, Cudjo

Cudjo was an enslaved male likely owned by Stevens Thomson Mason. Very little is known about Cudjo. His name appears only once in the Mason family manuscript account book. It may be the only surviving record of his life. Around 1791, Cudjo became sick and a doctor named James McClean gave medicine to him and an enslaved woman named Milley.

Cudjo’s name provides some information about him. Slaveholders often named or renamed the people they owned. The assignment and reassignment of captive Africans’ and African Americans’ names was a common way to further displace enslaved people from their past. Occasionally, enslaved individuals were able to assert their own identities by retaining their African name or by passing along a traditional African name to one of their children. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, some West Africans followed a custom of naming a child after the day on which they were born. Cudjo was a name often given to a male child born on a Monday.

It is possible that the name of this Cudjo was also anglicized to Joe by his owners and other white people in the community, though Cudjo’s appearance in the Mason family manuscript account book indicates that his African name was not entirely erased. In 1795, planter Burgess Ball sold a Joe, son of Milley, to Stevens Thomson Mason along with forty-eight other enslaved people. A Joe was also recorded in Stevens Thomson Mason’s 1803 estate inventory. Unfortunately, the timeline for Cudjo and Milley, named in the Mason family manuscript account book in 1791, does not quite match with the date of purchase for Joe and his mother. The total of what is known about Cudjo’s life may remain what can be gleaned from the short entry in the account book on 7 January 1791: “Visit and Medecines per Milley & Cudjo.”

By Elizabeth Paynter