Descendant says Burlington County village of ex-slaves included free blacks

Some historians believe Timbuctoo was a tiny community of fugitive slaves established in a Burlington County woods with the help of Quakers nearly four decades before the Civil War broke out.

But a descendant of one of the first Timbuctoo families says he discovered during a genealogical search that the enclave's rich history goes beyond reports that it was just a stop on the Underground Railroad and the scene of pitched battles between escaped slaves and slavecatchers.

Guy Weston, who wrote an article that was published in this quarter's National Genealogical Society Magazine, says Timbuctoo included a rare group of African Americans who were not born into slavery and who had lived independent lives before the emancipation.

"We know about the evils of slavery and the pain and suffering inflicted by the whips of people who mistreated the slaves," Weston said in a recent interview. "But we know little about the people who were free."

In his article, "Finding Free African American Ancestors From the Antebellum Period," Weston noted that famed author Henry Louis Gates had advised African Americans who want to trace their history to the days before emancipation to "try to find the name of their last enslaved ancestor's owner." Weston said the advice "fails to acknowledge the very significant history of a substantial minority" who were free. Between 1800 and 1860, free African Americans were 11 percent to 14 percent of that total ethnic population.

After examining a tattered handwritten deed, mortgage receipts and a will handed down by relatives, Weston learned one ancestor had purchased a one-acre parcel in Timbuctoo for $30 in 1829. Four generations later, that property, off Church Road in Westampton Township, is still in his family. The original house was vacated in the 1930s and burned down around 1940. Since then, a new house was built on the lot.

His mother, Mary Weston, 78, a retired special-education teacher, lives there. She chokes up when she talks about what they have learned from her son's two decades of research.

"It's very important for me to be able to establish a root," she said. "A person of color may not always be able to go back and see where it began . . . It gives me pride."

Knowing some of her ancestors had enjoyed freedom back before the Civil War gives Mary Weston comfort. "People think it wasn't possible. But it was," she said.

She instructs visitors to wear gloves before examining the deed, and protects the family's bulging Bible, which contains the handwritten names and births of family members dating back to 1880.

Like Solomon Northup, whose life was depicted in the Academy Award-winning picture 12 Years a Slave, the Westons' ancestor John Bruere was a free man and could own property, Guy Weston said.

"Where did John Bruere get $30 to buy land?" Weston asked, suggesting he must have had a job to allow him to buy the land from Quakers.

A yellow mortgage receipt passed down through the family sheds more light on the lives his ancestors led. Bruere's grandson had paid the mortgage by making 2,000 bricks.

The 1840 census record for Timbuctoo says Bruere - whose name was apparently anglicized to Brewer - was a free black man who was born in Pennsylvania, which had abolished slavery in 1780. The 1850 census mentions Lambert Guile, his son-in-law, as a free black, born in New Jersey, who worked as a waiter. His obituary in 1875 called him an "industrious and worthy man" who had been in demand as a white-washer, or cleaner.

Paul Schopp, a local historian from Riverton who has lectured on Timbuctoo, said he has not specifically researched Bruere, but he believes Timbuctoo was founded mostly by fugitive slaves from the South who helped other runaways settle in New Jersey, where they could hide. Hezekiah Hall, one of the first to arrive in 1825, came from Maryland and had been a slave of Charles Carroll, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Schopp said. Some Timbuctoo residents had given false names and birthplaces to census takers to hide their identities, Schopp said.

He also said it is unlikely free African Americans from New Jersey would have lived in the village with the fugitive slaves because slavecatchers sometimes came into Timbuctoo to make arrests.

But other historians disagree. Ernest Lyght, author of Path of Freedom: The Black Presence in New Jersey's Burlington County, 1659-1900, wrote that Timbuctoo had "a large number of nonslaves" and that a "small number of fugitive slaves were often found among them." He wrote that the villagers generally "lived a quiet and orderly life."

Weston, an executive director of DC CARE Consortium, an HIV/AIDs services organization in Washington, said Bruere's early life is a mystery and he has found no records indicating his ancestor once was a slave. But after Bruere purchased land, he lived freely, even appearing before a county official to take an oath when named a trustee of the Mt. Moriah A.M.E. Church in Mount Holly, Weston said.

"He was not in hiding," Weston said. And, Bruere's descendants also lived as free men and women, he said.

By the mid-1800s, Timbuctoo had 125 residents, but that number dwindled to only a few families in the early 1900s, historians have said.

"States in New England and along the North Atlantic began gradually freeing slaves as early as 1783," Weston wrote. In New Jersey, which abolished slavery in 1804, the census shows that in 1820 "free blacks, 12,460, outnumbered those in bondage, 7,557," he said. By 1850 the census shows there were no slaves in Burlington County, he said.

The 1860 census reports show there were nearly 500,000 free African Americans nationwide.

Weston began unearthing the details of his heritage in 1992 while attempting to obtain title insurance for the family plot after a relative gave his mother the deed. The family had continued to pay taxes on the land. It took a year to sort out legal complexities before the family could obtain clear title and have a house built there. He said he conducted his research at various times over the last two decades.

The only visual reminder of Timbuctoo now is down the street - a cemetery with the gravestones of 13 African American soldiers who fought in the Civil War. More than four years ago, Temple University had conducted archaeological digs near the cemetery and uncovered the foundation of a house and artifacts that showed Timbuctoo had been a vibrant community. A church, a school, and camp meeting also were part of the village.

Weston's brother, Mark, recalled when he first saw the family homestead with its "grass taller than my head" more than 20 years ago. He thought "it was cool" that Timbuctoo had played a role in the Underground Railroad, but didn't know until his brother researched the family history that their ancestors had full lives.

"I wished I had known this when I was young," Mark Weston said, recalling how some schoolmates had belittled him and his friends by saying their ancestors had been "just slaves."