Sam Polite repairing a fish net on St. Helena Island, S.C

Sam Polite was born around 1844 at St. Helena Island, Beaufort Co., South Carolina. His parents were Sam and Molly Polite. The family was enslaved by the Fripp family, which in 1860 owned thousands of acres of land and 20 plantations in St. Helena Island and other nearby islands. When John Fripp, the Polite family owner's son, got married, his father gave him 30 enslaved persons as a wedding gift. Sam Polite was one of them. When the Civil War came to St. Helena Island in November of 1861, the Fripp family and other planters on the island abandoned their plantations. John Fripp was serving in the Confederate Army, and his wife took her children, Sam and his mother, Molly, to Barnwell, South Carolina. When the end of the war came, Sam Polite and his mother returned to St. Helena Island, where the family reunited. It was only then that they learned that they had been freed from enslavement four years before. After working for another African American man, Sam bought 15 acres of land, which he owned for the rest of his life. Sam Polite was married four times and had two children. At the time that Dr. Turner interviewed him, he manufactured fishing nets for income. Sam Polite died at 100 years old on May 2, 1944, of accidental burns when his clothes caught fire while he smoked.