Moses Grandy
It was that skill that led him to be made commander of several boats that traveled the canal and Pasquotank River, transporting merchandise from Elizabeth City, North Carolina, to Norfolk, Virginia.
His slave narrative and others, read in the United States and overseas, helped to bring awareness of slavery and fuel the abolitionist movement.
The second man he worked for, Jeremy Coate, beat him so severely for not hilling corn as he wanted it that the sapling broke off in his side.
Enoch Sawyer, an owner of large tracts of land in Pasquotank and Camden counties, fed him so little that Grandy ground cornhusks into flour for food.
[3] Grandy worked jobs transporting goods to Portsmouth and Norfolk, Virginia, and running boats and cutting timber for the Great Dismal Swamp Canal.
[4] Although well-skilled at managing craft on the river, he also worked for a time as field hand and a look-out for his gambling boss.
[8] He was young yet and had seen a rough go of things already, but he was old enough to know that his life should not be all brutish work and near starvation and standing on the ceremony and bad habits of white men.Over the years, Grandy studied navigation and other jobs assigned to him, so he was proficient and valuable.
[9] In the winter of 1813, James Grandy's brother-in-law and a merchant, Charles Grice, approached him to hire 21-year-old Moses out as a freightboat captain.
He became commander, ultimately Captain Moses Grandy, of up to four boats that navigated and transported goods on the Great Dismal Swamp Canal and the difficult, curvy Pasquotank River, the only navigable waterways between Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and Norfolk, Virginia, once the British closed off Chesapeake Bay in the War of 1812.
Underclothed and underfed, he had better food, shoes, and a coat once he started working for Grice and Norfolk merchant Moses Myers.
After the final payment was made and within eyesight of the courthouse, James Grandy asked for the receipts in exchange for his signature on the papers to free him.
[5] Grandy recounted the experiences he had to a white man he believed to be honorable, Edward Minner, who agreed to buy him for $650 and have him earn back the price of the sale to obtain his freedom.
To earn money for their freedom, he recounted his life story, including the emotional and physical torment, which was published and sold.
To fellow African Americans, he stated his beliefs that the whites who had harmed his family and other enslaved people would face the judgment of God in the afterlife.
[13] The family members that Grandy wanted to buy their freedom included his wife, four of his six children — one of his daughters earned the money to free herself and one of her sisters — and four grandchildren.
[16] Grandy believed abolitionists in the United States, England, and Ireland (at that time, not an independent country) were important in the fight to abolish slavery.
As he was "perfectly illiterate", he dictated his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America, to fellow abolitionist George Thompson, according to an introductory letter of the latter, and it was published in 1843.
[18] His descendant Eric Sheppard, who wrote the book Ancestor's Call,[4] estimated that Moses saved a total of $3,000 in 1844 currency, equivalent to $98,000 in 2023.
