<!-- image -->

## D ORA R ICHARDS M ILLER ' S 'R ECOLLECTIONS OF A W EST -I NDIAN H OME AND S LAVE -I NSURRECTION ': A N INTRODUCTION INCLUDING A LINGUISTIC DISCUSSION OF HER C RUCIAN E NGLISH C REOLE TEXTS

Kristoffer Friis Bøegh Utrecht University, Aarhus University k.f.boegh@uu.nl

Peter Bakker Aarhus University linpb@cc.au.dk

## Abstract

This article presents an introduction to a diplomatic edition of a manuscript written by the Caribbean-born writer and educator Dora Richards Miller (18351914), finalized around 1886. The diplomatic edition is published as Miller (this issue), edited and annotated by the authors of the present introductory study. Miller's Recollections contains an account of her memories of the 1848 slave uprising on St. Croix, which resulted in the emancipation of the enslaved population in the Danish West Indies (today's US Virgin Islands). In addition to providing an overview of the life and work of Miller and contextualization of her Recollections , we offer a discussion of the account as a central source for Virgin Islands language history in the 19 th century. The document contains a considerable number of quotations as well as the lyrics of an 1848 song in a historical form of Crucian English Creole. Miller's Recollections can be considered, we argue, the earliest substantial source for the study of Anglophone sociolinguistic variation in the Virgin Islands.

Keywords: Dora Richards Miller; 19 th century; diplomatic edition; slavery; emancipation; Danish West Indies; St. Croix; Crucian English Creole; George W. Cable

## 1. Introduction *

This article presents an introduction to a diplomatic edition of a manuscript written by the Caribbean-born writer and educator Dora Richards Miller (1835-1914), published as Miller (this issue), edited and annotated by the authors. Finalized around 1886, Miller's manuscript, titled Recollections of a West-Indian Home and Slave-Insurrection ,  contains an account of her memories of the 1848 slave uprising on the island of St. Croix, which she witnessed when she was 13 years old. The uprising resulted in the immediate emancipation of the enslaved population in the then Danish West Indies, that is, the three northeastern Caribbean islands of St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix, known since 1917 as the US Virgin Islands.

A summary of the main events can be found in Hall (1992: 208). On the night of July 2, signal fires were lit on the estates of western St. Croix, estate bells began to ring and conch shells were blown, and by the morning, on July 3, an estimated 8,000 people - around half of the island's total enslaved population - had converged in front of the Danish fort in the town of Frederiksted, in western St. Croix, demanding their immediate freedom. Governor-General Peter von Scholten summoned a meeting of his senior advisers in Christiansted, the capital of the Danish West Indies, located east on the  island,  which  resulted  in  him  traveling  overland  to  Frederiksted. There, later on that same day, he then proclaimed emancipation by gubernatorial fiat. Although there were individual violent episodes, the uprising was largely without bloodshed, distinguishing it from other 'late' slave rebellions in the Caribbean, such as the 1816 rebellion in Barbados, the 1823 uprising in Demerara (Guyana), and the 1831 Jamaica Christmas rebellion (cf. Hall 1984).

The sequence of events surrounding the 1848 uprising on St. Croix is mostly well documented, and there is a reasonable quantity of historical literature (cf. Sections 2 and 3 for details). However, Miller's detailed eyewitness account has remained unpublished in full, and is not often referred to by historians, despite the intelligence received directly from enslaved Virgin Islanders. In 1892, a heavily edited extract from it appeared in Scribner's Magazine , but under the name of the Louisianan novelist George W. Cable (1844-1925). Recently, a more elaborate version, a later copy of the original manuscript, has been located, thus enabling the editing and publication of the complete account. Cable claimed that he had condensed Miller's manuscript from 15,600 to 8,100 words in his version.

* We are grateful to the late Arnold R. Highfield (1940-2019) in whose Caribbean collection, now housed at the University of the Virgin Islands, St. Croix, KFB first learned of the Miller manuscript's existence, and to the staff at Tulane University Archives, Louisiana, for assistance with locating a copy of the complete manuscript. We extend thanks to Rasmus Christensen for help with identifying some individuals referred to in Miller's manuscript, and to the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on this introductory study and the diplomatic edition of the account. The work presented here is supported by the Carlsberg Foundation (Grant CF23-1162 for KFB) and by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (Grant 10.46540/4256-00026B for PB).

Our aims in publishing Miller's Recollections -  faithful  to  the  author's full version - are, first, to make a valuable account of a pivotal event in the history of the former Danish West Indies and current US Virgin Islands accessible to a broad readership, and second, to provide more specific discussion of the account as a central source for Virgin Islands language history in the 19 th century. From a linguistic perspective, Miller's account is valuable because it contains a considerable number of quotations and the lyrics of an 1848 song in a historical form of Crucian English Creole, that is, the variety of Caribbean English Creole spoken on St. Croix in the colonial period (ISO 639-3: vic). These texts appear to comprise the earliest substantial source for the study of Crucian English Creole produced by a cultural insider with an awareness of sociolinguistic differences, and they should therefore be brought to light and examined from a linguistic perspective as well.

The remainder of this introductory study is organized as follows. In Section 2, we sketch out the historical context to establish a frame for the rest of the study. In Section 3, we present information about Dora Richards Miller and introduce and discuss her Recollections . In connection with this, we also explore Miller's association with George W. Cable, and their increasingly conflict-laden relationship, as this aspect is important for understanding the full context of Miller's Recollections - including why Miller's version of the account remained unpublished in her own lifetime. In Section 4, we discuss the account's significance as a primary source for studying the diachrony of Crucian English Creole, and thus the historical sociolinguistic situation in St. Croix. In Section 5, we present some brief editorial remarks, outlining the decisions made based on our work with the manuscript, and we provide an overview of the individuals/characters featured in the account.

## 2. Historical context

## 2.1 General background

The Virgin Islands archipelago is situated as part of the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean Sea. The most widely accepted accounts of the Indigenous history of the Virgin Islands suggest that they had been  inhabited  by  indigenous  populations,  who  had  migrated  from  the South American mainland beginning around 1000 BCE, reaching the Virgin Islands around 400 BCE. The first European sighting of the Virgin Islands was by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage to the Americas, in 1493. On November 14, Columbus sighted and, it is generally believed, landed on an island known among the indigenous Amerindian population as Ay-Ay , which he called Santa Cruz 'Holy Cross' in Spanish (hence the adjective Crucian 'of St. Croix'), later Frenchified to St. Croix. 1 He subsequently sighted and named St. Thomas, St. John, and a number of other nearby islands, and he went on to name the whole group of islands for a Christian saint (Ursula) and her group of holy martyred virgin followers.

The Spanish initially claimed the Virgin Islands after this original discovery, but they never established a settlement there. Instead, in 1508, they founded a permanent settlement in Puerto Rico, located west of the Virgin Islands. During the subsequent European scramble for colonies in the Caribbean, St. Croix was claimed successively, starting in 1625, by a number of different settler groups and nationalities. During the 17 th and 18 th centuries, following a series of short-lived settlements, coupled with the decline (through disease, death, and forced migration) of the indigenous Amerindian population, three of the Virgin Islands (St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix) were colonized by the Danes, as the Danish West Indies. In 1917, the three islands were sold to the USA and were given their current name, the US Virgin Islands.

From an economic standpoint, the Danish West Indies displayed a dichotomy: St. Thomas, settled permanently by the Danes in 1672, developed into an important hub for trade and shipping, whereas most activity on St. Croix, acquired from France by Denmark in 1733 and settled starting the following year, revolved around agriculture and large-scale sugar plantations. The colonization of St. John, the smallest of the three islands, was initiated in 1718. It progressed until 1733, when a slave insurrection took place, leading to a halt in further economic exploitation there. Throughout the remainder of the period of slavery, the economic interests of the colonial power were concentrated on St. Thomas and St. Croix.

1 Ay-Ay was the Taíno (Amerindian) name for St. Croix, or for Salt River, St. Croix (the original meaning of the word most likely being 'the river', cf. Highfield 2018: 30 f.). Salt River is an area located on the north shore of St. Croix. Today's spelling of the island's name derives from the French derivation of Spanish Santa Cruz . It is pronounced /sent kroj/ in English, and as /sɛ ̃  kʁwɑ/ in French.

For a broad overview of historical research concerning the Danish West Indies, see, for example, Jensen & Simonsen (2016). For an overview of the social history of the Danish West Indies and the US Virgin Islands, see Olsen (2017), and see Highfield (2018) for additional information on the cultural history of the islands. For an example of a contemporary account from the perspective of the colonizing power, see Highfield & Bøegh (2018). For further information about the Caribbean before European colonization, see Keegan & Hofman (2017).

## 2.2 Slavery in the Danish West Indies

The process of developing the islands in the Danish West Indies as plantation and trade colonies necessitated a workforce beyond what the European participants  involved  in  the  Danish  colonial  endeavor  in  the  Caribbean could provide. To address this issue, the approach adopted was to import enslaved people, principally of African and African Caribbean ancestry, via the transatlantic and local intra-Caribbean slave trade.

As described for example by Hall (1992: 70 ff.), enslaved people on St. Croix endured adverse conditions. The vast majority worked on plantations, particularly in sugar production, performing demanding tasks such as planting, cultivating, harvesting, and processing sugarcane. They were required to toil for long hours. As Hall (1992: 73) writes,

until plantation hours were regulated […] in the 1830s, the workday began at 4 a.m. […]. Work proceeded until 8 or 9 a.m. with a half hour breakfast […]. Work continued until midday and was then interrupted by a break of one-and-a-half hours […]. The afternoon [work] period continued until sundown.

Further, the enslaved lived in often substandard housing, sanitary conditions were typically inadequate, leading to the spread of diseases, and malnutrition  due  to  insufficient  and  poor-quality  food  was  not  uncommon. Consequently, mortality rates were high and birth rates low, and there was a constant flow of new arrivals into the plantations (cf. Roberts et al. 2024).

As in slave societies elsewhere, however, as Sebro (2016: 128) writes, 'the principally racial divide where black meant slave and white meant free', was not absolute in the Danish West Indies, including St. Croix. An intermediate class consisting of free African Caribbeans who managed in different ways to find space for themselves in the slave society, especially in the urban setting, by negotiating ideas of race and social position, was present as well, nuancing the above picture.

In 1803, the importation of new enslaved people became prohibited in the Danish West Indies. The prohibition had been made into law in 1792, but it only took effect after a 10-year grace period. Despite hopes that the conditions for the enslaved would improve after 1792, surging sugar prices led planters to increase their importation of enslaved Africans, and census data, slave trade records, and land tax registers reveal that St. Croix planters actually ended up exacerbating mortality rates among the enslaved in this period (Roberts et al. 2024). Moreover, slave trading still continued internally in the Danish West Indies (for a discussion, cf. Bendtsen 2016). Over time, however, and especially after Britain had moved to abolish slavery in 1833, the question of emancipation began to loom in the islands, especially in St. Croix, and in 1848, the increasing social unrest culminated in the slave uprising which is the subject of Miller's Recollections .

For a general study of the Danish West Indian slave society, see, for example, Hall (1992). For additional information about different aspects of life  in  the  slave  society,  see  Tyson  &  Highfield  (1994),  Jensen  (2012), Sebro (2016), Simonsen (2017, 2019), Simonsen & Christensen (2023), Roberts et al. (2024), among other works.

## 2.3 The years after 1848

1848 was a pivotal year in the history of the Danish West Indies, with significant social, economic, and political implications that followed for the islands. In the years after the emancipation, however, the conditions of the working class (i.e. the former enslaved population) did not improve much. Consequently, thousands emigrated from the islands, especially from St. Croix, in search of a better life elsewhere. As a response, the colonial government instituted strict labor and vagrancy laws aimed at securing sufficient labor for the plantations, thus worsening the conditions. A series of natural disasters (including five major hurricanes in the period 1853-1916), recurrent  epidemics  (including  cholera  and  leprosy),  and  a  decrease  of sugar prices globally did not improve the situation or reduce social tensions. In 1878, there was a culmination, in the form of widespread protest and strike - the 'Fireburn' uprising on St. Croix (Jensen 1998) - resulting in much destruction on the island.

The events of 1878 prompted reforms in labor regulations. In the following years, sugar production, which had been hampered already in 1848, continued to decline in St. Croix, while St. Thomas, which was experiencing reduced trade due to structural and technological changes in international shipping, also faced economic downturn. During the second half of the 19 th century, Denmark engaged several times in negotiations with the USA about the possibility of a sale of the islands, which was then realized in 1917. Over the course of the 20 th century, the US Virgin Islands were developed primarily as a mass tourism society, advertised in the 2020s as 'America's paradise'.

For further information about the post-1848 period, see, for instance, Jensen (1998) and Highfield (2009: 153 ff.). For a discussion of the modern-day, postcolonial situation in the territory, see Sebro (2017).

## 3. Dora Richards Miller and her Recollections

## 3.1 Dora Richards Miller

For the following notes about Dora Richards Miller's life and career, including information about her work as a writer, we have drawn extensively on an entry in the reference work A Woman of the Century (Willard & Livermore 1893: 504 f.), containing 'biographical sketches […] of leading American women in all walks of life'. In addition, we have used various other sources containing bits and pieces of supplementary information (e.g. Huntington  Family  Association  1962:  74;  Turner  1966:  241;  Hoehling 1996: 40; Goad [n.d.]) as well as Miller's own published work.

Dora Richards Miller, née Richards, was born in St. Thomas, Danish West Indies, on 16 November 1835. Her mother, Philomela Huntington (ca. 1806-1846), was born in St. Croix. Her family, of British descent, was related to Samuel Huntington (1731-1796), one of the Founding Fathers of the USA, and the 18 th Governor of Connecticut. Dora Richards Miller's father, Richard Richards (ca. 1796-1835), who was from Liverpool, England, had died when she was an infant, and after his death, Dora was taken to the home of her maternal grandmother in Frederiksted, St. Croix. Her grandmother was Mary Huntington (b. 1771), née Smith, who had freed all of her late husband's enslaved workers, and consequently, was living under relatively modest conditions, considering her family background. During her childhood on St. Croix, Dora lived through hurricanes and earthquakes and, at age 13, she witnessed the slave uprising of 2-3 July 1848. As a consequence of this, she was evacuated with other women and children to ships offshore immediately after the events. The family lost everything, it seems, and life on the island as she knew it was forever changed, prompting her family to make her leave St. Croix and the Danish West Indies for good. It is not known when her grandmother died or if she, or others from the household, left the island with Dora. Neither point is addressed in Miller's Recollections .

While Dora was living with her grandmother in St. Croix, her mother, with the other children, had moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, where she had remarried. In 1846, however, when Dora was 11 years old, her mother had died. Dora also relocated to New Orleans, in 1848, joining there her unknown (half-)brothers and sisters, to reside in the family of a married sister. After graduating from school where her school essays had attracted some attention, she was invited by the editors of a New Orleans newspaper to contribute to their publication. As a young woman, she found work as a teacher and, for a time, she provided support for a younger (half-)brother. In 1862, aged 27, she married Anderson Miller (1836-1867), a lawyer from Mississippi, and the couple moved to Arkansas. The American Civil War caused a disruption, however, and a series of more or less forced travels within the Confederacy, ultimately concluding with the Siege of Vicksburg (1863), which Miller experienced and documented in her diary that she kept from 1860. This diary was later published, via George W. Cable, and it was well-received.

Miller's husband died soon after the end of the Civil War, in 1867, leaving her with two young sons to support. Miller, who had sided with the Union in the Civil War, moved back to New Orleans, and there she returned to teaching, eventually being appointed to 'Chair of Science' (i.e. school principal) in the New Orleans Girls' High School. She continued to write, publishing in local papers, usually without her name, on educational subjects and other topics. She supplemented her income by doing research for the prolific Louisianan author George W. Cable and, eventually, through writing newspaper and magazine articles as a journalist, which she now published in her own name. 2 In  the 1880s, Miller's diary from the Civil War was published by Cable as 'A Woman's Diary of the Siege of Vicksburg' (Cable 1885) and 'War Diary of a Union Woman in the South' (Cable 1889a), in each case with the original author remaining anonymous. Miller and Cable collaborated on other projects as well. In 1889, for example, she wrote, in collaboration with Cable, 'The Haunted House on Royal Street' (published in Cable 1889b), but was again left uncredited. The association between Miller and Cable, and its consequences for her (lack of) recognition as a writer and, ultimately, the fate of her Recollections , is further examined in Section 3.3.

A social progressive, later in life Dora Richards Miller was involved in the suffragette movement, and she was a prominent figure in the movement in Louisiana (women were granted the right to vote in Louisiana only in 1917). Miller died in her New Orleans home on 7 November 1914, just before turning 79, having outlived both of her adult sons. In her war diary (Cable 1885: 773), we can read that Miller had kept her St. Croix passport at least until the 1860s. Figure 1 presents a half-tone engraving of Miller, published in 1893, based on an undated photograph of her.

2 It is beyond the scope of this study to investigate the activities of Miller as a journalist. According to a variety of sources, she contributed articles to the newspaper Statesman during the second Cotton Exposition. She wrote for Lippincott's Magazine , Louisiana Journal of Education , The Practical Housekeeper , The Independent , The Times Picayune and Times-Democrat of New Orleans, and other periodicals. Moreover, she was assistant editor of a newspaper published in Houston, Texas. This list is probably far from complete.

arde Miller (cource. Willard O Tivermore 1903.

Figure 1. Dora Richards Miller (source: Willard & Livermore 1893: 504)

<!-- image -->

## 3.2 Miller's Recollections

While living in New Orleans, Miller produced a 78-page manuscript about her youth and experiences in St. Croix, Danish West Indies, titled Recollections of a West-Indian Home and Slave-Insurrection . In 1892, a heavily edited extract from it appeared in print, under George W. Cable's name. In his introduction to the text, Cable (1892: 709) writes as follows about the account: 'This is a true story. But it is not mine; I take it all from a friend's manuscript, which I have had for years and which lies before me now'. According to Turner (1966: 241), Cable's biographer, it was Cable who had suggested to Miller that she write up her experiences in St. Croix, according to him (Turner), in 1884. There is no direct indication of a date in the West Indian manuscript, but there are some hints. For example, Miller mentions the novel Daniel Deronda by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), published in 1876. This means that the text was finalized at the earliest in 1876, when the author was around 41 years old, and around 26 years after she had moved from St. Croix to Louisiana. It might have been even earlier when she began: Cable claims to have known Miller for nearly 30 years, dating back to the early 1860s, in the preface to Cable (1889a: 931), and in Greene & Cissel (1988: 134), Virgin Islands historian William Cissel (see more below) expresses a belief that at least parts of Miller's account were in fact written in the 1860s. The account was finalized at the latest in the mid-1880s, probably in 1886 (cf. also our discussion in Section 3.3, and the appendices).

Miller's complete St. Croix manuscript remained unpublished until today, and the whereabouts of the original manuscript are currently unknown. The edition presented as Miller (this issue) is based on what we believe to be a faithful and fairly precise manuscript copy, possibly made many years after the original text was completed. This later copy of the manuscript (Miller [n.d.]) survives at Tulane University Archives, Louisiana, as part of a collection of Cable's papers, acquired by Tulane University in 1943. 3 At  some point in the 1980s, Miller's account - apparently the original source manuscript - was unearthed by William Cissel (cf. Cissel 1987; Greene & Cissel 1988: 100). We first learned of the account's existence from a partial xerox copy encountered in 2018 by the first author in the Caribbean collection compiled by St. Croix linguist and historian Arnold R. Highfield (now housed at the University of the Virgin Islands, St. Croix). An excerpt of this partial copy (probably copied from Cissel, who had included part of the manuscript in a 1987 conference presentation) is shown in Figure 2. 4

3 The repository can be accessed online via https://archives.tulane.edu/repositories/3/resources/956 (last accessed 10 December 2024).

4 The text in this excerpt, in English Creole, reads as follows: ' When Meestoo Peter say / De Nager dem bin free / Nager bin so drunk so tay / Dem could'nt yerry could'nt see / Da day dem ring de bell - da day dem blow de shell / Chaw! dem bin do some ugly ting, de ting no good foo tell, / Dem kill de Buckra sheep & hog so mek one famous lunch / Me yerry say dem bin hab one Cisron full ob punch. / Dem bruk the Buckra store, dem ruin Mister Moore '. An English translation can be found in the diplomatic edition of the account (Miller, this issue).

e lager dew kir free

·l facsimile eycemt of the partial veroy cony from Hiohfield'e collection

Figure 2. Facsimile excerpt of the partial xerox copy from Highfield's collection

<!-- image -->

Highfield's research file (dated 19 August 2008) contains the following information about Miller's account: 'Miller, Dora Richards. Recollections of a West-Indian Home and Slave-Insurrection. Ms., [n.d.]. 78 pp'. In addition, it has the following annotation: 'Apparent firsthand account of the emancipation revolt of 1848. The manuscript was found at Tulane University  by  William  Cissel  and  presented  at  a  conference  in  St.  Cro[i]x  in 1987(?)'. Based on a comparison with another manuscript page written by Miller, sourced from her Civil War Diary, we have found that the handwriting in the text shown in Figure 2 is most likely hers.

Miller [n.d.] - the Tulane document - which is complete, is a seemingly verbatim later copy of the source manuscript. It is written in pencil on lined paper. An excerpt is shown in Figure 3. The document shown in Figure 2 is clearly the older document of the two, based on the handwriting and the paper quality. Importantly, based on the available evidence, there is (notwithstanding some small typographical details, and transcription errors) 1:1 agreement between the text as found in the two documents. Further research is needed in order to ascertain the exact relationship between the two documents, as well as the current location of the source manuscript. The diplomatic edition presented as Miller (this issue) is based exclusively on the Tulane copy.

When ellesti Rer say

Magur bin er drunte so tay (tile)

De nagur dem besure- luenco

Me gerry eay dem bin hab en cieron full of punchi;

Dem kill the tricksa sheef and hog to mek one parmes

Dem buk the bucksa etro dem ruin els. lloos

Figure 3. The Tulane document version of the same text excerpt shown in Figure 2

<!-- image -->

We can rule out that the copy was made by Miller herself; the handwriting does not match Miller's, and there are some inconsistencies in the spelling of place names, including the name of the town of Frederiksted (misspelled twice on p. 62 5 ), which is, of course, an error Miller would not make. The transcript  has  been  checked  because  there  are  improvements  in  the  text from another review, with the same handwriting. It is likely that it was an assistant for Cable who carried out the copying. Furthermore, in the title, a prefatory line, 'This Island is Santa Cruz', with a different handwriting, appears to have been added after finalizing the copy, possibly by Cable. Based on a cursory comparison of the Tulane document and three samples of Cable's handwriting (one private letter and two letters published in Biklé 1967 [1928]: 102, 246), we tentatively conclude that the body text in the Tulane document is not in his handwriting.

Miller's story begins with an introduction to St. Croix (also referred to by its Amerindian name, Ay-Ay ) and the main character, Dora. An overall description of the island and its social conditions is provided, covering themes such as nature, sugar production, slavery, and local customs and realia in general. Also described is the growing social tension existing between the different population groups, that is, the colonizers and the colonized. The uprising then begins and Dora experiences various aspects of it at more or less close range, overhearing and having a number of exchanges, and sharing her opinions about the different occurrences, persons involved, etc.  Although the conversations in the account must be characterized as invented, at least some of them are likely rooted in concrete memories. She claims to remember well, and considering the exciting and also traumatic nature of her experiences, this seems realistic: 'The talk [about the possibility of an imminent uprising] had got beyond my depth so I ran out into the moonlight to take little Jeannie home, but every word said that evening sank into memory , because it was the last time we talked of these things' (Miller [n.d.]: 35-36, our emphasis).

5 The page numbers here and below refer to the Tulane manuscript; in the edition published as Miller (this issue), they are inserted in square brackets.

The account is characterized, especially in the beginning, by what might be viewed, from a modern perspective, as a florid, literary style. An example in illustration of this 'belletristic' style can be found in the opening lines (p. 1):

That November morning, when Columbus on his second voyage sailed into the Caribbean through the avenue of islands, he touched at one called by the native Caribs 'Ay-Ay', and carried some of them captives to Spain. The first half of this century was closing, when in the thought of the child sitting at evening by that equatorial sea, see the old Carib name that answered to assent in our Saxon speech, seemed like the eternal 'ays' of God to some high spirit who had asked for the creation of such a pearl of the ocean. To the vision of the young dreamer, all that was told by poet or prophet of a possible heaven was comprehensible, as the daily transfiguration of light and color, scintillated between wave and cloud.

Other parts of the text contain more everyday language, which seemingly becomes more concrete and descriptive the closer to the author's actual memories we get. In the following excerpt, Dora looks out on a scene during the uprising where Buddhoe, one of the leaders of the demonstration for freedom in Frederiksted, is introduced (pp. 49-50):

Jack dashed in from the gate - 'O Miss Marcia go look! Dey's a comin! Gin'ral Buddoe at dey head on his wite hosse'. 6 We did get behind the jalousies and saw, riding at what seemed in the narrow street like an endless multitude but was really about 2,000 7 men and women, a large powerful black man with a long, rusty sword clanking at his horse's side and wearing a cocked hat 8 adorned with a long white plume. Except this leader all the rest were on foot, the women having their skirts tied up in fighting trim. All carried weapons; hatchetts, hoes, cutlasses, bills. The bill was a peculiar shaped axe used in cutting down the sugar-cane.

6

Crucian English Creole: 'Oh Miss Marcia, go and look! They are coming! General Buddhoe is at their [i.e. the procession of enslaved people's] head on his white horse'.

7 This is a low estimate (cf. Hall 1992: 208 ff.).

8 A cocked hat is a hat with three corners that used to be worn with some uniforms.

Our interpretation of the account is that it not only chronicles Miller's own experiences but also contains elements of post-rationalization. Additionally, in places, it likely incorporates information from other sources. We do not have precise knowledge of the sources Miller likely used to support her memory, but it is worth noting that popular historical works about the Danish West Indies, such as those authored by John P. Knox (e.g. 1852) and Charles Edwin Taylor (e.g. 1888), were in circulation before the extracts were published.

A reading of Miller's account gives rise to observations and perspectives that both support and add new nuances to the general depiction of the 1848 uprising in the historical literature. For example, in one scene Dora expresses fear of violence from the protesters participating in the uprising; however, an enslaved man she encounters, who initially appears frightening to her when he is asking her for a drink of water, as it turns out, behaves politely toward her (p. 55). Conversely, Miller provides a notably negative characterization  of  the  aforementioned  Buddhoe  (pp.  71-72),  or  Moses Gottlieb as his real name was, who is otherwise considered a hero in the US Virgin Islands today. Miller's characterization of him notwithstanding, during the demonstration in Frederiksted and in the days that followed, Buddhoe apparently urged the angry crowds to stay calm and refrain from harming any of the Danish soldiers, thereby contributing significantly to keeping the uprising mostly free from bloodshed. For further information about Buddhoe and the role he played during emancipation and its aftermath, see, for instance, Highfield (2018: 86).

## 3.3 Miller's association with George W. Cable

George W. Cable is a famous Louisiana author of many books, and the subject of several biographical studies (e.g. Butcher 1962; Turner 1966; Cleman 1996). He was instrumental in the publication of some of Miller's works, including an abridged version of her St. Croix account. Their association was also a crucial factor in why Miller never published her Recollections herself. Miller lived in New Orleans from late 1848, or not long after, until her marriage in 1862, and again from 1867, after her husband died, until her death in 1914. Miller and Cable must have met before 1862 in New Orleans, when Miller was a resident of the city for the first time, and Cable considers her 'a friend' (Cable 1892: 709) in print.

As  touched  upon  in  Section  3.1,  when  Miller  was  working  as  a teacher and later as a school principal in Louisiana, she also did journalistic work, about women's issues, educational affairs, and events in New Orleans. Some of it was published under her own name, but some of the more politically  contentious  publications  were  printed  anonymously.  Some  of her writings were edited by George W. Cable. That is the case for at least Miller's account of her experiences as a Unionist woman in the American South during the Civil War, published in the periodical Century in 1885 ('A Woman's Diary of the Siege of Vicksburg') and 1889 ('War Diary of a Union Woman in the South'). In the 1885 publication, Cable wrote in the introduction: 'The name of the writer is withheld at her own request' (p. 767). That is also true for an account of the occupation of her school in New Orleans by white supremacists demanding the removal of children of color, published in Cable's book Strange True Stories of Louisiana (Cable 1889b). In the same book, Cable also republished Miller's anonymous account of the Siege of Vicksburg in a 'severely abridged' version, writing as follows in the introduction: 'For good reasons the author's name is omitted' (p. 261). Miller's political views could not be overtly expressed while she was working as a school principal in New Orleans, a position that she held until around 1890, after which she worked for the US Census Office (which led to the publication of Miller 1891, with Cable credited as editor).

In 1892, things were different. Miller no longer was school principal, and she had more freedom of expression. In that year, Cable published an anonymized,  heavily  edited  version  of  Miller's Recollections ,  titled  'A West Indian Slave Insurrection', in Scribner's Magazine , with the phrase 'By George W. Cable' right after the title. This time, however, Miller had wanted her name associated with the article, probably because she was now a journalist with her own merits. In 1889, Miller had been recognized as a talented writer by The Author , a magazine for literary workers published in Boston (cf. Hills 1889: 192, cited in Goad [n.d.]). Cable did acknowledge in his introduction (Cable 1892: 709) that the account was not his, writing the following about the author:

In 1848 there lived on Kongensgade, that is King Street, in Frekericksted [SIC], a little maiden named Dora. I have known her these many years, though I did not know her as a child or in the island. She is the author of the manuscript now lying before me, from the facts of which I shall not go aside from first to last, even though I have to end the story tamely without births, deaths, or marriages.

When this publication came out, Miller and her associates reacted with articles in several newspapers, in which they accused Cable of having published Miller's text under his own name, while she was at that moment a recognized journalist. An anonymous letter, signed by 'a subscriber', was published in the Times-Democrat in  December 1892, accusing Cable of having used Miller's text for his own gain (see Appendix 1). It was followed by a letter by Miller herself, expressing her discontent about the way her text had been treated by Cable, and that he had withheld her name (Appendix 2). Another, rather detailed, article severely criticizing George W. Cable appeared in the Louisiana Review of January 4, 1893, under the name Olive Otis (1893), the pseudonym of Mrs. L. Jastremski, who was the wife of the editor of the Louisiana Review . 9 A month later, in a periodical called The Critic , Miller and Cable exchanged public letters-to-the-editor over the issue. Cable replied to some of the accusations (Appendix 3), notably those made by Miller herself in the Times-Democrat newspaper, '[i]n response to […] certain criticisms which have applied to me in the Times-Democrat of New Orleans, and several other publications of less prominence, concerning my use of manuscripts bought by me from Mrs. Dora Richards Miller'. Miller, in turn (Appendix 4), replied that Cable had indeed promised to credit her as the author of the text first in 1886, when he had first offered to purchase the account from her, again when in 1887, she agreed to sell the account to him, and then finally in 1892, before it appeared in print. Cable's acquisition of manuscripts of Miller's is also touched upon in Cleman (1996: 139 f.).

It is beyond the scope of the present study to get to the bottom of this case. An inquiry of the local newspapers and the documents deposited in the George W. Cable Papers in Tulane University Archives is necessary for a full account. On the available evidence, the conflict seems to have been about authorship issues, payment, adjustments of the text, and recognition. In any event, the conflict resulted in Miller's Recollections not being published in her version, and it also led to the end of amicable relationship between the two authors. After Miller's death in 1914, Cable re-used extensive parts of Miller's Recollections in a novel that he published in 1918 (Cable 1918).

9 See https://www.hancockcountyhistoricalsociety.com/reference/alphabetfile.htm?page=187 (last accessed 10 December 2024).

## 4. Linguistic discussion

## 4.1 General research context

In creole studies and contact linguistics more broadly, the systematic gathering and analysis of historical textual sources to examine the diachrony of individual creoles has become increasingly central in discussions about the historical developments as well as a typological status of creoles, as summarized,  for  example,  by  Schneider  (2012)  and  Huber  (2020).  Through careful inspection and contextualization of written representations of vernacular speech from different territories and regions, researchers can reconstruct earlier language stages, detect interrelationships of varieties, contrast earlier data with synchronic evidence for comparison with the modern situation in a given territory, etc. In the context of research on the Anglophone Caribbean, such efforts have contributed to creating an increasingly detailed picture of the history, and histories, of Caribbean Englishes, including the region's many localized forms of Caribbean English Creole (see e.g. Baker 1999; Migge & Mühleisen 2010; Daval-Markussen & Bakker 2011; Schneider & Hickey 2020).

Older creole texts from Caribbean islands are generally sparse; yet, in the absence of audio recordings predating the 20 th century, they are central  for  studying the diachrony of sociolinguistic variation in the region. For the Anglophone Caribbean in general, creolist research since the 1980s has uncovered a wide range of written representations of local vernaculars extending back more than two centuries. Examples of historical texts are included in analytical anthologies for Jamaica (Lalla & D'Costa 1990, earliest  connected  creole  text  from  1781,  see  also  Avram  2015),  St.  Kitts (Baker & Bruyn 1999, earliest text from 1793), Suriname (Arends & Perl 1995, earliest text fragment from 1718, see also Van den Berg 2007), and Guyana (Rickford 1987, earliest text from 1797), among other locations (cf. Migge & Mühleisen 2010: 232 f.). In some cases, however, the picture of what a given variety looked like historically remains unclear or lacking in empirical substantiation. As discussed by Huber (2020: 420 f.), one difficulty in accessing historical linguistic data is that the stigmatization of creoles (historically the vernaculars of enslaved people) led to a situation of uneven representation of language data. The sizes of available historical corpora vary significantly. For instance, there is a very substantial collection of historical texts on the Surinamese English-lexifier creoles, whereas documentation on many other Caribbean varieties might best be summarized as 'less prolific' (Migge & Mühleisen 2010: 223).

In the Caribbean context, the bulk of the vernacular texts dating back to the colonial period were written by cultural outsiders, typically European visitors or colonists recording their (more or less reliable) impressions of local conditions, speech forms, etc. While potentially useful as linguistic sources, such texts must be treated with caution, and they often have important limitations (cf. Baker & Winer 1999). Still, even scattered evidence can  be  effective  in  the  reconstruction  of  earlier  language  stages.  Conversely, there are also instances where material written by cultural insiders - people with intimate familiarity with a given territory - has survived. For St.  Croix,  diachronic  evidence,  in  the  form  of  textual  samples,  can  be sourced from letters, novels, travel accounts, memoirs, newspapers, collections of local folklore and proverbs, etc. The earliest known samples of connected textual data from St. Croix (found in West 1791, 1793) are from around the same time as those from St. Kitts, and thus the Leeward Islands altogether, but the first samples of English Creole data from St. Croix are much more fragmentary than those from St. Kitts (Baker & Bruyn 1999). Based on the overview in Bøegh (2021: 95 ff.), non-fragmentary texts in Crucian English Creole began to appear only in the 1840s (Weed 1866, a text of 820 words from 1844/45), and besides a series of anonymous newspaper texts from the late 1860s (e.g. Anon. 1867, a text of 330 words), substantial texts only started appearing in the 1880s (Westerby 1882, a text of 260 words) and 1890s (Whitehead 1932, a text of 1,500 words from ca. 1890). For a discussion of additional English Creole texts from the Virgin Islands, primarily St. Thomas and St. John, see Avram (2013).

Against this background, Dora Richards Miller's Recollections represents a central source for the study of Virgin Islands language history in the 19 th century. The account includes a considerable number of quotations from a variety of characters, reflecting the local vernacular. It also includes the lyrics to a topical song, approximately 530 words long, about the 1848 uprising,  titled  'Conversation  between  Martin  King  and  Buddy  Ben', which can be dated to 1848. In total, Miller's manuscript contains some 1,100 words in a historical form of Crucian English Creole, making it a limited but precious source.

## 4.2 St. Croix and the Virgin Islands

Already early on, the Danish West Indies had developed into a multilingual society (see e.g. Sabino 2012; Bakker & Bøegh 2021; Bøegh 2024). Nash and colleagues (2020) highlight St. Croix in a global sample of islands with notable language situations for its history of shifting linguistic influences in the post-indigenous era. The languages spoken in the Danish West Indies during  the  colonial  period  included  the  European  languages  Spanish, French, Dutch, Danish, German, and English, as well as creole languages lexically based on European colonial languages (notably Dutch and English), and more than 25 African languages. Most of these languages are no longer heard in the US Virgin Islands. Today, the main languages spoken are  English  and  Spanish,  in  both  standardized  and  localized  forms,  and modern English Creole. In the contact linguistic literature, the islands are best  known for the language Virgin Islands Dutch Creole, extinct since 1987,  which  is  among  the  most  extensively  diachronically  documented Caribbean creoles (see e.g. Van Rossem & Van der Voort 1996; Sabino 2012; Bakker 2014; Van Rossem 2017; Bøegh et al. 2022; cf. also the studies by Appel et al., Robbe & Bakker, Stein, and Van Rossem in this issue). Various varieties of Virgin Islands English Creole, including Crucian English Creole, were also spoken, alongside Dutch Creole (for Dutch Creole borrowings into Virgin Islands English Creole, cf. Bøegh & Bakker 2021).

Crucian English Creole was widely spoken by the African Caribbean population of St. Croix in the colonial period. However, since the 1917 transfer to the USA, the US Virgin Islands have been strongly influenced by American culture and language. Crucian English Creole has gradually declined in favor of American English and other Caribbean Englishes since the mid-20 th century, particularly since the 1960s, when the linguistic environment of the US Virgin Islands underwent significant changes due to influence from other groups entering the territory from diverse parts of the Caribbean and the continental USA, and consequently, there has been a development in the direction of more standardized English (Bøegh 2021). At least since the 1960s (cf. Di Pietro 1968), St. Croix has been recognized as a multivarietal Anglophone speech community. However, because there was a shift in numerical proportions between distinct groups of language users over the course of the 20 th century, over time a situation developed in which  the  US  Virgin  Islands  are  often  associated  predominantly  with American English-oriented speech norms (e.g. Roberts 1988: 3).

Citing  selective  evidence  from  the  Crucian  English  Creole  verbal system, Holm (1989: 456) made note of 'the rapidity with which decreolization has progressed' in the US Virgin Islands. That the linguistic situation  characterizing  the  territory  has  changed  considerably  since  the  US transfer in 1917, can be gleaned from historical metalinguistic commentaries (e.g. Bøegh & Bakker 2021: 4 ff.). For example, the American linguist Frank G. Nelson, who visited St. Croix and St. Thomas in 1936, wrote as follows about his visit to the islands: 'I was surprised to discover that everyone there except the French-speaking 'Chachas' of St. Thomas spoke some kind of English -  ranging  from  Standard  to a  thick  local  dialect ' (quote adapted from Van Rossem 2017: 258, our emphasis). A Danish geographer, Holger Lassen, who had visited the Danish West Indies four decades earlier, in 1892, reported English to be the common language; however, the speech of the African Caribbean population was, he claimed, a 'horrible  gibberish  with  mixed  words  and  scraps  from  all  sorts  of  languages, with its own grammar, to the utmost degree unpleasant', and 'leaving traces even in the speech of the [descendants of] Europeans, making pure English rare on our islands' (quote adapted from Børgesen & Uldall 1900: 47, our translation from Danish). Earlier yet, a missionary, writing in 1820, in English, characterized the language situation on St. Croix as follows: 'The Negroes have got into the habit of speaking what they call English', a vernacular 'made up of English, [Dutch] Creole, and a variety of words taken from different languages of Guinea [i.e. Africa], most unintelligibly mixed, but considered by them as good English' (Anon. 1820: 68). These various reports provide a sense of the distinctiveness of the traditional 'thick local dialect'.

An important source for developing a diachronic, comparative perspective on the language situation of St. Croix, as already noted, is Miller's Recollections . The account can be considered the earliest non-anonymous work containing substantial samples of earlier Crucian English Creole produced by a cultural insider with an awareness of sociolinguistic differences (the textual samples in Weed 1866 [1844/45] were recorded by a casual visitor). A reading of Miller's Recollections makes it possible to begin to explore questions such as, how 'deeply' creolized was earlier Crucian English Creole? Caribbean linguistic situations are very often marked by a high degree of sociolinguistic complexity; the Englishes spoken in the region range from standardized varieties to intermediate ones that are somewhat understandable to speakers of standard English, and to ones with almost no mutual intelligibility with English. In Miller's account, there are various individuals/characters who speak with varying degrees of Creole influence. Miller had an ear for language, also accurately reproducing some Danish phrases (p. 39), and the language use as depicted in the account is fundamentally  credible  and  reflects  sociolinguistic  differences,  such  as  variations between enslaved workers and house servants. 10 The 'Conversation', to be discussed below, is the longest creole text in Miller's account and, in terms of both quality and quantity, when factoring in its age, probably the most significant English Creole text from St. Croix in the 19 th century.

## 4.3 The 'Conversation'

Miller's  account  features  the  lyrics  to  the  song  'Conversation  between Martin King and Buddy Ben' (Miller [n.d.], pp. 73-75). The song is set to the  tune  of  a  Danish  patriotic  song  from  1848,  titled  'Den  tapre  Landsoldat' [The brave foot soldier]. In Denmark, the song is best known as 'Dengang jeg drog afsted' [When I left (for war)]. The identity of the original author of the text of the 'Conversation' is unknown. The song is of linguistic interest as the lyrics are written in a historical form of Crucian English  Creole.  Although  Miller's  manuscript  is  from  a  later  date,  the 'Conversation' itself dates back to 1848 and, being illustrative of various characteristics  of  earlier  Crucian  English  Creole,  as  well  as  having  remained in use locally throughout the 19 th century, this Creole song can be argued to be a key source for the history of Anglophone sociolinguistic variation in the Virgin Islands. Older songs often serve as a window into language history, as they tend to preserve conservative linguistic features. This conservatism is well known; it is discussed by Soule (2014: 11 ff.) in the context of St. Croix and the Virgin Islands in general.

The 'Conversation' has the form of a purported dialog between two insurgents involved in the uprising on St. Croix. The two discuss the uprising and its outcomes. The lyrics can be read either as a parody or as representing a form of expression of resistance, or possibly both. As noted, the original  author  of  the  song  is  unknown.  According  to  Miller,  it  was  a woman. This is quite likely, as many of the local songs were composed by women (Soule 2014). It is also likely that several versions of the song existed.  The  version  in  Miller's Recollections is  probably  a  fairly  'white' version. Miller ([n.d.]: 72-73) characterizes the song as follows:

10 Halberg (2024) examines a series of letters from 1871, authored by a former house servant and addressed to a Danish recipient, in which the language used is close to the non-Creole end of the spectrum of variation.

While Buddoe was yet in custody and known to be making his revelations, a young lady overheard a conversation between two negroes on the scene just passed, and put it into verse. It was set to the Danish air 'Den tapre Land-Soldat', and sung about the island a good deal. As an example of the dialect of the West-Indian negro in English-speaking colonies it is so accurate that it seems for that reason worth recording.

Miller probably knew the author (of this version); the addition 'it is so accurate' may imply that the text was not written by one of the enslaved. The comment also implies that Miller knew English Creole well - not surprisingly, as she grew up with several Creole speakers in her family's household. This is clearly evident in the story, where we hear about 'old Si'Myra [i.e. Sister Myra], one of the freed slaves, who still had her home with us' (p. 17), and who 'was a native-born African who could speak no English when she first came, a young girl, from the Congo coast' (p. 20). Several other Creole speakers are mentioned in the account, including 'Rachel, and Tom, and Lotta, and Jule and Jack, and the others' (p. 32).

The 'Conversation' must have been written in 1848, as Miller left St. Croix not long after the uprising. Thus, the language reflects Crucian English Creole as heard in 1848. The melody of the song was written that same year, 1848, by Danish composer Emil Horneman, and the Danish text was  written  by  songwriter  Peter  Faber.  In  Denmark,  this  song  is  well known, and sung even today, and recorded in several versions. The title of the original song relates to the First Schleswig War, between Germany and Denmark (1848-1852). In the Danish song, a soldier says farewell to his sweetheart. The Creole song inherited both the military content and the military melody (a march) from the Danish original, but otherwise the contents are quite different. It is not likely that Miller memorized the lyrics in their  entirety  from  her  youth  in  St.  Croix;  she  probably  had  access  to  a manuscript copy.

The song gained popularity on St. Croix in the 19 th century. The Danish West Indian army musician Vilhelm Bartholin Tuxen reported that their band played the melody in 1862, at the occasion of the visit of a British delegation (Tuxen 2007-2008) to the islands. It is possible that the song received a boost in popularity among the local population in 1878, in connection with the St. Croix Fireburn. At any rate, when the Danish journalist Henrik Cavling visited St. Croix almost half a century after 1848, he described his tour from the harbor to his accommodation as follows (Cavling 1894: 47, our translation 11 ):

And again the parade set in motion. At the forefront your sweating author, surrounded by a myriad of Negro boys. Then a long tail of Negro men and women who, on the tune of 'Den tapre Land-Soldat' [The brave foot soldier], tuned in the popular 'Good night my Buddy Ben'.

Despite its popularity in the 19 th century, the song was apparently no longer remembered in the second half of the 20 th century, even though some other local  songs  from  the  same  period  survived.  When  the  cultural  archivist MaryJane Soule collected traditional songs from St. Croix in the 1970s and 1980s, working with Crucians born in the 1880s and later, the song had, it would appear, been forgotten, or at least it was not volunteered by any of the people recorded by her. Soule made hundreds of recordings, primarily in St. Croix, many of them of carisos and quelbés, that is, '[t]opical songs evoking social interactions, mores, and lifestyles of the period from approximately 1880 to 1950' (Soule 2014: 13).

It is beyond the scope of the present article to present a full linguistic analysis of Miller's Crucian English Creole texts, but for illustrative purposes we offer some brief observations here based on examination of a sample of morphosyntactic features which appear in the 'Conversation', as summarized in Table 1. These features are associated with conservative or  basilectal  creoles  in  the  Anglophone  Caribbean  context,  having  clear correlates  in  other  Caribbean  English-lexifier  creoles.  In  each  case,  the given example represents the earliest attestation of a particular feature for St. Croix (based on the overview in Bøegh 2021: 125 ff.).

11 The Danish text: 'Og atter satte Toget sig i Bevægelse. I Spidsen Deres svedende Forfatter, omgiven af et Mylr af Negerdrenge. Derpaa en lang Hale Negre og Negerinder, der paa Melodien af den tapre Landsoldat istemte den populære: Good night my Buddy Ben'.

| Feature                                                                                      | Example sentence                                                   | Translation                                                                                            |
|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Indefinite article based on the numeral one                                                  | Dem kill the buckra sheep and hog to mek one famous lunch          | 'They killed the white peo- ple's sheep and hog(s) to make an infamous meal'                           |
| Object-specific 3. person pro- noun am , from him, unspeci- fied for gender or number        | Dem take dem bill, dem chook am […] pon long long tick […] so high | 'They took their cutlasses, they stuck them onto very long sticks, so high'                            |
| Functional differentiation of copular verbs: locative form based on there                    | He day […] in Westen dem say                                       | 'He is in Westend [i.e. Fred- eriksted], they say'                                                     |
| Combination of preverbal markers (based on been and going ) conveying hypo- thetical meaning | You nebber bin goin catch dem gib nagur up dem sword               | 'You never would catch them giving up their swords to the Negroes'                                     |
| Preverbal marker: fu- ture/modal sa (ultimately from Dutch zal , English shall )             | Me no kin tell de haf else yo sa dead wid laugh                    | 'I can't tell you the half of it, or else you will die laugh- ing'                                     |
| Infinitival complementizer based on for                                                      | Me glad foo see you fren                                           | 'I'm glad to see you, friend'                                                                          |
| Sentential complementizer homophonous with 'say'                                             | Me yerry say dem bin hab one cisron full ob punch                  | 'I heard that they had a cis- tern full of punch'                                                      |
| All-round preposition da                                                                     | Me yerry say de na- gur bin play de deuce da town                  | 'I heard that the Negroes (had) played the deuce [i.e. acted like devils] in town'                     |
| Verb front-focusing construc- tion with 'highlighter' da , with repetition of the verb       | Da grudge dem grudge de buckra foo all dim good sumting            | ' A grudge is what they held against the white people, for all their nice belongings'                  |
| Serial verbs: directional con- struction with 'run' plus 'go'                                | De West En buckra dem / Bin run go hide on board                   | 'The white people of West- end [i.e. Frederiksted] had run away and taken refuge on board [of a ship]' |

Table 1. Selected features of earlier Crucian English Creole morphosyntax, with examples

The examples provided in Table 1 underscore the close linguistic resemblances between Crucian English Creole as depicted in the 'Conversation', in 1848, and other conservative creoles of the Anglophone Caribbean. Further examination of the texts in Miller's Recollections will shed additional light on the diachrony of Crucian English Creole, shaped by its historical links with other Caribbean varieties, and by contact locally with Dutch Creole and more standardized forms of English, among other factors.

## 5. About the diplomatic edition

## 5.1 Editorial decisions

The work presented as Miller (this issue) is a diplomatic edition, where the editors (KFB & PB) have added footnotes with annotations. Miller's original spelling has been maintained throughout, but we have standardized the punctuation, for instance the placement of commas relative to quotation marks, and added a few citation signs where they were forgotten, and some commas for readability. We have also corrected a few obvious spelling mistakes, for the ease of readability of the text, but we have refrained from making further stylistic adjustments. We have maintained the author's capitalization,  even  when  it  is  deviant  from  current  norms.  Throughout  the text, we have inserted the page numbers of the Tulane manuscript in square brackets. In the important Crucian English Creole text, the 'Conversation', we have added interlinear glosses for each line, in order to facilitate linguistic analysis, and we have added a translation into English. The diplomatic edition concludes with a list of references to works cited in the text and in the footnotes, added by the editors.

## 5.2 Who is who in the text?

Most of the enslaved, or formerly enslaved, individuals, members of the family, and friends of the family are called by their first names only. Officials are called by their family names and sometimes only by the first letter of their names. We have tried to identify all the people mentioned in the text. We distinguish here between family members, friends of the family, neighbors and inhabitants mentioned, and the people directly involved in the emanating conflict, both governmental/military and from the side of the enslaved, and finally a category of 'others'. The following list accounts for the important individuals/characters in the story, to the extent that they can be identified.

## Family members

- -Dora (Richards Miller), 13 years old in 1848.
- -Dora's mother, Philomela Huntington-Richards, also called by the name Pauline in the account, who had died in 1846.
- -Grandmother : Dora grew up in an all-female household in St. Croix with her grandmother, Mary Huntington, née Smith, and, for reasons unknown to us, called by the name Paula in the account.

- Grandmother is called Mrs. Paula by the personnel. Grandmother is also referred to as Mrs. H. in the text.
- -Grandmother's mother, Great Grandmother , is referred to on p. 15, when Miller relates a story about her linked to a past hurricane.
- -Three of Grandmother's daughters, Dora's aunts, are mentioned in the text, all of them unmarried: Marion (Miss), also called Miss Mary Anne by the personnel, and Anna and Marcia . According to other sources, Philomena Huntington-Richards had two sisters, Martha and Anna , but Marion is not mentioned. In the text, Anna uses 'my mother' about the grandmother, and must be a sister.
- -Si'Myra , or Sister Myra, is the housekeeper, of African origin. She preferred to stay and serve the family when Grandmother had given the enslaved their freedom. Creole speaker.

## Friends of the family

- -Jack is one of the freed servants of the family. He voluntarily guards the house under the uprising. He also informs the family of events among the insurgents. Creole speaker.
- -Tom is one of the freed servants of the family. He protects the house. Creole speaker.
- -Jack and Tom are both freed men, once part of the household, and still connected with it, but they do not live in the house. They are friends of the family. They protect the house from feared attacks.
- -Rachel is an enslaved woman, and known to the members of the household. Creole speaker.
- -Mr. and Mrs. Valberg are a Danish couple, and friends of the family.
- -Jeannie is Dora's friend.
- -Miss Nancy and Miss Bee (Belinda) are two old maid sisters, and friends of the family.

## Neighbors and inhabitants of Frederiksted

- -Gilbert W. is a son of an intimate neighbor. The description in Cable (1892: 713) is that 'Gilbert, the young son of a neighbor who was an old friend of Dora's grandmother, used often to drop in at her house'.
- -Mr. H. could not be identified. Lover of Christina.

- -Christina is the daughter of an old friend of Miller's family. Could not be identified.
- -Mr. K. (possibly short for Mr. Kenyon , cf. Cable 1918: 248) is another neighbor.
- -Mrs. Dale and her daughter Kate are inhabitants of Frederiksted.
- -Lotta . No information in text, possibly an enslaved woman.
- -Jule . No information in text, possibly an enslaved woman.

## Military/governmental, authorities

- -Peter Von S. is Peter von Scholten (1784-1854), Governor-General of the Danish West Indies. He declared freedom for all enslaved, in order to prevent a bloodbath, in 1848. It was his own independent decision to proclaim emancipation and the King of Denmark had no knowledge of the episode until several weeks later.
- -Irminger is Carl Ludvig Christian Irminger (1802-1888), a Danish naval officer and captain on the ship Ørnen (Danish 'The Eagle').
- -Lawyer Z. , also just Z. , is Carl Frederik Vilhelm Sarauw (18061881), Crown Prosecutor in Frederiksted. He lived at 30, Hospital Street in Frederiksted and he was sherriff or town prosecutor at the time of the uprising. He figures as Lawyer Zarrow in the English Creole song quoted by Miller.
- -Major G. is Major Jacob Hietman Gyllich (1795-1868), a resident of Frederiksted, of Danish descent, who served as Commander of the Frederiksted Fire Corps. Gyllich was known for cultivating positive relationships with members of the enslaved population (cf. Christensen 2018).
- -Erminger : See Irminger.
- -Capt. A. is a Danish soldier mentioned on p. 53. He was a captain at the fort in Frederiksted, awaiting orders from Von Scholten. He was later deposed by Irminger. Not identified.

## Insurgents, enslaved

- -General Buddhoe is one of the leaders of the uprising, and in regular contact with the authorities of the island. He had been enslaved on the La Grange Estate plantation. His formal name was Moses Gottlieb, or also Gottlieb Bordeaux.

- -Moses is perhaps Moses Roberts, another notable figure behind the demonstration in Frederiksted (Jensen et al. 2017: 274; Hall 1984).
- -Martin King is one of the leaders of the slave uprising (Hall 1984).
- -Buddy Ben is mentioned in the Creole song, but is possibly a fictitious person.
- -Halina (or possibly Kalina, short for Carolina) and Georgina are insurgents, both enslaved women. Allegedly, Georgina is the one who destroys the piano, according to enslaved Rachel.

## Others

- -The Priest is Father Timothy O'Ryan, an Irish Catholic priest (Taylor 1888: 130). In the contemporary Crucian song 'Clear de Road', still sung today, Father Ryan is mentioned and characterized in a positive light (Soule 2014: 491).
- -The Parson is mentioned (p. 75) together with the Priest. The Priest must have been the above-mentioned Father O'Ryan, the Parson presumably a Lutheran. Not identified.
- -Pastor L. convinced Grandmother that slavery should be abolished. This individual is most likely Reverend Benjamin Luckock, an English minister who was at St. John's Episcopal Church, St. Croix, 1832-1841 (Cissel 2011: 104). In Cable's (1892) version, he is referred to as 'a clergyman lately come from England' (p. 710).
- -Mr. B. is a store owner in Frederiksted, possibly Mr. B. Woods (cf. Taylor 1888: 157).
- -Mr. S. is an owner of a plantation, North End Estate, with enslaved workers. Not identified.
- -Mrs. S. plays the piano. Not identified.
- -Mr. Moor is a shop owner. This refers to Mr. John Moore. The house of his grocer's shop was looted during the uprising (Hall 1984: 19 ff.; Taylor 1888: 130 ff., 155 ff.).
- -The American Consul's wife is a passenger together with Dora and Grandmother aboard the ship to which women, children, and the elderly were evacuated.
- -The Rector is the pastor in Dora's church congregation. His speeches, preaches, or sermons are mentioned several times in the account (pp. 4, 36, 59).

## References

- Anon. 1820. Danish islands: United Brethren. In Anon. (ed.), The missionary register for M DCCC XX , p. 68. London: L. B. Seeley.
- Anon. 1867. Buddy Tomas to Sissy Shanna. St. Croix Avis , 25 December 1867, p. 2.
- Arends, Jacques & Matthias Perl. 1995. A collection of 18th century Sranan and Saramaccan documents . Frankfurt: Vervuert.
- Avram, Andrei A. 2013. The distribution of diagnostic features in English-lexifier contact languages: Virgin Islands Creole. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 45(2): 206-227. DOI: 10.1080/03740463.2013.901597.
- Avram, Andrei A. 2015. The oldest Jamaican Creole text: A linguistic analysis. In Piotr P. Chruszczewski, Richard L. Lanigan, John R. Rickford, Katarzyna Buczek, Aleksandra R. Knapik & Jacek Mianowski (eds.), Languages in contact 2014 , pp. 21-47. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Wyższej Szkoły Filologicznej we Wrocławiu.
- Appel, Charlotte, Peter Bakker & Joost Robbe. 2024. Initiating reading in Creole: Contents and contexts of primers in the Danish West Indies, 1770-1825. Scandinavian Studies in Language 15(2): 198-239.
- Baker, Philip. 1999. Investigating the origin and diffusion of shared features among the Atlantic English Creoles. In Philip Baker & Adrienne Bruyn (eds.), St Kitts and the Atlantic Creoles: The texts of Samuel Augustus Mathews in perspective , pp. 315-364. London: University of Westminster Press.
- Baker, Philip & Adrienne Bruyn. 1999. St Kitts and the Atlantic Creoles: The texts of Samuel Augustus Mathews in perspective . London: University of Westminster Press.
- Baker, Philip & Lise Winer. 1999. Separating the wheat from the chaff: How far can we rely on old pidgin and creole texts? In Philip Baker & Adrienne Bruyn (eds.), St Kitts and the Atlantic Creoles: The texts of Samuel Augustus Mathews in perspective , pp. 103-122. London: University of Westminster Press.
- Bakker, Peter. 2014. Three Dutch creoles in comparison. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 26(3): 191-222. DOI: 10.1017/S1470542714000063.

- Bakker, Peter & Kristoffer Friis Bøegh. 2021. Kolonierne [The colonies]. In E. Hjort et al. (eds.), Dansk sproghistorie: Dansk i samspil , vol 5, pp. 121-134. Aarhus/Copenhagen: Aarhus University Press/The Society for Danish Language and Literature.
- Bendtsen, Lasse. 2016. Domestic slave trading in St. Croix, 1764-1848. Scandinavian Journal of History 41(4-5): 495-515. DOI: 10.1080/03468755.2016.1210883.
- Biklé, Lucy Leffingwell Cable. 1967 [1928]. George W. Cable. His life and letters. New York: Russel & Russel.
- Bøegh, Kristoffer Friis. 2021. Crucian Creole: A sociohistorical and linguistic analysis of the English-lexifier contact language of St. Croix, Virgin Islands . Aarhus: Aarhus University PhD dissertation.
- Bøegh, Kristoffer Friis. 2024. African ethnolinguistic diversity in the colonial Caribbean: The case of the eighteenth-century Danish West Indies. In Angela Bartens, Peter Slomanson & Kristoffer Friis Bøegh (eds.), New research on circum-Caribbean creoles and language contact , pp. 13-63. (Studies in Caribbean Languages 6). Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.14282808.
- Bøegh, Kristoffer Friis & Peter Bakker. 2021. Words from Dutch Creole in Virgin Islands Creole English. Trefwoord 2021: 1-38. Available online: https://neerlandistiek.nl/2021/09/nieuw-in-trefwoord-3/, last accessed 10 December 2024.
- Bøegh, Kristoffer Friis, Peter Bakker, Cefas van Rossem & Rasmus Christensen. 2022. Seven newly discovered 18 th and 19 th century Virgin Islands Dutch Creole texts. In Nicholas Faraclas, Ronald Severing, Sally Delgado, Elisabeth Echteld & Wim Rutgers (eds.), Caribbean convivialities and Caribbean sciences: Inclusive approaches to the study of the languages, literatures and cultures of the Dutch Caribbean and beyond , pp. 93-116. Willemstad: University of Curaçao.
- Børgesen, Frederik & F. P. Uldall. 1900. Vore Vestindiske Øer [Our West Indian Islands]. Copenhagen: Universitetsboghandler G.E.C. Gad.
- Butcher, Philip. 1962. George Washington Cable . New Haven, Conn.: College and University Press.
- Cable, George W. 1885. A woman's diary of the Siege of Vicksburg. The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine 30(5), 767-775. [Author: Dora Richards Miller. Editor: George W. Cable.]

- Cable, George W. 1889a. War diary of a Union woman in the South. The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine 38(6): 931-946. [Author: Dora Richards Miller. Editor: George W. Cable.]
- Cable, George W. 1889b. Strange true stories of Louisiana . New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
- Cable, George W. 1892. A West Indian slave insurrection. Scribner's Magazine 12(6): 709-720. [Based on excerpts of Miller (n.d.).]
- Cable, George W. 1918. The flower of the Chapdelaines . New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. [Includes excerpts of Miller (n.d.).]
- Cavling, Henrik. 1894. Det Danske Vestindien [The Danish West Indies]. Copenhagen: Det Reitzelske Forlag (George C. Grøn).
- Christensen, Anne Holm. 2018. Major Gyllich. Magasinet Dansk Vestindisk Selskab 53(2): 5-11.
- Cissel, William Fleming. 1987. New light on the emancipation at St. Croix, Danish West Indies: An eyewitness account. Paper presented at the Symposium on Slavery and Emancipation in the Virgin Islands, University of the Virgin Islands, St. Croix Campus, November 2, 1987. [Not personally inspected by the authors.]
- Cissel, William Fleming. 2011. A summary history of St. John's Episcopal Church, Christiansted on the 250 th anniversary of its founding. In David Hayes (ed.), Christiansted at 275: Celebrating the 275 th anniversary of the founding of Christiansted, St. Croix , pp. 99132. St. Croix, US Virgin Islands: The Society of Virgin Islands Historians.
- Cleman, John. 1996. George Washington Cable revisited. New York: Twayne Publishers.
- Daval-Markussen, Aymeric & Peter Bakker. 2011. A phylogenetic networks approach to the classification of English-based Atlantic creoles. English World-Wide 32(2): 115-146. DOI: 10.1075/eww.32.2.01dav.
- Di Pietro, Robert J. 1968. Multilingualism in St. Croix. American Speech 43(2): 127-137.
- Eliot, George. 1876. Daniel Deronda . Edinburgh/London: William Blackwood and Sons.

Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56-106)

- Goad, Mike. [n.d.] Dora Richards Miller - War Diary of a Union Woman in the South. American Civil War Chronicles . Available online: http://www.cw-chronicles.com/blog/dora-richards-miller-war-diary-ofa-union-woman-in-the-south/, last accessed 10 December 2024.
- Greene, Jerome A. & William F. Cissel. 1988. Historic furnishings report. Fort Christiansvaern, Christiansted National Historic Site, Christiansted, Virgin Islands . Harpers Ferry Center: National Park

Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.

- Halberg, Rikke Lie. 2024. Ann M. Beaudhuy's letters. Journal of Caribbean History 58(1): 54-68. DOI: 10.37234/JCH.2024.5801.A003.
- Hall, Neville T. 1984. The victor vanquished: Emancipation in St. Croix; its antecedents and immediate aftermath. New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 58(1-2): 3-36. DOI: 10.1163/1382237390002084.
- Hall, Neville T. 1992. Slave society in the Danish West Indies: St. Thomas, St. John and St. Croix . Mona, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press.
- Highfield, Arnold R. 2009. Time longa' dan twine: Notes on the culture, history, and people of the U.S. Virgin Islands . St. Croix, USVI: Antilles Press.
- Highfield, Arnold R. 2018. The cultural history of the American Virgin Islands and the Danish West Indies: A companion guide . Christiansted, St. Croix: Antilles Press.
- Highfield, Arnold R. & Kristoffer F. Bøegh. 2018. Georg Hjersing Høst's account of the island of St. Thomas and its governors: Recorded there on the island from 1769 until 1776 . Christiansted, St. Croix, US Virgin Islands: Antilles Press.
- Hills, W. H. 1889. Literary news and notes. The Author 1(12), 15 December, p. 192.
- Hoehling, A. A. 1996. Vicksburg: 47 days of siege . Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books.
- Holm, John. 1989. Pidgins and creoles. Volume II. Reference survey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

- Huber, Magnus. 2020. Diachronic studies of pidgins and creoles: Exploring pidgins and creoles over time. In Umberto Ansaldo & Miriam Meyerhoff (eds.), The Routledge handbook of pidgin and creole languages , pp. 418-433. London & New York: Routledge.
- Huntington Family Association. 1962. The Huntington family in America: A supplement to the genealogical memoir published in 1915 and including those known descendants whose records have been obtainable since that time. Norwich, Conn.: Huntington Family Association.
- Jensen, Niklas Thode. 2012. For the health of the enslaved: Slaves, medicine and power in the Danish West Indies, 1803-1848 . Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.
- Jensen, Niklas Thode & Gunvor Simonsen. 2016. Introduction: The historiography of slavery in the Danish-Norwegian West Indies, c. 1950-2016. Scandinavian Journal of History 41(4-5): 475-494.
- Jensen, Niklas Thode, Gunvor Simonsen & Poul Erik Olsen. 2017. Reform eller revolution, 1803-48 [Reform or revolution, 1803-48]. In Poul Erik Olsen (ed.), Danmark og kolonierne - Vestindien, St. Croix, St. Thomas og St. Jan , pp. 212-281. Copenhagen: Gad.
- Jensen, Peter Hoxcer. 1998. From serfdom to Fireburn and strike: The history of Black labor in the Danish West Indies, 1848-1916 . St. Croix: Antilles Press.
- Keegan, William F. & Corinne L. Hofman. 2017. The Caribbean before Columbus . Oxford/ New York: Oxford University Press.
- Knox, John P. 1852. A historical account of St. Thomas, W. I . New York: Charles Scribner.
- Lalla, Barbara & Jean D'Costa. 1990. Language in exile: Three hundred years of Jamaican Creole . Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press.
- Migge, Bettina & Susanne Mühleisen. 2010. Earlier Caribbean English and Creole in writing. In Raymond Hickey (ed.), Varieties of English in writing: The written word as linguistic evidence , pp. 223-244. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
- Miller, Dora Richards. [n.d.] Recollections of a West-Indian home and slave-insurrection . [Ms. 78 pp. Tulane University Archives, Louisiana.]

- Miller, Dora Richards. 1891. The Census as she is took. The Independent , 17 December. [George W. Cable credited as editor.]
- Miller, Dora Richards. 2024. Recollections of a West-Indian home and slave-insurrection. (Edited and annotated by Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker.) Scandinavian Studies in Language 15(2): 107-159.
- Nash, Joshua, Peter Bakker, Kristoffer Friis Bøegh, Aymeric DavalMarkussen, Hartmut Haberland, Dale Kedwards, John Ladhams, Carsten Levisen, Jón Símon Markússon, Joost Robbe & Jeroen Willemsen. 2020. On languages on islands. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 52(1): 81-116. DOI: 10.1080/03740463.2020.1736747.
- Olsen, Poul Erik. 2017. Vestindien: St. Croix, St. Thomas og St. Jan [The West Indies: St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John]. Copenhagen: Gads Forlag.
- Otis, Olive. 1893. New Orleans notes. Mrs. Dora R. Miller and Mr. George W. Cable. Louisiana Review , 4 January 1893, p. 4.
- Rickford, John R. 1987. Dimensions of a creole continuum: History, texts, and linguistic analysis of Guyanese Creole . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
- Robbe, Joost & Peter Bakker. 2024. A grammatical and graphematic comparison of five Creole primers from the Danish West Indies (17701825), with a preliminary phonemic inventory. Scandinavian Studies in Language 15(2): 240-288.
- Roberts, Justin, Philip D. Morgan & Rasmus Christensen. 2024. The paradox of abolition: Sugar production and slave demography in Danish St. Croix, 1792-1804. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 54 (4): 453-476. DOI: 10.1162/jinh\_a\_02006.
- Roberts, Peter A. 1988. West Indians and their language . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Sabino, Robin. 2012. Language contact in the Danish West Indies: Giving Jack his jacket . Leiden: Brill Publishing.
- Schneider, Agnes. 2012. Typological profile: Pidgins and creoles. In Bernd Kortmann & Kerstin Lunkenheimer (eds.), The Mouton world atlas of variation in English , pp. 874-904. Berlin & Boston: Mouton De Gruyter.
- Schneider, Edgar W. & Raymond Hickey. 2020. Contact and Caribbean creoles. In Raymond Hickey (ed.), The handbook of language contact , pp. 403-423. Wiley Blackwell.

- Sebro, Louise. 2016. Freedom, autonomy, and independence: Exceptional African Caribbean life experiences in St. Thomas, the Danish West Indies, in the middle of the 18 th century. In Holger Weiss (ed.), Ports of globalisation, places of creolisation: Nordic possessions in the Atlantic world during the era of the slave trade , pp. 218-244. Leiden: Brill.
- Sebro, Louise. 2017. American Paradise? 1960-i dag [American Paradise? 1960-today]. In Poul Erik Olsen (ed.), Vestindien: St. Croix, St. Thomas og St. Jan , pp. 360-379. Copenhagen: Gad.
- Simonsen, Gunvor. 2017. Slave stories: Law, representation, and gender in the Danish West Indies. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.
- Simonsen, Gunvor. 2019. Risking Obeah: A spiritual infrastructure in the Danish West Indies, c. 1800-1848. In Hokkanen, M. & Kananoja, K. (eds.), Healers and empires in global history: Healing as hybrid and contested knowledge , pp. 203-237. Palgrave.
- Simonsen, Gunvor & Rasmus Christensen. 2023. Together in a small boat: Slavery's fugitives in the Lesser Antilles. The William and Mary Quarterly 80(4): 611-646. DOI: 10.1353/wmq.2023.a910393.
- Soule, MaryJane. 2014. Guidebook to the Soule Archive: Song and dance in St. Croix and St. Thomas. Copenhagen: Special Collections, The Royal Danish Library.
- Stein, Peter. 2024. Grammaticography of Virgin Islands Dutch Creole (Negerhollands) from the Danish West Indies: Oldendorp and Magens. Scandinavian Studies in Language 15(2): 180-197.
- Taylor, Charles Edwin. 1888. Leaflets from the Danish West Indies: Descriptive of the social, political, and commercial condition of these islands . St. Thomas: The author.
- Turner, Arlin. 1966. George W. Cable: A biography. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
- Tuxen, Vibeke Maduro. 2007-2008. Overhornblæser Vilhelm Bartholin Tuxens erindringer fra Dansk Vestindien [Chief hornblower Vilhelm Bartholin Tuxen's memoirs from the Danish West Indies]. Dansk Vestindisk Medlemsblade 2007-2008. Digital reprint: http://www.danskmilitaermusik.dk/dansk%20vestindien.htm, last accessed 10 December 2024.
- Tyson, George F. & Arnold R. Highfield. 1994. The Kamina folk: Slavery and slave life in the Danish West Indies. St. Thomas: The Virgin Islands Humanities Council.

- Van den Berg, Margot C. 2007. A grammar of Early Sranan . Manta: Zetten, Radboud University of Nijmegen PhD dissertation.
- Van Rossem, Cefas. 2017. The Virgin Islands Dutch Creole textual heritage: Philological perspectives on authenticity and audience design . Utrecht: LOT.
- Van Rossem, Cefas. 2024. The suspicion confirmed: J.P.B. de Josselin de Jong's 1923 linguistic fieldwork in St. Thomas and St. John on Virgin Islands Dutch Creole. Scandinavian Studies in Language 15(2): 16-55.
- Van Rossem, Cefas & Hein van der Voort. 1996. Die Creol taal: 250 years of Negerhollands texts . Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
- Weed, Thurlow. 1866. Letters from Europe and the West Indies. 18431862 . Albany, NY: Weed, Parsons and Company.
- West, Hans. 1791. Beretning om det danske Eiland St. Croix i Vestindien, fra Junimaaned 1789 til Junimaaneds Udgang 1790 [Account of the Danish island of St. Croix in the West Indies, from the month of June 1789 until the end of June 1790]. Maanedsskriftet Iris 3: 1-88.
- West, Hans. 1793. Bidrag til Beskrivelse over St. Croix med en Kort Udsigt over St. Thomas, St. Jean, Tortola, Spanishtown og Crabeneiland [Contribution to the description of St. Croix with a brief view over St. Thomas, St. John, Tortola, Spanish Town, and Crab Island]. Copenhagen: Friderik Wilhelm Thiele.
- Westerby, George Wall. 1882. Letter to Hugo Schuchardt (Library Number 12771), St. John's, Antigua, 9 August 1882. In Bernhard Hurch (ed.), Hugo Schuchardt Archiv . Graz: University of Graz. Available online: http://schuchardt.uni-graz.at, last accessed 10 December 2024.
- Whitehead, Henry S. 1932. Negro dialect of the Virgin Islands . American Speech 7(3): 175-79.
- Willard, Frances E. & Mary A. Livermore. 1893. A woman of the Century . Fourteen hundred-seventy biographical sketches accompanied by portraits of leading American women in all walks of life . Buffalo/Chicago/New York: Charles Wells Moulton.

## Appendix 1: 'A subscriber' writes to the Times-Democrat newspaper pointing to George W. Cable having used Dora Richards Miller's text

( Times-Democrat , 11 December 1892, p. 12)

## 'LITERARY SPECULATION'

## To the Editor of The Times-Democrat :

Mr. Besant has given us a strong picture of this in his novel 'Armorel of Lyonesse', but it has just been brought forcibly to the attention of your correspondent in the ease of one of our own literateurs, Geo. W. Cable. While awaiting the train to bear me back to New Orleans, I entered the news department of the well-managed union depot at Houston, Tex., for reading matter to while away the two hours' wait, and turned the leaves of the December Scribner .  A  familiar title caught my eye, 'A West Indian Slave Insurrection', and the name, Dora, appearing on the pages of the article, decided the purchase. For memory went back several years and recalled the fact that I had seen this manuscript in the hands of its author, Mrs. Dora Miller, and that she told me later, in answer to question about it, that she had sold it to Mr. Cable for $30. So, I exclaimed to myself in the Houston depot, at last Mr. Cable has published this manuscript he bought so long ago, and I sat down to read again this reminiscence of my friend's childhood. Imagine my surprise when, instead of finding her signature, or at least the heading 'edited by G. W. Cable', it was published as if his own. It is true that Mr. Cable repeatedly asseverates 'this is not my story', yet he puts it as if it were a child's tale he had rewritten, while I know that he received the finished manuscript of an accomplished writer, relating an interesting episode of her childhood, and which he has used almost word for word as I recall it. I had been cognizant of Mr. Cable's purchasing and publishing other articles from Mrs. Miller, and of similar transactions on his part, but none so flagrant as this, for he had stated in previous ones that he simply edited them. But this antithesis was hard to comprehend - by 'G. W. C.' and then the assertion 'this is not my story, it is Dora's' - 'I have her manuscript before me'. And in addition I remembered saying to Mrs. M. when she told me she had sold it to him: 'Do you never intend to get credit for your work'? She replied: 'Oh, yes; I told Mr. Cable this must appear in my name, and he agreed to it'. Again this morning my attention is arrested by remarks in The Times-Democrat relative to this. The reviewer Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56-106)

in the column of 'Literary Bric-a-Brac' says: 'There is some of Cable's most beautiful writing in 'A West Indian Slave Insurrection''. Then follows a passage I remember well in the manuscript I heard read. For the subject and matter being fresh and odd, I recollect it well. Were it not that necessity  compels  an  immediate  return  to  Texas,  I  should  certainly  endeavor to obtain Mrs. Miller's manuscript to prove my assertions. Is such literary appropriation to become the fashion of the day? Are writers to speculate in good articles bought from writers less notorious? Is it possible that such bold plagiarism is perpetrated by a resident of Paradise Road, Mass.? It would be another good speculation, and one in the interests of truth and justice, for some enterprising publisher to obtain and print Mrs. Miller's manuscript. I have no doubt she has it, for I heard her say she kept a copy of every article sold till after it was in print; and Mrs. Miller is right here in New Orleans now.

A SUBSCRIBER New Orleans, Dec. 4, 1892.

Appendix 2: Dora Richards Miller writes to the Times-Democrat newspaper that she was the real author of the article in Scribner's Magazine

( Times-Democrat , 11 December 1892, p. 12)

Mrs. Miller's Statement.

The Times-Democrat endeavored to interview Mrs. Miller, but before she could be reached the following contribution was received from her:

To the Editor of The Times-Democrat :

It is with pleasure one reads each Sunday in your column the able, just and often subtle criticisms on current literature which form your weekly review for The Times-Democrat .

On this occasion I owe special thanks on my own account, and desire to make a correction. In justice to another, as well as myself.

Last Sunday, Dec. 5, in reviewing contents of Scribner's Magazine for December, you say: 'There is some of Cable's most beautiful writing in 'A West Indian Slave Insurrection'', and proceed to quote from that article the passage beginning: 'To Dora sitting by that equatorial sea'. Now that passage is not Mr. Cable's writing at all; it is mine, as is that of the whole article, a fact which the manuscript now in my desk can prove. I sold it to Mr. Cable five years ago, and certainly he is too honorable to claim credit for that which he has not written. He has his own inimitable style, and I feel sure he would wish me to state the true facts and get the credit of my work. He has himself plainly stated in three places in the article. 'This is not mine. I take it all from a friend's manuscript, which lies before me now. She is the author of the manuscript now lying before me. This true story of Dora's, not mine'.

These quotations show that Mr. Cable has taken pains to reiterate the fact that he is not the author of the paper in question, and the words mean just what they say, for the article is published very nearly word for word as I wrote it. The tense has been changed throughout, because, of course, as the story was reminiscent it was written in the first person, Mr. Cable has rewritten it in the third. Here and there he has changed a word, here and there thrown in a sentence, and has omitted considerable matter, but the article remains substantially in both facts and language as I wrote it, as a comparison with my manuscript shows. In the passage quoted in Bric-aBrac column but a few words have been changed.

## Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56-106)

The moral drawn from the story on the last page, beginning: 'Doubtless it was easy for government to argue', is wholly Mr. Cable's, as my manuscript  closed  with  the  sentence  he  has  put  at  the  end,  beginning: 'Beautiful Santa Cruz still glitters, etc.'.

Having been spoken to in regard to it by several persons who recognized me in the sketch, it has seemed best to tell the truth over my own signature.

## RICHARDS MILLER

New Orleans, Dec. 9, 1892.

## Appendix 3: Cable reacts to Miller's accusations

( The Critic , 4 February 1893, pp. 63-64)

Mr. Cable as an Editor

To the Editors of The Critic :-

In response to your invitation to answer certain criticisms which have applied to me in the Times-Democrat of New Orleans, and several other publications of less prominence, concerning my use of manuscripts bought by me from Mrs. Dora Richards Miller, I submit the following:-

Except  in  the Times-Democrat ,  I  find  nothing  emanating  directly from Mrs. Miller; and as Mrs. Miller has written in the Times-Democrat , I feel it best to confine my response to what has there been printed. A communication to that paper is a matter of astonishment to me, as my relations to Mrs. Miller have been those of a personal friend, heretofore totally without a jar or any word or intimation of discontent from her upon which I might  found  a  suspicion  that  our  relations  and  transactions  were  not  in every way entirely satisfactory. I have told her more than once or twice that in  my conviction her one chance of disposing of any writing of hers as literature lay in her confining herself to the simplest recital of any experiences of her own that might be interesting enough for publication. It was because of this candidly-expressed conviction that, while giving her my fullest sympathy and counsel in every attempt she made to come before the public as a writer or reader, I urged her several times to write a simple narrative of her recollections of a West Indian slave insurrection which she had witnessed in her childhood.

She finally sent me a manuscript of these reminiscences, asking me to buy it. I offered her a price for it which I seriously doubted I should ever realize from it, not even knowing that I should make the attempt to give it the total reconstruction which I saw it would require.

But at the same time I sent the manuscript back to her, urging her not to sell it to me, nor to any one, but to rewrite it, reconstructing it so as to give it what it totally lacked, organic form, simplicity and definiteness of direction. I also wrote that I was at her service to assist her in finding a place for it in some magazine after such reconstruction; and in hope of further discouraging her from any attempt to get it published in its inchoate form, I wrote that I would not buy it at all if, after sending it in that form from one magazine to another and having it refused by all, as it certainly would be, she should send it back to me.

But this, which I had tried so hard to keep Mrs. Miller from doing, is just what she did; and she finally sent it to me unaltered, confessing that she had tried and failed to sell it, and asking if I would still give the price I had offered. I sent the price to her, receiving her grateful acknowledgment, threw the manuscript into a chest, with no definite intention of ever using it, and so completely forgot it that I was able only very gradually to recall it  to  mind,  when, some three years afterwards, Mrs. Miller wrote to me again soliciting and receiving my aid in securing the publication of a very short paper reciting some humorous experiences of her own as a clerk in the mortgage department of the last census. This paper also was so totally unfit for publication in the shape in which it came to me that I doubt if any newspaper of any class would have accepted it as a gratuitous contribution. In preparing the episode of the West Indian slave insurrection, I found it essential to put an amount of work into it which made it almost, if not entirely, as great a task as if the matter had been entirely original with myself. I did not think then, I cannot think yet, that it would have been a true statement to call the result of this a collaboration; but I thought it just to make it  very plain that the experiences were not mine - that they were taken from a friend's manuscript; and my purpose in mentioning her by her true first name was in order to make way for securing to her any complimentary notoriety resulting from any lively interest the story might draw forth from the public reader or the critical world.

It is probably very natural that Mrs. Miller, without taking pains to compare my publication with her own manuscript, a copy of which she seems to have retained, should believe that I had in the main reproduced her manuscript word for word. For I did take pains, and even laborious trouble, to introduce into my rendition the very fewest possible phrases of my own, and to build the structure, as one may say, as largely as possible out of the timber and stone supplied by the eye-witness. Thus the changes of construction would easily seem to be far less than they were, but I do not think that Mrs. Miller ought to have overlooked in her own mind, or in her public utterance, the enormous condensation of her manuscript from fifteen thousand six hundred to eight thousand one hundred words. This condensation, moreover, was made not in order to get my article within any prescribed limit of space, but purely as a necessity of literary excellence, and because everything left out was better left out than left in.

In order to show how sweeping a reconstruction was necessary, I append a partial list of my pages and of those of hers which they comprise:-

G. W. Cable.

Mrs. Miller.

Page 1.

Page 8.

Page 2.

Page 9.

Page 3.

Pages 10, 11, 12 and 13.

Page 4.

Pages 14, 2, 3and 1.

Page 5.

Pages 4 and 5.

Page 6.

Pages 7, 8, 15, 16 and 17.

Page 7.

Pages 18, 19, 20 and 21.

Page 8.

Pages 22, 23 and 24.

Page 9.

Pages 25, 26, 27 and 28.

Page 10.

Page 29.

Page 11.

Pages 30, 31, 32 and 33.

With this I submit, as a sample of the styles of Mrs. Miller's manuscript and my revision, a quotation from the former and my rendition of it.

G. W. Cable: 'We need not say that nature had her rudenesses as well as her graces. There were sharks in the seas and venomous things, tarantulas, serpents, scorpions, ashore; and there was the hurricane. Every house showed appliances of defence against this visitant. Every window and door was armed with strong outer shutters, provided with stout bars, rings and ropes that were brought swiftly into vigorous use whenever, between July and October, the dire word ran through the town, 'The barometer is falling'. Then candles and lamps had to be lighted indoors, and it was a time of delightful excitement to a courageous child. At such times Dora would beg hard to have a single pair of window-shutters held slightly open by two persons ready to slam them shut in a second, and so snatched glimpses of the tortured flying clouds and the writhing trees, while old Si'Myra, one of the freed slaves who had not left the house, crouched in a corner muttering, 'Lo'd, sabe us! Lo'd sabe us!''.

Mrs.  Miller: 'Every  house  showed  arrangements  for  protection against these storms, which were looked for between July and October, the twenty-fifth of that month being Thanksgiving Day if no hurricane had occurred, or humiliation and prayer if it had. Very little glass was used in dwellings, as it was not really needed, but stout outer shutters, as well as jalousies  were  on  every  window  and  door,  and  on  the  frames  of  these, wooden blocks were fastened with heavy screws, while the shutters were provided with iron rings. When, during the hurricane season, the dire words went through the town, 'the barometer is falling', then 'barring up' began. Stout prepared sticks of hard wood were passed through the big rings on the shutters, the ends of the sticks laid on the blocks on each side, and then stout rope was twisted around and about and securely fastened. Then, of course, candles or lamps had to be lighted all over the house, and it was a time  of  delightful  excitement  to  an  untimid  child.  Who  could  tell  what might happen! Such high adventure as being blown about like Great Grandmother might be experienced, or the roof, as sometimes happened, might be carried away. The only drawback was that one could not sufficiently revel in the wild weather owing to the necessity of being barred in. Much pleading would generally obtain permission to keep one window open a little by two persons holding the rings, ready to slam the shutters in a second. The flying clouds seemed to take on forms like demons of the air rushing to war, and the tortured trees, shuddering and twisting, looked in the lurid light like sentient creatures. Not far from us lived two delightful old maid sisters, Miss Nancy and Miss Bee - short for Belinda. Kitchens in that climate are usually built separate from the main building, and as we were a household of women, who, with their dangerous skirts, should not venture out of doors to make tea or anything else, it was the thoughtful habit of these good ladies, on such stormy evenings, to send their ancient man servant, black as the night himself, with a tray holding a pot of hot tea and thin, curly slices of their home-made bread and butter. Never since has any sort of food held for me the flavor of those repasts eaten while the tempest roared without, smiting the doors and windows, and old Si'Myra, one of the freed slaves who still had her home with us, crouched in the corner muttering, 'Lo'd sabe us!'.

I could show many instances similar to this, although it is true that some of her work was rendered with much less change, and the following will  be  an  example - the paragraph referred to in the criticisms of the Times-Democrat and elsewhere.

G. W. Cable : 'To Dora, sitting often by that equatorial sea, the island's old Carib name of Aye-Aye seemed the eternal consent of God to some seraphic spirit asking for this ocean pearl. All that poet or prophet had ever said of heaven became comprehensible in its daily transfigurations of light and color scintillated between wave, landscape and cloud, its 'sea like unto crystal and the trees bearing all manner of fruits'. Fragrance, light, form, color, everywhere; fruits crimson, gold and purple; fishes blue, orange and pink; shells of rose and pearl. Distant hills, clouds of sunset and dawn,  sky  and  stream,  leaf  and  flower,  bird  and  butterfly,  repeated  the splendor, while round about all palpitated the wooing rhythm of the sea's mysterious tides'.

Mrs. Miller :  'In  the  thought of the child sitting at evening by that equatorial sea, the old Carib name that answered to assent in our Saxon speech, seemed like the eternal 'yes' of God to some high spirit who had asked for the creation of such a pearl of the ocean. To the vision of the young dreamer all that was told by poet or prophet of a possible heaven was comprehensible as the daily transfiguration of light and color, scintillated between wave and cloud. A sea of turquoise blue, 'like unto crystal, and the trees bearing all manner of fruits', were they not here visible realities? Which was more lovely or more real, the delicate emerald of distant hills  or  these  opaline ranges that rose from the sea in the pomp of each day's decline? Color everywhere; fruits were crimson, gold and purple; fish were palpitating masses of orange, blue and pink; shells were of rose and pearl. Sky and water, foliage and flower, bird and butterfly repeated the splendor. Everywhere the same beauty of form, the same rainbow hues, the same golden light, and round all the wooing, whispering sea creeping to the feet in the ordered rhythm of its mysterious tides'.

I trust that no hasty reader will overlook the fact that the complaint I am answering is not the charge of anonymous writers that I have swindled a poor widow and sold her manuscript as my own, but Mrs. Miller's complaint that the Times-Democrat had given me credit for the beauty of a paragraph which she said, and no doubt thought, I had simply copied from her manuscript, word for word.

I  have  only  to  deny,  first,  that  there  is  any  thing  in  my  article  as printed that truly shifts the onus of this mistake of the Times-Democrat to my shoulders, if it be a mistake; and, second, that while I have preserved Mrs. Miller's beautiful paragraph, which, I repeat once more, 'is not mine, but  hers',  I  was  compelled,  as  the  reader  himself  may  testify,  to  edit  it heavily. I do not think that from the beginning of the article to the end I was able to reproduce a single paragraph, or even a single sentence of any length, from Mrs. Miller's manuscript literally as I found it. If I could have done so I would.

To anonymous charges I can of course pay no attention whatever; but in so far as or her silence tend to cast upon Mrs. Miller's demurrers me the suspicion of having kept in the shade her merits as an author, I may suggest that such an imputation will have more weight when Mrs. Miller has written four or five magazine pages exclusively, with her own pen, which a first-class magazine is willing to publish.

I  have been compelled to say this in great haste, dictating it while riding on the railroad train, and I trust that both Mrs. Miller and the patient reader will attribute any seeming harshness of tone to haste and not to intent.

George W. Cable.

Dryads' Green, Northampton, Mass., Jan. 23, 1893.

## Appendix 4: Miller's reply to Cable's reaction

( The Critic , 18 March 1893, pp. 167-168)

Mr. Cable as an Editor Again

To the Editors of The Critic :-

In your issue of Feb. 4th appears a letter from Mr. G. W. Cable, referring to an article written by me and signed by Mr. Cable, 'A West Indian Slave Insurrection'.

He states that he responds only to what Mrs. Miller has written, not to others, then I reply his letter is a curious one, full of inaccuracies and surprising as an answer to my note in the Times-Democrat that was certainly courteous, imputed no ill-intent, amounted to a defence of him and gave opportunity for him to take a generous attitude.

The publication was forced upon me by the recurring comment on the literary transactions between us. These criticisms came, at last, to seem to me injurious to us both, accusing us, as it were, of being in league to deceive the public. I felt that, friendly as his motives might be, his method of disposing of my work was a mistake, one I was no longer willing to have part in even were it for my interest, or, to be a cause of odium to him. The manner in which I tried to rectify the situation does not justify Mr. Cable's ungenerous  fling  that,  'the  imputation  of  having  kept  her  merits  in  the shade will have more weight when Mrs. Miller has written four or five pages which a first-class magazine is willing to take'.

This is an ill-considered retort. My note made no such imputation but, contrariwise, tried to show that he wished me to have the merit. The effort to belittle my work is irrelevant to the question at issue, whether it is right, for Mr. Cable or anyone, to buy original matter of another, change it either much or little, and put his name to it. It is immaterial whether I can, or can not, write for a first-class periodical, but it is important whether the purchase of literary material constitutes a claim to its authorship.

The changes made in my article are, in the opinion of some competent critics a question of individual taste. He surely does not assume to be the sole arbiter of literary criticism.

I do not pretend to competition with him but for answer to his taunt submit quotations from his printed words, his letters, and outside opinion.

When he published my 'Diary of the Seige of Vicksburg' in the Century he said in his preface 'I have not molested the original text' (Cent. Mag. Sep. 1885.). When about to publish in bookform this 'unmolested text' with the rest of it, 'Diary of a Union Woman in the South', he says, - 'At length I was intercessor for a manuscript that publishers would not likely decline' (Cen. Nov. '88.). From a letter comes this - 'I congratulate you on the grace with which your story is told, the heroism that makes it inspiring and the love that makes it tender and touching'. Another letter states - 'every one praises without stint the unknown writer of the Diary'. These opinions sound as if he then thought these pages, exclusively from my  pen,  'worthy  publication  in  a  first  class  magazine'.  If  I  remember aright, it was the only part of the book praised in the London Atheneaum which said of it, 'the Diary of a lady who was in Vicksburg during the seige is a piece of work of the highest interest, to be read only with breathless excitement so completely vivid and so simple is the narrative'. A good critic here, said in the Picayune , - 'this diary proves Mrs. Miller to have unusual literary ability'.

Mr. Cable's second paragraph in the Critic article makes an incorrect statement, 'I told her more than once that her one chance of disposing of any writing of hers as literature lay in confining herself to the simplest recital of experiences of her own interesting enough for publication'. His sole words to that effect are in a letter, - 'I think your forte lies in simple, direct narrative of interesting incident'. Some critics approve such a style and it has the advantage of making an editor's work lighter.

The next inaccurate statement is, that I sent him manuscript of the Slave Insurrection 'asking him to buy it'. I have his letters and copies of replies. He urged me to write it in five letters. When I wrote that it was finished and I thought of sending it to Lippincott , he rejoined, 'Don't send it to Lippincott . Send it to me'. I did. Here is the reply - 'It has strangeness, movement, color, life and human interest but it wants perspective and correlation of parts. It ought to be re-written; there are periodicals might take it as it is. Try them if you like. There is another proposition I can make, to offer you less than the material, but more than the writing is worth, then take it and make it mine, you named or unnamed. If this seems fair to you I offer $50.00' (Nov. 1886). I was unwilling to sell it if he was to make it his, had him return it and kept it a year. School-work prevented my revising it. I sent it as it was to some magazine, (can't recall which) it came back with signs that it had not been examined.

Then I wrote Mr. Cable he was probably right that it needed revision, I had no leisure to do it and if he still wished to buy it, could have it if he would name me as author. This was his answer, - 'if I re-write it, I should still feel bound to give you credit for its authorship and will gladly do so' (Aug. '87). In Jan. 1892 he wrote to me for a map of the island. In the interval, losses and sorrows 'in battallions' had come upon me; he knew the situation, and in replying I specially reminded him of the promise that my name should appear, adding, that it was now important for me to get a standpoint for myself. He replied, 'I will of course give you credit in printing  the  story  of  the  Insurrection'.  Naturally,  when  it  appeared  over  his name, I felt disappointed and wounded.

His third misstatement is this, 'Mrs. Miller wrote to me soliciting my aid in securing publication of a paper reciting humorous experiences in the Census'. That manuscript, mentioned to Mr. Cable as suitable for a Reading, was sent him at his request to put in Lecture form for me; his own offer. There are witnesses to this besides his letter which says, - ''The Census as She is took' is received and is better to publish I will find a publisher'. I had not attempted to prepare it for anything. Three months later I learned on inquiry it was published in N. Y. Independant .  He sent me a check for it and I sent for a copy, it was changed a little, he had put a preface over his name and mine at the end.

Mr. Cable alludes to 'anonymous charges'. These refer to the manuscript entrusted to him to submit to the editors of the Century with the explanation that if accepted my name should not appear in the magazine. I certainly intended the editors should know of it. He did not show it but bought it by telegram letting me suppose it was purchased by the Century Co. He stated the true fact some months later. I felt disappointed but having a firm belief in his kindly intention did not demur for fear of wounding him. It turns out that it was an illegal transaction, 'no agent is permitted to buy of his principal when he is authorized to sell' (Story on Agency Sec. 207). Of this I was then ignorant. My long reserve ought to be proof that, as he says, I thought of him as a friend and believed his actions well-meant. I considered that his reputation, probably, sold manuscripts more promptly than I could and entitled him to part profit. Therefore as long as he headed Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56-106)

my papers as edited by him, though I knew it destroyed my chance of gaining reputation for myself, I did not complain, motives of delicacy kept me silent and dictated my note to the Times-Democrat . An answer in the same spirit would have set things right. To reply by a taunt and indirect slurs, which are incorrect, confirms an interpretation of the circumstances which was not given by my note.

DORA R. MILLER. 459 Carondelet St. N. O, La. March 8th 1893.