The Unsuccessful Hanging of Mackey Anderson Keith
by Bruce Baker
The area known today as Keithsburg was named for the Keith Family, who owned and operated a sizable plantation. The tale of one Mackey Anderson Keith, who was hung by the Union Army in 1864, but died here in Cherokee County in 1872, is a strange one and not without controversy. We’ll start with his great grandfather’s arrival in the Virginia Colony, because I believe it has some bearing on the man and his character.
Cornelius James Keith
Cornelius James Keith was born near Loch Lomond, Scotland, in 1715, as was his son in 1743. You may recall that just a couple years later, on April of 1746, the Battle of Culloden resulted in the end of Scotland’s fight for Independence, and the Jacobite cause. One result of this is known as the Highland Clearances, where a great number of supporters of the Jacobite cause were removed from Scotland. The Keith Clan were Jacobites, and there are records of Keiths relocating to Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and the American Colonies. Many were impoverished, arrested for vagrancy, and sent away as part of their sentencing. As they lacked money, the ones sent to Virginia commonly arrived as indentured servants, and there are records of multiple Keiths who found themselves as bonded labor upon arrival. The prison sentence would set a term during which they were to labor for the merchant who paid their passage both to repay that debt and to serve out the penalty for their transgressions. Indentured servitude was really prison labor, not slavery, as it was not perpetual. At some point your rights were restored, a small compensation was given, and you then had to make a life of your own.
Image: Cornelius James Keith Jr. grave marker, located in Oolenoy Baptist Church Cemetery, Pickens, South Carolina.
For Cornelius and his son, Cornelius Keith the III, that life in Virginia was one of abject poverty, living along the Roanoke River quite literally without a roof over their heads These are the exact words of one William Bryd about poor Cornelius Keith and his family: “...Cornelius Keith...liv'd rather in a penn than a house with his wife and 6 children. I never beheld such a scene of poverty in this happy part of the world. The hovel they lay in had no roof to cover those wretches from injurys of the weather; but when it rain'd or was colder than ordinary, the whole family took refuge in a fodder stack. The poor man had rais'd a kind of a house but for want of nails it remain'd uncover'd. I gave him a note on Maj. Mumford for nails for that purpose and so make the whole family happy at a very small expense. The man can read and write very well, and by the way a trade can make set up Quernstones & yet is pooer than than any Highlander Sct or Bog Trotting Irishman.”
In time they would relocate to what is now South Carolina onto land acquired from the Cherokee Indians, and both Conelius Keith Junior and his son Cornelius the III are buried in Pickens County, SC. George Keith, the father of Mackey Keith and the son of Cornelius the III, would be born in South Carolina but head west into Georgia, and was buried in Forsyth County in 1840. Mackey too was born in South Carolina, however, he’s buried in the Keith Family Cemetery here in Keithsburg.
Mackey Keith
Born in 1796, Mackey was too old to serve in the US Civil War, and he continued to farm the Keith Plantation throughout the war. He was one of the largest (if not the largest) slaveowners in the area, but perhaps because of the family’s own unfortunate history with forced labor, the Keiths treated their enslaved people better than most. They were given better care, and the Keiths refused to separate family members. They were even said to refer to them as “helpers” rather than slaves, and were not abusive. I say this not to in any way condone the practice of slavery, but as will become apparent slaves on the Keith Plantation fared far better than most.
Mackey Keith was 68 years old the day the Union Army came to Canton. As the Governor of Georgia was a Canton resident, the soldiers were under orders to loot the city for provisions and burn as much of it as they wanted down, while making certain that Governor Brown’s house was among those torched. For Canton’s 200 residents, it was a tragic day, with over half the city destroyed.
Image: Obituary of Mackey Anderson Keith, The Standard and Express (Cartersville, GA) August 22, 1872.
The soldiers then headed to the Keith Plantation. Mackey was made aware that they were coming, and he instructed his slaves to bury the families’ valuables underground and hide as much of the food as they could up in the trees on the property. When the soldiers found some of the food in the trees, they opted to set his house on fire and hang Mackey Keith from one of those trees. Once the blaze was going, the men took the food they’d found and left. But Mackey Keith was not dead; the rope had caught on a tree branch, preventing it from breaking his neck. Keith’s slaves freed him once the soldiers left and also put out the housefire.
Slavery ended a year later, but the vast majority of his formerly enslaved would remain, working as sharecroppers on the land and even rebuilding his heavily damaged home using clay from the nearby Etowah River to make kiln-dried bricks. Mackey Keith died on August 15, 1872, and when he did the Keith family parceled out land to their former slaves, and the earliest free black settlements in Canton were the result. The Keith surname is common in the black community here, and one such report from a AfriGeneas weblog used by black families with the Keith surname states: “ My great, great, great grandfather was given 160 acres, some of which is still in the family today.”
Sources:
Arrival in Virginia: Ancestry.com. U.S. and Canada, Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, 1500s-1900s [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc, 2010. Place: Virginia; Year: 1739-1740; Page Number: 209
Quotation from Wm. Byrd: Bryd, Histories of the Dividing Line ed. Boyd, 305.
Life in VA and SC: Cornelius Keith (abt.1715-abt.1808) | WikiTree FREE Family Tree, and references cited herein
AfriGeneas weblog: https://bit.ly/3Tj00L7