Old Salem's New History: The Story of Happy Hill
(Our State, Down Home Living In North Carolina, February 1998)

Miss the turn into Old Salem Visitor's Center, and you may find yourself on Liberia Street, the main road through the neighborhood known as Happy Hill. Here, the population, largely African American, lives in a mix of government-subsidized apartments, rental houses and private homes. You could pass right through this neighborhood without ever knowing its rich history. But if you looked closely, you would see the curb cuts that once provided access to homes long gone, homes like the one of Fredric Schuman, a Moravian who rented a farm here in 1816.

Dating from the early 1800s, the old Schuman house was demolished some time in the mid 1930s. What is surprising about the curb cuts leading to the overgrown plot where his house stood is that the streets weren't paved when the dwelling was demolished. How, then, are there curb cuts? Well, there were sidewalks. Old photos reveal sidewalks skirting both sides of the dirt road known then, and now, as Liberia Street.

Like the curb cuts that point the way to the past, history often reveals itself in mysterious ways. That's exactly what's happening today in the neighborhood of Happy Hill, as well as across the creek in Old Salem: history is presenting a new vision of how life was lived here, and what history is revealing about a place that you may think you already know will surprise you.

The Way It Was Then
For years, the story of Old Salem has been one of how industrious Europeans settled in the rolling hills of North Carolina's Piedmont. It's a story that's been told time and again to visitors to the historic settlement, just blocks away from Winston-Salem's towering skyscrapers. Here, you see life on these streets much as it must have been in the 18th and 19th centuries. In period costumes, blacksmiths pound at glowing steel, bakers present trays of Moravian sugar cookies, pit-sawers labor to make lumber and weavers work with wool.

But amid the industrious shuffle of the hearty Salem workers, there is another story. It is the story of West Africans who were brought here and enslaved, of men and women who played an equally important role in sustaining the settlement known then as Wachovia. And it is a story of a place called Happy Hill, where, just across the creek from Salem, slaves worked on Schuman's farm and where, once they were freed, were first allowed to buy land here and build their own homes.

But this story's roots begin not in Happy Hill or Old Salem but in West Africa, where, writes a Moravian minister in 1797, "Our dear Brother Abraham, otherwise called Sambo, a Negro from the Mandingo Nation on the coast of African Guinea, was born about the year 1730." Captured by slave traders and shipped off to the New World, Sambo eventually was sold to the Moravian church at Wachovia, where he began work at the tannery. He ran away once, only to be captured, returned and punished. But in 1780, at the age of 50, he had become a Moravian, was baptized and given his new name, Abraham.

Had you been walking the streets of Salem back in the late 1700s, you would have seen slaves like Abraham working in a variety of occupations. In 1998, the history of slaves in Salem is being acknowledged. Next month, which just so happens to be Black History Month, The Gallery at Old Salem kicks off a new exhibit that runs through June, "Across The Creek From Salem: The Story of Happy Hill, 1816-1952," which details the lives of African Americans in Salem.

Since taking his post as director of African-American programs at Old Salem two years ago, Mel White has been gathering oral histories, photographs and artifacts so that the story of African Americans in Old Salem can be better interpreted. His approach has been decidedly different from bilingual scholars who have translated from German to English the detailed journals of Moravian life.

Through word of mouth and a series of public service announcements, White began to seek out people who had descendants in Old Salem and Happy Hill. "We went to the churches, distributed flyers, put public service announcements in local newspapers and started asking around," White says. "The response was great. We received 800 to 900 photographs, and they're still coming in. And we have about 18 oral history tapes." When we visited Old Salem in October, White was busily organizing the material for the February exhibit.

Archaeologists are adding another dimension to the story of slaves in Salem. They have uncovered, in the burial grounds in front of St. Philips Moravian Church, shells, pottery shards and other artifacts placed on top of graves, suggesting that African Americans mixed their native burial practices (which were likely frowned upon by the church) with Moravian, "right under the noses," White says, of church authorities. In addition, 30 tombstones of the 120 or so people who were interred here have been found. Archaeologists have also located the foundation of the log church where African Americans began worshipping in 1823, following segregation in Salem's Moravian church.

The archaeological unearthings and the oral history from descendants of those who lived in Old Salem and Happy Hill help to balance the journals written by white Moravians, says White, adding that an entirely white perspective, by virtue of its interpretation, can skew the reality of how African Americans in Salem really lived.

Take, for example, an event recorded in church journals. During the 1860s at St. Philips Church, the African American church on the south end of Old Salem, three women rose from the back pews and seated themselves up front. The congregation sang and applauded them. The bewildered white minister chastised the three for disrupting the service.

What the minister failed to understand, White says, "is that in traditional African culture these people were known as mourners. They were coming forward to acknowledge their sins not only before their maker but before the community at large," an event worthy of the congregation's praise.

Had you been a visitor here in the early 1800s, before Salem churches were segregated, you would have seen African American faces among the largely German stock at the Moravian church. You would have heard slaves speaking German, the language of the church. And you would have seen them tending livestock and crops at Schuman's farm across Salem Creek. In short, African Americans were an integral part of Moravian culture and an indispensable part of Moravian life.

A Better Life For Salem Slaves?
Although African Americans were held in bondage, some, including White, say they were treated better here than they might have been treated on large Southern plantations. The notion of more humane treatment also has currency with Jon Sensbach, assistant professor of history at the University of Southern Mississippi. As a graduate student at Duke University, Sensbach spent a year researching the history of black Moravians at Old Salem. Fluent in German, he was able to translate church records and journals.

In a booklet called, "African-Americans In Salem," Sensbach cites a variety of sources suggesting that slavery in Old Salem was far less severe here than elsewhere. "Because of our love for them we do not free them," Moravian Bishop August Spangenberg wrote in a church journal in 1760, "for they would be in a worse condition if they got free as if we kept them. Actually they are not slaves with us, and there is no difference between them and other brothers and sisters. They dress as we do, they eat what we eat, they work when we work, they rest when we rest, and they enjoy quite naturally what other brothers and sisters enjoy."

From his office in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Sensbach tells us that there were even cases of African American farm managers, tavern managers and others who held positions of authority giving orders to the white employees under their supervision. "That to me is very unusual," he says, "because we're so attuned to think of slaves on a big cotton plantation. This was nothing like that at all."

Sure, there are records of floggings, but corporeal punishment, administered to both African Americans and whites, was a part of Moravian culture. "The Moravians thought that slavery was sanctioned by god, so they weren't opposed to it, but they also thought that all people were blessed by the gospel and everybody had a chance for redemption," Sensbach says. "This gospel of spiritual freedom and spiritual equality also spilled over into the social realm and translated into a sort of social equality as well, even though legally African Americans were still held in slavery."

Sensbach has just written a new book, available in March, titled, "A Separate Canaan: The Making Of An Afro-Moravian World In North Carolina 1763-1840," (University of North Carolina Press, 300 pages, $17.95 paper)

The Way It Is Today
If you know where to look and what to look for, you can find reminders of African American life in Salem: St. Philips Moravian Church, built in 1861; weathered headstones bearing such inscriptions as "Abraham Neger, Guinea, Died 7 Apr 1796 Age 67" (interestingly, Neger's grave is only a few yards from the towering tombstone of R.J. Reynolds); and the community of Happy Hill.

Currently undergoing restoration, St. Philips Church is a sturdy brick structure at the southern boundary of Old Salem. Inside the church, archaeologists are digging underneath the floors of an addition that was built over several graves. Rows of pews face the pulpit; up front, five thick, wood chairs sit on elevated platforms facing the pews. Two potbelly stoves are on either side of the church. It was here, with the two potbelly stoves crackling on winter days, that black Moravians worshipped from 1861 to 1952.

Behind the church, White points across the creek to Happy Hill. Two elongated wooden houses sit on the northern edge, facing us. White tells me that these homes have their origins in West Africa and that they are examples of the only indigenous African architectural form that still survives in the United States.

Known as shotgun houses, the homes derive their name from a West African word that means "place of assembly." In traditional African culture, these houses were arranged in clusters, encircling a compound where tribal ceremonies were held. The doors were on the long side of the house, but as the style of architecture migrated, first to Haiti, then to New Orleans, then to the American South, the door moved to the front of the house. The homes were so easily constructed, needing only blocks to rest upon, that Sears & Roebuck once sold them through its catalogs.

In the 1870s, when the Wachovia Administration began selling small plots of land at $10 each, freed slaves came to Happy Hill to claim their stake and to build homes like the shotgun houses.

But how did the name Happy Hill come to be? There are at least two other North Carolina communities that carry the name, one in Greensboro, the other in Rocky Mount. While no one is sure how it emerged, White suspects the name was connected to freedom. "After 1865, any place you lived was a happy place to be," he says.

It all began in 1836, when Schuman, the farm owner, freed many of the slaves under his supervision, sending them to Liberia in West Africa. The church disapproved of his testiness, but three decades later, a bishop thought that Schuman should be recognized for his humanitarian deed. The bishop proposed naming the settlement "Liberia," but the name Happy Hill stuck. The main thoroughfare, however, bears the name Liberia Street.

White would like to see Happy Hill designated as an historic district. He is joined by Kathleen Bitting Mock, who has lived in Happy Hill for all of her 73 years. As a girl, she often walked across Salem Creek to St. Philips. She recalls happy times, a time when nearly every home had its own garden, a time when there was a real sense of community here. She remembers her father's pride in Happy Hill and how he went around with chalk, marking numbers on the houses so that mail could be delivered instead of residents having to walk to the post office in Salem.

She remembers the baseball games, boxing matches, sugar cookies and the warmth of the old potbelly stoves at St. Philips. Looking out the window of her home on Humphrey Street, she remembers what life here meant to African Americans. Beginning next month, Old Salem will remember too.