Lisa Fager, executive director of the Black Georgetown Foundation, has recently shared an intriguing mystery with my Race and Racism students at American University. Neville Waters III, a member one of Georgetown’s longest-resident African American families came across, in his grandparents’ trunk, a puzzling large book. At first glance it appeared to be a Bible, bound in distinctive American Bible Society elaborate coverings. But opening the book, it turns out to be an early edition of William Still’s classic, “The Underground Railroad A record of facts, authentic narratives, letters, &c., narrating the hardships, hairbreadth escapes and death struggles of the slaves in their efforts for freedom,” first published in 1872, This 780 page book is an encyclopedic compendium of Still’s remarkable experience aiding hundreds of freedom seekers prior to Emancipation. (The full, searchable text of the book is available on Internet Archives at: https://archive.org/stream/undergroundrailr00lcstil/undergroundrailr00lcstil_djvu.txt)

Why would someone have re-bound this venerable book in a Bible covering? Was this done for protective subterfuge? To sanctify a remarkable story of Black liberation? For simple convenience as the old binding frayed off the Still book?

As we ponder this enigma, we are pursuing the likely chain of provenance of the volume. On the first page of this bound volume we can discern the name “James Cole” and an address “1711 13th Street, NW” in Washington DC. Below the name and address is a note, discussed below, addressed to a “Mr Craig.” (This page is immediately followed by the list of illustrations from the William Still Underground Railroad volume, which is partially visible in the photograph below.)

The house at 1711 13th Street

This brownstone, still standing, was owned by George Wheeler, a porter and member of the Odd Fellows. Born in Norfolk, Virginia around 1847, he served during the Civil War in the 38th USCT regiment (Company H) a unit primarily composed of self liberated men from Virginia and St Mary’s County, Maryland. Wheeler mustered into the regiment on 15 February 1965 in Frederick MD, as a substitute for a Phillip Sheffer a wealthy white man, b 1823, in Maryland’s 4th Congressional District. After a hospital stay, George Wheeler was mustered out of the army for disability on May 3, 1865.

On May 2, 1870, 23 year old George Wheeler opened a Freedman’s Bank account in the District of Columbia, listing his birthplace as Norfolk Virginia; his parents were not living and his brothers were John and Thomas Wheeler. He is a porter working for John A Major. (A latter bank application, evidently by the same man, lists his mother as Mary)

Around 1878 George Wheeler married Josephine Thompson, daughter of James Thompson and Charlotte Craig. By 1880, he and Josephine resided at the house at 1713 11th Street, NW, where he continued to live for the next 45 years.

Upon the death of George Wheeler on 16 May 1926 the house on 13th street was willed to his widow Josephine (nee Thompson) Wheeler and his three children Ernestine Wheeler Brooks (widow of Daniel L Brooks, who died in 1911). Sandy (Samuel) Wheeler and Bessie Wheeler Cole. Sandy Wheeler, a handyman, died in August 1940 in Pittsburgh. Ernestine Wheeler Brooks died in her family home of 1713 11th street, on 27 April 1955 (no children are listed in her death notice in the Evening Star.)

Sandy and Ernestine’s sister Bessie Wheeler, the daughter of George and Josephine Wheeler, married James Cole on 26 May 1906. The couple were married in the home of her parents, 1713 11 st NW, by the distinguished Catholic priest Alonzo J Olds, of St Augustine Church (formed out of Blessed Martin de Porres Parish, founded by the city’s Black Catholic community.) It is intriguing that their marriage certificate lists James’s name as “Juan Cole,” which was perhaps his Catholic baptismal name.

The couple continued after the death of Bessie’s father George Wheeler to reside in the Wheeler house at 1713 11st NW. It is possible that the Bible-covered copy of The Underground Railroad was inherited from George Wheeler, who as a USCT veteran from Virginia, residing in Frederick MD in early 1865, had likely been a freedom seeker during the Civil War, and may have had particular interested in Underground Railroad history.

The family of James Cole

James Cole, who married George and Ernestine Wheeler’s daughter Bessie, and who inscribed his name in the book, was the son of Sophia “Sophie” Cole of Georgetown, according to Sophia’s 3 March 1930 obituary in The Evening Star.

James Cole’s mother Sophia “Sophie” Cole, born about 1857, is listed in the 1860 census in Georgetown Ward 4 as the daughter of Barbary Cole and sister of Virginia Cole and Roberta Cole. Presumably, James Cole was born out of wedlock,and thus carried the maiden name of his mother, who was later known by her married name of Sophia Walston.

Living next door to Barbary Cole is her mother Mary Wilson, who appears to be the landlords of the Irish family of Jeremiah Harrington.

As indicated in her death’s certificate, filled out by her son James Cole, Sophia’s mother was originally Barbara Ellen Wilson, who married Robert Cole of Georgetown at Trinity Church in 1856. Robert died of consumption in December 1859, leaving Barbara a young widow. (James Cole, in filling out his mother’s death certificate in 1930, lists her father as “John Cole,’ but the Georgetown marriage records lists his name as “Robert Cole’).

Barbara Wilson (later Barbary Cole) and her mother Mary Wilson appear in the 1850 census in northwest Georgetown.

Sophia Cole appears in 1870, in Georgetown in the household of Albert Coffee. Her mother, previously Barbara of Barbary Wilson Cole, is now listed as Barbara Coffee, married to Albert Coffee, with 4 year old daughter Cora L Coffee and Joseph M Coffee, with elder daughters Jennifer B Cole, Sophia Cole, and Roberta Cole.

In the 1880 census, Sophia Cole is living in the household of 73 year old Mary Wilson, with Mary’s daughter Barbara (Wilson Cole) Coffee and Barbara’s husband “Alfred” Coffee (presumably the same person as “Albert”), and other individuals bearing the Coffee and Cole surnames.

Around 1880, Sophia Cole married William Lorenzo Walston, born, according to the 1900 census, in March 1857. The 1900 census lists the couple residing at at 1022 21st street, in the West End, with Lorenzo’s children, James Walston, Raymond Walston, Poe Walston,, and Lorenzo Walston,(Jr). This James Walston, born May 1878, must be the same person as “James Cole, whose 1917 World War I draft registration lists him as born 12 May 1879. It seems likely that James Cole was born to Sophia Cole out of wedlock, soon before Sophia married Lorenzo Walston..

As noted above, Sophia Cole Walston died in 1930 at the home of her son James Cole, at 1713 11th St NW.

James and Bessie Cole

Following his 1906 marriage to Bessie Wheeler. James Cole seems to have lived the remainder of his life in the Wheeler house at 1713 11th street NW. In 1940, the house at 1713 11th Street , in which the couple resided, was valued at $8,000.

Bessie Wheeler Cole continued to reside at 1713 11th street until her death on 27 June 1960, when she died at home, survived by her husband. James.

We are not sure if James and Bessie Cole had children. Bessie’s 1960 obituary makes no references to surviving children or grandchildren.

As late as 1969, a James Cole, retired, is listed in the city directory as residing at 1713 11th street, NW. We have not yet located a death record for James Cole, Jr, the husband of Bessie Wheeler Cole.

Who was Venecia Fox?

The 1960 obituary of Bessie Cole makes reference to her surviving niece Venecia Fox. This woman was born Venecia Cecilia Walston, 12 January 1922.

The parentage of Venecia is unclear. She is listed in a Social Security record as the the daughter of Lorenzo “Walslon” (Walston) and “Susie”. This is partly consistent with 1922 death notice of Susie Edwina McRoy Walston, the wife of Lorenzo J Walston, which lists her as the daughter in law of Lorenzo Walston and Sophia Walston. However, this obituary does not list Venecia or any surviving child. Indeed, Venecia seems to have been brought up in the household of John Raymond Walston, brother of Lorenzo. and his wife Andora “Dora” G Holmes Walston. One way or another, she would appear to be the daughter of one of James Cole’s half brothers; this would explain why the 1960 obituary of James’ wife Bessie Wheelr Cole describes Venecia as Bessie’s “niece.”

On 3 May 1944, at age 23, Venecia married the 51 year old Charles Fox, who resided in the West End at 2506 M St. N.W. Venecia evidently survived Charles, whose death record we have not yet located, and continued to work as a maid in DC. She is recorded in 1962 and 1969 as a maid at the Tabard Inn in the Dupont Circle neighborhood, residing at 1126 22nd street, the longtime Walston family home. In 1980 and 1985, however, she is recorded residing at 1713 11th St NW, the former Wheeler-Cole home, the former residence, as noted, of her late aunt Bessie Wheeler Cole and her late uncle James Cole). Venicia died January 1996, with her last zip code being 20001, the same zip code at the old Wheeler-Cole house.

The Walston Family Connection

To review, James Cole’s step father was Lorenzo Walston, the father of the younger Lorenzo Walston, the apparent father of Veneica Walston Fox.

The Walston’s are related to the Turner-Waters family of Georgetown, in whose possession the Bible-covered volume of the The Underground Railroad was discovered. The key link seems to be Neville Waters III’s maternal grandmother Gertrude Turner Waters,  1895-1972 a long time teacher at Thaddeus Stephens elementary school and a founder of Epiphany Catholic Church in Georgetown, wife of Neville Rupert Waters Sr, 1895-1981. Gertrude’s mother  was Mary Louise Walston Turner,1868-1943, daughter of Mary Clair Walston, c. 1833-1898.

The death notice of James R Walston (who died 5 June 1911) indicates that he was the brother of ML Turner, Lucy Williams, and Lorenzo Walston.

The 1878 city directory for Georgetown indicates that Mary Claire Walston was the widow of Augustus Walston (who seems to have died before 1870.) In 1878 Mary Claire and Lorenzo Walston both resided at 62 4th street (now Q street or Volta Place) in Georgetown. Two years later, in 1880, Mary Walston and Lorenzo Walston were both servants in the household of the white woman Elizabeth Poe at 1725 De Sales Place. It seems a reasonable inference that Lorenzo, who soon after married Sophia Cole (and was the stepfather of James Cole) was the son of Mary Claire and Augustus Walston.

Speculatively, the Bible-bound copy of The Underground Railroad may have passed from Venicia Walston Fox, who resided in the Wheeler-Cole house at 1713 11th Street, to her kinswoman, Gertrude Turner Waters, evidently descended, as noted above, on her mother’s side from Augustus and Mary Claire Walston, the parents of Venicia’s grandfather Lorenzo Walston.

.Who was “Mr Craig”?

An intriguing partially legible note on the first page, reproduced above, reads, “Mr Craig would you please come to my house tonight or tomorrow morning, If you will stop the roof from leaking as you promised, I will give you the balance of the money I owe you. The roof has never stopped yet {I] paid {21 dollars?]”

The 1930 census lists over 30 Black males in Washington DC with the surname “Craig”, one of whom might have been the handyman being addressed. It is not clear how the note came to be inserted in the re-bound volume; perhaps the note was a loose sheet that was placed at the front of the book when it was rebound with the Bible cover?

As noted above the maternal grandmother of Bessie Wheeler Cole was Charlotte Craig, so it is possible that the note was a addressed to a kinsman through marriage of James Cole.

We hope in the future to determine the precise path of Bible-covered William Still volume from the Wheeler-Cole house at 1713 11th street to the Turner-Waters household in Georgetown. It would be equally interesting to explore why James Cole, or someone else in his family or circle, chose to preserve William Still’s Underground Railroad in the binding of a bible.

Freedom Seekers in James Cole’s Lineage

Might James Cole’s ownership of The Underground Railroad have been motivated in part by memories of freedom seekers in his lineage?

On his mother’s side, James’s ancestors appear to be longstanding free Black people in Georgetown. His mother Sophia Cole was born free, evidently in Georgetown around November 1860, to Barbara or Barbary Ellen Wilson Cole, after the death of Sophia’s father Robert Cole, who passed in December 1859. Barbara’s mother Mary Wilson is listed as free in the 1850 and 1860 censuses in Georgetown. Mary Wilson may have been related to Catharine Wilson, a free woman of color listed in the 1840 census in the District of Columbia.

Barbary’s husband Robert Cole, James Cole’s maternal grandfather. is listed in 1850 as a free young man of color in Georgetown, bound as an indentured servant to the white grocer Uriah H Ager. He is a few doors away from the free Black couple Elias Cole and Mary Holley Cole, his likely parents, and ten households away from Raphael Cole, Robert’s possible older brother, listed with his wife Margaret and one year old son John,

James Cole’s biological father is unknown, given that he took his mother Sophia’s maiden name of Cole. His stepfather Lorenzo Walston was the son of Mary Clair Walston and Augustus Walston. (We do not see any trace of Augustus, other than Mary Clair identifies herself as his widow, in the 1878 Georgetown city directory, so he may not have survived the Civil War.)

29 year old Mary Clair Walston appears in the 1860 census in Georgetown as a free woman, born in Maryland, with her apparent children, James Walston; Alonzo Walston; Lucinda (Lucy) Walston; and Louisa Walston (five months old). So she and her children were clearly free by that date. The eldest Lucinda, is listed as born 1852 in the District of Columbia, indicating the family was in the District by that date.

The Walston’s may be related to Joseph Walston, manumitted by Isaac Noble, Jesse Dashiell and William Evans in Somerset County, Maryland, on May 25, 1798. (Somerset, on Maryland’s Eastern shore, is the state’s southernmost coast)

Joseph’s possible son, James Walston, born 1804, appears as a free man of color in the 1850 census in Princess Anne, Somerset County, Maryland

Also in 1860, in Brinkley’s, Somerset County, Maryland, two curiously mixed race families of oystermen or watermen, both with the surname Walston are living adjacent to another:

James E Walston, Oysterman, and his wife Sarah and children Henry, Molly, John, James, Charles. Only Henry has a letter “B” for his race, while the others are unmarked suggesting the census enumerator considered them White.

In the following line, John T Walston, appears with his wife Louisa and children Martha and Thomas. Martha is listed as “B” (Black), but the other family members have no letter by their names, again suggesting they were read as “white” by the census enumerator.

The handwritten notes in the text

Why did someone, perhaps James Cole, handwrite notes in the book? Were these related to the contents of the Underground Railroad.

Opposite p. 94 is handwritten “Washington DC. My Dear sister I will”?

P. 94 itself recounts the story, dating to 1855, of the freedom seeker Jane Johnson, who had been purchased from Cornelius Crew of Richmond with two of her children, by Colonel John Wheeler, of North Carolina, the United States Minister to Nicaragua, who attempted to bring the enslaved Jane with him from Washington DC, through Philadelphia to Nicaragua, before she petitioned for freedom for herself and her two children. The case was a major test of the Fugitive Slave Act.

Is the notation to “My dear sister, I will” in some way related to this story? As we have seen, George Wheeler, the owner of the house at 1713 11th street, may have been enslaved in Virginia and Maryland: was he somehow connected to the enslaver Colonel John Wheeler?

Who Bound the Book?

We are of course curious who bound the book in the Bible cover? Was it bound by James Cole himself, or did he use the services of a professional bookbinder. We know that a number of Black Washingtonians were employed in the Government Printing Office around the turn of the century so presumably had experience with bookbinding.

We even see a bookbinder by the name of John T Cole, listed in the 1880 city directory, at 508 5th street; perhaps he was distant kin to James?

by Mark Auslander (September 2024 entry)

One of the most fascinating works of public art in Washington DC towers over “Paul Robeson Triangle Park” a small park formed by the intersection of Georgia Avenue, Varnum Street, and Kansas Avenue NW” in the Petworth neighborhood, just south of 907 Varnum Street NW. “(Here I Stand) In the Spirit of Paul Robeson”, fabricated in 2000 and dedicated in 2001, is one of the best known sculptures of Allen Uzikee Nelson, a long-time DC artist whose life story is explored in the marvelous documentary, “Uzikee. Washington DC’s Ancestral Sculptor” (Doug Harris, 2021). The sculpture is included in the Guide to DC’s Black Public Art created by Partners for Historical Justice, under a grant from the Tour de Force Foundation of Washington DC. https://www.tourdeforcedc.com/post/here-i-stand-in-the-spirit-of-paul-robeson

Description of work:

The sculpture is composed of ten foot high metal column, upon which is placed an octagon with facial features on both sides. The base column has three openings within it, a hollow square, triangle, and a rectangle with a diagonal cross affixed within it.  At the top of the work a facial figure is visible within an octagon shape, in a West African inspired style, evidently based on Hongwe or Kota aesthetics from Gabon. About thirty seven panes of stained glass are arrayed around the periphery. On the front or south facing side, the facial features–eyes, nose and mouth,are rounded and project smoothly outwards (in a manner that might recall the Mesoamerican Olmec heads in which some Afrocentric scholars apprehend African influences). On the back or north facing side, the facial features are somewhat more stylized, with straight line designs that may evoke scarification marks. 

As of this writing the sign in front of the sculpture is damaged by the wording of the original sign in the the 2021 documentary film by Doug Harris, (Note, community members helped to restore the sign in April 2026).

Here I stand, 
Black Balled, Red Baited & Whited Out
2000
The Spirit of Paul Robeson
April 9, 1898-January 23, 1976
Orator-Valedictorian-All American Athlete-Lawyer-Actor-Singer-Linguist-Union, Civil & Human Rights Activist-Freedom of Speech & Cultural Warrior-Pan Africanist Visionary

“In my music, my plays, my films, I want to carry always this central idea: to be African”

By Allen Uzikee Nelson

Interpretation

The ten foot high piece is composed of weathering steel and stained glass, and has stylized faces on both sides of an upper element.. The aesthetic is rather reminiscent of the Janus-faced Kota or Hongwe (Gabon) reliquary guardian figures, some of which are located in the collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, which Uzikee has often visited. (see: https://www.si.edu/object/nmafa_78-14-12) My understanding has been that Hongwe double-facing guardian figurines are oriented both towards the visible world and the world of the invisible powers, serving as portals between spiritual domains and between past, present, and future, binding together those who come before and those who come after. It seem to me that Uzikee has constructed a kind of ancestral shrine, re-planting in effect Paul Robeson as a life-enhancing ancestral presence in a neighborhood of DC with a long history of African American political and cultural vitality. This sense of consecration is enhanced by a halo effect as the sun passes through the thirty-seven or so stained glass elements that surround the two sided faces of the sculpture, which create a sense of shimmering energy radiating fromheart of the park. With characteristic wry humor, the artist has affixed a sign summarizing the vicious assaults on Robeson’s career and legacy, “Black balled, Red baited, and Whited out.”

As an anthropologist deeply interested in ritual language and aesthetics in Africa and the African Diaspora, I am especially fascinated by the title Uzikee has chosen for the work, “Here I Stand.” The title manifestly refers to Paul Robeson’s 1958 autobiography and manifesto, “Here I Stand” (Othello Books) as well as the 1999 documentary on Robeson of the same name, directed by St Claire Bourne. Yet the title phrase, “Here I Stand” may also be considered what linguistic anthropologists term a “performative utterance,” a statement that does not simply describes the world but calls certain conditions into being. Performative utterances are often used in ritual language, which helps bring about mystical transformations in consciousness, social relationships and continuum in human-spiritual dynamics.   For example, the speech act “I baptize thee” is a performative utterance in that it doesn’t only describe the act of baptizing but brings about the end state of being baptized. “I now pronounce you husband and wife” does not only describe the act of the officiant, but actively help bring the state of being married into reality. “I bless thee” produces the state of being blessed. Similarly, “Here I Stand’ does not only allude to Robeson’s autobiography, it actively constitutes the fact that the sculpture, and in a sense Robeson himself, now stand over the Petworth neighborhood, As a ceremonial performative utterance, the phrase helps bring about the state of this ancestral figure once more “standing up” for the values Robeson was committed to in life, including justice, radical inclusiveness, and proud African heritage. This sense of “standing” is presuably extended to the artist Uzikee Nelson himself, a proud cultural activist of African descent and, beyond that, to all members of the community to whom the artist address himself in the neighborhood and in the District of Columbia. All of us are drawn into the ceremonial field cast by the sculpture, standing tall with Paul Robeson and his legacy.

In this sense, the title “Here I Stand” is an act of sacred ritual language that helps to re-energize and re-consecrate the land on which the statue stands, and thus nurtures the African-derived lineage of the District of Columba, at a historical moment when that lineage, like Robeson’s own legacy, risks being obscured and, in the artist’s terms, “whited out.”

Speculatively, the work’s subtitle “In the spirit of Paul Robeson,” may also refer to one of Paul Robeson’s most beloved recordings, of an old African American spiritual which dates back to the era of enslavement “Every time I feel the spirit/moving in my heart I will pray.” (As explored in the Harris film, Uzikee is descended from Frank Walzer, a famous escapee on the Underground Railroad, and has been deeply engaged with legacies of resistance from the period of enslavement.) The sculpture’s two open mouths, facing north and south, may in effect be singing and praying, and in so doing, animated by Spirit, be continually blessing the community with the words and wisdom of Robeson and the ancestors who came before him.

We have been intrigued by the life story of Hannah Slater, listed in Mt Zion Methodist church records as well as District of Columbia death records as the longest living persons buried in the Mt Zion-Female Union Band Society cemeteries in Georgetown, Washington DC. Her death is recorded as July 15, 1878, and her birth year as 1768, which would give her a life span of 110 years. This seems improbable. What can be inferred about her life and likely year of birth?

Her death record in Joseph Birch’s undertaker book as well numerous entries in the District of Columbia city directory indicates that her residence was 32 Beall Street, Georgetown (now 2617 O Street), which was also the home of Clement Beckett ( b 1815) and his wife Mary Beckett (1814-1894) for many years. This is now just across from the Rose Park pickleball courts.

Clement and Mary Beckett played important roles in the foundation of Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church, which was formed by Black members who left Mt Zion Methodist in 1856. (Ebenezer AME left Georgetwon for Fort Washington, MD in 1983). The death certificates for Clement and Margaret’s sons Clement Wainwright Becket and Joseph Cartwright Becket and daughter Margaret Beckett Ferguson (d. 21 April 1928) all indicate that Mary’s maiden name was Slater, the same surname as Hannah. Hannah was thus clearly the mother of Mary Slater Beckett and the mother-in-law of Clement Beckett.

Indeed, the first census record for Hannah Slater, in 1850, shows “H Slater”, a free woman of color, age 70, residing in the household of “C Becket” (Clement Beckett). age 35 and M Becket (Mary Beckett), age 34 in Georgetown.

I do not see Hannah Slater in the 1860 census. The 1870 census records Hannah Slater, age 98, that is to say born 1772, residing next door to Clement and Mary Slater, in the home of John H Ferguson, waiter, and his wife Margaret A Beckett Ferguson, who had married four years earlier, on 30 August 1866.

Margaret is the daughter of Clement and Mary Beckett and the granddaughter of Hannah Slater. The 1880 census, two years after the matriarch Hannah’s death, shows Clement and Mary and their son in law John H Ferguson and daughter Margaret A Beckett Ferguson, all residing in the same household.

The 1864 DC city directory lists Hannah Slater as colored, widow of Benjamin, boarding on L street north, near 23rd. The 1878 and 1879 city directories lists her as residing as 32 Beall in Georgetown, also as the widow of Benjamin Slater.

Who was Benjamin Slater, the late husband of Hannah, who must have died prior to 1864?(The fact that Hannah Slater was living with her daughter and son in law in 1850 may imply that Benjamin died earlier than that year.) There is no record in the 1840, 1850 or 1860 census of a free Black man named Benjamin Slater, which may imply that Benjamin was enslaved.

Perhaps relevant: a Benjamin Slater was emancipated in Maryland on 1 November 1864 under the terms of the new Maryland Constitution; in 1867, the heirs of William C Pearce of Montgomery County MD unsuccessfully filed for compensation for his freedom. William C Pearce in 1860 owned 24 slaves in Medleys District, Montgomery County, MD and one slave in Georgetown. (Medleys District was located along the Potomac River and the C & canal in the vicinity of modern day Seneca and Poolesville).

The November 1866 Freedman’s Bureau notebook, which retroactively records Black marriages, notes that in 1834 a presumably different Benjamin Slater married an Elizabeth Ricks in Washington DC.

This may be the same Benjamin Slater born about 1800 listed in the 1870 census, residing with Caroline Slater, age 48, residing next door to Francis Slater, hotel waiter, age 27.

Perhaps this Benjamin Slater was the son or different relation of “our” Hannah Slater.

In any event, I have not located a newspaper death notice or obituary for Hannah Slater, although, as noted above, her death, on 15 July 1878, is recorded in Mt Zion Church records and the Joseph Birch undertaker notebook. Her burial on 17 July 1878, is recorded in the Register of Burial, Colored, District of Columbia.

If her age of 70 enumerated in the 1850 census is correct, then Hannah was born around 1780 and died at the age of 98 in 1878. This is still an age of impressive longevity but not quite the 110 years listed in the DC death records.

Remembering Hannah’s daughter and granddaughter in the FUBS Cemetery

Hannah’s daughter Mary (Slater) Beckett is memorialized by the standing monument
in Section 9 of the Female Union Band Society cemetery, with the inscription:

In loving
remembrance
of our dear mother
MARY BECKETT.
Died July 29, 1894
Aged 80 years
3 months and 9 days.
Gone but not forgotten
Our Mother is gone and we are left. The loss of her to
mourn. But may we hope
to meet with her with Christ
before his throne.

Hannah’s granddaughter Margaret Beckett Ferguson is memorialized, with her father Clement Beckett on the other side of the monument:

IN MEMORY OF
CLEMENT
BECKETT
DIED DEC 1, 1901
AGED 92 YRS.
MARGARET BECKETT
FERGUSON
1845-1928

Hannah Slater perhaps is interred near her daughter and granddaughter, but I am not sure of this.

Enslaved Background of Hannah Slater and Mary Slater? The Orme’s and the Slater’s

Hannah Slater, as noted above, was a free woman in Georgetown as early as 1850. Was she born free or enslaved?

“Hannah” may be referenced in the 1829 will of James Orme of Montgomery County, which bequeaths to his wife Rebecca (Brightwell) Orme, three slaves, including a woman named “Hannah”:

I give and bequeath unto my dear wife Rebecca Orme… during her natural life my three colored people called Tom, Hannah, and Henrietta, after and from the time of my said wife’s decease it is my will and I hereby ordain that the said colored people Tom, Hannah and Henrietta, shall be manumitted and made free.

Rebecca Brigthwell Orme was still alive in December 1836 when she published in the newspaper her intention of moving west and selling the farm of her late husband James, 12 miles from Washington DC. I have not yet located a death record for her; presumably, after her death, Hannah, Tom, and Henrietta became free.

Although the will does not specify the surname of the enslaved “Hannah,” there is some indirect evidence that her surname might have been “Slater.” In the same 1829 will, James Orme of Montgomery County specified:

I give and bequeath to my third son Patrick Addison Orme my three colored people, Jasper Wesley and Eliza , the boys Jasper and Wesley to serve until they arrive at the age of thirty five years, and the girl Eliza until the age of thirty years. from and after which time they three shall be manumitted and free,

This Eliza almost certainly later became Eliza Slater (1828-1926), later Eliza Slater Wilson, who as of 1859 was attested to be a free woman of color by a Patricia Johnson in the District of Columbia; two years later in 1861 she married Clement Wilson. Her daughters Marion Wilson, age 14, and Henrietta Wilson, age 11, remained enslaved as the property of George Orme until DC emancipation on 16 April 1862, after which George Orme claimed compensation for them. George Orme attests he received the two girls from Jeremiah Orme, who in turn inherited their mother from James Orme.

The Mt Zion-FUBS Cemetery Information System records that Mary Slater Beckett was the former slave of Jeremiah Orme of Montgomery County and Georgetown. I have not seen direct evidence of this manumission yet. However, James Orme did clearly in 1828 bequeath to his son Jeremiah Orme two slaves, the boy Gassaway and girl Polly, the former to be manumitted at age 35 and the latter to be manumitted at age 30. (Gassaway seems likely to have become Gassway Thomas, who in 1880 was residing at 51 Beall Street in Georgetown, a few doors away from Hannah Slater and her daughter Mary Slater Beckett and son in law Clement Beckett.)

Jeremiah Orme did manumit his slave Edward Lancaster in 1811. (MONTGOMERY COUNTY COURT (Land Records), Liber P, Folio 266, 1810-1812, [MSA CE 148-16]. Jeremiah Orme to Edward Lancaster, July 9, 1811. Deed of Manumission.)

So, tentatively, it seems reasonable that Hannah Slater was enslaved by James Orme and inherited by his widow Rebecca Brightwell Orme and then freed after her Rebecca’s death, which would seem to have happened before 1850

I am not sure if Hannah Slater late husband Benjamin Slater was free or enslaved at the time of their marriage.

We hope to learn more about the life of Hannah Slater and her relations in Georgetown and environs.

Patrick Tisdale also recently unearthed a long buried headstone on the slope of Mt Zion Cemetery, adjacent to the vault (believed to have been used for refuge during the Underground Railroad). Patrick observes, “It is a very nicely carved Virginia bluestone, about 5.75 ft tall, 2.75 ft wide and about 3.25 inches thick (approx 600 pounds).”

The carefully engraved wording on this bluestone marker reads:

Here lie the mortal remains

of
JOHN CARR
a native of Philadelphia

and by profession a mason;
he died in the hope

of a better hereafter
October 31st 1815.
To his memory this stone is erected by his well wisher

and friend when alive
Robert Leckie

The Phrasing on the Stone

The wording is resonant with early 19th century Methodist emphases on the good death. A proper passing was in a sense a sacred performance, in which the Dying voiced a visible profession of faith, a fervent belief in the better life to come. The ubiquitous nature of death, a major early 19th century concern, is also hinted at by the rather somber phrase, “his friend when alive,” looking back nostalgically towards the time of the two men’s friendship on earth, before death separated them.

Who were these men?

Robert Leckie is a well known figure in the antebellum history of the District of Columbia.T he Scottish-educated Leckie was, like John Carr, a stone mason. He constructed a good deal of public infrastructure in DC, including fortifications, aqueducts and portions of local canals.

John Carr, however is more obscure, leaving relatively little trace in the historical record so far as we can tell.

We should first note that this is clearly not the relatively well known John Carr, of Washington County, MD a revolutionary war hero and member of the “Maryland 400”, who died in 1819: https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/016800/016816/html/16816bio.html

Rather, this John appears to be the man listed in the 1790, 1800, and 1810 Federal censuses in Philadelphia. The 1810 census records a John Carr resident in East Southwark Ward, the oldest area of European settlement in the city of Philadelphia. He is also in the Pennsylvania Septennial 1793 census, as resident in High Street Ward Philadelphia. John Carr married Mary Dean in Philadelphia on 5 August 1798. Their daughter Catherine Whiley Carr was born 6 April 1799 and christened on 12 July 1799 in Christ Church Philadelphia, indicating the family’s Anglican or Episcopal faith.

John and wife Mary are recorded buying and selling land between 1798 and 1811 in Philadelphia.

John Carr perhaps came down to Washington after the War of 1812 concluded. During the second half of the 13th Congress (1813–1815) the city of Washington was engaged in active rebuilding of the many public buildings burned by the invading British on August 24, 1814, the third year of the War of 1812. Masons such as Carr were in great demand, for the rebuilding of the US Capitol and for the completing of the Washington Canal, which facilitated local commercial transport, connecting Tiber Creek and the Anacostia (Eastern Branch) and Potomac rivers. Perhaps Leckie hired John Carr for some of the many public building projects he oversaw in the District.

The District of Columbia was generally considered an unhealthy climate, with numerous infections diseases extant and it possible that Carr succumbed to one of these maladies.

I have not found an 1815 newspaper death notice for John Carr in Philadelphia or Washington D.C.

Connection to James and Rachael Carr?

The 1810 Federal census (which only records heads of household) lists no household heads named Carr in the District of Columbia. . The census lists 30 household heads in Philadelphia with the surname Carr. Of these, two other Carr’s other than John Carr are listed in Philadelphia’s East Southwark Ward, the oldest site of European settlement in Philadelphia. These are James Carr and Rebecca Carr. James Carr’s household consists of 20 people, including one male over 44, whereas Rachel Carr is the sole member of her household. Rachel Carr in a will of James Carr proved 1 June 1810 is listed as the executrix of James Carr, and the apparent mother of another James Carr. Perhaps this older James Carr, dead before 1 June 1810, i was the father or kin of “our” John Carr. The younger James Carr evidently appears in the 1820 census, in North Mulberry Ward, thenon the western edge of the city.

Connections to other Carr Family Members?

It is possible that “our” John Carr was related to:

1. Benjamin Carr, who emigrated from England in 1793 and settled in Philadelphia in 1797, and who was a prominent music publisher and singer, as well as the composer of the Federal Overture, 1794.

2. Overton Carr, b 1781 -d. 21 March 1838, the doorkeeper of the House of Representatives, buried in Congressional Cemetery, District of Columbia. Son of Overton Carr, b 12 July 1752 in Virginia, died 8 September 1804 in Baltimore. The elder Overton Carr was, I believe, one of the 19 “”Original Proprietors”or original owners of property transferred or sold on 31 March 1791 to create the District of Columbia

Our colleague Patrick Tisdale at Mt Zion-Female Union Band Cemetery in Georgetown, DC, recently recovered a headstone lying in the earth, face down, near the Doughty family monument, that is to say on the Mount Zion cemetery side of the burial ground. Inscribed within a “Civil War’ style military headstone shield are the words

GUY BENNETT
BORN DEC. 1854
DIED JAN. 7 1928
AT REST

Curiously, a 2020 photograph, evidently taken by a cemetery volunteer, does show the front face of the headstone; it is not clear how the headstone was later turned face down, vanishing from public view for several years.

It should be noted that unlike the standard military headstone design utilized between 1873 and World War One for Union veterans of the Civil War and veterans of the Spanish-American War, the inscription does not list the deceased’s unit or the war in which he served. This suggests that Bennett was a civilian. As it happens, Congress did in 1904 auhorize the shield motif for some civilians, interred within miitary posts. Mt Zion of course was not a military post, but perhaps his widow or other family members, Lodge members, co workers, or well-wishers wished to honor Mr. Bennett in an unofficial capacity. Records indicated that Guy Bennett worked for many years for the Quarteraster Corps of War Department at Fort Myer in Virginia as a teamster, evidently as a civilian employee teamster. Perhaps his supporters wished to honor him in a quasi- military fashion.

A further puzzle posed by the headstone is the date of death given January 7, 1928. Guy Bennett’s newspaper death notices indicate that he in fact died January 7, 1929. The discrepancy may suggest that the headstone was created some years after his death, when memories of his death date may have grown dim.

NOTE: I should note that my collaborators Katherine Walters (James Madison University) and Rev. Avis Williams and I are developing a program in which Putnam County GA middle schoolers will undertake research on participants in the Great Migration from Georgia to Washington DC. We hope one of the showcased individuals will be Mr. Bennett, and that the young people will be able to visit Mt Zion-FUBS next year and see Mr Bennett’s headstone in person.

Guy B Bennett: Apparent Enslaved Background

The first reference we see to Guy Bennett is in 1877, employed by the white farmer ”L Burnley “ (likely to be James Lawrence Burnley) in the Ponds Militia District, Warrenton, Warren County, Georgia (in the east central part of the state). James Lawrence Burnly was a son of Perry Jackson Burnley, who according to the 1860 slave schedule owned 20 slaves,

including a six year old boy who might be Guy.

Of possible relevance, the 20 May 1837 will of Perry Jackson Burnley’s father Stephen W. Burnley (Warren County) lists the following slaves willed to Perry Jackson Burnley: “one negro man named Moses , one negro man named John , one negro man named London , one negro boy named Irwin , one negro Girl named Tilphy & her increase . Negro woman named Dorcas & her increase.” It is possible that Guy’s parents were among those listed in this will, proved about 18 years before the birth of Guy Bennett.

Later Life of Guy B Bennett

The 1880 census has Guy in the same location, Ponds, Warren County, Georgia
married to Falby Burnett. They are living adjacent to the white woman, Elizabeth Jane (nee Hamilton) Burnley, widow of the former enslaver Perry Jackson Burnly, who must have died at some point after 1870 and prior to 1880.

Guy’s first wife, Falby is likely to be Falby Tarver, from adjacent Hancock County, Georgia, daughter of Frank and Abigail Tarver. She evidently died before 7 January 1889 when Guy married his second wife Mary Mamie Roberts in Augusta, Richmond County, Georgia.

Guy and Falby had at least one daughter, Mary Francis Parker, born 1883 in Georgia, died 16 Jul 1928 in Blythe, Richmond County, Georgia.
.
From 1889-1902, Guy resided in Augusta, Richmond County, GA, working as a porter and then driver, with the CT Punds Company. (It would not be unusual for a black man coming up in the world, to move from Warren County to Richmond and pursue more skiled work than sharecropping).

The 1900 census has Guy living with “mother” Jane Roberts, his wife Mary, son Richard Bennett in Augusta. Given that Guy’s wife was Mary nee Roberts, it seems likely the census enumerator was incorrect and Jane Roberts was Guy’s mother in law, that is to say the mother of his wife Mary.

In 1902, Guy Bennett is still working as a porter in Augusta, Georgia. However,s tarting the next year, 1903,he appears in the Federal Register as employed at Fort Myer, Virginia, working as a teamster in the Quartermaster’s Departmant. He continued to reside in the vicinity of Fort Myer for the remainder of his life.

In 1905 he is a teamster employed by the War Department at Fort Myers in VA. (I do not see any evidence of him having been on active military duty in the Spanish American War or other service.)

In 1907 Guy is a driver living at 2704 P Street, Georgetown, that is to say near Mt Zion Methodist Church. I am not sure if he held or retained membership at Mt Zion.

In 1909, according to the 1910 census he married Emma Johnson, b, 1879 in the District of Columbia, daughter of Thomas and Mary Johnson.

Multiple listings have Guy in subsequent years living in Arlington, Virginia, or in “Radio,” the hamlet at Fort Myers where the US Army had one its earlier radio installations.

As noted Guy’s headstone gives the date of death for Guy Bennett of 7 January 1928, but newspaper death notices indicate he actually died 7 January 1929.

A 1929 death notice for Guy Bennett noted that was a member of the J. McC Crummill Lodge, 1437, GUOOF (Grand United Order of Oddfellows, a Masonic orders that predominantly served African Americans, who had been denied entry into white dominated lodgers). James MC Crummill was a prominent African American printer and activist in Philadelphia, who served as a grandmaster with the GUOOF and who was later honored by having a lodge named for him. Guy Bennett’s headstone does not contain any of the standard Oddfellows insignia, such as the three linked chains stamped with the letters F, L, and T honoring “Friendship, Love, and Truth”, or the familiar motif of the heart in hand. Headstones for members of the Knights of Pythias, an allied African American benevolent order,sometimes feature shields, but not the particular military style motif found on Mr. Bennett’s headstone.

One year after his death, on 9 January 1930, his widow Emma placed the following notice, “In Memoriam. Bennett, Guy B. In remembrance of Guy B Bennett, husband of Emma A Bennett, who died on year ago, January 7, 1929. One year has passed but stil you are missed, EMMA”

His widow Emma Johnson Bennett continued to work as a domestic in Alexandria, Virginia. She died 6 January 1940, was funeralized at Bulah Baptist Church, and was buried in Alexandria’s Douglass Cemetery. It is not clear if she had any relationship with Mt Zion Church or Mt Zion Cemetery. It does appear that she and Guy Bennett had children.

Descendants of Guy B Bennett

Guy B Bennett had at least two children

1.with his first wife Falby (Tarver): Mary Francis Bennett. (1883-16 Jul 1928). She married Charles Story in Warren County, 21 June 1897. Mary Francis and Charles Story had at least one child, Ethel Pauline Story, and evidently also Annie May Story, Lula Story, and Farrer Lee Storey.

Ethel Pauline Storey married James M Chambers Jr. (Birth 17 Jun 1908 • Bronx, New York City, New York, Death 12 May 1961, Hempstead, Nassau, New York). They had at least one child, Mary Jeanette Edwards (Birth 11 Oct 1929 • Georgia; Death December 1995). Her children include Peggy Edwards Washington, who died Nov 2022 in Maryland.

2. with his second wife, Mary Mamie Roberts, Guy Bennet had aa son Richard Livingstone Bennett (sometimes Richard W Bennett) b 21 May 1890 in Augusta, Georgia. Richard served as a wardroom steward on the Coast Guard Manning in 1911 and perhaps also during World War One.

Richard married Emma Bennett, and had the following children, Richard Bennett, b 1917. Julia Bennett, b 1919, Leonard Bennett, b 1920, Harold Bennett, b 1930, Lois Bennett b. 1932.

For several years, I have been puzzling over the likely maiden name of my mother’s mother, whose married name was Yetta Epstein (c.1894 or 1897-1959) and her sister “Bessie” (March 1885-17 December 1970). whose initial married name was “Masse Lebed,” was later known as “Bessie Labb, ” married to Abraham (Abe) Lebed Labb. The maiden name of Yetta and Bessie would also be the likely maiden name of Bessie and Yetta’s father’s sister, Tillie (Tibel or Taub), who married Yankel (Jacob) Vogin in Motovilovka, Ukraine around 1888. Tillie’s married surname was thus Vogin or Vogina. The Vogin couple and their children emigrated to the United States on 23 February 1923, and settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Vogin and Epstein family retained some connections in Philadelphia from the 1940s onwards.

The unmarried Yetta in the 1920 census in Baltimore gives her surname as “Anderson”, on name which my mother Ruth Epstein Auslander always insisted that was not Yetta’s actual maiden name. Bessie Labb in turn, told her family that her maiden name was “Antinson.” Neither surname appears in relevant immigration or naturalization records, so it seems likely that both women were approximating the Yiddish or Russian pronunciation of their natal surname.

In a previous post,https://markauslander.com/2020/10/30/families-of-yetta-anderson-epstein-and-bessie-labb/
I considered the possibilities that the sisters’ maiden name was in fact Aronson or Nathanson, names which appear frequently in my DNA matches on my maternal side. (I should note that a cousin on her Ancestry tree speculatively listed the maiden name of Tillie Vogin, Yetta Epstein and Bessie Labb as “Andreyev“: unfortunately, that this erroneous name was been reproduced by many Vogin and Epstein descendants in their Ancestry trees.)

I am now convinced that a more likely candidate for the maiden name is in fact “Entenson” or “Yentenzon.” The evidence is as follows:

The Ukraine Revision Lists, Group 2 for 1897 (uploaded and transcribed on JewishGen) contains is a notation for 3 year old Chana-Ita (Hannah Yetta?) daughter of Mordko-El (Mordecai?) Entenson and his wife Inda‑Beyla of Pavoloch, Ukraine. Pavoloch, it should be noted, is the birthplace listed by Yetta’s sister Masse Bessie Labb in her naturalization petition.

Also listed in this entry is a Bryna Entenson, 9 years old, so born about 1886, listed as daughter of Morsko‑El (That may be a transcription mistake’ I can’t make out the Cyrillic clearly)

Perhaps this is Yetta’s sister Masse or Bessie. who was we believe born about 1885.

In any event, the Departure List for the ship Abraham Lincoln in March 1934 from Hamburg lists Chaje Itte Entenson, age 20, as a dressmaker form Pawelec, which is presumably a variant of Pavoloch. She is I believe my maternal grandmother Yetta.

Then the arrival record for 4 April 1914, on the President Lincoln lists Chaje Jette Entenson, 20, dressmaker, who affirms she is heading to Baltimore, Maryland.

She last lived with her father Mordeche Entenson in Pawelec (Pavoloch), and intends to live with her brother in law.

His name is difficult read but appears to be “Levin Abram”, that is to say “Abram Levin”, on 1223 Lexington St, Baltimore, in the heart of what was then Baltimore’s Jewish working class neighborhood.

Abram Levin likely was the half brother of Isadore Epstein, whom Yetta married (probably only in a common law sense) around 1922. The couple apparently lost an infant or stillborn child in 1923. Their first surviving son was Morris Epstein, born in Reading, Berks County, Pennsylvania. The 1914 shipping manifest, listing Chaje-Jetta’s father as Mordeche (Mordecai) would suggest that Yetta named Morris, her first born son, for her father.

When 21 year old Itzchok Epstein (Isadore), my mother’s father, arrived in New York on the Kaiserin Auguste Victorian. from Hamburg, on 22 May 1911, he and his 19 year old half brother Eli Levin indicated that they most recently been residing with their father Reuben Levin and their mother Hannah Epstein back in Bobroisk, Belarus.

(Perhaps Hannah had remarried Reuben after the death of Isadore’s father, Elijah Epstein. Isadore (line 24) planned to stay with his cousin Joe Epstein, 272 Cherry Street, on New York’s Lower East Side. His half brother Eli Epstein (line 23) planned to stay with his brother Abraham Levin, at 58 Montgomery Street in Brooklyn.

(I should note that my father’s mother’s mother, Chava Weinstein Zeltzer, came from Bobruisk; it seems likely she was somehow related to Isadore Epstein and that for this reason many of my DNA matches seem to be both through my maternal and paternal lines.)

I had assumed that Isadore and Yetta, who were from different regions of the Russian Empire, only met in the United States after Yetta emigrated from Ukraine. But the fact that Yetta listed in 1914 Abram Levin as her ‘brother in law suggests that she must at least have considered herself engaged to Isadore Epstein, even though she gave the name “Anderson,”—a variant of her maiden name, which I now believe to have really been Entenson— to the census enumerator in Baltimore in 1920. Bobruisk in Belarus, where Isadore was from, is over 400 miles from Pavoloch, Ukraine, Yetta’s hometown, so it is not clear how the two young people met one another in the Old Country.

As of this writing, I have not succeeded in tracing Abram Levin, Yetta’s brother in law. Abram or Abraham Levin was a common Jewish name in Baltimore and New York City. The Baltimore city directory for 1914, the year Yetta arrived, lists 13 men named Abraham Levin, none of them residing on Lexington St the street which Yetta claimed her brother in law was residing on.

In any event, it is clear that Massie/Bessie and her family never approved of Isadore, whose alcoholism and violent temper were a source of great concern. Yetta appears to have left Baltimore with Isadore in the early 1920s for Reading, Pennsylvania in the face of opposition from her sister and brother in law. Yetta remained estranged from the Labb family for the rest of her life, except for a brief attempted reconciliation around 1942. when the Labbs visited the Epsteins in Philadlephia for one night.

Did Isadore have more than one family?

In his 1917 draft registration card, an Isadore Epstein, tailor, in Reading, Pennsylvania indicates that his wife is “Annie Epstein.” The 1920 census records an Isadore Epstein, tailor, residing at 625 Wales Avenue in the Bronx with his wife Annie and their children Dora, Minnie, and Hannah.

Does this mean that Isadore in fact had two families, one in the Bronx and then one in Reading, where he and Yetta had seven children (Morris, Charles,Louis, Harry, Ruth, Ann, Norman) from 1924 onward, before moving to Philadelphia around 1942? (The move, the family recalls, was catalyzed by Isadore’s desire to escape his extensive debts in Reading. In 1934 Isadore seems to have served a prison sentence due to failure to pay rent.) Might Isadore’s double familial entanglements account for the fact that he and Yetta appear never to have been legally married, and most likely lived as a common law couple?

It should be noted that Yetta’s alienation from her natal kin due to her alliance with Isadore was in a sense mirrored by Isadore’s estrangement from his own natal kin. He appears to have drifted away from his sister Dora Epstein, b. 1880 in Bobroisk, and her husband Sam, also from Bobroisk, who adopted her surname Epstein. (It was not uncommon for Russian Jews negotiating the dangers of conscription and emigration controls by the Czarist system, to alter their surnames.) It does not appear that Dora and Sam, and their son Harry “Hank” Epstein, had extended relations with Isadore and Yetta. (Tensions may also have been exacerbated by financial demands that Isadore, perpetually in financial distress, made upon his relatives.)

Note: While it follows logically that the maternal aunt of Yetta and Bessie, Tillie Vogin also was born with the maiden name of Entenson, I have not yet a reference to a Tillie or Taub Entenson in any Ukrainian records.

It seems clear that Yetta, Bessie, and their Entenson relatives were related to the Bilous, Aronson, and Nathanson families of Pavoloch, but I am not yet sure of all the precise connections.

Nor am I precisely sure how Yetta and Bessie were related

I would be grateful to family members and helpful genealogists for corrections on this preliminary discussion and suggestions for moving forward.

Last week, at Emancipation Day at Mt Zion/Female Union Bank Society cemeteries, the gifted DC violinist Justin Silvey accompanied the readings of over 3,100 names of those emancipated in the District of Columbia, April 16, 1862. Naturally we are all curious if the members of the “Silvy family” emancipated in 1862 are kin to him and his family.

Here are a few preliminary notes. The 1862 compensated emancipation petitions in Washington DC record that the enslaver Susannah “Susan” Maria (Wilson) Burche (1790-1874), widow of the late Col. Samuel Burche (1787-1846) filed for compensation for three enslaved people, Verlinda (or Virlinda or Veolanda) Silvey, born about 1827, and her daughters Anna Elizabeth Patterson, born 1847, and Maria Edmonia Silvy, born 1859. Mrs. Burche specifies she is claiming compensation for:

Virlinda Silvy 35 years of age Black, about 5 feet 3 or 4 inches high, Slender made very fine woman, good Cook, Washer and Ironer &c.—
Anna Patterson 14 years of age, very Black, about 5 feet high & well made
Maria Edmonia Silvy 4 years old, Dark Copper Color, about 3 feet hight, very healthy and sprightly—
A. Patterson and M. E. Silvy are the children of said Virlinda Silvy.

She further notes she “acquired her claim to the aforesaid service or labor of said Persons in manner following, to wit: to Virlinda Silvy and Anna Patterson by purchase from Sheckels and Company, called Negro Traders—Maria E. Silvy was born my property after the purchase aforesaid”

What can we determine about where Virlinda, Anna. and Maria came from, and what became of them after Emancipation?

The Slave Trader Sheckles

To begin with, the reference to the slave trading firm “Sheckles and Company” must be to the slave trader Benjamin Owen Sheckles (c. 1806-1879), who appears in multiple local court cases concerning the purchase of slaves and freedom petitions. Sheckles, evidence suggests, was actively engaged in kidnapping of Black individuals in the District of Columba in the 1840s. As chronicled in Chapter 22 of Solomon Northrup’s Twelve Years a Slave, Sheckles in 1853 provided perjured testimony in the case against slave trader James Burch, who had kidnapped Northrup in DC in 1841. (The case was ultimately dropped since the testimony of Black witnesses against white men was not accepted in court) Sheckles in at least one case flouted the 1850 Compromise which prohibited slave trading in the District of Columbia, after he had transported slaves to Alexandria. Virginia. (He won the suit field against him on the grounds that Virginia was a sovereign state and not subject to “foreign” jurisdictions. )

I am not sure of the date when Susan M. Burche purchased Verlinda Patterson (later Silvy or Selvey) and her daughter Anna Patterson from Benjamin O Sheckles; it must have been some point between 1848, when Susan’s husband Colonel Samuel Burche died, and 1851, when Verlinda’s younger daughter Edmonia Silvey was born (since Susan Burche attests in the 1862 petition that her younger daughter Maria Edmonia Silvey was born after she purchased Verlinda).

The Free Man Anthony Silvey

Some light is cast on the story by a Freedman’s Bank application in New York City by “Annie Elizabeth Patterson,” dated 29 October 1870, indicating that she is employed as a chambermaid by a Mrs Bartholomew at 114 22nd street in New York City. She indicates that her father was a William Patterson, now dead, of Virginia, and that he stepfather was Anthony Silvey, Her living siblings include “James Edward”(which might be one name, or which might mean James and Edward) and her dead brothers are Billy and Reuben, both twins, whom she never saw alive. (Oddly, I don’t see Annie Patterson listed in the 1870 census or city directory in New York.)

An Anthony Silvy or Selvey was a coachman or hack driver, residing as a free man in 1860 in the Susan M Burche residence, which is where presumably he became connected to Verlinda, then enslaved. (I do not see Anthony in the 1850 census and I am not sure when he became free.) A marriage record in DC notes Anthony married a “Malinda Patterson” on 28 June 1859, which presumably is a reference to Verlinda, who was still enslaved and still bearing the surname of her late husband William Patterson. Anthony is charged in 1863 with “overcharging hack rates” and being drunk and disorderly. Anthony Selvey enlisted in the 23rd United States Colored Infantry regiment, Company E, on March 19, 1864 and was discharged June 5, 1865. His birthplace is listed as Prince George’s County, Maryland. His widow, “Malinda Selvey,” filed for his pension July 8, 1871, by which time he must have been deceased. I assume “Virlinda” and “Malinda” are the same woman.

This same woman, under the name Malinda Selvey is listed in the 1870 census as a washerwoman in Washington Ward 7, with her children Edward Selvey, age 19 (born about 1851), and Maria Selvey, age 12 (born about 1858). The 1878 city directory shows her as Anthony’s widow, working as a washer at 222 C St SW. The 1879 city directory shows her, again as Anthony’s widow, residing at 525 3rd St SW, with her daughter Maria E Selvey, servant. I do not see a subsequent reference to her.

Verlinda’s Children

Verlinda’s daughter Maria Selvey died on 11 April 1880, about 20 years old. of pneumonia, while residing with her mother at 525 3rd. St. SW., having been ill for five weeks. She was buried in Becket’s Cemetery, also known as the Union Beneficial Association Cemetery, on C street SE in Anacostia.

What became of Verlinda’s elder daughter, Anna “Annie” Elizabeth Patterson, after she listed herself as a chambermaid in Mrs. Bartholomew’s in New York City in 1870? She may be the Annie Selvey listed in the 1875 and 1878 Washington DC city directory, servant, Peartree Alley, SW. She is likely to be the “Annie Elizabeth Patterson” who married in Washington DC on 20 October 1884 a William H. Thomas. The couple had a baby girl on 18 September 1884 at Columbia Hospital (about a month before their legal union); the birth certificate lists William as a waiter. The 1880 census, four years earlier, and 1870 census, list William H Thomas as married to a wife Anne, who seems likely to be a different woman than Anna Patterson. He may appear as the one year old William H. Thomas born 1849,in the 1850 census as the son of the free couple Henry and Mary Thomas in Washington Ward 7.

I am unclear on the background of Edward Selvey, b. 1851, who is listed by Anna Patterson in the 1870 Freedman’s Bank application as her brother, and who appears living with his mother “Malinda” Selvey in Washington DC that same year. He is not listed as a free person in the 1860 census or in the DC Compensated Emancipation petitions of 1862. I am unsure if he was the child of William Patterson or Anthony Selvey or a different man.

There are several references in newspapers and other records to one or more younger Black men named Anthony Selvey in DC in the late 1800s and early 1900s, who may be kin to the Anthony Selvey who served in the 23rd USCT Co E and was married to Verlinda (Malinda).

I hope we will be able to trace the descendants of Anthony and Verlinda (Malinda) Silvey and determine if there are connections to present day Silvey’s in the DMV.

Yesterday at Politics and Prose Bookstore I was delighted to be invited into dialogue with my former colleague Joshua Hotaka Roth (Mount Holyoke College) about his marvelous new graphic memoir, Life Lines: Art, Memory, Relationship (University of Toronto Press, 2026). When teaching several years ago at Mount Holyoke I had the opportunity to encounter this project in its early stages. It is thrilling to behold it now as a completed, published work.

I approach the book in large measure as an anthropologist, in conversation with a fellow anthropologist. Joshua’s resonant title “Life Lines” suggests multiple associations. The phrase evokes, first and foremost, the inscrutable calligraphic “MOOPS” designs his father, a contemporary artist, created across the decades. I don’t believe Joshua offers us an etymology of the delightful term MOOPS, but it may be that the phrase is an amalgam of “me” and “oops”, along with a sense of the recursive “loops”of these spiraling graphic forms. That is to say, MOOPS may be a composite of the artist’s selfhood and the continuous inventive play of the accidental that anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss termed “bricolage,” at the heart of the mythological imagination in so called “archaic” societies.

From “Helping” to Mutual Care

Late in his father Richard’s life, Joshua embarked on a collaborative project with his Dad to better understand these designs, hitherto only comprehensible to his father. The title “Life Lines” evokes the lines of Joshua’s own drawings chronicling his deepening understanding of his father’s life work, which takes us through his father’s experiences of home care and eventual death. This joint initiative, and the meaningful sense of mutual discovery it catalyzed, emerged as a metaphorical “life line” binding father and a son.

Such lines of mutual respect stand in striking contrast to how eldercare is usually organized in modern societies, in which the aged are relegated to care facilities that render them structurally invisible, subject to regimens of management that attend, with varying degrees of success, to their physical needs without necessarily honoring the entirety of their personhood. Joshua quotes medical anthropologist Janelle Taylor, with whom Ellen and I attended graduate school at the University of Chicago many years ago. Whenever her friends learned her mother was suffering from dementia, they inevitably asked Janelle if her mother still recognized her. The real question, Janelle notes, in reference to our aged loved ones, is “do we still recognize them?” Joshua’s entire book can be conceived of as an effort to live up to Janelle’s challenge: to recognize the full complex consciousness of the person directly across from us, to be present with them in the deepest sense, to enter with them into meaningful exchange even if the old words and so many of the memories that once informed the relationship have drifted off. In the give and take of touch, smiles, gestures, and even shared breath, the deeper life lines endure.

Speculatively, I wonder if the “lines” in question might in some ways evoke the most ancient forms of human inscription, including the rock and cave paintings of the Upper Paleolithic. On the cave walls of southern Europe and the rock-faces from southern Africa to Australia, that date back tens of thousands of years, such intricate designs bound together innumerable generations of artists. Each cohort of artist was inspired by inscriptions created by their ancestors, which they modified and added to, leaving behind gifts in turn for their posterity. (Joshua, suggestively, notes that one of his father’s favorite MOOPs was reminiscent of a Paleolithic fertility figure.) In diverse cultural words, these graphic forms played vital roles in generational succession, initiating cohorts of youth into maturity, passing on the enigmatic mysteries of ancestral wisdom. For countless millennia, to be human has been to engage in the making, deciphering, and remaking of such life lines, which by definition escape easily understanding. Anthropologist Alfred Gell once characterized art as a “technology of enchantment” that bound together creator and viewer through dense layers of “cognitive indecipherability”, producing cascading webs of influence and mutual enchantment. Such is the power of “life lines” that bind together parent and child, and, more broadly, link the generations that come before and which will come after.

Language, Story-telling, Abstraction

In reference to the dynamics of generational succession, a questioner speculated that the father’s MOOPS might in part be inspired by kanji, the Chinese derived ideograms, and perhaps the Japanese syllabaries hiragana and katakana that Richard must have become familiar with through his Japanese wife and fellow artist. His mother was, his father always said, the “pillar of the family”, while he, a lover of creature comforts, was the “pillow of the family.” The mother dies late in the book, but perhaps her spirit lives onwards in the MOOPS that continue to unite father and son, through evocations of the East Asian ideograms that are compressed abstractions from the observed world.

Following on this discussion, anthropologist Ellen Schattschneider brought in Levi-Strauss’ structuralist discussion of abstraction as a generative system that is foundational to human thought and communicative systems. A phoneme is not, after all, an actual sound, but rather an abstracted concept that is distinguished from other abstracted phoneme-concepts through a series of structural contrasts. Culture too for Levi-Strauss is built upon such inter-related contrastive abstracted forms, including kinship terms and mythological images (“mythemes” for Levi-Strauss) that are defined contrastively to other abstractions. In this sense, Ellen proposed, Richard’s abstracted MOOPS encapsulate something profound about the operations of language and culture themselves, arbitrary contrastive operations that condense fundamental processes of meaning-making.

Pondering Ellen’s point, it occurred to me that Victor Turner, in building on Levi-Strauss’ insights, argued in his classic work on the liminal period in Rites of Passage that the radical transformative power of the liminal often depends on abstraction, including simplified masks or material objects that strip away all superfluous details in order to illuminate, for initiates or initiators alike, the fundamental system of contrastive relations out of which a cultural world is produced. The shrinking-down of our attention in abstraction, in other words, is key to processes through which we are moved through the life cycle and achieve higher level of psychosocial integration.

Ethnographic Encounters

Whatever the precise sources of these inscriptive codes, I am struck that Joshua, an anthropologist to the core, operates as an ethnographer venturing into foreign territory, to inhabit, if only incompletely, the lifeworld of others. Anthropologists inevitably operate in the shadow of the Tower of Babel, negotiating a core paradox; as members of the human species, we all ultimately share common origins and are united by a deep cognitive unity, yet we are divided by profound differences of language and culture. Inevitably, the overlap between anthropologist and Native, between guest and host, is only partial, and yet, miraculously, that is often enough for deep mutual understanding to unfold.

In a particularly poignant example of this partial encounter, on p. 123, Joshua addresses his Dad: “MOOPS allow you to write statements only you can read. Is the calligraphic quality of MOOPS supposed to suggest a hidden transcript?“ The question is reminiscent of political scientist James Scott’s concept of the ‘hidden transcript’, a touchstone of modern anthropological analyses. which often emphasizes decoding the perspectives of the subaltern.

Yet to his son’s question Richard responds in a way that indicates his frame of reference is quite different: “ Hmm. MOOPS are a device that help me generate interesting visual compositions.” In other words, Joshua’s primary orientation is towards decoding textual meaning in the MOOPs, whereas his father the artist emphasizes the power of image.

Their alternate stances from these varied points of view, is beautifully illustrated in the successive double pages of pp. 124-125, and pp. 126-127. 
In the first sequence, Joshua is shown in the upper left, gazing into a vast unfolding page of MOOPS.

Then on the next sequence, as we turn the page, the father Richard is visible on the upper right, gazing into another page of piled inscription, dubbed a “Tower of Babel.”

Their perspectives are different, yet they meet in the middle, and that meeting, like the pursuit of cross cultural exchange in the anthropological project, is a form of life-giving exchange.

A further intriguing instance of cross-cultural exchange is suggested by Richard’s incorporation of design motifs from the textile art of the Kuba people of Central Africa. In Flash of the Spirit, art historian Robert Faris Thompson famously observes that African music and art forms are often enlivened the off beat phrasing of accents, breaking the expected continuum of surface regularity, by staggering and suspending established pattern. Something similar, we might speculate, unfolds with Richard’s MOOPs, characterized by poly-rhythmic musicality of overlapping off beats. The eye cannot quite determine where to rest, and that “cognitive indecipherability” is part of what so seductively draws us in.

Trauma and Healing

At times, Joshua speculates that his father carries traces of trauma, from his own experiences of wartime service, in the US Army, at which he was an observer at the Nuremberg war crime trials, and later in Haganah Zionist paramilitary struggles to establish Jewish sovereignty in British mandate Palestine. In this respect, it would be interesting to interpret the spiraling lines of the MOOPs as cracks in the artist’s psyche and lifeworld, which may reveal both fractures and possibilities of healing. One is put in mind of the well known lyrics of Leonard Cohen’s Anthem:


“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything,
That’s how the light gets in”

Political Economies, and Moral Economies, of Care

Finally, I am intrigued by the globalized political economy of care that runs through this narrative. The primary caregivers in the story are Black immigrant women from Jamaica and Guyana, who are heirs to a long complex colonial history in the Black Atlantic, binding together peoples of African descent into vast extractive industries, including sugar production and the Atlantic slave trade, which have led to lines of immigration into the North American metropole, where many of them became employed in healthcare. One of the many ironies of our current care system is that eldercare depends, in places like New York City, on women of color, from societies that revere elders and honor to wisdom of seniors, while residing as subaltern in wealthy modern social formations that suffer from paroxysms of of xenophobia, seen most recent in the current wave of mass deportation. Our current war against “the stranger in our midst” is not unconnected to our strange campaign against care for our own elders and those in need. This beautiful book, ultimately, is a call to resurrect the life lines that ought to bind together resident and immigrant, young and old, the relatively privileged and the relatively precarious, into a larger community of care and compassion.

The author suggest that in a future project he might explore that lifeworlds of the immigrant women of color who gave unstinting care to his father in his final years, even during the terrors of the Covid-19 Lockdown. Such a sequel, honoring these postcolonial “life lines,” will be well worth the wait.

Here are some notes on the lives and Civil War service of the brothers

John Armstead Harris (1839-1893) Company G, USCT 1st
Joseph H Harris (1844-1931), Company G, USCT 1st

Parents: Mary Ann Harris (1820-1913) and Thomas Harris (1815-1891), who settled in Dry Meadows off Broad Branch Road in Washington County, District of Columbia, in the 1840s, perhaps escaping the racial violence of downtown DC.

1860, John Harris, eldest son, turns 21 and seeks freedom certificate, attested to by Martha Parker. Then works in Georgetown (and probably regularly returns to Dry Meadow Farm to help out) Address: 20 Fifth street (now 34th and Q st) near Georgetown College, joined eventually by brother Joseph.

Before 1862 John Harris, eldest son, marries Millie/Mildred

May 22, 1863. US War Department establishes Bureau of Colored Troops.

July 10, 1863. John Harris enlists USCT 1, Co. G (Col. Holman, for three years)

July 12, 1862 Joseph Harris enlists USCT 1, Co. G

June 18, 1864 John Harris, suffers severe wound in his hand in the assault on Petersburg (nb ten percent of the USCT 1st were wounded or killed in the campaign. The June 18 assault on the city fails, and initiates a 9 month siege.)

-John Harris transported to Balfour US General Hospital in Portsmouth, VA, underwent surgery to remove part of hand, leaving it permanently disabled. Transferred to US General Hospital, Fort Monroe, Hampton, VA.

Sept 1864. Joseph Harris falls ill, evacuated to field hospital, Point of Rocks. VA, potentially could have been tended to by Clara Barton. Then seven months at Fort Monroe, before discharged from Army

Christmas Eve, 1864, John Harris rejoins his regiment

June 11, 1864, Confederate General Jubal Early and 11,000 troops advance towards DC. The Harris family evacuate from Dry Meadow Farm.

January 1865 John Harris with USCT1 sailed to staging near near Fort Fisher, Wilmington NC

28 September 1865. John Harris mustered out of service, in North Carolina

c.1866 Joseph moved to New York City for 20 years. Pullman Porter

c 1866 John Harris moves to Herring Hill, Georgetown (26 Monroe Street, 1337 27th street, Georgetown)

7 November 1893 John Harris (same person?) leg broken while working at H.C. Winship Wharf, Georgetown

Late 1893? John Harris dies? (Still searching for death record or death notice.

1894: Mildred Harris listed as “widow” of John Harris, 1337 27th St, Georgetown. So John dead by now.

c. 1893 Joseph return to Dry Meadows Farm and farms

1925; Joseph Harris property auctioned off to white speculators

—Joseph Harris and wife Margaret move to 1117 19th street, south of Dupont Circle.

1929: Construction of the all-white Lafayette Elementary School begins on the former grounds of the Harris farms

25 March 1931. Joseph Harris dies Garfield Hospital. Buried Woodlawn Cemetery

Sources:

Barbara Boyle Torrey and Clara Myrick Green, Between Freedom and Equality; The History of an African American Family in Washington DC, Georgetown University Press, 2021

U.S., Colored Troops Military Service Records, 1863-1865 (National Archives)

Special thanks to Cate Atkinson on DC land records.

As recently reported, the Trump administration has been eager to locate temporarily the statue to Caesar Rodney, a Delaware signer of the Declaration of Independence, to Freedom Plaza near the White House in Washington DC. Rodney was a prominent slaveowner, and his statue consequently was removed in June 2020 from Rodney Square in Wilmington Delaware, during the summer of racial justice protests.

My colleagues and I at Partners for Historical Justice, as well as my students, have been curious about which precise enslaved people Caesar Rodney owned and what became of them. Here are my initial notes:

Many newspaper reports indicate that Rodney owned about 200 people, some of which he acquired, along with the Byfield plantation (east of Dover, of about 1000 acres), after his mother’s death in 1763. I have not yet located the probate records from his parents’ estates; however, Caesar’s probate will and inventory papers from the time of his death in 1784 (reproduced in Scott 2000, p 221; from the Historical Society of Delaware Archives) clearly indicate the names of 18 enslaved persons in the estate. Of these, three were freed outright, and the remainder were to be freed, in a delayed fashion. when they reached the age of 25.

(As noted below, there is some evidence that Rodney sold off many of his farmworking slaves during the Revolutionary War period, so those who remained many have primarily been household slaves, including his coachman John.)

Those to be immediately manumitted were Old Negro Charles, Old Negro Peg, and Negro Jude.

The probate inventory for the Caesar Rodney estate, completed 20th July 1784, indicates the names of 15 enslaved individuals, with notations on how many years they had left to serve. (Source: Rodney Collection, Box 6, Folder 22, Delaware Historical Society.) Rodney specified in his will that his heirs should not take these bondspeople out of the state prior to their reaching their age of freedom, but of course there was no workable legal mechanism to guarantee that they would really be manumitted on schedule.

The 15 individuals to be freed in this delayed fashion were:

1. Shadrack, 4 years to serve, so presumably born 1763 with anticipated manumission in: 1788

2. Charles, 4 years to serve, so born c. 1763 with anticipated manumission: 1788 (perhaps related to Old Negro Charles)

3; Ezekel, 5 years to serve, so born 1764 with anticipation manumission1789

4; Hannah, “four years to serve, a breeding woman,” so b 1763 anticipated manumission: 1788

5; Cyrus, 3 years to serve until 25, so to be freed 1787, implying birth in 1762

6. Ezekill, 3 months old in 1784 to serve till 25 so born 1784, to be freed in 1809
7. Kate, “5 years to serve, a breeding woman:, so born 1764, anticipated manumission in 1789.
8. Maria, “3 years to serve till 25”, so born about 1762
9. Charlotte, 1 year to serve till 25, so born about 1760 with anticipated manumission in 1785.
10. Bosman, 4 years to serve, so born around 1762 with anticipated manumission in 1788.

11. Pegg, 13 years old, to serve till 25, so born 1771 with anticipated freedom in 1796 (perhaps related to Old Negro Peg).

12, Harry, 10 years to serve so born 1769 with anticipation of freedom in 1794.

13. John, 17 years to serve so born 1776, with anticipated freedom in 1801. [In correspondence, Rodney mentions his enslaved coachman John ( Scott 2000, p. 89) This may be an older relative of this younger John.

14. Sal, 12 years to serve, so born about 1771, anticipated freedom in 1796.

15. Beth “at Fields, 4 years to serve, “ so to be freed in 1788 and likely born in 1763 (Perhaps “Fields” mean Byfields).

In addition, as noted below, I speculate that the enslaved man Caesar Rodney, born around 1780, may have been enslaved by Caesar Rodney the signer of the Declaration of Independence.

It is of course possible that some of these individuals were fathered by Caesar Rodney, the signer of the Declaration.

Out of the fifteen granted gradual manumission in 1784, five individuals may appear in subsequent record of free people in Delaware and adjacent states, starting with the 1790 census. (NOTE: The first US census of 1790 listed 8,887 slaves and 3,899 free Blacks in the state of Delaware).

OLD CHARLES

“Old Charles” is mentioned in an undated letter to Caesar Rodney from his brother and business partner Thomas Rodney, that seems to date to mid 1775. The Rodneys, occupied with the demands of Revolutionary War planning, have rented out their farms and are considering selling off their farmworking slaves. Tommy writes remarks that “some applycations have been made for the negroes–all the men except Old Charles will bring 100 pounds when it is convenient to sell.” (Scott 2000: 89, citing n.d, letter in the Rodney Collection, Historical Society of Delaware.)

“Old Charles’ or perhaps the younger Charles, born about 1763, may correspond to the household head Negro Charles, in the US 1800 Census, in Christiana Hundred, New Castle, Delaware. Household total: 8 free persons of color.

The 1810 census for Christiana Hundred lists a Charles Hart, as head of a household of 7 persons of color.

Then, the 1820 census lists a Charles Hart and, eleven lines away, a Charles Hart, Jr, They are presumably father and son.

The 1830 census also list a Charles Hart, whom I presume is the younger man. Then, a Charles Hart, born about 1794, who is presumably Charles Hart, Jr., is listed in New Castle Delaware in the 1850 census as a laborer, living with his wife Julia, adjacent to the the Black family of William and Elizabeth Morris , who are perhaps kin.

JOHN



Perhaps relevant: a John Rodney is listed as head of a household of 7 free persons of color in the 1820 census for Little Creek Hundred, Kent County, Delaware, the same neighborhood in which Harry Rodney (discussed below) is listed. The same man is listed in the 1830, 1850. and 1850 censuses.

The 1850 census in the same Little Creek Hundred shows John Rodney married to Sarah (Furbee), age 64, with children Matilda, 17 years old, and John (Jr.), 10.

John Rodney Jr. married Matilda Parker or Pasker, and had three children, Matilda Rodney 2nd. b. 3 NOV 1876 • New Jersey; d. 14 OCT 1911 • Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) Henry Rodney, Birth 1858 • Camden, NJ, Death 3 FEB 1923 • Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Sarah Elizabeth Rodney Williams, born in Camden, NY, Death 24 MAR 1929 • Washington, D.C. (buried in Paynes Cemetery). I do not see descendants for these Henry and Sarah Elizabeth. However. Matilda Rodney, daughter of John Rodney Sr and Sarah Furbee Rodney, married it appears David Miller. Their children included Henrietta and Laura Miller, who seem to have had descendants.

A possible relative, a different John Rodney, born Pennsylvania, is referenced as Secretary of Masonic Lodge 16 of Hartford, CT in the The Weekly Anglo-African 1859 December.

HARRY (b 1769)

A Harry Rodney appears in the 1830 census in Little Creek, Kent County, Delaware , in a household of six free Black persons, as follows

Free colored persons – Males – Under 10 1
Free Colored Persons – Males – 24 thru 35 1
Free Colored Persons – Males – 55 thru 99 1
Free Colored Persons – Females – 10 thru 23 1
Free Colored Persons – Females – 24 thru 35 1

EZEKIEL (the younger)

A black man named Ezekiel Rodney, died 5 August, 1821 age 40, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, so seems likely to be the infant Ezekiel, born about March 1784, listed in Caesar Rodney’s probate inventory.

HANNAH, b. 1763

There is a negro Hannah, with no surname listed. in the 1800 census, in Duck Creek Hundred, Kent County, Delawar, heading a household of three free persons of color. Perhaps she is the same person as the Hannah manumitted by Caesar Rodney.

CHARLES, b. 1763

It is possible that the younger manumitted Charles (born around 1763) resurfaces in a fugitive slave advertisement in 1800 for a Charles Rodney, having escaped from a John Quimby residing in Newtown, Chester Ferry, Queen Annes County (later known as Chestertown, Kent County, Maryland), along with the pregnant enslaved woman Nanny and her daughter Ariana. The fugitive Charles Rodney is referred to as a “noted ferry man,” who had driven a wagon in the Revolutionary War, and is said by his enslaver to “read tolerably well.” This Charles is said to be about 40 years old, whereas the Charles owned by Caesar Rodney would have been born 1763, so about 37 years old.

The relevant section of the advertisement reads: “The noted Ferry man Charles, who calls himself Charles Rodney; he went off on the 18th of February last, he is a dark mulatto, about five feet eight or nine inches high, about forty years old, stoops in his shoulders when he walks, a scar on his head very perceivable — he took with him a small bay mare about 4 or 5 years old, her mane trimmed and bob tail’d; his cloathing unknown, as he carried off a variety of cloaths; it is probable he has changed his name, as he is a very artful, sensible fellow, he can read tolerably well it is likely he may hire himself to drive a waggon, being well acquainted with that business, driving for the army during the war; he also perhaps may have a pass.”

If this is the same Charles, then it would follow that the manumission stipulation of Caesar Rodney’s will was not actually followed by his heirs, and that Charles was sold out of the state of Delaware and that his promised manumission was not in fact honored in 1788.

CHARLOTTE b. 1760

Speculatively, perhaps Charlotte became Charlotte Croker, who died 1 July 1850 in Philadelphia, PA (residing at Lombard Street below Eighth) at the age of 90, so born around 1760. There is a long line of African American Crokers, in Delaware, including Daniel Croker, in the 1840 census in Dover Hundred, Kent County, Maryland, as head of a household of five people of color. His apparent son, Daniel Croker, born 1841, lived in Camden, NJ during the Civil War. Perhaps these two Daniel Crokers are Charlotte’s descendants.

Caesar Rodney, Escaped and Free

Perhaps significantly, a black man named Caesar Rodney appears in an 1802 runaway slave ad. 22 years old Cesar Rodney has escaped from enslaver Frederick Stump, and is thought to be heading to Philadelphia, where he had been raised by a Mr Wirtz. He escaped 12 June 1802, at age 22, so was born around 1780. ( Frederick Stump is infamous in colonial Pennsylvania history for having murdered at least ten Native Americans in 1768)

This Caesar clearly attained his freedom at a subsequent point. He is enumerated in the 1820 census (7 August 1820) residing in Salisbury, Lancaster County, Philadelphia, and in the 1830 census in Drumore, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in a household of two persons of color; an African American man named Caesar Rodney, perhaps he same person, is listed in the 1830, 1840, 1850 and 1860 censuses in Little Creek, Kent County, Delaware.

Perhaps this Caesar had been previously enslaved by Caesar Rodney the signer of Declaration and even fathered by him.We will continue to work on documenting the stories of these enslaved people and their descendants. Perhaps there will be a way to honor this community at Freedom Plaza in downtown Washington DC when the statue of Caesar Rodney is placed there.

References

Scott, Jane Harrington. 2000. A Gentleman as Well as a Whig: Caesar Rodney and the American Revolution. Newar: University of Delaware Press. (National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Delaware).