Chapter 1: Born into Bondage (1841–1865)

Amanda Wilkerson was born on July 28, 1841, in Oglethorpe County, Georgia—a place where the red clay roads twisted through fields of cotton and pine, and the air was heavy with both humidity and oppression. Her birth occurred during one of the most tumultuous and dehumanizing periods in American history. She was not born free. She was born into slavery.

In Amanda’s Georgia, enslaved people outnumbered white residents in many counties. Oglethorpe County, like much of the Georgia Piedmont, was dominated by plantation agriculture, primarily cotton, which relied entirely on the forced labor of Black men, women, and children. Enslaved people like Amanda were considered property, often bought, sold, mortgaged, and inherited.

We do not know the names of Amanda’s parents, but we can assume with sorrowful confidence that they too were enslaved. Her earliest memories may have included the fearful whispers of mothers torn from children, the crack of a whip, and the quiet comfort of whispered prayers and lullabies passed down in secret. From the beginning, Amanda lived under the constant threat of separation—a child could be sold away without warning, never to see their family again. Such was the reality of American chattel slavery.

Amanda’s girlhood was likely spent in backbreaking labor. If she was assigned to the “big house,” she might have been made to clean, cook, or care for white children. If she worked the fields, she would have risen before dawn, walked barefoot through rows of cotton or corn, and labored until sundown under the unrelenting Georgia sun. No matter where she worked, her body was not her own—her labor, her time, even her womb were controlled by others.

Despite this, enslaved communities fostered deep familial and spiritual bonds. Through songs, oral storytelling, and religion—especially the emerging Black Christian tradition—enslaved people created a cultural world of their own, one that resisted dehumanization and offered hope. Amanda likely drew strength from the elders who sang spirituals in the fields, from whispered stories told under moonlight, and from the faith that someday, freedom would come.

That hope burned brighter in the 1860s as war swept across the South. When Amanda was around twenty years old, the Civil War began. By the time General Sherman’s troops began their infamous March to the Sea in 1864, devastation surrounded her. Union forces swept through Georgia, burning plantations, tearing up railroads, and offering a glimpse of what emancipation might look like.

Then, in 1865, after more than two decades of bondage, Amanda Wilkerson was free.

But emancipation brought no reparations, no land, and no guarantees. Freedom was a beginning—but it was a beginning without structure, without shelter, without protection. Formerly enslaved people like Amanda stepped into a world that was legally changed but structurally hostile. They were left to navigate a society where many white Southerners still saw them as property, and where violent backlash brewed against any semblance of Black independence.

That same year, Amanda took her first step into this uncertain future with courage. She married Jacob Davenport, a fellow freedperson from her community in Maxeys, Georgia. Their marriage, likely held in a church or on farmland among friends and neighbors, was more than a union of two people—it was an act of defiance, a declaration of dignity, and the start of a family rooted in survival, strength, and love.

Amanda had emerged from slavery not broken, but determined. She would never again belong to anyone but herself. And from that moment on, she would shape her own legacy—one child, one season, one sunrise at a time.

Chapter 2: Emancipation and Marriage (1865–1870)

"Freedom Without Foundations"

In the spring of 1865, the sound of gunfire finally ceased. The Confederacy collapsed, the Union had won, and the Thirteenth Amendment was on its way to ratification. Slavery, at least in law, was over. For Amanda Wilkerson, now in her mid-twenties, freedom arrived not with celebration, but with uncertainty.

There was no government waiting to greet her. No land offered. No reparations paid. Just the same land she had worked as property—now to be worked as a “free” woman, without protection, resources, or rights. The freedom Amanda had long prayed for came with little more than the clothes on her back and the memory of chains still fresh on her skin.

Yet out of that chaos, Amanda found something precious: love, and perhaps even stability, in the arms of a man named Jacob “Jake” Davenport.

Jake had also been born into slavery, most likely in the same region of Oglethorpe County. His life mirrored Amanda’s in many ways—long days in the cotton fields, relentless labor, and a future stolen by a system that never intended to let him dream. But like Amanda, Jake survived. And after emancipation, they did more than survive—they began building.

They were married later that year, in Maxeys, Georgia, a rural crossroads town surrounded by farmland. Their marriage was both a personal union and a political act. Before emancipation, enslaved couples had no legal right to marry. Families were regularly torn apart, with spouses sold hundreds of miles from each other. Marriage ceremonies held in slave quarters were sacred, but unrecognized by law. Now, in 1865, Amanda and Jake stood before God and the law as husband and wife for the first time in their lives.

Starting a life together was not easy. The South was ravaged—its economy shattered, its towns burned, its white population humiliated by defeat and increasingly violent in their resentment. Amanda and Jake were among the thousands of newly freed people who stayed close to home, hoping familiarity would give them a foothold in a rapidly changing world.

By 1870, Amanda was listed in the U.S. Census as “keeping house” in Maxeys. Jake worked as a farm laborer. Their household included Sam, age seven, and John, just six months old—two boys born into freedom, whose names could now appear in a government record, whose births were not mere property transactions, but part of a family history.

But this was freedom in name only. Most freedpeople were forced into exploitative labor arrangements like sharecropping and tenant farming, where they leased land from former slaveholders and paid in crops. These systems, on paper, promised a share of the harvest—but in reality, they trapped families in cycles of debt. With no access to credit, legal defense, or fair wages, Amanda and Jake likely found themselves working the same land they had toiled on while enslaved—only now paying rent for the privilege.

Despite these setbacks, Amanda began shaping a home, instilling in her children the strength that had carried her through bondage. Her days were filled with washing clothes by hand, cooking over open fires, and tending to the garden and chickens if they were lucky enough to have them. Nights were spent telling stories, nursing babies, and praying the next day would bring opportunity instead of sorrow.

All around them, Reconstruction flickered like a candle in the wind. For a brief moment, African Americans were elected to local office. Freedmen’s schools opened. Churches became hubs of political and community life. But these gains were fragile and fiercely contested. White vigilantes, including the newly formed Ku Klux Klan, terrorized Black communities, determined to restore racial dominance by any means necessary.

Amanda lived under constant threat. A wrong word, a perceived insult, or a simple act of pride could bring violent retaliation. And yet, she persevered.

Her marriage to Jake—official, sacred, and hard-earned—was one of many small acts of rebellion against a country still struggling to accept Black humanity. Together, they planted seeds not just in the red Georgia soil, but in the hearts of their children—seeds of faith, survival, and resilience.

They had begun building something of their own. A home. A family. A future.

And Amanda, no longer property, was now a matriarch.

Chapter 3: Raising a Family in the Reconstruction Era (1870–1900)

"Loss, Labor, and Love"

By 1870, Amanda Wilkerson Davenport was navigating the harsh terrain of freedom with quiet strength. Living in Maxeys, Georgia, with her husband Jacob “Jake” Davenport, and two young sons—Sam, age seven, and infant John—Amanda was building a life from the ashes of slavery. But the Reconstruction period, though promising on paper, offered few true protections.

Their community was rural and deeply segregated. Schools for Black children were few and underfunded. Access to healthcare and legal recourse was nearly nonexistent. Amanda and Jake, both illiterate and born enslaved, had little recourse when faced with unfair contracts or mistreatment by white landowners. But like so many Black families of the era, they endured by leaning on one another.

Amanda’s days were physically exhausting. She tended to the children, prepared meals from scratch, and likely cultivated a small garden if the land allowed. She may have taken in laundry or worked alongside Jake in the fields when needed—cotton, corn, or whatever crops the landlord demanded. Life was marked by cycles of planting, harvesting, and praying that the yield would be enough to settle the debts and keep the family from losing what little they had.

But even survival carried its risks. In 1876, Jake Davenport was arrested for retailing whiskey without a license—a common charge in a time when alcohol sales were heavily regulated, especially for Black men seeking side income. Selling whiskey illegally wasn’t just about rebellion—it was a desperate strategy to make ends meet in a world that left Black families no economic cushion. The fact that another man named John Goolsby—possibly a relative—was also arrested for the same offense suggests a shared risk, perhaps even a small underground trade among kin.

It was a dangerous gamble. Black men accused of violating laws were often targeted with disproportionately harsh penalties. Even a misdemeanor could end in forced labor through convict leasing—a system that recreated slavery under another name. Jake's arrest would have placed stress on the household, forcing Amanda to hold everything together in his absence, if only for a few days or weeks.

By 1880, Amanda’s resilience had become the backbone of her family. The Davenports were still in Oglethorpe County, living in a small farming community known as District 237. Their household had changed: Sam, now 16, worked as a farmhand like his father. Their second son, John, had tragically passed away. In his place, they had welcomed another child—Mercer Davenport, born around 1878. The couple had also adopted a daughter, Henrietta, whose origins are unclear but whose presence spoke to Amanda’s capacity to love and nurture beyond her own bloodline.

Amanda had now given birth to multiple children, and her maternal spirit extended further than biology. As the home’s anchor, she raised and consoled, taught and disciplined, cooked and counseled. And when death visited her household—as it so often did in the 19th century—she mourned and carried on.

Though slavery had ended, Amanda still lived under a system designed to suppress Black mobility. Jim Crow laws, officially taking root in the 1880s, made segregation the law of the land. Public spaces, transportation, and even water fountains were divided by race. Amanda’s children would grow up in a world where a Black boy could be punished for making eye contact with a white neighbor, where landownership was nearly impossible, and where speaking out could cost someone their life.

Still, Amanda and Jake pushed forward. They instilled values of family, work, and quiet perseverance. They might not have owned the land they worked, but they laid claim to something far more enduring: the survival of their children and their history.

Amanda likely worshipped at a local Black Baptist church, where Sundays offered rest, worship, and the freedom to speak, sing, and gather without white oversight. These churches weren’t just places of faith—they were community centers, schools, and political safe havens where the Black community strategized, supported one another, and dreamed of a better life.

But even those dreams were tempered by grief. Sometime between 1880 and 1900, Amanda and Jake would lose more children. Of the eleven Amanda reportedly birthed, only one—Mercer—survived to adulthood. Sam and Henrietta both passed away, joining John and their unnamed siblings in the growing list of heartbreaks Amanda bore silently, carrying the weight in her body and soul.

By 1900, the Davenports had moved once again—this time to Fork, Madison County, Georgia. They were still renting farmland. Amanda was now approaching 60 years old. Most of her children were gone. But she and Jake had been married for 35 years, raising not only Mercer but also their grandchildren—likely orphans of their lost sons and daughters.

That year’s census marked a small milestone: Mercer, now in his early twenties, was the only literate person in the household. Amanda and Jake had raised a child who could read and write. In a world stacked against them, that alone was a triumph.

Amanda had walked from bondage to freedom, from mother of eleven to matriarch of one surviving son. She had labored, grieved, and endured. But through it all, she remained standing—her love of family unshaken, her roots deep in Georgia’s soil.

Her legacy, though built from loss, was one of unbreakable strength.

Chapter 4: Widowhood, Migration, and the Final Years (1900–1921)

"Rooted in Love, Carried by Legacy"

By the turn of the 20th century, Amanda Wilkerson Davenport had known more sorrow than most could bear. Of the eleven children she had brought into the world, only one—Mercer—was still living. Her sons Sam, John, and adopted daughter Henrietta had all passed away, their names now echoes in census records and cemetery stones, their stories preserved only through Amanda’s memory and mourning.

Still, Amanda endured. She and her husband Jake were now living in Fork District, Madison County, Georgia, renting a modest farm. At nearly 60 years old, Amanda was still working—still managing a household, still raising grandchildren whose own parents had been lost. The farm was not theirs, but the sense of home Amanda created—one of love, faith, and resilience—was more permanent than any deed.

Life in Georgia, however, was not becoming any easier. The dawn of the 20th century brought with it the deepening cruelty of Jim Crow segregation, the entrenchment of racial terror, and the widespread disenfranchisement of Black voters. Lynchings were frequent and unpunished. Sharecropping systems ensured economic dependency. White supremacy was the law in practice, if not always in writing. For Amanda, these years were not a reprieve—they were a second kind of bondage.

By 1910, Amanda, now nearly seventy, had moved with Jake and Mercer once more—this time to Rome, Floyd County, Georgia. There, Jake had found work as a gardener, a quieter occupation than the grueling demands of field labor. Perhaps it was a sign of age, or maybe a stroke of luck. Amanda was no longer working outside the home, but her labor never ceased. She managed the home, cared for her grandchildren, and remained the quiet heart of a family shaped by survival.

Meanwhile, Mercer, now in his early thirties, was working at a planing mill—part of the growing industrial landscape of the South. It was dangerous work, but stable, and it marked a shift from the agricultural past Amanda and Jake had known all their lives. Mercer could read and write. He was a laborer with skill and purpose. His survival—and his strength—were Amanda’s legacy in motion.

But the final blow came quietly, sometime between 1910 and 1921: Amanda’s husband, Jake Davenport, passed away. There is no surviving record of the exact date or circumstances, but by the time Amanda’s own death certificate was filed, she was listed as widowed. The man she had loved for over 45 years—the one who had walked with her from bondage to freedom, who fathered her children, and shared in the weight of their losses—was gone.

Without Jake, Amanda was now the sole matriarch. She had outlived most of her children and all of her peers. And so, like many Black families seeking better opportunities and an escape from Georgia’s racial violence, Amanda moved north. She followed Mercer, who had relocated to Indianapolis, Indiana, joining the growing wave of African Americans participating in the Great Migration—a movement that would redefine the country and the lives of millions.

In Indianapolis, Amanda lived out her final years surrounded by the grandchildren she had raised, her only surviving child by her side. She no longer toiled in red clay fields or labored under the heat of a Georgia sun. Though not wealthy in possessions, Amanda was rich in endurance, love, and legacy. She had crossed eras—born into slavery, died a free woman. And she had never let the weight of the world break her spirit.

On May 11, 1921, at the age of 80, Amanda Wilkerson Davenport passed away from bronchial pneumonia. It was Mercer who signed her death certificate, standing as both witness and bearer of her legacy. She was buried in Indianapolis, Indiana—a quiet end far from the place of her birth, but perhaps finally a place of peace.

Amanda’s story didn’t end in tragedy. It ended in triumph—the triumph of survival, of love that endured unimaginable loss, of motherhood that stretched across generations.

She began life as someone else’s property.

She ended it as the matriarch of her family—free, remembered, and revered.