The Black Settlers of Treasure Oak Island - This Generation

The Black Settlers of “Treasure Oak Island”

This Generation

Recently, a friend I and were talking about events in Black community history. I was encouraging Michael Glasgow to talk about his grandfather who operated a large hog farm in East Preston. He was telling me about his grandfather’s farmhouse and how he was renovating it.

I was so proud of him and his story because he delighted in telling me about it and truly I like to listen to stories of Black family history.

I said to Michael that I would like to chronicle his family history on my web log. In the spirit of sharing stories I began to chronicle some of my own family’s historical past -- the loyalist side of my mother’s family. Michael found that interesting as well.

When I confided that I had not yet published it on my web log, he turned to me and said: “Why don’t you publish your family’s loyalist history before you publish mine.” I thought about why I had not published it. Michael’s remark made me think back to 1975 when I published McKerrow’s history and at that time there was very little else available on the Black community’s history that wasn’t negative in some way. I published McKerrow because some local sociologists had absurdly written in their books that Blacks had no history.

This story is a clear example of how prejudice, passed onto us and taught to us by our “teachers,” becomes part of the shared prejudices of another generation, their students. Of course, it’s the students’ responsibility to liberate their minds, to open them up to other and truer realities which the students may later discover for themselves. As you will see this happened for me but at such a high price that it is just now, decades later, that I am able to put it into thought and place it on electronic paper. The years and decades do pass on you so very quickly you do not notice.

From Michael’s comment I realized that I had not published my loyalist family history for much the same kind of reason and, that is, that people might say they do not believe it. I admit that decades ago when my mother told me about HER, I mean, OUR family history, I really didn’t believe it either. So I reasoned that if I had difficulty believing my own family history why won’t others. It was a serious question that required a serious answer and the answer is ignorance.

Ignorance is a common affliction in Nova Scotia when it comes to knowledge of the history of African people. African people have the burden of proving everything beyond a higher reasonable doubt than do white historians because they have a history which so few have been taught to doubt. Such nonsense shouldn’t be given space here but it must be part of the intellectual liberation of African people. We must compel ourselves to doubt what White people tell us of Black history.

So Michael’s question challenged me for more reasons than he understood at the time. I was reluctant to record it because at first I had great difficulty believing it myself. Even now, I believe I will be challenged just as I knew I would have been had I shared my discovery with my peers living in the Hood when my mother proudly recited what she knew. Regardless, it is time I shared this history with others even though they might challenge it, or even if they might say it is not true, or that they do not believe it at all. What it is, truth or falsehood, becomes the non-believers’ burden, which formerly had been my own all these many years, so telling this story, which I know is true, does truly set me free.

The story begins where I was born in the heart of the Black ghetto of Halifax; I was actually born at 117 Creighton Street on a cold December morning just before Christmas in 1943. My father was steadily employed on the waterfront and this was due to his dependability and very much due to his ability to think things through that needed to be done.

For as long as I can remember my family consisted of my two older sisters and me. From my perspective my entire family life began with the five of us. Mother told us stories and so did father and both of them were so good at it that I was enthralled by those wonderful tales. Every family has its storyteller (s) and in some cases that has been the only way family history has been passed on.

So, this was my universe: my parents and my two older sisters, the fundamental unit in which I was socialized. Although my family grew in number from there, it was from these four people that I learned who I was and they help set my expectations and help me define my place in the world.

One day, when I was older, I asked mother from where her people had come. This is when I thought mother began a tall tale; at least what I thought was a very, very tall tale. Each time I asked her that question she began the same way.

“My people came from treasure Oak Island in Chester where they owned land.” She said, adding, “That is what Mama told me.” Everyone in Nova Scotia and, perhaps the world, knew something about the famed Oak Island: it was famous to say the least for romantic tales of gold bullion, pirates, Captain Kidd and those marooned ones, “what buried the treasure.”

I could imagine my grandmother, Laura Ball, telling my mother, Mae, this story with more detail than my mother could remember. Mother couldn’t be right; at least that’s what I thought at the time. Then I asked myself: “How could it be?”

Over the intervening years since she uttered those words: “treasure Oak Island” I thought about those words, and each time I just dismissed the thought. I didn’t think my mother was lying to me because I knew she would not. The entire idea seemed to me so bizarre. In fact, I now know that we (Black people) are socialized to think that we had no past worthy of note, as if history had past us. Of course that isn’t true either.

Most of the Black families in my hood had come from nearby Black communities -- towns and small villages, like Africville. I didn’t know anyone who could claim that their family owned land and once lived on treasure Oak Island. What a story but, of course, it couldn’t be true.

Back in the day the Christian believers of old would say about themselves that “they were in the world but not of it;” similarly, I always knew that I was in the hood but I also knew that by destiny I was not part of it. Not because there was anything about which to be ashamed but I was taught always to “think” larger, and to “act” larger. As if I needed another reason to standout from the crowd; I can tell you with utmost certainty that wasn’t true either.

How could I tell my peers, my gang, that my family came from treasure Oak Island? In spite of the many times that they asked that question I couldn’t tell them what I was told by my mother. I would say Preston and that is true because my dad’s people were from the part of Preston then known as New Road. The name Boyd is not a common name either, so that didn’t help. As a child the question of who the five of us really were was never far from my consciousness; anymore than the question is now, that I am an adult.

Perhaps, the fact that my father was adopted by a family in Hammonds Plains and later discovered his true identity has only served to heighten my search for identity, as though slavery and being uprooted from Africa and the United States were not enough to compel my lifelong search. Events compounded my thirst to know.

Even if my family’s legacy could be proven beyond a shadow of doubt, my peers in the hood would not have believed it; they would not have been able to resist convulsing from the laughter at my expense. Don’t tell me you can’t hear their youthful gales of laughter.

You see when members of a small visible minority, who have banded for decades together for support, do not believe its members stories of common hardship and national origin it is not of commonplace, it is of major importance; it is a tragedy of major significance, leaving its members without solace and mutual understanding and without a safe place to find comfort. We often refer to this as life’s rat-race.

To this day I am reluctant to tell anyone. But for Michael’s challenge, I may not have even offered this on my web log except as fiction. Many times I was tempted to tell this story and could not. But when Michael challenged me by saying it’s your web log so write your own story first, then write the story of my family.

What was my ancestor’s name who lived and own land on treasure Oak Island? His name is Samuel Ball.

In truth, I did mention it once when I was director of the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia on the occasion of the 200 century mark of the Loyalist landing in Nova Scotia. I have a photo that was published in the newspapers at that time. To this day, I am not sure anyone among the unchallenged Loyalists actually believed me.

The main point is though that we are the descendents of Samuel Ball and as far as proof is concerned my grandmother, Laura Ball’s word that her people came from “treasure Oak Island in Chester,” is good enough for me.

We have no pictures of Sam but we do have one of his records that have survived -- a will, and maps depicting his lots on treasure Oak Island and pictures of his foundations at the Ball Homestead on Oak Island.

The Photos above:

The picture above is Oak Island in Mahone Bay on the south shore of Nova Scotia where millions of dollars and many lives have been spent seeking a famous pirate’s booty which, so far as we know, has never surfaced.

The next photo is of my two older sisters and I.

The next post, The Last Generation, will describe the Ball family in photos and words and how I discovered the truth of our Ball family legacy on treasure Oak Island.

As always, Well wishes,

F. Stanley Boyd