Meet Boston King. He was one of hundreds of formerly enslaved people during the American Revolution who sided with the British with hopes of gaining his freedom. And he did.
King is listed in the British “Book of Negroes” that detailed his transit from the Colonies to Canada with the British. He started a new life, became a Methodist minister and wrote a memoir.
“I was beat and tortured most cruelly, and was laid up three weeks before I was able to do any work …To escape his cruelty, I determined to go to Charles Town, and throw myself into the hands of the English,” he wrote. “They received me readily, and I began to feel the happiness of liberty of which I knew nothing before.”
His story is one of the hundreds of “everyday people” in Charleston during the British occupation in the late 18th century profiled by new research, said Katherine Pemberton, director of the Powder Magazine Museum.
Thanks to a $20,000 grant the Powder Magazine received last year from the SC250 Commission, researchers Christina and Nic Butler were brought on to piece together American and British documents. This is one of many efforts the state’s official commission has been involved in to honor the multiyear commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.
The couple’s efforts reveal what life was like for colonial people during the American Revolution who didn’t make it into the history books. Like pulling on a thread, the Butlers were able to weave these pieces of information into vignettes that tell the stories of women, African Americans, loyalists and patriot sympathizers.
“Boston King wrote his own story, which is rare,” Christina Butler said. “For most enslaved people, the only record of them is filtered through the accounts of landowners who tried to claim them as a financial loss when they ran away.”
Pemberton said history isn’t as clear-cut as it seems.
“Talk about the Revolutionary era has always been binary — of patriots versus loyalists, Americans versus the British, good versus bad. History accounts have been told through the lens of elite White people, generally men. This research broadens that story.”
Christina Butler spent more than 500 hours on the project, uncovering the lives of people in Charleston, then Charles Town. Butler likened the research process to trying to solve a complex puzzle. Some information was easier to piece together than others. She said it was humbling to see these individuals, who in their time lived what was viewed as seemingly insignificant lives, be recognized centuries later.
Butler said the narrative has long relied on well-known memoirs, like the one by Gen. William Moultrie, but there’s much more to the story. Despite there being limited records for marginalized groups like African Americans and women, she was able to string together narratives from sources one might not expect.
Colonial newspapers, merchant logs, post-war claims and personal journals provided valuable insights into daily life in Charleston during the American Revolution, including patriot and loyalist sentiment, economic trends, British government proclamations and economic losses during the war. Property deeds, plats and maps helped identify places of activity and fortifications in the city, even those that no longer stand today.
“These kinds of records are fascinating because they give us a lot of really personal stories that speak to what motivated people to side with one country or the other during the war,” she said. “Claims lay out how the war impacted their families, how they suffered and all the property that they lost.”
The fate of some enslaved people was tracked this way. Like that of Sarah Gordon and her 17-month-old son Jasper, who were escaped slaves claimed as lost property and later listed in British documents as having made it to Nova Scotia to freedom.
“Ultimately it’s a human story,” Butler said. “We hope that bringing these stories to light can make this history more meaningful to young people. When we look at history 250 years later, its easy to make it an us versus them story. But choosing between the British and American causes was not such a black-and-white choice. These were real people who had to make real choices, real sacrifices.”
Pemberton said that while the Revolution was based on fighting the British occupation, some positives grew out of the situation. For some enslaved people, siding with the British was a means of escape. Some historians say that it helped establish the framework for the city to thrive after the occupation.
“The British created order in Charleston, setting up the infrastructure and bureaucracy needed that made it possible to incorporate the city in 1783 after the occupation. Without that law and order, it’s difficult to say how that could have impacted the city.” Pemberton said. “The complexity of history continues to surprise us centuries later.”
The city surrendered to the British on May 12, 1780, and remained under British control until December, 14, 1782.
The vignettes will be used to create a new exhibit at the Powder Magazine, as well as be highlighted in a series of lectures. The exhibit panels will be available for other museums to take out on loan in the future.
The 270-page report will be available online on SC250’s website and the Powder Magazine.
“Often history is boiled down to the collective suffering of groups of people because of the lack of, or gaps in, documentation. Research like this provides an understanding of who these people were as individuals,” Pemberton said.
“There are more than two sides of history,” she added. “Nationally, there is more effort around telling these stories. I think Charleston is now doing a much better job of looking at representative history by telling more diverse stories and histories that people can feel connections to.”
Meet some of the “everyday people” of Charleston in the 18th century:
Many women worked during the occupation. Ann Wood advertised her services in the newspapers a bookseller, bookbinder and stationer at her shop on Tradd Street. Martha Stoll took in washing, clear-starching and needlework to support herself from her house on Meeting Street.
Eliza Wilkinson was a young woman during the British occupation, often writing about her day in a journal that survives today. She’s an example of many Colonial women who often, and sometimes not so quietly, rebelled against the British. She wrote in May 1781 that Charleston was “filled with enemies” who would expose their patriot neighbors. In a letter to her friend she confided that she had been urged by a Captain to “not be very saucy” and be careful who she spoke to because other women had been put in provost (the dungeon) for similar insults. “Do the Britons think they will conquer America by such means? If they do, they will find themselves much mistaken,” she wrote.
The women Wilkinson referred to were the Sarazen sisters. Some accounts say they were imprisoned by the British for two weeks with the accusation of being spies to lure their alleged patriot spy brother Johnathan Sarrazin. He was arrested by the British in 1780 and held in the Old Exchange dungeon, and later likely banished.
A Black Charleston blacksmith known only as Dick repaired firearms for the Americans, secretly harboring British loyalist sentiments. When American patriots sent him a shipment of 300 weapons to repair, he twisted the barrels to make them unusable. When he fled to England after the evacuation, the Board of Police intendant James Simpson vouched for him. Dick secured his freedom and was awarded compensation for his services and loyalty to the Crown.
Widow Eleanor Lestor, a loyalist, had a liquor shop on Kings Street before it was destroyed by a fire in 1781. She sold one of her enslaved servants to buy passage back to England.
Loyalist James Cook (also spelled Cooke) was a carpenter and loyalist during the occupation. He owned several properties, including a lot on East Bay Street that he purchased from Quaker merchant Zephaniah Kingsley in July 1778, and which was recorded in November 1781. He built a house on the vacant lot, still barren from the fire of 1778. The house, at 93 East Bay St., still stands today as part of Rainbow Row. He lost his estate and did not receive clemency after being accused of leading the decision to “shut all neutral and patriot artisans from the ability to practice their trades in British-occupied Charleston.” He was hung, carted through town and burned at Gadsden’s Wharf.
Mary Taggart had a small plantation on the neck of the Charleston peninsula, known today as the East Side. She petitioned multiple times for financial compensation from the new state and U.S. governments for property loss. She wrote that during the siege, patriot leader Benjamin Lincoln told her she needed to evacuate her property. It was burned to the ground to create siege lines so the patriots could see the British coming up the peninsula.