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by Effson Chester Bryant (Author)
Libbin (Living) In De (The) Billige (Village) - Sam Pitt (Sampit, Sampeet) photographically tells the stories and history of the Bryants, a family from Sampit, a small, rural, wooded, fishing, logging and farming community in Georgetown County. The nearly 700 photos, dating back to the 1800s, capture the author's family African American lineage, Sampit's Gullah or Geechee culture and the community's rich history.
From the big house (slave master's house) to the White House, Bryant "brings to life some of the tales and precious memories he recalls from his childhood" and the continued history of the 21st century. It also tell the stores and tales about the Sampits or Sampas Indians, white settlers, slave owners, white planters, plantations, rice fields, slaves, freemen, stores, schools, churches, gospel singers and infamous hang man or hanging tree,
This outstanding book helps to put in writing of the many faces of the kinfolks that once lived and soiled the ancestry ground of this formal Indian Village and Slave Plantation. "
Libbin in the Billige even includes the historical account of Reverend March Singleton, known as Father March, an honored Preacher, Church builder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Reverend William Conyers Ervin Jr., an influential preacher and community leader, The Right Reverend Frederick Calhoun James, 93rd Elected and Consecrated Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, President Barack Hussein Obama, the 44th U.S. President, First Lady Michelle Obama, whose great-great grandfather worked as a slave on the Friendfield plantation in Georgetown County and Uncle who served as the longest serving Principal at Sampit Elementary School and Congressman James E. Clyburn, the moral conscience for South Carolina.
As is evident by its title, the 339-page book and 1400 reference contains Gullah or Geechee language, a combination of English and West African languages spoken along the sea islands of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.
