Jacob Stroyer: Salem

"The slaves had three ways of detecting thieves, one with a bible, one with a sieve, and another with graveyard dust."

Jacob Stroyer was enslaved in South Carolina from his birth in 1849 until the end of the Civil War. He then moved to Massachusetts and became a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. His narrative, My Life in the South, recounts his experiences during plantation slave life, the Civil War, and his Salem church endeavors.

Stroyer is buried in Greenlawn Cemetery in northwestern Salem. His grave is at the intersection of Anemone Ave. and Thorn Ave.