Gullah

Technically, Gullah encompasses only the distinct black culture found near the southern coast of SOUTH CAROLINA, but historians, folklorists, and anthropologists traditionally link it to the Geechee culture of the Georgia Sea Islands. Throughout southern slave societies successive generations of slaves maintained many of their African traditions, influencing white and black culture alike. In a process described as creolization, African and European cultural inheritances fused together to produce distinctive African American cultures. Over time the unending process of cultural fusion often concealed cultural roots, yet the relative isolation of Gullah facilitated the retention of African characteristics that remain highly visible today.

Gullah retained many of its Africanisms through language. The first slaves brought to South Carolina came from the CARIBBEAN, where many had gained familiarity with British culture. Initially, most had constant, intimate contact with white people in South Carolina, and most acquired the English language of their masters. As the colony expanded, based increasingly on rice cultivation, planters obtained more slaves directly from AfRlCA, and they revivified African culture in their new homes. The development of large rice plantations combined with the rising fear of malaria, which drove planters to absentee ownership during the summer and fall, limited contact with white people and allowed slaves to form a new mode of oral expression.

As a dialect, Gullah largely combined English vocabulary with African grammar. African slaves usually spoke mutually unintelligible languages, but the English of American-born slaves provided a unifying vocabulary. African slaves simply appropriated English words and applied them to familiar speech patterns. Thus, an English-based “pidgin” language developed. The transformation of pidgin—which by definition has no native speakers—into a

Creole language occurred as African-American children inherited Gullah from their African parents.

The creolization of Gullah included not only the creation of a distinct language but the use of that language as well. Gullah-speaking slaves, for example, often followed the African tradition of “basket-naming,” bestowing names of social significance or personal circumstance on their children. One practice involved giving temporal names to children to denote time or day of birth; many slaves shared the names Monday, Friday, March, August, Christmas, and Midday. Speaking in parable was another common African feature of Gullah. Indirect and ambiguous language conveyed subtleties to black people while it disguised hidden meanings from whites. Indeed, the notorious trickster, Brer Rabbit, may have first surfaced in Gullah parables.

Further reading: Margaret Washington Creel, A Peculiar People: Slave Religion and Community Culture among the Gullah (New York: New York University Press, 1988); Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (New York: Norton, 1974).

—C. B. Waldrip

Hamilton, Andrew (1676-1741) lawyer Andrew Hamilton was born and educated in Scotland, but for unknown reasons he was forced to immigrate to America, most likely because of political troubles during the reign of King William (1689-1702). He assumed the name Trent and lived in Virginia and Maryland, where he managed an estate and ran a classical school. By the time of Queen Anne’s rule (1702-14), he was using the name Hamilton again. He married the wealthy widow Anne Brown and entered the upper ranks of colonial society. Hamilton made a return trip to England in 1712 and was admitted to Gray’s Inn in London, being called to the English Bar only two weeks later. Returning to his plantation in Maryland, Hamilton’s legal career gained wide notice. His legal services for William Penn and his agents brought about Hamilton’s removal to Philadelphia in 1717. There he continued his legal work for the proprietors, who granted him a 153-acre estate; he held several public offices, including recorder of the city, prothonotary of the supreme court, and representative and Speaker of the Assembly. He was known as a political independent but retained his connections with the proprietary family. Hamilton was responsible for designing the State House, which later became known as Independence Hall. He was appointed judge of the vice admiralty court in 1737, just a few years before his death in Philadelphia.

Hamilton’s biggest claim to fame, which made his reputation as the greatest colonial lawyer, was his successful defense of New York printer John Peter Zenger in 1735. New York’s royal governor, William Cosby, had dismissed Chief Justice Lewis Morris in favor of a political crony. Morris and attorneys James Alexander and William Smith attacked the governor’s high-handedness in a series of unsigned articles printed in the new Weekly Journal, which they had persuaded Zenger to begin publishing. Zenger was arrested on charges of seditious libel. He retained Alexander and Smith to represent him, but the royal judges disbarred them for questioning the validity of the judges’ commissions from Governor Cosby. Zenger’s friends invited Hamilton to undertake his defense. The law limited the jury to determining the fact of publication, leaving the question of libel to the judges. Hamilton, taking the case for no fee, masterfully argued for the jury to deliver a “general verdict” on both the law and the facts, concluding that freedom of the press “is the best cause; it is the cause of liberty.” It is not libel, he argued, if the statements Zenger printed about public figures were true. Zenger was found not guilty. The trial set a precedent for the independence of juries and was a major victory for the freedom of the press throughout the colonies.

Further reading: James A. Alexander, A Brief Narrative of the Case and Trial of John Peter Zenger (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969); Robert R. Bell, The Philadelphia Lawyer: A History, 1735-1945 (London: Associated University Press, 1992).

—Stephen C. O’Neill

Hammon, Jupiter (1711-1800?) poet According to his master’s ledger, Jupiter Hammon was born to slave parents on October 17, 1711, at the Lloyd plantation located near Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York. Hammon enjoyed extraordinary privileges that were denied to most colonial slaves. His master, Henry Lloyd, permitted him to read theological books in his library and attend schools on the plantation. Lloyd sold Hammon a Bible in 1733, which enhanced his literacy and influenced his religious beliefs. Lloyd trusted Hammon as the family’s bookkeeper, including maintaining slave-trading records.

Religion was a pivotal force in Hammon’s life. He attended the Lloyds’ church and became aware of abolitionists because Oyster Bay was the nucleus of New York’s antislavery Quaker movement. Hammon listened to abolitionist speakers and major religious figures, including George Whitefield during the Great Awakening.

Hammon experienced an epiphany in which he became devoutly religious and determined that his purpose in life was to protest slavery subtly through preaching to slaves on the Lloyd estate.

Hammon incorporated biblical themes in poetry and essays, using hymns as his pattern for rhythm. His 1760 debut poem, “An Evening Thought,” expressed the idea that slaves would ultimately be freed through the salvation of Jesus. Hammon was the first American slave to publish antislavery writings that were read by a diverse audience, although many white colonists dismissed him.

After Henry Lloyd’s death in 1763, Hammon served his son Joseph. When Lloyd fled to Hartford, Connecticut, in 1776 to evade invading British troops, Hammon accompanied him. In that literary-minded city Hammon published more writings that expressed his antislavery Calvinist views. His first poem published in Hartford addressed the slave poet Phillis Wheatley, suggesting that she should write about religious subjects. His evangelical writing reiterated his main theme that God used slavery to test African Americans’ faith in heavenly freedom. Hammon urged black people to support one another spiritually while remaining obedient to their masters. Although Hammon did not believe that he would ever be freed on this earth, he tried to improve conditions for younger generations of slaves.

After Joseph Lloyd committed suicide in 1780, John Lloyd inherited Hammon, who continued writing in Hartford until 1783, when Lloyd returned to Oyster Bay. In that year Hammon published “A Dialogue Entitled the Kind Master and the Dutiful Servant,” stressing that sin was what divided slaves and masters. Hammon’s final short book was An Address to the Negroes of the State of New York, printed in 1787. concerned about slaves’ suffering economic misfortunes if they were suddenly freed and forced to compete for employment, Hammon argued that gradual emancipation was the best solution. Although a pioneering African-American literary figure, Hammon has often been ignored because Wheatley overshadowed him.

Further reading: Philip M. Richard, Nationalist Themes in the Preaching of Jupiter Hammon (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990).

—Elizabeth D. Schafer

Hamor, Ralph (the Younger) (1588-1626) merchant Ralph Hamor, the son of Raphe Hamor, was a prosperous merchant-tailor and early subscriber to the Virginia Company of London. With the issuance of the second Virginia Company charter in 1609, Hamor the younger sailed to Virginia on the Sea Venture in the company of Sir George Somers and John Rolfe. Shipwrecked on Bermuda (an event that inspired Shakespeare’s The Tempest), Hamor and survivors eventually made their way to Jamestown, where he was appointed clerk to the Virginia council by Governor Thomas Gates. Hamor subsequently served as colony secretary and councilor. Upon returning to England in 1614, Hamor wrote A True Discourse of the Present State of Virginia (1615), a promotional tract that nevertheless realistically chronicles the leading events of Virginia’s first years, including the starving time, the abduction of Pocahontas, and her courtship by John Rolfe. The tract provides an interpretation of Virginia’s early history that alternately contests, confirms, and complicates the account by John Smith.

In 1611, both Hamor and John Rolfe experimented with tobacco cultivation, which became the foundation of Virginia’s economy, and Hamor assisted in securing Deputy Governor Dale’s approval of Rolfe’s courtship of Pocahontas. Shortly before returning to England in 1614, Hamor was dispatched by Dale on a delicate but unsuccessful mission to negotiate with Powhatan for his 12-year-old daughter to serve as the already married Dale’s “nearest companion, wife, and bedfellow.” This diplomatic transaction probably was the aged headman’s last formal negotiation with the English. Along with his brother Thomas and three servants, Hamor returned to Virginia in 1617 to found a plantation on Hog Island, taking advantage of the Virginia Company’s land grants to investors for transporting workers to the colony. During Opechancanough’s revolt in 1622, Hamor and his servants fought off an attack by the Warrascoyack with “spades, axes, and brickbats,” until rescued by a squad of musketeers. During the dissolution of the Virginia Company, the Crown in 1624 issued a commission, delegating Sir Francis Wyatt to rule Virginia as governor with a council composed of Hamor and 11 other “old planters.” Hamor lived until about 1626, having married twice and fathered two children.

Further reading: James Horn, A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America (New York: Basic Books, 2005).

—James G. Bruggeman

Harris, Benjamin (d. 1716) publisher Benjamin Harris, the first individual to start a newspaper in the American colonies, began his career in the book trade in his native London in 1673 with the publication of an anti-Catholic tract. When the Catholic James II ascended the English throne in 1685, Harris fled to Boston, where he resumed publishing and bookselling. His most famous publication, the New England Primer (1690), was a spelling text for children that sold for two centuries; it is known as the Little Bible of New England. Harris became the richest bookseller in Boston in part due to innovative practices such as selling coffee and tea along with his publications. His establishment became known as the city’s only coffeehouse suitable for respectable women.

Harris recognized that Boston’s commercial activity provided advertising possibilities to support a newspaper. In September 1690 he published F-ublick Occurences Both Foreign and Domestick, the first American newspaper. The newspaper contained three printed pages and one blank page, because the custom was for the first reader to write a letter on the blank page and send it to a friend. While Harris meant for his newspaper to appear regularly, his criticism of the colony’s Indian allies and reports on the sexual peccadilloes of the French king led to the newspaper being banned; the official reason was that Harris had printed without a license. In the following years Harris continued to run his coffee shop and publish books, and for a year he served as the governor’s official printer. Harris returned to London in 1695 and spent his last years in the publishing trade and in selling quack medicines.

Further reading: William David Sloan and Julie Hedgepeth Williams, The Early American Fress, 1690-1783 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994).

—Kenneth Pearl

Harrison, Peter (1716-1775) architect Born in England and raised a Quaker, Peter Harrison became one of the colonies’ premier architects. He converted to Anglicanism when he immigrated to America, settling in Newport, Rhode Island about 1740. Following his immigration and conversion, Harrison ran a successful business and married a wealthy woman, Elizabeth Pelham, who brought a dowry of more than ?20,000. These actions catapulted Harrison to the top of Newport society. Harrison, his wife, and their four children had their portrait painted by John Smibert.

Although his early architectural designs were for ships and lighthouses, Harrison soon moved on to larger projects, such as country homes for the wealthy. In 1748 he designed the Redwood Library, basing his work on Greek classical images, which made him well known throughout New England, although he was never paid for this project. Harrison designed several religious structures, including King’s Chapel in Boston, which was the first stone church in America, and the first Jewish temple built in New England. This last project was especially difficult, because Harrison was ignorant of Jewish ritual and he had no model upon which to base his plans. Harrison also plotted the Brick Market in Newport and many homes for prominent families. Not until the 20th century was Harrison acknowledged as America’s “first architect,” although he would not have described himself in those terms. Harrison always considered himself a gentleman and his architecture the work of an amateur.

Further reading: Leland M. Roth, American Architecture: A History (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2003).

—Victoria C. H. Resnick