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Pettway Plantation…Dinah’s American Destination
Who Is Dinah?
My grandmother’s story is absolutely incredible. Actually, she’s my second great grandmother. Dinah Miller, was my grandmother’s grandmother. How amazing is that?! I can’t even begin to imagine how afraid and overwhelmed she must have been to be captured and sold from her homeland in Africa. Then to make the harrowing voyage from the west coast of Africa, across the Atlantic, to America, specifically Mobile Bay.
I feel the weight of having loss both my parents and I was well into my adulthood. So trying to imagine what was going through her mind during that awful process is overwhelming. And I’m just imagining it.
As Told By Arlonzia.
Connection to the Clotilda
Arlonzia is my grandmother’s niece. and Dinah’s great-granddaughter. Arlonzia’s account of my grandmother, Dinah’s, story is recorded in The Quilts of Gee’s Bend (Atlanta Tinwood Books, 2002), pp. 92-93.
The details of Grandma Dinah’s story coincide with the Clotilda, a schooner that was used to bring Africans to the shores of Alabama to enslave them, even though voyages to capture human beings to enslave them were illegal.
Grandma Dinah was kidnapped at the age of thirteen, along with her mother, father, and brother and became one of the 110 members of the Clotilda “cargo.” It’s really painful to refer to someone who is a part of you, someone who is adored and love as cargo.
Grandma Dinah and her family were among the eighty or so enslaved Africans who were sold north to Selma and Wilcox County.
Her Clotilda Experience
“We used to sit and listen to her telling us about it. She told of back in Africa, how they couldn’t get the Africans on the ship. For two weeks she said they kept them penned up, and they wouldn’t go near the ship. They decked the ship up with red lights and red bow ribbons ’cause they understood that the Africans loved the color red so much, and then the Africans got on there.” (Atlanta Tinwood Books, pp. 92-93)
Dinah’s Arrival in America
“This white man bought her, and she said she cost a dime. He paid a dime for her, and he carried her a different direction from her mama and her brothers. She don’t know which way they went. She followed the man what brought her with ten cents. I was real small when she told me the story, but it startled me so I kept it. She say the first field she worked it was a place down there they called Mobile Bay. ” (Atlanta Tinwood Books, pp. 92-93).
The Arrival of Sally.
The Landing
“When they landed on this side, there was seven white men waiting. One white man bought twenty-five of them, including her, but not one of the rest of her family. She was separated from all of them right there and never seen them again. The man that bought her and those other ones took them down to Mobile Bay to farm the land by the bay. They gave her the name Dinah. There weren’t no Millers up around here, she say she came from Africa with that name.” (Atlanta Tinwood Books, pp. 92-93)
Snow Hill
“…She worked down there, and another man bought them and took them to Snow Hill. Four big healthy mens, two Indians and two whites was sent to Snow Hill to work with the slaves and get the womens pregnant. So that’s when she got pregnant with Sally, my grandmama. She had to live with those four mens, and once the woman got pregmant, they moved them out and brought more womens in. They wanted big strong babies. ” (Atlanta Tinwood Books, pp. 92-93)
“Dinah still worked the fields after Sally was born. They get somebody to nurse thebabies so the field slaves could still work. Mama Sally — that’s what I called by grandmama – she got to be a big enough girl and she started working in the fields with her mama. ” (Atlanta Tinwood Books, pp. 92-93)