Our last post was about the year John and Mary Musgrove were separated (link here). John spent most of 1734 in England, translating for Oglethorpe and a delegation of Indians led by Tomichichi.
Meanwhile, Mary...
...wrote to Oglethorpe in mid-July with regards to various local issues..., but she also inquired of Musgrove's health. and asked that "...your Honor will take great Care of him, he being in a strange place and not able to take care of himself and to send him home as soon as possible."
While these comments may seem quite ordinary, the couple,
...previously acted as a team, but now Mary had to fill the gap that her husband had left. Most historians assume she did so willingly, but maybe not. ...She did a good job of handling this situation without her husband, but she may have been more reluctant to act alone than scholars have initially believed.
Julie A Sweet: Journal of the Native South, Vol. 2 2009
This post is the story of the Musgroves before they became a team.
Mary's Father
Sometime after Oglethorpe left the Georgia colony he had founded, Mary claimed to the Georgia assembly,
Your memorialist was born at the Cowetaw Town on the Oakmulgee River, which is a branch of the Altamaha and the Chief Town of the Creek Indian Nation. Mary Bosomworth, 1747
Most historians date her birth to around 1700. Mary's father, Edward Griffin, "... probably came to South Carolina in the 1690s, as indicated by the arrivals of several other men by that surname, possibly relatives, before 1700." Hahn, Steven C. The Life and Times of Mary Musgrove - (pp. 14-15).
Her father worked for Thomas Broughton, the son-in-law of the governor of South Carolina.
In contrast to many traders, who were infamous for their drunkenness, violence toward the Indians, and scurrilous business practices, not once was Edward Griffin charged with any of the infractions for which so many other traders stood accused before the colony's board of Indian Commissioners. As the Creek Indians never once complained about him, we might imagine that his Creek acquaintances thought well of him, well enough, that is, to accept him as an in-law.
He was a family man.
Griffin established a relatively durable relationship with his Indian wife. Griffin's Coweta wife bore him at least two children, a boy who went by the name Edward Griffin, and the daughter, who became Mary Musgrove.- (p. 17).
Mary's Mother
…your Memorialist about the Age of 7 years, was brought Down by her Father from the Indian Nation, to Ponponne in South Carolina; There baptized, Educated and bred up in the Principles of Christianity…. Mary Bosomworth, 1747
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| Pon Pon Chapel of Ease SC |
Her mother probably died around 1707.
Given that most of the Indian traders’ offspring lived out their lives in Indian communities, something extraordinary must have happened to enable Edward Griffin to remove his daughter from Coweta. Several explanations are possible, though only one seems probable: that Mary's mother had died. (p. 36)
Yamasee War of 1715
...She was in South Carolina when the Indian War broke out in the year 1715. - Mary Bosomworth, 1747
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| Yamasee War of 1715 |
Holy Week 1715 was a time of rising anxiety in South Carolina. Swirling rumors of an Indian uprising had set the colony's leadership on edge. The rumors proved all too prophetic when on Good Friday the Yamasee and Creek Indians began killing Indian agents and traders at the Yamasee town of Pocatalico and later directed their wrath at the English settlements.That 'wrath' would result in Mary's next loss.
South Carolina's residents had been entertaining rumors of an Indian uprising for about a week, but many dismissed them as being “ill-founded.”
Governing officials didn't take those rumors seriously until two traders, Sam Warner and William Bray, arrived in the colony to warn them that the Indians would take up arms unless the governor addressed certain grievances.
In the hopes of heading off a potential attack, Governor Charles Craven sent Bray and Warner to the Yamasee town of Pocatalico, where Yamasee and Creek Indian leaders had been gathering to discuss their plans.
Indian agents John Wright and Thomas Nairne also arrived, and all parties sat down together the night of April 14 to exchange diplomatic gestures. The English delegation expressed to the Indians the governor's condolences, as well as guarantees of “satisfaction” for any wrongs that had been done to them.
The Indians, appearing “satisfied” with the offer, “shook hands in a token of friendship,” and shared drinks as men do. Thinking all was “as usual,” Nairne and the rest of the English delegation retired for the evening and fell asleep not knowing that it would be their last day on earth.
The killing began in the predawn hours of April 15, Good Friday, as painted warriors “resembling devils come out of hell” sounded the bloodcurdling war whoop and began firing their guns “without distinction” on their white visitors.
The lucky ones died quickly in the first barrage of gunfire; others succumbed slowly to torture, as was the case for the agent Thomas Nairne, who perished in a slow-burning pyre that prolonged his agony for “several days.” (p. 50).The Story
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| William Bartram |
Writing sixty years later, the naturalist William Bartram recounted a story told to him by a veteran Creek trader explaining how almost all the traders were massacred in Apalachicola, where they had fled for protection. Bartram wrote that they had gone there hoping to find asylum and met together in a house “under the avowed protection of the chiefs of the town.”
While the chiefs assembled in council to determine their fate, “Indians in multitudes surrounded the house and set fire to it; they all to the number of 18 or 20 perished with the house in the flames.” Griffin, then, may have died in this manner, after spending several weeks in fear for his life. Never again did his name surface in the historical record, making it almost certain that Mary never heard from him again. (p. 54).John's Father
Whereas Mary's father was poor and rather obscure, John's father, Captain John Musgrove, was a somewhat prominent figure in turn-of-the-century South Carolina. Captain Musgrove was English or possibly Barbadian by birth and probably came to the colony in the 1690s,...
That John Sr. prospered in the Indian trade indicates as well that he was a shrewd businessman, perhaps verging on the unethical. Musgrove was, in fact, among the most chastised Indian traders of his generation and was known to enslave free Indians to cover his debts and to use strong-arm tactics to compel his Indian clients to go to war.
...it is reasonable to suspect that Captain Musgrove's rise in South Carolina society served as a model for young John, who might have anticipated capitalizing on his father's name and wealth and who likewise saw nothing wrong with enslaving human beings of various hues.John's Mother
It appears John Musgrove also lost his mother while he was young. The circumstances were entirely different for him.
As the story goes, in December 1706 the Commons House of Assembly accused John Musgrove of seven different improprieties, one of which involved a man known as the “Tuckesaw Indian King.” According to one story, Musgrove “threatened the lives of the Tuckesaw King and another [Indian],” demanding four Indian slaves.
Musgrove wanted the slaves as compensation for his Indian wife, who the Tuckesaw King (his wife's uncle, perhaps) had taken away. The Tuckesaw King, however, saw things differently, complaining that Musgrove and another trader “had turn'd away their said wives on purpose.”
In the end, Musgrove and the Tuckesaw King reached a compromise by which Musgrove received in lieu of his estranged wife three Indian slaves, all of whom had been designated “free.” (pp. 57-8)
John's Family
If John Musgrove, Jr. thought he would cash in on his father's success, he was soon to be relieved of that notion.
After dispensing with his Indian wife, Captain Musgrove married a white woman named Margaret, who gave birth to a son around 1712. Improbably, Margaret and John named the infant “John,” as if they intended him to replace his older, half-Indian brother. Tellingly, while his will no longer exists, when John Sr. died in 1719 it is clear that the English John Musgrove became the primary beneficiary of his father's estate...
Indian John's course in life was different from that of his English half-brother, as his mixed ancestry and illegitimate origins made him an outsider. That at least some white South Carolinians considered him so is evident in the impersonal manner by which they referred to him.
Not only does one of the earliest documentary references to John add the derisive qualifier “half breed or mustee,” but his contemporaries also omitted his first name, referring to him simply as “Musgrove” or “Young Musgrove.”John and Mary's Marriage
History remembers this couple's marriage arranged at peace talks with Brims, Mary's uncle, during the Yamasee War.
Although establishing the circumstances of John and Mary's marriage is difficult, the documentary evidence consistently suggests that they wed in a Christian ceremony. Evidently, their wedding took place shortly before February 1717, when John Musgrove purchased his Colleton County lands.
Elizabeth Hunt, Mary's neighbor and midwife, recalled that Musgrove made this purchase “soon after their wedding,” indicating that Mary and John were newlyweds at the time. Mary and John therefore did not intentionally wed to promote peace between the Carolinians and Creek Indians, but rather did so on their own terms.
Still, it is evident that South Carolina officials knew of the Musgrove marriage and sensed an opportunity to capitalize on it politically. Shortly after Creek messengers began floating peace proposals that spring, the Commons House of Assembly agreed, on May 25, 1717, to send a peace delegation to the Creeks.Peace Talks
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| Coweta map - 1715 |
Not by coincidence did the Commons House appoint Captain John Musgrove, John's father, to lead that delegation, as House minutes indicate that they were aware of unspecified circumstances that gave him unique leverage over the Creeks. In justifying their decision to appoint him, the Commons House explained that...
“...,as we understand that the said Musgrove is much respected among the Creek Indians, we have reason to believe he may have some influence over them...to make proposals for a Peace.”
Bearing in mind these circumstances, it seems likely that John and Mary accompanied Captain Musgrove that summer to Coweta, where they arrived in late July bearing gifts and words of peace from the South Carolina government.Lieutenant Diego Peña
They may have held a second ceremony there. At least one attendant's note seems to indicate they did.
...the Spanish Lieutenant Diego Peña, who arrived in Creek territory that August, provides more direct evidence of Mary and John's presence in Coweta and the positive effect their marriage had on the peace negotiations.
Peña relates first the exuberance of a certain “Chieftainess Qua” of Coweta, who “opened her arms” to embrace the party “and with wailing and sighs celebrated their arrival,” possibly to welcome her long-lost kinswoman.
Peña later reported that “the leader of the English (was given) the daughter of the chief as wife” and noted an exchange of presents that took place between Brims and Captain Musgrove.
Although the Spaniard misunderstood the exact details of the marriage arrangement (John the younger was the bridegroom, not the Captain, and Mary was not Brims’ daughter), his comment nevertheless may indicate that the couple had a second marriage ceremony in Coweta in accordance with Creek customs.We don't know what happened immediately after that.
It is tempting to think that the couple returned to South Carolina with the captain that October,escorting a group of ten Creek Indians, led by Brims’ “son” Ouletta, to Charles Town, where the peace talks continued.
More probable, however, is that Mary and John stayed behind in Coweta with the trader Theophilus Hastings, who with a party of “three or four white men besides women and children was left amongst the Enemie Indians [Creeks] as a pledge of the safe passage of their people” until April 1718. (p. 61-3)
Series on John and Mary Musgrove
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