Title: Nine at Natchez: The Remarkable True Story of Nine Former Slaves From One Family Who Became Civil War Soldiers
Author: Deborah Fountain
Genre(s): Nonfiction, History
Release Date: Forthcoming
Publisher’s Description
The year is 1804. On one of the thousands of ships that departed from West Africa en route to America, during one of the countless voyages of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, an African woman gives birth to a baby girl. The child would grow up and come to be known as Mary.
While little is known today about Mary’s mother, what is known is that like so many other Africans brought to America, Mary, born on the ocean, came to live and work on a plantation in Mississippi.
By the mid-19th century, Mary, her descendants, and extended family resided in captivity on family-owned cotton plantations that were an integral part of the fabric of a complex “neighborhood” community and socio-economic structure that spanned the Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson counties of Mississippi.
When the Civil War made its way to the Natchez district, reverberating throughout the surrounding counties, Mary’s neighborhood, nine of Mary’s closest family members left their plantations to enlist in the Union Army. They traveled west, passing through their neighborhood, one plantation after another. Then, still in the Confederate state of Mississippi, the nine men arrived at Natchez, a port city along the Mississippi River, a city that was home to the Forks of the Road Slave Market, active just decades before as the second largest slave marketplace in the United States.
There at Fort McPherson in Natchez, risking great peril to themselves and their families, the Nine enlisted for service in the the United States Union army as United States Colored Troops (USCT) soldiers and served in the Civil War, the most profound fight for the very heart and soul of America the nation has ever known. Through a fascinating journey of groundbreaking research, Nine at Natchez chronicles their story.
Deborah Fountain, researcher and Rich Soil Press author of Nine at Natchez: The Remarkable True Story of Nine Former Slaves from One Family Who Became Civil War Soldiers featured in the Veterans Day edition of The Natchez Democrat, Saturday, November 11, 2017. Download