Forbidden Fruit (31 page)

Essex County Genealogical Society. Transcriptions of marriage registrations, 1859,
1860. J. B. Huffman of the British Methodist Episcopal Church of Windsor solemnized
a marriage on April 30, 1859, between Isaac Berry, 30, a resident of Windsor born
in Kentucky, and Lusea Millon, 18. Huffman also solemnized a subsequent marriage on
January 16, 1860, between “Lucy Miller” and Isaac Berry. Lucy’s religion is identified
as Latter-day Saint, but she is called of African origin for the first time.

Freeman, Roland L.
A Communion of the Spirits: African American Quilters, Preservers and Their Stories.
Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press, 1996. Quilter Marguerite Berry Jackson tells the
story of her grandparents.

Gibson, Robert A. “The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the United States,
1880–1950.”
Yale-New Haven Teacher Institute, www.yale.edu/
ynhti/curriculum/units1979.

A Guide to the Hoosier State.
Compiled by workers of the Writers’ Project of the Work Projects Administration in
the State of Indiana. New York: Oxford University Press, 1941.

Gutman, Herbert G.
The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925.
New York: Vintage Books, 1977, p. 349. This tells the story of a black couple who
committed suicide, reported in 1746 in the
Boston Evening Post.
The woman was about to be sold. They were in a garret; the man cut the woman’s throat
and then shot himself. See also pp. 3–37 (Send Me Some of the Children’s Hair).

Hill, Daniel G.
The Freedom-Seekers: Blacks in Early Canada.
Toronto: Stoddard Publishing Co., Limited, 1992. Orig. pub. The Book Society of Canada,
Limited, 1981. This book contains information on John “Daddy” Hall and his five wives.

Hu, Winnie. “In Upstate New York: A Tourist Chapter to the Book of Mormon.”
The New York Times,
Wednesday, December 20, 2000.

Hudson, J. Blaine.
Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad in the Kentucky Borderland.
Jefferson, N.C., and London: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2002. Interracial escapes are
described on page 63 and interracial romances leading to escapes on pages 79 and 80.

Interview with abolitionist William Lambert.
Detroit Tribune,
January 17, 1886.

Jackson, Marguerite Berry.
Finding a Home,
an unpublished memoir about black settlers in central Michigan. In this unpublished
memoir, Jackson, a retired teacher of Afro-American history and granddaughter of Isaac
and Lucy Berry, talks about pioneers Thomas Cross, Granderson Norman, Daniel Pointer,
Joseph Cummin, James Guy and the Berry family’s first encounter with the Chippewas.

———. Videotaped interviews, Mecosta County, Michigan, May and October 1991. In these
videos, Jackson recounts the story of her grandparents, Isaac and Lucy Berry. She
mentions the names of free blacks who aided Isaac, including Albert Campbell in Quincy,
Illinois, and the Purdues in Coloma, Indiana.

Jackson, Ronald Vern, ed.
Federal Census Index, Missouri 1850 Slave Schedules.
Published by Genealogical Services.

Jackson, Ronald Vern, and David Schaefermeyer, eds.
Kentucky 1850 Census Index.
Bountiful, Utah: Accelerated Indexing Systems, Inc.

Kirkland, Caroline.
Chicago Yesterdays.
Chicago: Daughaday & Co., 1919.

Larrie, Reginald.
Makin’ Free: African-Americans in the Northwest Territory.
Detroit: Blaine Etheridge Books, 1981. On page 28, the book notes that the papers
carried by free blacks “gave a description of the person who was supposed to carry
them at all times. Yet in many instances, the description was inaccurate. For example,
Jack James was a black man who happened to be married to a white woman of German descent.
Regardless of this fact, his wife’s papers described her as Indian. Frequently, white
people who married blacks carried ‘free papers which classified them as Indian.’”

Lippincott’s Gazetteer.
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1883, p. 1689. This lists twenty-six places
called Palmyra.

Lustig, Lillie, S. Claire Sondheim, and Sarah Rensel, eds.
The Southern Cook Book of Fine Old Recipes.
Reading, Pa.: Culinary Arts Press, 1939.

McGraw, Bill. “Slavery Is a Quiet Part of City’s Past.”
Detroit Free Press,
February 22, 2001.

McRae, Norman, Ph.D. Interview, Detroit, January 2000.

———.
Black Participation in the Civil War: The Underground Railroad in Michigan.
Detroit: unpublished social studies unit.

Missouri 1860 slave schedule. Ronald Vern Jackson, ed. North Salt Lake, Utah: Accelerated
Indexing Systems International (no date).

Missouri 1860, Census Index Vol. II. This shows Solomon N. Millard living in Knox
County, Missouri, and other Millards in Missouri, including James Millard in Marion
County, Daniel and William in Sullivan, G.B. in Texas County, Lawrence in Perry County,
Samuel in Lewis County and Selden in Lewis County.

Missouri, A Guide to the “Show Me” State.
Compiled by workers of the Writers’ Project of the Works Project Administration in
the state of Missouri. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1941.

Missouri, State of, Official Manual,
The Role of the Negro in Missouri History,
www.umsl.edu/services/library/blackstudies/slavery.htm. “The purchase of the Louisiana
Territory by the United States in 1803…offered slave owners a potential new world,
spreading from the Mississippi to the Rockies…. Part of that new world was Upper Louisiana,
containing the present states of Missouri and Arkansas. Upper Louisiana was not as
conducive to cotton growing geographically as Lower Louisiana, but there still existed
possibilities for slave labor in tobacco and hemp production, as well as in the cultivation
and production of grain and live stock. This caused an influx of slaveholders and
their chattel into Missouri. A majority of these slaveholders came from the worn out
lands of Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia…. In 1860, top male slaves
brought about $1,300 each, and female slaves about $1,000. Since Missouri was largely
agricultural, most slaves were employed in the fertile bottom lands which bordered
the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and their tributaries. Without a single staple
crop, Missouri never developed large plantations as did the cotton states…. In general,
most of the Missouri slaveowners held only one or two slaves…. They were employed
as valets, butlers, handy men, field hands, maids, nurses and cooks. Masters often
hired out their slaves during periods when the slave was otherwise likely to be unemployed.
The person hiring the slave was responsible for the sustenance of the slave, in addition
to an amount of money paid to the slaveowner for the services of his chattel. During
the 1850s, the crews of river boats on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers were generally
black. Aboard the boats, hired out slaves served as deck hands and cabin boys or as
stevedores…. Many slaves became skilled laborers—black-smiths, carpenters, masons,
bricklayers, horticulturists, as well as general all-around trouble-shooters for the
entire farm. In fact, the slave and his family and the master and his family were,
more often than not, a team, sharing the burden of work together in the field…. Missouri’s
institutions, both social and legal, constantly reminded the black man he was property
not a human being.”

The Old Settlers: A World Unto Themselves.
Mecosta County, Mich.: The Old Settlers Family Reunion Committee, 1987. This book
was compiled by descendants of the original black settlers in Michigan’s Mecosta,
Isabella and Montcalm counties. It includes the genealogy of the Isaac and Lucy Berry
family, the Stephen Todds and the Guy and Sleet families.

Our Untold Stories.
Compiled and written by members of the Fred Hart Williams Genealogical Society. Detroit:
Fred Hart Williams Genealogical Society, 2001. This contains the story of black inventor
George Thompson.

Paige, Howard.
African American Family Cookery.
Southfield, Mich.: Aspects Publishing Co., 1995. On page 88, Paige gives a recipe
for the kind of combread that gave Harriet Tubman and others the strength to rescue
slaves. He calls the bread “Harriet Tubman’s Fat Cornbread.”

Pierson, Dudley. “An Ode to Michigan’s Forgotten Trailblazers.”
African American Parent Magazine,
February/March 2001.

Pointe to Pointe: A Tour of East Jefferson-Lakeshore Road from Windmill Pointe to
Gaukler Pointe.
Grosse Pointe, Mich.: Grosse Pointe Historical Society, 1987. This describes the
road from Detroit to Grosse Pointe in the nineteenth century.

Pointer, Raymond, Sr. Interview, Mecosta County, Michigan, February 2001. As a child,
Raymond Pointer lived with his great-grandmother, Lucy Berry. He tells stories about
her pipe smoking, her pretending to be a witch, her quilting and her strength.

Pointer, Ray, telephone interview and emails to author, great-great-grandson of Isaac
and Lucy Berry. “As far as I can recall,” he wrote in an email on July 24, 2000, “there
were five slaves, Isaac’s mother, Harve, Louis, a sister whose name I don’t recall
and Isaac. My father may be able to give you the details you are seeking…. My father
is 79, he attended that school which was built in 1901 to replace the original log
school built by Isaac Berry. Lucy, my great, great grandmother was the first teacher
in the area, and both Isaac and Lucy were members of the school board for many years.”

In a July 25, 2000, email Pointer said: “As I know about Jim Pratt, his ownership
of the Berry slaves was through Juliann’s inheritance from her father, Uriah. I never
knew that Jim owned any property of consequence, not to say that he wouldn’t have
had slaves. But according to what I heard, Jim and Juliann lived on a rather shabby
farm. I don’t know what crop they raised, if they did raise anything at all. I do
understand that Jim rented the slaves out to German immigrant farmers, as I told you
on the phone. Considering that Jim was a compulsive gambler, I now wonder how Juliann
fared with Jim after he sold all the other slaves and let Isaac go.”

Poremba, David Lee.
Images of America: Detroit, 1860–1899.
Charleston: Arcadia Press, 1998. On page 10, the author talks about billboard advertisements
next to the Michigan Central Railroad depot at Third and Woodbridge; they directed
passengers to the terminals of the Grand Trunk Railroad of Canada. The book’s introduction
mentions that Detroit had a population of some 45,000 in 1860.

Preliminary Report on the Eighth Census 1860 by Jos. C. G. Kennedy, superintendent.
Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1862. Figures for the state of Michigan
show that in 1860, the “free colored population” in Mecosta County, Michigan, included
one male in the 20-and-under-30 category, one male 30 and under 40, one male and one
female in the 40-and-under-50 category.

Rawick, George P., ed.
The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography,
Vol. 4, orig. pub. 1941; reprint, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Co., 1974.
On pages 10 and 206 are descriptions of slave dances. See also Vol. 6, Alabama and
Indiana narratives. This contains the story of an overseer supposedly torn to pieces
by his own hounds after climbing a tree after a slave and then falling. See also Vol.
4, Texas narratives. Page 27 features a reference to rubbing salt and pepper on wounds.
See also Vol. 7, Oklahoma, p. 66.

Roger, Sharon A. “Slaves No More: A Study of the Buxton Settlement, Upper Canada,
1849–1861.” A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the Graduate School of the
State University of New York at Buffalo in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 1995. On pages 208–11, the book talks about
biracial couples in Buxton.

Shockley, Robert, and Charles K. Fox.
Survival in the Wilds.
New York: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1970. The book talks about the various ways in which
lost persons can orient themselves in the wild and about the North Star that guided
runaway slaves.

Sommers, Laurie Kay. “Herb Woman of Mecosta.”
Michigan National Resources Magazine,
September/October 1989. This profile of Marie Berry Cross talks about the herbal
lore Marie gained from her grandmother, Lucy Berry. It includes Marie’s account of
how Lucy Millard found Isaac Berry in Canada after hearing his violin.