30.09.2015
Escape From Slavery – RCB Library Archive of the Month October 2015
Church of Ireland register records escape from slavery in Africa and baptism in Ireland of George Ellis Bernard Freeman, 1855
The RCB Library in Dublin is custodian of over 1,000 collections of Church of Ireland records which have been transferred from the parishes where they were created to the library’s safe custody.
Within each collection are various categories of records, the most widely–used of which are the registers of baptism, marriage and burial. These document the lives of millions of people – when and where they were born; who their parents were; who they married; details of their spouses’ fathers and occupations; and ultimately if and when they received a Christian burial.
Occasionally in the course of their work, library staff come across more unusual pieces of information of lives lived and long forgotten, and this month’s Archive of the Month focuses on one such story – the extraordinary survival and migration of a child from ‘the interior of Africa’ who was saved from slavery and brought to Ireland after his family and ‘all his tribe had been killed in war’. The story is recorded as an annotation in the entries of baptism for the parish of Kilbrogan, county Cork, which centres on the town of Bandon.
Instead of the standard pro–forma information of who the child’s parents were and where they lived, this entry records his fortuitous escape from slavery. The record states that on 15th April 1855 the rector of the parish, Revd Charles Bernard baptised a child ‘aged about 7 years’ with the Christian names ‘George Ellis Bernard’ and presumably surname of ‘Freeman’. The entry further fleshes out his story: that he was the son of an African chieftain from the interior of Africa, whose tribe were killed in war and as a result he was ‘sold as a slave’.
Since the British slave trade had been abolished in 1807 (and slavery itself was abolished in the British Empire in 1833) we can assume that he must have been sold as a slave in the internal African trade, he was found by ‘Capt. Ed. Ellis’ – master mariner from Bandon – who, as the register entry continues to narrate, had been ‘trading up the river Gaboon and Cameroon’ in the 1850s, and ‘made [the child] free’ by bringing him to ‘this country for education and religious training’.
The use of the middle names of Ellis on the one hand and Bernard on the other may be a tribute or connection to the man who rescued the child in Africa, and the rector who baptised him in Ireland. Neither man appears to have adopted him, or at least that information is not recorded in the baptismal register, and he does appear to have received the surname Freeman.
The online presentation explores the background to this unusual entry and speculates what might have happened to George and the influences in Ireland giving him support. To date, no further information about what became of him has come to light. However, by putting the story on public record, the hope is that it may spark further interest and feedback from members of the public.
You can view the Archive of the Month at: http://ireland.anglican.org/about/128