Salih Bilali and Bilali Mohammed — Lowcountry Digital History Initiative

Exhibit page of 'Enslaved and Freed African Muslims: Spiritual Wayfarers in the South and Lowcountry' (Lowcountry Digital History Initiative, College of Charleston): Salih Bilali was born around 1790 in Massina on the Niger River (present-day Mali), captured and sold along the Gold Coast to the Bahamas, then sold to James Hamilton Couper, who took him to Cannon's Point plantation on St. Simons Island, Georgia, where he rose to head driver; some sale records note him as 'Tom'. It quotes Couper on him: 'his industry, intelligence, and honesty, soon brought him notice, and he was successively advanced, until he was made head driver.'