David (Davey) Grant [Gullah informant]

The settlement of Harris Neck, McIntosh County, Georgia, began when on September 2, 1865, Margaret M. Harris donated her land to Robert Dolegal (the name is also spelled as Delegal and Denegal), who she had formerly enslaved. According to Mrs. Harris' will, she had raised Robert and trusted him to take care of her and her mentally disabled son Bright Harris until their death in exchange for the lands. Mrs. Harris appears in the 1850 Census slave schedule as being the enslaver of 59 individuals. In the 1860 Census slave schedule, she appears as the enslaver of 66 persons. Robert Dolegal must have sold parcels of his land immediately after he took possession of it. In the Census of 1870, there were 87 African American households and 21 white households in Harris Neck.

David (Davey) Grant was born around 1874, the son of Alexander (Sandy) Grant and Frances (Fannie) Grant and the older brother of Sandy Grant, another of Dr. Lorenzo Dow Turner's informants, by two years. Around 1901 David married a woman named Amanda (Manda). They had one child, a boy named Roan. Sometime before 1910, the family moved from Harris Neck to Brunswick, a coastal town in Glynn County, Georgia, where David went to work as a dockhand and Amanda as a washerwoman. By 1920 the family was back at Harris Neck, living on South Harris Neck Road at a locality named Warboo. David was renting the place where they lived and was not working. Amanda was working at a farm. We do not know what happened to Amanda, but David Grant lived until 1947. He died on April 11, 1947. Thus, he was alive and most likely witnessed when Harris Neck was destroyed to build a military airport. The residents were given two weeks to move out. On July 27, 1942, all the community's houses were bulldozed and burned down.