Santiago Margarida – 8 Years Old Facing Slavery

While digging through records for Trujillo Alto, Puerto Rico in search of my own African ancestors, I came across a record at the end of the book that caught my attention. Another baptism, but a baptism of an African child.

I had previously posted about discovering a record of a 10 years old girl from Mandingo. However, this time it was of a child of 8 years of age. The difference is that this 8 years old child was listed as an adult, yes, an adult.

The child is a boy who is from Guinea and is given the name Santiago Margarida on the day he was baptized on June 10, 1821. While I never have seen this last name in future Trujillo Alto books, I decided to see if this line still existed, which it does.  There are many Margarida in the San Juan region.  Could this child have survived and continue living in Puerto Rico? I’d love to know but with no access to the church death books for Trujillo Alto, I have no way of confirming if the line continued in this region or if it is the same one that moved away into another municipality.

Santiago Margarida from Guinea baptism entry in Trujillo Alto, Puerto Rico

As a genealogist, I wanted to do a little more digging to understand how so many children wound up being taken from the homeland. Yes, I knew there was kidnappings but I wanted scenarios of how this happened and I wanted a scholarly source for this post.

In one case study, it was found that approximately 3 million of 12 million Africans that were enslaved were children. As I read the case study, factors that led to children enslaved included men were killed during battles, their women and children were likely to wind up in slavery due to the caravans that followed military expeditions. This was something I didn’t factor in as I always went with the path of kidnapping. Sure enough, children were found to be placed into slavery by kidnappings while:

• Working in the fields
• Walking on the outskirts of towns
• Grabbed while playing outside and outside of parent’s view

In other situations, which I really didn’t expect were:

• Payment of family debt
• Payment due to crimes committed by their family members
• Children in poor health
• Special needs children
• Children believed to be evil spirits
• Sold due to famine to make ends meet

Reading some of these situations makes me understand how devalued or of value children were view, depending on how you want to view it. How truly sad for many of these children and then to continue their mistreatment with being enslaved if they made it across during Middle Passage.

What is shocking is that only those under 4 feet 4 inches were considered children, the rest were considered adults and locked up with the adults. So could it be that these children identified as adults were tall for their age? We won’t know as the children I have found in the records only speaks of their ages and whether they are considered adults like Santiago. Below is a table of children that were taken from Africa.  There is no mention of prior to 1601 as we know that slavery started in the Americas in the early 1500s based on records maintained in Spain’s archives.

Point of Embarkation	1601-1700	1701-1800	1801-1867
Africa unspecified	6,701	65,440	125,699
Bight of Benin	39,221	93,216	41,324
Bight of Biafra	16,478	82,021	40,932
Gold Coast	14,602	79,663	2,618
West-central Africa	11,169	145,523	20,092
Senegambia	5,462	26,424	1,668
Sierra Leone	974	24,398	11,512
Windward Coast	0	13,174	1,766
South-east Africa	0	4,202	3,327
Total	94,607	534,061	248,398

Table Data from: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-Rom

Children were at times given preferential treatment on ships but it did not mean that they didn’t attain the diseases that seem to take hold on the ships. The fact that these children survived is a miracle onto itself. Most children were considered a bad investment because they were more likely to die from diseases.  They were less like purchased because they could not do the hard labor on plantations like the adults. However, in the 1700s, things changed as children were viewed lasting longer and the trade increased for them, especially with the abolitionist movement taking hold in the Americas.

While I find it quite sad how these children wound up being enslaved, I decided to look up slavery overall on the continent of Africa. I was able to locate a chronological history on the University of Colorado Boulder website. Reading threw records and seeing humans being enslaved tends to get to me as anger begins to boil and my stomach churns. It is why it is necessary for me to take a break before continuing my research. Please ensure that you check out the resources provided as they provide further information that may be beneficial in your research.

Reference:

Colleen A. Vasconcellos, “Children in the Slave Trade,” in Children and Youth in History, Item #141, http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/items/show/141 (accessed January 25, 2018).

Steven Mintz, “Childhood and Transatlantic Slavery,” in Children and Youth in History, Item #57, http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/items/show/57 (accessed January 25, 2018).

“Slavery in Africa,” Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2000 http://encarta.msn.com accessed from http://autocww.colorado.edu/~toldy2/E64ContentFiles/AfricanHistory/SlaveryInAfrica.html

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-Rom. Edited by David Eltis, Stephen Behrendt, Herbert S. Klein, and David Richardson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Annotated by Colleen A. Vasconcellos.