Hull Anderson
- Charles Thrasher
- Feb 17
- 4 min read
Hull Anderson wasn’t the only black shipwright in North Carolina, but he was certainly the most famous. Prior to the Civil War, a large number of blacks were employed in the maritime trades, both skilled and unskilled, freedmen and slaves. The largest group were carpenters who might build boats as well as houses. Blacks also dominated the blacksmith and caulking trades. (Caulking was the practice of waterproofing a ship’s hull by hammering oakum into the gaps between planks.) [1]
Shipbuilding and related trades were among the few where Blacks were allowed to excel. [2]
Hull Anderson likely started working in shipyards as a caulker. In the early part of the 19th century, Abner Neale and Jonathan Havens both had shipyards in Washington. Neale’s yard was located on Castle Island. In 1815, the majority of the eight men employed in Jonathan Haven’s Washington shipyard were slaves. [3]
Anderson was born in 1794, likely the property of John and Sally Anderson, Beaufort County. He was granted his freedom in 1826, either by gift or purchase. Slaves with a marketable skill were often hired out. Sometimes they were allowed by their owners to keep part of their earnings. It might have been the way Hull Anderson earned his freedom. His shipbuilding skills later earned him the money to free his wife and child.
Anderson was an anomaly, a successful black shipwright — the only black shipwright — when shipyards owned by whites typically had a short lifespan.
In 1826 he bought a lot in Washington and built a home. In the same year he bought from Joseph Hinton “a Negro woman named Esther, formerly the property of the late Mrs. Sally Anderson.” In 1827 he bought another Negro woman named Chaney (listed as Cherry in an 1843 census) from Miss Ann Grimes. One was likely his wife, the other his daughter. [4] In addition to the shipyard, he owned a dozen lots in town and at least four slaves who worked with him in the yard. [5]
By 1830, he had purchased from Bryan Grimes the waterfront lot at 519 West Main Street and built a shipyard. (Ironically, Grimes was later the Confederate general who led the last attack against the Union Army before General Lee surrendered at Appomattox.)
Anderson was a successful businessman and a freed Black man, but in North Carolina, that didn’t mean he was free.
Nat Turner's Rebellion
Nat Turner’s Rebellion of 1831 terrified slave owners in the maritime counties of North Carolina. Between 55 and 65 whites died in the slave revolt in nearby Southampton County, Virginia. At the time, approximately one-third of the population of North Carolina was enslaved.
The white reaction was immediate and visceral. North Carolina’s Adjutant General sent 200 muskets from Raleigh to defend against a possible black revolt in New Bern; the county officials confiscated all firearms from slaves. Raleigh officials jailed all free blacks. “And in Duplin County, not far up the Northeast Cape Fear River from Wilmington, testimony induced by torture revealed plans for a slave rebellion, leading to a number of slaves being tried and put to death. Some were beheaded and their heads placed on posts as a warning to other blacks. At least one of the alleged slave conspirators was burned at the stake.” [6]
White authorities were terrified that free Blacks would incite their slaves to rebellion. The infamous Black Codes of North Carolina were the result.
The Black Codes
By 1830, any slave who didn’t leave the state within ninety days after being freed would be jailed and sold. Any free Black entering the state had 20 days to leave, pay a fine of $500, or serve 10 years of labor (1826). Any free Black found idle or without honest employment could be hired out by the court for a time sufficient to reform their “habits of industry and morality,” not to exceed three years for any one offence (1826). Free Blacks who left the state for 90 days couldn’t return (1830). Any free Black who married a slave could be fined, imprisoned, and whipped, not to exceed 39 lashes (1830). Free Blacks couldn’t gamble with slaves or allow slaves to gamble in their houses (1830). Slaves and free Blacks couldn’t preach in public, punishable by 39 lashes (1831). Any free Black convicted of violating one of the Black Codes who couldn’t pay their fine with cash would pay with their servitude. [7]
Hull Anderson recognized the grim arc of history. In 1841, after the General Assembly took away his voting rights and limited his freedoms of speech, assembly, and movement, he sold his shipyard and property in Washington and emigrated with his family to Liberia on the West African coast. [8]
Liberia
The Republic of Liberia was a project of the American Colonization Society who believed Blacks would never be integrated into U.S. society; they had a better chance of freedom in Africa than the United States. Between 1822 and the outbreak of the Civil War more than 15,000 freed and free-born African Americans relocated to Liberia. [9]
In 1843 Hull Anderson was living in the town of Monrovia, Liberia, with his wife Cherry and son Henry. The 1843 census listed his age as 50. He had given up shipbuilding and become a farmer. He owned 100 acres of land, 2 buildings, and 100 coffee trees. He died on July 19, 1852; his wife died ten years later. [10]
He didn’t live to see, even from a distance, the eventual abolition of slavery in the United States.
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