Cornbread My Soul: The Davis Family of Eutawville, South Carolina

Myra Davis-Branic discusses the steps she took in writing a book that traced her family back to the 1700s to a South Carolina Plantation and finding a connection to Sierra Leone through the name of an ancestor, Teneba, which is a name from Sierra Leone’s Mende or Temne tribe. The writing of the book was inspired by a “Cousin’s trip” to The Rocks Plantation Cemetery located in Eutawville, South Carolina, on the County line of Orangeburg and Berkeley Counties. During the trip to locate the headstone of their Great-great grandfather Jacob Davis, who was born a slave, there was an encounter with the Cymbee or Simbi Spirit, a water spirit from folklore originating from Africa and brought to the Low Country of South Carolina. The book, Cornbread My Soul: The Davis Family of Eutawville, South Carolina, has been placed in the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, The Orangeburg Historical Society and the International African American Museum’s Family History Center in Charleston, South Carolina.