Following the slaves ....

Lately I've been reading a couple of really good books:  The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill, and Black Loyalists by Ruth Holmes Whitehead.  Both excellent books, full of information, some of which I had never heard of before.  As usual, every time I read anything I'm constantly on the lookout to any reference to the Grays or other names I've seen associated with them along the way.

Of course I couldn't read The Book of Negroes fictional novel without having a look at the ACTUAL Book of Negroes.  Among the many lists are 5 slaves listed as such (the names in parentheses are in possession of the slave at that time):

Nero Denton, 40, stout fellow, (Cornet Gray, B. Legion). Formerly the property of William Denton of Goshen; left him in 1776. GMC.

Dalkeith, 25, stout fellow, (Cornet Gray, B. Legion). Formerly the property of James Ronaldson, Smithfield, Virginia; left him in 1778. GMC.

Toney, 20, stout wench, (Cornet Gray, B. Legion). Property of Cornet Gray per Bill of Sale.

Jem, 1, (Cornet Gray, B. Legion). Property of Cornet Gray per Bill of Sale.

Nicholas, 20, stout fellow, (Cornet Gray, B. Legion). Formerly the property of Benjamin Fisher, Pennsylvania.

Cornet was a rank in the British Legion equivalent to 2nd Lieutenant.  Capt Jesse's brother Samuel was a 2nd Lieutenant when he was in St Augustine, this I know.  I don't know if he was also the Cornet Gray listed above, but it is entirely possible.

In Ruth Holmes Whitehead's book, Black Loyalists, she makes reference to a letter from John Cruden, commissioner of sequestered estates, to the local magistrate, George Nibbs in 1783 advising that a Mr. Gray was transporting Negroes from Carolina under the pretense of setting them free but then selling them in the British West Indies.  A few weeks later Cruden wrote to the Honorable J. Fahia, Esq, president of the council at Tortola, about the same thing.  Cruden believed this Mr. Gray to be either Capt Jesse or his brother Samuel.  

We do know that when Capt Jesse went from St Augustine to Nova Scotia, they did detour to Bermuda before heading north.  We also know that in 1786 Samuel bought a number of slaves from Gov Tonyn in East Florida.  Samuel was later recorded as living in Jamaica in 1817.

In Ruth Holmes Whitehead's book she speaks about Boston King, a former South Carolina slave.  King had been the property of Richard Waring of Charlestown, SC, he later worked as an orderly to a militia Capt Grey/Gray in SC.  We know that Mary Postell had also been the property of a family by the name of Waring in Charlestown.

Upon doing a bit of online poking around I was reading through some ads posted for runaway slaves in the newspaper in South Carolina in 1783-85.  You can see them here.  On Sept 2-6, 1783 and Jan 3-6, 1784 a Henry Gray was looking for 4 runaway slaves.  The part that set off my alarm bells was that they had been purchased from Postell and Waring .... BOTH names associated with Capt Jesse, Samuel, and Mary Postell.

Hmmmmmm.........

So ... factual information, I have none.  Well, it's all factual and it's all information, but it doesn't all necessarily belong to me.  It is thought provoking though.  A bit too coincidental for my liking ... I am definitely going to have to do some more investigating into these areas.

Working the numbers ....

That's what it all comes down to ... the numbers.  If the dates don't line up within reason, then certain names and associations go right out the window.  This is one of the 3 main reasons I have discarded the many Jesse Grays I've come across until now, the dates just don't work.  The next reason is locations.  Based on the bits of information I do know about Capt Jesse since the American Revolution, I can reason out certain places that just don't make any sense.  This goes along with the 3rd reason, which is common names.  First names were handed down through the generations, naming children after parents, grand-parents, uncles, etc.  Often a child would be given the mother's maiden name as a first name.  They also married locally, so often we have brothers marrying sisters or cousins, with common surnames popping up all over the place within that particular section of the tree.

Using these 3 main processes of deductive reasoning I've eliminated pretty much every Jesse Gray I've come across.  Every now and then I get an email from my dad asking if I'd checked out a name he'd gotten from Uncle Gary (his brother).  So far every one I've been able to definitively tell him they're not the one we're looking for.

But every now and then I get a family line that looks too good to NOT be ours.  There's a Fielding Gray who was born in 1799 in VA, died 1850 in TN.  On the face of that it doesn't look like anything.  Just another Gray.  His middle name is Wells.  Interesting ... Capt Jesse's father-in-law's name is Wells.  Still, not much to go on.  Fielding's father is usually listed as James Gray.  Again, no big deal, there are lots of James Grays out there.  Then I discovered his name is actually James Samuel Gray and he married Mary Mangum, of the same Mangums that my Capt Jesse and Samuel had dealings with in the Mary Postell trial and more.  Capt Jesse has 2 sons that married Mangums.

James Samuel Gray didn't, to my knowledge so far, have a brother named Jesse.  But he did have a cousin Jesse. 

On the face of it I'm only related to these Grays through the Mangums:

James Samuel Gray (1750 - )

husband of 2nd cousin 5x removed

Mary Mangum (1775 - 1800)

wife of James Samuel Gray

Micajah Mangum (1730 - 1787)

father of Mary Mangum

Joseph Micajah Mangum (1710 - 1762)

father of Micajah Mangum

John Mangum (1674 - 1737)

father of Joseph Micajah Mangum

William Mangum Sr. (1706 - 1787)

son of John Mangum

William Mangum Jr. (1736 - 1818)

son of William Mangum Sr.

Mary Mangum (1800 - )  ***** married to Capt Jesse's son, Jesse jr. ... she is 2nd cousin to the Mary that James Samuel Gray married!

daughter of William Mangum Jr.

Benjamin Samuel Gray (1820 - 1890)

son of Mary Mangum

Edgar Athlene Gray (1863 - 1925)

son of Benjamin Samuel Gray

Keith Albert Gray (1908 - 1976)

son of Edgar Athlene Gray

Keith Gerald Gray (1940 - )

son of Keith Albert Gray

Deborah Gray

No matter where I start to dig and add names to fill in holes in the branches, I always have to return to these people.  The dates line up.  The locations are plausible.  The people are familiar.  I have to keep at this until I can definitively say that these people are or are not Capt Jesse's people.  Then I can either do a happy dance or roll up my sleeves and set this branch aside and move on to another.