African Americans of Boone County, Kentucky

 In the fall or winter of 1837 I formed a resolution that I would escape, if possible, to Canada, for my Liberty. I commenced from that hour making preparations for the dangerous experiment of breaking the chains that bound me as a slave. My preparation for this voyage consisted in the accumulation of a little money, perhaps not exceeding two dollars and fifty cents, and a suit which I had never been seen or known to wear before; this last was to avoid detection. On the twenty-fifth of December, 1837, my long anticipated time had arrived when I was to put into operation my former resolution, which was to bolt for Liberty or consent to die a Slave. I acted upon the former, although I confess it to be one of the most self-denying acts of my whole life, to take leave of an affectionate wife, who stood before me on my departure with dear little Frances in her arms, and with tears of sorrow in her eyes as she bid me a long farewell. It required all the moral courage that I was master of to suppress my feeling while taking leave of my little family. – Henry Bibb, 1849[i]

 As a slave-holding northern county in the Bluegrass border state of Kentucky, Boone County’s records are abound with information regarding enslaved and free African Americans both before and after the American Civil War. Until recently, however, very little documented information has been available to the general public. This situation is particularly perplexing because in 1860, nearly 25 percent of Boone County’s population was enslaved. Yet, by 1900 the African American population was well below five percent. Nevertheless, as a result of the critical presence of African Americans in Boone County, a vast amount of information that document the African American experience in the region does exist but it is interwoven into numerous little used primary documents and rarely visited facilities on the history of Boone County and the surrounding regions.[ii] Based on this dilemma, the main objectives of the “Boone County African American Resource Survey Project” (BCAARSP), that began in 2019, are twofold: 1) to produce an online, fully searchable, integrated database of all the African American historic sites and resources in the county; and 2) to make readily accessible little-known and seldom used primary sources throughout the county (and beyond), such as both Boone County cemeteries records, the Percent Maps of the 1883 Atlas of Boone, Campbell, and Kenton Counties, the Sand Run African American Baptist Church and Cemetery, that document the origin and development of numerous local African American communities.[iii]

The foundation of BCAARSP rests on the work of the Boone County Public Library (BCPL) Local History Department. Specifically, many of the original documents that formed the basis of BCAARSP resided in the Boone County Public Library’s (BCPL) Local History Department in Burlington, Kentucky, that was established in 2005. Since that year the BCPL’s Local History Department has compiled an extensive and comprehensive collection of Boone County’s history that provides access to a multitude of resources, in multiple formats, but primarily digital, that helped to reach a broad audience of scholars and researchers beyond Boone County, Kentucky in their quest to explore the experience of African Americans in the county. Additionally, the holdings of BCPL’s Local History Department includes items such as family files, genealogical records, tax records, deeds, as well as a number of secondary sources that have accumulated by local historians, librarians, and researchers, along with print materials related to Boone County, Kentucky. This collection also includes regional history and culture studies, as well as, digital resources in the form of photographs, documents, indexes and databases.

 In 2013, BCPL’s Local History Department began actively gathering more records to document Underground Railroad activity within the county. For example, in various records well-known Underground Railroad routes illustrate that fugitive African Americans passed through Boone County into Ohio and Dearborn Counties, Indiana, as well as, into Hamilton County, Ohio. Although the amount of research completed is extensive, more and more information is uncovered weekly, monthly, and yearly. Ultimately, BCPL’s Local History Department is dedicated to pursuing information on the African American experience in the Ohio Valley region and to assisting descendants and researchers to discover the past. [iv]

African Americans in Boone County, Kentucky: A Snap Shot of this History

In 1835, Henry Bibb (known as “Walton” to his owner) made his first escape attempt when he was hired out to Mr. Vires, who lived on a nearby farm in Newcastle, Kentucky. Although he was hoping to reach Canada with great ease, Bibb was captured in less than twenty-four hours, whipped and placed in isolation. However, determined to obtain his freedom, Bibb planned and executed another escape attempt but the same result took place. He was recaptured rather quickly and whipped once again. The determination of Bibb to ultimately gain his freedom was temporarily halted when he began to date and subsequently married an enslaved African American woman named Malinda, who resided in a nearby plantation in Oldham, County, Kentucky.[v] Once married, Bibb soon became a father. However, the hardship of being a husband and father whose wife and child were owned by a white man soon reignited Bibb’s aspirations to escape once again. As a result, and with a promise to his wife to return to them after he was completely free, Bibb absconded on Christmas Day in 1837. Bibb’s journey to freedom is typical of those persons of color who resided in Boone County, Kentucky.[vi]

On one hand, the history and experience of African Americans in Boone County, Kentucky from the enslavement period of the Commonwealth (and perhaps beyond) is similar to the experience of all persons of color who resided on non-plantation dominated regions in the South. For example, like their counterparts in similar places, during the period of enslavement in Boone County, for individuals such as Matt Bates, who resided on the North Bend area, Samuel Barkshire, Elizabeth Brokeman, Jane Shelton Clarkson, and hundreds of others, contact between African American captives and owners were slightly closer compared to what usually took place on large plantations throughout the Deep South.[vii] Additionally, most enslaved persons of color did not reside within a harsh and competitive economic environment. On the other hand, however, in Boone County, as well as in similar areas, enslavement did function as a valuable labor and economic resource. African American enslaved people did live under a harsh and violent environment almost daily. Furthermore, clothes were still issued mostly on a semiannual or annual basis.[viii]

Despite these conditions, African Americans in Boone County, Kentucky, enslaved and free, did survive and ultimately created a number communities throughout the region. For example, during the antebellum period, there were numerous episodes of African American runaways to Ohio and Indiana, such as Margaret Garner, the Cincinnati 28, and John “Felix” White. Initially, the main objective of most runways was to remove themselves from the horrible and terrifying nature of enslavement. However, with the establishment of several African American churches in the county, like First Baptist African American Church of Florence, created in 1870, and Mount Zion Baptist Church, in 1872, as well as two Baptist churches in Burlington, Kentucky, several small but potent African American communities emerged throughout Boone County that continued to thrive until the late 1890s.[ix]

Conclusion 

 In Boone County, similar to much of the rest of the state, region and nation, with the end of the American Civil War, racially segregated and the use of public funds for the construction of separate public institutions for African Americans was the standard of day one. As a result African American churches and a few White churches, along with a handful of individual African Americans and progressive Whites, created and maintained facilities and communities for African Americans to thrive. However, by the 1900, the number of African American residents throughout the county seemingly disappeared. Thus, the Boone County, Kentucky African American Survey Project (BCAARSP) seeks to uncover the various factors that led to this important but little-researched topic.

[i]Henry Bibb, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave, Written by Himself (New York: Henry Bibb, 1849), 46.

[ii] https://www.bcpl.org/cbc/doku.php/african-americans

[iii] https://omekas.bcplhistory.org/s/borderlands/page/home

[iv] https://www.bcpl.org/cbc/doku.php

[v] J. Blaine Hudson, Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad in the Kentucky Borderland (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2002), 131.

[vi] Hudson, Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad in the Kentucky Borderland, 131 – 132.

[vii] Eric R. Jackson, Black America Series: Northern Kentucky (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2005); https://omekas.bcplhistory.org/s/borderlands/page/enslavement

[viii] Jackson, Black America Series: Northern Kentucky (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2005), 1 – 10; https://omekas.bcplhistory.org/s/borderlands/page/enslavement

[ix] https://omekas.bcplhistory.org/s/borderlands/page/enslavement