Simeon G. Eddins

Simeon G. "Sim" Eddins (May 19, 1861) was a 19th-century farmer and slave trader. He primarily traded in the Middle Tennessee region of the United States, but he also purchased enslaved people in Virginia, and sold people in Alabama. Among the children he bought and sold was nine-year-old Henry McDaniel, who as an adult became the father of Academy Award-winning actress Hattie McDaniel. Sim Eddins was killed in 1861 in a Mississippi River steamboat boiler explosion.

Life and work

Eddins was born in Alabama around 1823. In 1847, "Sim Eddings" purchased three legally enslaved children, ages 11, nine and six, from a Spotsylvania, Virginia farmer named Robert Duerson, and resold them in Fayetteville, Tennessee to a farmer named John McDaniel. The middle child grew up and took the name Henry McDaniel; his daughter Hattie McDaniel in turn grew up to be the first African-American winner of an Academy Award, for her performance as Mammy, an enslaved woman who lived in antebellum Georgia, in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's 1939 Gone With the Wind. Eddins was a guest at Brown's Hotel in Washington, D.C. in September 1853. In 1854, in Hampton County, Virginia, Eddins bought an enslaved woman named Betsy and one of her children, separating Betsy from her husband and seven other sons, and taking them to another state for resale. In 1902, Betsy White was reunited with her surviving children.

In spring 1859, Eddings placed an advertisement in the Fayetteville (Tenn.) Observer announcing, "Negroes for Sale — I have just arrived from Virginia with FIFTY YOUNG NEGROES, 2 miles west of Fayetteville, consisting of men and women, boy and girls, which are for sale at reasonable prices. I will also exchange families, women with one, two, or three children; for single Negroes, either boys or girls. I, or one of my brothers, may be seen in Fayetteville, during the day, or at home at night. S. G. EDDINGS." The place where Eddins held these 50 people was likely a 380-acre property later described as "two and a half miles from Fayetteville, with a good dwelling-house, a mill, and other valuable improvements. The land being mostly creek bottom is unsurpassed by any in the county in fertility." In autumn 1859, Eddins showed a harness mule at the Lincoln County Fair.

In February 1860, the Tennessee General Assembly named Eddins one of seven commissioners of the Fayetteville, Boonshill and Pulaski Turnpike. At the time of the 1860 U.S. federal census in June, S. G. Eddings, occupation "trader," lived in Fayetteville, Lincoln County, Tennessee. Of the 40 enslaved people associated with S. G. Eddins, 11 were designated as "fugitives from the state," including a 13-year-old, a 12-year-old, a seven-year-old, two five-year-olds, and a one-year-old.

Death "For sale on the premises of S. G. Eddins, dec'd," Fayetteville Observer, December 19, 1861 In May 1861, Eddins was apparently aboard the steamship Kentucky on the Mississippi River near Columbia, Arkansas, when it suffered a boiler explosion. The Louisville Courier-Journal included Eddins on the casualty list: "S. G. Edings, Fayetteville, Tenn., badly scalded; will die." The Vicksburg, Mississippi Daily Evening Citizen reported that among those killed was "—— Edding, negro trader, Tennessee." The grievously injured Eddins, along with the injured Little brothers and other victims of the explosion, were transferred to another steamboat and taken to Greenville, Mississippi for medical attention. In December 1861 the administrators listed for sale 140 stock hogs, eight work mules, three head of horses, 20 head of cattle, and 37 likely negroes.

In 1875, lands that had once belonged to Simeon G. Eddins, deceased, were to be sold to satisfy a judgment.