Ever since she was a girl, Jane Clark Banse has heard stories about Roswell King, one of her paternal ancestors.
King was known in his family as a keen businessman and industrialist and co-founder of Roswell, Georgia, along with his son, Barrington.
She remembers the treasured portraits and a handwritten family tree that included the Kings.
One thing that escaped the family storytelling, however, was that the elder King, her great-great-great-great-grandfather, was also a slave owner and at one time was the manager of the Butler Island Plantation near Darien and another one on St. Simons Island.
Credit: COPY
Credit: COPY
“I found out that his methods were really harsh and extreme,” she said. “(Major) Pierce Butler was often unhappy with him because his methods were so harsh. He was a very efficient manager of the plantations — the amount of cotton he produced, the amount of rice he produced, but it wasn’t pretty.”
Historical references call King either the manager or overseer, sometimes both.
This week, Banse and her husband will leave their Virginia home to visit the Darien area, where she hopes to meet the descendants of some of the enslaved people who lived and worked on the plantations. A meeting will be held Friday at Sams Memorial Church of God in Christ in Darien.
She’s already visited Roswell; delved more into the life of King; and contacted people who were connected to the plantations. She doesn’t know for sure, but some may be descendants of people who lived on the plantations when her relative managed them.
Credit: contributed
Credit: contributed
“We haven’t told the correct story,” she said during a telephone interview. “We haven’t told it authentically. We’ve only told the nostalgic parts of this story. We hope the next generation will establish a conversation about this. Can we have reconciliation?”
Banse, a librarian, became interested in learning more about Roswell King after a trip with students to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., in 2017. There was an exhibit about the cotton and rice plantations in Georgia and South Carolina. She knew she had relatives from that area, so when she got home, she turned to Google and “there we were.”
Among those waiting to meet Banse is Griffin Lotson, a seventh-generation Gullah-Geechee. Lotson is Darien’s former mayor pro tem and vice chairman of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission.
Lotson has traced his ancestry back to the Butler Island Plantation and many others in that part of Georgia.
“We’re not looking to change the world with this,” he said. “There’s always been injustice in American history. We don’t have all the answers, but we’re going to start a dialogue.”
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
Lotson doesn’t know how many people will show up. He posted notices on social media and encouraged others to spread the word.
Even if the gathering is just a handful of people, both Lotson and Banse will consider it a step forward. There’s still much to learn from each other and about the history.
”If you lived on a plantation, almost everybody is interrelated,” said Lotson, who recently returned from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he spoke about his family history and the Butler plantations.
According to Elaine DeNiro, the archivist of the Roswell Historical Society, King, who moved to Georgia from Connecticut in 1789, served as the manager of the Butler plantations from 1802 to 1819. Others say it was 1820.
King later went to join the board of the Bank of Darien. He was on a scouting trip for new bank branches when he rode through what is now north Fulton. He loved the area and with its water resources, figured it would make a good site for a mill complex. He died in 1844 and is buried in Roswell.
“He was the founder of the town, but there is a not-so-favorable side that we have to acknowledge and make sure that we tell the complete story,” said DeNiro.
King was already deceased during the period known as “The Weeping Time”: On March 2 to March 3, 1859, to satisfy debts, Pierce Mease Butler, a grandson of Major Pierce Butler, sold more than 400 enslaved men, women and children from his plantations. It is considered one of the largest sales of enslaved human beings on U.S. soil.
As Lotson said, almost everyone living on plantations was likely interrelated, if not by blood, at least by circumstance.
In 2001, Colin Campbell, a columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and a descendant of the King family, wrote about the joy of meeting his distant cousins from the Black side of the family.
Not long ago, Lotson was visiting the old Butler plantation when he happened upon Lily Baker and her daughter, Genese Baker Lane, both of Hinesville.
They, too, were in search of answers and connections.
Baker Lane knew about her father’s side of the family and was curious to learn about her maternal lineage.
Her research led them to the Butler plantation. She pored through census reports and deeds.
One was a record of a Fannie Butler, her great-great-great-grandmother, who was apparently named after Pierce Butler’s wife, Fanny Kemble.
“Finding her name on the census gave us more insight to more children who we didn’t know about,” said Baker Lane. They’re not sure if Fannie Butler was born in slavery or a free person.
They hope to attend the gathering in Darien.
“I’ve always been very connected to that area,” said Baker Lane, who recalled visiting a restaurant there over the years that sits on the Butler River, the northernmost part of the Altamaha River.
It feels a bit different now.
She wonders about her ancestors who may have stood on that same spot.
“I know some of my ancestors may have drowned in that river,” said the elder Baker. “Their remains are still there. It’s good to know, but at some point, it’s sad because of the hurt they endured, but they had to go through it for us to be where we are today.”
