Jack, Cor

Coromantee Jack was a man who may have been enslaved in Africa and transported to Virginia. The term “Coromantee” was used to describe enslaved people associated with Akan-speaking tribes from the area of West Africa that includes present-day Ghana. “Coromantee” or “Cormantyn” was the name of a landing place in that area used by British and Dutch traders; slaveholders took to referencing the people enslaved there by the place of their embarkation.

Slaveholders sought after Coromantee people for their reputed physical strength, mental acuity, and disciplined manners. However, their association with historic slave uprisings also gave Coromantees a reputation as faithful but dangerous. Jack must have had traits associated with the Coromantee for his nickname to have stuck in Virginia. He probably stood out because of his place of origin, or that of his ancestors, since enslaved people in Loudoun County at the time came mostly from the areas encompassing modern-day Gambia, Guinea, and Nigeria, not Ghana.

In 1801, “Coromantee Jack” appeared as a debtor in the Mason family manuscript account book. White slaveholders did not generally extend credit to enslaved people, suggesting that Jack’s emancipation had occurred by that time.

The use of a nickname and the absence of a surname for Jack suggests he might have been a longstanding acquaintance of the Masons. Thomson Mason, Stevens Thomson Mason’s father, owned a man named Jack. This Jack was born around 1743 and came into Thomson’s possession in the 1760s, a period when Thomson was active in arranging the importation of enslaved Africans. When Thomson died in 1785, he freed Jack in his will and left him thirty acres of his land in Loudoun, Prince William, or Stafford County, at a time when there were very few free landowners in the area of African descent. Thomson gave Jack produce, livestock, the use of a enslaved worker for a month to get Jack started, and an annual pension.

Thomson also charged his family to help protect Jack in exchange for his twenty years of “fidelity and integrity.” Thomson’s son John T. Mason did just that in 1794 when Jack was wrongfully assaulted and imprisoned after being mistaken for a runaway. John provided written proof of Jack’s emancipation and Jack won his case, garnering damages of a penny and costs incurred to bring the suit.

By Nina Erickson