Bess Ebo of Good Hope

The 1817 slave register for John Tharp's Good Hope estate includes three children with a mother who is designated as Bess E or Bess Ebo, indicating that she was from the Igbo people of Nigeria. They are: Balinda (b. 1797), Berwick (b. 1809) and Castile (b. 1812). Another two children on the estate were listed with a mother called Bess: Day (m) (b. 1800) and Ophelia (b. 1802).

There were two adult woman called Bess on the estate, and they were both born in Africa: Bess (1751-18th of January 1820) and Bess (b. 1770). The older Bess would have been 61 when Castile was born and therefore cannot have been the woman designated as Bess Ebo. It must therefore have been Bess (b. 1770) who was the mother of Balinda, Berwick and Castile.

The older Bess could theoretically have given birth to Day at the age of 49 and Ophelia at 51, but it's also possible that Bess (b. 1770) was the mother of all five.


Going down a generation, the register also lists a one-year-old girl described as Mulatto, called Margaret Walker. Her mother was named as Belinda. The 1820 return of 'increases' and 'decreases', the only one that provides dates, records the short life of James Walker, who was born on the 25th of June 1819 and died on the 6th of July. Like Margaret, he was described as Mulatto, and it seems likely that their white father's last name was Walker.

The 1826 return, covering the period 1823-1826, records the death of an eighteenth-month-old girl called Francis [sic], and also includes a living eighteen-month-old called Bessy. Both were described as Negro, and their mother was named as Belinda.

There were two other women named Balinda in the 1817 register, and it's possible, but unlikely, that the younger of the two was the mother of Margaret and James Walker. See 'Three women called Belinda or Balinda on Good Hope' for a discussion of the evidence.

The mother of January (b. 14th of November 1818) was named as Ophelia in the 1820 return.


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