Author: Horton, George Moses
Biography:
Horton, George Moses (1798?-1883: WBIS)
"The colored bard of North Carolina," in his own phrase (from the 1845 Poetical Works), he was one of ten children by several fathers born to a woman owned by William Horton, who had a tobacco farm in Northampton County NC. The names of his parents are not recorded and most of the information available about him comes from the autobiographical preface in his 1845 collection. He was self-taught; he composed in his head and had had poems published before he could write. By 1820 he was selling poems and occasionally composing to order for students at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. In 1828 the wife of one of the professors launched his literary career by sending two of his poems to the Lancaster Gazette. Though he published to gain support and money to buy his freedom and did attract some helpful patrons, he was not freed until 1865, at which time he moved to Philadelphia. His marriage to a slave on a nearby farm in the 1830s produced two children who, according to custom, were given the name of their master: Free and Rhody Snipes. His final collection, Naked Genius (1865), was edited by a cavalry captain, Will R. Banks. After the move to Philadelphia, Horton continued to write poems for local newspapers. The date and place of his death are not known. (ANBO 25 Apr. 2019; Joan R. Sherman, "Introduction," The Black Bard of North Carolina [1997])