Beyond Barbados: The Carolina Connection

This program is funded in part by a grant from the South Carolina National Heritage Corridor Sometimes the history of a place begins elsewhere.

When we study the formation of the United States we learn about colonization, white Europeans settling in the New World, establishing a new way of life.

But that effort wasn't so simple or as direct as just sailing across an ocean and stepping onto a new continent.

Rather the experience is far more complex.

History is complex.

There is serendipity and there are also calculated measures by human beings to control the outcome to control other human beings and to in affect write history.

The history of South Carolina is like wise complex.

But it begins somewhere else in a place that many South Carolinians know very little about.

A place where our culture and our diversity was forged.

classical music Most students today understand that the Carolinas were colonized by the English who had come to the Charleston area by way of Caribbean trade routes, primarily Barbados.

Although the extent of the influence the tiny island of Barbados has on the Carolinas is largely unknown.

It is unmistakable.

It is probably safe to say that most people around the world think of Barbados as a popular tourist destination with a warm climate, picturesque beaches and all inclusive resorts.

And they would be right.

Barbados's number one industry is tourism with five star hotels, fine dining and a port of call for cruise ships.

It's Caribbean culture at its finest.

So it may be difficult to imagine that this one hundred sixty six square mile island was once the most densely populated country on earth, the richest colony of the New World, and the hub of the West African slave trade.

Like the United States, Barbados is an amalgam of international cultures.

However for close to three hundred years Barbados remained a Commonwealth of the United Kingdom, only gaining its independence from Britain in nineteen sixty six.

The story of Barbados is as unique as the island itself.

Barbados is the most easterly of the West Indian islands and technically not even in the Caribbean.

Situated in the western Atlantic Ocean, it is only five hundred miles from South America.

Prior to the arrival of the Englisher there were some three thousand years of occupation by Amerindian peoples who originated in what is today Guyana and Venezuela.

If you look at very early Spanish maps, you will see the island recorded various say as: Los Barbados Los Barbudos.

Barbados translated means the bearded ones in Portuguese, believed to be a reference to the island's indigenous bearded fig trees.

Although not nearly as numerous as they once were, they still grow throughout the island to enormous sizes.

Their thick strands of beard like vines are a natural habitat for various birds, bats and even monkeys.

The Spaniards and the larger islands to the north the greater Andies either enslaved the Amerindians or chased them from the islands.

But whatever happened Amerindians of Barbados had fled the island.

We know that Europeans had been visiting Barbados as early as fifteen hundred when it first started appearing on Spanish maps from the period, however, by all accounts it was uninhabited.

European explorers were hot on the heels of what may be the single most pivotal event in world history.

The successful navigation of a sea route across the Atlantic Ocean by Christopher Columbus.

Fourteen ninety two is seminal in world history because fourteen ninety two broke down the Atlantic barrier and the Atlantic ceased to be a barrier for the exchange of anything biological and became a highway.

It is widely held in the name Pedro a Campos was the first European to actually, physically set foot on Barbados.

He was an adventurous person.

He was engaged in a trip to South America and passed here by accident.

People took a long time to sail in those days.

Getting to Barbados is no easy trick because it is the most when windward of all the Caribbean Islands.

If you're not careful you go around Barbados it's very difficult to tack back.

Perhaps the island's most distinctive difference from its Caribbean neighbors can be found in its geological construct.

Barbados was unique in the fact that it wasn't a volcanic island.

It's far from the geological uplift of the ocean floor.

Most islands are formed as a result of volcanoes.

Barbados emerged from the Atlantic Ocean as a giant coral rock, flat and porous.

The other thing is it sits to the east so the, the breeze is different.

That also set it up in in a nice position to be a stop over.

The first port of call, given the equatorial currents and the northeast trade winds up that blew across the island.

Those little coves there became ideal landing spots for the settlers.

Europe as a whole was looking for expansion so whether you were British, French, Spanish, you know, Dutch whatever.

Some hundred years passed after Europeans first began visiting the island.

And it wasn't until sixteen twenty seven that Barbados was settled by the English who were escaping the turmoil of civil war in Great Britain and endeavoring to re-infuse their declining family fortunes.

It is said that they nailed a cross to a tree claimed in the name of King James the first of England.

It would have been hard to settle initially, covered with bearded fig trees and all they had were axes and saws to chop them down and till the land with a few cattle.

So it would have been tough settling it.

But within a very short time it became obvious that it was a perfect port for the English.

The society comprised a small number of wealthy people who were privileged and who were given land grants and a large number of really peasant farmers and servants.

The earliest map of Barbados shows the settlements all along the western and southern coasts and these settlements were all designed to provide the land owners with one and a quarter miles of land inland and a quarter of a mile at the sea, so that each and everyone could produce their goods and ship them themselves from the coast.

My father's ancestors came here in sixteen twenty seven and sixteen thirty five.

So my father's family go back a very long way.

This island and tropics beckons you and offers fame and offers fortune and offers the springboard to greater riches.

Among the first ships to land on Barbados were a crew of English, Scottish and Irish indentured servants.

But also on board were a number of enslaved African people who had been acquired from a Spanish ship mid journey.

Barbados begins its colonized history sixteen twenty seven with a group of well it be eighty persons on board the ship.

But thirty were crew members and fifty stayed to colonize the island, along with the group of is it twelve, is it ten, is it eight?

But they are Africans undeniably.

The the assumption is that they would have been enslaved because of course slavery was not necessarily foreign to England.

They not only bring African slaves with them, they make a point of going to Sierrenam as they call it and rounding up a whole bunch of native Americans and then bringing them to the island.

Everybody knew that they did not know how to survive in this new environment.

So they had to round up people and enslave them so that they could learn how to survive on Barbados.

Youngsters in Europe said I want to see fame and fortune I want to go somewhere where I can become a planter.

I can own other human beings.

I can have a huge elaborate great house.

I can become very wealthy.

I can perhaps come from a background of nothing but I can achieve fame and fortune and social prominence.

They were looking for something that would really yield financial return and they started experimenting with crops, cotton.

indigo, ginger tobacco.

The tobacco phase was short lived, a decade at most.

Our tobacco was not the best quality to tobacco.

The price of that commodity starts to decline because they're receiving significant competition from the northern colonies.

Although the new inhabitants of Barbados tried many different crops, it was tough.

They continued to struggle to find a crop that they could produce well export and profit from.

It wasn't until another group of transplants just happened to make their way to the island that their fortune would change.

You know, history never really happens in a vacuum In the sixteen twenties through to the sixteen forties northern Brazil is controlled by the Dutch.

And the Dutch basically are modernizing that colony.

Many of these Dutch colonists in northern Brazil consisted of Sephardic Jews.

these planters and businessmen and their families had immigrated originally from Spain and Portugal to Holland to avoid religious persecution at the onset of the infamous Spanish Inquisition.

Jews in Brazil became active plantation owners, importers of African labor and providers of capital.

And also they provided a massive trading network.

Eventually the Spanish Inquisition reach these colonies in the New World.

And the Sephardic Jews in Brazil began looking for a new place to settle that accepted their ideology and offer the potential for monetary growth.

Their first stop upon their exodus was Barbados.

Although not afforded the privileges they had established in Brazil, these transplants brought with them a valuable knowledge of the production of a commodity that had only just recently become a highly demanded staple throughout Europe.

A product that would literally transform the economic and cultural landscape of the island of Barbados making the whole venture an overwhelming success.

Sugar.

It was a fortunate transfer of technology from Brazil to Barbados in the middle of the seventeenth century.

It was the Sephardic Jews that brought the mill technology, the knowledge of sugar cane cultivation and that formed the very basis of the great wealth that was to become Barbados.

It transformed the world economy and Barbados was at the epicenter of that transformation.

Who they had as their labor force were indentured servants from Ireland and Scotland.

People regarded Irish almost sort of like a different subhuman group of people who were okay to exploit and dehumanize.

So people from the British Isles who were then brought to Barbados for a defined period of time five to seven years I believe was the time of the indentured period.

And plantations popped up everywhere.

Some record say as many as five hundred plantations on that small island.

They realized that they could indenture the poor white English servants but they would lose them from yellow fever.

And the Africans survived.

They found out that the indentured servants they were not able to withstand the heat and what it would take to really make the plantations productive.

It was at that point that they started bringing in enslaved Africans from the west coast in mass.

The traders are sourcing enslaved Africans from different parts of Western Africa places like Ghana, Nigeria.

There is evidence that some would of come even from East Africa.

The treatment could not have been good.

Slave ships were at sea for many many weeks couple of months.

People were in very cramped conditions.

Of course on the slave ships people would have been chained down.

Very bad conditions obviously.

Africans begin their existence here having their culture identified as inferior or sub human.

So it's an extremely desperate situation for the African who comes to Barbados.

So they brought in shiploads and shiploads of of of Africans from West Africa.

You have a mainly rural experience so the living in plantations is out in the country but there was enslavement in the urban centers like Bridgetown, Oistins, Holetown and Speightstown.

The vast majority of the enslaved people would have been basically at the bottom.

They would been performing very arduous work clearing land for instance very labor intensive work.

Then they're preparing the lands for the production of sugar cane.

basically plows that are operated manually.

Then the planting of the sugar cane.

The canes grown, they're then being reaped.

Sugar cane is actually a tropical grass.

It grows well in areas that are not prone to excessive rainfall.

It also must have a ripening season and reaped during a dry period to ensure the highest sucrose content.

After its harvested a mill must be utilized usually powered by wind or oxen.

Cut cane would be fed into wooden rollers that squeeze and crush it extracting a juice.

This juice would be boiled down to a series of pots of varying sizes to a molten form of sugar.

It is cooled in a final stage and sugar crystals are formed.

It was an elaborate process that required skill and many resources.

If you make a mistake then you can spoil a whole sugar crop a successful sugar plantation on Barbados would have a minimum of three hundred working enslaved peoples.

Sugar changed the landscape of Barbados.

Sugar changed the demographic landscape of Barbados.

Sugar changed the culture of Barbados.

And sugar created a system You've got a very interesting experiment taking place where you've got in a tropical environment basically English people and North Europeans enslaving Africans two very phenotypically different people, alien to each other and culture.

One has authority, complete authority over the other group.

Right.

So obviously that would have been reinforced by you know corporal punishment.

There is a practice of social control by means of apparatus of violence.

And of course the enslaved people have no recourse.

They're not supposed to answer back.

You learn how to respond non aggressively.

You have a clash of civilizations.

The people who probably would not have interacted with each other all of these people came together and something new was birthed.

It really ushered in the industrialized era.

Every single invention that covered the sugar industry forward took place here on this small island, sugar and all its aspects dominated our island and created a type of culture of our own.

Barbados economy was booming.

It was quickly becoming the wealthiest colony of the New World and the most densely populated country on the planet.

Barbadians were considered to be the richest people in the world.

So you found that some of the most prominent families from England and Europe would have come here seeking the fortune.

Having huge plantations.

the success of elite planters of the island fostered a New World lifestyle for the former Europeans, one of opulence and excess, holding lavish parties like their aristocratic counterparts back in England but with a flair of living unfettered in this exotic setting.

They were show offs and they continued their lifestyle and their status.

These men were foolish fox who overdressed in this tropical climate and would suffer from heat stroke.

They liked to dance.

They like to gamble not that they weren't weren't doing those things in in England, but they seemed to do it to excess.

And they were big into rum which is a by product of sugar cane growing sugar cane.

The plantations and growth in the island every single inch of land was occupied and used in agricultural production.

Despite being the wealthiest colony of the New World, the entire island had been deforested within twenty five years of its colonization.

Having placed the majority of the land mass into the service of sugarcane production.

This island experienced the first real ecological disaster and the world with the complete clear cutting of forests and the extinction of many life forms on the island.

The deforestation of the island of Barbados completely changed the ecology of that island.

There wasn't enough land for the big planters to give land to their progeny.

Barbados became very overcrowded.

There wasn't any more land for these new new comers that were coming into Barbados.

It was all bought up and then they built their whole economy on one commodity.

And that's never a good idea.

So that's why they looked to North America.

Barbados was faced with severe shortages of lumber for construction, fuel sources and food.

Some of the larger Barbadian plantation owners with names like Cooper, Middleton, Drayton and Colleton organized and financed an exploratory endeavor known as the Barbados adventurers.

People like Ashley Cooper, his family owned holdings in Barbados.

The whole venture was promoted here locally.

Any Barbadian who felt restricted and confined on this small island could seek their fame and fortune elsewhere.

Captain William Hilton was tasked with leading the expedition that arrived first in Port Royal.

A small fortification near what is now Beaufort, South Carolina.

And nearby Hilton Head Island would eventually be named after the captain.

They sent a scouting expedition down to what's now the Charleston area and they met a friendly tribe there called the Kiawah.

And the Kiawah tried to build the relation with these Barbadian planters because they needed protection from other groups.

The Kiawah directed them to an area where two rivers came together.

When the Barbadians landed they claimed it in the king's name.

Calling it Charles Town.

The men who became the proprietors of Carolina were supporters of King Charles while he was in exile.

And helped him become reestablished in the monarchy.

And Charles the second rewarded them with all the land that we know today as North and South Carolina, basically the southern United States which was called Carolina by King Charles and he gave it to the eight lords proprietors, everything but Florida which was still Spanish.

One of the proprietors was Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper.

And that's where the Ashley and Cooper get river get their name.

By the time the Middletons made it to Barbados in the sixteen seventies they encounter a Barbados that was already fully developed at that time.

Sugar had had taken off.

And they tried to establish themselves but were not able to.

One of the Middleton brothers Arthur became involved in bringing slaves into the island.

They continually had to import more and more people from Africa to keep up with the labor demands and auction them right off the ship to planters who needed enslaved people.

So after a few years of being involved in this kind of activity they eventually decided to take advantage of Carolina opening.

One of the greatest motivations for this initial surge of migration to Carolina came through land grants.

A settler would be granted by the lords proprietors an initial one hundred acres.

And if they brought their wife and family, an additional fifty acres.

And for each enslaved person the settlers were given one hundred acres each.

Giving the wealthy slave holders of Barbados a tremendous advantage in staking their claim in this emerging colony.

Didn't matter how much money you had, you worked.

Everybody was a worker you know.

And they got out there and make sure things happened.

They had only one thing in mind.

They had gone there to get rich.

Carolina was an investment it was a way for them to make money.

And they brought indentured servants and they brought enslaved Africans and they brought the system.

Over half the white population came from Barbados itself and more than half of the enslaved population came from Barbados.

You cannot separate the system of slavery from the economy of those those early pre-colonial times and Barbados was one of those places that helped define that economy.

The earliest slave law within an English speaking community is a slave code of sixteen sixty one in Barbados.

The slave law of Barbados is transferred, lock, stock and barrel to the Carolinas.

They took with it malaria and yellow fever.

So all of those African conditions that had produced immunity in the slaves then became problematic in the Carolinas as well.

The death rate of people who first went out to any colony was pretty severe.

Those who had been in a in an English colony in the Caribbean were seasoned in terms of what it took to make a colony work.

It was not the paradise that was proclaimed by William Hilton and others and life was tougher.

And distances were great.

They made the colony successful.

If that meant working helping to clear the fields with their slave property, they did that.

They didn't sit on the veranda sipping a mint julep.

It required a change in cultural aspects.

The cultural aspects that remained of course were the the dialect approach to how they spoke English and the institution of slavery.

They have to search for a crop that would do well so they experimented.

Sugar's not going to do as well here.

It's more temperate.

We need a crop that would do well in the Carolinas.

It took some time for them to establish profitable plantations when they discovered that the the lowlands which were very wet were in fact much more suitable for rice.

With rice as a viable and profitable crop the comparatively vast and bountiful region attracted the most successful Barbadian planters.

Names that read like a who's who of South Carolina history indelible on the state's identity.

I think if someone from Barbados came to Carolina in the eighteenth century they would have felt very at home with the parish names for instance that are the same.

Carolina was divided into parishes just like Barbados and the the names St Philip St Thomas Christ's church, St George, St Andrews.

They're all the same names that were on Barbados.

Family names like Middleton, Drayton, Colleton, Yeamens those are names of people that were living in Carolina.

And even today Middletons and Draytons are around today in South Carolina.

So it's a connection that lives on.

The Middletons were early immigrants to Carolina.

They were part of this group of Englishmen who established themselves on a tributary of the Cooper called Goose Creek and became a political faction called the Goose Creek men.

They were powerful English planters from Barbados.

They viewed the lower proprietors as incompetent and selfish.

And they opposed them at almost every turn.

They knew how to control commerce.

And they knew international business.

They knew agriculture.

They were hard working but in a lot of ways unscrupulous.

They used enslaved labor to make that money.

They were not one to be told what to do.

They would do the things their way.

And they would go up against the government.

They controlled South Carolina politics for the first sixty years or so even after the lower proprietors lost control the colony in seventeen ninety.

One of their sons Arthur Middleton became the first rural governor of South Carolina in the seventeen twenties.

They wanted to distinguish themselves from the ordinary Brit.

They called themselves Barbadians because being a Barbadian at that point meant something.

They did live as if there were no tomorrow.

And all that comes out of the Caribbean.

They have established that ethos that ethic and that influences settlers regardless of nationality that settle particularly in the Low Country.

All the way through the eighteenth and nineteenth century you've got this defiant self reliant way of doing things in South Carolina.

They experimented.

They found that lumber was needed in Barbados.

They found that cattle was needed.

They realized there were native Americans that were here that could be enslaved so they sent them down to Barbados.

Then today there's communities on the island that are descendants of native Americans from Carolina.

The Goose Creek Men were determined.

They were ruthless.

They were very much Barbadian in that respect.

In addition to building the balance of power in the colony, the Goose Creek Men were also known for their illegal activities, like the enslavement of indigenous peoples and engaging in commerce with pirates.

Pirates or privateers were a common threat to the New World trading networks and they flourished during the proprietary period, plundering trade ships and ransoming hostages throughout the Caribbean, the colonies and the West Indies.

Some of the most infamous of these marauding seafarers found the easterly isolation of Barbados and it's hedonistic culture attractive, for not only eluding capture but also for the acquisition of crew members and rum.

Folks didn't care how they, how they made their money.

And South Carolinians illegally traded with the pirates, who frequently wanted things as simple as medicine.

Carolinians wanted whatever they had.

Perhaps the most well known Barbados Carolina connection that has made it into the history and lore of South Carolina is that of a colorful historical figure that captivates historians and youngsters alike.

It is the story of a Barbadian aristocrat who wanted to seek his fortune in the new colonies , but as a pirate.

Barbadian born as Stede Bonnet, a young wealthy plantation owner, is said to have grown bored of his home life and a nagging wife.

Stede Bonnet was a privileged son of a planter in the seventeenth century and he married a member of a famous family at the age of twenty eight.

He apparently bought a ship called it the Revenge and sailed off across the Caribbean to become a pirate off the shores of the Carolinas.

But it was a surprise in character and it still remains a mystery why he became a pirate, why he left his wife and children.

Due to his a fluent upbringing and noble manners.

Stede Bonnet received the nickname, 'The Gentleman Pirate.'

He pirated in and out of the Carolinas and Caribbean for a mere eighteen months, teaming up with a more seasoned and well known pirate named Edward Teach also known as Blackbeard.

He was a gentlemen who is reputed to have invented the process of walking the plank, perhaps because he didn't have the guts to put people to the sword and spill their guts.

So he thought well let them walk the plank and disappear into the sea.

It is believed that Blackbeard took advantage of this gentleman pirate and betrayed him leaving him with an ailing ship just outside Charleston where he was captured tried and hanged for his crimes.

It is said that the wept and pleaded with the judge not to hang him to no avail.

His last press was not for a smoke of tobacco but for a posy of flowers.

And the cartoons at the time showed him holding flowers in his hand as he went to the gallows.

The Barbadian aristocrat turned pirate was buried along with his twenty nine ship mates in a marsh just off White Point gardens, what is now the battery in downtown historic Charleston.

Barbadians continued to dominate the world market in the cultivation, processing and export of sugar and rum.

And this new colony in the Carolinas became a crucial resource.

From the construction of barrels for shipping wood for fuel to run the refineries, lumber to build more ships and food to sustain the people, Carolina became known as the bread basket of the Caribbean.

And with the massive import of an enslaved labor force to support it all, a triangular transcontinental trading network began to flow, feeding the birth of the United States of America.

They were part of a global market from the very day they were founded.

You'd produce agricultural products, beef.

Then you've got rice.

That's competing on a world market.

So you're dealing with a global economy.

Barbados worked a triad of sea ports that dominated World Trade particularly in the Americas at that time.

The African element, the Barbadian Caribbean element, and the American or New World Atlantic element that triangle is important for the world.

As the American colonies evolved in the eighteenth century, Carolina became known as the crown jewel and the wealthiest of the thirteen.

Barbados continued to lead in sugar production but in the Carolinas rice was king.

Plantations up and down the coast began importing more and more enslaved people directly from West Africa slowly cutting off that Barbadian link in the middle passage to the Carolinas.

In seventeen fifty one Barbados had a young visitor whose name would become synonymous with American independence.

Accompanying his half brother who was stricken with tuberculosis, nineteen year old George Washington traveled to Barbados, the only country he ever visited outside of the United States.

They felt that a warmer climate would have been better for him.

George Washington intermingled with some of the leading people in the militia and they found his diary where he entered a detail of what he did on the island and what he saw and how he visited the garrison there.

Washington stayed here in this house in Bridgetown, which is now part of the Barbados National Trust.

While his brother convalesced unsuccessfully for six weeks, Washington contracted smallpox.

But his experience on the island and observations of the British garrison there would influence his future and ultimately his country.

Upon his return to his Virginia plantation he renewed an emphasis on his role in the military.

During the revolutionary war the colonial army was sieged by a small pox epidemic.

However, General Washington had developed immunity to it in Barbados and he effectively oversaw one of the earliest known inoculations against the disease, saving his troops to rally for the cause.

Historians refer to Barbados as the culture hearth of the Americas.

This culture hearth is almost like a cultural transference.

It was a real melting pot of people.

The success of Barbados, Carolina, America, the new world for that matter is coterminous with slavery, the labor, the technology, the ingenuity and the culture that supported this global economy is attributable to the enslavement of African people.

And within this society is also the undeniable progeny of the slaves and the slave masters.

All of the societies of the western world have that phenomenon.

The brown progeny of black and white.

Within the societies of the western Atlantic if the slave master has impregnated the slave woman, the child becomes a slave automatically.

And that is the fundamental experience and the heritage of all the people and stayed within western societies, not just the English Caribbean but throughout.

You really can do little to correct what was wrong.

You need to know the genesis.

You need to know what occurred in the past.

And the only way we can really have a positive influence is by understanding the past and how it influences us in the present.

Knowledge does that knowledge of the history both from a Barbadian vantage point and a Carolina vantage point.

In eighteen thirty three slavery was abolished in all British territories, some thirty years prior to the United States.

The consolidated slave law, which granted freedom to the Barbadian labor force, was enacted after a series of violent slave uprisings throughout the Caribbean.

Most of the plantations and most of the enslaved are in revolt.

There is a widespread damage, cane fields are burnt.

There's damage done to the properties as well as plantation complex.

The Englisher is summoned.

The British Army is summoned, as well as elements of the British West Indies regiment.

The bloodiest of these violent insurrections took place in Barbados in eighteen sixteen.

It is estimated that upwards of nine hundred slaves were killed in the revolt known as Bruce's Rebellion, led by an African born slave.

Although very little is known about Bussa, he is regarded as a Barbadian national hero.

His sacrifice broadened the rights of the enslaved, paving the way to freedom and is memorialized in a larger than life bronze emancipation statute near Bridgetown.

Over eighty thousand enslaved people on Barbados had been freed.

However leading up to this moment the demographic of the island had shifted dramatically, to a black majority society as white planters immigrated to America and the and the enslaved population grew with new generations being born on the island, the highest percentage of which were Creole, a hybrid of African and Europeans.

After Emancipation the enslaved had to serve four years of apprenticeship to adjust to freedom.

But really it wasn't freedom because they still had to work on the plantations and they were still tracked and there were still living under the same circumstances.

A lot of people are taking the obvious choice of not working for the people who formerly enslaved them.

So they are moving and they're going to work on other plantations and other estates.

There might be also some rural to urban movement as well too.

During that time, People were leaving the reality of Barbados rule, Barbados to go and work in places like Bridgetown.

Although Barbados was a plantation economy, you had the whites that were living their own life.

They were trying to mimic life in Britain but you also had blacks that would live on the outskirts of the plantations.

So they had their own life too.

So there was a second life in terms of poor community.

And some of those things have passed down to our generation.

As the rights of the formerly enslaved were expanded into property ownership, apprenticeships and education, they were also provided by the government with the unique concept of housing.

The evolution of the chattel house, the chattel movable property.

So for a person in the mid nineteenth century who was laboring on a plantation decided that they could have a better lot for themselves on another plantation, they would move.

Chattel houses were small, relatively simply designed residences that could easily be disassembled, moved and reassembled.

Loaded onto a cart drawn by a mule or horse or a donkey and they go to the other spot and then reassemble it.

Primarily a permanent residence, these days, many of them have been updated, modified or added onto over the years.

Some now service businesses like rum shops.

The chattel house is unique to Barbados and they can be found almost everywhere you look, everywhere you go on the island.

upbeat music I grew up in Beaufort, South Carolina I consider that almost the heart of Gullah country.

Very strong Gullah dialect Gullah roots.

It's the blending of all of those cultures that came together during that horrible time in our history called the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade.

Those many west African countries Sierra Leone, Senegal, Gambia, Angola, Benin, Togo coming over blending with that of the Europeans that became masters that came from various European countries, Ireland, Scotland, England of course Portugal, Spain, France blending with those cultures and then of course once we got here, the Native Americans were already here.

So my interest in the Barbados Carolina connection is really a big part of my whole life because my family is from Barbados.

My mom is born and raised on there.

Her father, my grandfather was it a great politician on the island of Barbados.

If you're from Barbados, they call you Bajan.

You're also talking about a culture, and you're talking about a language.

And the language has got similarities to what is called Gullah here.

upbeat drum music Isn't it a blessing that yo' name wasn't in the obituary this morning?

So ya'll betta say something up in 'er.

I mean I got a deal with the undertaka partna, cause if you look too dead then all I have to do is hit five.

Yes.

Yes.

Cuz you're in the heart of yo history.

See Gullah is the root of African American history.

So if you didn't know you was Gullah befo you got in 'er, turn around to your nayba and say , 'Hey cuzin!'

audience: 'Hey cuzin !'

Say, 'How mom and dem doing?'

How mom and dem doing?

Say, 'How mom and dem doing?'

Tell Annie Sue I say hey too but check on mama and dem.

Make sure mama and dem alright.

We had to create a language, a language that you can communicate to folks that look like you as well as communicate with folks that don't look like you.

You can't take out the European influence you can't pick out the African influence.

You can't take out the Native American Ex...influence They call it Gullah.

It's all of that together.

We all share a piece of this story.

And folks may not know that but we all Gullah kinfolks whether we want to be or not.

upbeat Caribbean people in a point of enslavement could still communicate with one another.

The African learnt English.

He learnt phrases he learnt commands He learnt nuances of meaning.

This is how Gullah developed so they literally tried to mix up the ethnicities that that came on the slave market and Gullah developed as a form of resistance as well as a form of communication because whites either couldn't understand it or they dismissed it as slave talk.

I know y'all from all over the place.

From Hilton Hea' South Carolina and thing, where we speak that Gullah Geechie language.

Ya'll aint no whether to go on o to talk on.

If you close your eyes and you hear a Gullah Geechie person speak you would think it's a Barbadian.

I could actually understand the vernacular, because it's a mixture of English and African.

And we call it Bajan here at Barbados and the similarities in the words has given me such an affinity to Charleston as a Barbadian.

There's these phrases that have found their way you know across and they transcended through you know generations if you will.

I remember when I first went to Charleston and I looked around in amazement.

The feeling is difficult to quantify or analyze but I did get positive vibes and a feeling of being somewhere that I'd been before.

I felt at home.

It was like being home for me.

When I went to Barbados.

I felt comfortable I felt welcomed.

I felt at home.

They say the Barbarians are more British than the British.

We are.

We're very proper and gentile and we're called New England.

We are extremely British but we are on a crusade now to create a greater awareness amongst the American population.

The similarities are mind blowing.

There's definitely similarities in the cuisine as well in the way that people cook in the way the people pronounce different things.

You can find a lot of that similar culture.

Again it can all, has its roots in in Africa.

Rice was introduced from Africa to Carolina and it became the major crop.

And then it became a crop that fed the people in Barbados.

So today rice is is a major part of the cuisine of Barbados and Carolina.

Africans also added peas and rice and peas in Charleston we call it Hoppin John.

They do pigeon peas and rice.

We do black eye peas or field peas and rice.

They do fly fish.

We do fish seafood.

They do greens.

You know different greens, collards and kale and stuff like that.

First time tourists to the city of Charleston, South Carolina are often quickly taken by its charm.

Preserved effectively in historical sites then harkening back to its colonial days.

The further one ventures to the end of the peninsula, the further back in time one seems to travel.

Even frequent visitors are often struck by the beauty of the unique and numerous residences that line the city streets and remind us of the port city's European influences.

Although not specific to this American city per se, it turns out the single house architectural style is not the result of European influence but rather Barbados.

A single house basically by definition is a room wide with a gable ended roof fronting the road, the back wall of the single house is basically on the property line.

The other long side of the single house is usually up around the piazza and it's built that way to be able to take advantage of breezes.

The single houses of Barbados was a concept translated in Charleston.

It wasn't an exact copy but it was the principal of a long narrow house, well ventilated.

Although very few examples of the single house remain in Barbados today, those that do still stand like the historic Arlington house and Speightstown exhibit obvious comparisons.

Your history is told from your perspective.

So your story as to why you left Barbados, why settle in South Carolina what has happened to you after that, the disconnect, those things are important and just having this being able to understand a bit more of who we are and it has nothing to do with race, color, class or creed.

From a historic perspective you really can't completely understand the Carolinas unless you understand the culture of Barbados and where it came from.

There's a genealogical link an architectural link.

A dialect link, a social economic link, a trade link, there's every kind of link with these two places.

And we're all family.

So you have a Jewish history there.

You have, have an African history there.

You have an Irish history.

You definitely have a the British history there.

Your culture is basically who you are, your way of life, the things you do.

How you view life itself, your food, your fashion, your language.

All of these things have value.

Circumstances brought these people together in a dramatic clash.

And we still want to maintain each as a separate people.

When they're all thrown together, how you gonna separate them when centuries pull them together.

Both whites and blacks are ashamed of the casts, the old bits of evidence of those brutal practices are gone.

The sugar plantation has practically ceased to exist in Barbados.

There's a general gentrification of the Barbadian people the sentence of the former slaves saw their labor in Spanish bungalows.

They have all of the accoutrements and the amenities of the middle class in suburban America.

It is estimated that seven to ten million Americans both black and white Caucasian and African American could trace their roots back to Barbados.

People are searching for their roots.

They're looking for unique experiences, memorable experiences that they want to share with their families to have a great understanding of who you are, why you are the way you are?

Why do they eat the foods they eat?

Why do they speak the way they speak?

What is it that makes their language completely different to the rest of America?

People are trying to find out from whence they came.

If you're from the south you should take a trip to Barbados to understand where these roots come from.

Tourism is an industry that promotes friendships tolerance and understanding amongst the citizens of the world.

People have been coming to Barbados for decades to trace their roots.

So we're working very closely with archives.

We have a host of records at a Barbados archives dating back as far a sixteen thirty seven.

Our main mandate is to ensure that Barbadian historical records are preserved for future generations.

We have parliamentary papers.

We have private papers of individuals and organizations.

We have deeds.

We have vital records.

cisions, baptisms, marriages and burials.

We have school records.

All these records tell stories.

Visitors from overseas are getting involved in researching their roots.

We had a lot of people come up from Scotland and Irish.

We get queries from all over the world.

There's a saying that you find a Barbadian everywhere.

And it's so true.

Everywhere you go you find a Barbadian.

We need for the American people to know of the connection, of the fact that maybe your ancestry will land you back within a hundred and sixty six square miles of Barbados.

You don't know.

I would like to encourage people to explore the genealogy to explore their family, explore your family home, explore your mother country or at least your foster mother country and meet the family.

Although Barbadians can be found around the globe, the best place to meet one is in Barbados.

What separates Bajans from many cultures is not the gradation of people's skin, it's not the ancestry, it's not even the variation of language or system of beliefs, rather it is the attitude.

It is the treatment of one another.

It is as if life on this tiny island is dependent more on what we all share than what makes us different.

When it is all said and done we are all related in the present, despite the past.

It's enriching when you can relate it to the present and what's going on.

We can connect on that level.

It links you to humanity.

It links you to others.

Nobody can take that away from you.

We are a mixture of a bunch of different cultures and a bunch of different ethnic groups and we can learn from our past to build a better future.

Heritage can be used to promote togetherness, the commonality of human experience, the shared experiences that would unite us rather than separate us.

Because we've come out of an experience of being dominated time and time again that when we speak to the rest of the world we speak with this particular confidence that says we are not better than but we are neither below.

We understand that we are part of a human family.

We are one family.

Come on and see ya cuzin ova 'er.

How mom and dem doin bo?

Come on!

See we!

We waitin on ya.

We got cuzins right cross da way.

It's time for you to go see 'bout em.