Roland Steiner, Conjuring in Georgia, 1901
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The page below offers an in-depth look into the life of one of the greatest African-American root doctors and medical pharmacists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Roland A. Steiner: Enslaver, Physician, and Folklorist
Roland A. Steiner (December 1839 - January 12, 1906) was a physician, plantation owner, enslaver, folklorist, and amateur archaeologist. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he lived in Georgia as an adult. He was the son of a doctor and he fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War, hoping to keep African-Americans in slavery, for his personal economic benefit.
After the Union won the war and slavery was abolished, Steiner kept many of his former slaves on as employees, paying them to work on his plantations. On the Burke County, Georgia, Property Tax Digest for 1874-1876 he is listed as owning 3,174 acres and acting as the agent for H. H. Steiner, who owned 2,342 acres. (His own land was valued at $12,696.00 at that time, equivalent to about 5 million dollars in 2023.)
Steiner's labourers undertook the large works of archaeological discovery for which he is now best known. He oversaw their excavation of Mound C at the Etowah Mound site and many other prehistoric Native sites, and he catalogued their findings. From the 1890s through the early 1910s, Steiner sent approximately 78,000 Native American artifacts to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. This trove, which includes copper, shell, mother-of-pearl, and stone implements, jewelry, statuettes, and other items, is the museum's largest private collection.
As an ethnologist and folklorist, Steiner was certainly less overtly racist than some of the other European-Americans who collected Black folklore and mocked it at the same time. He was of a precise mind, and although this article did come from the pen of an inherently evil, greedy, and uncaring enslaver, it contains a detailed report on late 19th century Georgia hoodoo, root doctoring, witchcraft, and conjure -- or as he spelled it, cunjer.
I have lightly edited Steiner's text, broken apart some of his very long paragraphs, and added sub-headings for the sake of readability. A few explanatory notes have been added [in brackets].
WARNING: The material on this page was written by a European-American who was describing African-American spirituality as an outsider. This author was racist or race-derogatory and the conclusions he or she drew while writing this eye-witness account are grossly offensive. However, the text is included in full because it accurately describes practices and customs of the African-American South during the 19th century (albeit not always with complete understanding) -- and it also serves as a political reminder of how far we have some in our struggle for race equality and respect in the ensuing years. Read with caution and compassion.
OBSERVATIONS ON THE PRACTICE OF CONJURING IN GEORGIA
by Roland Steiner
from the Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 14, No. 54, 1901
This collection of beliefs relating to witchcraft, which has been obtained from informants whose confidence I have acquired, may be introduced by some account of my personal experience with cunjer.
Hattie McGahee, the Root Doctoress of Waynesboro, Georgia
A family of negroes consisting of husband, wife, and son applied to me at my plantation near Waynesboro, Georgia, for work. The man and woman were well advanced in years and both of the pure negro type. The woman asked that I would give them a house as far removed from others as possible, which request seemed to me rather odd, as most negroes prefer living together, or near each other. They worked as well as the average negro, and I had no cause to complain.
A few months after their arrival, when they were firmly established and were well acquainted with the neighborhood, it began to be rumored about that Hattie McGahee, the woman, was a root doctoress, could relieve pains, cure diseases, foretell events, bring about estrangement between husband and wife, or effect reconciliations. She could interpret dreams, was a weather prophet, and in short completely proficient in her art.
Hosey Lightfoot, the Celebrated Root Doctor of Waynesboro
Upon the same plantation [near Waynesboro, Georgia] were two negroes, Joe Coleman and Henry Jenkins, both of whom were seeking to win the affections of a young negress named Laura Jones. Henry Jenkins sought the assistance of Hattie McGahee, while Joe Coleman procured as advisor and friend of a celebrated negro root doctor called Hosey Lightfoot. [Hosey is probably short for Hosea, so it is likely that the rival cunjer doctor's proper name was Hosea Lightfoot.]
The plantation was divided as to the suitors for the hand of Laura, and Hattie declared open war against all those espousing the cause of Joe Coleman.
The Black Dog and the Black Cat
[Hattie McGahee] had as assistants in the occult art a perfectly black dog and black cat, which were regarded as evil spirits, perhaps as Satan himself. The dog was brought into service [to further the cause of Henry Jenkins] by furnishing a few hairs which were burned with some sassafras sticks and as a powder administered in food to Laura. [Generally speaking, dogs represent men and cats represent women; thus feeding the powdered ashes of dog hair and sassafras represented Henry's masculinity entering into Laura's body.]
Cross marks and graveyard dirt, or small bundles of tied-up sticks, were found lying in the paths leading to the houses of the respective rivals, and many of the negroes refused to work in the same field with Hattie and her husband. Every headache or other pain, or even diseases common to the climate, were laid to the account of the different doctors, [Hattie and Hosey].
I once found a large pile of cotton lying in the field, which the negroes refused to take out, claiming that Hattie McGahee had put a spell on it. Negroes would not even walk in the paths that Hattie used, fearing the effect of some spell.
Matters were at a fever-heat until a crisis was reached in the killing of Hattie McGahee's dog, which was ascribed to Joe Coleman and his friends.
The Waynesboro Witch War Melee
When the principals with their friends met to settle the difficulty personally, the result was that Henry Jenkins was fearfully mutilated with an axe, Joe Coleman suffered a fearful beating with sticks, while others of the respective parties escaped with more or less personal injury.
Joe Coleman, the aggressor, was sent to the chain gang by the county court for six months. While he was serving out his term, Henry Jenkins recovered from his injuries, and married Laura [Jones]. Shortly after the difficulty, the father of Joe Coleman was kicked by a mule and killed; his death was laid at the door of Hattie McGahee, the negroes believing that she used some spell over the mule, making him to kill Lewis Coleman, the father of Joe.
After I left Waynesboro, Henry Jenkins and another negro had a difficulty, in which both were killed, about the same Laura Jones [Jenkins] whom he had married. I immediately discharged the whole McGahee family, saving the young son, who refused to go with his mother and father. Whenever she went, still pursuing the calling of a dealer in the occult science, trouble followed in her wake.
Those following the profession of cunjer doctor rarely remain in one place for a long time, and generally wish their homes far removed from other habitations. When their work becomes known and its effect felt, for the peace of all, master as well as man, it is necessary to remove them from the place.
The Jane Jackson and Anna Bonney Cunjer War in Grovetown, Georgia
Any trouble that befalls a negro that he can't explain is laid at the door of cunjer.
In 1896, upon my plantation near Grovetown, Georgia, I secured as cook the services of a mulatto woman by the name of Jane Jackson, who was highly recommended. She and her husband lived in the yard. At the same time I employed as milkwoman Anna Bonney, whose husband, Jim Bonney, attended to the lot. An estrangement between Anna and Jane soon produced the following disastrous results. Anna would complain about Jane, Jane in turn would accuse Anna of taking the milk.
One morning at breakfast, my brother and myself, upon drinking a little of the coffee in our cups, were made violently sick. Of course Jane was questioned very closely in regard to it; but I soon became convinced that she was not the guilty party. We never could explain the coffee incident, having failed to analyze the coffee. A negro told me that he thought powdered pecune [Puccoon] root was put in the coffee, as it is a powerful emetic.
Though Anna milked and Jane churned, every effort to make butter failed. Jane said that Anna had put a spell on the milk. Anna retorted by saying that Jane put something in the milk to prevent the butter coming, so that she, Anna, could be discharged.
Chickens about the yard began to die, the water in the well had a peculiar taste, little bundles of sticks were found in the kitchen as well as in the cow lot, graveyard dirt served its purpose in various ways and in many places. Having stopped using water out of the well, we had all the water used for drinking and culinary purposes brought from a spring that was a short distance from the house. Very soon sticks of various lengths, devil's snuff, and graveyard dirt, were found strewed along the path to the spring. When a hen was put to setting, she rarely brought off chickens.
Our milk cow prematurely going dry, and a fine calf dying at the lot, together with the fact that Jim Bonney and his wife Anna were seen by a negro, Steve Olley, at midnight making repeated circuits around the well, and motioning with their hands towards the house occupied by Jane Jackson. Upon the negroes telling me of the walk around the well, I determined to make a clean sweep of everybody, and discharged all hands in any way concerned in the matter.
It was with great difficulty, while all this cunjer was going on, that I could get any one to enter the yard in order to perform the slightest offices. Negroes would use neither axe nor hoes kept at the yard, but would bring their own, and take them away as soon as the work was finished. Some would not even pass through the yard.
Shortly after the discharge of all parties, John Jackson, the husband of Jane Jackson, was seen, when passing on a path, to motion three times towards Anna Bonney's house. Anna was standing in the yard at the time the motions were made, and fell in convulsions. She was taken into the house, where she lingered for some weeks, and died. Her death was laid at the door of Jane Jackson.
Before using the well again, I had it thoroughly cleaned out. I also had red pepper thrown in, as well as into and under the house that was occupied by Jane Jackson, before I could get other negroes to occupy the premises, or use the water from the well. [Having red pepper thrown into the well and then both in and under the house was undertaken not because Roland Steiner believed in cunjer or thought red pepper efficacious in any way. He, like many another white plantation owner, outnumbered by those who served him, chose to go along with the beliefs of his slaves or employees in order to settle their minds and gain their cooperation. In some cases the performative magical actions of the white enslaver proved so effective that he was converted to a belief in hoodoo, and took up the practice of magic himself; there is no indication, however, that Steiner went that far.]
It can be well understood from the foregoing, how this matter of cunjer, in designing hands, can work evil to the innocent. Jane and Anna, with the assistance of their husbands, were fighting a battle royal against each other. Yet I and other innocent people had parts to play in this drama.
How a False Cunjer Dowser Got Money from the Widow Sarah Davis
This account was given to me by Henry Thomas. [From later context, it appears that Henry Thomas was an African-American man, and probably one of Roland Steiner's employees.]
"Two miles from Grovetown, Georgia, lived an old widowed negro woman, Sarah Davis, who had accumulated quite a sum of money. She was very close, and would neither lend nor give. A negro, learning that she was sick, put the following scheme in execution to get some of it. He went along with the path that led to the spring, and found a convenient spot for his purpose, dug a hole, put in it a small bottle containing human hair, some graveyard dirt, and two small sticks; he covered up the holes, throwing leaves over the surface of the ground to conceal his work. He then went into the house, where he found the old woman quite sick, her son and daughters were with her.
"After talking with her for some time, asking particularly the nature of her complaint, as to pain, etc., he plainly told her she was under a spell, and that if she would give him ten dollars he would find it, break the spell, and cure her; if he did not find it, no pay. He asked that the son and daughter accompany him in the search, which proposition seemed fair enough. He told them he had with him a rod that could find it. He, with the son and daughter, began the search. He did not go on the spring path when he began the search for the cunjer, but went about the yard in opposite directions, holding in his hands the rod, a small piece of rod-iron about twelve inches long. He held the rod firmly in both hands, a hand holding each end of the rod. [The use of an iron rod held in the hands to locate an item under the earth marks this unnamed false cunjer doctor as a false dowser as well.].
"After searching the yard thoroughly, with no success, he went towards the lot where the mules were kept, with no better luck; the rod would not turn.
"At last he turned his face toward the spring, and slowly walked along, no one speaking a word. When he neared the spot where he had put the bottle, the rod began to show signs of life; when he got within two feet of the spot, the rod acted very excitedly. He sent the son after a hoe and shovels, made a circle about four feet in diameter, and began digging. He gradually approached the bottle, then began very carefully to take away a little dirt at a time, till at last he unearthed the bottle; the son and daughter were speechless. He took the bottle to the old woman, who was much relieved and paid the ten dollars, and then he gave her some roots to chew. The bottle, after being broken, was buried in the middle of the public road."
The old woman recovered, and, though the trick was exposed, still believes she was cunjered, and cured by the doctor.
Tom Franklin, the Georgia Graveyard Dirt Cunjer Doctor
Henry Thomas describes another Georgia Cunjer Doctor:
"Tom Franklin is supposed to be a cunjerer. Whenever he comes into a house, he always puts his hands in his pockets, then on a chair, or table, or bed. When he does this, something always happens to the household. Negroes think he carries graveyard dirt, and works spells by it. They say he works entirely with graveyard dirt, that he knows the time to get it.
"Tom was the cause of a negro named Alex Johnson giving up a farm and moving off the place; he put graveyard dirt under Alex's house, and made him very ill. Alex saw the dirt, and what he could get of it he took with a shovel and threw in a fire he had made in the road. Some he couldn't get, as it kept sinking into the ground."
Tom Franklin is also a root doctor, and practices; he collects roots at different stages of the moon. [The use of astrology by professional root doctors, especially when timing spell-work, can be found from the 19th century right on to the present day.]
A Benevolent African Wizard Who Practiced Native American Magic in Georgia Before the Civil War
Many years ago [before Emancipation in 1865] an old African or Guinea negro, who was a trainer of race-horses and hanger-on of the sporting ring, claimed to be a cunjurer and wizard, professing to have derived the art from the Indians after he arrived in this country from Africa.
This power he never used criminally against any one, but only in controlling riotous gatherings and commanding forgiveness from parties threatening him with personal violence. He would cause runaway slaves to return to their masters, foretell the time they would appear and give themselves up, and compel their masters or overseers to pardon and forgive them for the offense of running away, even against their own threats of severe punishment when caught.
[How I wish that Roland Steiner had remembered this root doctor's name! Since Steiner was born in December 1839 and freedom came in 1865 when he was 25 years old, he probably saw or met this man when he was a child or a teen, circa 1850 - 1860. Training race-horses and riding them was almost exclusively the work of black slaves at that time; horse-racing only became a predominately white occupation during the Jim Crow era, when black jockeys and trainers were forced out of the field.]
Henry Thomas Described Being Cunjered in 1898
"I was cunjered last May, 1898. I felt the first pain, hoeing in the field; it struck me in the right foot, and then in the left, but most in the right foot, then run over my whole body, and rested in my head. I went home, and knew I was cunjered. I looked for the cunjer and found a little bag under my front doorstep, containing graveyard dirt, some night-shade roots, and some devil's snuff. I took the bag, and dug a hole in the middle of the public road, where people walked. I buried the bag, came home, and sprinkled red pepper and sulphur in my house.
"I have used fresh urine, pepper, and salt to rub with. I am going to get fresh pokeberry root on the next new moon, make a tea, and rub with that."
"My feet feel hot. The cunjer put a fire in them. I am going to see a new root-doctor, and find out who worked on me, have the spell took off of me, and put it on the person who spelled me."
Items Relating to Cunjer
These beliefs come from various negro informants in Georgia.
How to Make and Use a Cunjer Hand
Devil's snuff, a large species of mushroom, when broken, is full of powder of a slatish color, and is used in cunjer bags, singly or in combination with graveyard dirt and other things.
A cunjer bag [to cause harm] contains devil's snuff, worms, a piece of snake-skin, some leaves or sticks tied with horsehair, a black owl's feather, the wing of a leather-wing bat, the tail of a rat, or the foot of a mole; any or all of these things may be used as needed.
Some cunjer bags are made with snake-root, needles, and pins. These are tied with pieces of hair of the person to be cunjered, and placed in a bag of red flannel. This mode of cunjer does not produce death, but much suffering and pain.
How to Obtain and Use Graveyard Dirt
Most negroes rarely go near a graveyard in daytime, and never at night, but cunjer doctors do.
Graveyard dirt must be got off the coffin of the dead person, on the waste [waning phase] of the moon at midnight.
Graveyard dirt is taken from a grave one day after burial.
To cunjer a well, throw into the well graveyard dirt, an old pipe of a cunjer doctor, or some devil's snuff.
One can be cunjered by shaking hands with any one, if he has rubbed his hands with graveyard dirt.
To sprinkle graveyard dirt about the yard or about a house makes one sleepy and sluggish. The one who dwells there will naturally waste away and perish until he dies.
Harmful Cunjer
To put a root with a cunjer-spell on it on the ground and let a person walk over it will hurt him.
To produce blindness by cunjer, take a toad-frog and dry it, then powder it up. Mix the powder with salt, and sprinkle it in the hat of the person to be cunjered, or on the head. if possible. When the head sweats, and the sweat runs down the face, blindness takes place.
To cunjer by means of a hat, take a toad-frog dry and powder, and put the powder in the hat, or the dried toad may be put up over the door, or under steps. Toads, frogs, lizards, etc., must be all gotten at night on the waste of the moon, as that will insure a wasting away of the body.
Get hair from the mole [mould] of your head, tie it around a new ten-penny nail, and bury it with the nail head down, point up, under the doorstep. This will run one crazy.
Deadly Cunjer
If a person is cunjered by a negro with a blue and black eye, he will surely die.
If cunjered by a blue-gummed negro, death is certain.
Some cunjer by getting the excrement of the person to be cunjered, boring a hole in a tree, and putting the excrement in the hole, and driving a plug in tight; this will stop one up, an action on the bowels can't be had unless the tree with the plug is found, the plug taken out, and the tree cut down and burned where it stands; the smallest trees are generally selected to prevent their being found.
I give an illustration of cunjering to death by hat and by water. While Bill Marshall, a negro, well known around Grovetown, Georgia, was riding in a wagon with another negro, the latter's hat blew off. Bill Marshall picked it up, and handed it to the negro, who in a few days was taken sick and died; his death was laid at the door of Marshall. Marshall went to a well to get some water; he drank out of the bucket; a negro woman came after him, drank out of the same water, and died shortly after; the death was laid to Bill Marshall. I employed him to deaden timber in new ground; none of the negroes would have anything to do with him, but said he was a bad man, a cunjer doctor; one old negro said, "Look at a tree Bill cut, die in a week." I couldn't reason the question with them; Bill could get no place to stay or cook, so I had to discharge him. He is now living in a house he built far off from his fellows, and will be forced to follow cunjering.
Take the heads of dried snake, ground puppy, scorpion, or toad-frog, pound them up, and put it in the water or victuals of anyone; the varmints, when taken into one's stomach, turn to life, and slowly eat you up, unless you can get the cunjer taken off.
To Protect Against Cunjer
Red pepper in your shoe will prevent cunjer.
Sol Lockheart found a cunjer bag at his doorstep. He did not look into it, but picked it up with two sticks, and threw the bag and two sticks into the fire.
To keep from being cunjered, wear a piece of money in either shoe, or both. If you eat where any one is who you fear may cunjer you, keep a piece of silver money in your mouth while eating and drinking.
To keep witches from riding you in your sleep, you make an X on a Bible, and put it under your pillow.
To carry about the person a bone from the skeleton of a human being is proof against cunjer, but the bone must be gotten of a grave by the person.
In excavating an Indian mound on the Savannah River, Georgia, the negroes working took each a metacarpal bone to protect them against cunjer.
If a negro finds a coat or article of dress lying nicely folded, with a stick lying on it, he will not touch it for fear of cunjer.
On one occasion, where some cotton was left in the field, and thought to be cunjered, I could not get a negro to touch it. When I picked it up and put it in a basket, I was told that the spell left it, as the spell leaves after being touched by a human hand, the cunjer going to the person touching it.
However that may be, I have also been told by negroes that cunjer can only be effectual against those of the same race and that a negro cannot cunjer a white man. [I suspect that those who told this to Steiner, who was at various times either their enslaver or their boss, hoped to pacify or mollify his fears by this ruse; it is not a belief i have ever encountered before, although i am sure other instances of it may be found in the literature.]
To Cure Cunjer
Fish-bone is good for curing cunjer when swelling has occurred.
Pecune [Puccoon] root is good for cunjer; use it to rub with. [Puccoon is an Algonquian word that means "red dye," and refers to dye made from the root of a plant. There are two types of Puccoon -- Yellow Puccoon, which refers to dye-bearing Lithospermum species in the Borage family, and Red Puccoon, or Blood Root (Sanguinaria canadensis), a dye-yielding member of the Poppy family. Both produce red dye. Red Puccoon has a long history of use in ointments and creams for treating diseases of the skin, especially cancer, for which it is now deprecated by medical science as being a highly caustic escharotic, which can destroy skin tissue.]
Dogs and Cunjer
To prevent a hunting dog from running after spirits, take a glass button and tie it around his neck.
To stop a dog from hunting spirits, rub an onion over his nose, and he will not trail anything; a piece of wild onion is sometimes found in a cunjer bag and; such a bag may be rubbed on the dog's nose as well.
Spirits and Haunts
If you go through a place that is haunted, to keep from seeing the haunts and from their harming you, take your hat off and throw it behind you, then turn around to the right and take up your hat and walk fast by the place, so as not to aggravate the haunts to follow.
Spirits come in any shape, as men, cows, cats, dogs, but are always black. Some whine like a cat.
To see spirits, take a rain-crow's egg, break it in water, and wash your face in it. [The rain-crow is also known as the yellow-billed cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus).]
If a man dies and leaves money buried, so that nobody knows where it is, his spirit will come back, and the color of the spirit is red.
Whenever any one gets killed, the spot is haunted.
All old houses, that stand off by themselves, and are unoccupied, generally get the reputation of being haunted. A cunjer doctor can lay haunts.
Many negroes say they travel round with spirits, but they are generally considered cunjerers.
-- Roland Steiner, Grovetown, Georgia.
Persons Named in this Account
Because genealogists lack the 1890 Federal Census (it was destroyed and cannot be reconstructed), i am adding the names of 19 people mentioned in this account, which was written in 1901 but spans Mr. Steiner's memories back to the 1870s. With the exception of Jane Jackson, all of those named are African-American or Black and would have been identified as "negro" or "black" on Federal census records of the 1870s - 1900. Jane Jackson, identified as "mulatto," would today be called bi-racial. The names are in alphabetical order by surname.
- Anna Bonney, milkmaid, plantation of Roland Steiner, near Grovetown, Georgia, after 1896; discharged for cunjering circa 1896-1897; fell victim to John Jackson's conjurations, went into convulsions and died.
- Jim Bonney, husband of Anna Bonney, cared for cattle and livestock, plantation of Roland Steiner, near Grovetown, Georgia, after 1896; discharged for cunjering circa 1896-1897.
- Joe Coleman, son of Lewis Coleman, labourer, plantation of Roland Steiner, near Waynesboro, Georgia; sentenced to 6 months on the county chain gang. for battery, prior to 1896.
- Lewis Coleman, father of Joe Coleman, labourer, plantation of Roland Steiner, near Waynesboro, Georgia; kicked to death by a mule while Joe was on the chain gang, prior to 1896. He was listed on a Burke County, Georgia property tax digest in 1878-1880 as working in the employ of J. Attaway. He was enumerated on June 23rd, 1880. in District 61 of Burke County, Georgia, with the occupation of "Agriculture."
- Sarah Davis, an old widowed woman, lived two miles from Grovetown, Georgia; she had one son and at least two daughters, and was well-to-do.
- Tom Franklin, root doctor and cunjer doctor, near Grovetown, Georgia; he only worked cunjer with graveyard dirt; he harvested herbs and roots by the stages of the moon. He was enumerated on the property tax digest for Grovetown and Berzelia, Georgia, as a tenant on the land of W. H. Busy [? -- the handwriting is hard to read] which was adjacent to the property of R. A. Steiner, the author of this memoir.
- Jane Jackson, a mulatto, cook, plantation of Roland Steiner, near Grovetown, Georgia, after 1896; discharged for cunjering circa 1896-1897.
- John Jackson, husband of Jane Jackson, cared for cattle and livestock, plantation of Roland Steiner, near Grovetown, Georgia, after 1896; discharged for cunjering circa 1896-1897.
- Henry Jenkins, labourer, plantation of Roland Steiner, near Waynesboro, Georgia; mutilated with an axe;; married Laura Jones; killed in a fight after Steiner relocated to Grovetown, Georgia, circa 1896.
- Alex Johnson, near Grovetown, Georgia; he gave up a farm and moved off the place due to the graveyard dirt cunjer of Tom Franklin at his house.
- Laura Jones a.k.a. Laura Jones Jenkins. labourer, plantation of Roland Steiner, near Waynesboro, Georgia; married Henry Jenkins; died around the same time he was killed, circa 1906.
- Hosey Lightfoot a.k.a. Hosea Lightfoot, root doctor, plantation of Roland Steiner, near Waynesboro, Georgia, prior to 1896. He was recorded in the 1870 Federal Census as Hosey Lightfoot, 25 years old, born in 1845 in Georgia, black, not able to read or write, living alone in building 170, subdivision 157, Waynesboro, Burke County, Georgia, employed as a domestic servant. Under the name Hosea Lightfoot, he was listed on a roll of "Names of Freedmen" in the 73rd District of Burke County, Georgia in 1873-1874, and again in 1874-1876. As Hasia Lightfoot, he was briefly a patient in a hospital in Savannah, Georgia, in 1900, and, as Hosia Lightfoot, he died there on July 28th of the same year, at the approximate age of 55.
- Hattie McGahee, root doctor, plantation of Roland Steiner, near Waynesboro, Georgia, prior to 1896.
- Mr. McGahee 1, Hattie's husband, labourer, plantation of Roland Steiner, near Waynesboro, Georgia, prior to 1896.
- Mr. McGahee 2, their son, labourer, plantation of Roland Steiner, near Waynesboro, Georgia, prior to 1896.
- Steve Olley, labourer, plantation of Roland Steiner, near Grovetown, Georgia, after 1896; witnessed and reported probable well tampering, 1896-1897.
- Henry Thomas, labourer, plantation of Roland Steiner, near Grovetown, Georgia, after 1896; he was cunjered in 1898; he was Steiner's informant on many aspects of cunjer in and around Grovetown, Georgia. He was enumerated on June 8th, 1880. in District 64 of Burke County, Georgia, with the occupation of "Agriculture." He was listed on a Burke County, Georgia property tax digest in 1884-1886 in Liberty Hill District Number 68 in the employ of W. R. Dixon. In 1890 he was a tenant on the land of John Bell in Waynesboro, Burke County, Georgia.
- Unidentified benevolent African-born wizard who practiced Native American magic near Grovetown, Georgia before the Civil War
- Unidentified travelling confidence trickster who posed as a dowser and conned Sarah Davis out of money by pretending to cure her of a cunjer spell.
Thanks to Eoghan Ballard for the transcription, to nagasiva yronwode for the photos, and to my Patrons, whose subscriptions have paid for the creation of this page.
catherine yronwode,
Editor of SouthernSpirits.org