As work continues at the Cooch’s Bridge Historic Site, researchers are gradually learning more about the men and women who were enslaved there more than 200 years ago.
Sam was a middle-aged man who was able to escape to freedom in 1754.
Hatfield was an old man before he was finally freed, but he later returned to work at the Cooch mill.
Link was freed in Thomas Cooch’s will, but he had to wait until Cooch’s wife died to actually receive his freedom.
Bristol, Cesar and Toney weren’t freed but were instead “gifted” to Cooch’s son.
Calvina Perry, a historical researcher employed by the Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs, told those stories and more Sunday during a Juneteenth celebration outside the Cooch house on Old Baltimore Pike.
“It’s really important to me to give voice to those names that we may or may not have heard of,” Perry said. “But more importantly recreate and retell that story of what was going on here.”
As the state prepares to open the Cooch site to the public as a museum, Perry has spent the last year researching the people who were enslaved there was well as the free Blacks who worked at Cooch’s farm and mill and lived in the surrounding Iron Hill community.
Most people know Cooch’s Bridge for the Revolutionary War battle fought there, but historians are trying to ensure that more is known about the rest of the site’s history, including its ugly legacy of slavery.
“It needs to be told,” Perry said.
Crystal Hayman Simms is a descendent of the James family, whose members worked on the Cooch property for generations. Family history indicates an early ancestor was enslaved by the Cooches, but that has not yet been officially documented.
“The Jameses acted as cooks, nurses, farmers, housekeepers and account managers for the Cooches,” Simms said.
During Sunday’s event, she led a prayer thanking God “for the faith of our ancestors, who kept their hands to the plow and held on until freedom from persecution finally came.”
Patricia Wilson Aden, whose ancestors worked at the Cooch property, led the crowd in reciting the names of the 17 people known to have been enslaved at the site.
“We honor those enslaved at Cooch’s Bridge, breathing life back into them,” Aden said. “We’re honoring them as family, as part of our community and in recognition of our human kinship. As we say their names, we acknowledge them and lift up their stories.”
The keynote speaker Sunday was Kenneth Morris Jr., a descendent of two well-known African-American leaders who were both born into slavery: Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. He now runs the nonprofit Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives, which works to end racism and human trafficking.
“History is not just about the past, but it’s about the present and it’s about the future,” Morris said. “The more that we know where we come from, the better we can navigate the world in which we live and we also know where we’re headed.”
He said that during a divided time for the country when bigotry is still rearing its ugly head, America needs more leaders like his famous ancestors.
“When we hear all the racist, xenophobic rhetoric and everything else that we’ve been hearing, what will our great-great-great-grandchildren say about us in this moment in time?” he asked. “Were we on the right side of history, or were we on the wrong side of history?”
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