The Story of Jenny and Noah

Jenny and Noah ran away in August 1825. Jenny was Frederick Douglass's aunt, the sister of his mother, Harriet. Noah was her husband. Aaron Anthony, Douglass's master, owned them all. Douglass, who was approximately seven years old at the time, heard about their escape and the news affected him profoundly. This was, he later wrote, the first time that he had heard that there was such a thing as free states and that, if a slave could get to them, the slave would be free. (Legally speaking, that was not true, but that was not how enslaved people perceived or even lived the situation.)

The story, however, had more parts to it than Douglass may have known at the time or found useful for his autobiographies. Eleven days after their flight, Jenny and Noah’s children also left Maryland, but they went in the other direction. Anthony sold Mary and Isaac, ages 7 and 6 respectively, along with their first cousin, fourteen year old Betty, and their aunt, nineteen year old Maryann, to slave traders in September 1825. If my theory about childrearing under Anthony’s ownership is true, then Douglass knew the two children and the two children, like him, did not know their mother.

From what I can surmise, Anthony allowed the women he enslaved to keep their children with them for about two years. Then, the babies went to live with their grandmother, Betsy. Betsy kept her own youngest children as well as these grandchildren until they reached about the age of five or six. Douglass, for instance, wrote that he had been taken from his mother before he could remember her and that his grandmother kept him until he was approximately six years old. When they reached that age, Betsy did what Anthony ordered, and took the child – be it her own or her grandchild – to Anthony’s house on the Lloyd plantation on the far side of the county. In 1825, Douglass himself was seven, the same age as Mary, and had been at Wye house for a year. That would mean that he, Mary, and Isaac had been kept together at Betsy’s cabin, and that the two were either still there or also at Wye House with him.

Jenny and Noah, however, lived elsewhere. According to Dickson Preston, author of Young Frederick Douglass, the Maryland Years, they worked at one of Anthony’s Tuckahoe plantations. In fact, Preston last mentions the specific location of Jenny’s employment as being in the Hillsboro home of Elinor Maloney, Anthony’s elderly widowed sister, where Douglass’s mother Harriet had also worked for a time. In other words, Jenny and Noah had been separated from their children for several years; and if their children had already been sent to Wye House, then the distance of the separation had grown further.

This is not to say that Jenny and Noah callously ran away and abandoned their children. In fact, this is the difficult part of writing about enslaved people and attempting to explain their situation to a twenty first century, American audience. Enslaved people faced choices that are alien to our experience today, and historians have to convey the logic of those choice with sympathy and without judgement. Thus, when Jenny and Noah ran away, thereby abandoning their children, they did so for specific reasons that might seem callous, but made the most sense to their particular situation.

So, what options did Jenny and Noah have? They had already lost a child who had died in infancy in 1821, when Mary was three and probably just removed to Betsy’s cabin, and when Isaac as two and on his way there, too. Thus, three babies had been taken from them in as many years, one forever. Since most of Jenny’s sisters and her mother had children approximately every two years, Jenny could have lost others to miscarriages or still births between 1821 and 1825, or she may have found out that she was pregnant about the time that she and Noah ran away. The separation from their children may have been the impetus for their flight. Their “Sophie’s Choice” decision may have followed a logic in which they thought, “these two children are lost for now – we can come back for them, we might buy them, we can get them, but the next ones will be ours to have and to raise.”

Then came the sale. Preston suspected that Jenny and Noah’s flight was a response to the impending sale, a logical conclusion if they suspected that they themselves would be sold. Would they do the same if they suspected that their children faced the auction block, or would they have know that the situation was desperate and had the same conversation about which I have speculated above? Perhaps, because of their children’s youth, they assumed that they would be immune from sale. In 1825, young women like Maryann and Betty, or their male counterparts, would get a higher price than two children.

The sale of the children, however, strikes me as retaliation. In the ad that Anthony posted in a Baltimore paper on the day before the sale, he wrote that he had planned to give Jenny and Noah their freedom. Given that he had already slated at least two young women for sale, and threw in two more children, he was hardly in the mood to let two grown, healthy, slaves, one bearing children, get away for free. The next day, he sold their children.

I wish I knew what happened to Jenny and Noah, to Mary and Isaac, to Maryann and Betty. So many others on the Lloyd and Anthony farms probably did, too.

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Image from Dickson J. Preson, Young Frederick Douglass, the Maryland Years (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 66.

Sources:
Preston, Young Frederic Douglass, 64-66.
Aaron Anthony Return Books, Lloyd Family Papers, Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, Maryland.

Douglass in Belfast

Last weekend, I went on a long weekend to Belfast and points further north. Douglass spent a little time in Belfast during his tour of the British Isles between 1845 and 1847, and had a contingent of support from women in the city when he and the Garrisonians based in Boston had a parting of the ways.

Today, Douglass appears in the scarred Belfast landscape in a mural:

Twice, even, as you can see the younger Douglass up to the left of the older man.  The rest of the mural has interesting references to black history.

Here, on the left side of the mural, you can see slave ships, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Barack Obama (who, incidentally, is very popular in the Republic of Ireland) and Rosie the Riveter, who seems like she might be mixed race or light skinned:

On the right side of the mural, you see references to Martin Luther King, Angela Davis, Nelson Mandela and South African apartheid, Muhammad Ali, and Bob Marley.

You can also see images of the Mothers of the Disappeared, Indian women, what appears to be one of the Grimke Sisters, and Daniel O'Connell. I don't instantly recognize the other figures, and you also can see images from recent Northern Irish history interspersed through the mural.

Daniel O'Connell is the key to understanding the connection between African American history and this mural in Belfast. This mural is one of a series of murals in both Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods, which are separated by a tall wall. The murals on the Protestant side reinforced their connection to the British and participation in the two world wars in the 20th century. The murals on the Catholic side referenced various global freedom and human rights struggles, particularly those against racism. The Douglass mural is on the Catholic side.

Initially, I wondered what a mural featuring Frederick Douglass would be doing in Northern Ireland on the Catholic side. Douglass himself did not mix with many Catholics. His supporters in Ireland tended to be Protestant, usually Quakers. Also, his visit coincided with the beginning of the Great Famine and took place during the Repeal movement, led by O'Connell, which intended to end the Act of Union that made Ireland part of the United Kingdom. In other words, the Irish as a whole had more immediate concerns than ending slavery in the U.S.

During Douglass's visit, those involved with the Repeal movement drew direct connections between American slaves and Ireland under British rule and between African Americans and Irish Catholics. Their positions relative to their respective governments and societies were analogous, according to this argument.

In this mural, you see that argument expanded. Douglass is central but connected to a broader struggle for rights for oppressed people of color. The artists trace this history from the origins of the slave trade through resistance to slavery in the U.S., the U.S. Civil Rights movement, resistance to apartheid in South Africa, opposition to South American dictatorships, and even -- with Muhammad Ali -- resistance to wars of imperialism in Southeast Asia, and all the way to the election of the first black American president. I think the Indian women may have something to do with Indian independence (although, note the absence of Gandhi himself), and Rosie, despite her connection with World War II, may suggest women's rights.

This mural, then, had it appeared in the U.S., might seem like a tribute to great black figures in history, something for Black History Month. Here, in Belfast, among the Catholic murals, a few blocks from the offices of Sinn Fein, and right next to a former checkpoint between the Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods -- Douglass himself looks toward the checkpoint -- it seems to be a statement of ongoing resistance.

Frederick Douglass Hall

In my research yesterday, I came across this letter, dated 4 May 1934:

My dear Friends:
It was pleasant to receive your telegram expressing appreciation of the University’s action in naming its new classroom building after your distinguished grandfather. We are sorry that the notice reached you too late for your attendance. I am happy to report to you that the dedication was well attended, that many eminent persons were present, including six members of the Douglass family. For your full information, I am sending you, herewith, a copy of the University’s news release of the occasion.
With cordial regards and best wishes, I am
Sincerely yours,
Mordecai W. Johnson

What building had been named after Frederick Douglass, might you ask? This one:

The Frederick Douglass Memorial building on Howard University campus, right across the quadrangle from the library in which I was sitting while reading that letter and in front of which I ate lunch (because the Moorland-Spingarn closes for lunch) all week.

Now, I find that I absolutely must locate (wherein "absolutely must" means "it would be cool, but not really necessary except for fun") "L'ouverture Terrace" in Takoma Park. Rosetta Douglass Sprague, Frederick Douglass's daughter, had a home there in the 1890s. Since I have worked in Takoma Park for the past 4 years, finding her home might be rather interesting. If the same house is standing, then I might be able to ascertain the style of living enjoyed by her family at that point in time. Her husband, after all, was supposed to have been a former slave and had to struggle for survival (and respect) in the aftermath of Emancipation and the rise of Jim Crow. That's a story that I'm still trying to tease out.

The "dear Friends" to whom this letter was addressed, Hattie B. Sprague, Fredericka Douglass Perry, and Rosabelle Sprague Jones, were three of Rosetta and Nathan's five children.

Clements Library

For the past week, I have been researching in the Clements Library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The collection that I'm visiting is the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society Papers. I originally thought that this collection was in Rochester at the Rush Rhees Library, where I have been for the greater part of the past month. The reason I was under this mistaken impression? Well, a biographer listed it as being there in a bibliography. Fortunately, another bibliography in another book cleared that all up, and here I am.

Much of my research these days has not turned up much meat. Most of the letters to or from Douglass have been published. Many of the letters about Douglass are fairly well known. Most of the current work has more to do with finding more clues to more clues, but also filling out the stories of the women beyond their interaction with Douglass, placing them within a community and thereby opening up the context of Douglass's story. I'm trying to say more in this book than simply, "Douglass did this -- and these were the women there -- and Douglass did that -- and these were the women there." That's boring. That's note taking. I want to expand this story about the gender interactions within the abolitionist movement both in public and in private. Or something like that. It will sound more eloquent in the book.

Which reminds me: The scholarship around the public/private division of "separate spheres" has been slowly erasing that line, showing how that was not the way most women lived their lives. I think the divide was much more a male experience, if any one experienced it at all. In what I am studying, Anna Murray Douglass (the first Mrs. Douglass) was probably the most exemplary of a fully private life, with several caveats, of course. Douglass seemed to prefer as public a life as possible. Much of what he did, he did for an audience, and when he was at home, he tried to keep that locked up tightly. At least, that's what the documentation seems to say at this point. As usual, I have much more secondary work to do.

To get back to this collection, I wasn't entirely certain of what I expected it to contain,  but I didn't expect it to be this interesting. The majority of this past week, Box 1, full of correspondence, occupied my attention, and gave me an idea of the way that these women conceived of their antislavery work and some of the ways that the work extended into Reconstruction.

A fascinating series of letters came from Julia A. Wilbur, a woman -- I can't say "young" or not, but she identifies herself as a "spinster" -- who took on the task of going down to Washington, D.C., to aid the "Contraband," in 1863. Eventually, Harriet Jacobs joined her, and the two of them fought government bureaucrats, Union officers, a military governor, and ordained ministers to make sure that the "contraband" had decent living conditions, education and medical attention. The narrative of the letters is itself fascinating; but more interesting is the way that she starts out calling the freed people "contraband" and "poor creatures" and attempting to impose her ideas of "civilization" on them, to calling them "the people" and listening to their needs as articulated by "the people" themselves and both responding to and advocating for them.

Box 1 also includes some notes about aiding fugitives. I use the term "notes" because clearly someone at Douglass's office carried them to the sender. In once case, the writer, William Watkins, identified the messenger as Douglass's oldest son, Lewis. These letters show just how "upper ground" the Underground Railroad actually was in western New York. They all clearly identify the sender, the recipient, and that the fugitives with the sender need money. The sender is generally in the Frederick Douglass' Paper office, and the recipient is usually Maria G. Porter (who I mentioned in the posts on the Porter family graves), treasurer of the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society.

I finished Box 1 on Thursday, and moved on to Box 2, thinking that there would not be much in it, and that I might be able to move this show on down to Oberlin to look up Rosetta Douglass in their archives. After all, how much can you find in an account book?

Clearly I forgot Watergate Deep Throat's dictum, "follow the money." One of the aspects of the antislavery movement that often gets lost in the ideology and action is the importance of money. There were only so many antislavery dollars out there to go around, and there seems to have been huge competition for them, which became tangled in the ideology and action. Much of what the women in the movement did, too, involved raising funds. Speakers needed salaries and expenses paid, lectures required advertisements, fugitives needed aid, rendition cases has court costs, Beecher's Bibles were not cheap, and every newspaper published struggled. Activism is not cheap!

All of this is to say that I found an amazing amount of data in this second box, which contains the Society's annual reports and account book. I'm in the account book, which, incidentally, required me to figure out how account books work (if you know me in the physical world, then you know that I am famed for my inability to understand numbers). The account book shows speakers' fees, the cost of renting a hall for the speakers, the amounts taken in at fairs both from foreign and from domestic goods (which will figure in with my analysis of Julia Griffiths, if I can round it all out with the same from the American Anti-Slavery Society), and the amounts given to fugitives or to bury fugitives who died.

Between the account book and the correspondence, however, you can see that these women saw their primary task as aiding not Frederick Douglass but enslaved -- or formerly enslaved - people themselves. They deployed the same networks and methods as emancipation advanced, sending an agent into the South, as they had when they provided railroad tickets, clothing and funerals to those running North. I have to dive back into the secondary literature -- fast becoming my greatest weakness -- in order to see how this fits into the larger pattern of women in the antislavery movement, and the ways that they differed or modeled themselves on other women.

What I am seeing is that there is a distinct difference in the way that they conceive of their activism and the way that Douglass sees his activism, and that, sometimes, the women believe that their work is, in fact, morally superior to his. Furthermore, the more that Douglass becomes famous and moves into party politics, the less feminine his world becomes. For Douglass -- and this is just a hypothesis at this moment -- the abolition movement was much more female or, at the very least, integrated by gender. The Civil War took him into a world in which men and masculine citizenship and political action dominated his work. He was a connection and a wedge for the women and their work, and, at the moment, the number of women working with him in reform seems to decrease or their activism and organizations seem separate from him in some way that made their relationship different than before the Civil War.

Here, too, I must sort out politics, activism, and reform.

After Michigan, I'm back to Syracuse, then off to D.C. to close shop there. Then, off to Ireland until May.