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During their time on the Barr farm near Abbeville, South Carolina, Cannon Beckley (1840-1903) and Bill Reed (1846-1937) were very close.  However, their brother-like relationship was forever interrupted in 1859, and they never saw each other again.
 

                  Our history did not begin with slavery in America. However, our furthest-traced ancestors on American soil were a devoted couple named Lewis and Fanny. Research findings indicate that Lewis was born around 1780 in South Carolina. DNA testing has revealed that Lewis’s paternal ancestor – most probably his paternal grandfather – was an African captive taken from the Angola-Congo region of West-Central Africa.  He was likely transported to Charleston, South Carolina. This strong ancestor was from the Mbundu people who resided in northern Angola. Lewis's wife Fanny was born around 1790 in Virginia. On August 7, 2009, at the 150th Year Commemorative Reunion of the Descendants of Lewis and Fanny Barr, the African ancestry of Grandma Fanny Barr's lineage was revealed to the family – her descendants – who reunited for the first time 150 years after our ancestors were separated. Through her maternal lineage, we learned that we are connected to the Fulani and Yoruba peoples of Nigeria.
              Extensive genealogy research has confirmed that our ancestors were enslaved on the farm of the Reverend Dr. William H. Barr and his wife Rebecca Reid Barr, located three miles north of Abbeville, South Carolina. Dr. Barr was the minister of the Upper Long Cane Presbyterian Church in Abbeville. The 1820 U.S. Federal Census of Abbeville County reported Dr. Barr with six slaves that year: an adult male, an adult female, and four young children (one young female and three young males). We know this enslaved family unit to be Lewis, Fanny, and children, Glasgow, Sue, Pleasant, and another son whose name is lost to the family. It is not known when and from whom Dr. William and Rebecca Barr acquired Lewis and Fanny. However, from 1820 to 1843, the enslaved population on the Barr farm increased naturally from a family of six to eighteen people. During those years, Lewis and Fanny created a solid family structure of children and grandchildren that would soon become dismantled.
              Dr. William H. Barr died in Abbeville County on January 9, 1843.  In settling his estate, state laws required that an inventory be taken of all of his personal possessions.  Since enslaved African Americans were considered property, a slave inventory was taken on March 14, 1843, which listed Lewis and Fanny at the top of the list.  Both were “valued” at $50.  After them, their children, Glasgow, Pleasant, and Sue, were listed.  Sue and her three youngest children, Edmond, Cannon, and Louvenia, were given one value of $800.  Listed individually after them were Sue’s three oldest children – Sina, John, and Luther – who were “valued” separately.  Seven more slaves were listed as part of Dr. Barr’s estate including Isabella and her daughter, Mariah.  See inventory below.
              After Dr. Barr’s demise in 1843, his youngest son William Barr Jr. maintained the plantation with his mother Rebecca.  For sixteen additional years, the enslaved Barrs remained together on the Barr farm and welcomed the births of Pleasant’s children with Isabella, namely William “Bill” (1846) and Mary (1850), and the births of Sue’s children, H. Clay (1846), Jacob Jr. (1847), Lewis (1849), Joseph (1852), Patsy (1855), and Susie (1856).  They also buried the family patriarch, Grandpa Lewis, in September, 1846 on the Barr farm.  Although they were subjugated under the ominous cloud of slavery near Abbeville, the enslaved Barrs cherished their family unit, as reflected in the oral history passed down by Pleasant’s son Bill, who often relayed stories to his own children and grandchildren about his close relationship with Cannon and others.

The Family Separation

           On February 6, 1849, Rebecca Reid Barr wrote the following in a letter to her sister Margery Reid Miller of Pontotoc, Mississippi, provided by Margery’s descendant, Bob Thompson:
 

“. . . I am not without friends and the common comforts of life. But I can not feel altogether satisfied to be so far from my older sons. If we can sell our plantation to advantage we will move to Mississippi. I cannot expect to live long enough to be a comfortably fix there as here but I think my children can do better there, and at my death the negroes are to be divided. Some will go to Mississippi and some here and I cannot bear the idea of sepperating Sue and her children. She has nine children—seven sons & two daughters . . .”   

              Rebecca Reid Barr wrote this letter in 1849, but the move to Pontotoc County, Mississippi did not occur until ten years later.  As Rebecca Barr had planned, the slaves were indeed divided.  Prior to moving to Mississippi, research has uncovered that the Barrs sold Grandma Fanny’s son Pleasant to a local farmer named James Giles, who was also preparing an exodus to Ripley, Mississippi.  After acquiring Pleasant, he took him to Ripley in 1859.  According to oral history, his children never saw him again.  Isaac Deberry Sr., the grandson of Bill, also vividly recalled the story shared by his grandfather of him waving goodbye to Cannon and other family members who had been a significant part of his life since his birth in 1846.  Rebecca Barr then sold several slaves to her nephew, Lemuel Reid, who had also established a plantation just a short distance from them.  Those sold included Bill and his younger sister, Mary.  Bill and Mary remained on the Reid Place near Abbeville until 1866, just shortly after slavery had ended.
             As Rebecca Barr further indicated in her letter, she desired to keep Sue and her children together; therefore, William Barr Jr. took them, as well as Grandma Fanny, Isabella, and several others with him to Pontotoc County, Mississippi, settling near the College Hill community (Barrtown) in early 1859.  Various records show that prior to the move, the Barrs had purchased Sue’s husband Jacob, a mulatto, from their neighbor, John Watt Lesley, to keep her family unit in tact.  After the Civil War, Jacob, Sue, and their children took the Beckley name instead of Barr.  The oral history of the Beckley family relayed that Sue’s eldest son, who was actually John Beckley, had killed a nightrider in defending his family, which likely impelled William Barr Jr. to finally execute their plans to move them to northern Mississippi. The following minutes from the Session Books of the Upper Long Cane Presbyterian Church records show that William Barr Jr. moved to Pontotoc County, Mississippi shortly before March 1859 with Grandma Fanny and others, including Jacob Sr. and Sue:

Upper Long Cane Church Minutes, Abbeville, South Carolina

Sunday 20 March 1859:…The moderator presented the application of the following persons for Letters of Dismission from this church to join Zion Church in Mississippi (Pontotoc County):  Mr. William Barr and his servants to wit Fanny, Isabella, Marinda, Sawney and Edmond. On motion ordered that certificates in the usual form be granted to them……

Saturday 13 October 1860:…The clerk also stated that he had been requested by Mr. Lemuel Reid to present the application of Jacob & Sue servants of William Barr for a Dismission from this church to join Harmony Church, Mississippi (Pontotoc County).  Ordered that the application be granted and that the clerk do furnish the proper certificate of Dismission.

             After the Civil War, Pleasant’s children Bill and Mary migrated to near Senatobia, Mississippi, which placed them only sixty miles away from their long-lost father and less than one hundred miles away from their grandmother Fanny Barr, their mother Isabella Barr, their aunt Sue Beckley, her children, and other relatives.  They never knew their whereabouts, as reflected in the oral history passed down by Bill.  Bill took the Reid surname after slavery, and the family consequently spelled the name “Reed.”  His father Pleasant retained the Barr name, remarried to Amanda Young, and had another son, Elijah Barr.  Five of Sue’s sons, Edmond, Cannon, Clay, Jacob, and Lewis, who was named after his grandfather, became known as “The Beckley Five.”  They and their sister Louvenia remained in Pontotoc County, and Jacob later moved to Holly Springs, Mississippi.  Their older brother, John Beckley, and their sisters, Sina, Patsy, and Susie, all settled near Oxford, Mississippi.  Sawney Barr also remained in Pontotoc County and became the first black Superintendent of Schools for Pontotoc County during Reconstruction.  In 2009, which marks the 150^th year anniversary of the family separation, the descendants of Lewis and Fanny Barr, primarily through their children, Sue Barr Beckley and Pleasant “Pleas” Barr, are coming together for the first time in a special, commemorative reunion in Atlanta, Georgia and in Abbeville, South Carolina, the last place where we were together as a family.  We are “Mending Family Ties, Rejoicing the Hearts of Our Ancestors.”
 

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