Outcast is the suggestion for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks for this week.
Who should I consider an outcast in my ancestors? The Captain of a Confederate ship that was imprisoned at the beginning of the Civil War?
Dear old great great grandfather Alexander G. Swasey, the Captain of several ships out of Charleston, including transporting slaves to New Orleans from the caribbean and Charleston SC. I'm of course not proud of this information, but I refuse to delete it from my history. This is what happened. Several other ancestors may have also been involved in the trading of Afticans, but the documents have all disappeared, thanks to well meaning people who thought that they could feel better by denying that their ancestors did these things.
"Here's some verbiage based on what the docent at the Charleston Slave Mart told me. I can't verify that my memory is totally correct, or the historical veracity of what he said without researching it more. But this is my best recollection - feel free to edit however you want:
Captain Alexander G. Swasey was a ship captain as well as a Confederate blockade runner during the Civil War. Although he was based for a time in Charleston, South Carolina (and ultimately died there), the historical record shows he made trips between Charleston, New Orleans, and the Caribbean. According to information provided by a docent at the Charleston Slave Mart Museum, this was a common triangle for slave runners. Once the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves took effect in 1808 (the earliest date permitted by the United States Constitution), slave states continued to smuggle slaves by claiming that any slave brought from Africa who even set foot in the Caribbean was no longer considered "imported." Charleston and New Orleans were two of the most important slave ports at the time, so the triangle among those two cities and ports in the Caribbean would have been a common route for slave captains such as A.G. Swasey."
John F. Rogers is my first cousin, so has the same relationship to Captain Swasey.
Francis, age 30, slave transported from Charleston to New Orleans, as A.G. Swasey affirmed.
A slave manifest from 1843 possibly. A.G. Swasey is "agent for F. M. Cotter." My attempt at reading the initials of Mr. Cotter may be way off. I can however, read the ages from 50 down to 4 years old.
I also don't know anything about the Calluo, the ship for both of these trips. Captain Swasey was often in charge on ships owned by others, sometimes a group of merchants.
He also married and had 5 children in St. Augustine FL, from 1839 to at least 1853, when our great grandfather, Alexander John Swasey was born. Then he apparently moved and is listed in a census of 1856 in Newport, Rhode Island, where he had been born in 1812.
He was master (captain?) of the Ella Warley, a renamed sidewheeler originally the Isabel, that was a blockade runner for the Confederacy. The Union tried to keep the southern ports from sending or receiving goods with their blockade. Since the southern states had been the major source for cotton in Europe up till then, it sat in warehouses, and the Confederate families learned to live without imported items.
"The Steamship Isabel, Charleston, South Carolina, circa 1855 Oil on canvas 30 1/4 x 50 1/4 inches
This rendering of the steamship Isabel, which had a maritime career from 1848 to 1863, is a highly evocative representation of the maritime history of antebellum South Carolina and the Confederate States of America.
Commissioned by a group of Charleston business leaders, the Isabel was built in Baltimore, Maryland in 1847-1848. It was constructed specifically to serve the United States postal service, as well as coastal passenger trade, between the eastern United States and the Spanish colony of Cuba.
During the Civil War, the Isabel, renamed the Ella Warley, operated out of Charleston for two years as a blockade runner. Following its capture by the Union Navy in April 1862, the Ella Warley was purchased by a New York City shipping company. The illustrious ship’s career ended when it collided with another vessel and sank off Sandy Hook, New Jersey in February 1863.
Essay by the Charleston Renaissance Gallery.
(Note, this essay mistakenly gives the Isabel as the ship that rescued the Union Troops at Ft. Sumpter in 1861. At that time it was still a Confederate blockade runner until capture in April 1862.)
It's interesting to note that some military documents inferred that the Ella Waley had an opportunity to escape capture in Nassau.
"On the morning of the 2d inst. the ocean steamer Ella Warley, Capt. SWASEY, ran the blockade at Charleston, from Nassau, N.P. She was chased and fired on by the blockading squadron, without harm to her. Her passengers were all English and Scotch, except B.T. BISBIE, late a bearer of Confederate dispatches to Europe. The Nassau authorities forced the Flambeau out of the harbor to coal, which gave the Ella Warley the chance to escape."
SOURCE: NY Times printing of letters received at the Adjutant-General's office, from Brig.-Gen. SHERMAN, dated: HEADQUARTERS G.C., PORT ROYAL, S.C., Jan. 2, 1862.
Note again dates! This letter of Jan. 2 talks of the "2d inst" (meaning this month) when the Ella Warley ran the blockade. But General Sherman's missive to the Times was also dated Jan. 2nd. I wonder that it might have been any time from Nov. to Feb, since the Times could not receive messages even by ship in less than a few days. But apparently Captain Swasey did escape that time. But how did Sherman know the makeup of the passengers? Anyway, by April she was indeed captured by Union ships.
And my great great grandfather spent most of the rest of the next 3 years in a Union Prison, Fort Warren, on George's Island in Boston Harbor, MA. He somehow made it back to Charleston following release, and died a sick man on March 16, 1866.
Shared with the FB group Generations Cafe' for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.
I believe my people came through the Charleston port from Africa before ending of importation.
ReplyDeleteOh Kristin, that's so awful to consider. And while so many of your ancestors didn't have any records kept, what part of Africa do you imagine they might have come from? I guess it's hard to find out. That TV show "Roots" started us all thinking of the beginnings of slavery more, at least myself.
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