4. “SMALL RACES” OF THE MIDDLE ATLANTICIsolated communities throughout the region

have preserved their Native heritage through centuries,usually without official encouragement or recognition.

The preservation planning regimerequires that each property must be consideredin terms of its larger cultural and historicalcontext. An obvious context for the subjectproperty is the post-contact history of NativeAmerican populations in Delaware, notpreviously treated by the planning process.While creation of a new planning context is notappropriate in a site-specific study, someinformation is necessary in order to place thesite in its own proper historical milieu.

In this chapter we will review availableinformation on Native American communitiesin the Middle Atlantic region, with emphasison the Delaware communities. In the nextchapter we will examine the history of the KentCounty community and its relationship to theresidents of Bloomsbury.

At least two tenants on the Bloomsburyproperty, John Sisco and Thomas Conselor, areknown to have been members of a local NativeAmerican remnant population often misnamed“moors” or “high yellows,” historicallycentered around the town of Cheswold in LittleCreek and Duck Creek hundreds of KentCounty. Two of the European-Americanowners, Patrick Conner and Francis Denney,were identified with these people through closebusiness and personal relationships. Anotherfamily on the property, the Loatmans, also arerelated to the local Indian remnant community.

From the end of the seventeenthcentury, until the last decades of the nineteenthcentury, no Indians were legally identified inKent County government records. Census, tax,and school records contain no record of anyrace other than black or white during nearlytwo centuries (Heite and Heite 1985).

Before the United States census of1790, there was no legal requirement inAmerica to classify everyone by race, and therewas no generally-accepted standard for

racial identity. Racial designations appear in therecord only on an ad hoc basis, determined foreach occasion. The Constitution required adecennial census, that would identify whites,slaves, free persons of color, including everyoneexcept “Indians not taxed.” Indians not taxedwere those who lived on reservations set aside bythe U. S. government or by the colonies before theRevolution.

Taxed Indians were enumerated in thecensus together with African Americans under theclassification of “free persons of color.” Somewere classified as white. Because there were noreservations in Delaware, where untaxed Indianswould reside, an Indian could be either black orwhite, but not “red.” Many were called“mulattoes,” an ambigous term that encompassedany nonwhite person, regardless of ancestry. The1800 census of Delaware (the 1790 returns havingbeen lost) did not list any person identified as anIndian.

For thirty years before the Civil War,increasingly strict laws controlled the actions ofblacks and mulattoes, who were considered likelyto foment rebellion against slaveowners. BecauseDelaware was a slave state, these restrictions wererelatively onerous. A few well-off Indianschallenged the restrictions in court, but failed.

After the Civil War, Indian people wereable to obtain limited separation of their schoolsfrom the black school system, but officialrecognition of individuals as Indians escapedthem until the twentieth century.

Indian people clearly have been living inthe area since contact, but their ethnic identity hasbeen systematically erased or concealed from thepublic record for centuries. It is generally notpossible to find individuals who wereunequivocally classified as Indians in the publicrecord after about 1700. On the other hand, itis possible to identify

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community of people who have maintained atradition of Indian descent. These communitieshave maintained internal cohesion throughthree centuries of European domination andofficial denial of thier Indian identities. Thetwo Indian communities in Delaware and athird community centered around BridgetonNew Jersey maintained strong social tiesthroughout the nineteenth and twentiethcenturies. Today about 1,500 families belong toa regional Nanticoke-Lenape organization inKent County and across the river in New Jersey(Nanticoke-Lenape 1996: 9). An unknown

number of families belong to another organizationin southern Delaware.

Official silence concerning race duringthe eighteenth century has complicated thehistorian’s task of making a racial or culturalidentification of these people during a criticalperiod in their history, and the time when this sitewas occupied. The concept of “race” presentssome problems to the historian. If “race” isdefined by genealogy, or pure descent from thecore population, very few people can be classifiedas belonging to a single race.

Figure 15Detail of the 1719 Senex Maryland map

This Maryland map varies little from the Augustine Herman map issued a generation earlier. The projectarea (arrow) is shown as virtually unknown territory, inaccurately located on a shrunken Delaware Bay

shore. Even the heads of Delaware rivers were claimed by Maryland. Indian tribes were still identified onthe New Jersey side of Delaware Bay near the project area. Native-descended populations have

intermarried across Delaware Bay throughout recorded history.

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If, on the other hand, a “race” isdefined as a self-defined community whointermarry freely and share cultural traditions,then a person’s “race” is easy to define,regardless of individual genetic makeup.

For purposes of census and enforcement ofdiscriminatory laws, race in America has beendefined by yet a third standard, which is thesubjective opinion of the person keepingrecords. In the case of Indians living in asociety where everyone was either black orwhite, subjective racial assignments variedthrough the spectrum.

While the house at Bloomsbury wasstanding, the economic, legal, and social statusof the local Native American community wasslipping from a largely undifferentiated whiteor “not black” designation to a status legallyindistinguishable from free Negroes. Partly as aconsequence of this change in designation,native people became poorer, less literate, andalmost invisible.

This isolation and alienation had itsbeneficial effects, however. During nearly threecenturies, Indian remnant communitiesmanaged to retain their separate identities,some social structure, and the oral heritage of anative ancestry.

ISOLATE GROUPS = INDIANS?

Racially ambiguous communities,sometimes collectively called isolates or, informer times, tri-racial isolates, are foundthroughout the United States, but they are bestknown in the upper South. These groupstypically are self-defined and are recognized bythe larger communities that surround them.Sociologists, anthropologists, historians, andgenealogists have studied these “small races”from several complementary points of view.

The first published overall survey ofisolate groups in the upper South was asociological study by Brewton Berry, AlmostWhite (Berry 1963). The most recent scholarlystudy is a genealogical survey by an historian(DeMarce 1992, 1993). Published scholarlyaccounts of individual communities areappearing regularly (Cissna 1986). Some

studies are fragmentary and others remainunpublished (such as Segal 1976), leaving thefield wide open for future researchers.

Genealogical and anthropologicalscholarship has shed light on the isolates’ origins,but researchers generally recognize that muchbasic data must yet be gathered before the subjectcan be adequately understood (DeMarce1993:39). Before the advent of modern DNAstudies, there were several attempts to quantify ingenetic terms the racial makeup of the isolategroups (Pollizer 1972) by looking at grossperceived racial characteristics.

As details have fallen together, it hasbecome apparent that the isolate groups are, infact, remnant Native American communities thathave remained outside the official system ofrecognized tribes.

REMOVALS

Almost immediately after the beginningof colonialization, the European and Nativecommunities recognized the need to keep spacebetween themselves.

Among the first laws issued by theEnglish under the Duke of York was a lawforbidding freedom of worship for Native people(Linn 1879:33):

“No Indian whatsoever shall at any time beSuffered to Powaw or performe outwardworship to the Devil in any Towne within thisGovernment.”

The same law, however, required settlers to helpfence Indians’ corn fields against wanderingcattle, and to compensate Indian farmers for cropdamage from settlers’ cattle. Strong liquor wasnot to be given to Indians, except for medicinalpurposes.

Figure 16(Facing Page)

This map of Virginia and Maryland was publishedjust before the Winnesocum uprising of 1742.Indian towns are shown in the area nowrecognized as part of Sussex County. Note thewavy line representing the disputed boundary ofPennsylvania and a shrunken Delaware withMaryland.

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By about 1718, some of the SouthernMaryland Piscataway had moved north andestablished Conoy Town on the Susquehanna inPennsylvania, near the present Bainbridge. Tothis location came other Piscataway from thepresent Washington metropolitan area, as well asother Maryland Indians. They began to join othertribes in doing business with the Pennsylvaniacolonial government. By 1742, there is mentionof Nanticokes among them (Cissna 1986:192-193).

1742 may have been the definingmoment in the history of Native Americans onthe Delmarva. In that year, a group oftraditionalists gathered in the Pocomoke swampat a place called Winnesockum to plan amassacre that was thwarted. Within a few years,traditional Indian towns (Figure 16) and theirinhabitants had “disappeared” from theDelmarva landscape. The history of thisupheaval, or last gasp of a society, is yet to bewritten (Weslager 1943).

In the next year the main body of theConoy and Nanticoke moved upriver to themouth of the Juniata, following advice from theIroquois with whom they had becomeassociated. By 1753, the Nanticoke andPiscataway (Conoy) were being treated as asingle people. During the Revolution, 120Nanticoke and 30 Piscataway took refuge at FortNiagara.

Thereafter some went to Canada, whileothers left to join the Lenape in the OldNorthwest on the trek that eventually took themto Oklahoma (Cissna 1986:193-200). Lenapeemigrants took the traditional religion withthem, and it survived into the twentieth century(Kraft 1984) in Canada and Oklahoma. Duringthe migration period, people moved back andforth, between the emigrant communities and theEast Coast homelands. Limited communicationwas sustained, along the route, certainly forseveral generations after each move.

INDIANS WHO STAYED BEHIND

Today’s isolate communities descendfrom the people who lived along the East Coastwhen the first Europeans arrived, although the

tribal labels attached to groups today are notnecessarily the ones their ancestors carried. TheSussex County Nanticoke community, for example,may in fact contain significant numbers ofChoptanks, Assateagues and Gingaskins Weslager1943:142).

More than a hundred identifiable tribalgroups are not recognized by the Department of theInterior. Most surviving Native Americans alongthe eastern seaboard live outside the “recognized”or “reservation” system. Without governmentrecognition, tribal groups have had little success inasserting their Indian identity. Ironically, the“citizen” or “non-reservation” Indians, descendantsof members of “removed” tribes who did notemigrate, probably number more than 115,000(Porter, ed., 1986:2).

Indians in the east are here because theirancestors consciously masked their native culture.During the removal period, Indians who chose toretain their traditional way of life were packed offto a sequence of distant reservations. Those whochose to stay in their home territories adoptedEuropean ways and acculturated as quickly aspossible. Rather than live on tribal reservations,they acquired land in the European tenure system,and became landowners indistinguishable on therecord from their white neighbors.

The late John Witthoft suggested that, inthe Penn colonies, native groups survived on thepersonal manors of the Proprietors, which wereeffectively baronial estates exempt from localpolitical forces (Witthoft 1994; Porter, ed.,1986:73). There was a manor, called Frieth, on theupper reaches of Duck Creek, in Kent County,Delaware, immediately northwest of the area wherethe progenitors of the Cheswold community livedduring the eighteenth century.

Those who stayed behind graduallyadopted charactertistics of the dominant society.The rate of acculturation never has been measured.Nor have scholars been able to determine howmuch of Native culture survived, or for how long(Porter, ed., 1986: 27).

Because it was not legally or sociallypossible to proclaim Indian identity, remnants

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Postcontact Nanticoke and Lenape chronology(Boender 1988, Davidson 1991, Adams 1995; Horle 1991)

1570, August 5: Don Luis, a Christianized Indian, set off from the Spanish fort at Santa Elena on a voyage to his Chesapeake homeland,accompanied by the Jesuit Vice-Provincial

1659, 29 July: Choptanks and related groups agree to a treaty with Maryland.1666: Somerset County, Maryland, formed, including Nanticoke lands now in Delaware.1669: Dorchester County, Maryland, formed, containing nearly all the reserved Choptank lands.1676: Bacon’s rebellion in Virginia, resulting from native dislocation and friction between natives and Europeans.1682: John Puckham, Indian, was baptised and then married Joan Johnson, “mulatto” granddaughter of Anthony.1698, October: The Maryland council set aside the Chicacoan reservation for the Nanticokes. The Puckamee village on the south bank of

the Nanticoke was simultaneously abandoned and claimed by settlers1698: A “mulatto” was ruled to have no African ancestry in Sussex County.1705: By treaty the Nanticoke tayac was declared to be subject to the Maryland Council’s supervision. Virginia defines the term “mulatto.”1711, January: Askecksy reservation, 1,000 acres, was set aside for the people called Indian River Indians by the Maryland authorities;

by 1742, only 400 acres remained in Indian hands.1711, 3 November: Broad Creek reservation was set aside by the Maryland legislature for the Nanticoke.1712: Ashquash, the Nanticoke tayac at Chicacoan, abdicated and moved to Pennsylvania, joining the Susquehannocks.1719: Choptanks retreated to a small tract called Locust Neck.1742: Nanticoke and visiting Seneca gathered at Winnasoccum, an island in the middle of Pocomoke Swamp, possibly for the purpose of

planning an uprising.1744: Conrad Weiser reported Nanticoke living in the Susquehanna valley near the mouth of the Juniata in Pennsylvania; Nanticoke in

Maryland petitioned the legislature for permission to leave and join this community.1748: William Cambridge “mulatto,” received a patent for 60 acres (expanded to 128 in 1754) within the former Askibinikansen Indian

town, which lay north of the present town of Snow Hill, Maryland (Figure 16).1753: The “Indian Town” tract in Worcester County, 69 acres, was patented by James MIles.1757: Nanticokes attempted to select a new tayac, but chose Peter Monk, who proved to be an Assateague instead. After they

discovered their mistake, George Pocatus was chosen. Nanticoke delegates visited the Eastern shore to invite the remainingIndians to join them in Pennsylvania.

1758: Two identified Indians were listed in a Sussex County militia muster roll, James Westcote and Nathan Norwood.1761: Governor Hamilton of Pennsylvania wrote to Maryland authorities requesting permission for the Nanticoke to remove to

Pennsylvania.1767, July: A delegation from the Six Nations visited Annapolis, requesting permission to remove the remaining Eastern Shore Indians.

In return, the three reservations were to be surrendered; some families moved. Most of the surviving Maryland Indians chose tostay.

1768: Chicacoan, Maryland. reservation was declared vacated, but a woman and two children remained at Broad Creek, now inDelaware, continuing the Indian occupation so that it could not be declared vacant under Maryland law.

1793: Led by Moravian missionaries, refugee Lenape from Ohio established a settlement at Fairfield, on the Thames in western Ontario,which was destroyed in 1813 by United States troops.

1812: Gingaskin reservation, on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, is abolished and the land is distributed among the tribal members1852: A delegation of Nanticoke from Grand River, Ontario, visited the Maryland legislature to seek compensation for lost reservations on

the Eastern Shore.

were called “mulatto” or even “negro,” but moreoften “colored.” Until 1830, free nonwhitecommunities were tolerated or ignored in mostlocalities by the dominant European culture.

Race and status are indefinite and internallycontradictory in colonial records. John Oakey is anillustrative example. He patented a tract hesuggestively named “Mulatto Hall” on BlackwaterCreek in Sussex County in 1684. This is the earliestracial reference among the community’sdocumentary history. Oakey had served as a countyconstable, indicating that he was recognized as a

full member of European-American society,whatever his racial origin.

He was in Somerset County, Maryland, asearly as 1662, when he was was claimed as aheadright in a land claim (Shearer and Schaeffer1993). He was associated in many of his legal andbusiness dealings with members of one of today’srecognized Nanticoke families in Sussex County, butwe still do not know his origins.

Unfortunately for later historians, raciallabels during the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies are confusing, nonexistent, or contradictory.

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DEFINITIONS OF ISOLATE GROUPS

During the entire first half of European-American history, there was little or no incentiveto legally define the precise racial origin of aperson who was otherwise culturallyindistinguishable from the European-Americancommunity. Before the Revolution, only Virginiaand North Carolina legally defined race in termsof ancestry.

Although it is today taken to mean mixedblack and white, the word “mulatto” in theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries generallyapplied to anyone with dark skin who was not aNegro. In the West Indies, the term was appliedalso to mixed black-Indian individuals. Anothermeaning was a person who was “half-Christian,”born of a union between a Spaniard and a non-Christian. In one 1709 example, a person wasdescribed as both a mulatto and an Indian (OxfordEnglish Dictionary 1971). Definitions inDelaware official documents were no moreprecise (Heite and Heite 1985).

The Virginia law of 1705 defined thechild of an Indian as a mulatto, but it stated thatthe child, grandchild, and great-grandchild of aNegro would be a mulatto legally. ForIndian/white unions, the taint of mulatto statuswould disappear when the issue of such a unionmarried a white person. For Negro/white unions,the taint was effectively permanent. While theprogeny of Indian/white unions mated amongthemselves, Virginia law would identify theoffspring as mulatto. Maryland had a similardefinition, which was not explicitly stated (Cissna1986:204-205).

The Pennsylvania Assembly set terms of servicefor [white] indentured servants whose indenturescould not be found. Those who came into thecolony without papers would be assumed to servefive years if they were between seventeen andtwenty-two years old [later changed to sixteen andtwenty-one] , or until the age of twenty-two ifthey were under seventeen (Linn 1879:153, 237).

The law, which at first was disallowed by

the Crown, would not apply to Africans. A taint ofAfrican blood would therefore significantly alter aservant’s status. In this regard, “mulatto” statuswas legally independent of any African connection,as the case of Jacob Frederick illustrates.

In June 1698, a “Molattoe Boy” namedJacob Frederick complained to the Sussex courtthat “hee Came Not of nigroe Parentage,” andtherefore could not be held as a slave for life.Frederick argued that he had been bound as anapprentice for a term, and could not be held as aslave for life under Delaware law. He succeeded inhis plea, but in 1704 he was again in court,sentenced to twenty lashes and six weeks ofadditional service to his mistress for beating JohnMorgan. Frederick was a witness in 1709 for thedefense when Samuel Dickinson was accused ofhorse stealing (Horle 1991: 1049, 1195, 1291).

The Maryland state historic preservationplan assumes that Native Americans ceased to existin the colony at some time. A research questions inthe plan is, “Why did indigenous Native Americanpopulations largely disappear from Maryland afterEuropean settlement began?” In fact, they are stillthere, but they were consistently missed bycontemporary authorities and later historians,largely because of the misleading “mulatto” tag(Maryland Historical Trust 1986:282).

Modern historians have retroactivelyapplied the narrower modern, black-mixed,definition of “mulatto” to the historical records. Arecent state-sponsored study of “free blacks” in theEastern Shore of Maryland included documentedIndians, among the black population, as a result ofmisunderstanding the term “mulatto” in the publicrecords (Davidson 1991).Indians and other nonwhites were lumped in earlycensus records as “free persons of color,”interpreted frequently by historians as “blacks,”thereby obscuring all the nuances encompassed bythat category.

Public policy in the southeastern states wasessentially biracial. One was either white ornonwhite, which meant black. Native Americanremnant groups fought for recognition as a separaterace outside the biracial system throughout the

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segregation era, sometimes successfully(Williams, ed., 1979:23).

Between the Revolution and the CivilWar, racial definitions became more detailed andmore important, as legal restrictions on nonwhitesbecame progressively more oppressive (Mencke1976:8). Those who were defined as Negroes ormulattoes found their civil rights eroded, whileIndians were forced off their land and into thewest. Racial definition became a matter ofsurvival. After 1831, in response to the perceivedthreat of the Nat Turner rebellion, the slave states,including Delaware, passed restrictive lawsforbidding nonwhites to own arms, to congregate,or even to attend church, except under whitesupervision.

There have been many legal andtraditional definitions of the term “Indian.” ACensus Bureau definition calls anyone an Indianwho is registered in a federally recognized tribe,or who is one-fourth Indian. The Bureau of IndianAffairs defined an Indian as a person entitled to itsservices, and the Public Health Service definitionis different still. As little as 1/256 Indian bloodhas been recognized as conferring tribal rights(Berry 1963: 7). Each state and locality whereIndian remnant groups reside has produced a newsolution to the problem of defining them.

Legally many attempts at defining race areobsolete, of course, because race no longerdefines a person’s access to voting, schooling,marriage partner, or public facilities. Released

from the spectre of legal repercussions, researcherscan now ask questions that previously would havebeen taboo, even inside the community.

A Native American remnant on IndianRiver in Sussex County, Delaware, formed a tribalcorporation in 1921, and laid claim to the name ofNanticoke (Weslager 1953:30), even though theyprobably include descendants of many groups,including the Assateagues.

The state of New Jersey legallyrecognizes Lenape organizations in Burlington andCumberland counties. (Kraft 1986:241-243). Agroup known as Nanticoke-Lenape Indians of NewJersey, incorporated in 1978, includes manyfamilies from Kent County, Delaware. (Leni-Lenape Council 1996). The organization includesabout 1,500 families today.

For centuries, families have moved andmarried easily across Delaware Bay, so that todaythey are genealogically a single community. NewJersey member families are descended in part fromSussex County Nanticokes who moved across thebay to escape Jim Crow laws. Among theemigrants was Levin Sockum, whose trial had firstlegally labelled the Nanticoke as mixed with theNegro (Fisher 1895). Weslager reports that LydiaClark is said to have admitted that she lied in returnfor payment from a jealous white neighbor whosestore competed with Sockum’s (Weslager1943:37). Other families moved from Delaware toCanada around this period and intermarried withlocal Native families in their new homes.

Nanticoke and Cheswold Lenape surnames

Bass Butcher CambridgeCarney Carter ClarkCoker Conselor CottDean Drain DurhamGreenage Han[d]sor HarmonHughes Jackson JohnsonKimmey La Count LoatmanMiller Morgan MoselyMunce[y] Norwood PuckhamRidgeway Read(Reed) CourseySammons(Salmon) Saunders SeeneySisco(Francisco) Sockum SongoSpark[s]man Street[t] ThompsonWright (Directory begins on page 345)

Delaware legally recognizes an organizedSussex County Nanticoke tribal group, whichcontains individuals with near relatives in KentCounty and New Jersey communities that are notlegally recognized by state or federal authorities.The three communities are genealogicallyindistinguishable.

THE CHESWOLD ENCLAVE

A new wave of Indian awareness in KentCounty has been enhanced by the organization of atribal corporation. Group

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members have responded by researching theirfamily histories and their ethnic identity.

The first hurdle facing researchers is theissue of historical, legal, and documentaryambiguity. Racial isolate groups share a lack ofdocumentary history, a legendary past that isimpossible to verify, and a tradition of reticenceabout their true origins. All these problems willconfront anyone studying the Kent County“moor” community.

The name “moor” is not particularlyfavored by the community it designates, since itdenotes North African or Iberian origins forpeople who consider themselves both culturallyand genealogically Native Americans.

A separate identity for the Kent Countycommunity can be documented genealogically asearly as the first half of the eighteenth century,when free persons were not customarilyidentified by race in the public record.

Members of the group already weremarrying among themselves during the firstidentifiable generation. Separate racial or groupidentity consciousness is implied by thegenealogical facts, but not explicitly stated on theofficial record, during the eighteenth century.

Progenitors of the community appeared in theKent County records without racialidentification, generally literate and financiallywell off, by 1693. Over the next century and ahalf, their descendants declined in wealth andstatus. Perhaps most significant was the declinein literacy among the community. Male literacywas a powerful indicator of a household’seconomic prospects (page 59). In those daysbefore free public education for all races, literacywas a commodity that required disposableincome and, preferably, access to schools. Apoor family in the backwoods, unable to reach orafford access to private schools, had fewprospects of improvement.

Scharf’s History of Delaware states thatgroup members claimed that the Kent Countycommunity began about 1710, maintaining a

separate society from the start. (Scharf 1888:1124).

By the time Thomas Conselor died in1739, the families had already begun to intermarry.His will indicates that Conselor’s daughters hadmarried a Butcher and a Francisco (Sisco), both“core” families of the community.

William Handsor was the first documentedIndian migrant into the Kent County community.He patented Jolley’s Neck, on Chance’s Branch ofSt. Jones River, in 1737. When he died in 1768, heleft effects that speak of a decidedly prosperouslife, including a sword, a fiddle, shoemaker tools,and carpentry tools.

Historians have never definitivelyestablished the origins of the community. Weslager(1943:74-78) traces the Hansor family to Aminidab(born 1688), son of Aminidab (born c.1664) andRose Hansor. His will, dated 1717, mentions hisbrother Samuel and his daughters Ann and Mary.His aged parents were still living, and his fatherwas his executor. William is presumed to be hisson, but this presumption is based only upon laterdocuments in which he is associated with Samuel.

In 1716, a William Handsor owned land inIndian River Hundred, and was listed as white, orat least not black. If this is the same William wholater lived at Jolley’s Neck, he could not have beenthe son of the younger Aminidab, who was only 29in 1716.

The elder Aminidab Hansor is said by somesources to have been the illegitimate son of MaryVincent (born c. 1650), an English girl of fourteen,and a servant called Aminidab “Haw” of NanduaCreek, Virginia (Deal 1993). Actually, they appearto have been unrelated, but very closely allied.

Mary and her husband John Oakey (bornc. 1640) had a son named John, born about 1669,and a daugther Mary, as well as a son namedAminidab Oakey.

Aminidab [Hanger or Hamsworth] theelder was a witness in 1685 to a power of attorneythat was part of the conveyance of 775 acres called“Cheat” on Indian River to William Burton of

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Accomac County, Virginia. The Oakeys and theHandsors helped John Barker bring Burton’scattle from Virginia to the Sussex County Burtonproperty in 1687, and testified at length whenthere were allegations of rustling (Horle1991:433, 606-608). Mary Oakey was also awitness of the will of John Burton, who left alegacy to Aminidab Handsor.

Other “core” families appear in the KentCounty record around the same time, about ageneration after some of the same names firstappear in Sussex County documents. Whereorigins can be traced, each original “core” familycan be identified as coming from Sussex, orhaving close relatives there. Even in Sussex, lessthan a third of the community surnames appearin the court records before 1710 (Horle 1991).

When racial labels began to appearconsistently in the public record, early in thenineteenth century, members of the communitywere arbitrarily assigned such labels as“mulattoes” or “free persons of color” andsometimes “Negroes.” There was absolutely noconsistency among the record keepers when itcame to reporting race.

Members of Delaware’s Kent and Sussex“moor” or Indian racial isolate communities havebeen known by a bewildering variety of labelsover the years. Labels have shifted, dependingupon the era and individual points of view. It isuseful to analyse the meaning behind theselabels, remembering that they reflect observerbias.

Some Delaware community membersevidently retained connections with the Indianfamilies that had moved away. In 1892, aPhiladelphia newspaper reported that a man ofthe Cheswold community born in 1811 had livedas a young man among Lenape emigrants thenliving in Indiana (page 66).

The 1800 manuscript census is the oldestofficial extant documentation of an attempt (the1790 census being lost) to define everyone inDelaware by race. Three categories of nonwhitepeople were identified by the federal enablinglaw: Indians not taxed, free colored persons, andslaves. In each hundred, the local census taker

applied his own criteria. The census was tallieddifferently in each county, too. In Sussex County,the tally contains a list at the end of each hundred’slist titled “Free Negroes & Mulattos & C,” while inKent, the letter “N” was placed after certain names.

The ambiguity is well illustrated in theproject vicinity by the cases of Elizabeth LaCountand Mary Durham.

Mary, widow of Isaiah Durham, is listed inthe 1800 census of Little Creek Hundred as “N”with only free persons of color in her household.When she married John Sisco, also listed as “N” inthe census, her surety on Isaiah’s estate, a whiteman, demanded to be released from his bondbecause she had married a mulatto! Clearly Marywas perceived as belonging to a “superior” racialgroup, above the mulatto Sisco, while in anotherrecord both are described as negroes. In the 1800census, Isaiah’s brother William Durham is listedas white, or at least not nonwhite. His sistersmarried members of the Sisco (Francisco),Conselor, and LaCount families, who were listed as“N.”

Thomas LaCount married Letitia Durham,sister of William, in 1789. Elizabeth [Letitia?]LaCount is listed without the “N” after her name inthe Duck Creek census, with only free persons ofcolor in her household. Samuel LaCount appears aswhite in the Mispillion Hundred census of 1800.

During the period of racial tension before and afterthe Civil War, the outside community tended tolump nonwhite minorities among Negroes and“colored.” The “moors” responded by withdrawingfrom the system.

When Delaware began offering free publiceducation in 1829, it was reserved for the whitepopulation. Benjamin Tharp was engaged to set upthe districts, and his field notes have survived atthe Delaware Archives. Tharp counted thehouseholds and allocated them to districts, each ofwhich was to be served by a one-room school. Noblack households were counted, and neither werethe Native American families.

Creation of a public school system led to amonopoly of literacy reserved for whites alone,while private schools were dissolved or absorbed.

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RACE PERCEPTION AMONG REMNANT COMMUNITIES

Year Name identified as source1684 John Oakey.................................................. mulatto? ..................... his patent to Mulatto Hall1747 John Ridgway .............................................. mulatto .................... St. George Chapel baptism1758 Daniel Norwood ..................................... brown Indian ..........................................muster roll1758 Nathan Norwood........................................... brown ................................................muster roll1758 James Westcote........................... brown, occupation “Indian” ..............................muster roll1760 Abraham Siscoe.........................................Nanticoke .................. delegation to Pa Governor1768 Bowen son of Nathan Norwood ................. mulatto .................... St. George Chapel baptism1771 Saunders & Mary Oakey............................. mulatto .................... St. George Chapel baptism1773 Joseph & Ann Sammon............................... mulatto .................... St. George Chapel baptism1782 Charles Francisco (Sisco)..............................white ..........................state of Delaware census1800 William Durham............................................white ................... Little Creek Hundred census1800 John Francisco (Sisco) “N”..........................negro................... Little Creek Hundred census1800 Mary Durham, widow, “N” ..........................negro................... Little Creek Hundred census1806 John Francisco (Sisco) ................................ mulatto ...........................................court petition1810 Esther Francisco(Sisco).....................free woman of color.................................... her probate1813 Thomas Consealor ....................................... mulatto ..................Benjamin Coombe accounts1820s Noke Norwood.......................................copper-colored ...................... Judge Fisher’s article1827 Nathaniel Clark............................Colored man of Indian race............... Passport declaration1831 James Hansor ......................................Indian complexion...................... Passport declaration1839 Jesse Dean................................................ colored man .................................................his will1841 Daniel Coker......................................... free yellow man ................................his deed to land1853 John Dean............................................. of Indian descent ....................... Passport declaration1892 John Sanders ................................ self-identified as an Indian .............. newspaper interview1895 Cornelius Hansor ...................................Indian or Moor....................... Judge Fisher’s article

signatures on official documents.

Literacy is important for afamily’s short term and long termeconomic survival. Male literacyis vital in a business and legalenvironment, but female literacyensures a family’s future becausemothers teach reading and writingto children when schools are notavailable (Murray 1996). Thuspaternal illiteracy may limit afamily’s immediate prospects, butmaternal literacy determines thenext generation’s prospects.

After the Civil War,Delaware reluctantly institutedfree public education fornonwhites on the biracial model,which originally excluded thepossibility of a third racial school

Academies in Dover, Camden, Newark,Middletown, and other towns became publicschools with a strict color line. There was nolonger employment for private teachers or forthe less formal schools that might have been lessracially exclusive.

Apprenticeship was traditionally a way to ensurethat a son would be taught a trade as well asbasic arithmetic and literacy. The exact terms ofan apprenticeship indenture depended upon thechild’s parentage. When a poor orphan childwas bound by court order, the master seldomwas obliged to provide education. On the otherhand, well-off parents often negotiatedapprenticeships with education included fortheir children. Girls and black boys seldom wereindentured with an education requirement.Eventually Delaware law allowed masters to paytheir black apprentices a fee in lieu of education(Hancock 1974). Clearly, assumption thateducation would be rationed on a racial basis.

For whatever reason, the Cheswold communitydeclined in status and literacy during the firsthalf of the nineteenth century, as measured by

system. Public education in Delaware for blacksbegan in 1868, over bitter white objections. Aseparate system for blacks emerged after asegregationist white element threatened to keep theirchildren from school rather than attend classes withnonwhites (Hoffecker 1974:52-63).

A few “moor” or “Indian” schoolseventually were established within the coloredsystem, but only at the elementary level. Some wentwithout education rather than attend segregatedblack schools; others moved away to less segregatedstates, or sent their children to schools inunsegregated jurisdictions (Heite and Heite 1985).

RELATIONSHIPS AMONG GROUPS

The Kent County community is genealogicallyintertwined with the self-declared Nanticoke Indiangroup in Sussex County, and with a similar group inCumberland County, New Jersey. Most KentCounty “moor” families have close relatives in bothplaces. The term “moor” is distasteful to mostcommunity members, and is being replaced usuallyby “Indian” or “Lenape” instead.

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“Isolate” groups have not been isolatedfrom one another. Circumstantial and anecdotalevidence, not yet vertified by broad-scaleresearch, points to a long interrelationshipamong the various groups over centuries. Somemigrations can be traced in the documentaryrecord (Deal 1988:299), connectingcommunities across the Delmarva Peninsula.

Members of the same lineages, settledin different areas, were known by differentracial labels. Even inside the small state ofDelaware, descendants of the same individualsmight be categorized in several racialcommunities (Blakey 1988), depending upontheir ancestors’ perceived willingness tointermarry with white or black neighbors.

Recent researchers have tallied familynames among the various isolate groups in theSouth (DeMarce 1992; Kennedy 1994), inattempts to roughly assess the amount ofintermarriage among them. While admitting thatthe surname list is a crude and unreliable,measure, the results may point a direction forfuture researchers.

Since these surnames may be relativelycommon in the community at large, it isdangerous to identify them as evidence ofinterrelationship. However, they may serve asclues for future migration research. Nearly everywork on racial isolates contains surname lists,which are useful for searching the genealogicalliterature. As the stigma of “inferior” racialstatus has waned, and concurrently Indian ethnicpride has increased, there has been considerablegenealogical work directed toward identifyingthe Native American remnant groups.

Most recently, even the most tenuousclaims to reservation status have been advancedby groups hoping to cash in on federal lawspermitting reservation gambling casinos. Thegaming phenomenon has not touched Delaware,but native self-awareness flourishesindependently of it.

Modern descendants of these peoplehave organized themselves into the LenapeIndian Tribe of Delaware, headquartered atCheswold. They have attempted to obtain state

OCCURRENCES OF SURNAMES

Nanticoke / MoorSurname Found also among

Bass Nansemond in VirginiaClark Redbones of Louisiana,

LumbeeCarter Northampton County, Va.

Pamunkey of Va.Lumbee

Coker 1906 Oklahoma Lenape rollGreenage CanadaHandsor CanadaHarman (Harmon) Northampton County, Va.

Nansemonds,South Carolina Brass Ankles

Pamunkey of Va.,Johnson Northampton County, Va

Person County N. C.Indians, Lumbee of N.C.,Redbones of Louisiana,

LumbeeMosely Melungeons of Tennessee

Lumbee of N. C.Morgan LumbeeDriggers (Roderiguez) South Carolina Brass AnklesDriggus LumbeeDrighouse Gingaskin of Northampton County, Va.Sanders LumbeeSammons CanadaSongo (Shongo?) Chickahominy of Virginia

SenecaStreet Canadian emigrant NanticokeFrancisco (Sisco) Gingaskin of Northampton County, Va.

New Jersey highlandsEmigrant Nanticokes

recognition, most recently through Senate JointResolution of the 137th General Assembly. Thismove failed to pass the State Senate after otherIndians objected.

SUSSEX COUNTY NANTICOKE

On Indian River in Sussex County, Indianawareness has a longer history among a closely-related group.

Even though the main body of theNanticoke tribe of Sussex County is said to haveemigrated to Pennsylvania and eventually to Canadaafter 1742, a remnant group identifies itself as abranch still in place on Nanticoke ancestral ground.These people are historically and genealogicallyrelated to the Kent County remnant aroundCheswold who choose to identify themselves asLenape.

The Nanticoke during the seventeenth centurywere a powerful tribe, who received tribute from

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communities as far afield as NorthamptonCounty, Virginia. In times of unrest, they appearto have been a magnet for refugees andmalcontents of all races from other parts ofDelmarva and beyond.

Maryland colonial authoritiesestablished reservations in the present westernSussex County, Delaware, and nearbyDorchester County, Maryland. Nanticoke andChoptank people complained that thesereservations did not actually protect themagainst encroachment from land seekers andwandering livestock. Eventually the frictionbecame too great; seasonal subsistencemigrations were not compatible with the moresedentary European ideas of land ownership andsubsistence.

In 1742, Nanticokes participated in anabortive uprising that precipitated retaliationthreats from the authorities. Faced with furtherrestrictions on their traditional activities, manyof the Nanticokes decided to move north.Eventually a Nanticoke remnant settled amongthe Six Nations in Canada, where they retain anidentity today (Porter, ed., 1986: 139-147).

Frank Speck, an anthropologist whostudied the Nanticoke in Delaware and Canada,concluded that in 1748, when the Nanticokeemigrated, they left behind some of their peoplein Delaware. He identified the Sussex Countyremnant as an authentic Nanticoke community,even though their documented connection withtoday’s Canadian Nanticoke tribe is tenuous(Cohen 1974:219). Only one family name[Street] is found both among the remnant groupsin Delaware and the emigrant community.

In April 1762, Maryland officialsreported that about 120 Indians still lived onreservations. These people, almost certainlyNanticokes, reportedly lived in good relationswith their European-American neighbors, andno longer traded with other Indians. This is thefirst documentation to indicate that the peoplewho stayed behind were merging into the largerpopulation (Cissna 1986:209).

Their public identity as an Indian tribe

was relatively recently revived; indeed, a member oftoday’s Nanticoke chiefly family was the first tochallenge in court their right to be identified asIndians.

In 1855, Levin Sockum sold powder and shot to hisson-in-law Isaac Harmon, another “person of color.”Sockum was charged with violating a law thatforbade supplying firearms to Negroes andmulattoes. Harmon and Sockum both denied anyNegro ancestry. The prosecuting attorney confirmedthat the two men had no hint of Negro appearance(Fisher 1895, 1929). The charges may have beenpolitically motivated, since the two men were thewealthiest members of their community, and amongthe largest landowners in the hundred. Theyeventually came to own the area now occupied bythe core of the community (Porter, ed., 1986: 154-156). Harmon left 700 acres when he died.

A relative of the two men, Lydia Clark,claimed to be the last full-blooded Nanticoke. Shetestified that Harmon’s ancestor was an enslavedAfrican who had married his white mistress. Thehalf-breed offspring of this union, Lydia Clarktestified, had intermarried with some of theremaining Nanticoke. As a result of her testimony,the “moor” and “Nanticoke” communities weresubsequently identified as tri-racial (Berry1963:135-138).

Judge George Purnell Fisher, who as a young manprosecuted Harman and Sockum, wrote an articletitled “The So-Called Moors of Delaware,” for anewspaper in 1895, which was reprinted by thePublic Archives Commission in 1929. This articlesupported the Lydia Clark testimony of a tri-racialorigin, even though he declared from his ownobservation that Harmon was “a young man,apparently about five and twenty years of age, ofperfect Caucasian features, dark chestnut brownhair, rosy cheeks and hazel eyes; and by odds thehandsomest man in the court room, and yet he wasalleged to be a mulatto.”

He also described Noke Norwood, an oldman who had lived north of Lewes during the thirddecade of the nineteenth century, as “a dark copper-colored man, about six feet and a half in height, ofsplendid proportions, perfectly straight black hair(though at least 75 years old), black eyes and high

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LITERACY AND PROSPERITYIN THE CHESWOLD POPULATION EARLY GENERATIONS

BASED UPON PROBATE RECORDS AT THE DELAWARE PUBLIC ARCHIVESYear of Name of Was he Name of Was she Value ofdeath Deceased literate? Widow literate? inventory1732 David Francisco £27/1/61748 Thomas Francisco Patience no £18/16/61767 William Handsor yes Sarah no £711780 William Conselor yes £65/4/01786 Daniel Durham no Ellinor £116/19/61788 John Durham no £233/7/61791 John Francisco yes £942/6/31793 Whittington Durham no Ruth no £132/10/31795 Thomas Durham Mary £103/6/31796 Thomas LaCount Hester no £39/1/11798 Charles Francisco yes Elizabeth yes £706/5/2.51797 William Durham yes Mary no £129/12/31800 Isaiah Durham Maria no £195/11/101801 Daniel Durham yes Nicey (Unity) no £185/11/01801 Elijah Conselor no Hannah no £501/17/41810 Benjamin Durham Elizabeth no $250.391815 Daniel Durham no $161.061811 Jeremiah Conselor no Elizabeth no $656.8951839 Jesse Dean yes Rebecca $576.121864 Elisha Durham yes Priscilla $352.03

and treated as whites.Indistinguishable from theirneighbors, they were half-hidden to history.

In north-central NorthCarolina, the racialdesignation of severalrelated families has beentraced. In 1750, they weregenerally listed among thewhite settlers, although otherfamilies were listed asmulattoes. By 1762, closelyrelated people were shownon the same lists as eitherwhite or mulatto. By 1771, amember of the group wasidentified as black, whileothers were not identifiedracially, which usuallymeant white (DeMarce1992:21). In none of thecases were individuals

cheek bones.” According to Judge Fisher, NokeNorwood was held in high esteem by hiscommunity. He was also Lydia Clark’s brother(Weslager 1943:35).

“Noke” Norwood may have been the sameperson as “Noble” Norwood, who is listed in the1800 census of Indian River Hundred as havingthree “colored” in his household.

The Nanticoke descendants around IndianRiver Hundred, led by the Clark family, formedthe present tribal corporation in 1921 (Weslager1943:91).

THE NORTH CAROLINA LUMBEE

The experience of a North CarolinaIndian community closely parallels the historyof Delaware’s remnant groups. The Lumbee,centered in Robeson County, now have apopulation estimated at nearly forty thousand(DeMarce 1993).

During the Colonial period, the Lumbeeof North Carolina were referred to as Indians

identified as Indians.

From 1835, North Carolina Lumbee werelegally defined as “free persons of color.” Soonafter the Civil War, the North Carolina Lumbeepublicly insisted upon their Indian designation,which they received and continue to defend.During segregation, the Lumbee of RobesonCounty were entitled to a separate school system(Sider 1993:32).

Like the Delaware community, opinionamong the North Carolina group is divided on thesubject of historical tribe names that should beused. They are divided between people who callthemselves Lumbees and others who callthemselves Tuscarora, even though they might beclosely related, even siblings (Sider 1993:4). Inboth states, modern tribal names reflect differenthistorical notions of identity that may not betotally grounded in fact.

MELUNGEONS

In the Southern Appalachians, from WestVirginia to Georgia, are dark-skinned

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people called Melungeons, whose eighteenth-century ancestors reportedly claimed to bePortugese, even though they bore English andGerman surnames.

Like the other isolate groups, thesepeople first became evident as a distinctcommunity in the public records during themiddle years of the eighteenth century. They arefound throughout a wide region, and a few havetried to identify themselves as Indians. Mosthave tended to merge into the European-American community.

The group’s home territory is in EastTennessee, along Newman’s Ridge in HawkinsCounty, where they lived forty years or sobefore 1844 (DeMarce 1993:31).

Certain Melungeon family names came fromother areas. The Bowling and Collins families,for example, may descend from Saponi familiesof the same names that lived in Orange County,Virginia as late as 1742-1743 (DeMarce1992:11).

Some have joined the Lumbee or theCherokee, and in some localities are recognizedas Indians. In the current generation, aMelungeon research group has formed to seekanswers to questions about origins (Kennedy1994). The notion of Portugese ancestry,formerly dismissed as folkloric, has recentlybeen reexamined with more respect (Deal 1993).Surnames with known Iberian connection,including Francisco and Driggus, are foundamong other isolate communities, but nogenealogical connection to the Melungeons hasbeen documented.

CONNECTICUT’S LIGHTHOUSE

In Connecticut, there is a small remnantgroup whose ancestors were called the“Lighthouse” people. They trace their ancestryto an eighteenth-century Narragansett man nameChaugham and his English-American bride whofled to the mountains to avoid her parents’displeasure (Feder 1994). Their descendantsformed a distinct group that did not fit into theneat racial categories demanded by governmentstatistical tables.

During the generations when theChaugham family lived together in a community,they were called by a variety of ethnic labels,according to Feder’s recent history of the group(at the pages cited):

Year Name Source of appelation Page

1788 Indian James Chaugham deed 85

1800 “other free persons” Federal census 96

1810 “other free persons” Federal census 96

1830 “free colored persons” Federal census 99

1842 Mohegan marriage certificate 102

1848 Creole town vital records 104

1858 “nearly white” town birth records 105

Lighthouse descendants no longer residein a closed community, but they continue torecognize their separate nature. After merginginto the larger community nearly a century ago,descendants kept the stories alive, assisted byoccasional press and literary attention. Becauserace was never a legal issue in Connecticut,segregation laws do not affect the dynamics ofLighthouse history.

Like other eastern non-tribal Indians, theLighthouse people became “other free persons”for the census. In their case, however, they wereable to assert and keep their Indian identity.

NORTHAMPTON COUNTY, VA.

Racial segregation and legal nuances ofrace played a major role in the history of minoritypopulations in Northampton County, Virginia.

Virginia law, beginning in 1705, defined aperson’s racial status in terms of Africanadmixture. After 1873, Virginia law definedanyone with Negro blood as “colored,” anddeclared that Indian status could not be extendedto colored persons. As late as 1975, any taint orsuspicion of Negro blood was enough to classify aperson as “colored,” except Indians living on thePamunkey and Mattaponi reservations, who could

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have as much admixture as one Negro great-grandparent (Porter, ed., 179-180).

Northampton is the southerly of the twoVirginia counties on the Eastern Shore. Its racialhistory is unique. By the first decade of thenineteenth century, politicians were circulatingclaims that all the Indian blood had dissolvedinto the black population. This argument waspolitically necessary to force dissolution of thelocal Indian reservation, but it has been repeateduncritically by historians for two centuries.

Ralph Whitelaw, historian of land titles in theEastern Shore counties, concludes for example,that “Today, their blood remains only as amixture with that of the Negro race.” (Whitelaw1968:20). This statement still is repeated as acultural and genealogical epitaph for the Indiansof the Eastern Shore of Virginia (Rountree1972:3).

During the seventeenth century, therewere families identified as Negro whosebackgrounds and surnames appear to indicateIberian cultural, if not racial, origins. Amongthese “Negro” families were people namedRodriggus (Driggus or Drighouse), Ferdinando,and Francisco (Sisco), as well as such non-Iberian names as Payne and Harman. Thepossibly Portugese surnames have beeninterpreted to indicate a Dutch connection, sincethe Dutch were contending with the Portugese inBrazil and Angola. The name Francisco alsowas found in the “Negro” population of NewAmsterdam (Breen and Innes 1980: 69).

All three races lived intimately together,both inside and outside bondage or wedlock,during the seventeenth century in Virginia’sEastern Shore. Servants or former servants, whomight have been either African, NativeAmerican, or some mixture, not infrequentlymated across racial lines. White servant womenoften married or bore children by fellowservants of other races (Deal 1993).

In the Eastern Shore counties ofVirginia, settlers’ relationships with the nativesdiffered from the rest of the colony.Debedeavon, the “laughing king” of theAccomack, welcomed young Thomas Savage

and granted him a substantial tract in 1620 nearthe present county seat town of Eastville.

In 1640, the tables were turned, andsurviving Virginia Eastern Shore Indians weregiven a 1500-acre reservation, which shrank to650 acres when it was actually conveyed to them.The tract, Gingaskin, apparently included some ofthe acreage that had been given twenty yearsearlier to Thomas Savage (Whitelaw 1968: 281-286).

Gingaskin was never an important village. Whenthe powerful Nanticoke of lower Delaware plottedto poison wells of the English and drive themfrom the Peninsula, the Gingaskins’ King Tomcarried a roanoke tribute to the Nanticoke andspied on European settlers.

The Gingaskin tribe of Indians dwindledand became destitute. Their neighbors consideredthem a nuisance, and charged that they hadbecome mixed with the local black population.Trustees were appointed to protect them, andfinally in 1786 the tribe petitioned the Virginialegislature for relief against encroachments. In1792, the Virginia General Assembly ordered theIndian town land to be divided among survivingmembers of the tribe. This was finallyaccomplished in 1813, after a second law waspassed. The 690-acre tract was divided into 27lots that were allocated to the surviving tribalmembers, among whom were people namedDrighouse and Francis, which may be corruptionsof Driggus and Francisco (Whitelaw 1968: 286).

A few allotments were sold immediately,but by 1830, half the reservation remained in thehands of the tribal members. That year, the NatTurner rebellion occurred in SouthamptonCounty; the remaining Gingaskin sold their landand some joined the northward migration.

MARYLAND INDIAN FAMILIES

The Cheswold community during the lateeighteenth century was in touch with Nativefamilies from the Eastern Shore counties ofWorcester and Somerset. One known contact, thePuckhams, is one of the few that can be identified

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with a seventeenth-century Maryland NativeAmerican ancestor.

John Puckham, an Indian, was baptisedin 1682 and married a “mulatto” named Jone[Joan] Johnson shortly thereafter. The namePuckham may be an anglicized version of thename of his village, in northern SomersetCounty, probably now Sussex County,Delaware.

Their sons, John and Richard, aged 13 and 10,were bound as apprentices in 1699.Apprenticeship for a child’s minority was achild-rearing option open to white orphans,seldom if ever to African-American children.Voluntary apprenticeship to a white master maybe taken as an indicator that the child was notAfrican.

During the eighteenth century,Puckhams appear without racial designation onthe public records in Stepney Parish ofSomerset County. Abraham Puckham was calleda “planter” in 1723 and was married to atransported white felon named Honor Norgate.This was not the family’s only documentedwhite liaison; at least two Puckham females hadillegitimate children by white men in SomersetCounty. It can be determined from the tax rollsthat Richard Puckham’s wife was either white ormulatto, and not black (Davidson 1991:32 - 37).

Even though their only documentednon-white liaison was the “mulatto” JoanJohnson, eighteenth-century Puckhams havebeen grouped by historians with free blacks,possibly because later members of the familywere classified as free persons of color.Matthew Puckham, called a carpenter, sold hisMaryland farm in 1771 (Davidson 1991: 37). AGeorge Puckham was among the “Indians”named in connection with the Winnesockumconspiracy of 1742.

Matthew apparently moved to KentCounty and joined the Native Americanremnant. A Matthew Pucherm, “free negro,”appears in the St. Jones Hundred tax records in1782, while Matthew and Richard Puckhamwere listed in Broadkill Hundred without racialdesignation. These almost certainly are theMatthew and Richard who were in Somerset

County a few years earlier, and who have beenidentified as free blacks by Davidson (1991).

Puckhams joined the Kent County Indiancommunity at about the same time. Among theaccounts in the 1782 estate settlement of ThomasMurphey [who also had married into thecommunity] were Ellinor and Ephraim Puckham.Ellinor Puckham witnessed John Durham’s will in1788.

In 1815, Hugh Durham administered theestate of Rachel Hansor in Kent County. Thesureties for his bond were Angelica Loockermanand Susan Durham, who was Rachel’s daughter.The two heirs, who shared equally, were SusanDurham and George “Pookham,” an heir-at-lawwho must have been either a son or a son-in-law.Some of Puckham’s descendants, who arecommonly identified as black by the surroundingcommunity, continue to claim their Nativeancestry (Roth 1997: 14-22)

In 1748, according to Davidson, a free“mulatto” named William Cambridge Hunt, laterknown as Wiliam Cambridge, patented land thathad been part of the Askibinakansen Indian town(Figure 16, page 49) near the present settlement ofTaylor Gate in Worcester County. The Indiantown tract had been occupied during the samedecade, and may still have harbored some Indianremnants; another patentee on the town lands wasSamuel Collick, also identified as a “mulatto”(Davidson 1991:82).

Cambridge died in 1787, leaving awidow, two sons and a daughter. The family soldtheir Worcester County farm in 1801. Peoplenamed Cambridge were part of the Cheswoldcommunity by 1813, when Mary Cambridgereceived a payment from the estate of BenjaminDurham. A miller named Frederick Cambridge isrecorded in a probate account doing business withmembers of the community about 1841. Later, aWilliam Cambridge married Mary Dean, daughterof Hester Carney and Jesse Dean, who was thegreat grandson of John Durham.

Benjamin Cambridge of Worcester County is anexample of the racial ambivalence of the 1800census enumerators. He is listed in 1800 as awhite person with one juvenile white male and a

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slave in the household. In the 1810 census hewas identified as a free Negro with three freenonwhites in the household. By 1820 theCambridge family is missing from countycensus returns.

Even though Davidson included theCambridge, Collick and Puckham families in hisstudy of “blacks” on the lower Eastern Shore,circumstances indicate a probable Indian originfor all three families. Some descendants of thesefamilies today consider themselves to beAfrican-American, further complicatinggenealogical attempts to isolate their Indianancestors.

Small patents to “mulattoes” for formerIndian land may actually represent distributionsof assets among resident Indian families whowere legally “mulattoes” under Maryland law.The dissolution of the Askibinakansen Indiantown may provide insights into the origin ofremnant communities.

A person of Native American descentwas an “Indian” as long as he lived on areservation, or stalked deer in the forest for aliving. Once the “Indian” took up a regular landholding, went to church, and used money, hebecame a “mulatto,” as these cases illustrate.The best illustration of this perception is the1758 muster roll reference to James Westcote,whose occupation was listed as “indian,”without racial reference in his description.

The name Driggus, associated withpeople of color throughout Delmarva, providesan example of the racial confusion in therecords. Today many people named Driggusclassify themselves as African-American, buthistorically the name has occurred among allraces.

A Driggus family is reported as white,or at least not nonwhite, in the 1800 census forMurderkill Hundred, Kent County, Delaware.Davidson lists the Driggus family of the lowerMaryland shore as blacks, but the same name,spelled Drighouse, was a major component ofthe Northampton Indian tribe when thereservation land was distributed in 1812.

All probably were descended from

Emanuel Driggus (Rodriguez). He and his firstwife, Frances, came into the Virginia colony asbondservants. She died before attaining herfreedom and he was free in 1660. His secondwife, Elizabeth, was white. Emanuel’s pedigree isunknown, but his name suggests he may havecome from a Portugese or Spanish colony. Hecertainly was never considered to be a slave forlife.

His grandson, Azaricum, died a well-off slave-owning planter in 1738. Azaricum, or Rica,Drighouse was apprenticed to a farmer who wasobliged by the indenture terms to pay for twomonths of schooling a year; such provisions werecommon in white children’s indentures. Clearly,then, Rica was not regarded as a Negro by thelocal officialdom (Deal 1988: 289).

The name evolved into Drighouse insome areas, including the Indian reservation, andDriggus in other areas. Members of the family,including the ones who lived on the Indianreservation, were called mulattoes or negroes inVirginia and Maryland records, and recenthistorians have chosen to identify all as black(Deal 1988: 275-283). The family later is found inthe Cheswold community.

OTHER MARYLAND REMNANTS

South of Washington, D.C., in theMaryland countryside, is a community known as“Wesorts” or the Brandywine community, whomay descend from the indigenous Piscataway,Accokeek, Wisoes, Wannys, or Moyaone (Segal1976:15, 16). They claim mostly NativeAmerican ancestry and carefully avoid socialrelationships with blacks, as do most remnantgroups.

Unlike most isolates, Wesorts aretraditionally Roman Catholic. Among the firstwhite settlers of the area were Jesuit priests whosemission was devoted largely to converting thenatives. English communicants of St. IgnatiusChurch during the seventeenth century boresurnames, such as Proctor and Harlan, foundtoday among the “Wesorts.” The history of thiscommunity repeats, in remarkable detail, patternsobserved among the Cheswold group and others.

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The six “core” family lineages alreadywere thoroughly intermarried by the end of theeighteenth century. During the early period oftheir recorded history, Brandywine familieswere associated with distinct localities, mostlyswamplands around the fringes of Europeancommunities. Another nine family names joinedthe group after 1870 (Sawyer 1961:2).

Documentary research has linked themodern colony with the Piscataway remnantswho stayed behind during the removal period.The Piscataway, as an organized tribe(sometimes called the Conoy), moved awayfrom Southern Maryland and joined theNanticoke. Those who remained in SouthernMaryland did not reappear on the recordimmediately. When they reappeared, they wereidentified not as members of a tribe but asindividuals (Cissna 1986).

Piscataway removal began around 1699,with a move to Conoy Island, on the upperPotomac, whence they moved up theSusquehanna, deep into the Pennsylvaniafrontier. Thereafter they were identified with themigrant Nanticoke faction, eventually settling inCanada.

Like so many similar groups, themodern Wesort families appear first as arecognizable population in the records by 1720,when they were identified as mulattoes. Theyalso found themselves, during segregation,assigned to Negro schools, which theyfrequently refused to attend. In order to maintainthe boundary between themselves andsurrounding populations, Wesorts condonedmarriages among relatively close relatives aspreferable to exogamy (Sawyer 1961:57).

Names found among the Piscatawaypeople are not repeated among the other isolategroups, although there are Proctors among thefamilies in Canada that originated among theNanticoke-Lenape community in Delaware.Some common names are Proctor, Savoy,Harlan (Harley), Swann, Newman, Linkins,Gray, Mason, Queen, Thompson and Butler,who refer to the whole population sometimes asa “family” of people (Cissna 1986).

Their group name is said to derive from astatement that there was a difference between “wesort” and “you sort” of people (Segal 1976:85).Public self-identity as an Indian remnant grouphas come gradually. Phillip Proctor, who took thename Turkey Tayac, worked to gain recognitionfor his people as Indians; he lived anoutdoorsman’s life and discussed his heritagewith whomever would listen (Hurley 1979).

HISTORICAL QUESTIONS

Native American remnant groups exist inall parts of the Middle Atlantic, but their historicalrecords are nearly invisible. Historians havetended to uncritically accept old racial lables, sothat the history of these people has been masked.Some writers, notably Deal (1988) and Davidson(1991), have swept the study of local NativeAmericans into "black" history, continuing a longtradition of misperception.

There is, clearly, a need for in-depthrevisionist histories of the Native Americanremnants. A few steps have been taken along thispath, by genealogists, by tribal organizations, andby a few academic historians whos points ot vieware neither afrocentric nor eurocentric (Roundtree1990).

In the present project, Bloomsburyprovides an opportunity to study in detail thedomestic situations of people who may or maynot have inherited their Native Americanancestors' food preferences, hunting methods,handcraft skills, or religious beliefs. The projectalso provides an opportunity to examine thesociety of a neighborhood where people fromthree racial backgrounds met and interacted.

Archæologists often are reluctant to seekevidence of ethnicity in material remains. Smalltools and other surface indications of culture mayor may not betray deeper-held beliefs andinheritances.

Community is an equally elusive concept,not necessarily visible in the physical record. Onemark of community might be similarity ofhousing, as was demonstrated in the Moselycommunity on McKee Road (Heite 1993).

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While genealogy is an excellent tool fordefining community, other historical researchmethods can be employed. For example, probaterecords contain names of witnesses, bondsmen,and people who bought items at the estate sale.These individuals, in the aggregate, are part of

the community, who reappear in association witha defined group of other individuals.

These techniques were employed in thisproject (Chapter 26) to define the social contextfor Bloomsbury’s inhabitants.

Times, Philadelphia, May 19, 18921-

KENT COUNTY’S MOORS-

A CURIOUS DELAWARE COMMUNITYAND ITS HISTORY

-LENI LENAPES OF TO-DAY

-Leni Lenapes they claim to be but perhaps

there is another side of the story. Whata tradition of the countryside says.

-Every American knows that his country is avery big one and that what he calls “theAmerican poeple” is a conglomeration ofnearly every race and nation on the face ofthe earth, but he seldom realizes that, inhundreds of places, scattered here and thereall over the land, there are to be foundhundreds of colonies of peculiar races,families or tribes, many of which wereplanted long before the Revolution, that havepreserved through many decades the habits,peculiarities of mind or physique, often thevery language of their ancestors.It was lately the good fortune of the writer todiscover one of these little communitieswithin three hours’ ride of Philadelphia, andhe promptly interviewed every neighbor andevery “oldest inhabitant” who seemed likelyto prove a source of information in regard toit. It was in the vicinity of the village ofCheswold, in Kent county, Del., that a certainrace or clan of people were heard spoken ofunder the name of Moors. They weredescribed as having a light browncomplexion, sharp or clean-cut features, eyesusually blue and hair in many cases of adistinctly red tinge. There was no difficulty infinding the house of one of them. The masterreceived us civilly. He was about the color ofa dark mulatto, apparently about 50 years ofage and his bushy whiskers were streakedwith gray. His iron-gray hair was nearlystraight, with a slight wave running through it,and his eyes were a dull bine.Except his color he had none of the

characteristics of a negro, and mightotherwise have been taken for a well-bredwhite American.-“There are a great many of our peoplescattered about here,” he said, “but really Idon’t know much about our origin. Mostpeople call us mulattos, but we are reallynothing of the sort. I don’t know just whatyou would call us, though. My father’sgrandfather was a Frenchman and his wifewas an Indian squaw; my own grandfatherand my father married among their ownpeople. I never bothered about the mattermyself, and never thought it made anydifference to any one where we came from.But I’ll tell you where you can find out asmuch about it as anyone knows. You go tosee old John Sanders. He’s pretty old, and haslived about here nearly all his life, andprobably he can tell you more about it thananybody else. But I’m not sure that he can tellyou much, either. I can’t read or write myself,and I have to carry everything in my head, soI don’t try to put anything in it that I am notlikely to have a good deal of use for. PerhapsI may have heard something about myforeparents, but if I have I’ve forgotten it. If Ihad been one of your reading and writingpeople I suppose I would have had it all downon paper long ago.”Though he asserted his inability to read andwrite, his language was excellent, and hespoke with the intonation and pronunciationof a well educated man. There was none ofthe usual negro thickness of tongue andmouthing of words among them, and theirfluency of speech and clearness ofenunciation might be envied by half the whitemen one meets.John Sanders’ house was found after a walkof about a mile over such perfectly levelcountry as only Delaware can show. The oldman was at home, and was glad to seevisitors. He must have been a remarkablyfine-looking man in youth, and has not yetlost all pretensions to good looks. Though heis 80 years of age, he walks as straight as

ever; his eyes are clear and strong, his voicefull, and his straight black hair, thick andheavy, is only slightly streaked with gray. Ourmodern American curse of baldness haspassed him by, and he might easly pass forthirty years younger than he is. And his[… damaged… ] a lean face, broad forehead,high cheek-bones, and prominent but thinnose, with a downward curve.“I’m afraid I can’t tell you much about ourpeople,” he said, but you are welcome to thelittle I know. No, we are not Moors, neitherare we mulattos. We are Indians, and webelong to a branch of the great DelawareNation, which used to hold all this countryfrom New York to Cape Charles. Down inSussex county, on the backbone ridge of thePeninsula, the head waters of two rivers comeclose together – one of them, the Nanticokeriver, flows west into Chesapeake Bay, andIndian river, the other, flows east and emptiesinto the ocean; and it was at the place wherethese two rivers rise that our clan had its chiefseat, and it is still the centre of our people.When this part of the country was first settledby the white men most of the Indians wereeither killed or driven away to the West andSouth, but some of our people clung to thesoil; they settled down, adopted many of theways of the white men, and lived in peace andfriendship with their despoilers. In time theyadopted the names of their white neighbors,and the principal names in our tribe are nowHarmon, Norwood, Sanders, Street,Ridgeway, Jack, Mosley, Durham andHughes - all unmistakably of Englishderivation. They settled all over the countryin squads in the same way. Ypu can findthem almost anywhere if you know how tolook for them, and in Acomac andNorthampton countis, Va., at the extremelower end of the peninsula, there are anynumver of them.1 And down thre, they havekept more to themselves than they haveelsewhere, and they look and live more likethe Indians did when I was a boy. I am 80years old, and I can remember a good wayback."

1 Transcribed from a copy provided by Mrs. May Belle Bordley.

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“I was born in 1811, not two miles fromhere.23 My father, while a boy, was boundout to a man named Jefferson, who broughthim up here from Sussex, so that I claimkindred with the old families down there. Hesettled here and lived here all his life; so did I,except some years that I spent out West,mostly in Indiana. At that time there was quitea large colony of Indians living along theWabash river, near Peru, Indiana, and theywere much lighter in complexion than ourpeople here.4 I can remember the time whenour people about here all lived together in asquad; but now it is as if a tornado had struckthem, and they are scattered all over thecountry. At that time they used to intermarry;they would have nothing to do with eitherwhites or blacks, and kept entirely tothemselves. I suppose it was laterintermarriages that caused the tribe todiminish so fast in number; there were a greatmany more of us fifty years ago than there arenow. But after they came to be so few theybecame more or less mixed up with otherraces, so that now they might be called almostanything; they are like Jacob’s cattle – somewhite, some black, and some ring-streaked.We older ones are pure-blooded, but theyounger generations have got badly mixed.“But we still keep much to ourselves, andwhen we marry outside the tribe it is usuallywith some one whiter than we are. Most of usbelong to the Methodist Episcopal Churchand we have our own church buildings andgovernment Little Union Church,5 near here,has members of all races and colors, but ourown Manship Chapel6 doesn’t admit any butour own people. Others may come as often asthey choose and are quite welcome and agood many do come, but no strangers are

admitted to membership or can have anyvoice in the management. A number of yearsago the Methodist Conference succeeded intaking one of our churches from us, down inSussex,7 but our people immediately builtanother for themselves with the MethodistProtestants. That is why we want no strangersto join our church here; that occurrence was alesson to us. A few years ago the conferencecited us for trial because we refused to admitthe black people to membership, but weproved to them that it had always been thecustom for whites and blacks to have separateplaces or worship, and that we, as not beingeither, had always had our own churches,though in the old days we always had whitemen to preach to us. When they saw theground we took and that we were not going tobe forced to submit to them, they quietlydropped the whole thing and didn’t allow itto really come to trial. Ever since then wehave gone on our own way quietly, andnobody has said a word to trouble us.“My father and mother and all my foreparentswere Indians. There are not many of the pureblood about here now, though there used to bea great many. It is strange how people haveforgotten about us. Sixty years ago every oneknew who and what we were; there never wasany question about it, and no one ever thoughtof taking us for Africans. Look at me!” saidthe old man as he drew himself up to his fullheight of six feet two inches. “Do I look like anegro?” He certainly looked like almostanything else. “Well, all our people lookedlike me then. None of them were ever slaves;we were as free as the whites, and every oneknew it. But since that time most of the oldfamilies have either died out or moved away.The people about here now are allnewcomers. Of course they knew nothing

about us and never troubled their heads toinquire. There were plenty of mulattos aboutand the newcomers thought every one with adark skin must be a mulatto. So they don‘tknow any better. Of course we feel ourselvessuperior to the negroes and mulattos andgenerally hold ourselves aloof from them andwe would prefer not to be confounded withthe useless mulatto lot that are found loafingeverywhere. But we have become accustomedto it and don’t mind it so much now, for itreally doesn’t matter much what you call aman, provided you don’t call him a thief or aliar._“I really don’t know how we came to becalled Moors. I have heard, though, that agood many years ago a family of genuineMoors settled somewhere in this part of thecountry, but I have never seen them, andnever heard anything more about them. Theycertainly had no connection with our people,who are the ones usually known by that name.But if the story is true, the newcomers abouthere, whom I spoke of, may have got usconfused with them, or attached their story tous.There are quite a number of families by thename of Moor or Moore living about here,and this village used to be called Moortonuntil a few years ago. But the Moore familiesare mostly white people and none of themhave ever been connected with us in any way,and I never heard whether the village was sonamed on their account or ours. Probably itwas on theirs, for the settlement, the originalone, is a pretty old one and must have got itsname long before we were ever called Moors,and while our descent was well known. In myyoung days we were called ‘planters.’ Webelonged to the Delaware tribe of Indians, butI don’t know what was the name of our clan,

2 This assertion is startling in light of the contentions by whitelaw, Deal and other, that the separate Indian identity had disappeared from the Eastern Shore ofVirginia almost a century before this article was written.

3 This may be the same John Saunders who married Martha Dean, daughter of Hester Carney and Jesse Dean, Jr.4 The Lenape settlement along the Wabash River, in theory, was to be vacated under the 1818 treaty of Saint Marys. Since Mr. Sanders was only 7 at the time, hemay be referring to people who stayed behind in central Indiana after the tribe removed to Missouri. See Weslager, The Delaware Indians: A History, page 351. Inspite of the removals, many Native American people stayed in the Wabash.

5 The Fork Branch or Little Union church (Plate 8) was established as a branch of the Little Creek Methodist congregation about 1850, and the present church wasbuilt in 1883. For a history of Fork Branch community, see Louise and Edward Heite, Fork Branch/ duPont Station Community, Delaware Department ofTransportation archæology series 37, 1985.

6 According to Scharf, History of Delaware, page 1119, “Manship African M. E. Church is located at Bishop’s Corner, and was built about 1830. In 1876 a veryneat building was erected, and the old name of Sutton’s Chapel was changed to Manship Chapel, in honor of Rev. Andrew Manship.”

7 Harmony M. E. Church in the late 1870s split racially, leading to establishment of Indian Mission M. P. Church, originally Johnson’s Chapel, in 1881. See Zebley,Churches of Delaware, pages 297, 298, and Weslager, Delaware’s Forgotten Fok, page 90.

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probably nobody doesnow. But I know that ourlast chief was buriedsomewhere in theneighborhood ofMillsborough, in SussexCounty, and I have heardthat when they werebuilding the railroad fromLewestown down toSnow Hill, in Maryland,they had to dig throughthe place where he wasburied, so they took upwhat was left of his bonesand buried themsomewhere else. He musthave died more than ahundered years ago, forwe had no chief when myfather was a boy.”8

But sons of the toil tellyet another tale, whichthey claim to havereceived from theirforefathers. And theseman say that about themiddle of the last centurythere dwelt in Ireland alady of more or less nobleblood, with certainly alarge amount of property,whose temper was amatch for her own fierylocks. And that this sametemper of auburn hue ledher to quarrel with herfamily and indulge in an

Plate 8

Little Union ChurchLittle Union Church, Fork Branch, was one of the centers of thenineteenth-century community. It now houses a revived local tribalorganization.

“field boss” afterwardof overseer of thewhole plantation. Thenearest white neighborlived miles away.Milady was still youngenough to feel that “itis not good for man –consequently forwoman also – to bealone.” The color lineand race antipathywere not as stronglymarked as they are inour own day; andbefore many yearswere flown Madamehad married her big“Congo nigger.” Thepopulation increased,both on the plantationand in the neighboringcountry, and as thecountry filled up thepeople becameaccustomed to seeingdark brown boys andgirls with the red hairand blue eyes that theyhad inherited fromtheir Celtic ancestress.They kept much tothemselves, affectingto despise the othernegro population.Some of them marriedwhite husbands orwives, and the whole

animated “discussion wid sticks” in thecourse of which the fair lady’s relatives usedsuch forcible arguments as to disgust her withher present surroundings. So she converted allher property into a portable form as soon asmight be, and fled her away to the far West ofthose days. What is now known as Sussexcounty, Delaware, was fortunate enough tofind favor in her eyes, and the goods shebrought with her to the Land of Promise werequickly exchanged for an extensive tract ofland. In due time the land was cleared, houses

and barns built and all was ready for the vastcrops that were certain to repay a slightamount of cultivation. But the country wasnew and sparsely settled; every free man hada tract of his own and found it more profitableto farm it for himself than to become a daylaborer on the lands of another man . So, indefault of other labor, she did as herneighbors had done, and she imported largenumbers of negroes … [mutiltated] … as myinformant expressed it, who was soonpromoted to the position, first,of “driver” or

clan so intermarried for so many generations,that they have now as fixed racialcharacteristics as any race or tribe in theworld. Yet there are still some prejudicedones among their neighbors who stubbornlyrefuse to forget that their Saracen blood wasimported by way of the Congo, and whoconsider these “American Moors” as ofexactly the same race and racial standing withthe mulattos whom the “Moors” themselvesdespise so heartily.

8 The Delaware portion of the Breakwater, Frankford and Worcester Railroad, a branch or extension of the Junction and Breakwater, was built in 1874 betweenGeorgetown and Selbyville. See John Hagman, Rails along the Chesapeake, page 34. Another story, published by Scharf (1888:21) states that bones were found in anossuary along a small stream a mile from Laurel by men digging fill for a mill dam early in the nineteenth century. Old persons of the neighborhood allegedlyreported on this occasion that the departing “last of the Nanticokes” (of circa 1748) had reburied their dead here before moving to Pennsylvania.