A Fascinating Life

The topic of my microhistory is an enslaved American named Boston King. Boston's father was born in Africa, survived the middle passage, and had a family in South Carolina. King ran away from his "master" during the American Revolution and joined the British. He was a part of group of former slaves who took refuge in New York following the war. They were later relocated to Nova Scotia by the British where he became a Methodist preacher. He later moved with his family to Sierra Leone, returning to his father's Africa to bring Christianity to the people.

King wrote a memoir, which was published in 1789. I have found his memoir in an anthology called Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World of the Eighteenth Century, as well as an annotated version published by the Antislavery Literature Project at Arizona State University. I have an article called "Arming the Slaves in the American Revolution" and an article called "Our Mad Methodists: Abolitionism, Methodism and Missions in Sierra Leone in the Late Eighteenth Century." To research his life in Nova Scotia I hope to pull information from The Black Loyalist Heritage Foundation website in Nova Scotia.

I first came across Boston King in a book by Simon Schama called Rough Crossings: The Slaves, the British, and the American Revolution. This book has a much larger scale than just the life of King, but it provides information about the British use of American slaves and the frustration they felt when they weren't able to emancipate all the slaves who helped them. (The new American government considered the return of the slaves a necessary war reparation.)

This topic is similar to The Diligent because of its subject matter and because it was written by a first-person participant in the events. King's story is not a diary like A Midwife's Tale, nor is it a journal like Robert Durand's log on the Diligent. King's story is a reflection of his life written in his old age. He is weak on dates, and runs through his life events rather manner-of-fact-ly. My other sources should help me fill out the story. I think I shall have to use the would "perhaps" to make him more personable. He speaks most passionately when he tells of his religious conversion. It was the most important event in his life, but his life follows a journey through some incredible history! I want to follow King's life through those events. I don't want to use him as a connecting thread through some greater story. I want to tell the fascinating story of one man's exceptional life.

I worry about telling a narrative, based on a memoir, that is not redundant or boring. I would like his story to flow and only interrupt it to provide context. I'd like to just footnote my sources other than his memoir but I'm not sure if that is okay. Otherwise everything would just be one big footnote? That's the confusing part for me.