Lost history: What happened to Claiborne Parish child set free by Emancipation Proclamation

CLAIBORNE PARISH, La. ( KTAL/KMSS ) – A man who was once enslaved in Claiborne Parish, Louisiana, once told historians in Oklahoma the story of how the Emancipation Proclamation changed his life on Gee Plantation in Sugar Creek, Louisiana. More than 150 years later, we are able to read his words and understand what it was like when he became free.

“I was born in Louisiana, way before the War. I think it was about ten years before because I can remember everything so well about the start of the war,” said Isaac Adams in a recording taken by the Oklahoma Writer’s Project .

The writer’s project was later published in the Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves .

The publication was recorded for the Library of Congress .

“My Nanny belonged to Mr. Sack P. Gee. I don’t know what his real given name was… we all called him Master Sack. He was a kind of youngish man, and was mighty rich,” said Adams in his elder years.

Every spring, the property where the Gee Plantation once stood becomes overgrown with a beautiful climbing rose known as the Cherokee Rose. It’s an antique variety that was likely brought to the plantation during the height of the Gee family’s influence.

The Gees were so influential, in fact, that if you were well-off in 19th century Claiborne Parish it was said that you were “ up in Gee .”

The Gee Plantation was located on lands now known as Sugar Creek, Marsalis, Aycock, and parts of both Lisbon and Athens. The plantation was massive, but not a single building from that time period exists today.

“He ( Sack Pennington Gee , the owner of the plantation) would leave in a buggy and be gone all day and still not get all over it,” Adams said of the size of the plantation where he spent much of his childhood. “I was the only child my Mammy had… I think she was going to have me when he got her; anyways I come along pretty soon, and my Mammy never was very well afterwards… and when I was four or five years old she died.”

At least four cemeteries related to the plantation still exist, though one is lost in the woods near Lisbon. In what remains of the once flourishing settlement of Sugar Creek, three graveyards still remain. One contains the graves of the Gee Family. Every member of the Gee family died after the Civil War and there are no known descendants left in the area.

To understand what life would have been like for the people who were buried in the old cemeteries, we look to the words of Adams.

“He (Sack Pennington Gee) had so much different kinds of land that they could raise anything they wanted, and he had more mules and horses and cattle than anybody around there,” Isaac Adams recalled.

But Adams also recorded something magical in his narrative: the entirety of the Civil War in Claiborne Parish, Louisiana.

“The first I knowed about the war coming on was when Mr. Sack had a whole bunch of white folks at the Big House at a function. They didn’t talk about anything else all evening and then the next time they come nearly all their men folks weren’t there—just the women folks. It wasn’t very long till Mr. Sack went off to Houma with some other men, and pretty soon we knew he was in the war. Next thing we knowed they was Confederate soldiers riding by pretty nearly every day in big droves.”

Another graveyard in the Sugar Creek area contains the bodies of those who were enslaved and their descendants. Simple rock markers without writing are the tombstones for the oldest graves, handmade tombstones adorn the graves of many who died after the Civil War, and newer tombstones are found throughout the old cemetery that can only be reached by walking a little trail through the woods.

Adams tells us what is was like in rural Claiborne Parish during the Civil War. Much of what he describes isn’t commonly known, even in Claiborne Parish.

“When the Yankees got down in the country the most of the big men paid for all the corn and meat and things they got, but some of the little bunches of them would ride up and take hogs and things like that and just ride off… The Yankees was mighty nice about their manners, though. They camped all around our place for a while. There was three camps of them close by at one time, but they never did come and use any of our houses and cabins…”

A third graveyard near the location of the old Gee plantation has graves from before and after the Civil War. But the cemetery is also the final resting place of the Sherrard family, a white family that was amongst the earliest settlers of Sugar Creek. The Sherrards sold land to those who were enslaved so they could build St. Luke Baptist Church.

The church and congregation still exists today, though the original building has been transformed through the years.

“Master Sack come home before ethe war was quite over,” said Adams. “I think he had been sick, because he looked thin and old and worried… One day he went into Arcadia (Bienville Parish) and come home and told us the war was over and we was all free. (We) didn’t know what to make of it, and didn’t know where to go, so he told all that wanted to stay on that they could just go on like they had been and pay him shares. About half of (those who had been enslaved) stayed on, and he marked off land for them to farm and made arrangements with them to let them use their cabins, and let them have mules and tools. They paid him out of their shares, and some of them finally bought the mules and some of the land. But about half went off and tried to do better somewhere else. I didn’t stay with him because I was jest a boy and he didn’t need me at the house anyway.”

Sack Pennington Gee enslaved more people than anyone else in Claiborne Parish, and at that time, Claiborne Parish encompassed much of northwest Louisiana. After the Civil War, the parish was cut into pieces and new parishes were created, such as Lincoln Parish (Abraham Lincoln), Union Parish (as in the Union vs. the Confederacy) and Webster Parish (after the man who created the dictionary.)

The Gee Plantation covered thousands of acres.

Adams was 87 years old when he recorded his remembrances about being enslaved on the Gee Plantation in Claiborne Parish. He had only returned to the former grounds of the plantation once, when he was in his 60s.

“I seen the old Sack P. Gee place about twenty years ago, and it was all cut up in little places and all rund down. Never would have known it was one time a big plantation ten miles long.”

An old stagecoach road once led past Gee Plantation, and in the woods around Gee Creek and Sugar Creek, the remnants of such early settler roads can still be found today. So can the grave of Sack Pennington Gee, who died in June of 1863 five months after the Emancipation Proclamation.

Gee’s only son died before the Civil War. Gee’s only daughter (Mary) passed away in 1865. She was only 18. Sack’s wife was buried beside him, too. An iron ore stone marks her grave.

Those who still very much care about the old cemeteries related to the Gee Plantation maintain the graveyards even today, though it is difficult because wild hogs frequently rip through the woods and try to uproot anything in their paths—including tombstones.

An old Gee cemetery located on Young Road in Claiborne Parish has become lost in the woods in recent decades.

And nobody is quite certain exactly where on Gee Creek the old plantation, barns, tool houses, seed houses, outhouses, water wells, and slave quarters were once located.

Adams was an old man when he returned to see what remained of the old Gee Plantation. He recalled the way the plantation looked in his childhood and how shocking it was to see how run-down it had become.

“Yes, Lord, my old feets have been in mighty nigh every parish in Louisiana,” said Adams, “and I seen some mighty pretty paces, but I’ll never forget how that old Gee plantation looked when I was a boy.”

The Emancipation Proclamation was issued on Sept. 22, 1862. It was enacted on Jan. 1, 1863, and in the proclamation President Abraham Lincoln penned words that would forever change the United States.

“And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons. And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.”

After the war, when Isaac Adams’ father was set free he reconnected with his son.

“When pappy got free he come and asked me to go with him, and I went along and lived with him. He had a share-cropper deal with Mr. Sander and I helped him work his patch. That place was just a little east of Houma, a few miles… I don’t think my pappy was born in Louisiana. Alabama, maybe. I think his parents come off the boat, because he was very black — even blacker than I am.”

Adams said he lived with his pappy until he was about eighteen, then he married and moved around all over Louisiana.

“My wife give me twelve boys and five girls, but all my children are dead now but five. My wife died in 1920 and I come up here to Tulsa to live. One of my daughters takes care and looks out for me now.”

It is not known if Adams experienced the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921.

Happy Juneteenth, America. May all find healing and love in the present moment when we think of those who came before us and the times that they endured. To read more of Isaac Adams’ recollections, visit this page in on the Library of Congress website .

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