Page 77
“…a small one close by…”
The Wetumpka Argus, March 22, 1843, p. 2.
“…violent tempests…thousands of years…”
The Democrat, April 18, 1843, p. 4.
“Anarcha looked up at the great line…”
Although Anarcha’s musings here are wholly speculative, it’s virtually certain—as with the falling stars of 1833—that Anarcha would have seen the great comet of 1843. Not only was the comet seen around the world, the coverage of the event in Alabama newspapers was particularly intense. (The image of the comet printed in the book first appeared in the Illustrated London News in March 1843.)
“…Anarcha’s blood came.”
Although it was common to include the date of first menses in hospital records, the case record of Anarcha in New York City does not specify when Anarcha had her first period. At this point, Anarcha is approximately fifteen years old, and Sims reports her as a seventeen-year-old girl when he facilitates her first birth in 1845. There is little in in the FWP slave narratives about the first menses of young women, but given the many children being born on the Westcott plantation at the time, and the incentive for plantation owners to learn which women were “good breeders,” it follows that planters and overseers would watch for signs that revealed when a woman could bear children.
Narratives of an unidentified person and Martha Jackson.
Library of Congress. (2018). Slave narratives: A folk history of slavery in the U.S., Georgia Narratives, Vol. 4, p. 361; Alabama Narratives, Vol. 1, p. 36; Arkansas Narratives, Vol. 1, p. 222.
“Some of the field hands…”
There is no evidence of either the attention, or lack thereof, that Anarcha received from enslaved men on the Westcott plantation, but this is consistent with the experience of young women as described in the FWP slave narratives. Regardless of how Anarcha was eventually impregnated for the first time, it is logical and consistent with the record that she would have drawn the attention of young men.