Land of the Free

Harrison County Historical Society Collection, wvculture.org and Bridgeport by Robert F Stealey Sophia "Aunt Sook" Westfall, was born into slavery in the early 1800s. She lived on Simpson Creek near Bridgeport, West Virginia until her death in 1902. She and her daughter, Jane, were bought not long before the War Between the States by George Higinbotham, a rich Simpson Creek farmer. The Higinbotham farm is now the Bridgeport Country Club.

William (1824-1900) and his wife Ellen Craft (1826-1891) were born into slavery in the state of Georgia. Ellen was the daughter of a white slaveholding father and slave mother. Because she took after her father in appearance, she could pass for white. William, on the other hand, had a dark complexion. His master arranged for him to apprentice under a cabinet maker, and he became a skilled carpenter. In 1848, William and Ellen escaped and traveled to Boston, where abolitionists helped establish them in the community and taught them to read and write. They later helped them flee to England in order to avoid recapture under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. Census records indicate that while in England, Ellen worked as a seamstress and gave birth to three of the couple's four sons while William worked for a cabinet maker. The abolition of slavery and the end of the Civil War allowed the family to return to the United States in 1868, and they settled in Georgia, where they lived for the rest of their lives. Ellen died in 1891; William died nine years later. [Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or, the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery by William Tweedie, 1860]. One of the most ingenious escapes from slavery was that of a married couple from Georgia, Ellen and William Craft. (The Granger Collection, New York) Most runaway slaves fled to freedom in the dead of night, often pursued by barking bloodhounds. A few fugitives, such as Henry “Box” Brown who mailed himself north in a wooden crate, devised clever ruses or stowed away on ships and wagons. One of the most ingenious escapes was that of a married couple from Georgia, Ellen and William Craft, who traveled in first-class trains, dined with a steamboat captain and stayed in the best hotels during their escape to Philadelphia and freedom in 1848. Ellen, a "Quadroon" with very fair skin, disguised herself as a young white cotton planter traveling with his slave (William). It was William who came up with the scheme to hide in plain sight, but ultimately it was Ellen who convincingly masked her race, her gender and her social status during their four-day trip. Despite the luxury accommodations, the journey was fraught with narrow escapes and heart-in-the-mouth moments that could have led to their discovery and capture. Courage, quick thinking, luck and “our Heavenly Father,” sustained them, the Crafts said in Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, the book they wrote in 1860 chronicling the escape. Ellen and William lived in Macon, Georgia, and were owned by different masters. Put up for auction at age 16 to help settle his master’s debts, William had become the property of a local bank cashier. A skilled cabinetmaker, William, continued to work at the shop where he had apprenticed, and his new owner collected most of his wages. Minutes before being sold, William had witnessed the sale of his frightened, tearful 14-year-old sister. His parents and brother had met the same fate and were scattered throughout the South. As a child, Ellen, the offspring of her first master and one of his biracial slaves, had frequently been mistaken for a member of his white family. Much annoyed by the situation, the plantation mistress sent 11-year-old Ellen to Macon to her daughter as a wedding present in 1837, where she served as a ladies maid. Ellen and William married, but having experienced such brutal family separations despaired over having children, fearing they would be torn away from them. “The mere thought,” William later wrote of his wife’s distress, “filled her soul with horror.” Pondering various escape plans, William, knowing that slaveholders could take their slaves to any state, slave or free, hit upon the idea of fair-complexioned Ellen passing herself off as his master—a wealthy young white man because it was not customary for women to travel with male servants. Initially Ellen panicked at the idea but was gradually won over. Because they were “favourite slaves,” the couple had little trouble obtaining passes from their masters for a few days leave at Christmastime, giving them some days to be missing without raising the alarm. Additionally, as a carpenter, William probably would have kept some of his earnings – or perhaps did odd jobs for others – and was allowed to keep some of the money. Before setting out on December 21, 1848, William cut Ellen’s hair to neck length. She improved on the deception by putting her right arm in a sling, which would prevent hotel clerks and others from expecting “him” to sign a registry or other papers. Georgia law prohibited teaching slaves to read or write, so neither Ellen nor William could do either. Refining the invalid disguise, Ellen asked William to wrap bandages around much of her face, hiding her smooth skin and giving her a reason to limit conversation with strangers. She wore a pair of men’s trousers that she herself had sewed. She then donned a pair of green spectacles and a top hat. They knelt and prayed and took “a desperate leap for liberty.” At the Macon train station, Ellen purchased tickets to Savannah, 200 miles away. As William took a place in the “negro car,” he spotted the owner of the cabinetmaking shop on the platform. After questioning the ticket seller, the man began peering through the windows of the cars. William turned his face from the window and shrank in his seat, expecting the worst. The man searched the car Ellen was in but never gave the bandaged invalid a second glance. Just as he approached William’s car, the bell clanged and the train lurched off. Ellen, who had been staring out the window, then turned away and discovered that her seat mate was a dear friend of her master, a recent dinner guest who had known Ellen for years. Her first thought was that he had been sent to retrieve her, but the wave of fear soon passed when he greeted her with “It is a very fine morning, sir.” To avoid talking to him, Ellen feigned deafness for the next several hours. In Savannah, the fugitives boarded a steamer for Charleston, South Carolina. Over breakfast the next morning, the friendly captain marveled at the young master’s “very attentive boy” and warned him to beware “cut-throat abolitionists” in the North who would encourage William to run away. A slave trader on board offered to buy William and take him to the Deep South, and a military officer scolded the invalid for saying “thank you” to his slave. In an overnight stay at the best hotel in Charleston, the solicitous staff treated the ailing traveler with upmost care, giving him a fine room and a good table in the dining room. Trying to buy steamer tickets from South Carolina to Philadelphia, Ellen and William hit a snag when the ticket seller objected to signing the names of the young gentleman and his slave even after seeing the injured arm. In an effort to prevent white abolitionists from taking slaves out of the South, slaveholders had to prove that the slaves traveling with them were indeed their property. Sometimes travelers were detained for days trying to prove ownership. As the surly ticket seller reiterated his refusal to sign by jamming his hands in his pockets, providence prevailed: The genial captain happened by, vouched for the planter and his slave and signed their names. Baltimore, the last major stop before Pennsylvania, a free state, had a particularly vigilant border patrol. Ellen and William were again detained, asked to leave the train and report to the authorities for verification of ownership. “We shan’t let you go,” an officer said with finality. “We felt as though we had come into deep waters and were about being overwhelmed,” William recounted in the book, and returned “to the dark and horrible pit of misery.” Ellen and William silently prayed as the officer stood his ground. Suddenly the jangling of the departure bell shattered the quiet. The officer, clearly agitated, scratched his head. Surveying the sick traveler’s bandages, he said to a clerk, “he is not well, it is a pity to stop him.” Tell the conductor to “let this gentleman and slave pass.” The Crafts arrived in Philadelphia the next morning—Christmas Day. As they left the station, Ellen burst into tears, crying out, “Thank God, William, we’re safe!” The comfortable coaches and cabins notwithstanding, it had been an emotionally harrowing journey, especially for Ellen as she kept up the multilayered deception. From making excuses for not partaking of brandy and cigars with the other gentleman to worrying that slavers had kidnapped William, her nerves were frayed to the point of exhaustion. At a Virginia railway station, a woman had even mistaken William for her runaway slave and demanded that he come with her. As predicted, abolitionists approached William. One advised him to “leave that cripple and have your liberty,” and a free black man on the train to Philadelphia urged him to take refuge in a boarding house run by abolitionists. Through it all Ellen and William maintained their roles, never revealing anything of themselves to the strangers except a loyal slave and kind master. Upon their arrival in Philadelphia, Ellen and William were quickly given assistance and lodging by the underground abolitionist network. They received a reading lesson their very first day in the city. Three weeks later, they moved to Boston where William resumed work as a cabinetmaker and Ellen became a seamstress. After two years, in 1850, slave hunters arrived in Boston intent on returning them to Georgia. The Crafts fled again, this time to England, where they eventually had five children. After 20 years they returned to the States and in the 1870s established a school in Georgia for newly freed blacks. Photo: William and Ellen Smith Craft Photo Album, College of Charleston Libraries Bio: Smithsonian Magazine , By Marian Smith Holmes

Ellen Craft (1826-1891), and her husband William Craft (1824-1900) were born into slavery in the state of Georgia. Ellen was the daughter of a white slaveholding father and slave mother. Because she took after her father in appearance, she could pass for white. William, on the other hand, had a dark complexion. His master arranged for him to apprentice under a cabinet maker, and he became a skilled carpenter. In 1848, William and Ellen escaped and traveled to Boston, where abolitionists helped establish them in the community and taught them to read and write. They later helped them flee to England in order to avoid recapture under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. Census records indicate that while in England, Ellen worked as a seamstress and gave birth to three of the couple's four sons while William worked for a cabinet maker. The abolition of slavery and the end of the Civil War allowed the family to return to the United States in 1868, and they settled in Georgia, where they lived for the rest of their lives. Ellen died in 1891; William died nine years later. [Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or, the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery by William Tweedie, 1860]. Ellen Smith Craft was born in 1826 in the town of Clinton, Georgia. Her mother was an African-American slave named Maria; her father was her mother’s white owner, Colonel James Smith. Ellen’s skin was very light and she was often mistaken for a member of her white family. At age 11 Ellen was given as a wedding gift to Dr. Robert Collins of Macon, Georgia, who married the daughter of Colonel Smith’s wife. In Macon, Ellen met her future husband, William Craft. William was a slave whose family had been broken up and sold to pay their master’s gambling debts. William’s owner apprenticed him as a carpenter to earn money from his labor. Ellen and William were allowed to marry in 1846, but could not live together since they belonged to different masters. They endured this separation for a while, but soon began to save money and plan an escape. Using Ellen's fair skin to their advantage, Ellen and William Craft believed that they could escape if Ellen posed as cotton planter and William her slave. Unfortunately at the time wealthy women did not travel without a suitable chaperone; instead, in order to successfully avoid suspicion, Ellen Craft needed to dress as a man. It was illegal for slaves to learn to read or write, and so Ellen Craft also thought to put her arm in a sling; this obscured the fact that she was illiterate and provided a credible excuse as to why she could not sign at hotels and custom houses. A bandage was also tied in place at her head, over her cheeks and under her chin to hide her smooth skin and lack of a beard. Hand-sewn trousers that Ellen had made, matched with green spectacles and a top hat purchased secretly by William completed the disguise. Traveling by train and by sea the Craft’s made their way to Maryland. Once in free territory, they made contact with an Abolitionist group. Ellen stayed with a Quaker family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who nursed her through a serious illness. For safety, they then moved on to Boston, the center of the Abolitionist movement. There, they supported themselves by working in their respective trades: cabinet-making for William and sewing for Ellen. Both became active in the abolitionist movement and gained fame on the lecture circuit. Stories about them were published in The New York Herald, The Boston Globe, the Georgia Journal and The Macon Telegraph. In 1850 the Fugitive Slave Act was passed, permitting the forcible recapture of ex-slaves from free states. Ellen’s former master, Dr. Collins, sent two slave catchers to hunt her down. An ex-slave group called the League of Freedom protected Ellen and William. But no longer feeling safe in Boston, the Crafts decided to flee to England, going over land to Maine to board a ship departing for England from Canada. The Crafts lived in England for 18 years, during which time their five children were born. After a lecture tour during which audiences were often moved to tears—William and Ellen went to an agricultural school in Surrey, broadening their skills and eventually learning to teach. Though they were offered positions of superintendent and matron of the school, they chose to move to London, believing it was important to demonstrate that ex-slaves could be self-sufficient. When visitors to England from the southern United States began to spread rumors that Ellen desired to return to the security of her former home in Georgia, she issued what became a famous disclaimer: “I had much rather starve in England, a free woman, than to be a slave for the best man that ever breathed upon the American continent.” A few years after the Emancipation Proclamation had declared an end to slavery, in 1869 Ellen and William returned to the United States, having raised enough money to start a cooperative farm for ex-slaves. They also planned to develop a school for children. The Ku Klux Klan burned their first plantation in South Carolina, but a determined Ellen and William started a second plantation in Byron County, outside of Savannah. Slander from white opponents eventually bankrupted the plantation, also causing Ellen’s school—where she taught 75 children free of charge—to close. Ellen died in 1891. A few years later the farm she and her husband had started was auctioned off to pay William’s debts. Ellen Craft was not content simply to gain her own freedom. Through her belief in the dignity and worth of all human beings she helped to shape a better future for succeeding generations. In 1996 Ellen Craft was inducted into the Georgia Women of Achievement. It recognizes women from Georgia who have made significant contributions in their fields of endeavor, impacted the lives of those around them, as well as inspired future generations to utilize their own talents. Bio: GWA: Kenneth Coleman and Charles Stephen Gurr, editors, Dictionary of Georgia Biography Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1983 Photo: William and Ellen Smith Craft Photo Album, College of Charleston Libraries

Photo comes from the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center; Info: 'Cincinnati's Underground Railroad,' by Dr. Eric R. Jackson and Richard Cooper, William P. Newman, who escaped slavery in Virginia during the 1830s, became the pastor of the Union Baptist Church (now located on Seventh Street in downtown Cincinnati) and served in that position from 1848 to 1850. Before this, he studied for many years at Oberlin College and was a fiery orator. He traveled to Canada several times as an antislavery lecturer. Newman was also instrumental in the establishment of black schools in the Buckeye state and as an agent of the Ladies Education Society of Ohio. However, when the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was enacted, Newman and his family moved to Ontario, Canada; he continued to fight for the freedom of African Americans, both enslaved and free persons of color, until he returned to Cincinnati in 1864. He died two years later.

Elisa Greenwell was a runaway from the residence of William Edelan of Leonardtown, Maryland in 1859. [Photo: 6th plate ambrotype] sold to the National Museum of African American History and Culture set to open September 2016 in Washington DC., for $37,500. According to a professional genealogical researcher, Elisa (or Eliza) Greenwell was born into slavery in 1830 in Saint Mary's County, Maryland on the William and Elizabeth Greenwell plantation. The date is based on the 1850 and 1860 slave schedules for the State. It is probable that Elisa became a house servant for Elizabeth Greenwell. At some point she was sold to William Edelen of Leonardtown, Maryland along with John and James Greenwell (possibly husband and son). William Edelen was a slaveholder with 45 slaves on his tobacco plantation in 1860. It is believed that Elisa Greenwell became a household servant once again to Ellen Edelen, wife of William. How Elisa came to be photographed in Philadelphia in 1859 is open to speculation. It would be a logical place for her to run, having a large free black population as well as being a thriving Underground Railroad hub. William Edelen was a physician as well as tobacco grower. He might have taken Elisa to Philadelphia, but that is doubtful. It seems more likely that Elisa simply ran away, and was somehow returned to Edelen, because the slave schedule for 1860 shows that she is a servant to Mrs. Edelen. The records show that she ran away again on March 20th,1863 according to the 1867 Slave Statistics. John Greenwell escaped and joined the United States Colored Troops (USCT) a few days later on March 24, 1863. One longs to know the rest of her story, and that imagination factor is a primary reason why a vintage photograph like this comes to realize such an extraordinary auction result. Source: swanngalleries

A Justice of the Peace Mr. A. Burrell, a colored man of Carney, Iowa, was born in Virginia as a slave and is about sixty years of age. He came to Iowa in 1880 and lives in Crocker Township where there are about two hundred and fifty voting farmers and about two hundred Negro and foreign miners. He has served for two years as Justice of the Peace and has just been re-elected over a white opponent by a good majority to serve until January, 1915. He is a miner and farmer. He produces eighty bushels of corn to the acre and he has just bought two and one half acres to add to his four and one half at $350 per acre. He is a good specimen of the quiet, thrifty, honest Negro working man. [The Crisis Magazine, January 1915]

His fate and freedom were nearly stolen from him in September 1839, when he was just 8 years old. On a late summer day two kidnappers appeared in Worcester. They got to work just after dawn prospecting for potential victims among the town's people of color. The two men, posing as merchants in need of a boy to work at a shop in Palmer, stopped John Metcalf at the corner of Main and Front streets. Mr. Metcalf recognized the younger of the two as Elias Turner of Palmer. He had never seen the other man. Mr. Turner asked where they might find a "colored boy." "What do you want of a colored boy?" Mr. Metcalf wondered. "For the old man," Mr. Turner replied, perhaps meaning his father in Palmer. Mr. Metcalf said he couldn't help them. Then he watched as they ambled off down Front Street, headed toward Pine Meadow. It was Thursday, Sept. 12, 1839. Worcester was a town surrounded by farms, and its small community of free people of color mostly lived in Pine Meadow. In Pine Meadow, the two men posing as Palmer merchants knocked on Fanny Proctor's door and asked for one of her boys. Samuel Johnson later recalled the unfamiliar white men asking him the same question. One of the men, Elias Turner, had been spotted a few days before in Shirley asking local officials there if he might employ a black boy from the town's poor house. The overseer of the poor sent Mr. Turner away empty handed. But in Lunenburg, Caira Hazard had been swayed by a similar offer of employment for her son, Nahum. Two unfamiliar white men had come to her house on Monday, Sept. 2. The strangers said they operated a tavern in Western Massachusetts, about 60 miles away over the mountains. If young Nahum would come work in the tavern, they promised to see to his upkeep and education. The solicitation wasn't unusual for the times. The men offered a kind of apprenticeship that then was common for poor boys of any race. A local man had vouched, falsely as it turned out, for the two strangers. As a widow with several children to care for, Mrs. Hazard accepted the offer and allowed Nahum to go with the men. But there was no tavern. The men, in fact, planned to enrich themselves by selling her free born son into bondage in the slave markets of Virginia, and they hoped to get another boy or two before heading south. One of the men who called on Mrs. Hazard was Dickinson Shearer, a former resident of Palmer who had moved away years ago, eventually ending up in Cartersville, Virginia, on the outskirts of Richmond. The other man was likely Francis Wilkinson, a Virginia slave trader. Ten days later, Mr. Shearer and his nephew, Mr. Turner, appeared in Worcester's Pine Meadow posing as shopkeepers. They didn't have Nahum Hazard with them at the time. It's not clear where they had stashed the boy. The kidnappers eventually found their way to the home of John and Diana Francis, members of Worcester's small black community. Mrs. Francis heard men outside speaking to her 8 year old son, Sidney, and went out to see what they wanted. Mr. Shearer launched into his pitch, claiming he had a store in Palmer selling goods from England and the West Indies. He said young Sidney looked to be a smart lad and offered to take him on in the shop. He promised to send the boy to school in the summer when there was less work to do. "He said he wanted him to do chores and light work about the house and store, and take care of a horse," Mrs. Francis later recalled in court. Mr. Turner said he'd write with news of Sidney and that, at any rate, the railroad would soon reach Palmer, so Mr. and Mrs. Francis could visit easily. Mrs. Francis sent the men to where her husband was working nearby at a railroad depot. After conversing with the men a while, John Francis gave his consent. He took down the men's names in his account book, but he'd later learn both gave false identities. An hour and a half after they had arrived at the Francis home, Shearer and Turner departed with Sidney in tow. Something in the arrangement or the demeanor of the men apparently left Mr. Francis feeling unsettled. After asking around for a few days, he set off for Palmer on foot on Sunday, Sept. 15, with $3 in his pocket. He would end up being away for nearly two weeks trying to pick up the men's trail after finding no trace of them in Palmer. As Mr. Francis walked west that Sunday, his son and Nahum already had been taken more than 400 miles from Worcester. The boys had nearly reached Fredericksburg, Virginia, in a series of stagecoaches, steam boats and trains. In Fredericksburg, one or both of the boys created a commotion by asking for a book to pass the time and reading aloud from advertisements posted in a barbershop. Word of the supposed slave boys who could read, an implausibility in the South of the day, eventually reached the ears of J.P. Lipscomb, a local man who correctly sniffed out the unfolding kidnapping. By that time, the boys had been taken to Richmond and then on to Cartersville by Francis Wilkinson. Mr. Wilkinson likely had been the man who visited the Hazard home in Lunenburg with Mr. Shearer. Mr. Lipscomb soon showed up in Cartersville with a constable and demanded to speak to the boys. Sidney was found in Mr. Wilkinson's cellar. The boy told Mr. Lipscomb and the constable he was from Worcester and that his parents had only consented for him to go a short distance away. The constable arrested Mr. Wilkinson and Mr. Shearer and took them and Sidney back to Fredericksburg to sort the matter out. It's not clear if Nahum went with them that day or followed later. A letter explaining the situation written by Fredericksburg Mayor Benjamin Clark arrived in Worcester on Thursday, Sept. 19, a week after Sidney had been taken. The town was in an uproar. News of the kidnappings roiled Worcester from the modest homes of Pine Meadow to the wealthy white households along Elm Street. Levi Newton, nephew of former governor Levi Lincoln, struck an indignant tone writing in his personal diary that Sunday. "Today I hear of an outrageous case of stealing a negro boy from this town," Mr. Newton wrote. Two days later, George and Benjamin Rice of Worcester left for Fredericksburg having been assigned to fetch Sidney and one of the prisoners, Mr. Shearer. A man from Lunenburg already in Virginia on business was tasked with bringing Nahum home. Mr. Turner was arrested in Palmer. The Massachusetts Spy newspaper printed an account of the kidnapping in which the writer noted the tumult gripping the town: "The circumstance has produced a strong sensation here, and much indignation is felt at the commission of so daring an outrage." As Worcester fumed, Mrs. Hazard in Lunenburg still had no idea what had become of her son. She had fretted for his safety since hearing of Sidney's disappearance from Worcester. On Thursday, Sept. 26, George Bradburn of Boston arrived in Lunenburg to investigate the circumstances of Nahum's abduction. It was the boy's 9th birthday. Mrs. Hazard recounted to the Bostonian the story she had been told about her son going to work in a tavern. "The mother had no further knowledge of him till I informed her that he was in Richmond, Va., having been rescued from the hands of kidnappers," Mr. Bradburn reported in his account. "Joy enough, I assure you, was diffused through the bosom of this mother when I assured her that her son was safe, and would soon be restored to her arms again," he wrote. Mr. Wilkinson, the Virginian, was charged with Nahum's kidnapping but escaped from jail in Richmond that December before he could be brought to Massachusetts to stand trial. Shearer and Turner were tried in the Worcester Court of Common Pleas in Lincoln Square on Jan. 23, 1840. Col. Pliny Merreck, the prosecutor, said it was obvious to anyone that Shearer was guilty of kidnapping and scheming to sell free people into slavery. In his closing arguments, Col. Merreck sought to convince the jury that his nephew and accomplice, Mr. Turner, was equally culpable. "We found him going with Shearer in quest of colored boys, making that the first subject of inquiry whereever they went until they succeeded," Col. Merreck reminded the jury. The jurors deliberated less than an hour before returning guilty verdicts. They recommended Mr. Turner receive mercy. Mr. Shearer was sentenced to seven years of hard labor, and his name was lost to history after the trial. Sidney Francis died of tuberculosis in March 1850 at age 19. Nothing is known of his life after he returned to Worcester. His father, John Francis, helped jeer and pelt fugitive slave hunter Asa Butman in 1854 as part of an angry mob that gathered in Worcester to shoo the unwanted visitor out of town. The incident came to be known as the Butman Riot. Nahum Hazard later returned to the South as a soldier in the Union Army. He was assigned to the 55th Massachusetts Infantry, the second of the so called colored regiments mustered from black and mixed race volunteers. Pvt. Hazard was wounded in November 1864 at the Battle of Honey Hill near Grahamville, South Carolina. After the war, he returned to northern Worcester County. One of his descendants in the area, Beverly Monroe, 86, of Leominster, recalls hearing family stories about her notable great-grandfather when she was a young woman. Mrs. Monroe said her grandmother, Catherine Thomas Hazard, was one of Nahum Hazard's daughters. Mrs. Monroe wrote a fictional account of the kidnapping of her great-grandfather told from the perspective of the boy's mother, Caira Hazard. "I tried to picture the terrible travail of waiting all those weeks for word of him," Mrs. Monroe said. "As a mother, I'm so sympathetic to that. I can't image one of my sons being taken off." Mrs. Monroe said she has always been moved by the notion that, in a sense, her great-grandfather was saved from slavery by education. "He knew how to read, and that was unusual for the boys in the South who were slaves, the poor things," she said. "In those days, slavers were capturing people willy-nilly and most of them didn't escape." Musician and playwright Dillon Bustin of Marshfield was inspired by the story to begin writing a series of musicals based on the extraordinary life of Mr. Hazard. "He left nothing in the way of personal expression that I'm aware of, no letters," Mr. Bustin said. "But he was a survivor. He was highly adaptable." Seventy-four years to the day after he had been abducted, Mr. Hazard died in Leominster on Sept. 2, 1913. He was a few weeks shy of 84 years old. Nahum Gardner Hazard is buried on a shady edge of Townsend's Hillside Cemetery, next to his wife, Harriet, and three of their children who died young. On the small tombstone commemorating an 8-month-old girl named Helen and an unnamed infant son, the grieving parents had these words chiseled: "Sleep on dear babes and take your rest." Source: Telegram Gazette, Thomas Caywood (Feb. 10, 2014 edition)

Slavery A Family Divided History: The Relationship Between Two People Long Dead Reaches Down Through Time to Shape the Lives of their Descendants, Black and White The Baltimore Sun Madeline Wheeler Murphy Daguerreotype courtesy of Christopher Rabb June 29, 1997 My childhood recollections of the Fourth of July are punctuated by picnics, parades and my father's claim that he was related to one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. My family paid little heed to Pop's claim, and he ** made very little of it. There was no hard proof, just an oral history handed down from his mother. Although my hometown, Wilmington, Delaware, was segregated, Pop always told us that the Declaration of Independence was an important document. On one particular July Fourth, when I was about 10 years old, I remember him repeating these words in a voice heavy with irony: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." No sooner had Pop finished than he uttered an anguished sigh and set off a rocket, which rose toward the heavens and exploded with vengeance. It was if Pop had said, "Take that, you lying s.o.b.'s." As young as I was, I felt my father's anguish as a "colored girl" attending segregated schools, pools and tennis courts. I was not even allowed to sit in the white movie house balconies, nor at Woolworth's lunch counter for an ice cream soda, not even in the children's room of the public library. Equal, indeed! After my father had died, the memory of his claim haunted me so much that I asked his sister, Mary Alice Wheeler McNeill, about it. Referring to my great-great-grandmother, she wrote: "Christina Williams was one daughter of a West Indian woman and Philip Livingstone [sic], a member of a prominent New York family." My aunt wrote her letter in 1950. More than 40 years passed before the relationship between Philip Henry Livingston - the grandson of a signer of the Declaration of Independence - and his enslaved Jamaican, Barbara Williams, was authenticated. Over the years, I had grown frustrated trying to track down the truth, but my grandson, Christopher Murphy Rabb, a Yale graduate who majored in African and African-American history, was intrigued by the story and confirmed it. Trying to follow the Livingstons' family tree is very confusing because so many family members have the same or similar names. My aunt said they were "prominent" - which turned out to be an understatement. By the time the American Revolution began, the Livingston family owned approximately 1 million acres on both sides of the Hudson River in upstate New York. The empire began when the Crown gave Robert Livingston (1654-1728), the family patriarch, 160,000 acres. When the elder Livingston died, Robert Livingston Jr. (1688-1775) began building Clermont, the Georgian-style family home that is now a historic site. Robert Livingston Jr.'s only child, Robert R. Livingston (1718-1775), married Margaret Beekman, the heir to some 250,000 acres of land that became part of the Livingstons' holdings. Robert R. Livingston served as judge of the Admiralty Court and judge of the Supreme Court of the Province of New York. Robert R. Livingston Jr. (1746-1813) is probably the best-known member of the family. He was the eldest son of Robert, the judge, and Margaret Beekman. He also was a member of the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence, and he became the first United States minister of foreign affairs (secretary of state). While serving as chancellor of the state of New York, he gave the oath of office to George Washington after he became the nation's first president. Although Robert R. Livingston Jr. helped draw up the Declaration of Independence, he didn't sign it. Philip Livingston, a first cousin once removed, actually signed the document. In 1812, Philip Henry Livingston, the grandson of the signer of the Declaration of Independence, fathered a daughter by an enslaved woman, Barbara Williams. That daughter was Christiana Taylor Williams (1812 - 1903). After a yearlong correspondence with a member of the Livingston family, my grandson Christopher found the 1909 Brooklyn, N.Y., copy of Christiana's death certificate. It listed Philip Livingston as her father and Barbara as her mother. Last year, the descendants of Barbara and Christiana Williams were invited to the Livingston family reunion at the family mansion in Clermont, which is now a state preserve open to the public. Christopher was invited to make a formal presentation. It was held under a tent that seated 75 to 100 family members, who had mixed reactions to his findings. Some were curious and asked questions; others averted their eyes and retreated; a few scanned the genealogical charts quietly and spoke to Christopher almost in whispers, obviously embarrassed or uncomfortable with his presentation. Despite some consternation on the part of a few Livingstons, the local newspaper - ironically called the Kingston Freedman carried a story about the reunion and the Livingstons' black descendants. It ran with a headline that said: "Mr. and Mrs. Livingston, I presume - Annual reunion in Clermont includes black descendants." After I arrived at Clermont, I realized that what had been a footnote in my aunt's letter and Pop's sketchy verbal history had come to fore. I rode to the reunion on a lark, but now I had a lump in my throat. As I stood at the registration desk, putting on my name tag, I realized that I might have been standing where Barbara Williams, my great-great-great grandmother, stood two centuries ago. The registration table sat where some 150 enslaved had been quartered. Now it was a grassy meadow. All vestiges of slavery with its secrets, graveyards and debauchery had been leveled and buried. All the jocularity, the sardonic "guess who's coming to dinner" banter had vanished. I felt I was in the center of a whirlpool, enveloped by ghosts. No government sanctioned apology could assuage the pain I felt for Barbara as a concubine on call whenever Philip lusted after her. Imagine how the other enslaved must have shunned her, taunted her and perhaps even physically attacked her becaused of her relationship with "Massah." The impact of walking where Barbara had walked and seeing what she had seen took my breath away and churned the pit of my stomach. At the same time, I felt like running away from the ugly truth of my personal proximity to slavery. Rushing by me, a woman with her child in tow smiled in a patronizing way and asked in the lilting voice mothers use with their children, "Are they treating you all right?" Out of a daze I mumbled with disdain, "Why wouldn't they?" She became flustered, smiled again, shrugged her shoulders and resumed her walk. The growing empathy for Barbara was still with me in spirit. Although the woman's question was innocuous, it made me feel like a child who was somehow inferior. I realized that Barbara must have felt the same way much of the time. I also realized that the woman could not have understood how I felt. Our lives are parallel lines that will never meet. We are divided by racial stereotypes and our society's inability to deal with slavery's impact. The Livingstons were powerful, wealthy and influential, but instead of being instruments for change, they perpetuated slavery and grew rich using slave labor. Just as the sweat of the enslaved helped the Livingstons amass a huge fortuune, the wealth of the Western world is built on slavery. The Livingstons and every other white American who has enjoyed the fruits of this system has either directly or indirectly profited from the misery of the enslaved. How can they say they bear no responsibility for its legacy? At Clermont, all vestiges of slavery had been buried, hiding the dirty little secrets unearthed by my grandson, secrets of miscegenation and adultery. Philip had a wife named Maria who bore him children. He also had trysts with an enslaved woman named Barbara, for whom he had built a special cabin. Clermont overlooks the Hudson and the remnants of the pier where Robert Fulton invented the steamboat. General Lafayette on his way to Albany had docked there to enjoy an hour's feast on fresh fruit and rack of lamb. But there is no slave cemetery at Clermont, which has been a state park since 1962. It seems that there should have been an archaeological dig there to unearth relics, bones and other artifacts that would tell us about the lives of the enslaved who lived and died there. At this moment, however, the enslaved are out of sight, out of mind. It matters little that slaves helped to build Clermont. Their work goes unappreciated, and their broken bones, hearts and spirits are long forgotten. Clermont was the Georgian-style family home of the wealthy and influential Livingstons in upstate New York, and is now a historic site. Its construction was begun by Robert Livingston Jr., whose grandson, Robert R. Livingston Jr., helped to draft the Declaration of Independence. A cousin, Philip Livingston, signed In 1812, Philip Henry Livingston, the grandson of the signer, fathered a daughter by Barbara Williams, an enslaved Jamaican. That daughter was Christiana Taylor Williams, whose great-great-granddaughter is Madeline Wheeler Murphy. Murphy's grandson, Christopher Murphy Rabb, tracked down the lineage.

Mary Jane was a cook and boardinghouse keeper and also the sister-in-law of Sylvia Conner. What little is known about Mary Jane Conner comes from Private Clapp from Dorchester, Massachusetts, who was quite taken by both her and her sister-in-law, Sylvia Conner. Private Clapp was 21 years old when he arrived in New Bern, North Carolina in the Fall of 1862. He was Harvard educated – a graduate and halfway through his law studies at Harvard when he enlisted, joining the 44th Regiment from Massachusetts. They are sent to New Bern after it's already under federal control. Clapp participates in a variety of military missions leading him into different parts of eastern North Carolina. He also is the chief census taker among African Americans in New Bern. Clapp writes home to his family to describe this unusual land of the South and approaches its occupants with the curiosity of a scientist. So below, are excerpts of his letters that describe in greater detail who these women are in the eyes of this young Union soldier. March 31, 1863 To Mother, Mary Ann (as she is called, though her name is Mary Jane Conner) is about the most remarkable colored woman I ever saw…She had been a slave for years (all her life) before our troops took Newbern and been hired out as cook at the great Hotel here the Washington House – and which was burnt by the rebs when we came into Newbern. She supports an aged and infirm mother. She told me once or twice in answer to my questions, that if it were not that she felt as if she ought to stay and take care of her mother she would go to New York at once. She could earn a handsome living any where, for she is thoroughly capable. April 10, 1863 To Willie (brother), I want you to tell mother about the seamstress whom we employ to mend our clothes. She is a sister in law of our famous boarding-house keeper, Mary Jane, and glories in the classical name of “Sylvia.” She was formerly the slave of one of the richest men in New Berne who owned the house Gen Foster now lives in, and was the family seamstress I should judge. She is about forty, and though very dark of very pleasant appearance. Her address and manners are remarkably agreeable and really of unusual refinement. I’ve seen the wives of millionaires who were much her inferiors in urbanity and polish of manner. She is a superb seamstress, as my dress-coat just rescued from many rents will bear happy witness. She seems also to be a woman of very good sense & well worth listening to. We often wait in the house whilst they are putting the finishing touches on the dinner and spend the time in talking with her and Mary Jane. May 18th, 1863 To Father, The pieces of clothing and the presents for Mary, Sylvia, and Eunice were sent with admirable judgment, as Mother’s always is. .. The bundle was opened in the presence of Mary and the elegant Sylvia who had just returned to her home with Mary after quite a severe illness, and it was very interesting to watch the faces of the spectators as I passed them their separate packages with a few appropriate remarks in each case, and information, as to who the giver was. … Sylvia remarked that mother “seemed to have guessed her taste exactly” and Mary reechoed the sentiments. ******************** So now we know a little more. The beautiful dresses Mary Jane and Sylvia wear in the photographs likely were sent by Private Clapp’s mother, as they received the gifts less than three weeks before their pictures were taken. More importantly, we know the sisters-in-law were perceived as highly capable, intelligent businesswomen. Having successful businesses sets the stage for blacks to be able to establish their own schools and churches – which occurs sooner in New Bern than in other parts of North Carolina. African American leaders emerged from New Bern who influenced state politics and became part of the Constitutional Convention of 1868, including James Walker Hood. Sources: Letters to the Home Circle: The North Carolina Service of Pvt. Henry A. Clapp by John R Barden; Tryon Palace Collection

She was a businesswoman who worked as a seamstress in New Bern, North Carolina during the Union occupation and the sister-in-law of Mary Jane Conner. What little is known about Sylvia Conner comes from Private Clapp from Dorchester, Massachusetts, who was quite taken by both her and her sister-in-law, Sylvia Conner. Private Clapp was 21 years old when he arrived in New Bern, North Carolina in the Fall of 1862. He was Harvard educated – a graduate and halfway through his law studies at Harvard when he enlisted, joining the 44th Regiment from Massachusetts. They are sent to New Bern after it's already under federal control. Clapp participates in a variety of military missions leading him into different parts of eastern North Carolina. He also is the chief census taker among African Americans in New Bern. Clapp writes home to his family to describe this unusual land of the South and approaches its occupants with the curiosity of a scientist. So below, are excerpts of his letters that describe in greater detail who these women are in the eyes of this young Union soldier. March 31, 1863 To Mother, Mary Ann (as she is called, though her name is Mary Jane Conner) is about the most remarkable colored woman I ever saw…She had been a slave for years (all her life) before our troops took Newbern and been hired out as cook at the great Hotel here the Washington House – and which was burnt by the rebs when we came into Newbern. She supports an aged and infirm mother. She told me once or twice in answer to my questions, that if it were not that she felt as if she ought to stay and take care of her mother she would go to New York at once. She could earn a handsome living any where, for she is thoroughly capable. April 10, 1863 To Willie (brother), I want you to tell mother about the seamstress whom we employ to mend our clothes. She is a sister in law of our famous boarding-house keeper, Mary Jane, and glories in the classical name of “Sylvia.” She was formerly the slave of one of the richest men in New Berne who owned the house Gen Foster now lives in, and was the family seamstress I should judge. She is about forty, and though very dark of very pleasant appearance. Her address and manners are remarkably agreeable and really of unusual refinement. I’ve seen the wives of millionaires who were much her inferiors in urbanity and polish of manner. She is a superb seamstress, as my dress-coat just rescued from many rents will bear happy witness. She seems also to be a woman of very good sense & well worth listening to. We often wait in the house whilst they are putting the finishing touches on the dinner and spend the time in talking with her and Mary Jane. May 18th, 1863 To Father, The pieces of clothing and the presents for Mary, Sylvia, and Eunice were sent with admirable judgment, as Mother’s always is. .. The bundle was opened in the presence of Mary and the elegant Sylvia who had just returned to her home with Mary after quite a severe illness, and it was very interesting to watch the faces of the spectators as I passed them their separate packages with a few appropriate remarks in each case, and information, as to who the giver was. … Sylvia remarked that mother “seemed to have guessed her taste exactly” and Mary reechoed the sentiments. ******************** So now we know a little more. The beautiful dresses Mary Jane and Sylvia wear in the photographs likely were sent by Private Clapp’s mother, as they received the gifts less than three weeks before their pictures were taken. More importantly, we know the sisters-in-law were perceived as highly capable, intelligent businesswomen. Having successful businesses sets the stage for blacks to be able to establish their own schools and churches – which occurs sooner in New Bern than in other parts of North Carolina. African American leaders emerged from New Bern who influenced state politics and became part of the Constitutional Convention of 1868, including James Walker Hood. Sources: Letters to the Home Circle: The North Carolina Service of Pvt. Henry A. Clapp by John R Barden; Tryon Palace Collection

Louis & "Captain" Servant photographed in Charleston, South Carolina on July 16, 1860. The history of American photography starts in Philadelphia in the 1830s when it was used by medical researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. Within decades of its introduction, photography swiftly became a transformative tool that was powerfully used in politics and society. In the contentious political climate of the late antebellum era, photographs of the enslaved gave slaveholders a powerful new evidentiary tool to envision and perform a benevolent and intimate regime. Through the circulation and display of images of well-dressed bondspeople and portraits of enslaved caretakers with white children, enslavers projected a comfortable, harmonious, and familial form of bondage, which purportedly treated its laborers as people, not commodities. In the late antebellum era, slave photographs and their attendant photographic practices emerged as a key means for enslavers to persuade themselves and others of the just and beneficial nature of slavery. Matthew Fox-Amato’s examination of its early influence in “Exposing Slavery: Photography, Human Bondage, and the Birth of Modern Visual Politics in America” (Oxford; $39.95) features over 100 color illustrations — including little-studied photographs of slaves, ex-slaves, free African Americans and abolitionists. Fox-Amato, an assistant professor of history at the University of Idaho, offers rare photographs to create a center of understanding enslavement and the Civil War. From the earliest days of the medium, photos of whites and Blacks, free and enslaved, before and during the Civil War documented 19th-century America. “Exposing Slavery takes a fresh look at the role of photography in ‘humanizing’ the institution of chattel slavery,” notes Tina Campt, author of “Listening to Images.” “Revisiting the archive of slave photography that haunts contemporary representations of the subjection of black bodies in the 21st century, the book complicates our understanding of the subjects of these images at a moment when digital imaging has become one of the most important tools in the ongoing battle against anti-Black violence. The book provides a significant rebuttal to any assertion that these historical images are simply a reflection of mastery or submission. It tells a very different story that challenges us to look more closely at this troubling and insightful archive.” Formerly enslaved-turned-abolitionist Frederick Douglass was an early fan of the daguerreotype, an early type of photo, writing four speeches on the medium and sitting for at least 160 portraits during his lifetime. Slave owners made the abstractions of “slavery” and “mastery” concrete through miniature photographic depictions and social performances. They constructed and enacted a benevolent, intimate form of slavery for themselves and those in their social circles, one that implicitly and explicitly rejected the notion that slaves were viewed and treated as commodities. But slave photography actually constituted a precarious tool of power for southern slaveholders. A photographic portrait also made claims about the identity of the enslaved sitter. The very same portraiture conventions used to convey a humane form of bondage simultaneously implied the individuality and subjectivity of the enslaved sitter at least in theory. This was the bargain slaveholders made, consciously or not, when commissioning slave portraits. Elevating favored slaves helped owners to rationalize bondage and to perform a benevolent form of mastery, but elevating the slave too much imperiled the ideological foundations of their world. How slaveholders dealt with the implications of slave portraits is partially revealed in written records. Rare diary entries, private letters, and paper notes attached to photograph cases reveal how southern whites articulated what slave photographs conveyed and confirmed. Time and time again, slaveholders sought to define, undercut, and limit slaves’ expressions of humanity. Photography created a venue that cast enslavers as the arbiters of enslaved people’s social identities. The conflicts over human bondage ultimately reshaped the nation, and in turn, altered a scientific curiosity into a political tool that still impacts society today. Sources: Exposing Slavery shows human bondage amid visual politics article written by Bobbi Booker Tribune Staff Writer (April 2019); Captured Faces: Why did slaveholders have photographs taken of their slaves , article written by Matthew Fox-Amato (April 2019), Lapham's Quarterly; Louis Manigault & Captain, The Charleston Museum, Charleston, South Carolina, charlestonmuseum. org.

Born enslaved in Kentucky, Henry Walton Bibb escaped to Canada ⎯ twice, first in 1837, after which he returned to the South in a failed attempt to free his family and was recaptured, and in 1841 when he settled in Michigan and became active in the abolitionist movement. After the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850, he moved to Canada to avoid recapture and worked to help the thousands of fugitive slaves arriving each year. "I was brought up in [Kentucky]. Or, more correctly speaking, I was flogged up; for where I should have received moral, mental, and religious instruction I received stripes without number, the object of which was to degrade and keep me in subordination. I have been dragged down to the lowest depths of human degradation and wretchedness, by Slaveholders." —Henry Bibb Documenting the American South Summary of Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself New York: Author, 1849. First published in 1849 and largely unavailable for many years, The Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb is among the most remarkable slave narratives. Born on a Kentucky plantation in 1815, Bibb first attempted to escape from bondage at the age of ten. He was recaptured and escaped several more times before he eventually settled in Detroit, Michigan, and joined the antislavery movement as a lecturer. Henry Bibb (1815-1854) was born in Shelby County, Kentucky. His father was white state senator James Bibb, and his enslaved mother was a woman named Mildred Jackson. Henry Bibb was married twice, once before his escape to a slave named Malinda, and again after his escape to a woman named Mary Miles. In 1842, Bibb began lecturing on slavery and became a well known African American activist. In 1849 he published his autobiography, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave. Bibb helped create Canada's first black newspaper, Voice of the Fugitive a publication that worked to convince African slaves to settle in Canada. He was also the founding director of a Canadian black colonization project, the Refugee Home Society. He died in 1854. Lucius C. Matlack, author of the introduction to Bibb's Narrative, was born on April 28th, 1816, in Baltimore. He was a member of and preacher in the Union Church in Philadelphia and was recommended to join the Philadelphia Annual Conference, but because of his abolitionist beliefs, his application was rejected and he was removed from the Local Preachers' Association. He lost his preaching license in 1839. Matlack continued to preach anyway, even under threat of expulsion, and in 1839 he was ordained a junior preacher in Massachusetts. He eventually helped organize the Wesleyan Methodist Connection, with which he remained affiliated for the duration of his life. During the Civil War, he served as an army chaplain, working his way up the ranks to colonel, and in 1867 the Philadelphia Annual Conference reversed their previous decision and welcomed him back into their conference. He spent the rest of his recorded life preaching throughout the eastern United States. Bibb begins his narrative by recalling his birth in 1815 to an enslaved woman named Mildred Jackson. Though he never knew his father, Bibb was told that he was the son of a white man named James Bibb. Mildred was also the mother of six other boys after Henry. Henry and the rest of his family were the legal property of a slaveholder named David White, a widower with a little girl around the same age as Henry. While she was being schooled, Henry was loaned out as a laborer to neighboring farms; his wages were used to pay for her schooling. As a young teenager, Bibb was sold to a man in Newcastle, Kentucky, named Mr. Vires, whose wife treated Bibb poorly. Recalling the abuses he received in that household, Bibb says that the Vires' cruelty inspired him with a desire to escape. He would run away for days at a time, and though they would beat him for it, he never gave up. Eventually they grew tired of his escapes and returned him to Mr. White, who was now remarried to a woman Bibb describes as a "tyrant" (p. 16). Mr. White began to hire Bibb out again, and again he resumed his escape attempts. In 1833, at the age of eighteen, Bibb was introduced to his future wife, an enslaved woman named Malinda, who lived on a farm four miles from Bibb. At first he was reluctant to get romantically involved with her because he knew that such a relationship would impede his aspirations to freedom, but the more he spent time with her, the more he was distracted from his goals. Though everyone except for Malinda's owner opposed their union, they entered into a common-law marriage since legally binding marriages were a privilege withheld from those enslaved by most slaveholders. After marrying Malinda, Bibb was moved from farm to farm until, because of fear that he would run away to see his wife, he was contracted to labor for Malinda's slaveholder. He quickly became disturbed at seeing the abuses that his wife was subjected to, and even more so once Malinda gave birth to their daughter, Frances, who was likewise abused. In December of 1837, Bibb made another, more successful, bid for freedom. He left his wife and child without their knowledge and crossed the Ohio River into the free state of Indiana. From there he took a steamboat to Cincinnati, all the while hiding his identity from those onboard. In Cincinnati, he came into contact with the Underground Railroad and started on his journey to Canada. Along the way many people helped Bibb while others refused, but his greatest assistance came from a small community of African Americans, many of whom were themselves fugitive slaves. In Canada he found work and saved enough money for a return trip to Kentucky and his family. Bibb met with his family in a joyous reunion and quickly made plans for their escape. He traveled to Cincinnati to await their arrival, but while he was there, two men professing to be abolitionists came and spoke to him, offering their help in his escape. But when these men obtained the name and address of his owner, they betrayed him, and a mob soon came to recapture him. They shipped Bibb downriver, offering him money to assist in the capture of others enslaved, but he refused. Bibb eventually learned that he was not in fact returning to his family, but was to be sold further south. He was able to escape again from his captors in Louisville, Kentucky, where they were attempting to sell him, and he headed back to Bedford to attempt to rescue his family once again. The guard placed on his family was so strict, however, that he was forced to abandon his attempt to liberate them for a space of time. He left instructions for his wife to meet him in Ohio as soon as the excitement about his escape had died down, and then took his leave up the river once again. Again Bibb was betrayed and captured and sent to a slave prison, where he was unexpectedly reunited with his wife and child. He contrived to be sold with his family to a pious-looking man named Whitfield, who turned out to be a horribly abusive and neglectful slaveholder. They suffered many atrocities at his hands, including the loss of his second child, whose mortal illness was caused by neglect. Bibb escaped yet again only to be recaptured when he returned for his family. This cycle of escape, return, and recapture occurs a few more times before he finds himself in the hands of a Cherokee slaveholder and separated from his family. His new owner was comparatively liberal and provided for those he enslaved, but before long he passed away and Henry made another break for Canada. He again attempted to find his wife, only to learn that she was living with another man and had given up hope for a reunion. Neither this event nor the many captivities he endured quelled his spirit entirely, and he ultimately found his freedom. Bibb finishes his narrative with the earnest hope that "this little volume will bear some humble part in lighting up the path of freedom and revolutionizing public opinion upon this great subject" (p. 204). Following the narrative is a section titled "Opinions of the Press," which features several of "the many favorable notices of the Press which this volume has received" (p. 205). Henry Bibb was above all determined in his dream of freedom and never gave up no matter how hard it got. He loved freedom, but he was not willing to sacrifice the lives and freedom of those he loved and several times he risked recapture to save them. Though he was recaptured several times that never dampened his spirit and ultimately he found his freedom. Sources: Randolph Linsly Simpson African-American Collection, Beinecke Digital Collections; S. B. Brown, Photographer; National Humanities Center Resource Toolbox The Making of African American Identity: Vol. I, 1500-1865; uwpress article by Charles Heglar (2014); Fred Landon, "Henry Bibb, a Colonizer," The Journal of Negro History 5.4 (1920): 437-447; Wheaton History A to Z, "Lucius C. Matlack," 11 Dec. 2011; UNC North American Slave Narratives, researched by Matthew Connell

The above image is described as an exceedingly rare photograph of enslaved fugitives posed with Abolitionists Levi Coffin and Jonathan Cable, circa 1864-1866. Levi Coffin (1798-1877) was born into a Quaker family in North Carolina and became a strong supporter of the anti-slavery movement because of his religious beliefs. Beginning as a teenager, Coffin helped fugitive slaves find safe passage north to freedom. He married Catherine White in 1824, and, two years later, the couple moved to Newport in the free state of Indiana, where they became heavily involved in abolitionist groups, including serving as guides along the Underground Railroad. At the time, three major river crossings on the Underground Railroad converged in Newport, with three corresponding routes north out of the city. During his time in Indiana, Coffin purportedly helped some 2,000 individuals escape slavery. In 1847, the Coffins moved to Cincinnati, Ohio where they opened a business that sold only goods manufactured by free laborers. Levi Coffin continued his work as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, helping another 1,300 individuals evade capture. In addition, he helped found an African American orphanage in Cincinnati and played an integral role in the establishment of the Freedman’s Bureau. Noted abolitionist and presbyterian minister Jonathan Cable (1799-1884) was born in Hartford County, New York and moved with his family to Ohio in 1803. He studied at Ohio University in Athens, OH before pursuing theological studies at the Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, VA. Cable's experiences living in a slave-holding state would inform his ardent opposition to the institution later in life, and he grew increasingly outspoken about his beliefs. Upon his return to Ohio, Cable began to participate in the National Christian Anti-Slavery Convention and other abolitionist organizations, where he met like-minded figures within the movement, including Coffin and Underground Railroad conductors John Van Zandt and John Todd. Beginning in the early 1850s, Cable opened his home in North College Hill to fugitive slaves and collaborated with Coffin on the "Escape of the 28" of 1853, a particularly ambitious operation to convey twenty-eight enslaved men, women, and children from Boone County, KY safely north to Canada. On April 2, 1853, renegade anti-slavery activist John Fairfield brought a group of slaves across the Ohio River near Lawrenceburg, Indiana and traveled with them to the outskirts of Cincinnati. From there, he contacted Coffin and John Hatfield, a black barber and leader of Cincinnati’s Vigilance Committee, who would assist the group on the next leg of their journey. Hatfield and Coffin acquired two coaches and helped the fugitives assume the guise of free blacks taking part in a funeral procession to the Wesleyan Cemetery, an integrated burial ground in Northside. The group then dispersed among different Underground Railroad stops, including Cable’s home, where they would be safely hidden before making their way to Canada. In addition to shelter, Cable also provided the fugitive slaves with new clothing and shoes to combat the inclement weather they faced. Despite the reward of $9,000 offered by the Kentucky slaveholders for the recovery of the group, all twenty-eight arrived safely in Ontario on April 19, 1853. Though the individuals shown here with Coffin and Cable cannot be definitively identified as members of the “Escape of 28,” they likely benefited from Coffin and Cable’s involvement in abolitionist groups and the Underground Railroad." Source: Cowan Auctions (photograph from Cable descendent Sylvia Rummel).

A few years shy of a century ago, Nicholas II, last of the Russian Tsars, enjoyed the protection of what historian Robert K. Massie called “a gaudily fantastic quartet of bodyguards. Four gigantic Negroes dressed in scarlet trousers, gold-embroidered jackets, curved shoes and white turbans stood outside the study where the Tsar was at work, or the boudoir where the Empress was resting." Anna Vyrubova notes in her memoirs Memories of the Russian Court that "they were not soldiers and had no function except to open doors and to signal by a sudden noiseless entrance into a room that one of Their Majesties was about to appear." "Although all of these men were referred to at court as Ethiopians, one was an American Negro named Jim Hercules.” That passage, from Massie’s book Nicholas and Alexandra, goes on to report Hercules would return from visits stateside bearing jars of guava jelly for the tsar’s children, and that “he was an employee, bound to the family only by loyalty.” In his book, The Court of the Last Tsar, author and Romanov historian Greg King sheds more light on the famous blackamoor at the Court of the Russian tsars. King notes that Hercules was "born to former slaves in the American South in 1867," and that he "took advantage of the freedom after the Civil War and moved to New York City, where be became a boxer. In the 1880s, Hercules toured Europe, finally settling in London and taking British citizenship." King goes on to say that "Empress Maria Feodorovna invited him to Russia, where Alexander III offered him a position as an Abyssinian Guard." While visiting the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, Prince Christopher of Greece noted his impressions: "Tall, splendidly built, in their wide trousers and scarlet turbans they stood immobile as though they had been cast in bronze." Hercules in Russia was a play based on the life of Jim Hercules that opened at the Montgomery College's Cultural Arts Center in Silver Spring, Maryland and ran from February 10th until March 4th, 2012. Sources: Washington City Paper, The Last Labor: Hercules in Russia, by Chris Klimek (2012); The Court of the Last Tsar by Greg King; toritto wordpress Door Man to the Tsar (2014)

John and Mary Richardson Jones arrived in Illinois in 1844 and found a wide range of laws which restricted the freedoms of African American residents. The couple worked tirelessly in Chicago during the late 1840s and 1850s against slavery and the Illinois Black Laws. A few years after the abolition of slavery and the end of the Black Laws in 1865, John Jones was elected a Cook County commissioner and fought segregation in public schools. In 1955, their granddaughter Theodora Purnell described Mary Jones's role: She was mistress of the home where Nathan Freer, John Brown, Frederick Douglass and Allen Pinkerton visited. She harbored and fed the fugitive slaves that these men brought to her door as a refuge until they could be transported to Canada. In fact she stood at my Grand-father's side—her husband John Jones—when their early Chicago home became one of the Underground Railway Stations. It was she who stood guard at the door when these pioneer abolitionists were in conference. Abolitionist John Brown stayed at the Joneses’ house in 1859 when he passed through Chicago on his way to his infamous raid at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. The Joneses home located at the southwest corner of W. 9th St. and S. Plymouth Ct. was designated a historical landmark on May 26, 2004. After the Civil War, the Joneses worked to overturn racial segregation in Chicago and Illinois Mary Richardson Jones was a pioneer in the initial Suffrage Movement and was hostess to Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chatman Catt, Emma Chandler and Mrs. John Brown. Letter by Theodora Lee Purnell, September 2, 1955. John Jones Collection, Chicago Historical Society

She was born in Africa between 1835 and 1840 and was captured by the slave dealer Don de Mer when she was a child of about eight. The child had a string of beads around her waist which was thought to mark her as an African Princess. Although the United States outlawed the international slave trade in 1808, according to an article in the October 1925 issue of Old-Time New England, de Mer traveled on Magadala, a ship operated by Captain Austin Dodge of Massachusetts. De Mer died while on the voyage, and Captain Dodge took Sarah to his sister, Elizabeth Conant, who lived in Topsfield, Massachusetts, with her husband, Nathaniel. Although the Old-Time New England article states that she was educated and well taken care of within the Conant household, her true status in the home remains unknown. By 1860, she was living in Boston, with John McLellan, an auctioneer, and his wife, Catherine. While Colcher’s occupation is not listed in the 1860 census, it is likely that she was boarding in the McLellan household and was employed as a domestic worker. According to Old-Time New England, Sara worked as a cook in the home of Mrs. Gordon Dexter, of Boston and Beverly Farms, Massachusetts. Sara became ill while working for Mrs. Dexter, and was brought to the Cabot-Lee-Kilham household in Beverly, where she was cared for by Miss Henrietta Kilham. Miss Kilham donated the carte de visite to Historic New England, then the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, in November 1925. Sara died in 1882, and is buried in the Conant family plot in Topsfield, Massachusetts. Throughout the research, it was noticed the number of inconsistencies with primary sources. Sara Baro Colcher is listed as being twenty years old in both 1855 and 1860, and her name is occasionally spelled “Sarah.” Additionally, early biographies of Sara are now outdated. For example, the 1925 Old-Time New England article uses very neutral language when saying, “Sarah Baro Colcher was given to Captain Dodge, who brought her home to his sister, Elizabeth Dodge Conant.” Without any firsthand documentation, Sara’s social and legal status remains unknown. Historic England (Feb. 26, 2018); Theodore Wyman, Photographer (Boston, Mass.) circa 1864; Topsfield Historical Society by Amy Coffin

George O. Brown’s Jackson Ward studio chronicled African American life and culture for seventy years. Brown was born enslaved in 1852 in Orange County, Virginia, the son of Willis and Winnie Brown. “The whole family was enslaved near Barboursville,” says Michael Brown, George O. Brown’s great-grandson. “This lineage comes down to me from my father’s side.” The family moved to Richmond after the Civil War. By 1871, George O. had joined Ebenezer Baptist Church, one of the oldest black churches in Richmond, located in the heart of the Jackson Ward community, according to historian Gregg D. Kimball’s entry on George O. Brown in the “Dictionary of Virginia Biography.” George O. also opened a bank account at Freedman’s Savings and Trust Co., Kimball writes, and the company’s records listed him as being employed at a Richmond photographic gallery. “By 1879 he was working at the photographic gallery of George W. Davis,” Kimball writes. Davis owned and operated a photo studio and gallery at 827 Broad St.; the Richmond city directory lists Davis’ business in two locations over the span of a quarter century, from 1875 to 1900. Though not much is known about Davis, he is “often noted for hiring African-American photographers James Conway Farley (in 1875) and George O. Brown (in 1879),” reads a notation on one of Davis’ photos dated 1893, archived in Virginia Commonwealth University’s James Cabell Branch Library. Michael Brown says the relationship between his great-grandfather and Farley evolved from time spent as co-workers at Davis’ studio into a partnership as co-operators at a new studio, Jefferson Art Gallery. “According to our family’s oral history, [Brown and Farley] worked behind the scenes at Davis’ studio, setting up the lights and the scenes, mixing the chemicals used to develop the photos, and learning the skills of photography,” Brown says. “Eventually, they parted ways with Davis and went into business together. Farley’s wife paid my great-grandfather money and entered into a three-year contract with him to [operate] parts of the business.” Farley founded Jefferson Fine Art Gallery in 1895; he and Brown worked there until 1899, when Brown founded his own studio, the Old Dominion Gallery. Brown’s primary style of photography was portraiture; through his lens, he cast thousands of black Richmonders and Virginians as determined, upwardly mobile residents, though in reality they were denied the full rights of citizenship. “One of [the Brown gallery’s] most celebrated portraits is of the businesswoman Maggie Lena Walker (1867-1934), founder of the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank,” writes photographer and scholar Deborah Willis in her 2000 book, “Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to Present.” In the photo Willis references, Walker is swathed in a dark lace dress, her face bearing a dignified expression beneath rolls of glossy hair pinned below a large, plumed hat. It is telling of his photo studio’s reputation for excellence that a woman of Walker’s stature would select the business to capture her image on camera. Bettie G. Mason was a teacher at Richmond’s Navy Hill School whom Brown married in 1881. The pair had four children; a son and a daughter died in infancy. The two who survived, Bessie Gwendola Brown and George Willis Brown, learned all aspects of the family photography business from their father. As the business thrived, the Browns’ photography studio adopted the slogan “Portraits that please,” snapping photos of black life in Virginia and its capital city — funerals, architecture, commemorations of graduations and christenings. Bessie and George Willis inherited the studio after their father’s death in 1910. For the next six decades, their photography business endured, piloted first by both siblings, and then, after George Willis’ death in 1946, by Bessie. “Through [George O. Brown’s] award-winning portraits, and that of his descendants, we are privy to the vast contributions of these superb visual archivists in chronicling virtually every facet of the black experience in Richmond and the commonwealth,” says historian and educator Elvatrice Belsches. A researcher for the Steven Spielberg film “Lincoln,” Belsches served as curator of the BHMVA’s “Yesterday’s Stories” exhibition. She notes that Brown’s work was recognized nationally. “He was awarded a silver medal at the Jamestown Tercentennial in 1907,” Belsches says. The Tercentennial was one of a series of “world’s fair”-style expositions across the country, meant to celebrate the social achievements and technological advancements of the age, while observing a historically significant date. At the Tercentennial of 1907, over 2 million attendees witnessed an array of exhibitions, including a display of African-American inventions and innovations. After taking home the award, Brown’s studio featured a photo of it in their newspaper advertisements. Michael Brown, a semi-retired political campaign consultant who lives in Richmond, says that though his forebears left a weighty legacy, he never felt forced to take up the mantle: “My brother and I had little Brownie cameras, but it was nothing like, ‘OK, boy, your granddaddy had a business, your great-granddaddy had a business, you’ve got to do this.’ They did not do that at all. I had a little Brownie camera that I played around with, but that was about it.” Still, the knack for images rubbed off on his generation. “As far as the lineage in terms of photography, my youngest brother, Albert Wilder Brown, was a photographer,” Michael says. “He did not work for the family business — by the time he became an adult, they had closed it down.” During a 25-year career, “Albert worked for Miller & Rhoads as a photographer, and he later moved on to Caston Studio.” Albert Brown died in 2009. Ultimately, his great-grandfather should be remembered as a “visual historian,” says Michael, now 71 himself. Pioneering black photographers like Brown and Farley may not have realized it fully, but they were “documenting history, providing people with documentation of their family or their business. They were reflecting their community,” Michael says. “They provided a gift to us, and to future generations.” Sources: RichmondMagOnline "Reflections of the Past," by Samantha Willis (Oct. 2018); Michael Brown provided family photograph

John Dabney's mother was a cook, his father a carriage driver, in Hanover Junction. Dabney started in service work as a jockey, burnishing the reputations of the DeJarnettes, the white family that held his own family in bondage. When he outgrew the saddle, he headed inside the region’s racecourse buildings to prepare and serve food. There, Dabney began acquiring the skills that would attach to his biography terms that we rarely associate with those who were enslaved: bartender, chef, caterer. These were the stations from which, as a Richmond paper wrote upon his death, he supervised the city’s "every gathering of importance." Cora Williamson DeJarnette inherited Dabney's mother through her marriage to William DeJarnette, who died not long after their wedding. Cora, presumably confronting limited resources as a young widow and in need of income, allowed her brother, Dabney Williamson, to hire-out Dabney to a restaurant at the railroad station in Gordonsville, Virginia. She would earn his wages while he garnered skills to make him, as newspapers later attested, "a very valuable servant." In Gordonsville, Dabney's son Wendell later wrote, the young man displayed a knack for the work. He reached the position of head waiter at the age of 18. By the late 1850s, Dabney moved from the Columbian Hotel to run the kitchen and bar at the Ballard House & Exchange Hotel — the establishment, as his son Wendell later wrote, recognized by many as "the leading hotel in Virginia's leading city." Dabney took the helm after the departure of Spiro Zetelle, a well-regarded cook of Greek origin who excelled in restaurants and catering in Richmond until moving to California in the 1880s. Dabney inherited Zetelle's menu, a complex lineup of 19th-century fine dining standards, and the praise of his patrons indicates that he mastered it. Between his arrival in Richmond and the beginning of the Civil War, John Dabney married Elizabeth Foster, another enslaved black Virginian. The couple soon welcomed a son, Clarence. But the birth was not celebrated by all in their orbit. John and Elizabeth Dabney's younger son, Wendell, later wrote that Elizabeth's owners thought she was focusing too much on her newborn child and not enough on their own family. "Dissatisfaction at this," Wendell wrote, "and rapidly growing debts, caused them to decide upon selling her." Faced with the horror of losing his wife and son, likely forever — neither state nor federal law recognized enslaved people as members of families, and offered no protection nor support for reunification — Dabney turned to his savings. His work at hotels and restaurants principally benefitted Cora DeJarnette, but Dabney, as with fellow enslaved Virginians hired-out from farms around Richmond to factory and hospitality trades in the capital, was able to save tips. Dabney had made an agreement with DeJarnette to buy his own freedom through those tips. But his resources, while exceptional for an enslaved person, could stretch only so far. He asked permission to pause his payments in order to secure the funds necessary to free his wife. Cora DeJarnette agreed. "Then," Wendell explained, after enlisting "the help of some of his white friends" to arrange documents for the purchase, Dabney gathered the funds, "and bought my mother." War, slowly and with great doubt, eventually brought freedom. The United States Army, including a regiment of U.S. Colored Troops, liberated Richmond on April 3, 1865. Fires set by retreating Confederates had destroyed the city's industrial district and commercial core, including the Columbian Hotel, where John Dabney first drew public acclaim. Elizabeth Dabney labored to sustain her business of washing, pressing, and repairing clothes. Her husband sought new opportunities. Richmond residents, black and white, began to rebuild, and the burned district provided some of the most promising sites for new development. One such site was an 11-room women's seminary converted into a home and sold at auction in 1866. Two blocks from the State Capitol, the home at 1414 East Broad Street, on the city's main corridor, caught Dabney's eye as he walked by one day in November. John Dabney later told Wendell that he stood watching a large crowd of onlookers — and few bidders — while unintentionally nodding as the auctioneer announced sums climbing higher and higher. Bidders grew silent, Wendell later wrote, and finally the verdict was in: "Going, going, gone! Knocked down to John Dabney." The promising businessman and young father could just barely afford the final price. His accidental purchase, which became the family's home for more than 30 years, required a loan. But credit wasn't a stretch for John Dabney. Wendell's autobiographical sketch relays the family lore that became Richmond legend. After the war, Cora DeJarnette became "destitute." She no longer enjoyed the income Dabney's work had supplied, nor the regular payments he made to acquire his freedom. Dabney had resumed making those payments after freeing Elizabeth. But eventually, the depreciation of Confederate currency caused DeJarnette to call for a pause — and with Emancipation, this last source of income seemed to have vanished. Dabney learned of DeJarnette's plight and paid her a visit. He offered to pay her the balance that remained on his debt when Richmond was freed. Wendell Dabney wrote that his father felt indebted to DeJarnette due to her willingness to let him suspend payments when he faced the prospect of losing his wife. John Dabney told his son that Cora DeJarnette protested, but he did not waver. "I am keeping my word," he reported telling her. John Dabney placed before her a stack of United States currency, and then walked out. "Richmond," Wendell wrote, "never forgot the deed. My father's note was good at any bank, and his word equivalent to an oath." The city's white newspapers applauded Dabney's dignity. "All of our people are familiar with John Dabney, the celebrated colored restaurateur of our city," the breathless first account read, "and those who know him best place the most implicit confidence in his honor, and a circumstance which came to our knowledge a few days since proves how worthily this confidence is bestowed." In one remarkable act, Dabney transformed his reputation. He grew his wide acclaim into instant legend. The story hit the press in September 1866. It circulated throughout Virginia and elsewhere in the South, and appeared in a Richmond newspaper as late as 1938. Over those 72 years, the paternalistic tone of the accounts softened, but remained. White Richmond interpreted Dabney's action as the simple gratefulness of a simple man. They praised DeJarnette's generosity in permitting Dabney to pause payments for his own freedom without acknowledging what she stood to gain from the long-term arrangement, nor, most fundamentally, the fact that she held him in bondage until the war made it impossible. The papers emphasized Dabney's "sense of honesty and personal obligation" without considering that an observer of white elites in the recent capital of the Confederacy might have eyed the tenuous future and sought to cement his place in any way possible. "John will stand," read the first report, "higher than ever in the estimation of every Richmond gentleman." And so he did, whatever his own feelings. Dabney could not print an expansion of this narrative; slavery had made it impossible for him to learn to read or write. Wendell notes that on the one occasion when a family member of his owner's tried to teach him, "she was detected and sent away, while he received a severe whipping." But John and Elizabeth Dabney left no doubt about their politics. When Elizabeth gave birth to their son, Wendell Phillips, in November 1865, seven months after Emancipation reached Richmond, the couple named him after an abolitionist. John Dabney told his son Wendell that his "business was too durn good" to leave town and make a new start elsewhere. But in staying, John and Elizabeth Dabney resisted by building a legacy. They sent Wendell to Oberlin College, where he studied music. Wendell returned to Richmond for several years, a young graduate finding his way, teaching grade school, and writing music, before returning to Ohio. In Cincinnati, he founded an opera company, two newspapers, and the local chapter of the NAACP; served twenty-seven years as the city's paymaster, Cincinnati's first black citizen to hold the post; and became a lifelong advocate for African American civil rights. The other Dabney children, most born in the wake of freedom, also charted impressive paths. Daughters Kate and Hattie became teachers. John Milton, perhaps channeling the epic imagination of his namesake, excelled in professional baseball and later through a 30-year career in the U.S. Postal Service. Eldest son Clarence, whom John Dabney had rescued from sale in the late-1850s, followed his father into the hospitality trade. Dabney may have retired from managing his restaurant and catering business early in the 1890s, but he continued to work until the week of his death. He died at his Richmond home on June 7, 1900. All four of the city's daily newspapers reported his death, but none indicated in which of Richmond's African American cemeteries he was buried. This narrative of John Dabney's life written by the film's (The Hail-Storm: John Dabney in Virginia) co-directors, Hannah Ayers and Lance Warren, draws together existing scholarship and presents previously unpublished sources and facts discovered during research for the film in Summer and Fall 2017; Virginia Humanities; Author Maureen Egan discovered the long hidden photograph of Dabney, the only known photograph of him, in 2015 at The Valentine, the preeminent museum of the history of Richmond, Virginia.