The story of Scipio Africanus
Later Douglas Kennedy
African boy who started life as a slave and ended up living in Culzean
Castle as a free man
3 Jun 2021; STRUAN STEVENSON; Glasgow
Herald
Scipio Kennedy grew up in Culzean Castle after being
snatched from his homeland by slavers.
In the graveyard of the
Old Church in Kirkoswald, South Ayrshire, there is an ancient
headstone, green with age, but still with remarkably clear engraved
writing. The inscription reads: “This stone is erected by Douglas
Kennedy in Memory of his father Scipio Kennedy who died June 24, 1774.
Aged 80 years.
Also here lieth the body of said Douglas
Kennedy who died July 21, 1781 aged 49 years.” The inscription is
ambiguous. Although it clearly marks the burial plot of Douglas Kennedy,
it does not explictly claim to be the site of Scipio Kennedy’s last
resting place. It is yet another fascinating detail from the astonishing
rags to riches life of a celebrated slave.
Scipio Kennedy was
born in Guinea, West Africa, around 1694. He was most likely a member of
the Mandinka tribe and was kidnapped by slave traders at around the age
of five or six.
The Europeans rarely risked venturing into the
African interior. They anchored their slaving ships in coastal ports
and relied on mercenaries to round up their cargoes of slaves. Usually
these were African villagers working in the fields, while their children
acted as lookouts. Scipio was probably captured in this way and marched
to the coast with his parents.
It would be the start of a
gruelling experience, dreadful enough for an adult, but horrifying for a
child. The captured slaves would be incarcerated in forts in the Gulf of
Guinea, before being loaded onto European or British merchant ships,
chained at the wrists and legs with irons and stowed in the lower decks
in dark, crowded, foul-smelling, vaults. Up to 700 would be loaded in a
single ship. It is estimated that between 15 and 20 million Africans
were kidnapped and enslaved in this way. Many would die on their forced
march to the coast and many more would succumb in the fetid
conditions on board the slave ships.
The journey across the
Atlantic from Guinea to the Caribbean would normally take around 55
days. It can barely be imagined the horror of this voyage for the
captured slaves. Torn from their homes, naked, chained and abused. Lying
plagued with seasickness in sweltering darkness, in pools of vomit,
excrement and urine, with the dead and maimed dragged out almost daily
and hurled overboard.
For the child who became Scipio Kennedy,
the experience must have been traumatic. That he survived at all was
perhaps an indication of his lifelong resilience. The slaves were taken
to the West Indies where they were sold to the wealthy owners of sugar
plantations. The boy who would become Scipio Kennedy was bought by a
Scottish sea captain, Andrew Douglas. In 1702, Captain Douglas brought
the boy back to his home at Mains, near Milngavie in East
Dunbartonshire, where he was placed into the service of the captain’s
daughter, Jean, and given the name Scipio, after the great Roman General
Scipio Africanus.
In 1705, Jean married Sir John Kennedy, who
succeeded to the baronetcy of Culzean in 1711, on the death of his
father. Jean and Scipio accompanied the new laird to his Ayrshire
castle, a towering fortified structure, perched on a cliff-edge
overlooking the Firth of Clyde, south of Ayr. The castle had originally
been built in the 1500s. It would have been a place of wonder and awe to
the young African and the lad thrived. He was given the surname of the
Kennedy family to whom he was enslaved as a pageboy or footman. Having
mastered the English language, he was taught to read and write and given
some lessons in textile manufacturing, an extraordinary privilege for a
slave and an indication of how the Kennedy family valued him as a
person.
So, began a demanding and industrious life for the black
teenager. He must have been a mesmerising and unusual sight in his
footman’s uniform, almost certainly the only black person that many of
the local Ayrshire folk had ever encountered. But Scipio grew into the
role and was quickly accepted as a key member of the Baronet’s retinue,
so much so that he was baptised by the Kirkoswald minister which, under
Scots law, meant that he had to be given his freedom.
Scipio had
been with the family for 20 years when his freedom from slavery was
formalised by an indenture, which gave him the right to seek employment
elsewhere.
He was immediately offered a contract to remain in the
Kennedy family’s employment and it must be assumed that he agreed to
this based on his high regard for the family and theirs for him.
Scipio’s manumission (freedom from slavery) document, dated 1725, is
held in the National Archives of Scotland. The document states that he
had been provided with “clothng, maintenance and education with more
than ordinary kindness” by the Kennedy family and it set out a
‘breakable’ contract for his further employment for a period of 19
years for the sum of £12 per annum, equal to around £30,000 today, a
considerable salary for the time. The document was signed by Sir
John Kennedy and by Scipio.
By now, Sir John’s household had
expanded dramatically. He had fathered no fewer than 12 sons and eight
daughters with his wife Jean and Culzean Castle would be a hive of
activity.
Scipio himself was not found wanting in the fatherhood
stakes. His name appears in the kirk session minutes of Kirkoswald
Parish Church dated 27th May 1728, when he was accused of fornication
with Margaret Gray. For a former slave, baptised as a Christian, to be
found guilty of such an offence in 18th century Scotland would have been
a serious matter, but Scipio married Margaret Gray within weeks of the
kirk session accusation and he and Margaret went on to have at least
eight children of their own.
Sir John Kennedy provided Scipio and
his new family with a stone-built cottage and a small piece of land on
the estate, where he lived until his death, aged 80 in 1774, endng a
life of huge adventure and drama and demonstrating that in 18th century
Ayrshire, black lives mattered.
Scipio had been with the family
for 20 years when his freedom from slavery was formalised by an
indenture.
Note:
• A portrait, attributed to the
National Trust for Scotland, apparently of Jean Douglas, or Kennedy, and Scipio is probably of Tekli Rose Radziwill, a Polish Duchess who sat for a portrait in the 1720s. The portrait was painted by French artist Louis de Silvestre, who served in the courts in Warsaw and Dresden
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