Born into Slavery
Jeremiah “Jerry” Sykes was born into slavery near Washington, North Carolina on November 11, 1848. He was the son of Hester Ann and John Sykes. Little is known about Jeremiah’s parents, except that they were enslaved in North Carolina and that they, like their son, were born into slavery.
The Sykes family may have derived their last name from their enslavers, a practice common after emancipation for ease of identification. There were several enslavers with the surname “Sykes” or “Sikes” in eastern North Carolina at the time of the 1850 and 1860 censuses. Unfortunately, enslaved people were not listed by name in census records until after the Civil War, making it difficult to discern where, exactly, the family was enslaved.
Just before the outbreak of the Civil War, at the age of 11 or 12, Sykes and other enslaved children were transported to Roanoke Island to build up its defenses. Later in life, Sykes would tell the Fairhaven Star that he was tasked with “wheelbarrowing large blocks of stone and other substances to repair the fort on the island.” The work was difficult, Sykes said, and he saw many “fall exhausted in their tracks unable to proceed further.”
The Confederacy’s brutal use of the labor of enslaved people at Roanoke Island would come back to haunt it during the Battle of Roanoke Island, February 7-8 1862, when escaped local enslaved people gave the Union Army critical information about their enemy’s strength and defenses. With this information, the Union Army captured the island in only two days, with modest casualties.
Captain John A. Hawes and the Massachusetts 3rd Infantry Regiment
Following the victory of the Union Army at Roanoke Island, Sykes was briefly classified by the Union as “contraband” of war – that is, captured enemy property – until President Lincoln signed the Second Confiscation Act into law on July 17, 1862, which changed the legal status of escaped enslaved people in territory occupied by the Union Army to “captives of war… forever free of their servitude, and not again held as slaves.” During this time, Sykes found work as a cook for the Massachusetts Third Regiment, then encamped outside the city of New Bern, North Carolina.
In the course of his work at New Bern, the young Sykes drew the attention of Captain John A. Hawes of Fairhaven, who commanded Company E of the Third Regiment. Hawes hired Sykes as his personal servant, and in this capacity, Sykes remained with Company E for the remainder of its deployment, serving Hawes at the battles of White Hall and Kingston.
Captain Hawes was the only member of Company E from Fairhaven, the rest of his comrades hailing from New Bedford and Westport. Born in Fairhaven to a wealthy family, he was a prominent lawyer in town, serving as selectman from 1857-1860 and as a member of the school committee. After the war, he served two terms as a state senator, was president of the Bristol County Agricultural Society, and was elected the first commodore of the New Bedford Yacht Club. He lived with his wife Amelia and their daughters on a large estate on Main Street, north of Bridge Street, that he had inherited from his grandfather, Captain Samuel Borden.
When the Civil War began, Hawes immediately volunteered his service to the Union cause. He first served in 1861 as a member of the committee tasked with obtaining arms and equipment from the Commonwealth for harbor and coastal defense. When the Third Regiment was organized at Lakeville, he was selected to lead Company E over William Mason, sergeant of the New Bedford City Guard, despite the company being largely comprised of former members of that organization.
By all accounts, Captain Hawes was beloved by his men and ran his company honorably. A May 1863 letter from the commander of his brigade, Colonel James Jourdan, read: “It is with such pleasure… that I congratulate you on the remarkable good condition of your company, both in reference to drill, discipline, and soldierly bearing. To command such a fine company must certainly be an honor of which you feel proud.”
Move to Fairhaven
Company E completed its service on June 26, 1863, by which point a bond of mutual respect had been forged between Hawes and Sykes. The former invited the latter to return home with him to Fairhaven, and so at the age of fifteen, Sykes became a citizen of Massachusetts.
For over twenty years, Sykes lived with the Hawes family, serving as their cook. In the 1880 census, Sykes is listed as one of just 17 black residents in Fairhaven.
Captain John A. Hawes died on March 10, 1883 at the age of 59. A few years later, on February 11, 1886, Jeremiah Sykes married Lucy (White) Lane at her family home in New Bedford. It was his first and her second marriage.
Lucy Ann (White) Lane Sykes
Lucy Ann White was born to Harvey and Charlotte Sarah (Overton) White in North Carolina in 1855. At the time of the 1860 Census, the family was free and engaged in farming—likely, sharecropping-- in Little River District, North Carolina. Lucy had an older brother, Albert, who was four years her senior. A fifteen-year-old, Muriah White, was also living in the household, and may have been Lucy’s half-sister (given Charlotte’s age of 25 in 1860). None of the children were enrolled in school.
By 1870, the family had moved to Parkville Township, North Carolina, where they remained farmers. Muriah White had left the household by this time, though nineteen-year-old Albert remained. While Albert could read and write, Lucy could only write; her parents could do neither.
On 19 March 1872, at the age of 17, Lucy White married James Lane in Hertford, North Carolina.
By 1880, Lucy and her parents had settled in New Bedford, where they lived at 313 Kempton Street. One child, Corinna White, age 4, born in North Carolina around 1876, is listed living with the family as an adopted daughter of Harvey and Charlotte White. Though Lucy was still married at this time, her husband stayed behind in North Carolina, working as a laborer. James Lane appears to have died sometime around 1882, leaving Lucy a widow.
With their move north, the family left farming behind. Harvey worked as a laborer, while Lucy found employment as a domestic servant. By age 25, Lucy had learned to read and was the only one in her home who could do so.
Following her marriage to Jeremiah Sykes, Lucy crossed the bridge and moved to Fairhaven, where she would live until her death in 1941.
The Sykes Family in Fairhaven
On October 30, 1886, the Fairhaven Star reported:
“Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Sykes have just commenced house-keeping on Bridge street, and Thursday evening about 50 neighbors and friends surprised the happy couple and gave them a genuine house-warming. The visitors brought a rocking chair for Mrs. Sykes and a luxurious easy chair for the host.”
Town directories from the time note their house was at 32 Bridge Street, next to the old Friends Meeting House on Bridge Street. The home was owned by the Hawes family until around the time of Jeremiah Sykes’s death in 1923, when it was finally formally sold or given to Lucy Sykes.
Jeremiah and Lucy Sykes had one child, a girl, born on October 23, 1888. They named her Hester Ann, after Jeremiah’s mother. Sadly, Hester died of typhoid fever at the age of eleven, on December 19, 1899. She is buried at Riverside Cemetery.
Jeremiah worked at various times as a farmer and a laborer, including as a laborer for the Fairhaven highway department. He earned enough from his work to purchase at least two parcels of land, including an eight-acre tract of woodland in Westport and 82.87 rods (about half an acre) on the west side of Mulberry Street in Fairhaven, not far from the family home on Bridge Street. The Fairhaven Star includes mentions of Sykes raising pigeons and turkeys, selling milk, and cutting ice. Once, in 1917, a woman was charged with larceny for stealing potatoes from Sykes:
“She was tracked by night into the field of Jeremiah Sykes. One of her rubbers had come off, and she went half-barefoot. When Constable Dunham asked her what she was doing in the potato field she said she was merely going across the lots. She denied that she had been digging potatoes, but the officer detected a neat pile which she was attempting to conceal by standing over it.”
Jeremiah Sykes appears most often in New Bedford and Fairhaven newspapers because of his involvement in veteran’s groups. He faithfully attended the annual reunions of Company E, Massachusetts Third Regiment as an “honorary” member of the company. He was also involved in the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of Civil War veterans.
Sykes returned to the south at least once, in 1891, when the Star reported he visited “his old home in Plymouth and Newburg [sic], N.C.” One wonders whether he had remaining family or friends to visit in the area.
Jeremiah Sykes died of bronchopneumonia at Saint Luke’s Hospital on January 27, 1923. He is buried at Riverside Cemetery, where he is rightfully counted among its Civil War dead.
Sources Consulted:
· United States Census Records, 1850-1940; Commonwealth of Massachusetts Vital Records (available online through FamilySearch)
· Town of Fairhaven Directories (Millicent Library Archives)
· Town of Fairhaven Assessor’s Records (Millicent Library Archives)
· Fairhaven Star (Millicent Library Archives) and New Bedford Evening Standard
Michael Zatarga, “The Battle of Roanoke Island,” (2015), National Park Service