Warning: this blog post includes images of eighteenth century documents which sometimes use words that we find offensive today.

Parish registers are the most frequently used documents in most county archives. Anyone who has done their family history and attempts to extend their tree beyond 1837* will dip into parish registers. If you have been lucky enough to trace your ancestors back before the nineteenth century, you will know that the information in the baptism, marriage and burial entries thins out the further back you go.** But, every so often, the parish priest added something extra to the record which can shine a little extra light on the lives of his parishioners.  

Some vicars noted down when the people that they were baptising, marrying or burying were of African descent. A lot of research has been done on the Black Presence in London and other cities, such as Bristol, but little has been done on Northumberland. It would be easy to assume that Northumberland (with its current borders) would not have had any Black presence in the past. It is a vast, mainly rural county with no major city as an economic draw; even today, it is one of the least ethnically diverse parts of the country. But Northumberland’s parish registers tell a different story. 

Without having done any sort of systematic trawl of the registers,*** we know of nine entries that document people of colour in Northumberland in the eighteenth century. The earliest is the baptism entry of George Sylla on 4 March 1767 in Carham. The parish priest noted that George was African and the servant of Ralph Foster, a merchant of Berwick.  

Three of the other entries record that the man being baptised worked as a servant. Blackett Shaftoe (1 February 1778 in Ovingham) was the servant of William Shaftoe of Kingston, Jamaica. Later that year (17 April), Charles Reed son of Francis Reed of Virginia and servant to Captain Charles Ogle was baptised in Eglingham. A decade later (12 October 1788) William Mungo, “a black adult from the coast of Guinea in Africa” was baptised at Woodhorn. The register shows that he worked as a servant for S. Watson. 

None of the entries mention that these men had been enslaved, but it would seem likely. Virginia and Jamaica were both plantation economies that relied on enslaved labour to cultivate luxury crops such as tobacco, sugar and coffee for expanding eighteenth-century markets. During this period, ships sailed from London, Bristol and Liverpool laden with finished goods which they exchanged for people on the Guinea Coast of west Africa. The enslaved people were shipped across the Atlantic on the infamous “Middle Passage” to the West Indies and America. Blackett Shaftoe and Charles Reed might have been born in Jamaica and Virginia to Africans, but William Mungo seems to have been born in Africa – on the Guinea Coast. 

It is possible that the men that George, Blackett, Charles and William served had purchased them and brought them to Northumberland. Men who lived worked or fought (Captain Ogle?) in British colonies often returned to England and brought their favourite slaves to serve them. Having a Black servant was even seen as a fashion accessory in eighteenth-century England.  

Once the enslaved men (they were mostly men, as can be seen from our very small and unscientific sample) set foot in England, their enslaved status was unclear, especially once they had been baptised. Many felt that slavery was not English and that it was not possible to enslave a Christian.  

The Yorke-Talbot opinion was an attempt to clarify these questions – a handwritten copy can be found in our collection (ZMD/114/261). It stated that  baptism did not free an enslaved person and that bringing a slave to England did not change their status. However, this was an opinion that was sought for and given to a group of West Indian plantation owners after they had wined and dined Yorke and Talbot at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London. 

It seems likely that the belief that an enslaved person could be freed by baptism persisted, in spite of Yorke and Talbot’s “opinion”. So, the baptism of these men represented something more than acceptance into the Church of England; some believed that this act emancipated them. 

Not all the men that appear in the parish registers are described as servants. Peter and Samuel Blyth were baptised on the same day, 21 January 1798, in Earsdon parish. The baptism register records that they are of “riper years” indicating that they are not infants, as would usually be the case for baptism. It is unclear if these two men were related, although they both share the same surname. The fact that their surname is the same as a village (now town) within the parish might suggest that Peter and Samuel adopted a new name according to their new surroundings. It might even have been that they were runaways and were adopting a new name to hide from their former owners. Georgian newspapers often contained small ads for runaway slaves, generally offering rewards. (University of Glasgow project website: https://www.runaways.gla.ac.uk/)  

Unusually, Malcolm Patterson does not appear in a baptism register, but in the burial register for Earsdon, the same parish as Peter and Samuel Blyth. His wife, Mary, was buried on 8 May 1780. It is noted that Malcolm was a labourer at Hartley Pans (now Seaton Sluice). It is almost impossible to trace Malcolm’s background – he might have been a freed slave, a runaway, or a free African, some of whom worked as sailors and may well have sailed into Newcastle (or North/South Shields). What does seem very likely is that he was attracted to the area by the economic opportunity that it offered. This might also explain why three men of African descent can be found in the registers for this area.  

During the eighteenth century Blyth and Seaton Sluice developed as an economic centre in the county, due in large part to the investment and business acumen of the Delaval family. The production of salt was of long standing, but coal mining and shipping, glass production and shipbuilding all prospered in the 1700s.  

As has been pointed out by David Olusoga, escaped slaves or men of African descent who rejected domestic service were likely to have found it difficult to make a living in eighteenth-century Britain. Most trades relied on the apprenticeship system and were therefore effectively a closed shop. New industries might have offered men like Malcolm, Peter and Samuel good opportunities with their mix of skilled and unskilled labour, coupled with new systems of employment. 

The remaining two entries that have been found in the parish registers are baptisms; two that occurred on the same day (9 November 1784). John English and Robert Mouto were from Madras (now Chennai) in India, according to their baptism entry in the Bamburgh parish register. Both are defined as “a black or Mulatto boy” and their parents are said to be “unknown”. 

It is possible to speculate that John and Robert were orphans with some link to the British East India Company (BEIC), which had ruled Chennai since 1774. It may have been that they were brought over as servants by a BEIC functionary or a soldier, like the men of African descent who have been discussed above. Or perhaps they managed to work their passage aboard a ship. 

The term “Mulatto” that the vicar of Bamburgh applied to these two boys was used in the eighteenth century to mean a person who has one white and one black parent. It is possible that these two boys had an English parent who then brought them back to Northumberland with them (although they have two different surnames). It seems more likely that the vicar made the assumption that their brown, rather than black, skin was the result of a mixed-race union. He fitted them into a category that he was familiar with, rather than one that necessarily described John and Robert’s background accurately. 

We know a little about these nine men who came from Africa, America, India and the West Indies because they were recorded by vicars and uncovered by researchers. There may well have been other men and women of African or Indian descent living in Northumberland who are not obvious to us because they were not recorded in the registers. We hope that there are more to find. By digging deeper and looking more closely we can write a more rounded history of Northumberland, its people and its links to the wider world. 

*Civil registration introduced for births, marriages and deaths. 

**Printed registers for baptism and burial in 1812 and for marriages in 1754 meant that information became more uniform across the county. See https://northumberlandarchives.com/docs/ANGLICAN%20PARISH%20REGISTERS%20-%20reviewed%20November%202017.pdf for more… 

*** We are looking into the possibility of doing this. 

Sources 

J. Ken Brown, Out of the Ordinary: A Cornucopia of Unusual Northumberland Parish Register Entries, Tyne and Wear, 1999  

Peter Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain, London, 2018 edition (original 1984) 

David Olusoga, Black and British, London, 2016 

Northumberland Archives website, page for Blyth Communities exhibition: https://communities.northumberland.gov.uk/Blyth.htm 

Northumberland Archives, page for Seaton Sluice Communities exhibition: https://communities.northumberland.gov.uk/Seaton%20Sluice.htm 

Pre-dating the parochial ‘harvest festival,’ or the village wide ‘harvest home’, the traditional customs of harvest were celebrated by the landowners and their workforce, the people who were directly connected  with the reaping of the fields .The origins of these earlier festivals are lost in time, but according to Ronald Hutton, “There is very little trace of harvest customs surviving from the century 1450-1550, but some recorded in that immediately following almost certainly obtained earlier. They include the crowning of girls as harvest queens by sets of reapers, the bringing home of the last load of corn covered in garlands, with loud acclamations, and the weaving of images from grain stalks.” ⁹ 

The cutting of the last bundle of corn was often regarded with much ceremony in the County of Northumberland, though the custom was open to interpretation. Up to the mid nineteenth century in the northern part of the county, and parts of Berwickshire a competition among the reapers to cut the last bunch was held. The reapers gathering round the sheaf and threw their sickles at it in turn ⁶, “the winner of the competition was said to have “Got the Kern””. ⁷ “The word Kern or Kirn being a corruption of the word Corn”. ¹ 

In some areas, the winner of this competition then decides who can dress the kern, which is made up to look like a baby or a doll. “A curious image was produced – an image dressed in a white frock with coloured ribbons and crowned with corn ears – stuck on a pole and held aloft by the strongest man of the party while the rest circled round it.” ⁸ 

“The Kern was then raised up and the cry “I have her, I have her, I have her!” The other shout “What have you? What have you? What have you?”  They answer, “A mare! A mare! A mare!” “Whose is she?” the reply being the owner, whose corn is all cut. “Wither will you send her?” the reply being to a neighbour whose corn is all still standing, and then they shout three times and return in triumph, thrusting the Kern Baby into the faces of any one they meet, and demanding a tribute before they will allow them to pass. In some valleys before leaving the field the reapers raise the Kern, singing: 

“Blessed be the day our Saviour was born, 

For master—–’s corn’s all shorn. 

And we will have a good supper to-night, 

And drinking of ale with a Kern, a Kern, a Kern!” 

In others the variation of the rhyme runs: 

“The master’s crop is ripe and shorn, 

We bless the day that he was born, 

Shouting a Kern, a Kern, a Kern!” ⁶  

When all was done the kern baby was taken from it in which it was placed and carried to the farmhouse when loud cries of “kerney, kerney, hoo.” ⁶ 

After all the fields have been cut, it is common in for a supper to be provided by the landowner to all the harvesters and the servants of the family, this is known by different names in the north, sometimes called a Mell Supper, Churn supper or Kirn Supper. At this the servant and his master are alike and everything is done with an equal freedom. They sit at the same table converse freely together and spend the remaining part of the night in dancing, singing” ² “intermixed with rustic masquerading and playing uncommon tricks in disguise. Sometimes a person, attired in the hide of an ox, [im]personates the devil.” ³ 

Such a supper was reported in the Morpeth Herald in 1857 at Kirkley: 

“On the 14th inst., the Reverend E. C. Ogle of Kirkley, gave a grand treat to his workmen and their wives and families who are employed on his estate, on completion of the harvest operations. The joyous proceedings came off at Thorneyford Farm, where an excellent supper was provided. Mrs. Ogle and the Misses Ogle were present and took much interest in attending to the comforts of the company. After a supper, a ball was held in a spacious room which was tastefully decorated for the interesting occasion, with flowers and evergreens. At one end of the room was place the “Kirn Bawbee” between two sheaves of wheat, representing peace and plenty, and bearing the emblems of contentment in the right hand and the merry emblems of love and mirth in a wreath formed the head dress; and an evidence that these happy emblems were fully borne out by the company present, was visible in their beaming countenances, with great glee and animation till a late hour and before dispersing to their homes gave three hearty cheers for their generous master and his family” ⁴ 

The fate of the kirn- doll was then taken to the farmhouse and hung up there till the next harvest, when its place was taken by the new kirn-dolly⁶ There is no indication in any of the sources as to the fate of the earlier doll, it may be that the doll was discarded, re-ploughed into the soil, or even kept. 

Slowly over the years the parochial tradition of harvest increased, and the old traditions suffered. In little more than thirty years everything had changed. In an editorial in the Morpeth Herald in 1882, the full extent is shown. 

“We are now in the midst of harvest festivals which are being everywhere held in our local district. The wonder, the gratitude, the piety felt towards the Great Author of Nature, when it is brought before us that once more, as it has ever been, the ripening of a few varieties of grass has furnished food for the earth’s teeming millions, insure that there should everywhere be some sort of feast of ingathering or festival. The former method of conducting the harvest feast is fast disappearing, and the old-fashioned ‘kirn’ is being displayed by the more modern parochial festival in which the whole parish generally takes part. One cannot but regret the dissuade of that ancient harvest-supper in which our forefathers reveled. The hospitality of that old-fashioned gathering and other similar agricultural feasts, was a bond of union between the farmer and his work people, of inestimable value. The modern harvest festival, as a parochial thanksgiving for the bounties of Providence, is an excellent institution, in addition to the old harvest-feast, but it cannot be considered as a substitute for it” ¹⁰ 

By 1895 the only village keeping the vestiges of the kern baby was Whalton. The Vicar, Canon Walker, who was interested in tradition, included the kern doll as part of the parish harvest festival, a tradition which continued into the first decade of the twentieth century. In 1901, Sir Benjamin Stone MP visited Whalton to take photographs of that year’s sculpture. One of the resulting photographs is shown here.  

This image was also included in Stone’s book on Festivals and Customs, printed in 1906. Alongside the photograph he writes. 

“Though the Kern baby, as the figure was generally called, is seldom seen nowadays even in Northumberland, it is still made at Whalton. The villagers’ effigy, which is about 2 ft in height, is taken to church, and is afterwards the presiding genius at the harvest festivities”.⁷ 

Two years after the death of Canon Walker, the Morpeth Herald printed a piece on the harvest festival in Whalton and how times were changing. 

“The Harvest Festival at Whalton has always a distinctive feature of its own. In early times the church needed no decoration; and none was thought of for the parish had its kirn babby which was decoration sufficient, as it stood on its accustomed place, a silent witness that harvest was ended. In time, as at other places, the parish church of Whalton came to be decorated otherwise, and always with the best of taste; but under Canon Walker, the kirn babby was the important feature.” ⁹ 

[1] Antiquities of the Common People – Mr. Bourne 1725 

[2] Observations on Popular Antiquities – John Brand, 1777 

[3] A Historical, Topographical and Descriptive View of the County of Northumberland, E. Mackenzie, 1825. 

[4] Harvest Home – Morpeth Herald, October 31st, 1857 

[5] Murray’s Northumberland, a handbook to Durham and Northumberland part II, 1873. 

[6] The Golden Bough – J. G. Frazer, 1890. 

[7] Sir Benjamin Stone’s pictures -Festivals and Customs, 1906. 

[8] Canon Walker’s – Morpeth Herald and Reporter 27 September 1912. 

[9] The Rise and Fall of Merry England – Ronald Hutton 1994 

[10] Our Own Column – Morpeth Herald, October 21, 1882