He was given the name Charles Antoine Francois La Fleur by the French - a pretty long and flowery name for a slave. La Fleur was a common military name. I don't know if he had a specific owner or was owned by the French army as a whole. He travel with a French guy who was asked to be the king of Sweden. I'd have to look through my family papers to retrieve the name of that guy. I thought it was strange that Sweden would ask some French guy to be their king. His surname became Zamore in Sweden. Zamore meant "the Moore." In Sweden, he was a kettle drummer. Kettle drums and trumpets were used to send signals to the far flung troops. Sweden liked to have a dark guy on a white horse to presumably scare the Finns, Danes and Norwegians. One of his sons had four wives (the perils of child birth) and sixteen children. Two of his children came to America - one was my great grandfather. He was not accepted by the Swedish population of Boston because he was so dark. The Swedes had learned racism in America. This family has one of the longest generations in all of Europe. My ancestor who was a slave lived in the 1700s. but that was only five generations before me. In 2001, I went with twelve family members to a family reunion in Sweden. It was an amazing experience. We all look white now unless we marry an Arab or Italian. Then the past shows up clearly in the children. We were followed by a Danish film crew doing a documentary on Africans in Scandinavia. Our Swedish cousins had the best documented history. The most touching part was being shown the hills still called Zamore Hills. My ancestor would face south to Africa and play his kettle drums. That really got to me. He never got to see his family again. I loved telling people that I was going to my Black family reunion in Stockholm and I've threatened to change my name to Anne X since I'll never know what my real last name is. I feel for all those who still suffer the abuse of slavery today.
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