Newsletter of Captain Mortimer Jordan
Camp #84, Gardendale Alabama
Alabama Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans
November 2005 Edition Patrick Cumbie: Commander
Albert Snow: Adjutant
The Capt. Mortimer Jordan Camp met at the Gardendale Shoney’s Restaurant Tuesday Oct. 4th. 7pm. Several of our regular members along with the Commander could not make it this time so an informal “get together” was held instead. Mr. David Hogland of Fultondale was on hand as a guest. We welcome him and invite him back again this month.
The next meeting of the Capt. Mortimer Jordan Camp will be November 1st 7pm at the Gardendale Shoney’s Restaurant. Everyone is invited to attend.
The Re-enactment and Confederate Monument dedication at Janney Furnace was a great success. Over a hundred people were on hand for the event. The re-enactment is becoming one of the best in the state.
Upcoming Events of Interest
Nov. 10-13th 8th Annual Battle for the Armory, Tallassee Al. call 334-283-4628
Nov. 18-20th Battle of Missionary Ridge, Sequoyah Caverns, Valley Head, Alabama. call
678-2963337 for information.
The Virginia Military Institute Pipes and Drums at the 33rd Annual Stone Mountain Highland Games and Scottish Festival. The Tartan is the New Market Battlefield Tartan.
From "Virginia, Guide to The Old Dominion",
WPA Writers' Program,
Oxford
University Press, NY,
1940, p. 378
"In 1650 there were only 300 negroes in Virginia, about one percent of the
population. They weren't slaves any more than the approximately 4,000 white
indentured servants working out their loans for passage money to Virginia,
and who were granted 50 acres each when freed from their indentures, so they
could raise their own tobacco.Slavery was established in 1654 when Anthony
Johnson, Northampton County, convinced the court that he was entitled to the
lifetime services of John Casor, a negro. This was the first judicial
approval of life servitude, except as punishment for a crime. But who was
Anthony Johnson, winner of this epoch-making decision? Anthony Johnson was a
negro himself, one of the original 20 brought to Jamestown (1619) and 'sold'
to the colonists. By 1623 he had earned his freedom and by 1651, was
prosperous enough to import five 'servants' of his own, for which he
received a grant of 250 acres as 'headrights.'Anthony Johnson ought to be in
a 'Book of Firsts.' As the most ambitious of the first 20, he could have
been the first negro to set foot on Virginia soil. He was Virginia's first
free negro and first to establish a negro community, first negro landowner,
first negro slave owner and as the first, white or black, to secure slave
status for a servant, he was actually the founder of slavery in Virginia.
A remarkable man."
From PBS.org The FIRST slave owner in America was "Anthony Johnson, one of the earliest African Americans to settle Virginia", who enslaved his negro 'indentured servant' by court decree after his negro's indenture was over.
Anthony Johnson- The First American Slave Owner
"The Blurred Racial Lines of Famous Families"
Researched and Written by Mario de Valdes y Cocom
PBS.org
This painting could be fairly important not only because the artist is nationally recognized but because of the ancestry of the sitter.
According to Paul Heinegg, author of "Free People of Color in North Carolina," this Thomas Johnson, a wealthy Maryland planter, was none other than the great grandson of Anthony Johnson, one of the earliest African Americans to settle Virginia. And it is this very Anthony Johnson who is a pivotal figure in the debate over the origins of slavery.
Anthony Johnson had acquired close to a thousand acres of land by the middle of the 17th century and was among the first generation of free blacks whose relative affluence have forced scholars of the Colonial south to revise their original views on the origins of American slavery and the fine line between this "peculiar" institution and indentured servitude.
