William B. Gould I

Who was William B. Gould I?

William B. Gould was a former slave and veteran of the American Civil War.

William B. Gould was born to a slave woman and perhaps an Englishman. He learned to read and write and is known for his detailed entries in a diary about his work as a plasterer. He was owned by the Nixon family and worked on the Bellamy House.

On September 21, 1862, a slave named William Benjamin Gould escaped with seven other slaves by rowing a small boat 28 nautical miles down the Cape Fear River and out into the Atlantic Ocean where the USS Cambridge of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron picked them up as contraband. Prior to the escape, Gould had been working as a plasterer at an antebellum mansion in Wilmington, North Carolina. At the time of his escape he appears to have been owned by Nicholas Nixon, a peanut planter and slave owner in Wilmington.

After his escape, Gould joined the U.S. Navy and believed he was "defending the holiest of all causes, Liberty and Union." Beginning with his time on the Cambridge and continuing through his discharge at the end of the war he kept a diary of his day-to-day activities.