carolina in 1756. The slave ship "Hare," owned by Samuel and William Vernon of Newport, Rhode Island, took Priscilla on the terrible Middle Passage to America. PROJECT PRISCILLAProject Priscilla is a grass-roots effort by Rhode Islanders of all backgrounds to draw attention to Newport's role in the Atlantic slave trade by doing one simple thing: Taking Priscilla HomeBy a remarkable turn of fate the identity of one of Priscilla's modern descendants has been revealed. Mrs. Thomalind Martin Polite – a 31-year old primary school teacher in Charleston, South Carolina -- is a 7th generation descendant of Priscilla. Mrs. Polite wants to return tothe home in Africa that Priscilla would never see again. In 2003, the Government of Sierra Leone issued a formal invitation to Mrs. Polite to make a "Homecoming visit" to their country. Project Priscilla is made up of Rhode Islanders who want to help make that happen. DEFYING THE ODDSMost of the 10 million Africans taken across the Atlantic Ocean to slavery in the New World remain anonymous. In most cases their names went unrecorded and their fates are unknown. All we have are ledger entries made by customs officials that read like this: "Sloop 'Hare' arrived from Sierra Leone with 63 slaves aboard." In this unusual case, though, we are fortunate enough to know the name of one of the 63 Africans, or at least the name given her after she arrived in America. Priscilla defied the odds – the overwhelming odds -- that slavery would condemn her to obscurity. Historical records show that Elias Ball II, a South Carolina rice planter, purchased six children from the "Hare," paying £600 for them. One of them was a 10-year old girl the Ball family called "Priscilla." She would spend her life on the Balls' Comingtee Plantation, dying in 1811. Priscilla would bear ten children and live about 65 years. REMARKABLE DISCOVERYThe writer Edward Ball revealed Priscilla's identity in his book Slaves in the Family. Ball is a descendant of one of the richest South Carolina planter families, and his book – which won the National Book Award in 1998 – is a history of the slaves owned by his own family between 1698 and 1865. Ball discovered that his ancestors kept remarkably detailed records of their slaves, including references to Priscilla and her descendants. Using his ancestors' records Ball created a detailed family tree for Priscilla, linking her step-by-step through seven generations to her modern descendants. In the mid-1990s Ball paid a visit to the home of Thomas Martin and his family in Charleston, South Carolina. Spreading the family tree out on the Martins' living room table, he pointed to Priscilla's name on one side of the chart, and the Martin family's names on the other. Ball recounts the Martins' reaction: "Thinking about Priscilla, the Martin family began to smile at one another in a bewildered way. Suddenly there was a wave of laughter around the room, and everyone was talking at once." AFRICAN ROOTSEdward Ball also discovered Priscilla's home in Africa – Sierra Leone. Records show that the "Hare" bought most of its human cargo in Sierra Leone, and that it purchased at least some of its slaves at a place called Bunce Island. Bunce Island is a slave castle, one of the "warehouses of humanity" European merchants built along the coast of West Africa to carry on their trade in human beings. British slave traders based on this tiny island in the Sierra Leone River purchased African captives, imprisoned them, and loaded them aboard the slave ships that took them to America. Bunce Island lies at the heart of the "Rice Coast," the traditional rice-growing region of West Africa stretching from what is now Senegal and Gambia in the north to Sierra Leone and Liberia in the south. African farmers in that region have been growing rice for thousands of years, and they are experts at its cultivation. Rice was the staple crop in 18th century South Carolina and Georgia, and planters in those colonies were willing to pay high prices for Rice Coast Africans because of their rice-growing skills. Slave ships like the "Hare" took thousands of enslaved Africans from Sierra Leone and other parts of the Rice Coast to the ports of Charleston and Savannah. RHODE ISLAND CONNECTIONWilliam and Samuel Vernon – the owners of the "Hare" – were wealthy merchants from Newport, Rhode Island. The principal port in North America for ships engaged in the Atlantic slave trade, Newport sent over 900 voyages to the African coast. Between 1725 and 1808 Newport ships took about 100,000 people to slavery in the West Indies and North America. Rhode Island slave traders purchased Africans with rum made in New England. When they took their captives across the Atlantic to the West Indies, they traded them for molasses which they returned to Rhode Island to make more rum for the Africa trade. When they went to South Carolina, they traded their captives for barrels of rice. We will never know the identities of the vast majority of the 100,000 African men, women, and children Rhode Island traders like the Vernons exiled to the Americas, nor will we find their modern descendants and link them to their ancestral homes in Africa. Priscilla and her descendants -- the Martin family of Charleston -- are the rare exception. DOCUMENTARY FILMJoseph Opala is an anthropologist who has spent many years studying Bunce Island. While working on a documentary film on the slave castle, he recently contacted Mrs. Thomalind Martin Polite and asked if she would be willing to participate in his film by making a homecoming visit to Sierra Leone and seeing Bunce Island for herself. Thomalind could never forget Edward Ball's visit to her family home, bringing the incredible news of her link to Priscilla. When she said she was eager to see Priscilla's home in Africa, Opala went to Sierra Leone and explained Priscilla's story to the government of that nation. Sierra Leonean officials gave Mr. Opala a letter for the Martin family asking them to make a "homecoming visit" to their country. Opala and his colleague -- filmmaker Jacque Metz of Charleston, South Carolina -- plan to end the documentary film with Thomalind retracing what may have been Priscilla's last steps on African soil -- walking out the door of the slave prison at Bunce Island, through the castle's main gate, down the road to the beach, and then to the stone jetty, the last place in Africa touched by the many thousands of people exiled from Bunce Island. The jetty still faces due-west toward America. VOYAGE OF THE "HARE"While doing research for the documentary, Joseph Opala discovered that the "Hare" originated in Newport, not in England like most of the slave ships going to Sierra Leone. But Opala discovered something else as well: The "Hare's" voyage from Rhode Island to Sierra Leone to Charleston in 1755 and 1756 is one of the best documented slave voyages in history. Opala found that several different archives in the United States hold:
The "Hare"s' accounts even contain an entry specifically listing two "little girls" sold to Elias Ball in Charleston. One of those little girls was Priscilla. HOMECOMINGWhen Thomalind Martin Polite visits Sierra Leone in April, 2005, thousands of people will already know that she is coming, and they will be waiting to receive her. Sierra Leoneans know they have a special link to the Gullah people in South Carolina and Georgia, African Americans who live in the coastal "lowcountry" of those states today and who are the descendants of the rice-growing Africans taken there in the 1700s. "Priscilla's Homecoming" to Sierra Leone will be the third "Gullah Homecoming" to that nation during the past 15 years. The first two were recorded in documentary films that have been purchased by thousands of schools and colleges across the country: "Family Across the Sea" (1991) "The Language You Cry In" (1998) Thomalind's homecoming visit, though, is the first by a Gullah person descended from an enslaved African likely taken from Bunce Island or its immediate vicinity. Sierra Leoneans know that Bunce Island was the gateway for the many thousands of their people who were lost to them during the Atlantic slave trade. They will be excited to learn that even one descendant of those thousands has been able to return home. Sierra Leone Government officials will be at the airport to greet Thomalind, and local newspapers, radio, and television will chronicle her every step in their country. TAKING PRISCILLA HOMEBecause Rhode Islanders kidnapped Priscilla from her homeland 250 years ago, it is only right that Rhode Islanders take her descendants back home today. We are asking Rhode Islanders of all backgrounds to contribute to a fund to take Mrs. Thomalind Martin Polite and one other member of her family on their homecoming visit to Sierra Leone. We hope to raise $10,000 in a completely grassroots manner – from schools, churches, and other community-based organizations. We welcome small donations. Taking Priscilla home is an effort to bring Rhode Islanders together in a good cause, and in that spirit we would prefer to raise $1.00 each from 10,000 people than to raise all the money quickly from just one or two wealthy donors. We should do this together as a community. Project Priscilla will send Thomalind to Sierra Leone, but it will also commission an imaginary portrait of her ancestor, Priscilla, by a Rhode Island artist for Thomalind to take with her to Africa. The portrait – a copy of which will be given to the Sierra Leone National Museum -- will help people on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean picture the little girl whose 7th generation descendant has miraculously been able to come home. LINKING PEOPLE TOGETHERAfter Thomalind returns from Sierra Leone, Project Priscilla will bring her to Rhode Island so that she can share her homecoming experience with us here and meet with the schools, churches, and other Rhode Island community groups that contributed to her trip. Mrs. Polite is a schoolteacher, so she will be able to explain to Rhode Island children what her homecoming meant to her and why our state's contribution was so important. Her visit will link Rhode Islanders to people in South Carolina and Sierra Leone, an African nation that we are only now learning has an historical connection to our state. When Thomalind arrives in Rhode Island, Project Priscilla will also host a debut in Newport and Providence of the new documentary film: "Bunce Island: Where History Sleeps"The film will portray Mrs. Polite's homecoming to Sierra Leone and Rhode Islanders' grassroots efforts to bring about that historic event. FACING UP TO HISTORY As Rhode Islanders we like to think of the Ocean State's seafaring tradition in terms of whaling and fishing, the China trade, and tales of pirates and privateers, but in the process of romanticizing our history we have swept some things under the carpet. Newport's role as the most active center for the Atlantic slave trade in North America is gradually emerging, though, and so the question for us today is not whether to face up to that history, but how to face up to it in the best possible way. We believe Project Priscilla is the answer to that question. Rather than pointing fingers and assigning blame 250 years after the fact, we think it is better to come together as a community to do something positive – help a family come to terms with its sad history and bring people together on both sides of the Atlantic in an act of remembrance. By telling Priscilla's story, we will also tell the story of thousands of other Africans whose lives were shattered and families broken by slavery, and we will face up to an episode in our state's history that has been hidden from sight for much too long. Link to a new site for Pricilla here. It was created by Yale University's Gilder Lehrman Center |
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