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On 24 March 2007 at midday some 200 people packed into Kenwyn church at Truro for a bicentenary commemoration of the Act of Parliament that ended direct British involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. As well as the usual congregation, there were clergy from all over the county, local Quakers, the lord lieutenant and, perhaps, some distant descendants of former slave owners. Chains were carried, candles burned, a globe was spun and reference made to present day slavery as Bishop Bill led an ecumenical service. The focus of the event was the life of one remarkable man and ex-slave Joseph Antonio Emidy who lies buried in Kenwyn churchyard. Richard McGrady author of Music and Musicians in early Nineteenth Century Cornwall The world of Joseph Emidy slave, violinist and composer (University of Exeter Press, 1991) spoke on Emidys life starting at the end and working back to the beginning as summarized below: Emidy died on 24 April 1835 when aged about 60. On his tombstone shaded by trees in Kenwyn churchyard, he is described as a native of Portugal and a musician, but this is only part of the story. He had arrived at Falmouth in Cornwall in 1797 after four years as a volunteer in the British Navy. Given the chance to continue serving Captain Pellew as ships musician, Emidy chose freedom. (For the next 38 years he lived and worked successfully as a musician and composer first in Falmouth and later in Truro. He married a Penryn girl Jenefer Hutchens, and together they brought up a large brood of children). Back in 1794 Emidy had been a victim of the press-gang - kidnapped to order as he later told it (so much for volunteering). Emidy was at that stage a promising musician, playing second fiddle at the Lisbon opera house, but sometime before that he had been a slave. Born about 1775 in Guinea on the west coast of Africa, Emidy was sold as a child to Portuguese traders who took him to Brazil. From there he had come back to Lisbon with his owner and master and began a musical career that would last a lifetime. In the guise of a Redruth apothecary and friend of Emidy, Mike OConnor a talented Cornish musician, then played three pieces of music from Emidys time. None of Emidys own compositions having so far come to light, so Mr Handel and a country dance had to stand in. The programme also included Tunde Jegedes Island of Cold from Lamentation a musical portrayal of Fort James, an island captivity and the last port of departure for millions of African Exiles forced into slavery. On Fort James Island many of these people shed the beads of their necklaces into the sea as they left, for they believed that as long as a symbolic part of them remained here that they would one day be able to return (handout for the event and part of the accompanying exhibition at the west end of Kenwyn church) A contemporary cartoon-like sketch of Emidy and fellow musicians dated 1808 is on show as part of an exhibition at the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro. Prayers and thoughts were written on paper chain links to be made into a chain later on, and the service concluded with Amazing Grace. Bishop Bill than led a trail through Kenwyn churchyard to Emidys grave. By Emidys grave some people recalled other notable African slaves who had found their way to Cornwall like Alexander the Moor, baptized in the ruins of Paul church near Penzance the year after the Spanish raid in 1596. (This is a recent discovery by the Victoria County History of Cornwall team working on the history of Mousehole and Newlyn). Remarkable in a different way was Evaristo Muchovela (subject of Evaristos Epitaph by Patrick Caroll, a BBC Radio 4 play broadcast in November 2002) who died aged 38 in 1868 at Redruth. Sold as a child in Brazil to Thomas Johns, a Cornish miner, c.1837, Evaristo was a slave for 22 years - long after the slave trade was abolished. Unlike Joseph Emidy he chose to stay with his master when Johns returned to Cornwall in about 1859. Johns set Evaristo up as a cabinet maker in Redruth before he died, and both he and Evaristo are buried in the same grave in Wendron churchyard.
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