In 1858, a young African boy named Cilucangy was brought ashore after being forced from his village and enduring forty-two days at sea aboard the Wanderer in chains and in brutally cramped, miserable conditions with little food or water. Once on Jekyll Island, he and other survivors gathered around a fire to eat, rest, and regain enough strength to dance. Given the English name Ward Lee, he was sold to John F. Tucker and worked in the manual labor of maintaining Tucker's plantation down the river from Savannah, while also using basket-weaving skills passed down by his mother. After the Civil War disrupted the life he had known on the plantation, he accepted a tenant house, 40 cent wages, and a garden plot. Although he later owned a home, sold his handcrafted baskets successfully, married, and had four children, he remained deeply stirred by a longing for his African roots. He printed a letter begging for help to return to Africa and re-created from his dreams a woven straw house like the one before which the village chief had stood to say goodbye, but no help came, and he died ten years later without fulfilling what he called his God-sent yearning to return home. The origins and ages of the Africans brought on the Wanderer are often difficult to determine, in part because village names in Africa customarily changed when a chief died. Others who came on the Wanderer retained only fragmentary memories: Zow Uncola, known as Tom Johnson, said only that his home was where "you can see the water just drippin' out o' the sun"; Manchuella, known in the United States as Katie Noble, said she came "from deep in Africa" and could only add that she had a child; and people such as Uster Williams and Lucy Lanham were too young to remember their village or age when they were taken.
