Born April Allison in 1790 in South Carolina. He was born into servitude on a plantation close to Winnsboro, South Carolina to his father Robert Ellison of Fairfield County, a plantation owner.
Fairfield County is part of the Old English District of South Carolina. The county’s name seems to have come from Lord Cornwallis while he headquartered in the area during the Revolutionary War, Lord Cornwallis supposedly said that the region had “fair fields.”
By 1800 his father Robert Ellison began teaching young April critical skills in gin making and repairs and by the age of 10, he became an apprentice cotton gin maker. He was taught the trades of carpentry, blacksmithing and machining, as well as how to read, write, cipher and do basic bookkeeping. Six years later, he finished his apprenticeship and was armed with a skill that was much in demand across the Deep South.
By age 21, April would take 16yr old Matilda, a black servant woman to be his wife. They had a daughter Aliza/Eliza Ann together, born in 1811. April and Matilda also eventually had three sons, Henry, Reuben and William Jr.
He immediately got to work and was very successful. His father allowed him to keep a portion of his work and earnings which he saved to purchase his own freedom at the age of 26 on June 8th, 1816.
On June 8, 1816, that same day, William Ellison appeared before a magistrate (with five local freeholders as supporting witnesses) to gain permission to free April, now 26 years of age. In 1800 the South Carolina legislature had set out in detail the procedures for manumission. To end the practice of freeing unruly slaves of "bad or depraved" character and those who "from age or infirmity" were incapacitated, the state required that an owner testify under oath to the good character of the slave he sought to free. Also required was evidence of the slave's "ability to gain a livelihood in an honest way."
In gratitude he would change his name from April to William Ellison Jr. after his father. He immediately purchased his wife’s freedom and then his children.
By 1817, he moved to Sumter County, South Carolina in the High Hills of Santee, an area that was rapidly being developed for cotton plantations. At first, he paid for the labor of slave artisans who had been contracted out by their masters. Within two years he purchased two artisan slaves to work in his shop.
In the 1820's Ellison's slaves regularly tried to run away. The historians of Sumter District reported that from time to time Ellison advertised for the return of his runaways. Ellison had a run away slave and hired the services of a slave catcher Robert N. Andrews, a white man who had purchased a small hotel in Stateburg to run down "a valuable slave". Andrews caught the slave in Belleville, Virginia. He stated: "I was paid on returning home $77.50 and $74 for expenses.
On August 6, 1824 the Ellison family joined the Episcopal Church of the Holy Cross in Stateburg. As a mark of his status becomming the first free person of color to install a family bench on the first floor of the church as a donation.
Ellison and his family established a family cemetery on their plantation. Based on transcriptions of the gravestones, his wife and three generations of descendants, including his sons and their wives, were buried on this property. Family burials took place in the early decades of the twentieth century. Although a successful businessman and cotton farmer, Ellison's major source of income derived from being a "slave breeder."
Slave breeding was looked upon with disgust throughout the South, and the laws of most southern states forbade the sale of slaves under the age of 12. In several states it was illegal to sell inherited slaves. In 1840 Ellison secretly began slave breeding. While there was subsequent investment return in raising and keeping young males, females were not productive workers in his factory or his cotton fields.
As a result, except for a few females he raised to become "breeders," Ellison sold the female and many of the male children born to his female slaves at an average price of $400. Ellison had a reputation as a harsh master. His slaves were said to be the district's worst fed and clothed. On his property was located a small, windowless building where he would chain his problem slaves.
By 1830 he held four artisan slaves. By 1840, he had purchased approximately 350 arces of land, then purchased 32 slaves to work the fields.
He took 8 of his best servants to learn the front side of he business. Ellison was noted as South Carolinas largest black slave owner.
After purchasing his daughter Maria from her owner who had been born while her mother was in indentured seritude, Ellison set up a trust with a (white) friend in 1830 to have legal title transferred to him for one dollar.
Col. William McCreighton had custody of Maria, but the trust provided for her to live with her father, who could free her when the laws changed.
Col. McCreighton kept his part of the trust, and Maria lived a free life. As a young woman, she married Henry Jacobs, a free black man in another county.
In the 1850 census, Maria Ellison Jacobs was listed as a free woman of color, although there was no legal document to supported that.
In 1852, Ellison bought Keith Hill and Hickory Hill plantations, bringing his total of land holdings to more than 1,000 acres. He gave each of his sons part of the properties, as they were all working with him in his business. Each of his sons held slave women who worked as domestic servants for their families.
In 1861 the Civil war begins and William Ellison offers 53 of his field slaves to the Confederacy. He and his sons invested in Confederate war bonds, donated food and money to support the Confederacy.
Ellison dies and leaves a will dividing more than 60 slaves up between his one surviving daughter and two sons also leaving Maria an additional $500.
In 1865 Col. McCreighton led the Winnsboro Light Infantry against General Sherman when he invaded Winnsboro on February 1st, destroying railroads, supplies, and morale.
He led his army of 60,000 men into South Carolina and by the 17th, Union forces entered Columbia. That night, one-third of the city was destroyed by fire. Columbia, Barnwell, Orangeburg and other places along Sherman’s thirty mile-wide-path also suffered.
Railroads and anything of military value were destroyed. Colonists went hungry after losing food and supplies to both Confederate and Union foragers.
After the civil war Ellison's bonds were worthless and his remaing family lost almost everything, before they faded into history.
Most of the propagandist that are reshaping our history is what comes up at the top of the search results, when you Google anything about this period.
They're mostly venting their un informed feelings about about a moment in history that has been reduced to the size of a tweet and bullet points. There are tomes of books written by people of the period, who tell a far different story than the anti white narrative today.
If they would put down their PS4 controllers, shut down their cellphones and pick up a book for a change, they would see for themselves the truth with their own eyes.
Many published firsthand, boots on the ground testaments of how it all went down only a Google search away. Indentured servants were under contract for 4 to 7 years with an option for them to purchase their own freedom.
They were developing a trading post in a new world. They were not beaten and raped by "the white man" on a daily basis. They were compensated and eventually given land. This is not slavery, it's paying off a debt and earning their way. Ellison was so successful, due to his utilization of cheap slave labor, that many white competitors went out of business. Such situations discredit impressions that whites dealt only with other whites. Where money was involved, it was apparent that neither Ellison's race or former status were considerations.
According to federal census reports, on June 1, 1860 there were nearly 4.5 million Negroes in the United States, with fewer than four million of them living in the southern slaveholding states. Of the blacks residing in the South, 261,988 were not slaves. Of this number, 10,689 lived in New Orleans. The country's leading African American historian, Duke University professor John Hope Franklin, records that in New Orleans over 3,000 free Negroes owned slaves, or 28 percent of the free Negroes in that city. 28 percent is certainly impressive when compared to less than 1.4 percent of all American whites and less than 4.8 percent of southern whites. The statistics show that, when free, blacks disproportionately became slave masters.
I hope someone is enjoying my new blog series, I'm researching, comparing notes, filtering out all of the bullshit and emotion including "woke" speak. I'm putting everything on a timeline and in perspective and I'm using period terminology in an accurate way as documented, and no spin. Want to see spin? This is an artists depiction of William Ellison Jr.. Notice how European he look's?
Not even close to what he looked like. "The History Collection" an online source for information on black slave owners goes as far as declaring him a "mulatto" click (here) to see for yourself. Isn't that interesting? If William Ellison is half white? Then I'm Al Sharpton.
For more info on William Ellison Jr. click (here)
Sincerely,
Lonnie T Locke LMT
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