ABRAHAM – Survivor Of The Massacre at the Negro Fort

BY MATTHEW SHACK

I would like to remind you what life was like in the Florida panhandle in the early 1800s. The U.S. had began to have a difficult time controlling the area along the Florida Georgia border. There were escaped slaves, criminals, settlers, and rampaging Indians. Florida was also considered a No-Man’s-Land. The U.S. considered it “a center of hostility” because the southern slave owners were losing their capital in the form of runaway slaves.

The exact birth date of Abraham, one of the survivors of the massacre at “The Negro Fort,” is not known but is celebrated as June 28, 1787. Abraham was born a slave in Georgia and for a time lived in Pensacola, FL, where he worked as a servant for a physician, Dr. Eugenio Antonio Sierra. He was an African-American, a Black Seminole warrior, soldier, and politician.

Abraham, who had recently fled the army of Andrew Jackson, joined the British army under Major Edward Nichols, who promised freedom to any slave who joined him. Abraham helped build the fort at Prospect Bluff on the bank of the Apalachicola River in Florida.

Slaves were given a single name by their owner. A slave who was freed might keep his or her slave name and adopt the former owner’s last name as his or her last name. As an example, a slave given the name Toby by his owner William Gainer once freed was then called Toby Gainer. So, it was with Abraham who was a freeman at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation and did not have to take the name of an owner and just kept his slave name, Abraham. Even “Freedman” (free slave) became a popular surname choice among those recently emancipated, thus “Freeman” was a common last name.

 

 

When the “Negro Fort” (now Fort Gadsden) was attacked and destroyed, Garcon, the Choctaw chief, and Abraham were among the 30 who survived. The Choctaw Chief was handed over to the Creeks, who “Scalped him alive and then fatally stabbed him; Garcon was executed by firing squad. Abraham escaped in the confusion following the destruction of the fort and fled to the Tampa area, and the remaining slaves were returned to their owners. The historians William S. Coker and Thomas D. Watson said that of the survivors from the fort “some fled as far south to the black Seminole village of Angola and others joined the family of black Seminole and future military advisor to Osceola, John Horse, on the Suwannee river.” Abraham was one of the few survivors. He made his way to a Suwannee River Town in Florida. Abraham continued fighting during the first Seminole War and he became known as “Sauanaffe Tustunnagee” (Suwannee Warrior).

He created the African town in Florida called Pilaklinkaha, and was adopted as a member of the Seminole Nation. He became the Prime Minister of the Cowkeeper Dynasty and a chief adviser to Micanopy, principal chief of the Alachua Seminole. Micanopy, Florida is named after Seminole Chief Micanopy and is located 12 miles south of Gainesville. The population as of the 2010 census was 600. The town center is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and contains a number of antique stores, as well as a large used book store and several restaurants. Abraham even served as an interpreter for Micanopy in 1826 when a delegation of Seminole Chiefs visited Washington D.C. Later in life, Abraham married a woman named Hagan, the widow of Chief Bowlegs. Chief Billy Bowlegs or Billy Bolek, means “Alligator Chief” in Seminole, lived circa 1810 to 1859 and was a leader of the Seminoles in Florida during the Second and Third Seminole Wars against the United States. One of the last Seminole leaders to resist, he eventually moved to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). Bowlegs was born into a family of hereditary chiefs descended from Cowkeeper of the Oconee tribe of the Seminole in the village of Cuscowilla on the Alachua savannah (present-day Micanopy, Florida). His father’s name was Secoffee, and it is thought that the chief Micanopy was his uncle. The surname “Bowlegs” may be an alternate spelling of “Bolek,” a preceding Seminole chief. (A story that he had bowlegs from riding horses is unsubstantiated.)

He had already been rewarded by being given for a wife “the widow of the former chief of the nation,” age 25, presumably a woman of Negro, or part- Negro blood, and a slave, who had been the wife or mistress of King Bowlegs. She was probably the woman by the name of Hagan whose son by Abraham, named Renty, was freed by his father in 1839; Abraham had at least one or two other sons, one named Washington, and at least one daughter, probably all by this same woman.

He continued as interpreter, without particular event, for nearly another year, but on February 25, 1839, was finally shipped west to Oklahoma, during the “Indian Removal Act,“ often referred to as the “Trail of Tears.” He was noted in the local press en route as “Abraham, well known as an interpreter and a wily and treacherous rascal.” (1)

The company of which he was the leading member was turned over to the Seminole agent at Ft. Gibson, Indian Territory, April 13, 1839; the muster roll included two unnamed male slaves belonging to Abraham, who may, however, have been his children.

On April 17, 1841, at Ft. Gibson, Oklahoma, Chief Micanopy sold Washington, a 16-year-old negro boy to Abraham for $300. On September 14,1841, Abraham emancipated Washington, out of love for his son. He was the second son whose emancipation is on record. At a conference between Captain Ethan Allen Hitchcock and Coacoochee, at Ft. Gibson,

Nov. 28, 1841, Abraham interpreted. (2)

After this brief flare of publicity Abraham sank into an obscurity from which he did not again emerge. He returned to his home on Little River (Seminole County, Florida in the region to which the Seminoles had been removed according to the provisions of the treaty of 1845, where his name is still remembered by the older generation. According to Kenneth Wiggins Porter, author of the “Negro Abraham,” talked to Ed Payne (now deceased) who was an intelligent and prosperous Seminole Negro of the Little River (Seminole County) settlement, had heard much of him as a resident of that vicinity. Mr. Payne knew two of Abraham’s sons, including Washington, whose freedom his father had purchased in 1841. Washington used to mention that he and his father had both been slaves, but had been freed. Washington described his father as an able and successful cattle-raiser, and remembered that he used to come back from the sale of a herd of cattle with a sack full of gold and silver – no paper money in those days. He would then pry up a plank in the cabin floor and drop the sack into the space beneath. This was his bank.

Abraham seems to have been still living late in 1870, for a newspaper item notes: “The old interpreter for General Jackson [sic], the Negro Abraham, is still alive on Little River at the advanced age of one hundred and twenty years. A gentleman saw him the other day.” (3)

The date of Abraham’s death is unknown to me, but presumably it took place not long after 1870. According to Mr. Payne, he is buried at Bruner town, west of the Little River settlement, near Hazel. Payne had seen a stone shaped into a marker, with his name on it, over the grave, but cannot recall whether or not it bears a date.

I have been unable to trace the history of Abraham’s children because of the lack of a last name. However, I am still researching the history of Abraham and finding new information from time to time.

 

[author image=”https://www.panamacityliving.com/media/2016/01/Matt-Shack.jpg” ]Matthew W. Shack Sr., a local author, playwright, and historian, was born in Marianna and grew up in Panama City. In 2007, he founded the Glenwood Community Playhouse for the Performing Arts and acts as its director. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the American African Cultural Center in Panama City, is the chair of the Panama City Board of Adjustment, and is a member of the board of directors of the local chapter of AARP. He is also an adjunct professor at Gulf Coast State College. A graduate of Rosenwald High School, Matthew earned a BA in Math at Florida A&M University. From 1965 to 1970 he was a naval officer. In 1971 he started a business, Matthew Shack Insurance Agency, in San Jose, California. He retired from the insurance business in 2003. Matthew and his wife, Carolyn, and two sons, Matthew Jr. and Michael reside in Panama City. He is in the process of writing a book entitled “The History of African Americans of the St. Andrews Bay and the Florida Panhandle.” [/author] [divider]

(1) (from “The Negro Abraham” by Kenneth Wiggins Porter)

(2) (Records Pertaining to Cherokee Removal, 1836-1839 Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs)

(3) (Kenneth Wiggins Porter author of “The Negro Abraham”)