Matilda McCrear
Matilda McCrear (c. 1857 – January 1940) was a Yoruban-American woman who was the last known living survivor in the United States of the transatlantic slave trade and the ship Clotilda. She was captured and brought to Mobile, Alabama at the age of two with her mother and older sister.[1][2]
Matilda McCrear | |
|---|---|
| Born | c. 1857 Nigeria |
| Died | January 1940 (age 83) |
| Other names | Matilda Creagh |
| Occupation | Farmer (1865–) |
The girls were sold away from their mother and never reunited. Together with other American slaves in Union-occupied territory in the South, Matilda was granted freedom and American citizenship by the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. She and her family did not achieve freedom until after the de facto abolition of slavery in 1865. She continued to be a sharecropper as an adult, and had a family of fourteen children with a white common-law husband. She died in Selma, Alabama.
Life
According to research by Hannah Durkin of Newcastle University, published in 2020, McCrear was captured as a young child in West Africa with her mother and sister, and brought illegally to the United States as a young child on the Clotilda, the last known slave ship to have carried captives from Africa to the United States. She was a member of the Yoruba people.[3] She received traditional facial scars, which were visible for the rest of her life. When she was two years old, she and her mother Gracie and sister Sallie (as they were named in the US), were captured and bought by a planter, Memorable Creagh. They were among more than 100 Africans transported in 1860 on the Clotilda.[4] She had two other sisters whose names are not known, and a stepfather Guy. The girls were later sold apart from their mother and never reunited.[2]
After the abolition of slavery in 1865, McCrear (who first took the surname of Creagh) continued to work as a sharecropper in Alabama with her mother and sister.[5] She never married but, according to her grandson, had 14 children with a white German-born man. She changed her name from Creagh to McCrear.[6]
In her seventies, she made a legal claim for compensation for her enslavement, which was dismissed.[7] According to Durkin, she appears to have continued to have worn her hair in a traditional Yoruba style all her life. She died in Selma, Alabama, aged 83.[1]
Prior to the publication of Durkin's research in 2020, McCrear's contemporary Redoshi (c. 1848 – 1937) was thought to be the last living survivor of the Clotilda and transatlantic slave trade.[8]
References
- Coughlan, Sean (2020-03-25). "Last survivor of transatlantic slave trade discovered". BBC News. Retrieved 2020-03-25.
- Durkin, Hannah (2020-03-19). "Uncovering The Hidden Lives of Last Clotilda Survivor Matilda McCrear and Her Family". Slavery & Abolition. 41 (3): 431–457. doi:10.1080/0144039X.2020.1741833. ISSN 0144-039X. S2CID 216497607.
- Katz, Brigit. "Researcher Identifies the Last Known Survivor of the Transatlantic Slave Trade". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
- "The last slave ship survivor and her descendants identified". History. 2020-03-27. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
- Gifford, Storm. "Final survivor of transatlantic slave trade revealed to have died 80 years ago". nydailynews.com. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
- "Matilda McCrear – the hidden story of the last transatlantic slave trade survivor". HeritageDaily - Archaeology News. 2020-03-25. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
- "Survivor of Transatlantic Slave Trade Identified - Archaeology Magazine". www.archaeology.org. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
- Guy, Jack. "Last known survivor of transatlantic slave trade identified". CNN. Retrieved 2020-03-29.