Dianah Johnson of White House Plantation

To continue telling a diverse history of the Revolution, the Museum and Berkeley 250 are working to research the lives of the War's Berkeley County women.

Formerly enslaved at White House Plantation in Goose Creek, Dianah Johnson was a teenager when she "ran off" in 1780. In November 1783, Dianah embarked from New York City on the L'Abondance, a British ship used to transport formerly-enslaved Black Americans to Nova Scotia. Nothing else is known of her life, though there is a marriage of a Dianah Johnson and Mingo Leslie in New York City in 1783. The embarkation list for the L’Abondance shows Mingo Leslie's name listed directly above Dianah's.

The image here comes from the "Book of Negroes," a list of nearly 3,000 Black refugees leaving the United States for Canada in 1783. There are several Berkeley County names in the document; more research is ongoing.