When Randal McGavock died, an enslaved man by the name of “Joe, aged 47” was listed in the inventory of his estate. One of twenty-two individuals, human property, inherited by Randal’s wife Sarah Rodgers McGavock. The inventory was simple and clear, males and their ages followed by females and their ages. When Sarah wrote her will a few years later, she listed the same names, but in family units. She bequeathed “…Old Suky, Joe, Henry, Fanny (and her two children), Joanna, Eliza and Alice,” further specifying “…they are all of one family..” to her daughter Mary McGavock Southall. These are the only two court records that mention Joe, by name, during his lifetime. As is common with the passage of time, by the mid twentieth century Joe McGavock was absent from his own family’s narrative. A black man, born enslaved, forgotten in freedom. Let’s put him back in his family tree.

In 1796 the Constitution was nearing its tenth anniversary, Washington was giving his farewell address and a twenty-three year old enslaved woman named Suky, a nickname for Susannah, was giving birth to her son Joe in Virginia. Who owned Suky and Joe at this time is unknown, but by the late 18th Century they were owned by Randal McGavock in Williamson County, TN. Joe married Clara, an enslaved woman. Clara had three children from her first husband, a free man of color named Thomas Wright. Joe and Clara expanded their family and together they had five children: Patrick Henry, 1822, Fannie, 1824, Martha, 1826, Joanna, 1828 and Susanna, 1829. It can be assumed that Clara died by 1843, as she was not listed in either Randal or his wifes’ estate inventories.

`The next few steps of Joe and his children’s journey have to be surmised based on the meager facts written down. Inherited by Mary McGavock and her husband J. J. B. Southall, their lives would have been filled with tumultuous uncertainty. J. J. B. Southall was in debt and was slowly dying of tuberculosis.  His estate, including some of his slaves had to be liquidated. After a lifetime of his entire family being enslaved by one family, their precarious future surely weighed on Joe. 

There are only two clues we have as to the family’s location after J.J.B.’s death in 1853. The first Joe’s daughter Fannie and her husband Oscar Southall lived in Franklin after the war, perhaps this fact hinted that they had been sent to Franklin, instead of being sold off as some other Southall slaves were. Second, A memory from Francis McGavock, grandchild of Randal McGavock, about “Yankee Soldiers” coming to Riverside during the war, mentioned “Poppy Joe, an old family servant.” This information was vital, it placed Joe on the premises at the time, 1863.  So we know Joe is at Riverside, during the war. And as Joe does not show up on the 1870 Federal Census, we know the last years of his life were potentially these war years. Although the personal details are gone, we can study the metamorphosis happening around him. Those years in Franklin were thoroughly agitated by a subversive climate set to transform every aspect of southern life.

The U.S. Army was a constant presence in and around Franklin from 1862 on. January of 1863 blew in fast and hard with the Emancipation Proclamation, followed in February by the U.S. Army placing a garrison of soldiers permanently in Franklin. To house this army, construction of a fort was begun. U.S. Soldiers were a round-the-clock site about town. The transformation occurring around them wasn’t invisible. It was vibrant and loud. Everyone saw it, but the U.S. solders wrote letters home describing it. They described not only the human experiences they had but those they viewed. Slaves were leaving their places of enslavement.

The full impact of the Emancipation Proclamation and its power, was not understood by the people living through it any more than it is understood by people learning about it 160 years later. Enslaved people living in Tennessee were not freed by the proclamation. But it didn’t stop thousands of enslaved people from walking away from slavery and towards freedom. “It is astonishing to see the contrabands coming in—drove after drove. I think old Uncle Abe’s Proclamation is doing up the business finely. When first issued I felt opposed to it, thinking it impolitic; but since my return to Dixie I have quite changed my opinion. I think it is sapping the very foundations of the Rebels’ last hope.”-Dr. Henry West, 98th OH Infantry

For many Middle Tennessee enslaved, freedom was where U.S. Army was. They flocked to camps, like the one at Franklin in droves. This wasn’t running away in the middle of the night and hoping not to get caught. This was leaving. “A few days ago a black woman, with four or five children was coming up the street when a noisy she rebel ran out and hailed her, “Aunty, Aunty, who do you belong to?” The contraband, without halting looked over her shoulder and answered “I belongs to de Gov’ment.”-Dr. Henry West, 98th OH Infantry.  Imagine that moment, when that brave Black mother woke up, got her children ready for the day and stepped with them into the unknown. She had no idea what their next steps would entail, but she knew they were necessary. AND she knew those steps were her choice.

Soldier after soldier talked about the newly freed Blacks coming to Franklin:

“This is the richest country that I ever saw, and if a fair specimen of Dixie, there is no danger of starvation at present, though there can be but little planted in this vicinity this spring for several reasons. Fences and negroes, both are gone…We have 120 contrabands at work for us now, and still they come.”-W. 125th OH Infantry

“We have got about 100 negroes here now digging rifel[sic] pits and building briges[sic] and we don’t do anything at all only stand picket once a week”-Edwin Woodworth, 

“There is plenty of negroes here. They are a hard looking set of devils as you want to see. They come in by the hundreds and [we] ask them whare they are a going and they [say] to Nashville.”

“There were a few negroes at work in the fields, but most of them have “done gone and run away,” leaving their masters to get along as best they can.”

“Contrabands are very plenty here, and some rather rich things occur with reference to them. A few days ago a large sized black one was engaged in pulling timber on to the trustles [sic] at the railroad bridge and was asked if it would not have been better for him to stay with his master? He answered, “Oh no, massa.” “Why, don’t you have to work harder here than you did with him?” “Oh yes, but den I’s workin on de Union now.”

Younger Black men around Joe were leaving to join the army. They were not only enslisting they were fighting bravely for their freedom, for Joe’s freedom, for the freedom of all of their children and their childrens’ children. Abraham McGavock, also enslaved at Riverside, joined the U.S. Colored Troops and mustered into Co. G, 14th Infantry. His regiment fought valiantly at the Battle of Nashville. 

Joe saw the world tilted on its axis. He saw change and knew it was happening. To be in such a time, to experience the transformation through eyes that had only seen enslavement. God, what a moment! To know, your grandchildren will never be bought or inherited. To go from a world where humans were sold weekly, if not daily in the center of the town square to a complete halt of all public auctions. To know no human could ever legally be put on an auction block again. Joe was a slave born at the birth of our nation and he lived to see that same nation experiencing a rebirth into a country where all men are created equal.