· In Honor of Black History Month we honor the amazing life of Pastor Jacob Stroyer, wounded in combat as a laborer during the federal bombardment of Fort Sumter. Jacob Stroyer and nine others from his home plantation were gathered "from their masters to carry off to work on fortifications and to wait on officers" in 1863. Stroyer was 13 years old, and spent over a year working at Fort Moultrie, the surrounding batteries; and Fort Sumter.
His personal memoir, My Life in the South, was published in 1879 and offers one of the only written accounts of enslaved, laborers at Confederate fortifications in Charleston. Stroyer had some education, could read and write, and worked as a tradesman or “hostler”, or horse or mule tender and trainer.
Clergyman, and author. Jacob Stroyer was born and raised a slave in antebellum South Carolina. After emancipation, he authored an engrossing autobiographical narrative, My Life in the South, first published in 1879. Subsequently revised and expanded, the book is a collection of incidents that provides an intimate view of Stroyer’s life as a slave. The slaves’ struggle for survival, the constant task of having to shift loyalties are frankly shared by Stroyer in his narrative, as are the ethics, morality, and religious adherence of slave life.
By Stroyer’s own account, he was born in 1846 (later editions of his autobiography state 1849) on the Singleton family’s extensive Kensington Plantation, near Columbia, South Carolina. His mother and her parents were owned by the Singleton family, as was his father, who was transported from Sierra Leone as a young boy. Stroyer’s father was married twice in “mutual agreement” which resulted in fifteen children. Jacob was the third son from his father’s second marriage.
Like his father, Stroyer labored as a hostler (a keeper of horses and mules) on the Singleton plantation. Colonel M. R. Singleton kept race horses, including the notable prizewinners Capt. Miner and Inspector, which Stroyer, after becoming a legitimate certified rider, rode in many horse races. Unfortunately, the death of Colonel Singleton put an end to Stroyer’s care and racing of the family’s sporting horses, the horses were sold and all of the men and boys who had been hostlers and riders had to labor in the cotton fields to help make the plantation profitable. Stroyer was small and seemingly not suitable for fieldwork and he remarked: "In the summer of 1863 with thousands of other negroes...was sent to Sullivan's Island to repair forts... While the men were engaged in such work, the boys of my age... waited on officers and carried water for the men at work, we fared better on these fortifications than we had at home on the plantations."
In July 1864, Stroyer suffered a wound to his head at Fort Sumter when a U.S. mortar shell came down on his shelter. He was Transported to a hospital for treatment, he never returned to the fort, or service to the confederacy, instead, he returned to the family plantation in Columbia, which was later destroyed by U.S. General Sherman’s troops leaving Stroyer completely homeless.
After the war, Stroyer went to school in Columbia and then Charleston, South Carolina. He eventually moved north to Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1870. After attending evening schools, Stroyer went to Worcester Academy, where he studied for two years. During this time he was licensed as a pastor of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and he later was ordained as a deacon at Newport, Rhode Island. Soon thereafter Stroyer was sent to Salem, Massachusetts, where he remained to “preach the gospel.”
During this period Stroyer became a much-sought-after speaker regarding his life as a slave, and he was encouraged to write and publish these accounts. He did so with the idea and purpose to raise means that would enable him to add to his education and devote his services and attainments to the good of his race.
Sources: Stroyer, Jacob. My Life in the South, Part I. Salem, Mass.: Salem Press, 1879. Jacob Stroyer, 1849-1908. My Life in the South.
