Researching Ness: Can There Be Facts In Fiction?

Early in Homegoing, we were assigned a chapter about a slave named Ness. Gyasi begins the chapter with the fact that Ness has recently been bought by a slave owner from Alabama named Thomas Allan Stockham. To the slaves on his plantation, he is simply known as Tom Allan. I really didn’t pay much attention to this fact until a few pages later when Gyasi tells us that Tom Allan’s plantation is in a place called Tuscumbia. I’m sure most of my classmates simply looked over it as a small town, or maybe those that know some Alabamian history might have remarked that this was the birthplace of Helen Keller. To me, however, this is pretty much known as home. You see, I come from a city in Alabama called Florence, which is located right across the Tennessee River from Tuscumbia. Together with two other municipalities called Muscle Shoals and Sheffield, these cities are all grouped under the very broad association called “The Shoals.”

Now, I understand that slavery must have been present in the area I grew up. However, hearing the story of Ness and understanding she was enslaved right across the river from my house was a bit shocking. I also understand that Homegoing is a work of historical fiction, but surely Gyasi must have done some research in order to write about Tom Allan and his plantation. Being the historian that I am, I did a little research. The very first place I went to was the census records. Ness estimates she is around twenty-five years old, and she was also sold away from her mother at a young age in the year 1796. I made the very rough estimate that she must have been in Tom Allan’s possession during 1820, and since that was the first census available, that is the one I checked. There is no record of a Thomas Allan Stockham, or any variation, in the state of Alabama through 1850. So Gyasi made him up, which is not at all surprising due to the fact that this work is fiction. My curiosity had been peaked however, so I delved a little further. The city of Tuscumbia had not been settled until 1815, and had been incorporated as a town in December of 1820. On top of that, the first plantation homes were not built until the 1830s. Now, you might think I’m just being picky about a work of literature that did not actually have historical basis, and I probably am overthinking things. It was just interesting to me how the rough timeline Gyasi creates in her narrative do not seem to line up to historical facts. It makes me wonder what else she might have left out or included just to make the story more entertaining.