NED EDWARDS
alias Edward Edmonds
(circa 1829-1908)
“I was Born in Virginia. The slave trader brought me in Louisiana at the age of twenty. I was a slave in Louisiana twelve years before the war. My mother told me when I left the State of Virginia. I was 20 years old. Born 1829 the month I am unable to say. ”
Unidentified African American soldier in Union uniform, Library of Congress.
Enlistment Papers under the alias Edward Edmonds, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.
Ned was sold away from his family, friends, and home and was forced to board the ship Cyane in Richmond, Virginia, on November 18, 1851. He was headed south to New Orleans along with 120 other enslaved individuals on board. By December, he was locked in a slave jail in the largest slave market in the United States.
On February 13, 1852, Ned Edwards was sold in a group with five other men. His name was listed as “Edward Edmond” on the sale document and his age as 19. Thomas Boudar, a notorious slave trader, sold him to sugar planter Lezin Becnel. Becnel paid $6800 for the six enslaved men, which would be approximately $232,000 today.
Ned first appeared on an Evergreen Plantation inventory in 1858. He was described as “an American negro age 25.” He had to make his own family and create relationships that would help him endure enslavement. He married Aimée, a 17 year old girl enslaved on the plantation with her mother Katty and siblings. The couple’s first child, Marcel, was born in 1858.
Aimée was described as a griffe, indicating that she was of mixed race. Originally the term was used for a slave with some Native American ancestry, but by this time designated a child with one quarter European ancestry. Aimée’s older sister was considered a mulatresse, but her younger siblings were all listed as negroes. This suggests that Katty’s eldest daughters had a different father than her younger children.
Louisiana joined the Confederacy during the Civil War but soon came under Union control after the fall of New Orleans in 1862. The first black troops to join the United States army did so in Louisiana. More African American men from Louisiana enlisted in the Union army than in any other state. Ned was one of them. On August 20, 1864, Ned joined the 80th United States Colored Infantry. His name was recorded as Edward Edmonds. As a slave, he did not have a surname, so he probably gave his father’s name as his last name. Just a few months after his enlistment, Aimée gave birth to another son, Edmond.
Ned’s term of enlistment expired in March 1867. He returned home to Aimée and their sons. The couple went on to have more children and continued to work in the cane fields on Evergreen Plantation.
Aimée died in 1882 when she just a little over forty years old. Ned remarried on February 12, 1887. He and his new wife, Elizabeth, had a daughter together. They attended the Second African Baptist Church. Ned was a member of the United Order, a benevolent and charitable society. He moved from Evergreen to Carroll Plantation (also known as Johnson) and lived the rest of his life there. In his later years, Ned was supported in part by a pension from the federal government for his service in the war. He was disabled due to a serious oblique inguinal hernia that had gone untreated for decades. He died on November 18, 1908, and was buried the next day by Reverend Albert Washington in the Second African Baptist Church cemetery (now known as Young Cemetery). His physician attributed his death to arteriosclerosis. After Ned’s death, his widow was given a pension on his behalf.
Ned’s children and grandchildren continued to live and work at Evergreen Plantation for decades to come. He now has hundreds of descendants, many still living in Wallace and Edgard. One of his grandchildren, Olivia Simon, lived to be 100 years old. She was born at Evergreen and went on to have 10 children, 51 grandchildren, 148 great-grandchildren, and 88 great-great-grandchildren.
“I was born in St. James Parish eight or nine miles above Wallace on the Mississippi River. I was raised on Mary’s plantation in St. Charles Parish near Killona. I lived with Charley Turner there. Soldier was never married before his marriage to me. He had a wife to whom he was married according to the custom of slavery and he lived with her until she died. Her name was Amy and she died at Edgard, La., five years before soldier and I were married. He never had any other wife before he had me. He had grown children by her when he married me and he also had two younger children by her. His oldest child, a man named Marcelle Edwards, is about 50 years old. I had one child by soldier, a daughter, Ida, born in November 1888. Soldier was born in Virginia and was brought to Louisiana when he was nearly twenty years old. He lived on Evergreen plantation in this parish and belonged to Lesin Becknaile [Lezin Becnel] in slavery. He lived all his life in this parish. I knew him from the time I was a child. He was about 75 years old when died. He did not leave any children under 16 years of age at the date of his death. Soldier and I lived together continuously as husband and wife from our marriage to his death and were not divorced nor legally separated. I have not remarried since his death nor lived with any man as his wife. I knew of the death of soldier’s slave wife at the time it occurred and know that she died five years before our marriage, but I did not see her dead nor attend her funeral. ”