There are people whose name has not been forgotten for a long time after their death. Francis Scott Key is such a case, at least in America. The Lawyer and Opportunity Pose from Maryland wrote a poem in 1814 that later became the text of the US National Anthem ("The Star-Spangled Banner"). It's about an attack by the British Army on the American Fort McHenry in Baltimore.
About 30 kilometers south of there, in the village of Crownsville, Key's relatives lived on a nearly 300-acre tobacco plantation called Belvoir, also known as Scott's Plantation. As a child, the poet was there too, visiting his grandmother Ann Ross Key. And around the manor house at that time numerous people worked, whose name no one knows today. Slaves from West Africa and their descendants worked on the estate between 1736 and 1864, and only recently were remnants of a cemetery discovered on the extensive grounds.
Another find now gives at least part of its history to the slaves, who are still nameless. The whole thing has to do with the remains of a small, about 200 years old clay pipe that researchers around Julie Schablitsky of the Maryland State Highway Administration have dug up from the bottom of Belvoir. In the journal "Journal of Archaeological Science", an international team of researchers describes how he succeeded in isolating human genetic material from the find and subsequently investigating it.
The results indicate that the pipe was smoked by a woman who either came from the region of today's Sierra Leone, or at least her ancestors.
Disposable articles with dental impressions
It is genetically closely related to the members of the people of the Mende. Such small clay pipes were in mass use before the advent of the cigarette. They were cheaply produced and often did not last long. Once broken, they were thrown away, as was Belvoir's pipe. However, this must have been in use long enough that there were dental marks on the whistle. They brought the archaeologist Schablitsky to the question, whether in the wells still genetic residue could be detected from old saliva, tied in the sound. In fact, researchers from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign were able to isolate DNA residues.
A genetic database in Denmark then brought the connection to the Mende in West Africa, who live there until today in the states of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. In the 19th century warlike conflicts in their homeland made sure that they were particularly affected by enslavement. A member of this people, Sengbe Pieh, also known as Joseph Cinqué, was leader of the slave revolt on the Spanish ship "La Amistad". So one or the other may remember his name - especially since Steven Spielberg filmed the case in 1997 under the name "Amistad": Around 50 abductees from Africa had fought under Pieh's leadership for their freedom, but in the US they took a lengthy one Litigation had to lead.
But most of the names of the slaves remain in the dark. Between 1514 and 1866, more than 12.5 million people were deported to Africa and brought to the New World, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. Hundreds of them also landed in the port of Annapolis, Maryland, not far from Belvoir - in 1718 the "Margaret" delivered 117 slaves from Bunce Island in the Sierra Leone River, the "Lord Ligonier" in 1767 96 men and women Gambia.
The clay pipe of the tobacco planters of Belvoir now reminds one of them - or one of their descendants. The world still does not know a woman's name, but her story is at least slightly torn from the dark.