Celia Gaines

[This is an edited excerpt of Dr. Jennie K. Williams's forthcoming book, Oceans of Kinfolk: the Coastwise Traffic of Enslaved Persons to New Orleans, 1820-1860. Please do not cite or circulate without permission.]

On October 15, 1836, the Alexandria, VA-based slave traders John Armfield and Isaac Franklin sent 111 men, women, and children to New Orleans aboard their brig, the Uncas, which had been specially outfitted for the business of human trafficking. Listed as #84 on the manifest of that voyage was a man named Moses Gaines, described as 24 years of age and a little over 5’8” in stature.

The Uncas’s next voyage from Alexandria to New Orleans began a little more than a month later, on November 19, 1836. Listed thirty-ninth on the manifest of this voyage was a twenty-six-year-old woman named Celia Ganes. Customs officials had recorded her last name slightly differently than Moses’s, but make no mistake: Celia was Moses Gaines’s sister.

Decades passed, and eventually, at last, slavery ended. As soon as they were able, hundreds of formerly enslaved people set out looking for the loved ones from whom they had been stolen, sold, or sent away during slavery. Newspapers across the country printed advertisements taken out by African Americans searching for family. One such post, published in 1880 in a New Orleans paper called the Southwestern Christian Advocate, read as follows:

DEAR EDITOR–I wish to inquire about my people. I left them in a trader’s yard in Alexandria, with a Mr. Franklin. They were to be sent to New Orleans. Their names were Jarvis, Moses, George and Maria Gains. Any information of them will be thankfully received. Address me at Aberdeen, Miss.

And just below, appeared the name of the post’s author: Celia Rhodes, or–as she was formerly known–Celia Gaines.