- [Sandra] There's a North Carolina legend about an enslaved Mariner who outwitted British privateers during the American Revolution, saved his crew, and earned his freedom.

And then, went on to run his own business in the very waters he once worked as an enslaved captain.

The legend calls him Currituck Jack, but his story was lost in the archives until a group of locals began working to separate fact from fiction.

So we traveled to Currituck and worked with local historians.

- But I think this is what you were interested in.

- [Sandra] Visited a historical society.

- People did not know about him.

- [Sandra] And even hopped on an airboat with a retired police officer to get to the bottom of this legend.

What we discovered was a Revolutionary War story unlike any we'd ever heard and a community ready to share that story on television for the first time.

This is "Homegrown History."

[crickets chirping] - This is a story that was written in the Virginia Pilot in 1874 that talks about Currituck Jack.

That is the oldest one I have been able to find.

- Barbara Snowden is a historian and a former public school teacher who's been working on verifying the real story behind the Currituck Jack legend since 2002.

- A lot of people think history is in the past.

It doesn't have any connection to them, but if you can tell a student this happened here in Currituck and made a difference, then they're gonna pay attention to it.

- [Sandra] It was a 1981 magazine article about Currituck Jack that first sent her down the rabbit hole.

Here's what she found.

[dramatic music] In 1780, Currituck County was on the front lines of the Revolutionary War.

The British were running a blockade off the coast and loyalists privateers were doing everything they could to prevent the rebellious' colonies trade.

Between the raids and the treacherous shoals of the outer banks, these were dangerous waters, but colonial merchants still had to make a living, so they kept shipping goods in and out of the board of Currituck, sometimes for the patriot cause.

This was Jack's world and he was a vital player in it.

Jack was an enslaved mariner.

In local waters, he and other enslaved men captained vessels, commanded enslaved crews and were entrusted to transport cargo and sometimes revenue from merchants.

They could see the world in ways those bound to plantations couldn't.

Jack was a master at sea, but still enslaved by law.

In 1780, the Revolutionary War caught up with Jack aboard the Polly, a schooner se was crewing for his enslaver, a prominent Currituck county man named Henry White.

[dramatic music] It was the dead of winter when the Polly disembarked from the port of Currituck.

Its crew, Jack and two white half brothers named Samuel Jasper and Caleb White, were headed to the West Indies.

They'd never make it because two days into their journey, a British privateer vessel captured the Polly.

The privateers overpowered Jack and his crewmates, put them in irons, and gave them barely enough food and water to survive.

After a failed attempt at escape, the privateers separated Jack from Caleb and Samuel.

They locked the brothers up below deck, but Jack got it worse.

They lashed him to a post on the quarter deck.

And according to sworn testimony, he spent a full day and night exposed to a proper winter gale, snow, wind, and a rough sea.

But he survived.

And when he was reunited with his crewmates below deck, they came up with a new plan, one that cast Jack in the lead role.

[soft piano music] The plot, Jack would pretend to be an enemy to America.

This was not a crazy idea.

Five years earlier in the early days of the war, Virginia's royal governor promised freedom to enslaved people who fought for the British.

Many had taken 'em up on it, so their plan had real logic.

The British were offering freedom, most patriots weren't.

Jack nailed the part.

He convinced the privateers that he wanted to join their cause.

They offered him freedom and he became the right hand man.

But three days into the charade with the weather clearing, Caleb slipped his irons, gave the signal, and went for the leader of the privateers.

Samuel joined with a cutlass and Jack took on two men at once, armed with nothing but a marlin spike.

They overpowered the privateers, locked them up, and sailed the Polly into Annapolis, where they turned the prisoners over to revolutionary authorities.

- If it wasn't for Currituck Jack saving him, my family might not even be in existence.

- Yeah.

- But that was the main thing, but she would call me up.

- [Sandra] Barbara Pardue is a descendant of Samuel Jasper, one of the men who crewed the Polly with Jack.

Her genealogical work and family records led to a pivotal breakthrough in this research, identifying which Currituck County family with the surname of White enslaved Jack.

That wasn't easy.

- There was so many Henry whites, so many Caleb Whites.

- I was getting very confused.

- Barbara called me up knowing my family's name is White.

She goes, "Do you know anything about this story with White?"

I said, "Shoot, I've got it for 20 years.

Yes, I know it."

I gave her a piece of paper with all my eliminations on it, scratched it out with every Henry White, every Caleb White, and all the dates.

And I had no, no, no.

Then I finally had the big check.

- [Sandra] With that resolved, a new discovery found in a trunk owned by the White family was evidence they were on the right track.

It was a copy of sworn testimony given by Caleb White recounting what happened during the Polly ordeal and what Jack did next.

It took Jack five weeks to recover from the injuries he sustained reclaiming the Polly.

After recovering, he returned to his enslaver, Henry White, but he found life back home intolerable.

Citing abuse, he asked the survivors of the Polly for help.

And according to sworn testimony, Caleb White bought Jack, presumably in an effort to improve his situation.

After the war, Jack went on captain a 26 ton cargo schooner named the Resolution for Samuel and Caleb.

Samuel later testified that another local merchant trusted Jack with hundreds of pounds worth of cargo every year.

He remained a boss at sea, but he was still enslaved.

That was about to change.

In 1787, seven years after purchasing Jack, Caleb White signed his final will and testament.

It included a provision.

After Jack paid $100 to Caleb's executors, he could have his freedom.

Gaining freedom in North Carolina was extremely difficult.

The law required what it called meritorious service just to be eligible.

And even then, the enslaved person usually had to pay a fee, not easy for people who typically worked for no compensation, but enslaved captains were in a unique position.

Some of them could earn money in ways that other enslaved people couldn't.

It took Jack several years to raise the money.

But in 1792, over a decade after his heroic actions on the Polly, Samuel Jasper petitioned the legislature for his freedom stating, "Jack did great honor to the name of humanity and highly merited, much greater reward than that of emancipation."

The petition was bundled with nine other cases, and when the 10 people were freed, all were assigned new names, often combinations of their former enslavers.

That's how Jack became John Jasper White.

[machine whirring] We're flying across the marshes on an airboat with a retired police officer to find out what happened next.

[upbeat playful music] - My grandfather was born just on the other side of those trees.

He would spend his days hunting in the marsh, roaming this marsh.

I never get tired of being here.

- [Sandra] Barbara brought Jimmy Cason on the case to track down where John Jasper White spent the rest of his years as a free man.

- My professional life was spent in law enforcement and those skills that you learn, we are investigating crimes.

Research carries over into life sometimes in other places that you didn't expect.

- [Sandra] Today, this land is a national animal refuge named Mackay Island.

But 250 years ago, it was farmland.

A paper trail of primary sources, wills, deeds, a census, lead us here.

In one of the deeds the community surfaced, there's a crudely drawn map of a property that belonged to the white family.

And there's a curve on this map that caught Jimmy and Barbara's eye.

When they laid this map over satellite imagery, it lined up almost perfectly over the Indian Creek, which still runs through this land today.

- This area to our right, this is the general vicinity of that property that we believe Currituck Jack had.

- [Sandra] Owning property was a remarkable feat for African Americans in the 18th century.

And the discovery of an 1803 will recorded for John Jasper White gave us even more insight into the life he built as a free man.

He was married to a woman named Rose, he had children, furnished a house, and owned a cargo schooner.

He built a full life.

Two years later, that will was recorded in court, leading us to believe he died in 1805.

But his story will live on.

[church bells] The Historic Jarvisburg Colored School is a local museum dedicated to preserving this county's Black history and culture.

In 1867, on the heels of the Civil War, a free Black man named William Hunt deeded this land to the community in order to create a school for Black children in Currituck County.

In the late nineties, descendants of the founder and school alumni led efforts to convert the old school into a museum.

Today, museum stakeholders are guiding us through the site.

- Norma, one of the ladies that's featured in the panel, this is her narrative about about how she went to school.

They walked to school, walked through the woods.

They were scared to do it, but they did it.

And one thing about it, I always like to say when we get that, when we give this tour is, if they didn't go to school when they got home, their parents knew about it.

No cell phones.

So I always coin the phrase it takes a village.

- [Sandra] What would y'all say that the significance of the school is to this county's history?

- It would give us a lot of history that children didn't know anything about because in the younger age now, they didn't know anything about integration, that they did not know that Blacks could not go in white places or or restaurants or anything.

They had to go to the back door if they wanted anything to eat.

- And we were just trying to make people - Aware.

- Aware.

- [Sandra] Soon, a statue of John Jasper White will stand on these grounds, a monument to the centuries long contributions of African Americans in Currituck County.

For the past few years, North Carolina sculptor, Stephen Hayes, has been working with the community on this statue.

- At the end of the day, it's not my work, right?

This work is for the community.

- [Sandra] Several stewards of the museum provided input on the creative direction of the statue and the design they landed on celebrates the life John Jasper White built for himself as a free man.

- His clothes are really blowing in the wind like flowing, and he has his one hand holding the wheel of the ship and the other hand holding the marlin spike close to his heart as a symbol, saying like, "This is where, how I broke free," you know?

And holding that ship wheel of saying like, "I am guiding this ship now."

- [Sandra] There's still so much that we don't know about this story.

After John Jasper White's death, the white surname vanished from Currituck's records of Black residents for decades.

So we're not sure what happened to his family, but if there's anything this community has taught us, it's that you never know when or where a new clue will surface.

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