
MOONROY: A Story
of the American Revolution in the South by Beverly Enwall.
In 1765
the South Carolina rice plantation of Moonroy, built by the formidable French
Huguenot turned pirate and then planter, Pierre Monclair, now belongs to his
son, Peter Monclair. Moonroy is on the coast south of CharlesTown and has
three small sea islands where old Pierre was said to unload illegal cargo even
after he had ended his pirate days. In its rambling single story house live
Peter, his wife, and his four children. Peter’s oldest son, age 15, is about to set sail to Scotland to study, but not before he joins the night raid of patriots disguised as trappers and Indians who seize the Stamp Paper and send it back to England, to the delight of his little brother, the admiration of his two sisters and the amusement of his mother, the daughter of a French seamstress and the love of Peter’s life who, as the story opens, is expecting another child.
As on all plantations, the white family is only part of the story. The household and all that it encompasses is run by Patience, a second generation slave from Barbados who fell in love with the man chosen to breed her, but when her son was born with a crooked foot, she was shipped to CharlesTown, for in Barbados it was cheaper to buy another slave than to raise one or keep one who bore flawed children. Patience and her baby, purchased by the French seamstress, came to Moonroy with Peter’s bride, but Old Turner, the acknowledged leader in all things beyond the household, had sailed the high seas with old Pierre. Moonroy boasts exceptionally fine horses because old Pierre had purchased Jeremy from a Virginia planter who didn’t know what he had in a Gambia man, but Pierre did, for he had sailed the African coast, understood the different tribes, and believed it was important to give every man his human worth, until, of course, he betrayed you.
This is the story of the people of Moonroy as well as some of the real people in CharlesTown like Henry Laurens, Tom Lynch, and William Moultrie from 1765 when men first start gathering around the Liberty Tree to argue how best to deal with Britain until 1782 when the British finally withdraw from their brutal occupation of CharlesTown and the price paid for victory by so many, both white and black.
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