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2. "One Family of People": The Shouters of Bolden [Image Plates follow pg 84]
- University of Georgia Press
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The Shouters ofBolden The Mclntosh County climate was very demanding. Hot, humid summers and the rice fields and tidal marshes made for a perfect combination for the breeding of mosquitoes. Many slaves died from disease and the attrition created by the constant nuisances of mosquitoes, sandgnats, alligators, and poisonous snakes. Most of the planters spent only several months during the colder months on their plantations. The rest of the time, they fled to other places—Savannah, Charleston, New York, Philadelphia. The Civil War brought an end to all this, of course. —Buddy Sullivan, Early Days on the Georgia Tidewater [Hinesville developer] Clay Sikes won County Commission zoning approval Tuesday for a 141-acre mixed residential and commercial development at the South Newport interchange on Interstate 95. Sikes said he wants to build a historical theme park that simulates the old colonial town of Sunbury, complete with cobblestone streets and clipper ships in an artificial lagoon. "History is not something you can buy, but it's certainly something you can sell," he said. —Darien News, Febuary 10, 1994 53 2 "One Family Of People" "OneFamilyOfPeople" The shouters of Bolden live mostlywithin walkingdistance of each other, on land they own—land where their grandparents and great-grandparents were slaves. The community is also known as "Briar Patch/' after the Briar Patch cemetery. "The Wyllys had a slave [plantation] and the Hopkins had a slave [plantation] and . .. the Hopkins' slave [plantation] was further away in the section they call Meridian. See, the grave yard sorta briary over that side, so that give it the name of Briar Patch," Lawrence McKiver told us.1 He had this information from the previous generation: "Youfound some of them old folks, they remember what section of the slavethey wasinto."2 The Hopkins plantation, called Belleville, was one of the great rice plantations of Mclntosh County on the eve of the Civil War. Though its owner, Charles Hopkins, outspokenly opposed secession, Belleville was "partially destroyed during the Federal naval raid up the Sapelo Riverin November 1862."3 The Wylly plantation was known as the Forest. "On the Sapelo River about VA miles east of present-day Eulonia, was one of the finest estates in Mclntosh County during the antebellum period, being regarded for the quality of its cotton and produce."4 Though Charles Hopkins sold Belleville to his son in 1877 and the Forest was still in the possession of Alexander William Wylly when he died there in 1872, much of the land of the two plantations was bought by freed blacks who had worked there as slaves. As Lawrence McKiver told it, "After the . . . old slave holders had lost their power, see he couldn't keep nobody down no more. He start selling off. That's how come we get this land. He start selling off his land around here—could buy acre land for a dollar, but how would you get that dollar? Getting that dollar at that time is as hard now for me to get a thousand dollar bill. You work so long before you get that dollar. You could buy a whole heap of land for five, six dollars, maybe three or four dollars at that time. Right now an acre land cost you twenty-five hundred dollars."5 Rev. Nathan Palmer told his niece Carletha Sullivanwhy land on nearby Sapelo Island was owned by blacks: "He said . . . because of mosquitos and different things, the white people they all got sick, so they had to move away, and the black people wasthe only ones could stand up under the insects and so forth, that's how they got to own Sapelo. He also told me that his mother s mother was here, in this county, and her husband was sold to a slave [plantation ] in Jessup, in Wayne County. Andwhen they were freed... their owners used to let them visit each other ... the husband wascoming here to her, and she was going to him, and they met somewhere in the middle, and they 54 Shout Because You're Free [3.236.139.73] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 02:18 GMT) decided to come back here, and they settled [in] the piece of property that they really call the Briar Patch which we still own, and that's where they got together and settled."6 London and AmyJenkinswere the grandparents and great-grandparents of the shouters of Bolden, who have inherited from them a wealth of tradition and lore from slaverydays, including the...