NEW ORLEANS— Today’s Black History Month moment is the story of a drummer boy who helped lead the charge in the War of 1812, and the family that discovered their ancestor.
Regina Bartholemew-Woods says, “Right now we think of war in terms of very technical things and we think of a command center. Back in 1800’s, you didn’t have a command center. If the general of the war, of the battle, had the move the troops forward, it was moved through the rattle of a drum.”
Bartholemew-Woods continued, “I am the third direct descendant on my father’s side of Jordan Bankston Noble, who was the drummer boy of the War of 1812. There are some historians who have written that Andrew Jackson gave him his freedom but that is now true. When we discovered that we were a direct descendant of the drummer boy as we call him in our family for the Battle of New Orleans, it was very heartfelt for my father. My father is going to be 81-years-old. For a man who has lived through civil rights, who had to sit on the back of a bus, who also served in the army, it meant more to him, having a military man in the family before him. Such a historical impression not only in our family, but clearly in the history of New Orleans, something that can’t be erased even though it is not in our history books.”
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