Retired instructor authors book about a man’s life he considers “weightier than an entire curriculum”

Retired HFC English instructor Dr. Gary McIlroy believes that the story behind the 1837 autobiography of Charles Ball, an enslaved man, *Slavery in the United States: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball, should be at the forefront of American studies.

“After many years of focusing on the history and the authors of the mid-19th century, I wanted to learn more about the post-Colonial era: the struggles of a new nation, the awkward alliance between the North and South, the difficulty of producing a constitution, the consequences of the belief in ‘manifest destiny,’” explained McIlroy. “Somewhere along the way, I saw a reference to Charles Ball, an enslaved man who had walked from Georgia to Maryland. The audaciousness of that feat led me to his autobiography.”

McIlroy wrote a creative nonfiction version of Ball’s autobiography titled Turtles on a Black Gum Tree: The Life of Charles Ball.

“It’s an introduction to Ball's life for those who do not have the time to read a 500-page, 19th-century text,” explained McIlroy. “My narrative provides, I hope, a concise and vivid depiction of this singularly brave, resourceful, and compassionate individual. It is that rare story in which the life of one person is weightier than an entire curriculum.”

A brief history of Charles Ball’s life

(This section is adapted from the National Park Service website). Ball was born enslaved on a Maryland tobacco plantation around 1781. When he was 4, the man who enslaved him died. He and his family were subsequently sold to several different enslavers. Ball was the only member of his family to remain in Maryland.

When he was 12, Ball’s next enslaver, whom he said treated him “with humanity,” died, and the estate was taken over by his father, a cruel taskmaster who kept Ball and his fellow enslaved individuals continuously hungry and cold. At 20, Ball was hired out to the U.S. Navy** and stationed as a cook aboard the USS Congress. During his two years of service in the Navy, Ball met several free men of color, one of whom helped him devise a plan to hide on a ship bound for Philadelphia. But the ship’s itinerary was changed, forcing Ball to return to Maryland. There, he was eventually sold to a man who sold enslaved individuals, and was transported to South Carolina.

After six years of grueling and intolerable treatment in South Carolina and Georgia, Ball fled Georgia, returning to his family in Maryland, where he then fought in the War of 1812. Rather than fight for the British, he enlisted under Commodore Joshua Barney and attempted to convince other enslaved individuals to fight against the British instead of defecting.

Once the war ended, Ball remained in Baltimore, living as a free man and eventually establishing a small farm. In 1830, after nearly 20 years of freedom, he was seized by the brother-in-law of his former enslaver, taken back to Georgia, and eventually sold again. By the time he escaped and returned home again, his second wife and four children, all of whom had been born free, had been taken and sold into enslavement.

“The news of their capture and captivity almost deprived me of my life,” Ball wrote. “It was the most dreadful of all the misfortunes I had ever suffered. They had passed into hopeless bondage and were gone forever beyond my reach.”

There is no historical record of his later years, his family’s fate, or his date of death.

“Ball died in obscurity in Pennsylvania, fearful that one of his previous enslavers might still attempt to claim him,” said McIlroy.

Significance of the book’s title

Ball wrote his autobiography with the assistance of an attorney named Isaac Fisher, who served as his transcriber and editor. Subsequent editions of Ball’s autobiography were rereleased in 1846 and 1859 under different titles.

“Overall, the incidents and chronology of my story closely follow Ball's narrative with some passages copied verbatim,” said McIlroy. “Even so, we must keep in mind that Ball's story comes to us only through the filter of another writer, Isaac Fisher, about whom little is known.”

McIlroy explained how he came up with the title.

“To supplement their meager food rations, some enslaved people used their ‘free time’ to hunt and trap. In the fall, when most animals were in hibernation, Ball was often reduced to catching turtles on the fringes of the ponds,” he said. “After securing one, he would bind it with strips of hickory bark and hang it from the branch of a tree."

“Teaching is one of the best ways of continuing one’s education”

The middle of three sons, McIlroy was born in Detroit. He has been married to Monica Dewey since 1985. The couple, who have three children, reside in Mexico.

A graduate of Lakeview High School in St. Clair Shores, McIlroy earned his bachelor’s degree in English and political science from Oakland University. A two-time alumnus of the University of Detroit Mercy (then the University of Detroit), he earned both his master’s and doctoral degrees in American literature.

For more than 40 years, McIlroy taught college writing and literature. He taught at UDM and Marygrove College before coming to HFC (then Henry Ford Community College) in 1985. He taught at the College from 1985 until his retirement in 2020.

“Teaching is one of the best ways of continuing one’s education,” said McIlroy. “Sometimes students don’t realize that we are their classmates as well as their teachers.”

A story that needed to be heard again

His early academic writing focused primarily on the Transcendental era with a strong interest in nature writers. His essays on authors Henry David Thoreau and Annie Dillard have appeared in the South Atlantic Quarterly, American Literature, Thoreau Quarterly, and in the anthologies Earthly Words and Contemporary American Writers.

“The tranquil and aesthetically pleasing landscapes and retreats of the Transcendental writers were not isolated from the rest of society," said McIlroy. "Social unease and political tremors reverberated everywhere, including the unsettled matter of sanctioned slavery."

This prompted him to look further into the historical record.

“When I discovered Charles Ball, I knew that his was a story that needed to be heard again,” said McIlroy.

A broad and revealing portrait

Turtles is his first book. It took McIlroy three years to research and write it. The following paragraph is an excerpt:

“Charles Ball walked from Georgia to Maryland in a period stretching from August until the following spring. The terrain was rugged and varied; the weather was alternately hot, wet, and cold; food was difficult to secure; shelter haphazard; and his clothes threadbare and inadequate. His shoes wore out quickly, and his second-hand boots failed so often that he had to wrap strips of hickory bark around his feet to keep them from falling apart. He had begun his flight from his late [master’s]* plantation in Georgia on the ninth of August. By November, he had made it no farther than South Carolina. Inclement weather and starless nights had exhausted his patience; fear of being seen had worn on his nerves; loneliness and longing gnawed at his soul.”

“Ball is tremendously important because his story is so rich and varied. As general readers, we rarely get past the established or canonical writers like Frederick Douglass, whose experience was quite different from Ball's,” said McIlroy. “Aside from drawing attention to Ball, I hope the book provides a broad and revealing portrait of Southern culture in the first few decades of the 19th century – that is, the lives of enslaved people; the wealthy planters; the more modest farmers; the merchants; and the poor, white subsistence dwellers.”