Jazz musician explores Black history of Delaware Revolutionary War site

Why Should Delaware Care?
Musician Jonathan Whitney has composed a jazz suite about Black history at Cooch’s Bridge, the site of Delaware’s only Revolutionary War battle. Whitney believes celebrating and humanizing enslaved people whose stories have not been extensively documented is more important than ever when the federal government is making advances to whitewash the history of American slavery.

Jazz drummer and composer Jonathan Whitney spent his summer days as a kid wandering up and down the Christiana River in Newark, looking for trees and other structures to climb. One day, he struck gold: a dam of granite boulders stacked on top of one another.

The boulders created a waterfall flowing from a pond filled with crayfish, tadpoles and blossoming water lilies. It was the first time Whitney had seen such natural beauty nestled in his corner of suburbia.

Not far from the dam was a house Whitney assumed was a museum. It was, in fact, part of Cooch’s Bridge Historic Site, the 10-acre homestead built by the Cooch family in 1760 that served as the grounds of Delaware’s only Revolutionary War battle in 1777. The Cooch family lived in the house until 2010, which is now being transformed into a public museum.

It wasn’t until 2022 that Whitney learned the history of the dam while taking a tour of the estate with Friends of Cooch’s Bridge Historic Site President Vince Watchorn. The dam was built in 1792 by enslaved people owned by the Cooch family, who were millers.

“That moment connected me with them because they also had times when they could go back to that dam and look over it and see those lilies,” Whitney said.

Inspired, Whitney proposed a series of suites based on the estate’s history. Friends of Cooch’s Bridge Historic Site, with support from Delaware 250 and the Delaware Division of the Arts, commissioned Whitney in 2023 to compose four.

The first suite was a string quartet about the Cooch family. The second was a pipe organ suite about the Revolutionary War skirmish on the estate. The third, “Cooch’s Bridge: The African American Presence,” was released last month after its debut performance in October 2024. The fourth suite will be about local Indigenous history. 

“Cooch’s Bridge: The African American Presence” is a 50-minute jazz album made up of several pieces that characterize Black individuals who passed through or worked on the land. That includes the 20 enslaved people the Cooch family owned between 1742 and 1837.

In comparison to the Cooch family, little is recorded about Whitney’s subjects. So, he uses jazz as a tool to imagine what their personalities were like or what emotions they may have felt during important moments of their lives.

“We’re looking at these bodies not through the trauma that was inflicted on them, but through all the other humanity that wasn’t documented about them,” Whitney said.

The earliest documented enslaved person owned by the Cooch family is Samuel, whom we know about today because patriarch Thomas Cooch placed an ad in a Lancaster newspaper after Samuel ran away in 1750.

Whitney characterizes Samuel with hopeful trumpets and insistent conga backed by an ominous, looping piano note. 

As he composed the piece, Whitney imagined Samuel planning his escape during the dances the Cooch family’s slaves were known to hold in their quarters. 

“What was Samuel like at those gatherings? Was he smiling? Was he one of the guys that sat up against a tree and just watched? Did he have his side conversations going on? We can’t prove any of that,” Whitney said. “But as an artist, I can wonder.”

Whitney’s hard bop track “Jesse” is named after an enslaved man who ran away from the Cooch family twice and later negotiated his own manumission.

“It’s the hardest piece to play. It’s the fastest. It goes through so many keys, and it’s extremely complex. But that’s Jesse, right?” Whitney said. “There’s this energy behind him, but there’s this complexity behind him. You don’t become a negotiator with somebody who negotiates contracts for a living and get your freedom easily. He was a smart dude.”

“Cooch’s Bridge: The African American Presence” is not solely about the Cooch family’s slaves. There is also a piece about the indentured servants who worked for the Cooch family after they freed their slaves.

“The ones that are labeled ‘white’ in the record are being trained as millers, and all the rest of them … are being trained as housekeepers. In lieu of education, they’re being given two sets of clothes and $10. So, there’s still a separation there,” Whitney said. 

Whitney also wrote a tribute to a housekeeper, Ardessia, who cared for matriarch Eleanor Cooch in her twilight years. Ardessia was so beloved that her room is still dedicated to her over 50 years after her death.

“I wanted to write something beautiful for her because there’s these women, especially Black women, who do amazing things and make this world tick, who never get their flowers,” Whitney said.

The album’s lead single, “We’re Free,” is an upbeat vocal track about Benjamin Harris Martin, an enslaved person from North Carolina who fought at the Battle of Cooch’s Bridge alongside his enslaver, Col. Alexander Martin. 

When Col. Martin died in 1807, he, through his will, freed Benjamin Harris Martin and his wife, children and grandchildren and left him over 400 acres of land. He described Benjamin Harris Martin as “a humble friend, companion and servant” who risked his life for “liberty he was incapable of enjoying the benefits of.”

“The song about Benjamin Harris Martin is about that moment when they find out they’re free, and they’re walking down to their land,” Whitney said. “What would that feel like to have no agency, and then not only have agency over your life, but also (your family, and) … the ability to set up intergenerational wealth through a farm and a homestead?”

The fact that Benjamin Harris Martin was present at the Battle of Cooch’s Bridge was a months-old discovery for historian Wade Catts when Whitney was doing research for his suite. 

“Wade was super excited in our first meeting in (the Cooch home),” Whitney said. “Just to have confirmation that a Black body fought at Delaware’s only Revolutionary War site made him important.”

Coincidentally, when Whitney posted about Benjamin Harris Martin on social media after writing “We’re Free,” one of his descendents reached out wanting to share stories.

For Whitney, that interaction demonstrates the importance of telling stories from Black history. 

Works like “Cooch’s Bridge: The African American Presence” are made even more important when the federal government is actively trying to “erase” Black history, as Whitney put it. That’s been seen in measures like the recent removal of an exhibit about slavery at George Washington’s home in Philadelphia.

“‘If we don’t tell the story, maybe it’ll all go away.’ It doesn’t,” Whitney said. “It makes us lack context for what our current predicament is.”