They seem to have invariably taken place at night, possibly to allow slaves from neighboring plantations to attend, but just as likely because no other time was available. This seemed to shock and distress the people. When the coffin was lowered the grave was found to be partially filled with water – naturally enough, for the whole island is a mere swamp, off which the Altamaha is only kept from sweeping by the high dikes all round it. the coffin being taken up, proceeded to the people's burial ground. The coffin was laid on trestles in front of the cooper's cottage, and a large assemblage of the people had gathered round, many of the men carrying pine-wood torches. just as the twilight was thickening into darkness I went with Mr. Yesterday evening the burial of the poor man Shadrack took place. Yet another slave burial, on Georgia's Butler Island, was described by Frances Anne Kemble in early 1839: This concluded the services at the grave.

the corpse was lowered into the grave and covered, each person throwing a handful of dirt into the grave as a last farewell act of kindness to the dead.

As the procession moved slowly toward 'the lonesome graveyard' down by the side of the swamp, they sung the well-known hymn: Perhaps every fifteenth person down the line carried an uplifted torch. The procession was something like a quarter of a mile long. The coffin, a rough home-made affair, was placed upon a cart, which was drawn by an old Gray, and the multitudes formed in a line in the rear, marching two deep. There were a large number of Negroes from all directions present, I suppose over two hundred.Īt another nineteenth century South Carolina slave burial reported by Creel: Buried the body alongside of his son about 11 o'clock at night. The body begins to smell very bad already, had it put in the coffin as soon as it came. Got Uncle Ben's Paul to make coffin for poor old Anthony. He describes only one African-American burial, on May 6, 1850: Helena Island in Beaufort County, South Carolina, mentions the making or purchasing of coffins for black slaves on only two occasions. Thomas Chaplin, a Sea Island cotton planter on St. Death was certainly a way of life for African-American slaves and they had ample opportunities to make the trip from slave settlement to cemetery for their friends and family. Even on more interior cotton plantations it is likely that nearly one out of every three slave children died before adulthood. One study, for example, found that the mortality rate of black children on the South Carolina and Georgia coastal rice plantations was astonishingly high – nearly 90% of all children died before they reached the age of 16 years. Yet we do know that these African-American slaves died by the thousands.

Very few planter diaries recount the events surrounding slave burials. Planters were rarely interested and often took steps to curb, or at least carefully monitor, the religious training and activities of their slaves. It is even more difficult to discover the religious beliefs of African-American slaves. In her study, 'A Peculiar People': Slave Religion and Community-Culture Among the Gullahs, she explores the beliefs of the BaKongo, Ovimbundu, and other groups on the Windward and Gold Coasts. One anthropologist, Margaret Washington Creel, has examined a range of African beliefs and religious practices in an effort to better understand slave religion.

Hard west graves