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See related article "A White Man's Journey through Black History"

Richard Pace and the first blacks

Some historical surprises

by Roy Johnson

Richard Pace was the first Pace in America. Our first record of him is of his marriage to Isabella Smythe in the parish of St. Dunstan, Stepney, then a suburb of London, now a part of Greater London. He and Isabella were in Jamestown some time prior to 1616, one of the earliest settlers. It was Richard Pace who, tipped off by the Indian boy Chanco, rowed across the James River to warn the settlers of the coming Indian attack in the famous massacre of 1622. The colony was able to prepare itself and was not wiped out.

My mother told me that we are descended from Richard, but subsequent evidence, especially DNA, has proven otherwise.  However, as the first Pace in America, he remains significant to all Paces.

I taught history for 31 years of my life, and my history books told of the first blacks brought to Jamestown in 1619 by a Dutch slaving ship that ran aground and then sold their cargo to the colonists. The books said that the Jamestown residents were quite startled as they had never seen blacks before.

I have a copy of the marriages performed in St. Dunstan parish in 1608, which included the Richard Pace marriage. Imagine my surprise as I looked at the other marriages of that year to find "Sam and Mary, nigers."

First, I was surprised at the word "nigers". I had been under the impression that the term "nigger" was derived from a corruption of the Spanish word "Negro", meaning simply "black", evolving first into "Nigra" then "nigger". However, the word "niger" is LATIN for "black". It now appears that this term pre-dated the Spanish "Negro", which came into use only later when most slaves were acquired from Spanish sources. I would guess that the older term then took on a negative connotation which it probably did not have in the beginning.

Secondly, the assumption that Richard Pace and the other Jamestown residents had never seen blacks is obviously untrue. Richard and Isabella Pace and others from the St. Dunstan area were undoubtedly familiar with Africans before they came to America. 

Slavery did not exist in English law at that time, but indentured servitude did. Most servants had a contract for x number of years, but the law set a limit on how long servitude could be in the absence of a contract. So those early African-Americans were released after their term of servitude and became free men. There is a record of at least on of them taking up some land and paying the passage of some white servants from England, thus acquiring indentured servants of his own. Not too many Americans realize that there was once a time when blacks could own whites. Also, there are descendents of these early black servants whose ancestors (in that line, at least) were never slaves.

It took years for American law to create our "peculiar institution" of slavery. In the early 1600s when a person said he owned "slaves" he was referring to his indentured servants, and they could be white, black, or native American. Gradually laws were passed extending the term of servitude for blacks and shortening it for whites, until it eventually became a lifetime obligation. Other laws forbade black-white and slave-free marriages, and eventually, required that the children of slaves also be the property of the master, making American slavery unlike slavery in ancient Rome or in Africa, where this was not the case.

It would be most interesting to know where Richard Pace was when those first blacks were brought ashore in 1619, and what he thought. Of course, we can only speculate. I suspect that his kindness to the Indian boy who tipped him off about the impending Indian raid on Jamestown  would presuppose a similar attitude toward the Africans. I wonder if he knew Sam and Mary back in England.