c. 1820 birth of Gerschon Ausländer, Sadagora, Chernivisti, Austrio Hungarian Empire

c. 1825 birth of Hennie Salzman, Bukovina

c. 1840 ? Gerschon Auslander marries Hennie Salzman

c 1847. Birth of Moses Aron Ausländer, son of Gerschon and Hennie Ausländer. in Sadagora, Chernivtsi, Bukovina. Austrio Hungary

c. 1865? Moses Aron Ausländer marries Esther Resch.

c.1867 Birth of Sarah Ausländer daughter of Moses Aron Ausländer and Esther Resch.

23 Mar 1868 Birth of Isak Ausländer, son of Moses Aron Ausländer and Esther Resch. Radautz

c. 1870 Birth of Clara Tauber (future wife of Isak Ausländer) , Radautz?

30 Mar 1877 Birth of Alfred Ausländer son of Moses Aron Ausländer and Esther Resch. Radautz

16 May, 1879 Birth of Gustav Ausländer , son of Moses Aron Ausländer and Esther Resch. Radautz

1880, birth of Anna Ausländer, daughter of Moses Aron Ausländer and Esther Resch. Radautz

1 April 1889, Birth of Nathan Ausländer, son of Sarah Ausländer and probably Alter Mehler. (Since marriage was not officialized, Nathan retains his mother’s surname.)

4 June 1889 Nathan Ausländer’s father Alter Mehler departs Hamburg, travels alone to Canada, when his newborn son (born 1 April, 1889) was just about two months old. So Sarah Ausländer left behind to raise Nathan, presumably staying in the household of her father Moses Aron Ausländer. At some point, Sarah’s sister Anna (according to Bruno Auslander) helped raise Nathan.

4 Jan 1891, Attested to in Radautz: Moses Aron Ausländer legalized his previously common law marriage with his spouse Ester Resch: “I recognize my children produced with Ester Resch before the closure of our marriage: Sara, Isak, Chane, Uscher, Gerschon as married to Esther Resch. Radautz. 4 January 1891.”

4 March 1894. Birth of Tsuli Sarah Auslander, daughter of Isak Auslander and Clara Tauber Auslander. Radautz.

16 March 1895 Birth of Lala Henrietta Ausländer, daughter of Isak Ausländer and Clara Tauber Auslander. Radautz .

17 April 1896. Netti Koppelmann (future wife of Nathan Ausländer) born to merchant Berl Koppelmann and Mali Koppelmann, all from Radautz.

28 Sept 1896 Birth of Jacob Ausländerr, son of Isak Ausländerr and Clara Tauber Auslander. Radautz.

24 Oct 1898 • Birth of Cilli Ausländer. daughter of Isak Ausländer and Clara Tauber Ausländer. Radautz .

c. 1900 Sarah Ausländer marries Zabek Konner (later Sam Kerner)

c. 1900 Birth of Bertha Ausländer Konner Kerner, daughter of Sarah Ausländer and Zabek Konner?

c. 1900-02 Marriage of Alfred Ausländer to Rougea Eiferman. Czernowitz?

16 July 1901. . Gustav Ausländer, son of Moses Aron Ausländer, arrives in New York

24 Nov 1901 • Birth of Gisela Ausländer (1901–1902),daughter of Isak Ausländer and Clara Tauber Ausländer. Radautz .

23 September 103. Uscher (later Alfred) Auslander, and Rougea Eifferman arrive in New York City with Rougea’s parents, Samuel and Netti (Finkel) Eifermann, from Czernowitz.  Rougea still listed on passenger manifest with surname Eifferman; perhaps they underwent another wedding ceremony in the US?

19 Feb 1902. Death of Gisela Ausländer. Radatuz

5 June 1902. Birth of Clara Ausländer Konner Kerner, daughter of Sarah Auslander and Zabek Konner

c. 1903 Birth Caroline Auslander (1903–) , daughter of Alfred and Rougea Auslander, NY

May 13, 1904 Birth of George Auslander (1904–), son of Alfred and Rougea Auslander . New York

5 Oct 1903 • Birth of Julia July Ausländer(1903–1934) daughter of Isak Ausländer and Clara Tauber Ausländer. Radautz .

29 May 1904. Gustav Auslander marries Minnie Beutel. Brooklyn. BY

c. 1905 Birth of Rose Auslander, daughter of Gustav and Minnie Auslander

15 Sep 1905 Birth Isidore Isidor Siegried Auslander(1905–) son of Isak Auslander and Clara Tauber Auslander. Radautz .
?
15 May 1908. Birth of Helen Auslander, daughter of Gustav and Minnie Auslander

1911 Sarah Ausländer (daughter of Moses Aron Auslander) arrives in New York, with Zabek Konnor (later Sam Kerner) and daughters Clara and Bertha. Sarah’s son Nathan Ausländer left behind with his grandfather Moses Aron Auslander,

30 Dec 1912 Birth of Jesse Auslander, son of Gustav and Minnie Auslander, New York.

16 Dec 1915 Death of Esther Resch Ausländer, wife of Moses Aron Ausländer, Radautz, Bukovina

c. 1918 Birth of Stanley Auslander, son of Alfred and Rougea Auslander

7 Jan 1920 Death of Sara Auslander (1867–1920), daughter of Moses Aron Auslander and Esther Resch. Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA,

c. 1920 Cilli Ausländer earns doctorate in Chemistry, University of Vienna

c. 1921 birth of Bruno Ausländer, son of Nathan and Nettie Ausländer Radautz.

24 December 1922. Birth of Josef/Yosef/Yuziu (later Joseph) Ausländer, son of Nathan and Nettie Ausländer, Radautz

26 Nov 1923 Dr. Jacob Ausländer arrives in New York City, on the SS Sierra Ventana sailing from Bremen, from Vienna. (Cilli’s story is that on the train trip from Vienna, the train was diverted due to the Munich Beer Hall attempted Nazi putsch of Nov 8-9.)

c. 1924 Birth of Otto Wildman (later Shalmon?), son of Lala Ausländer Wildman, and Nutzl Widman, Czernowitz. (Later marries Tamar, children are Ani Shalmon, and Dafni Chabusha )

c. 1924. Dr Jacob Auslander pursues Residency in psychiatry, in Wisconsin before settling in New York and opening a practice there.

c. 1920. Martha Klinghoffer born, daughter of Dr. Robert Klinghoffer and Sarah Auslander Klinghoffer

c. 1921 Birth of Stella Avni Wildman, daughter of Nutzl Wildman and Henrietta Lala Ausländer Wildman. Czernowitz. (later married Albert Braunstein?)

January 1925. Alfred and Rougea Auslander, with son Stanley return from Europe, having visited Cilli Ausländer in Vienna. (Cilli declares Stanley “looks like a Romanian Prince”)

5 Nov 1926. Dr. Jacob Auslander marries Rebekah Zeltzer, New York City. She works as his his nurse, X-ray technician and office manager over the next three decades. )

8 Dec 1926. Death of Moses Aron Ausländer, in Radautz, Bukovina

c. 1927 Birth of Arthur “Moishe-Aaron” Klinghoffer, son of Dr. Robert Klinghoffer and Sarah Ausländer Klinghoffer, Bukovina

c. 1929. Dr Jacob and Rebekah Auslander travel to Europe, including to Radautz to see Jacob’s parents, etc.

21 March 1929. Rose Auslander married Leo Holland on 21 March 1929). Children were: Marvin Holland (1931-2013) and Eugene William Holland (b.1932)

c. 1930 Birth of Joseph Auslander, son of Jacob and Rebekah Auslander. New York City

c. 30 Aug 1931. Helen Auslander marries Herbert Holland. Children: Carol Sue Holland and Shelly Holland.

30 August 1932. Dr. Jacob Auslander returns from Europe (Cherbourg France). (Did he see his parents?)

c 1933 Birth of Irene Judith Auslander, daughter of Jacob and Rebekah Auslander

October 1933. Death of Alfred Auslander, son of Moses Aron Ausländer in Queens, New York

19 Nov 1934 • Death of Julie Ausländer Pagis, daughter of Isak and Clara Ausländer. Vienna. Appendectomy operation, evidently unnecessary.

c. 1935? Joseph Pagis, husband of Julie Ausländer Pagis, departs from Bukovina for Palestine.

1934-41 Severin Pagis raised by his grandparents, Isak and Clara Ausländer in Radautz. (Subsequent correspondence reveals Joseph asked Isak to send Severin to him, but Isak refused, hoping Severin would join Dr. Jacob (Bi) Auslander in New York and study medicine.

Summer 1936. Dr. Jacob (“Bi”) Auslander travels to Radautz in futile attempt to convince his parents Isak and Clara to return with him to New York City. (Arthur Klinghoffer recalls being given a book by Felix Salten, perhaps Bambi, by Bi, to Storonijet.) Not sure if Bi was able to see Cilli during this visit.

1 September 1936. Dr. Jacob Auslander arrives back in NYC, without his parents.

c. 1936? Cilli Ausländer released from Romanian prison system; resides in Vienna, later Paris?

c. 1937? Cilli Ausländer travels to the Soviet Union? Remains there through most of WWII, attached to the Comintern. Becomes friends with her brother Bi’s sister in law, Pauline Zeltzer Klein in Moscow, who had arrived in Moscow in late 1933. Cilli gets to know the children Joseph and Eva (and perhaps also Sol Klein?)

c. 1937. Joseph Auslander attends the Birch Wathen School (private) in the West 90s.

24 Oct 1937. Jesse Auslander (son of Gustav Auslander) marries Pauline Kweller ,24 October 1937. Children were Susan Auslander (1941-2012) and Marjorie Auslander.

12 September 1938. Martha Edith Klinghoffer, age 18?, daughter of Dr. Robert Klinghoffer and Sarah Ausländer Klinghoffer, arrives from Storojinet, Bukovina, Romania to New York, on SS Normandie from Le Havre. Lives with her mother’s brother Dr. Jacob Auslander and Rebekah Auslander, first briefly at 520 W 110th St, then at 120 Riverside Drive, Manhattan, their new address, with her cousins Joe and Judy Auslander

September 1938. Dr. Jacob Auslander and Rebekah move from 520 W. 110th street to 120 Riverside Drive, allowing Joe and Judy to attend PS 9.

18 August 1941, Isak Ausländer arrested in Radautz on charges of “having foreign currency.” [SANIC (Serviciul Arhivelor NaţionaleI storice Centrale in Bucharest), fund Collection 50, file 313, page 549. See: http://www.bondashku.com/437392973%5D He and other Jewish leaders were then released for a period of time 

5 April 1939, Birth of June Auslander, daughter of George Auslander and Evelyn Steiner Auslander. New York.

c. 1941 Siegfried “Tzip” “Salman” Ausländer, son of Isak and Clara Auslander . was in Palestine by this point, according to Arthur Klinghoffer, so did not experience the Holocaust deportations.

c. 1941-1944. Cilli Ausländer attached to Comintern, stationed hjust outside of Moscow, helps organize a system of underground hospitals outside of Moscow during the battle period.

Oct 1941. Isak Ausländer and other Jewish leaders in Radautz held as hostage temporarily by fascist authorities in local Gymnasium, to secure Jewish cooperation with the deportation process.

October 9-14, 1941. Deportation of Jews of Radautz. including Isak and Clara Ausländer, and grandson Severin Pagis, to Transnistria. Also deported are Nathan and Netti Ausländer, and son Joseph Ausländer (perhaps on same train transport, of cattle train cars). Initially across Dniester River to Moghilev? It is known that there were four transport trains from Radautz, of cattle cars, carrying a total of about 8,000 Jewish residents. Ultimately only three Jews allowed to remain in Radautz.

c. December 1941. Cilli Ausländer, stationed in a small industrial town outside of Moscow. recalls seeing the eastern horizon at night as wall of flame. She was reading War and Peace, and fears Moscow has fallen, but dawn reveals hundreds of Wermacht panzers destroyed in a great Red Army victory. She recalls living thorugh the coldest Russian winter of the century during the campagn

1941-44. Nathan, Netti and Joseph Ausländer in Moghilev, Transnistria. Joseph works in Jagendorf’s Foundry, which helps the family survive the Deportation period.

1941-45. Dr. Robert Klinghoffer, wife Sarah Ausländer Klinghoffer, and son Arthur Klinghoffer allowed to remain in Storonijet, Bukovina, since Robert was a physician, Not deported.

1941-45. Isak and Clara’s daughter Henrietta and her husband Nutzl Wildman and their children remained safely in Czernowitz during the war, and were not deported. Possibly due to leadership of Traian Popovici, a conscientious attorney who served as mayor of Czernowitz/Chernivtsi during World War II.

1941-1945. Bruno Ausländer, son of Nathan and Nettie Auslander, spends war period in Uzbekistan, USSR.

1940-1945. Stanley Auslander, son of Alfred and Rougea Auslander, serves in US Navy, stationed in Brazil and England where he flew convoy patrol missions and had several encounters with German U-boats. (His son Dean Auslander recalls).Hamilton

17 Dec 1942. Money transferred to Isak Ausländer in Vindiceni. USHMM records.

December 28, 1942, Death of Minnie Beutel Auslander, wife of Gustav Auslander. New York.

1942-early 1944. Isak and Clara Ausländer reside in the work camp in Vindiceni, Transnistria, during Holocaust. Isak works in sugar factory, evidently. Grandson Severin Pagis with them for most of this time, then transferred at some point, perhaps late 1943, to an orphanage in Moghilev? (Antonescu fascist regime in Romania slightly relaxed some Jewish policies, for children especially, as they anticipated the tide of war changing).

c. 1943. birth of Diane Peters Auslander (daughter of George and Evelyn Auslander) Mother of Jordan Peters and Grant Peters.

c. 1943. document in USHMM lists Isak Ausländer getting two payments associated with a sugar factory, in the Jewish ghetto of Vindiceni. (He had been a sugar merchant in Radautz, so perhaps helped restore the factory?)

31 March 1943. Isak Ausländer still in Vindiceni. Listed in a Holocaust Museum database document, listing a remittance to him.

January 1944. Isak Ausländer dies in Vindiceni, Transnistria. Typhus or Tuberculosis. (About two months before the town is liberated by the Red Army).

February 1944, Register from an Orphans’ Camp in Moghilev lists Severin Pagis as an inmate. (At some point after this Severin escapes and walks with two young male friends all the way to Czernowitz, where he stays with his mother’s sister Lala Henrietta Auslander Wildman.

c. December 1944. Cilli Ausländer transferred from Comintern to Red Army as interpreter for March on Berlin, from Moscow. She has a farewell meeting with her brother’s sister in law Pauline Zeltzer Klein in Pauline’s Moscow apartment. Cilli tries to give Pauline her Soviet war bonds “for the children,” in case she does not survive the NKVD or the coming military operations.

— 1944. Stanley Auslander marries Jean Hamilton, East Greenwhich, FI.

c. 1945, Nathan, Nettie and son Joseph Ausländer return to Radautz, Bukovina.

c. 1945. Severin Pagis reunited with his grandmother Clara Ausländer evidently at home of the Wildman’s in Czernowitz

c. 1945 Robert and Sarah Klinghoffer and son Arthur move from Storonijet to Radautz, to avoid living under direct Soviet rule. Stay with Clara Auslander in a room in her old house. in Czernowitz, while most of house is occupied by police.

c. 1946. Birth of Gail Auslander, daughter of Stanley and Jean Auslander. New York.

c 1946. Severin Pagis travels from Bukovina to Palestine. Belongings stolen en route. Sees his father Joseph Pagis, then goes to Kibbutz Dan. Changes name to Dan Pagis

c. 1945-1948. Clara Ausländer resides in several rooms of her previous house in Radautz, most of which was occupied by the local police force. Also living with her, in two room was her daughter Tsuli and son in law Bertel (Robert) Klinghoffer, and her grandson Arthur, since the family had moved 40 km from Storojinet to Radautz, in part to avoid life under direct Soviet rule.

c. 1946. Cilli Ausländer travels back to Radautz to see her mother Clara Ausländer; the two women share their belief that they survived air raids because of their refusal to go into basement shelters.

c. June 1947. Trial of Dr. Jacob Auslander, for Contempt of Congress, Washington DC (refusal to name names in front of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee)

8 July 1947, Martha Klinghoffer marries Ben Cohen. New York

c. 1950 Birth of Dean Auslander, son of Stanley and Jean Auslander.

c 1950. Dr. Jacob Auslander imprisoned, Danbury Federal Prison, for Contempt of Congress (refusal to name names in front of the House Un American Activities Committee) His cellmate was the playwright nd screenwriter Ring Lardner. (Later Bi’s medical license is suspended by the New York Medical Society, so he can only undertake research but not care for patients for some time.)

21 March 1951. Dr. Jacob Auslander, wife Rebekah and daughter Judy travel to Europe, including Vienna, and Israel, to see relatives.

14 Apr 1955. Death of Jesse Auslander, son of Gustav Auslander, NY

c. 1956. Irene Judith Auslander marries Alan Saks.

June 1958. Death of Dr. Jacob Auslander, New York City, age 61. Stomach cancer.

c. 1962 Josef/Yosef/Yuziu/ Ausländer and wife Dora Fichman Auslander emigrate from Bucharest, Romania to Paris, France. Secret payments made by Dora’s father in Israel to Romanian authorities for their emigration (Josef’s technical expertise made him high value for the Romanian Securitate). Yosef changes name to Joseph.

Nathan and Netti Auslander remain in Radautz, Bukovina, Romania.

c. 1964. Birth of Edgar Denis Auslander, son of Joseph and Dora Auslander, Paris.

c. 1965. Birth of Danielle Klinghoffer, daughter of Arthur and Lillie Klinghoffer. Israel.

2 March 1968. Death of Gustav Auslander. Miami, Florida.

c. 1975 Death of Nathan Ausländer. Radautz. Romania.

10 May 1982. Death of Evelyn Auslander, Miami FL.

c. 1986. Death of Dan Pagis. Israel.

11 Oct 1996. Death of George Auslander. Miami, FL

c. 1989. Death of Cilli Ausländer, Vienna.

11 Oct 1996. Death of Evelyn Steiner Auslander, wife of George Auslander

30 March 2007. Death of Stanley Auslander.

c. 2009 Death of Martha Klinghoffer Cohen.

26 Feb 2011. Death of June Auslander.

c. 2019 Death of Joseph [Josef] Auslander (son of Nathan and Nettie Ausländer ) in Paris.

c. 2022. Death of Lillie Klinghoffer, wife of Arthur Klinghoffer, Israel.

The poet and storyteller Andre Wilson and I have been contemplating how oral historical narratives passed through his father’s African American family about racial terror might be meaningfully compared with textual sources, nearly all of which were created by white authors. Wilson is the great great grandson of Jennie Harris (or Harrison) Lindsey, whose brothers Daniel Harris Jr. and John Harris, were both murdered by lynch mobs on or about October 10, 1878. (Some accounts give the family surname as Harrison or Harison.) Daniel Harris, Sr., who appears to have been Jennie’s stepfather, was, in turn, lynched by a white mob on October 11, 1878, at the Posey County Courthouse Square, in downtown Mount Vernon, Indiana, minutes before four other African American men were hanged by the white mob. The Harris brothers and the four hanged men were accused of having robbed and sexually assaulted three white sex workers; the evidence for these allegations, as has been widely noted, is highly dubious.

Over the years, Andre has collected multiple accounts of a racial terror killing in his family’s history, as told by his father the artist Fred Robert Wilson and his father’s mother Jennie Moore, They relayed stories that had been transmitted by Jennie Moore’s grandmother, Jennie Harris Lindsey, in some cases from eytwitness accounts by her own mother, Elizabeth.

African American oral historical accounts

The core story passed through the black family concerns their ancestor, “Daniel Harris” or “Daniel Harrison,” He is remembered as having come out of slavery with his wife and children, with tobacco seed obtained from his former owner, settling in Indiana. His seven daughters were harassed by a white man in the tobacco fields. Later, this white man sexually assaulted one of them. In response, Daniel confronted the white man, who dared Daniel to kill him. Daniel ultimately did kill the white man. One family account recalls him as “the first black man to kill a white man in the United States.” Following this, a white mob tied Daniel to a railroad car and set it on fire. This brutal murder took place, in one version of the story, in front of Daniel’s wife and daughters.

The various account continue that a group of “Masons” rescued Daniel from the burning rail car, either while he was still alive or after he had died. The Masons then interred Daniel’s body in a secret location, since the white murderers wanted to desecrate his body. In one account, Daniel’s wife was tortured by the white lynchers, but refused to divulge her late husband’s burial location, keeping the secret until the day she died. (In one version of the story, Daniel’s body was rescued and buried by sympathetic Native Americans). Daniel’s surviving family then fled to Illinois, where they continued farming.

So far as I can tell, these oral historical accounts conflate the three murders of the Harris men, a father and his two sons, on October 10 and 11, 1878. [I have earlier suggested that the Story of the Black Cat, passed down in Andre Wilson’s family, might itself be a poetic condensation of the murder of Daniel through fire.]

The precise circumstances of these October 1878 killings of the three Harris men remain somewhat murky. White-authored newspaper accounts assert that on October 10, the day before the spectacle lynching by hanging of four African American on the Posey County courthouse square, the brothers Daniel Harris Jr and John Harris were killed by white men in separate, less public incidents.

James Redwine, a white author who has researched the 1878 lynchings, gives several accounts of the killing of Daniel Harris, Jr. He claims that on October 10 that white killers forced Daniel Jr, whom they had been pursuing on trumped up charges of rape, into the firebox of a steam locomotive, where he was intentionally burned alive. Redwine reports that “Posey County native …Basil Stratton, told me that his grandfather, Walker Bennet, was an eyewitness . Walker told Basil that as a young boy he was present and saw several white men, including Walker’s father, force Harrison into the steam engine. Basil’s grandfather told Basil he never forgot the Black man’s screams and the smell of his burning flesh.” See this account. (Walker Bennett’s father was James Madison Bennett, c, 1826-28 December 1887, a blacksmith who had served in the Confederate Army in the 23rd Battalion, Tennessee Infantry (Newman’s), Company C. )

On the same day, Daniel Jr’s brother John was evidently murdered by white men, and his body stuffed into the hollow of a tree.

The night of October 10, according to Redwine, Daniel Harris Sr, the father of Daniel Jr and John Harris, met an attack on his home by a group of white men with armed resistance. In the exchange of fire, Cyrus Oscar Thomas, 1829-1878, was shot and killed, evidently by Daniel Harris Sr with a shotgun. Daniel Sr was wounded in the firefight and transported to jail. The next day, a white lynch mob attacked the jail and took him into the courthouse square, along with four other black men accused of the rape. The white killers hacked Daniel Sr to death and disposed of his bodily remains in the courthouse outhouse. Minutes later, the white lynch mob hanged the four other men from locusts tree in front of the courthouse.

Cyrus Oscar Thomas was, at the time, evidently running for the office of County Sheriff, and it seems possible that his targeting of black men in these attacks was part of a political strategy for building white support in the upcoming election.

Let us consider in terms the various key elements of the African American Harris/Harrison/Wilson family account, and see how they might match up with or differ from the white-authored texts.

1. White sexual violation of a Harris daughter

In his book, Judge Lynch, a quasi-novelistic (some might say prurient) reconstruction of the events around the 1878 mass lynching, James Redwine presents Daniel Jr as having a surreptitious sexual affair with a white woman, leading to her secret mixed race daughter being covertly raised by Daniel’s Jr’s sister Jane. This accounts strikes me as highly unlikely. More likely, the possibility of some sort of sexual encounter or encounters between one of the Harris daughters and a white man certainly does seem credible, and is entirely consistent with the racialized sexual politics of the era. It may be that one or both the Harris brothers, Daniel Jr and John, were defending their sister against a white man, and this is what lead to the accusations against them of raping three white prostitutes.

Perhaps Daniel Harris Sr’s shooting of Cyrus Oscar Thomas has been translated or condensed in family memory to the story of his killing his daughter’s rapist. It is certainly possible that the white man that Daniel, Sr shot had in fact assaulted one of the Harris daughters.

In any event, it does appear that the deaths of the two Daniels have been conflated into a single murder in the family accounts.

2. The Fire Train incident.

Redwine’s version, relying on the white grandson of a child eye witness, describes Daniel Jr as having been forced alive into a locomotive steam engine firebox. The African American family account, based on eye-witness recollections by Daniel’s widow and daughters, recalls a railway car being set on fire, with Daniel tied to the burning vehicle.

In both the white and African American accounts, the witnesses presumably were viewing the horrors from a distance, so the precise circumstances of the killing may have been difficult to ascertain. The firebox of steam locomotives had to be large enough for the fireman to rake coals evenly through its floor to create a standardized level of heat to create adequate steam, and needed to be regularly cleaned out, so was presumably large enough to accommodate an adult human body. On the face of it, it seems hard to imagine how the murderers could have forced a strong adult male into the burning fire car without being scorched themselves. In that respect, the African American versions’ reference to a the victim being tied to a burning railcar seem somewhat more credible.

3. The “Masons”

Several iterations of the African American account speak of “The Masons” or a “Masconic Society” coming to Daniel’s aid, either rescuing while he was dying or securing his scorched body once he had died.

There were clearly African American Masons in Posey County, Indiana in the late 19th century. The Western Star newspaper reports African American Civil War veteran Pvt John Tyler Jefferson “died in Mt. Vernon at noon on November 10, 1894. “[H]is remains were interred by the Colored Masons.” (see: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/179094684/john-tyler-jefferson In turn, Purn Dickson Bishop, buried in Emancipation cemetery in Mount Vernon, was a member of Walden Lodge No. 17 of the Free and Accepted Masons and was one of the founders of the Gay Flower Lodge of the International Order of Odd Fellows. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/174074187/purn-dickson-bishop The Mt. Vernon Weekly Republican newspaper reported the Private Jasper Towns helped lead an 1886 initiative to revitalize Mt. Vernon’s Gay Flower Lodge of the International Order of Odd Fellows. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/207419977/jasper-towns

Further north in Indiana, the Prince Hall Grand Lodge, the nation’s oldest African American masonic order, had been present in Indianapolis as early as 1856, and it is possible they also were active in southwestern Indiana in the 1870s.

It seems reasonable that Daniel Harris Sr, who may have been a Civil War military veteran, was a member of a local Masonic Lodge, perhaps the International Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF).

I have not seen any white-authored accounts of a secret burial of any member of the Harris family, although the story is certainly credible. Nor do any of the white accounts reference Elizabeth, Daniel Sr’s widow, being tortured by white vigilantes. I have not encountered grave records of any of the seven victims of the October 1878 lynching, although these may exist.

4. Flight to Indiana.

One of the African American accounts has it that immediately following the lynching of Daniel, the family fled across the Mississippi River to Illinois. Census and city directory records suggest that the surviving members of the Harris family moved to Evansville, in the adjacent county of Vanderburgh, Indiana, and then by 1900 some members, including Daniel Sr’s son Robert Harrision, had returned to Mount Vernon. By 1920, Robert, his wife and children were residing in Danville, Vermillon County, Illinois. Daniel Sr’s widow Elizabeth Harrison died in Danville on 5 April 1920

In this respect, the family story is basically accurate, although it seems have compressed the time between the lynching and the actual relocation to Illinois.

5. Photographic Evidence

There does not appear to be any photograph record of the remains of Daniel Harris Sr or his son Daniel Jr and John. There is an infamous photograph at the four bodies of the hanging lynched victims. Jeff Hopkins, James Good, William Chambers, and Ed Warner (whose name was perhaps William Edwards), taken on October 11, 1878, in the Robert Langmuir Collection, Rose Library, Emory University. See: https://digital.library.emory.edu/catalog/3246q573t7-cor

The Mt Vernon Dollar Democrat, in October 1878 notes, “Mr. Jones, our artist, took photographs of the four Negroes lynched by the vigilants [sic] last Friday night.It is an excellent representation of the tragic scene.. Mr. Jones has copies for sale.” see https://jamesmredwine.com/1878-lynchings-pogrom/published-in-2005/

The white photographer must have been Leroy William Jones, (29 JAN 1843 -11 JUN 1921) He had a photographic studio in Mount Vernon, IN, from at least 1880 onward. He was a Civil War veteran (Company C, 25th Indiana Infantry Volunteers(. I am sure how many copies of the photograph were made and sold.

6. Railroads and Lynching

Whether or not the murder of Daniel Jr took place in the steam engine firebox or on a burning railroad car, it it is worth nothing how ubiquitous trains, rail lines, rail yards, and rail bridges were in the history of American lynching from the end of Reconstruction onward. Perhaps the most infamous instance is the lynching of Sam Hose in 1899 in Newnan GA in which the local train company arranged for excursion fare for thousands of whites to witness his violent spectacle lynching, an event which arguably led W.E.B. DuBois to quit the South. Rail structures afforded high degree of visibility, and given that one of the core functions of racial terror lynching was to intimidate African American communities, it is perhaps not surprising that rail bridges and rail signal towers were used opportunistically as sites of display of lynched bodies by white perpetrators.

At the same time, the rails were also places of liberation, for those traveling north to the Promised Land in the Great Migration. Railroad employment provided economic upward mobility to Pullman Porters and many others. Yet. there is the dark side of railroad technology,that still casts a shadow to this day, Claude McCay, as a railroad porter who witnessed lynch mobs along rail lines, embodies this ambivalence in writing his poem “If we must die,” calling for armed resistance to white mobs.

Zygmunt Bauman’s book Modernity and the Holocaust, (2013) notes how intimately intertwined the mechanics of mass death during the Shoah were with industrial modernity, including rolling stock and train time tables. A comparable argument could certainly be developed about lynching. Technological triumph and white racial nationalism seem to have been integrally intertwined in many sectors of American society from the end of Reconstruction onward, and this may have overdetermined the horrific use of the railroad apparatus in racial terror.

Through my research on the legacies of the horrific 1878 Mount Vernon, Indiana lynchings, I’ve become familiar with the remarkable work of Andre Le Mont Wilson, poet, essayist, and storyteller, who has been exploring his family’s rich and complex history in multiple registers and genres. I am especially moved by his 2005 performance piece, “The Story of the Black Cat”, performed at the Marsh Theater in San Francisco, inspired by stories recounted by his grandmother, some of which were audio recorded while she was alive. (For those watching the piece, please note that it involves repeated use of the N-word, and a graphic account of the killing of a family pet.)

The story was transmitted across the generations from the artist’s 2nd great grandmother, Jennie Harris Lindsay (c. 1852-1932), who with her mother was enslaved by a “Mr. Harris” on a tobacco plantation, evidently in Kentucky Jennie’s mother, the story goes, was the enslaved mistress of the slave owner, who fathered Jennie. Jennie, who was light skinned, was afforded some privilege by her father the slaveowner, but was frequently castigated by the master’s second white wife, who deeply resented the child’s elevated status. The alternately tragic and hilarious story centers on a black cat owned by the white woman, which becomes a kind of battleground between the enslaved girl and the white woman.

I am especially intrigued by the use of actual and imputed photography in this single-actor performance work.

The piece begins with the artist playing the role of himself as a child, seated, silently miming picking up a shoebox of old family photographs. Smiling, he lifts up and examines two photographs in turn, but then is puzzled by a third picture, which he peers at intently. He calls out, in the voice of a boy, to his grandmother, speaking the first words of the piece: “Hey, grandmother Jennie. Who is this white woman, in this picture, from this shoe box, that has our old pictures of our black folk?” The artist shifts into the refined voice of his grandmother, explaining that the woman is her grandmother, Jennie Lindsay, for whom her mother named her. The boy is baffled, and his grandmother explains that Jennie Lindsay was a mulatta house slave, whose mother was mulatta and whose father was Irish. The grandmother then states, “Let me tell you the story of the black cat.”

The lights fade, and we are transported to the present moment, as the artist identifies himself as “The Narrator,” explaining that his grandmother Jennie Moore is no longer with us, but that the box of old family photos, like so many photographs, links us to old family stories. He begins to tell the story of his grandmother’s grandmother, transporting us through his voice and gestures back into an antebellum scene in front of a wood burning stove, which will later (like Chekhov’s pistol) play a pivotal function in the plot. The narrator recounts the story of the death of the first white wife and the second white wife’s animosity towards Jennie, and how Jennie contrives to revenge herself through an attack the white woman’s beloved black cat, burning it alive in the same stove she tends each morning. The white mistress is devastated and convinces the white master to whip Jennie severely, Jennie flees is struck in-the back of her head by an axe thrown by the master, who instantly regrets his actions. Jennie recovers, and later, when she, her mother, and “step-pappy” are emancipated and head north, they are provided by the master with tobacco seed for their new farm.

At the end of the performance, the artist returns to his own childhood, and, once again seated, he reverses the opening framing device. He looks again, through mime. at the imputed photograph, and says the name of his great great grandmother, “Jennie Lindsay.” In mime, he closes up the shoebox and places it back on the floor, precisely where the piece had begun. Then, when the lights come up, the Narrator returns fully to the present day and his “real” persona. He addresses the audience, holding up the actual sepia-toned photograph of his ancestor Jennie Lindsay, the very photograph his child-self had encountered in the performance piece and which had transported us back to slavery times. “I’d like to thank my great great grandmother Jennie Lindsay. This is her picture. This is her story.”We see that the actual photograph, protected in a plastic sleeve, depicts a distinguished light-skinned older woman in a black late Victorian pleated dress, standing in what appears to be a turn-of-the-century photographic studio, her right hand resting on an elaborate balustrade in front of a studio backdrop. The contours of her upper head are uneven, consistent with the story of her having been hit in the head as a child.

Photography as Time Travel

Wilson’s use of photography calls to mind Roland Barthes’ famous commentary that early cameras, created by wooden cabinetmakers and clockmakers, are “clocks for seeing,” that uncannily summon up earlier epochs. For Barthes, photographs enable remarkable, paradoxical forms of time travel. He contemplates the photograph of a condemned criminal on the eve of his execution, which he captions: “He is dead and he is going to die.” A potent photograph, Barthes emphasize, pierces us in such a way that we experience it as living presence, and thus through the photograph the seemingly lost past is regained in ways that may be joyous, intoxicating, disorienting, or terrifying. Even Walter Benjamin, who insists that mechanical reproduction normally robs mass-produced images of their “aura,” acknowledges that early portrait photographs functioned in ways akin to the icons of the ancient cult of the ancestors, bringing the intangible souls of the Dead into the proximate precincts of the living in ways that are deeply life-enhancing. In the resulting optical unconscious, proclaims Benjamin, “we go traveling.”

Such is the traveling through time that the old photograph of his ancestor enables in Andre Wilson’s performance piece. Appropriately, we do not see the actual image at the start of the recounting, but only imagine it, held invisibly between the fingers of the puzzled child. The work of the piece, through his grandmother’s storytelling and his own ventriloquizing of the various characters—the slave girl, the Master, the white mistress, and the black cat—is, in effect, to fill in the previously empty space of the anonymous picture, so that when the lights come up we can actually see her, and in effect, “meet” her across the gulfs of time.

Encountering the actual physical photograph at the end of the performance plays a complex role, I suggest, in awakening us from the dreamtime of the story, through a kind of epistemic shock. We had been in the realm of the Imaginary, in which the image was only mimed, existing invisibly between the fingers of the child; now the adult narrator holds up the physical image in all its undeniable facticity and tactility. We are back in the conventional here and now, and yet, through the uncanny power of the photograph, the ancestral presence still lingers, and the Dead are still with us, still speaking to us. Jennie Lindsay is still with us, as we meet her anew.

In a classical sense, the image of the ancestress functions as a kind of invocation of hte Muse, a quasi sacral being who becomes increasingly knowable as the performance progresses. At the same time, opening up the old shoebox, it appears, functions as a kind of opening of Pandora’s Box, releasing all manner of forces into the world, many of them haunting and deeply disturbing.

The Imagery of Fire

.In this connection, one particular feature of the Black Cat story deeply puzzles me, the terrifying image of the cat burned up inside the fires of the stove. As it happens, this nightmarish vignette strangely reduplicates a terrible incident in the history of Wilson’s family. Daniel Harris, Jr., the brother of Jennie Lindsay (the artist’s great great grandmother) was himself burned by a white lynch mob in October 1878. He was, as terrible as it is recount, thrown alive into the fire box of a steam locomotive in Mount Vernon, Posey County, Indiana, after he attempted to escape white vigilantes who had leveled false charges against him. In a related incident, white lynchers also murdered Daniel Jr’s brother John Harris. The next day, their father, Daniel Harris, Sr. (the “step-pappy” of Wilson’s story, who raised Jennie as his own child) fired a shotgun at the white mob to protect his family, and was in turn brutally hacked to death in front of the County Courthouse by white murderers. That same day, four other African American men were hanged by the lynch mob in the courthouse square.

is it only a coincidence that the Black Cat and Daniel Jr. died in precisely the same way? Is it possible that Jennie Lindsay, in passing on the slavery story to her posterity, displaced and condensed the unbearably painful story of her brother’s death by fire into the cat story? Or is this one of the strange coincidences of history, that the death of the cat in fire, possibly on the eve of the Civil War, foreshadowed the incineration of Jennie’s brother two decades later?

The History of the Photograph?

Andre Wilson explains that the depiction in the performance piece of him discovering the photograph as a child is in fact poetic license. He did not actually encounter the photograph until around 2012, after the death of his grandmother and father. The image would seem to confirm the story that Jennie’s head bore the results of being split by a thrown axe during the time of slavery.

The photograph is undated, but on the back is attributed to George Becker, who ran a photographic studio in Evansville, Indiana. The studio is listed in the Evansville, Indiana city directory up until 1882, but not listed from 1883 onwards. Tentatively, it seems likely the picture was taken in the late 1870s or early 1880s.

We are not sure if Jennifer Lindsay is wearing her own dress, or a dress borrowed from the studio. (Given that Becker also had white clientele, and given the intense racism of the period, he may not have kept garments that would be used by both black and white sitters).

Historical Context?

Is it possible, based on available evidence, to determine precisely the historical location of Jennie Lindsay’s Black Cat story? I review briefly what is known, and consider several plausible scenarios.

Jenny Lindsay’ Death Certificate, in Evansville, Indiana, indicates that she died October 10, 1932, aged 80 years, three months and six days. Her birthdate in Kentucky is given as June 30, 1852.

Her father’s name is given as “Daniel Harison” and her mother’s maiden name as Elizabeth Wagner. (The family name was variously transcribed as Harris, Harison or Harrison). The informant for the certificate is Jenny’s daughter, Elizabeth Lindsay Carter of Chicago.

The 1870 census is Mount Vernon, Posey County, Indiana, records the family of Daniel Harris and his wife Elizabeth Harris. The eldest child listed is Jane Harris, age 18, born around 1852, who is presumably the same person as Jenny. (The 1870 census, unlike subsequent censuses, does not specify family relationships, so we are not sure if “Jane’ is the daughter of Elizabeth and Daniel. Yet it seems likely, based on Jenny’s story, that Elizabeth is her mother and Daniel is her step father.)

Jenny next appears in the 1880 census, two years after the terrible lynching of he father and two brothers, residing in Evansville, Indiana, about twenty miles east of Mount Vernon. She is married to Thomas Lindsay, and has three children, the eldest being Mary, age 7, which would suggest her marriage was around 1872, when Jenny was perhaps 20 years old.

That same year, 1880, her widowed mother Elizabeth Harris is also living in Evansville, with most of her surviving children.

Recall that Jenny’s story refers to the male slaveowner as “Mr. Harris,” born in Ireland. The first white wife, who taught Jenny to read and write, died, and then Mr. Harris remarried, to a much less sympathetic white wife. The 1850 and 1860 slave schedules hardly ever list names of slaves, but do give sexes, age, and whether or not the individual is “black” or “mulatto.” Ideally, if all the details of Jenny’s story are correct, we would find a Kentucky slaveowner from Ireland named Harris, who married twice. owning a female adult mulatta and a child female mulatta, born around 1852.

About ten whites born in Ireland named Harris resided in Kentucky in 1850, none of them slaveowners. The 1850 slave schedule lists over 100 slaveowners with the surname Harris in the state of Kentucky. How might we narrow down the list?

Option 1: Thomas D. Harris

The Find a Grave site has Jennie Lindsay’s brother Robert Harrison Sr (1857-1940) lists his parents as likely coming from Hopkinsville, in Christian County, Kentucky.

The 1850 slave schedule records a Thomas D Harris in District 1 of Christian County, KY (about 120 miles south of Mount Vernon, Indiana). owning nine slaves. No adult mulatta female are listed, although there is a six year old female mulatta, who might be of interest. The 1860 slave schedule lists seven slaves, including a 38 year old black female, and a 17 year old female mulatta, born around 1843. Thomas Harris was born in Rockbridge County, Virginia, not Ireland. He married Sophia Harris, on 27 November 1841. An earlier marriage record in Grant County, KY, from 22 Februrary 1841, suggests her full name was Sophia Skirvin. In the 1850 and 1860 censuses, Thomas and Sophia are listed without children. Thomas D. Harris is not an entirely satisfactory candidate, in part because there is no sign of remarriage, and the mulatta female child seems too old, but he cannot be ruled out.

Option 2: David B. Harris

A possible hint is that Jennie Lindsay’s birth certificate lists her mother Elizabeth, born around 1837 in Kentucky, with the maiden name of Wagner, which might imply she or her mother had been owned by a Wagner family at some point. The 1850 slave schedule lists about 40 slaveowners named Wagner across the slave states, although none are in Kentucky.

There is however a cluster of four slave owners in 1850 with the surname “Wagoner” in Breckenridge County, Kentucky, (William Wagoner, Benjamin Wagoner, Richard Wagoner.) As it happens, there are two Harris slave-owners in Breckenridge County in 1850: Nathan Harris owns only one slave, while David B Harris, born 1815 in Virginia, owns 16 slaves, all male, with the exception of a 32 year old black female. Harris, listed as a tobacconist in the 1850 Federal population schedule, appears to be unmarried, residing in the home of the local postmaster. I do not, however, see a clear reference to David Harris in the 1860 census or slave schedule.

Option 3: Addison Jefferson Harris (Union County, KY)

Another possible hint is that in 1880, a black woman named Garbrile Harris resided in Evansville, Indiana, with her adult daughters Mary Dunegan and Jane Butter, and their respective children. This same family resided ten years earlier in Morganfield, Union County, Kentucky, about forty miles sounth of Evansville, Indiana. Were these Harris families all connected, and did Daniel and Elizabeth and their children also come from Union County? In Union County, KY, there is only one slaveowner with mulatto slaves in 1850, A J Harris (Addison Jefferson Harris) owns five slaves: Male, age 45, black; Male, 35, mulatto’ Female,30, mulatto; Female, 6, mulatto; Female, 1, mulatto.

His neighbor, Thomas Harris, owns ten slaves.

In 1860, Addison Jefferson Harris own only one slave, a male, age 18, which does not seem consistent with Jenny’s story, unless the individuals in question were manumitted prior to 1860.

We will continue to explore possible scenarios related to the antebellum story of Jennie Harris (later Lindsay)

My students at Mount Holyoke College and I have been enormously moved to learn of the memorial event held in October 2022, in Mount Vernon, Posey County Indiana, to commemorate the racial terror lynching of seven African American men in October 1878. Propelled by the activist work of local high school student Sophie Kloppenburg, the County has dedicated a plaque and bench honoring the seven murdered men. The memorial signage, it should be noted, avoids the word “lynching.” For all its limitations, the memorial is an impressive step forward, given the long history of racial inequality and inequity in this part of southern Indiana.

Five of the seven murdered victims are also commemorated in the the Equal Justice Initiative’s Memorial to Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, through a vertical steel marker honoring the victims of lynching in the state of Indiana. (In most instances at the EJI Memorial, victims of racial terror lynching are honored through markers dedicated to a single county, but in the case of Indiana, all victims are represented on a single marker of the entire state. ) The EJI Memorial only lists a “Dan Harris,” not distinguishing between Daniel Sr and Daniel Jr, and does not reference John Harris at all.

Photograph of Four of the Lynched Victims

Like other spectacle lynchings of this era, this mass killing was captured in a deeply disturbing photograph, archived at the Rose Library of Emory University (Robert Langmuir African American Photograph Collection) at: https://digital.library.emory.edu/catalog/3246q573t7-cor

The photographer was clearly Leroy William Jones, (29 JAN 1843 -11 JUN 1921), who had a photographic studio in Mount Vernon, Indiana, from at least 1880 onward. He was a  Civil War veteran, member of Company C, 25th Indiana Infantry Volunteers

The Mt Vernon Dollar Democrat, in October 1878, advertises the sale of copies of the photograph: “Mr. Jones, our artist, took photographs of the four Negroes lynched by the vigilants [sic] last Friday night. It is an excellent representation of the tragic scene.Mr. Jones has copies for sale.” Source: https://jamesmredwine.com/1878-lynchings-pogrom/published-in-2005/

I learned about these commemorative efforts through my cousin through marriage, Ben Uchitelle, who has played a leading role in the memorial committee. As Ben notes, his great-grandfather Benjamin Lowenhaupt, who lived in Mount Vernon in 1878, may well have witnessed the hanged bodies of four of the victims on the Courthouse Square during the full day that they were gruesomely on display. (I have recently written on Benjamin Lowenhaupt’s father (Ben Uchitelle’s great great grandfather) Isaac Lowenhaupt, who owned enslaved people in Vicksburg, Mississippi in the late antebellum period.)

Ben and other committee members have expressed interest in tracing the descendants of the seven lynched individuals, and inviting descendants to participate, if they so wish, in the necessary, difficult conversations about historical accountability and truth-telling that are so urgently needed.

Since I have worked extensively on African American family history, as well as the history of racial terror lynching, I thought that my students and I might partner with the Mount Vernon community to try to trace descendants. Here are my initial notes towards that process.

Overview

Seven black men in total were murdered by white lynchers during October 9-11 1878. Daniel Harrison Sr. , Jim Good, William Chambers, Edward Warner. and Jeff Hopkins, who were all brutally lynched in front of the courthouse on October 11, 1878. Two sons of Daniel Harrison Sr., Dan Harrison Jr. and John Harrison, were murdered by lynchers during the days that preceded the courthouse massacre. Some contemporary accounts identify the three dead Harrison men as having the surname “Harris.” As noted below, I think it possible that the man identified as “Edward Warner: was in fact “William Edwards.”

I consider, in turn, the descendants or collateral relatives of :

—Jeff Hopkins,

—Daniel Sr Harris (Harrison) and his sons Daniel Jr and John

—Jim Good

–the question of Ed Warner or William Edwards

—William Chambers,

As we shall see, descent lines are clear for Jeff Hopkins and the Harris/Harrison extended family; the family histories of Jim Good, Ed Warner (William Edwards?) . and William Chambers are somewhat less clear.

____________________________
The Family of Jeff Hopkins

Jeff Hopkins was lynched by hanging in front of the Posey County Courthouse on October 11, 1878. Moments before his murder, he affirmed his innocence and emphasized that he had a wife and five children.

Jeff Hopkins appears in the 1870 census living in Black township, Posey County, Indiana; he is born in 1842 in Kentucky and married to Pheba Hopkins, born in Kentucky in 1841. He resides with their son Fredric Hopkins, born 1860 in Missouri; a daughter, Gabrella Hopkins, born 1864 in Kentucky; a son Abe Hopkins, born 1867 in Kentucky; a son, US Grant Hopkins, clearly named for the Union General Ulysses S. Grant, born 1869 in Indiana.

Also living in this household is the 17 year old young woman Florida Hopkins, born 1852 in Kentucky. Given the ages listed it is possible that Florida is a daughter of Jeff and Pheba Hopkins, or perhaps she is Jeff’s sister. She might perhaps be the enslaved female child born in 1855 in Washington, Kentucky, the property of Wilson H. Jones, listed in state records.

Note: In a different post I discuss the possible slavery background of Jeff and Pheba Hopkins.

We should note that of these minors, Florida, Fredric and Gabrella were probably born in slavery, while Abe and US Grant were born in freedom. The location and ages would suggest that the Hopkins family came from Kentucky into Posey County, Indiana at some point after 1867, when Abe was born, and before 1869, when US Grant was born.

According to the 1880 census, none of the surviving members of the Jeff and Phebe Hopkins household were residing in Posey County two years after the lynching. For understandable reasons, they appear to have vacated the county. The only black person remaining in the county with the surname Hopkins is Dick Hopkins, born 1853 in Kentucky, residing in 1880 in Lynn township, Posey County, listed as a servant in the household of the white woman Jane Stallings. Perhaps he was kin to Jeff Hopkins.

At least five Hopkins family members by 1880 resided in the city of Chicago. 280 miles north of Mount Vernon. According to the 1880 census, Jeff and Pheba’s daughter Gabriella Hopkins resides at 1433 State Street, in the household of Alexander Partlow (listed in 1880 as born Tennessee, but according to later records born in Lake Saint Joseph, Tensas Parrsh, Louisiana) and his wife Rebecca (born Kentucky). Alexander Partlow or Pardlow had married Rebecca Jenkins in Chicago on 10 Jun 1874. Garbriella is listed as the ‘”niece” of the household head Alexander. Since Gabriella’s parents Jeff and Phebe were both born in Kentucky, it seems reasonable to surmise that Rebecca Jenkins Pardlow was the sister of either Jeff or Pheba. It seems likely that after the lynching, Rebecca invited her nieces and nephews to come to Chicago from Mount Vernon.

Rebecca Jenkins Partlow dies 30 May 1888. Her death records indicates she was born in Boyd County, Kentucky, in the northeastern corner of the state, about 300 miles east of Posey County, Indiana. She is buried in Oak Woods Cemetery, Chicago. Her husband Alexander dies seven months later, 2 Jan 1889, and is also buried in Oak Woods.

According to the the 1910 census, Alexander and Rebecca Partlow have two sons, John F. age 5, and Albert, four months old, who must be Gabriella’s cousins, either through her mother or father. John Fredrick Hamilton, a musician, married Harriet “Hattie” Hamilton on 2 November 1897, He died in 1906. It is not clear if the couple had children.

In turn, Albert Partlow married on 20 Dec 1905 to Anabell McAbee. He worked as a laborer in a warehouse and died 31 May 1920. The couple had two children, Elmer Parlow (b 1907) and Earl Partlow (b. 1908). I have not yet traced their descendants.

Returning to the 1880 census, four blocks away from the home of the Partlow’s and Gabriella Hopkins, Gabriella’s brother Fredric Hopkins and Abram Hopkins, reside at 1813 State Street, as boarders in the household of George Watkins, a black laborer. Fred, employed as a waiter in a hotel, is listed as suffering from dropsy (edema); his 13 year old brother Abraham is employed as a servant. Abraham may also appear as a 12 year black servant the same year, in the household of the white wholesale grocer Sylvester Sibley, residing about eight blocks away, at 1531 Michigan Avenue.

There is an Abraham Hopkins in 1887 listed as a “colored laborer” residing in Quincy, Illinois, 300 miles southwest of Chicago; he may be the same young man. I do not see a further reference to Abraham,

Five years after the lynching, on 23 July 1883, in Chicago, Fred Hopkins, residing at 2125 Clark St, marries Mary Sheedy. The couple evidently has a daughter, Bertha, one month later. On 20 June 1898, Fred marries Clara Yancy. In 1900, Fred is at 2528 La Salle St, Chicago, working as a teamster. His wife Clara Hopkins, is listed as born in Wisconsin. Fred has a 16 year old daughter, Bertha Hopkins, b Aug 1883. by a previous marriage or relationship with a woman born in Ireland, presumably Fred’s first wife, Mary Sheedy, who may be deceased at this point. Fred Hopkins is listed as a Private in the First World War, with his wife Clara as next of kin. Fred and Clara Hopkins appear in the 1930 census in Chicago, with Fred’s occupation is salesman.

On 21 Nov 1906, Clara and Fred Hopkins had a son, Albert Hopkins, also listed as Alfred, The child died age 13, on 26 Jan 1919. The child’s death certificate, it is interesting to note, records Fred Hopkins as born in Mount Vernon Indiana, and Clara as born in Beloit, Wisconsin.

The 1923 city directory records Fred Hopkins as residing at 4318 Evans Street, Chicago, on the South Side and working as a salesman for a grocery store. His wife Clara is listed as a laundress for a private family. Fred dies 11 August 1932, and is buried in Thornton, Cook County, Illinois. It is interesting to note that in his death record, his mother’s name is recorded as “Rebecca.” Presumably, this is a reference to his aunt Rebecca Jenkins Partlow, who may have helped raise him after he and his siblings made their way to Chicago after the lynching of their father.

Clara Hopkins is listed in the 1950 census as a widow; I am not sure of her death year.

On 31 December 1901, Bertha M Hopkins (the daughter of Fred Hopkins) married John B Stoball, a teamster, who died in 1909 in Chicago. The couple were married by Henry(?) H White, a Baptist Minister. I do not see a record of the couple having children. I am not sure what became of Bertha Hopkins Stoball, the grand-daughter of Jeff Hopkins.

The Chicago death records also records Fred’s sister, “Gabrella Hopkins” as living at this same address, 4318 Evans, Chicago (in the North Kenwood neighborhood of the South Side). She is listed as daughter of Jeff Hopkins, died in Chicago on 9 August 1929 and was buried 13 August in Mt Glenwood Cemetery, Thornton, Cook County, IL. Her occupation is listed as housework. Her birth place is recorded as “Mount Vernon, Illinois,” which must be a slight mistake. At this same address, 4318 Evans, as noted. above resides Fred Hopkins

Gabrella is not listed in the 1923 Chicago city directory. However, a black “Gabriella Hopkins” resides in 1922 at 303 Chesterfield in Nashville, Tennessee, working as a domestic, according to the city directory. Perhaps she returned late in life to Chicago to reside with her brother Fred and sister in law Clara.

Fred’s widow, Clara Hopkins, in turn, appears in the 1950 census as a widow, in Chicago. It does not appear that Clara and Fred had a child other than Albert. They thus may not have left behind any descendants.

Returning to the ,1880 census, when Fred and Abe Hopkins were living at 1813 State street, two other Hopkins family members were living nine blocks away, at 963 State Street in downtown Chicago. They resided in the household of a black man, William Davis (b. 1850, Missouri). The former Florida Hopkins is now William Davis’ wife, “Florida Davis,” born about 1856 (that is to say four years older than the Florida Hopkins listed in the 1870 census). Also residing in this household is Grant Hopkins, age 10 (born about 1870), born in Indiana, with a listing that his father was born in Kentucky. This boy must be the same person as the one year old named “US Grant Hopkins,” the youngest son of Jeff and Phebe Hopkins, in the 1870 census in Mount Vernon. Although listed as a “boarder,” he must have been taken in by Florida, who must be either his aunt or elder sister.

Grant Hopkins, laborer, born 1870, dies 30 November 1888, at age 18, at St. Luke’s Hospital, and is buried at Oakwood Cemetery; this seems likely be “our” Grant Hopkins, youngest child of Jeff Hopkins.

Grant’s sister or aunt Florida (Hopkins) Davis does seem to appear in the 1900 census, as the widowed “Flaurida Davis,” residing at 456 60th street, Chicago. She is listed as born in Kentucky (with her mother also born in Kentucky) in 1862 (that is say a good deal later than the listings in the 1870 and 1880 censuses,) She is living with her 14 year old daughter Flora Davis, born in Illinois in December 1886.

. It is interesting that living adjacent to them, according to the 1900 census, in the same house number is an Ella Hopkins, a single women born in Indiana in October 1873, with her nephew Raymond Hopkins, born in Illinois in September 1887, It seems likely that Ella Hopkins is somehow kin to Jeff Hopkins.

Flora Davis evidently married Stanley Tarver (b. 1899 in Indiana), a cooper in a barrel factory, in the early 1920s; she lived until 1959. Through their son Stanley James Tarver (1925-1997), Flora and Stanley have multiple descendants, many of whom are still alive.

I have not yet been able to trace Phebe Hopkins, the widow of Jeff Hopkins; Given that the death record of Fred Hopkins lists his mother’s name as “Rebecca,” an evident reference to his aunt Rebecca Jenkins Partlow, it seems a reasonable inference that Phebe died soon after the lynching, and that responsibility for raising the children fell to Rebecca and Florida Hopkins.

The Harris (Harrison) Family

Contemporary newspaper accounts reference the father and two sons killed in October 1878 as either having the surname “Harris” or “Harrison.” The 1870 census lists no “Harrisons” in Posey County in 1870, but residing in Black Township, Mount Vernon, Posey County, about eight households from Jeff Hopkins was Daniel Harris, age 33 (born about 1837), married to Elizabeth Harris, age 31, with children Jane, 18, Nicy, 16, John H, 14, Roberts 12, Daniel 11, Jacob 9, Elizabeth 5, Emma 4, and Fannie, 1. (According to one contemporary account Daniel Sr stated, just before his death, that he was married with eight children.) The fact that his daughter Elizabeth Harris was born in 1865 in Kentucky, and the next child, Emma, was born in Indiana in 1866, suggests that the family likely moved to Posey County just after the Civil War. (As noted below, circumstantial evidence suggests that the family may have come from the vicinity of Morganfield, Union County, Kentucky, about 20 miles south of Mount Vernon).

On the night of October 10, James Redwine asserts, burned alive in the furnace steam engine of a railroad train locomotive, after he attempted to escape his killers by hopping a train. When armed white men came to seize his brother John on the night of October 10, their father Daniel Harris, Sr. resisted by shooting a shotgun.. Daniel Sr. was wounded in the encounter and then later his body was hacked to pieces by the lynch mob at the courthouse. .

The fact that in October 1878 Daniel Harris Sr. capably defended himself with a shotgun when he was attacked in his home might suggest he had military training. It may be significant that several African American men named Daniel Harris served in the Union Army during the Civil War. One enlisted in Chattanooga TN and served in 44th US Colored Infantry (Co. D), Another served in the 8th US Colored Infantry, Co. D. (Two other men named Daniel Harris served in the 32nd and 52nd US Colored Infantry, respectively, but but both died of disease in the service. )

The 1880 census, enumerated two years after the lynching, shows that the widowed Elizabeth Harris has moved her family 20 miles east to Evansville, Indiana, residing at 23 Franklin Street (p. 30 in the census). Some of the children seen in 1870, Robert, Jacob, Lisl (Elizbeth?), and Emma, are still residing with her, joined by a son Henry, age 24. Jane and Nicy, however, are missing. The household also consists of two granddaughters of Elizabeth Harris, Musi (?) Colbner, age 6, and Sarah Colbner, age 4, both listed as mulatta. The two granddaughters are presumably related to Fredrick Colbner (born Germany 1822) and his wife Elizabeth Colbner (b. 1828, Germany) who in 1860 resided in Black township, Mount Vernon, Posey County, Indiana, the same township in which the Harris family resided in the 1870s. In the 1860 census, the Colbners had two sons Fredrick and Jacob, and it is possible that one of them married (or had a liaison with) a daughter of Elizabeth and Daniel Harris, perhaps Jane or Nicy, and that Musi and Sarah thus bear his surname.

In reference to the confusion of the names “Harris” and “Harrison”, it should be noted that the 1880 Evansville City Directory lists Elizabeth “Harris,” as a widow, but that the 1882 Evansville City directory lists Elizabeth’s surname as “Harrison, “still residing at 23 East Franklin, listing her as a “widow.” In turn, the 1895 Evansville city directory, lists, “Elizabeth Harrison, col, widow of Daniel,” “as residing at 16 E Nevada in Evansville.

By 1910, Elizabeth Harrison is once again living in Mount Vernon, with her son Robert Harrison and his children. It is possible, that like many other African Americans, she had fled Evansville after the notorious July 1903 massacre (the so called “race riot’).

Children of Daniel Harris Sr and Elizabeth Wagner Harris (Harrison)

What became of Jane Harris. daughter of Daniel Sr and Elizabeth Harris, born c. 1852, who is listed as a mulatta in the 1870 census? I see two possible candidates:

(1) According to the 1880 census, a Jane Butter, born 1852, widowed, is residing in Evansville, with her “mother” Gabrilla Harris. and infant daughter Georgette Butter, in the household of Jane’s “sister” Mildred Dunega, who must be Gabrilla Harris’s daugther, residing at the rear of 412 3rd Avenue, Evansville.

Ten years earlier, according to the 1870 census, most of this Harris family was residing in Morganfield, Union County, Kentucky., about twenty miles south of Mount Vernon, in the household of the white woman Margaret (Davis) Berry (the widow of Peter Davis) and her son John, a druggist. Gabrilla Hopkins is listed with her daughters Mary, age 18, and Nancy 10. Millie Dunegan is listed with her daughter Amy, age 3. There is no reference to a Jane.

In 1860, the late Peter Berry (who died 22 April 1869) owned 29 slaves in Morganfield, Union County, Kentucky, In 1850, he had owned 19 slaves. It seems quite possible that Gabrilla and her daughters were all enslaved on the Berry plantation, and continued to work for the Berry’s after emancipation.

I am unsure where the name “Butter” might come from: there was a George Butter, a white butcher, residing elsewhere in the county during the period, so perhaps infant Georgette was named for him.

In his book, Judge Lynch, James Redwine asserts that at some point in Mount Vernon prior to the lynching, an illicit affair took place between Daniel Harris Jr and a married white woman, Sarah Jones, resulting in the birth of a little girl, and that Daniel Jr.’s sister Jane Harris (whom he described as nearly passing for white) agreed to raise her niece as her own child. I am not sure what evidence Redwine has for this, since his book is structured as a historical novel and is not clearly sourced. A\

If Redwine’s account is correct, it may be that Jane and the baby were at some point moved to Evansville to reside with Gabrielle Harris, whom told the census enumerator that Jane was her daughter.

(That may suggest that Daniel Harris came from the Union County, KY area. As it happens, the 1860 slave schedule lists multiple slaveowners with the surname Harris in Union County; so it is possible that Daniel and Elizabeth Harris were enslaved by one of these slaveowners. Only one of these, Addison Jefferson Harris, has slaves in 1850 who are identified as mulatto, which may be significant. The Harris plantation was in District 2 of Union County, the same district as the Berry Plantation referenced above.

2. An alternative possibility for Jane Harris in the 1880 census is the woman identified as “Jennie Lindsay” (b 1852-d. 6 October 1932 enumerated in Evansville (p. 1) in the 1880 census. Her 1932 death certificate in Evansville, Indiana identifies her parents as Daniel Harrison and Elizabeth Wagner. She married Thomas Lindsay around 1870.

The children of Thomas and Jennie Lindsay include:

Mayme Lindsay, b. 1873-d, 27 October 1945 in Evansville. She married James R. Porter, and is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery.

Mary Lindsay Smith , born December 1873. By 1900, she was widowed, having lost her only child, and was living with parents on Williams Street.

Robert William Lindsay, born 10 July 1876. In 1910 he was residing with his wife Minnie, his mother Jennifer, and his sister Elizabeth (Mons). His World War I draft registration card lists him at 2330 Calumet in Chicago IL., laboring in the stock yards. He died 24 April 1929 in Chicago and is buried in Mt Greenwood cemetery. His death certificate indicates his mother Jennie Harris was born in Louisville, Kentucky.

Daniel Lindsay, born 1880, d. 21 Nov 1910 in Evansville.

Lucy Lindsay, b. 1883

Julia Lindsay, b. Sep 23, 1884-d. 1937. Her first husband was Nathaniel Coates in Evansville, Indiana. She later took the married name Watson. By 1930 she resided in Chicago, with her children Jennie, Charles, Tom and Rudolf. Jennie later married Thomas Wilson.

Elizabeth Lindsay Carter, b. 30 Jun 1888.

The 1895 Evansville City Directory lists Thomas Lindsay, colored laborer, as living at 503 1/2 Williams Street, along with his son Robert W. Lindsay, also a colored laborer. His daughter Mary Lindsay, a teacher, boards at 602 Cherry. The 1910 city directory for Evansville records siblings Robert, Daniel, Lucy, and Julia LIndsay also residing at 932 Cherry. (Robert must have moved to Chicago soon afterwards)

Among Jennie Harris Lindsay’s distinguished descendants was the noted artist and arts instructor, Fred Robert Wilson (1937-2012) See his 1990 ceramic head sculpture at: https://romaarellano.com/listing/690163089/1990-raku-pottery-face-vase-by-fred (And there is a moving video on his pottery teaching techniques.) Fred Robert Wilson’s son Andre Wilson, an accomplished poet and prose writer, has written brilliantly on family narratives of racial violence and performed works based on ancestral stories about Jenny’s childhood during slavery times. In another post, I discuss one of these performance piece, The Story of the Black Cat.

Returning to the other children of Daniel Sr and ELizabeth Harris or Harrison, the 1900 census records Robert “Harrison”, born December 1858, at 1211 Harrison Street, Mount Vernon, IN, who is clearly the same person as Robert Harris, the son of Daniel Sr and Elizabeth Harris. Employed as a laborer in a brickyard, he resides with his wife Maggie (Margaret Robinson), whom he married in 1883, and with their children Elizabeth, age 17, Eugene, 14, Robert, 12, Homer D, 7, Owen D, age 5. The same family is recorded at the same address in the 1910 census, now joined by Robert’s mother, listed as “Elizabeth Harrison”, widowed, born Kentucky around 1840. So after some years away from the town where her husband and two sons were lynching, Elizabeth evidently made the decision to return to Mount Vernon., perhaps because of the trauma of the Evansville massacre of 1903 By 1920, however, Robert Harrison, his wife Elizabeth, their daughter Emma F, their grandsons Vernon, Emmanuel and Alfred, and mother Elizabeth Harrison were all residing in Danville, Vermillion County, Illinois.

Robert and Margaret Harrison’s daughter Blizabeth B (“Lizzy”) Harrison died,of pneumonia, in Mount Vernon on 2 March 1904, at age 20, and is buried in the Mount Vernon Emancipation Cemetery. Although buried under the name Harrison, her death certificate lists her as married under the surname Bradbury, which might be a married name, although a husband is not listed.

Robert and Margaret son Robert Harrison Jr, born 7 July 1887, in Mount Vernon. His 1917-18 World War I registration form records him living at 528 Johnston St in Danville, Illinois, working as a railroad track labor. He is single and the sole support of his six year old son. The 1930 census shows him working as a laborer for a fertilizer company. married to Ella Harrison, living at 1502 Arnold Street, Chicago, IL , with children Mae, age 5, Lazzieh, age 4, Elmer, age 1, and Eugene, 4 months. Robert Harrison died in Chicago, 13 Dec 1937.

The 1940 census records Robert’s widow Ella Harrison residing at 1133 Wentworth Avenue, Chicago Heights, Bloom township, Cook County, Illinois, with her daughter Bertha (perhaps the same person as Mae in the 1930 census?), son Lazzira (?), son Elmer, daughter Eugene, son Arnold, and daughter Arba Della (?), age 3. The 1950 census shows the family in the same address, now joined by grandsons Ernest and Otis.

According to the 1940, and 1950 censuses Robert and Margaret Harrison’s son Eugene Harrison is working as a night watchman, single, in Los Angels, California, never having married. He dies 24 May 1956 in Los Angeles.

In turn, Robert and Margaret’s son Owen David Harrison, born 2 December 1894 in Mount Vernon, was a veteran of both World War I and World War II. In the Second World War, he enlisted on 15 August 1942 and served as a 1st Sergeant in the US Army. The 1950 census lists his wife as Hazel Harrison but at the end of the life, there must have been some concern over the legality of their union, since at age 73 he received a marriage license to wed Hazel Augusta Kiowa on 12 August 1967 in Yavapai, Arizona. He died the next day, in the V.A. Hospital.

An African American man named Henry Harris, born July 1860, is recorded in the 1900 census, residing at 711 Darnell, Indianapolis, with sons Jim H Harris, 14, and Carey M Harris, 13. This may be the Henry, born about 1856, the son of Daniel Sr and Elizabeth Harris.

The Harris/Harrison Extended Family

Daniel Harris seems to have had kin in the vicinity. In 1870, in Black Township, Mount Vernon, about thirteen households away from Daniel, was residing the African American couple, Reuben and Parnesa (McGill) Harris, both born in Kentucky. They had married in Kentucky, 21 January 1869. Reuben served as a Private in the 88th US Colored Infantry during the Civil War.

Also, African American man, Charles Harris, born 1847 in Kentucky, married an Eliza Jenkins in Mount Vernon, Posey County, Indiana on 5 September 1867. The couple was still residing in Mount Vernon in 1880, two years after the lynching, with the following children: Georgiana, Eva, Albert, Augustus, Mattie, Hattie, Fredonius. (Redwine in Judge Lynch identifies Charles Harris as the brother of Daniel Harris, Sr.)

Of possible significance, recall that Rebecca Jenkins Partlow in Chicago after the lynching clearly looked after the children of Jeff and Phobe Hopkins. Might she have been kin to Eliza Jenkins Harris, the wife of Charles Harris?

It may be that Elizabeth Harris moved to Evansville, to be close to her late husband’s kin. As noted above, there is some evidence that Gabrilla Harris, residing in Evansville in 1880, was perhaps a sister of Daniel Harris, Sr. The 1870 census records an African American woman, Julia Harris residing in Evansville Ward 2. She is born around 1820 in Kentucky, and is working as a domestic, residing in the household of the black farm laborer Phillip Long. Living with her is 13 year old Celia Harris, her daughter. Perhaps Julia and Celia Harris are kin to Daniel Sr, Daniel Jr, and John Harris?

The 1876 Evansville City Directory records Julia Harris as widow, residing south of Taylor and east of Campbell The 1880 census, enumerated two years after the lynching, records Julia Harris still residing in Evansville, on 179 Taylor Street. (although the 1880 city directory gives the address as 21 Taylor Street). Living with her are her children Celia Harris and David Harris (born 1862, Kentucky). The 1882 Evansville ,city directory shows her and her daughter Celia at 21 Taylor Street. David Harris, coachman, works at 9 Chandler Street. Julia is still at 21 Taylor Street in 1889. David, now a porter, resides at 1014 Upper Road. Julia is still at 21 Taylor Street in 1895. She dies in Evansville on 8 Aug 1898

We now turn to more speculative pathways, involving the three other victims of the murders:

Jim Good

It seems likely that Jim Good or Goode, the first of the four victims to be hanged from a tree in the courthouse square on 11 October 1878, is the same person as the James Good who married Emily Hensley in January 1875 in Posey county, Indiana. I do not know if the couple had any children,

Two years after the lynching, on 27 December 1880, the widowed Emily married widower and farmer Frank Odem, a Black Civil War veteran in Mount Vernon, who served as Corporal in the 14th US Colored Infantry Regiment (Co. F). The 1900 and 1910 censuses record the couple residing in Point Township, Posey County, with her name listed as Emiline. The 1900 census indicates she has had four children, all four still living; the 1910 census records three children born, none still living. (I do not know if any of these children were fathered by Jim Good, or if they had any descendants). Emaline Hensley Good Odem died 14 April 1913 of accidental drowning in the Ohio River,. Her death certificate lists her birthplace and that of parents as Harrisburg, Illinois, about 40 miles southwest of Mount Vernon, Indiana. She may have been born in May 1848 or May 1850; she is buried in the Independent Order of Odd Fellows cemetery in Posey County. Her husband Frank died in a veterans hospital in Washington DC in 1918 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

The lynching victim Jim Good would seem to be the same person as James L Good, born 1857 in Kentucky, listed as 13 year old male in the 1870 census in Center, Jennings, Indiana, about 175 miles northeast of Mount Vernon. Evidently the son of Merrit and Georgiantha Good, he resides with his apparent siblings Archy (Archibald), Merrit, Hulbert, Randle Bowen, Elizabeth Bowen, and Georgiana.

[As I note in another post, it appears the Good family had been enslaved in or around Campbellsburg, Henry County, Kentucky, during the antebellum period, by either Samuel (Lemuel) Goode or his brother Richard Goode, with a possible connection as well to the slaveowner Burket Johnston Bowen.]

In the 1880 census Merritt Good and his wife Georgia Good are still living in Center township, Jennings County, with four children (Archebald, William, Betty,Bown, Randle Bowen) and one grandchild (Emma Bowen), the evident daughter of Randle Bowen. Yet there is no sign of James residing in Center or elsewhere in the 1880 census. Young Merrit Jr is also missing.

James L. Good’s brother Randle Bowen, b. 1850 Kentucky, in 1880 is listed in the Merrit Good Sr household as a Blacksmith, widowed. On 18 July 1872 he had married Martha Valentine, a domestic servant, born in Abbeville, South Carolina. As early as 1850, Martha and her parents Samuel Valentine and Caroline Dunlap Valentine are listed as free people of color in Jennings County, Indiana. Martha Valentine Good must have died between 1875 and 1880 since Randle is listed in 1880 as a widower. He is raising Emma Bowen, born 1875. evidently the couple’s daughter. I do not see a clear subsequent reference to Randle or his daughter Emma.

After the 1880 census, I do not see clear references to James L. Good’s sister Elizabeth (Betsy) Randle. After the 1870 census I do not see a reference to his sister Georgiantha Bowen.

Nor, after the 1870 census do I see a clear reference to their siblings Merrit Good, Jr. or Houlbert (Halbert?) Good.

James L. Good’s brother Archy (Archibald) lived the rest of his life in Jennings County, Indiana. On 10 December 1885, he married Elizabeth (Lizzie) Constant, who died 9 June 1898. Descendants recall that Elizabeth Constant brought into the marriage a little girl, Debbie Constant Good, c. 1883-1963, who was adopted by Archibald Good. Debbie Good married Austin Bonds, 1 July 1900 in Lawrence, Indiana, and the couple appears to have had eleven children. One of these was Clifford Bonds (Sr.), 1904-1975, who married Ruby McElwain.

A year after the death of his first wife Elizabeth, Archibald Good married Ann Lucinda Easton (or Lyle) on 12 July 1899 in Vernon, Jennings County. (His wedding record lists his birth place as Campbellsburg, Henry County, Kentucky.) Their daughter Pearl Esther was born 29 March 1900. Pearl Esther Good later married Robert Sadler and lived in North Vernon, Jennings County. until her death 4 Feb 1953; her husband lived there until 1987. It is not clear if the couple had children; Robert Sadler’s obituary mentions him being survived by nieces and nephews.

Another brother of James L. Good (evidently by a different mother) was Warren Good (born October 1845 in Kentucky, died 8 JULY 1916 in North Vernon, Jennings County, Indiana) who married Teresa Johnson. Their children included Charles Goode, 1846-1926; Nellie Good, 1872-1963; Melvin Good, 1872-1963; Frank Good 1877-1934; Joseph Lunsford Goode, 1879-1958; Clarence Goode 1882-1913; and Cara Good, born 1884.

Melvin Good married Ellen Nora Easton (1873-1940). Their children included Carlos Good, b. 1901; Mildred Good, b, 1902, Merrill Vivian Good Coleman, born 1906; Russell Good, b 1909, Oswald Good, b 1910; Bernetta Good, b. 1912.

Miss Merrill Vivian Good (whose married names were Coleman and Frazier) had at least one child, Mr. Melbert A Good, b. 20 MAR 1925 • North Vernon, Jennings, Indiana; d.18 APR 1994 • Seymour, Jackson, Indiana), who retrained his mother’s natal name. Melbert married Pauline Evelyn Booker ( 1925-1986). The couple had at least five children.

Another son of Warren and Teresa Good was Joseph Lunsford Good, 1879-1958, who married Mary Cooper. Their daughter was Edna Maria Goode, 1910-1998, who married Jesse Watkins. Their children including Gayland Watkins, 1931-1995; Jesetta Maria Watkins, 1939-1998; Rosemary Teresa Watkins, 1942-2017, who married Harry Phillip Oldham.

Another son of Warren and Teresa Good was Clarence Good, 1882-1913 who married Ida Taylor. Their children included Donald, Clare, Hazel, Alice, William, Edith, Jay.

________

Ed Warner?

The Indiana State Sentinel (Wednesday, 16 Oct 1878, p. 1) in racist language references “Ed Warner,” as “a young, slim, slouchy looking boy of 21, coal black.” If the age given is correct, then the victim would have been born around 1857.

The 1870 census lists four black men named “Edward Warner,” in the United States:

1, one in Baltimore, Maryland (b. 1848), who also appears in the 1880 census, and can thus be eliminated.

2. one in Iberia, Louisiana (. 1861), who also appears in the 1880 census

3. one in Philadelphia, PA (born 1865), who also appears in the 1880 census

4. one in Chattanooga, TN (b. Virginia, 1862, hence five years younger than the victim described in the Indiana Sentinel). He is not clearly listed in the 1880 census.

The 1870 census also lists a William Warner, born 1856 in Kentucky, listed as attending school and residing with his parents Willis D and Mary R (Elliot) Warner, in Indianapolis Ward 5 in 1870. The couple had married on 21 Oct 1857. He is not evident in the 1880 census.

Of possible significance, the 1880 census lists a widowed African American woman Anna Warner, born c. 1843 in Kentucky, residing with her 16 year old son Richard Warner, a servant, (also born in Kentucky, c. 1864) in Evansville, Vanderburgh County, Indiana, to which, as noted, many Mount Vernon African American families after the lynching. Ann Warner and her son Richard board in the household of Sarah Thompson, mulatto, at 233 Sixth Street; she works as a house cleaner. Anna and Richard are not clearly visible in the 1870 census, so perhaps they had a different surname than Warner at that point. Anna Warner died 7 September 1890 in Evansville, at age 48, and is buried in Locust Hill Cemetery. In 1909, a Richard Warner, “colored”, is listed as residing at 625 McCormick avenue Evansville., in the same household as Fred Warner, a “Colored” teamster and Fred’s wife Jennie.

William Edwards?

Speculatively, might “Ed Warner” have been misidentified in some contemporary accounts and the recent markers? A highly racist account in The Indiana State Sentinel. 16 Oct 1878, Page 8, refers variously to an “Ed Warner” and a 21 year old man called “Edwards.” Is it possible that the victim was in fact William Edwards, born around 1861, so around 17 at the time of the lynching? In the 1870 census, William Edwards is listed in Black Township, Posey County, the same community as Jeff Hopkins. He is the son of Simon Edwards (1827-21 June 1901), a Civil War veteran who had served in the 8th Colored Heavy Artillery Regiment (Company H), and who married to Matilda Bracknage. William’s siblings in 1870 are listed as Margaret, age 15, Elias, age 12, Louisa, 11, Tisha (Letitia), 7, Harriet, 2, and Simon, age 1.

In the 1880 census (two years after the lynching) Simon and Matilda Edwards and their children are shown having moved about 20 miles northwest of Mount Vernon, to Carmi, White County, Illinois. All the family members from 1870 are still residing in the household, except that William Edwards is missing, and he does not appear elsewhere in 1880 census in the region.

The 1900 census records the family patriarch Simon Edwards, a widower living with daughter Margaret along with his apparent daughter (misidentified as granddaughter) Harriet Edwards, age 30. and grandchildren Ruymel Price, age 20, Mary Walker, age 14 and Ester M Williams, age 4. Next door reside Simon Sr.’s son Simon (b, 1870) with his wife Lucy, and Simon Sr,’s son Elias with wife Maggie.

William’s elder brother, Elias Lawrence Edwards, born around 1857, lived the rest of life in Carmi, He married Maggie Ann Ford on 1 Jan 1886. The couple had at least six children, Elias L Edwards, b 1887; Luther K. Edwards, b 1889; Susan Edwards, b. 1891; Emma Edwards, b. 1892, Samuel D. Edwards, b. 1893; Richard Edwards, b. 1898; Clara Edwards, b, 1900; Allie Edwards, b. 1901. These individuals have numerous descendants, including Emma Edwards (Chism)’s daughter, Marguerita Edwards Chism Johnson, a noted educator in Florida who worked extensively on aging issues in Marin County in the San Francisco Bay Area and who earned a doctorate in Mathematics.

Elias Edwards lived until age 92, passing on the last Wednesday of August 1945; his wife Margaret passed away the next day.

Chambers Family

Various newspapers accounts (eg The Evansville Journal, 13 Oct 1878, p. 3: The Farmer and Mechanic, 17 Oct 1878, p. 5) assert that, Bill Chambers was “28 years old” at the time of the lynching, so born around 1850. He is described in the accounts of having “been accused some time since of the assassination of Patt McMullin, a laborer on the government works at Grand Chain, Wabash River,” about ten miles northwest of Mount Vernon. The Evansville Courier and Press, 30 Oct 1877, Tue · Page 4. reports on the murder of a “Pat Mullen,” evidently shot accidentally, in mistaken retaliation, the newspaper speculates for employment having been refused to black men. The Evansville Journal, 02 Nov 1877, Fri · Page 4 reports that five men were arrested for the murder and held in Mount Vernon.

I do not see a William Chambers in the 1870 census in Indiana. About 40 African American men named William Chambers, are listed in the 1870 census nationwide. Perhaps one of these moved to Posey County, Indiana, prior to 1878.

Suggestively residing four houses away from Jeff Hopkins in the 1870 census in Black township, Mount Vernon, Indiana, is the household of the farmer John Chambers (1836-1912), born in Missouri and his wife Ann Chambers (c. 1846-c. 1890) and their newborn girl Francis. During the Civil War, John had served as a Private in Co. F of the First Iowa Colored Infantry. He was the son of Peter N and Phobe Chambers

It seems quite likely that the lynch victim William Chambers was kin to John Chambers, perhaps his younger brother. Given that John Chambers was born in Missouri, it may be that William appears in the 1870 census as a William Chambers in La Grange, Lewis County, Missouri; he had just married, on 15 May 1870, Cynthia Lewis. (I do not see a record of a Cynthia Chambers in the 1880 census, two years after the lynching, and am not sure if the couple had children.)

By 1880, two years after the lynching, John and Ann Chambers have relocated to Fulton, in Callaway County, Missouri, about 260 miles northeast of Mount Vernon, and 100 miles south of LaGrange, Missouri. Their daughter Francis is now joined by her siblings, Ulysses Grant, age 6, Hayes, age 3 and Lillie Angeline, age 2. The fact that all the children, including two year old Lillie Angelina, are born in Indiana would suggest that the family left Posey County after the 1878 lynching, perhaps in flight. However, John clearly maintained ties to Mount Vernon. The Mt. Vernon Democrat newspaper reports on August 18, 1887 that “John Chambers, a very respected colored man of this city, was granted a pension this week.” His wife Ann Chambers died in Posey County, Indiana in 1890. Three years later on 16 March 1893, he married Tilda or Lettie Dixon, in White County, Illinois.

It is interesting to note that a subsequent son of John Chambers was William McKinley Chambers (d. 23 March 1935), who served in World War I. Like John, William was buried in White County, Illinois. (I do not know if this William’s was named for the William Chambers who was lynched in 1878).

Also, of possible relevance, there is an African American Chambers family in 1870 in Evansville, Indiana, about 20 miles away from Mount Vernon The head of household is Alonzo Chambers, age 25 (b. 1845), born in Indiana, married to Mary K. Chambers, age 28. They do not have children in the household with them, but a decade later, in the 1880 census, the have five children living with them: Ida, age 9, Eliza, age 8, Alameta, age 4, Alfred, age 2, and John, one month old. In 1900, the same family is residing in Pigeon, Indiana about 40 miles east of Evansville; the family now includes Moses Chambers (15 May 1899-15 April 1959). Most of these children appear to have lived their lives in the environs of Evansville.

It is my hope that future research will allow for further tracing of the descendants and collateral kin of the seven men who were brutally murdered in the racial terror lynching of October 1878.

I have been fascinated by the slaveowning history of Isaac Lowenhaupt, a Jewish merchant residing in Vicksburg, Mississippi in the 1850s and early 1860s. Isaac, as it happens, is the great-great grandfather of the husband of my first cousin once removed. Such narratives are powerful reminders of how profoundly all of us are intertwined with histories of the slavery system and its legacies. In what follows, I share my preliminary notes on these enslaved individuals; I would be deeply grateful if descendants or other readers could help cast light on these individuals’ identities and what befell them during and after enslavement.

In both the 1860 US Census Slave Schedule and the Regular Population Schedule Issac Lowenhaupt of Vicksburg, Mississippi is identified with the the first initial “J,” often used for an “I” during the 19th century. Isaac owns four enslaved persons, all “mulatto,” and all of them recorded as fugitive from the state of Mississippi (during the previous year) on the day of enumeration, 21 June, 1860, ten months before the outbreak of the Civil War

40 year old female,
10 year old female
6 year old male
1 year old male

Presumably, the 40 year old woman was the mother of the three children listed.

I do not yet know the identities of these individuals, or when and how they escaped bondage, at some point between July 1859 and June 1860. I have not yet found any fugitive slave advertisements from the period posted by the Lowenhaupts, or relevant listings of captured slaves, which appeared from time to time in many local newspapers, including The Vicksburg Whig and the Vicksburg Tri-Weekly Sentinel. There are no African Americans in the 1870 census (the first “Freedmen’s Census”) who retained the name Lowenhaupt. So at the moment there is no indication what became of these four people after their escapes.

Who was Isaac Lowenhaupt?

Issac Lowenhaupt [recorded as “Isack Lowenhaupt”], born 1809 in Saxe-Coburg, Bavaria, arrived from Hamburg in New York on 2 August 1837, in the company of his wife “Hannah Bettmann” (identified by her maiden name) and their two year old son Jacob, on the ship Cuxhaven. Issac’s occupation was listed as “butcher.”

The family lived for a time in Williamsport, on the Susquehanna river, in north-central Pennsylvania, which had a Jewish community from the 1830s onwards. There, Hannah bore a son, Benjamin Lowenhaupt on 9 March 1839. The family next resided in New Orleans and like other Jewish mercantile families made their way north up the Mississippi. On 29 Mar 1845, Hannah died in Natchez, Mississippi, at age 30, and is buried in Natchez City Cemetery. Her headstone, erected by her sons Jacob and Benjamin, has Hebrew and English lettering.

Seven years later, on 13 July 1852, Isaac remarried in Vicksburg, Mississippi, to Caroline Strauss, who had been born in Bavaria. The $200 marriage bond was co-vouchsafed by the German-born merchant Isaac Sartorious of Vicksburg. (Bonds were used to record a marriage before the adoption of marriage licenses.) Several women named Caroline Strauss emigrated from Germany to the US in the 1840s and 1850s; the most likely candidate would seem to be a 23 year old Caroline Strauss, who arrived in New York City on 16 July 1851, a year before the marriage to Isaac. (Perhaps the marriage had been arranged before she left Bavaria).

During the early 1850s, Isaac and one or both of this sons had set up a mercantile business in Vicksburg. In 1858, Isaac and his second wife Caroline lost two young sons, Leopold and Sam, possibly to Yellow Fever, both buried in the local Jewish cemetery.

In 1860, Issac’s personal estate was valued at $12,000. The business Isaac Lowenhaupt and Son in 1860 was located at Levee and Clay street, just along the east bank of the Mississippi river. The Lowenhaupts resided on the west side of Levee street.

The Lowenhaupt household in 1860 consisted of Issac and his wife Caroline (prevously Strauss), their one year old daughter Fannie, and two sons by Isaac’s previous marriage, Jacob and Benjamin, as well as a female servant E Rhonsimer (sp?) and a clerk Herman Herold, also from Bavaria. (As noted, the separate 1860 slave schedule listed 4 slaves, all fugitive.)

No Lowenhaupts are listed as slaveowners in the 1850 slave schedule, so Isaac’s acquisition of slaves likely happened after 1850. The 1854 and 1856 tax records for Vicksburg, Warren County, have no records for the Lowenhaupts, so they may not have moved there yet. In 1858, the Warren County tax records indicate that Isaac owned one slave; the 1859 records and 1861 records both indicate 2 slaves. There is no extant 1860 tax record. (This might suggest that two of the escaped persons were returned to captivity., or that Isaac had purchased new slaves.)

In any event, it seems likely that the adult enslaved adult woman served a domestic servant, perhaps a cook and maid for the Lowenhaupt household. Speculatively, Isaac may have purchased this bondswoman in 1852 as a wedding present for his new bride. By 1860, it should be noted, Mississippi had 437,000 enslaved people held in bondage, the largest slave population of any state in the Union. The largest slave market in the state was in Natchez, where Isaac Lowenhaupt had resided in the 1840s. The Franklin and Armfield “Forks in the Road” slavevmarket near downtown Natchez and neighboring slave markers sold hundreds of people each year during this period. Frequent impermanent slave markets were held in Vicksburg. It is possible that Isaac purchased the enslaved adult woman and one or more of her children either in Natchez or Vicksburg.

It is also possible that Isaac acquired the slaves through his wife Caroline Strauss, who was born in Bavaria around 1826, and who may have been related to other individuals with the surname Strauss residing in Natchez and Vicksburg. She might have already owned slaves, or been named in a will that led to a bequest of slaves. However, I do not see any probate records that suggest Caroline was an heir during this period. As noted above, it seems more likely Caroline was a fairly recent arrival from Bavaria at the time of her marriage to Isaac in 1852.

The Civil War in Vicksburg

Isaac’s son: Benjamin Lowenhaupt

I am not sure if the Lowenhaupts were present in Vicksburg during General U.S. Grant’s siege of the city, May 18–July 4, 1863. I don’t believe they were impacted by General US Grant’s General Order No. 11, on December 17, 1862 (countermanded by President Lincoln on anuary 4, 1863) which expelled all Jews from military districts under his control.

Benjamin Lowenhaupt served as a private in the Confederate Army, in 1 Company G of Wood’s Regiment in the Confederate Calvary (1st Regiment, Mississippi Calvary, also known as Wirt Adam’s Regiment), enlisting August 30, 1861 in Memphis, Tennessee. His Muster Record, below, indicates he provided his own horse, valued at $250. He fought in the Battle of Shiloh, April 6–7, 1862, in southwestern Tennessee, which technically was a significant Confederate defeat at the hands of General U.S. Grant’s forces, although Union losses outnumbered the Confederacy’s. Benjamin was shot in the leg in this engagement, and was mustered out of service. On 13 November 1864 he married Rachel Rosenbaum in Posey, Indiana, which was Union territory. He remained in Indiana.

The surrender of Vicksburg to Union forces on July 4, 1863 marked the end of human bondage in the city, as all formerly enslaved people were declared by Union forces forever free under the terms of the Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863), which was now enforceable in the city. The Fall of Vicksburg and the Union victory at Gettysburg that same week marked a profound turning point in the War, which would nonetheless last another two brutal years.

At some point during the Civil War, the other members of the Lowenhaupt family made their way north to Cincinnati, Ohio, where Isaac died in 1865. (Given the presence in Cincinnati of several Baden-derived families with the surname Strauss during this period, it seems possible that the Lowenhaupts were seeking refuge with Caroline’s family.) Isaac’s will, dated 1 July 1865, names his wife Caroline executrix of his estate and details the distribution of his property. No mention is made of any former enslaved people, or any persons other than his wife and legitimate children.

After the War, Caroline returned to Mississippi and resided in Vicksburg and Jackson for the rest of her life, until her death in 6 July 1887. She is buried in the Vicksburg Jewish Cemetery (Anshe Chesed), and her headstone has Hebrew and English inscriptions. Issac’s eldest son Jacob Lowenhaupt continued to work as a merchant in the South, eventually settling in Covington, Tennessee, where he died on 28 November 1902. Isaac’s second son, Benjamin Lowenhaupt, settled in Mount Vernon, Indiana, and lived there until his death on 23 Apr 1914. He is buried with his wife Rachel and son Isaac; the headstone is in the Jewish section, row 36, of the Bellefontaine Cemetery, Mount Vernon, Posey County, Indiana, with Hebrew and English inscriptions.

.

Bound for Freedom?

What route might enslaved family have pursued as they attempted to escape to freedom? Thousands of escapees are known to have ventured north up the Mississippi River, which could be profoundly treacherous, given the complexities of the local water systems and the ubiquitous presence of slave patrols. Freedom-seekers might aim for the free states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, or Ohio upriver, or seek greater security, especially after the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, by reaching Canada.

Link to the John O.W. Hitch and Alice Condon Slaves?

A possible hint to the identity of the Lowenhaupt slaves w is found in the same 1860 slave schedule. Living two doors from the Lowenhaupts was the 21 year old white clerk John Oscar Whittington Hitch, who owned five slaves, all also mulatto and all a lso listed as fugitive from the stateL

60 year old female
50 year old male
30 year old female
16 year old female
21 year old male.

The 21 year old enslaved male, it is interesting to note, is also listed as “manumitted.” I have not yet found his manumission record, and it would be interesting to know if he was freed before or after he escaped from enslavement.

Is it possible that these two adjacent groups of enslaved people, owned by Issac Lowenhaupt and Oscar Hitch, escaped together at some point prior to 1860> Or is it simply coincidence that the adjacent families are both listed as entirely fugitive in the same year.

The young slaveowner John O.W. Hitch himself was not long for this world. At the start of the Civil War he enlisted in the Confederate Army in Vicksburg, Mississippi, on May 15, 1861. He participated in the battles of Seven Pines on May 31, 1862, and Savage Station, June 29, 1862, and was killed in the Battle of Malvern Hill, Virginia, on July 1, 1862. His will was probated in early 1863, but I have not yet located a copy of his will or an inventory of his property, which might name the escaped slaves.

John Hitch had been the minor guardian of Thomas Hacket, a carpenter and planter in Pike County, Mississippi, and may well have acquired the five slaves as part of an estate from his late father, who seems to have died at some point between 1840-1850. In 1850, ten year old John was residing in Warren County, Mississippi, with widowed Mary Hitch, presumably his mother.

John Hitch was quite possibly related to the wealthy planter Jonathan J Whittington, who in 1840 owned twenty-two slaves in Warren County. An 1828 domestic slave trade manifest records John J Whittington transporting the 40 year enslaved woman “Betty” from Pensacola, Florida to New Orleans, Louisiana. I do not at this point know the names of any other enslaved people in the Whittington estate.

Also, in the 1860 Slave Schedule, living next door to John Hitch was 36 year old Alice Condon, grocery store owner, born in Ireland, who listed her only slave as a four year old female, recorded both as fugitive from the state during the previous year and also as manumitted. Might this child have been taken along by the neighboring enslaved families during their escape attempt?

I would be grateful for any guidance from descendants or others who might be able to cast some light on the identity of the persons owned by Isaac Lowenhaupt, John Hitch, or Alice Condon.

The following is an abbreviated timeline of the history of the descendants of Moses and Rachel (Rochel) Zeltzer (Novye Dorogi and Starye Dorogi, Belarus), with some notes on the related Weinstein family of Bobruisk. At this point, the chronology goes up until the Second World War. Please share corrections and more notes with me.

Note: For a narrative account of Zeltzer family history, please see the first half of: https://joeauslander90.blogspot.com/2020/09/joes-family-history-zeltzers-and.html

c. 1813. birth of Iosel Zeltzer (Belarus?)

c. 1840. birth of Moses (Movsha) Zeltzer 1840–1899, Novye Dorogi, son of Iosel Zeltzer

c. 1842. birth of Rachel (Bubba Rochel), maiden name unknown

c. 1860 Marriage of Moses Zeltzer and Rachel.

c. 1860 birth of Riva (Rebekah) Zeltzer, daughter of Moses and Rachel Zeltzer

c. 1867. Birth of Rachel Zeltzer, daughter of Moses and Rachel Zeltzer. Starye Dorogi.

.

c. 1860. birth of Sarah Zeltzer, daughter of Moses and Rachel Zeltzer. Starye Dorogi.
1870 birth of Joseph Zeltzer, son of of Moses and Rachel Zeltzer. Starye Dorogi.

1866. Birth of Chava Weinstein, daughter of Zalman Weinstein and Rose (Razel) Bereskin or Tulkocheva.

1878 birth of Pearl Zeltzer, daughter of Moses and Rachel Zeltzer. Starye Dorogi.

c. 1880. Marriage of Riva (Rebekah) Zeltzer to Hessel Osovskiy, Starye Dorogi.

1880, 6 June. Birth of Blume Osovskiy (Asofsky)(1880–1961), daughter of Riva Zeltzer and Hessel Osovskiy. Starye Dorogi

1883 Birth of Hirsch Osovski (1983-1943), son of Riva Zeltzer and Hessel Osovskiyi. Novye Dorogi

1885. Birth of Maria Osovskiy, daughter of Riva Zeltzer and Hessel Osovskiy. Novye Dorogi
1886. March 16. Birth of Hirsch (Girsh?) Vainshtein son of Zalman Weinstein and Ita. (perhaps half brother of Chava Wainstein>)

1890 July 20. Marriage of Joseph Zeltzer to Chava Weinstein, in Bobruysk

1890. Birth of Nison Weinstein, son of Zalman Weinstein and Rose (Tolkacheva?). Bobruisk, Belarus.

1899, 23 January Death (pneumonia) of Moses Zeltzer, Glusk (Hlusk). Russia

1900, 2 March. Marriage of Pesia (Pearl) Zeltzer to Rabbi Jacob Canick.

1902. Birth of Morris Canick, son of Jacob Canick and Pearl Zeltzer. Starye Dorogi.

1903. December. Hirsch Weinstein, clerk (possible brother of Chava Weinstein) arrives in Baltimore on SS Brandenberg. Line 14. From Bobruisk, headed for Chicago.

1904. Death of Pesia (Pearl) Zeltzer Canick, Starye Dorogi.

1905 January. Start of First Russian Revolution; Sema Weinstein and other family members evidently involved, leading to Sema’s emigration the following year, and other travails for family members.

1906, 11 April. Sema Weinstein, born 1 May 1888, daughter of Solomon Weinstein and Rose Bereskin of Bobruisk, arrives in New York City and then settles in Chicago with family of mother’s brother (?) A. Bereskin in Chicago.

1913 15 October Zimmel Zeltzer (born 1 May 1894), son of Joseph Zeltzer and Chava Weinstein, arrives New York City

c. 1913 Frieda Zeltzer (b. 1 May 1893), eldest daughter of Joseph Zeltzer and Chava Weinstein, leaves Novye Dorogi, evidently to escape a betrothal.

1914, 19 March. Frieda Zeltzer arrives Detroit, Michigan— settling in Chicago, then New York

1917, 12 March, Marriage of Sema Weinstein and Nathan Shaviro in New York City; their home at 249 W. 115th street  (Apt 226) near Morningside Park, Manhattan, would serve as a place of refuge of many relatives from Novye Dorogi/Bobruisk over the coming five years.

c. 1917 Joseph Zeltzer imprisoned in or near Novye Dorogi (for suspected political affiliations, evidently; freed by the Red Army perhaps?)

1918. Death of Bubba Rochel Zeltzer. mother of Joseph Zeltzer.
1919. Death of Josef Zeltzer, evidently still ill from his imprisonment.

1920, 23 August. Sonia Zeltzer (daughter of Joseph Zeltzer and Chava Weinstein) arrives New York City.

1920. October 4, Birth of Vivian Shaviro, daughter of Sema Weinstein and Nathan Shaviro

1920, 22 September. Frieda Zeltzer leaves New York, to travel to Europe with her romantic partner William Zukerman, the journalist

1921, 20 August. Rebekah Zeltzer (daughter of Joseph Zeltzer and Chava Weinstein) arrives New York City. Travels via the Free City of Danzig and see her oldest sister Frieda (and William Zukerman) Accompanying children for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Presumably she stays initially with her aunt Sema Shaviro and Nathan Shaviro.

1921. 16 November. Pauline and Celia Zeltzer (daughter of Joseph Zeltzer and Chava Weinstein) arrives New York City. Travel via the Free City of Danzig where they see their oldest sister Frieda (and William Zukerman).

1922, 22 September. Arrival in New York of Rabbi Jacob Cannick, with second wife Bluma Osofskiy and son Morris Canick.

1922. October. Chava, Runya and Aaron Zeltzer evidently staying with Jacob Weinstein in Bobruisk, before departure for the USA, according to the Saxonia shipping manifest.

1922. November 8. Chava Zeltzer, with children Runya and Aaron sails on board SS Saxonia, Hamburg. Presumbaly seen off by daughter Frieda Zeltzer, then living with William Zukerman in Berlin.

1922. November 22. Arrival in New York City of Chava Zeltzer, with children Runya and Aaron on board SS Saxonia, departing from Hamburg on November 8. Stayed initially with her sister Sema and her husband Nathan Shaviro, we believe.

1924. April 3. Birth of Joseph Kerman, son of Frieda Zeltzer and William Zukerman, in England

1925. NY State Census. Chava Zeltzer living with her children, Aaron, Rebecca, Pauline,  Celia, and Runya, at 411 Manhattan Avenue,

1926? Marriage of Frieda Zeltzer and William Zukerman, London, England

1926, January 19, Sonia Zeltzer returns to New York, from London visit to her sister Frieda Zeltzer and William Zukerman, living 66, Woodland, London, England., William Zukerman’s work address then 177 Fleet Street, London

1926. 13 June. Zimmel Zeltzer marries Yetta Kroll, New York City

1926, 26 October. Rebekah Zeltzer marries the physician Dr. Jacob (“Bi”) Auslander, who had arrived from Vienna in 1923. 

1926, Nov 18. Vera Zeltzer (daughter of Zimmel and Yetta) born New York City.

c. 1927. Family members begin move up to the Northwest Bronx Co-op (Amalgamated Clothing Workers/ILGWU housing), Bronx, NY.

1927. Birth of George (“Dick”) Zukerman, son of Frieda Zeltzer and William Zukerman, London, England

c. 1928. Marriage of Sonia Resika to Abraham “Ressie” Resika.

1928, August 15. Birth of Paul Resika, son of Sonia Zeltzer and Abraham Resika.

1929 14 March. Pauline Zeltzer marries Solomon “Sol” Klein, an engineer in New York City

1929. April 21 Death of Chava (Eva) Weinstein Zeltzer (1866–1929) in the Bronx, NY

1929, 16 Jul. Celia Zeltzer marries Harry Shapiro, an artist

1930.Birth of Joseph Auslander to Rebekah Zeltzer Auslander and Jacob Auslander, New York City

1933. Irene Judith (“Judy’) Auslander born to Rebekah Zeltzer Auslander and Jacob Auslander, New York City

1933. Solomon Klein travels from New York to the Soviet Union. Soon after Pauline Zeltzer Klein with young daughter Eva travels from New York to London, staying with sister Frieda and William Zukerman, and then decides to travel to the Soviet Union.

1936, 9 January. Return visit to New York from London by Frieda Zeltzer Zukerman (not accompanied by husband William or by children)

1936, 21 February. Runya Zeltzer marries Harold D. ( “Harry”)  Margulies, an attorney. New York.

1936, March 23. Sonya Zeltzer Resika returns to New York from London, having stayed with sister Frieda and William Zukerman.

1937. David Margulies born to Runya Zeltzer and Harry Margulies, New York.

1937. birth of Joan Shapiro, daughter of Harry Shapiro and Celia Zeltzer

1939. September 1. Germany invades Poland. England and France declare war on Germany on September 3.

1939, October. 12 Frieda Zeltzer Zukerman returns to New York City, from London, with sons Joseph and George (“Dick”) just after War has been declared. Met on pier by Dr. Jacob Auslander, and also Paul Resika, who famously plays poker dice with Dick! The Zukermans stay for some time in home of Frieda’s sister Rebekah Zeltzer Auslander and Dr. Jacob Auslander, 120 Riverside Drive, before moving to Convent Avenue.

1940. July 1940. Wiliam Zukerman returns to New York on the SS George Washington sailing from Galway, Ireland, listing as his address 260 Convent Avenue (So by that time Frieda, Joseph and Dick must have been living there.)

1940.   Alice Harriet Shapiro born to Celia Zeltzer and Harry Shapiro. New York City

1941, April 8. Death of Rabbi Jacob Canick.

1941, June 22. Nazi Germany surprise attack on the Soviet Union begins, followed by mass murders of Soviet Jews, including in Novye Dorogi, Starye Dorogi and Bobruisk (Belarus)

1941. Summer or Fall. Hirsch Osovskiy, wife Gesia and son Efim evacuated from Bobruisk to Kazakstan
1942. Death of Dr. Jacob Weinstein (brother of Chava Weinstein Zeltzer ) in Moscow.

1942, Summer. At Shrub Oak, Westchester County, production of Steven Vincent Benét’s play, “They Burned the Books,” a wartime anti-fascist work. Cast including Dick Zukerman, Frank Dux.

1942? Pauline Zeltzer Klein and children Eva and Josef evacuated from Moscow (to the Urals)? Sol does factory work.

1943. Birth of Vicki Margulies, daughter of Harry Margulies and Runya Zeltzer Margulies.

1943. Death of Maria Osovskiy (married to Isaac Tarshis), while evacuated in Saratov, USSR.

1943? Death of evacuee Hessel Osofskiy and wife Gesia in Akhtubinsk or Kazakhstan (son Efim survives war, having spent time herding with Kazakh shepherds)

1944?. Pauline Zeltzer Klein and children Eva and Josef return to Moscow to their apartment, still partly occupied by Red Army officers.

1944 or early 1945?. Final visit by Cilli Auslander (sister of Jacob Auslander) to Pauline Klein in her Moscow apartment. Cilli, having just been seconded from the Comintern to the Red Army, gives Pauline her Soviet war bonds for the children.

One of the most intriguing objects in the Joseph Allen Skinner Museum at Mount Holyoke College is a small Japanese Shinto shrine dedicated to the kami or dinvity Inari. For some years, the wooden structure, about four feet high and resting on a table, has been listed in museum records as a “replica” of an earlier, larger shrine, but evidence suggests that the displayed object is in fact the original shrine, constructed in in the year 1839 in Mito city in northern Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. Records indicate the shrine was presented to Mount Holyoke Professor Mary Hussey by Friends (Quaker) Missionary Herbert Nicholson n the mid 1930s.

It is my hope that in Spring 2023 the students in my museum studies seminar will explore the object’s history and meanings in depth. Here are my preliminary notes on the object. I would be very grateful if colleagues and friends in Japan and elsewhere could share their insights into the shrine’s history and the remarkable lives of Herbert Nicholson and Mary Inda Hussey.

Description

Like many Inari shrine, the structure has a high sloping roof. Its front entrance is protected by folding double doors that can be locked or opened with a key A staircase of five steps and banisters leads up to the entrance. The central structure is flanked by a balcony and railing on its right, left, and front sides. (See Museum Collections record on line.) A January 1937 student newspaper article, reproduced below, asserts that included “behind the inner sanctuary” of the shrine is a mirror, associated in Shinto with the presence of Amaterasu, the sun goddess. (The museum curator notes there is no record of a mirror associated with the shrine.)

The shrine and about 20 associated accessory objects were donated by the Society of Friends (Quaker) missionary Herbert Victor Nicholson (1892–1983) in December 1935 or December 1936 (accounts vary) to Mount Holyoke Professor of religious studies Mary Inda Hussey, (1876-1952) a noted Assyriologist who was deeply interested in comparative religion. Hussey’s typed captions suggest that the shrine was removed from its original location in order to make room for a Friends ( Quaker ) meeting house in Mito., the capital city of Ibaraki Prefecture, about 130 km northeast of Tokyo. The date of this removal is unclear. A postcard, undated, (below) shows the laying of the Mito meeting house cornerstone. This meetinghouse may have been built in 1912.

Professor Hussey’s label records,

“This Inari shrine was erected in Mito, Japan, in 1839, two years later than the founding of Mount Holyoke Seminary. The Friend’s Mission, having brought the property on which the shrine stood, wished to dispose of it in a manner worthy of its workmanship, of the rare keaki wood of which it is made, and of the aspirations of which it has been the center. Because of my interest in religion, Mr. Herbert Nicholson, in charge of the Mission, gave it to me in December 1936, I have given it to the College, believing such an example of the religious culture of another people is of interest to students.”

A front page article in the Mount Holyoke News for January 9, 1937 gives a slightly different account: “Dr. Hussey obtained this rare object while on sabbatical year last year, and has presented it to the college…The shrine…was discovered on Mission property in Mito, Japan by Herbert Nicholson. To avoid the complications that would ensue had he forbidden its use by the natives, he presented this object of oriental religious rites to Dr. Hussey. “

A typed label affixed to the shrine roof states, “Under the ridge, which is removable, is written the date of the making of the shrine, Tempo 10 year (1839), December 1st. Built by Takeguchi Kichibei, aged 29.”

On February 6, 2023, Skinner Museum staff kindly removed the roof ridge ple and allowed its interior to be photographed. Historian Jordan Sand (Georgetown University) notes that the inscription actually says:” tategu craftsman Kichibei made this.” 建具師 (Tategushi), he notes, “is a maker of doors and decorative woodwork. There is no family name..”

Stored under the table on which the shrine rests is a brass shrine bell, which Hussey’s label explains would have been affixed to the eaves of the “simple building” within such a shrine would be stored to protect it from the weather. Even accounting for this degree of protection, the 180 year old structure does seem to be in remarkably good shape, showing relatively little signs of wear across the decades.

Associated notes by Professor Hussey explain how to unlock, open and close the shrine’s double doors.

Inari Veneration

There are about 3,000 registered official Inari shrines in present-day Japan, many of them elaborate and marked by multiple vermilion torri gateways. In addition, it is not unusual in Japan to come across small Inari shrines in agricultural fields or by a roadside, roughly of the dimensions of the Skinner Museum’s shrine. These are at times associated with larger Shinto shrines or Buddhist temples. (Matsui Keisuke estimates that they are around 30,000 Inari shrines of various sizes scattered through Japan.)

Throughout Japan, the divinity Inari has particularly strong associations with rice cultivation, business practice, and general well being. Foxes (kitsune) are consider familiars or messengers of Inari, and fox figurines are usually located within or in front of Inari shrines. Exhibited with the Skinner’s Inari Shrine are a pair of wooden foxes and a small porcelain pair of kitsune. A larger (damaged) porcelain pair of kitsune, also donated with the shrine, is stored separately.

As it happens, one of Japan’s three leading Inari shrines is located in Ibaraki Prefecture; Kasama Inari Shrine in Kasama city, about 15 km west of Mito, is over 1300 years old and visited by 3.5 million people each year. The shrine is dedicated to Ukanomitama no kami, the divinity of agriculture, associated with five types of grain, cattle breeding, fishing, sericulture, commerce, and industry , The feudal lords of the region were highly oriented towards Inari veneration (Matsui 2014). It seems reasonable that the small Inari shrine removed by Nicholson from Mito had in fact been part of the Kasama Inari Jinja ko (shrine association).

Yamakawa Kikue’s family biography of late Tokugawa life in a Mito low-ranking samurai household, “Women of the Mito Domain: Recollections of Samurai Family Life,” records that the household garden held an Inari shrine, dedicated to the patron deity of scholarship, Sugawa no Michizane. It would be interesting to document other instances of small scale Inari veneration in Mito and environs.

As Karen Smyers (1999) notes in her detailed ethnographic study of Inari worship, veneration of this divinity is often highly personalized and even idiosyncratic, often focusing on the polyvalent symbolic forms of the fox and the jewel. One of the wooden kitsune fox figurines associated with the shrine holds a jewel ball-like object. If possible, it would be fascinating to reconstruct some of the rich meanings this imagery held for worshipers of the shrine before it was removed from its original context of veneration.

The Shrine in its Original Context in Mito

Religious studies scholar Matsui Keisuke (2014) notes that many branch shrines of Kasami Inari Shrine were were created in the region, each organized around a specific association (ko) of worshippers, with the essence of the divinity “invited” to a specific locality through a ritual amulet; by 1904, 330 Kasama Inari-ko (associations) existed across the broad region of North Kanto. Future research may determine if this particular Mito Inari shrine was such a branch shrine with a corresponding association (ko) of dedicated worshipers.

It may simply be coincidence but 1839, the year of the shrine’s construction, was also the year of the promulgation of the “Bansha no goku” (the suppression of the society for Western studies) by the Japanese Shogunate, reacting to internal criticism of its isolationist policies. Speculatively, during this period there may have been particular encouragement to develop Shinto shrines, in keeping with the Nativist tenor of the times. The Mito daimyo during the time of Matthew Perry’s expeditions, 1852-1854, is recorded as having strongly opposed the signing of treaties with foreign powers; and the highly nationalist Mito leadership strongly supported the restoration of the Emperor in 1868.

A wooden dedication panel, associated with the shrine. records that in Meiji 22 (1889) on an auspicious day in the 12th month, this offering plaque was presented by a petitioner  小川信八, which would seem to read as Ogawa or Kogawa Shinpachi. (A museum translation lists the alternate name, “Nogawa Nobuko.”)

Perhaps this offering plaque was installed on a wall of the simple building that protected the shrine.

At some point, the collection box in front of the shrine was emptied; its contents, stored elsewhere in the Skinner Museum, appear to have consisted of about five Japanese currency bills and forty coins. Checking the dates on these items might help establish an approximate date at which the shrine ceased to used as an object of worship.

Quakerism in Mito and the Removal of the Shrine

A pamphlet by the Quaker missionary Edith Sharpless, indicates that Quaker missionization of Ibaraki began around 1889, and that the first full time mission worker was the physician and peace activist Manji Kato in 1894, joined by Gurney and Elizabeth Binford in 1899. A brick meeting house was built in 1912, and the first monthly meeting was recognized in 1917; it may be that the undated postcard photograph of the laying of the meeting house cornerstone records the construction of the structure in 1912.

As noted, in her typed label Mary Hussey implies that the shrine was removed from its original location when the Friends (Quaker) mission acquired the relevant plot of land in Mito. Since the first meeting house was evidently built in 1912, that might mean that the shrine was removed just prior to that point. However, the January 9, 1937 article in the Mount Holyoke student newspaper claims the shrine was “discovered on Mission property in Mito, Japan, by Herbert Nicholson.” Does that mean that the Mission had acquired new land under Herbert Nicholson’s auspices, shortly prior to his gift of the shrine to Dr. Hussey?

The 1937 article states that Herbert Nicholson gave the shrine to Dr. Hussey “to avoid the complications that would ensure had he forbidden its use by the natives,” which implies that he only recently discovered or encountered the shrine. This explanation perhaps accounts for why the Mission did not simply relocate the shrine to another location in the vicinity, as often happens in Japan when building construction displaces a small shrine.

Whatever the motivation, Nicholson and other mission members clearly did not wish to see the shrine destroyed and took careful steps to preserve it, albeit, it would appear, as an object of cultural heritage and not as an active site of spiritual power. Herbert’s eldest living descendant, his grandson Pete Nicholson, who lived in Nagano and Ibaraki in a mission household as a child, recalls no sense of antipathy between Shinto and Quaker practice in his experience.

The 1937 College newspaper article asserts Mr. Nicholson’s desire to remove the shrine fro active veneration by the local Japanese community. Yet I speculate that the decision to transfer the shrine to the United States may also have been conceived by the Nicholsons and the Mito Monthly Meeting as a gesture of international goodwill, at a historical juncture of mounting animosity between Japan and the United States, as the storm clouds of war loomed on the horizon. In that sense, it may have echoed the international Friendship Doll exchange of 1926, which was similarly conceived of by organizers Rev. Sidney Gulick (a Congregationalist missionary) and Shibusawa Eichi aas trust-building exercise in international tolerance and solidarity, in the period that followed the shock of Asian exclusion legislation in US immigration policy.

Herbert Victor Nicholson and Mary Inda Hussey

A life-long member of the Society of Friends (Quakers), Hebert Victor Nicholson (1892-1983) studied at Haverford College and undertook mission work in Japan from c. 1920 to 1940. He was based in Mito, Ibaraki Prefecture, from about 1922 onward, with occasional return visits back to the United States.

As noted, the chronology of the gift is a little unclear. Dr. Hussey’s typed label states she was presented with the shrine by Nicholson in “December 1936,: but Dr. Hussey’s article in the August 1938 Alumnae Quarlerly states she was given the shrine in “December 1935.” The January 1937 College newspaper article that that Dr. Hussey obtained the shrine “last year”, when she was on sabbatical leave. During the 1935-36 academic year Dr. Hussey i was in fact on leave at Pendle Hill, the Quaker Center for Social and Religious Studies in Wallingford, Pennsylvania. Perhaps this is where she obtained the shrine from Mr. Nicholson. (Census records indicate that in 1930 Nicholson and his family were residing in New Jersey. Shipping records indicate that in August 1936 he and his family traveled from Yokohama to California, but perhaps we was in the US earlier that year, and visited Pendle Hill in December 1935.).

In any event, Herbert Nicholson was searching for a Quaker scholar who would have been inclined to make use of the Inari Shrine as a teaching device, he could hardly have found a better choice than Mary Inda Hussey. By the mid 1930s she was internationally recognized as an accomplished scholar of ancient languages and religions. She had studied at Earlham College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Berlin and Leipzig, attaining a PhD in Assyriology from Bryn Mawr for her thesis, “Some Sumerian-Babylonian Hymns of the Berlin Collection,” published in 1907. She worked at the Harvard Semitic Museum before being hired in 1913 at Mount Holyoke, where she spent the rest of her career, taking several leaves to undertake research and teaching in the Near East, as well the 1935-36 year undertaking teaching and research at Pendle Hill.

Whatever the precise dates of the transfer, Nicholson clearly provided Professor Hussey with commentary on spiritual practices associated with the shrine and with detailed instructions on how to lock and unlock the doubled doors.

Professor Hussey appears to have used the shrine for instructional purposes in her comparative religions courses, up until her retirement in 1941. The shrine was presumably used in her courses, “The Intellectual and Cultural History of Western Asia,” and “Great Living Religions: India, China and Mohammedan countries” and “Confucianism, Buddhism and Hinduism,” which she offered in 1940.

The newspaper article from January 1937 and the August 1938 Alumnae Quarterly article suggests that she only recently donated the shrine to the college, and indicate that it was exhibited in Seminar Room 13 of the Williams Library. It is not clear when it was in turn transferred to the Skinner Museum. An undated photograph, perhaps from the 1960s or 1970s, shows the shrine on display within the Museum’s’ “Schoolhouse” building. It was later placed within the larger Museum “Church” building, where it remains on display.

Professor Hussey’s Later Life

After her retirement in 1941, Mary Hussey continued her detailed research on early Mesopotamian ritual incantations, based primarily on the tablet collection at Yale. She died of a heart attack at the Andover annual Friends meeting conference in 1952. Her research was completed by a colleague and published posthumously as “Early Mesopotamian Incantations and Rituals” (Yale University Press, 1985). Her planned book on global indigenous religious traditions, “Religions of Backward Peoples: A Source Book,” was never published; draft materials for this project are housed in the Mount Holyoke College Archives.

Herbert Nicholson’s later life

As international tensions between Japan and the U.S. worsened, the Nicholson family was forced to leave Mito and Japan in 1940, settling in Pasadena, California, Madeline’s home town. He served as minister at the entirely Japanese-American West Los Angeles Methodist Church, preaching in Japanese and English. He became well known durng World War II for his relief and support work for Japanese Americans detained in internment camps, and was among the nation’s most prominent advocates for the rights and welfare of Japanese Americans during the war period.

After the war, Herbert and Madeline Nicholson devoted themselves to development and reconstruction work in Japan, living in Japan during the Occupation and post Occupation period, Mitsuo Otso of the Mito Monthly meeting recalls learning conversational English from Madeline and helping Herbert with translation work in Mito around 1959. Herbert died in 1983. Herbert and Madeline’s son, Samuel Owen Nicholson, continued the family’s close connections with Japan, pursuing graduate studies in Japanese religion at the University of Michigan, and living with his family in Ibaraki Prefecture in the 1960s.

The Mito Friends Community, post 1940

Times were certainly challenging for the Mito Friends Monthly Meeting after the Nicholsons left Ibaraki for the United States in 1940. The Quaker missionary Edith Sharpless evidently remained in Mito into 1943, and must have been subject to intensive surveillance by Japanese internal security forces. The Mito Friends Meeting House was largely destroyed by Allied air raids in 1945; Mito sustained heavy damage from massive aerial bombardments on 1 August 1945, in which 836 B-29s staged the largest single raid of World War II. Surviving, burned bricks from the old Meeting House structure were used in the building’s reconstruction.

The rebuilt Meeting House was also damaged, we understand, by the 2011 Great Tohoku Earthquake, and has been reconstructed.

The full text of Mary Hussey’s label, which perhaps dates to the time of her retirement in 1941, is shown here:

Associated objects, donated with the shrine, include:

A wooden offering box, with two internally sloped panels creating a slot. The box contained about five currency bills and about forty coins, stored in a separate area. The box is attached to a wooden table, on which the shrine rests.

Shrine brass bell, c. 1861

A small incense stand, stored within the inner recesses of the shrine

Two kitsune fox wooden statues; the fox is a familiar of Inair, a divinity strongly associated with rice and rice cultivation. Hussey’s notes indicate that one fox is male, holding a ball the other is female.

A porcelain pair of kitsune fox figurines, significantly damaged.

Two pairs of matching brass candlesticks

Incense burner

Pair of white porcelain vases

Rice cakes presented as offerings to the shrine

Resources

MATSUI Keisuke: Geography of Religion in Japan: Religious Space, Landscape, and Behavior. Tokyo Springer Japan, 2014. (See especially Section 3.1 Characteristics of the Kasama Inari Belief Area)

Jennifer Myers, Mary Inda Hussey, typescript, Biography, undated.

Karen Smyers. The Fox and the Jewel: Shared and Private Meanings in Contemporary Japanese Inari Worship, University of Hawaii Press. 1999.

Acknowledgements: Special thanks to Mitsuo Otsu, the historian of Mito Monthly Meeting in Mito, Ibaraki, Japan for his assistance. I am grateful to Peter Nicholson for sharing memories of the Nicholson family in Ibaraki Prefecture. Many thanks to Aaron Miller, Associate Curator of Visual and Material Culture, at the Mount Holyoke Art Museum and Joseph Skinner Museum, for sharing materials on the object’s history and his insights into its provenance. Thanks as well to Ellen Schattschneider (Brandeis) and Joshua Roth (MHC) for their reflections on Inari veneration and this object set. Yuko Hosoi (Hirosaki) has kindly assisted with translation.

One of the more fascinating individuals interred in Mount Zion Cemetery in north Georgetown, District of Columbia, is David Twine (c.1824-1894). Twine was a lifelong hack driver and coachman in the District of Columbia, who for the last decade of his life was employed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum, serving as a coachman, in turn, to Dr. Spencer Fullerton Baird, the second Secretary of the Smithsonian, and Dr. Samuel Pierpoint Langley, the third Smithsonian Secretary

Family Background and Other Twines in the District of Columbia

David Twine’s mother may have been Eliza Twine, the only free person of color with the surname Twine in the 1830 and 1840 censuses in the District of Columbia. Eliza was born around 1800 in the District of Columbia. The 1830 census indicates she is the head of a household in Georgetown containing seven persons of color: one free woman, age 23-35, which must be Eliza Twine herself; one free female, age 10 to 12; two free girls, under age 10, and three free boys, all under age 10. It is possible that David Twine, whose death record indicates he was born in 1824, was one of these boys and a son of Eliza Twine. (The 1850 census, the first census to reference David Twine by name, states he is born in the District of Columbia, although his 1894 death record lists his birthplace as Virginia).

Eliza Twine on 2 Aug 1853 married Eli Jackson (b. 1793). The 1880 census records 80 year old Eliza Jackson as a widow residing alone on Four and A Half Street, SW, District of Columbia. She is evidently the Eliza Jackson who died 24 September 1884.

The only Twines in the 1850 census in DC are David and Christiana Twine, with their daughter Ann. However, it is possible that other children of Eliza Twine (that is to say, likely siblings of David Twine) are listed in the 1860 census, in the Washington Ward One household of Edward Woodland, a free black laborer:

Ann Twine, age 33 (b, 1827) , born Virginia
Andrew Twine, age 31 (b. 1829), laborer , born D.C.
Elias Twine, age 29 (b. 1831) , waiter, born D.C.
William Twine, age 27 (b. 1830 , waiter, born D.C.
Charles Twine, age 23 (b. 1837) , waiter, born D.C.
Mary Twine, age 18 (b, 1842) , servant, born D.C.

Living separately in Washington Ward One is a different William Twine, age 26, with his wife Mary Twine, age 25.

In addition, the 1860 census records a ten year old Eliza Twine, born 1850, in the household of William and Nancy Brown, in Washington Ward Two.

The 1870 census, the first “Freedmen’s Census,” lists nine black Twines residing in the District of Columbia:

Andrew Twine, b. 1825, a laborer in Washington Ward One, with his wife Martha and children Andrew and Ida. (This must be the same Andrew as listed in the 1960 census )
William Twine, laborer, b 1834, married to Mary Twine, in Washington Ward 1. (The same couple as listed in the 1860 census).
22 year old Rebecca Twine, b. 1848, working as a domestic servant in the household of the white publisher, John H. Hawes, in Washington Ward Two. Circumstantial evidence, discussed below, suggests she might be the daughter of David Twine.
Julia Twine, age 22, b. 1848, cook of Dr. Samuel Busey, who had a farm on the property that later became part of the National Cathedral Grounds, in Washington County, along with Julia’s 20 month old daughter Delilah. Julia Twine is not among the seven enslaved people owned by Dr. Busey, manumitted in 1862.

Note: A free woman of color, Ann Twine, born around 1834, married Charles Cogar on 22 Jan 1862 in the District of Columbia, and by 1880 resided at 2121 O Street in the District.

Mount Vernon and Tudor Place Connections?

It is possible that David Twine and this other cluster of Twines were related to the well-known enslaved woman at Dogue Run Farm, part of George Washington’s Mount Vernon plantation, Sall Twine (c. 1761, died after 1802). Sall Twine was a dower slave derived from the estate of Daniel Parke Custis (1711-1757) who after the death of Martha Custis Washington in 1802 inherited with her children by Martha Parke Custis and her husband Thomas Peter, the sometime mayor Georgetown who constructed Tudor Place, among the most elegant private residences in the new nation. Sall Twine’s children, included Barbary, born around 1788, Abbay, born around 1789, Hannah, born around 1795, and George, born around 1798.

Tudor Place was itself partly funded by the proceeds of an earlier sale in 1796 of thirty-one slaves brought into her marriage with Thomas Peter as Martha’s dowry. The 1796 Day Book of Thomas Peter records his ownership of six members of the Twine family:

Peter Twine 46 (45 pounds) evidently married to Elly Twine
Twine, Elly 30, 60 pounds, wife of Peter Twine. In Mrs. Peter’s Patrimony.
Dinah 12 36 pounds, evidently, daughter of Peter and Elly Tiwne
Maklin 18, 25 pounds evidently child of Peter and Elly Twine born around 1778
Lyddia 4, 18 pounds evidently child of Peter and Elly Twine
Fanny 1, 5 pounds evidenly child of Peter and Elly Twine

A note indicates that on May 10, 1796, the following members of this family were sold;
Peter Twine, Elly,
Macklin and Fanny, (109 pounds )

Then, on November 10, 1796, Dinah and Lyddia were together sold by Thomas Peters, respectively valued at 45 pounds and 25 pounds, for a total of 70 pounds.

(Tudor Place Archives; see also Mary Beth Corrigan (2014)

Later enslaved at Tudor Place was the gardener Will Twine, who died in 1832 and who also may have been kin of Peter Twine and David Twine.

I discuss some of the Twine family’s fascinating history in an essay on Barbara Cole Williams, and in a piece on the enslaved persons involved in the construction of the first Smithsonian building.

As noted in the Smithsonian essay, Sall Twine’s son George would seem to be listed as one of twenty four enslaved people in the 1848 probate inventory of the son of Thomas and Martha Peter, John P.C. Peter of Seneca, Montgomery County.

David Twine’s Marriages and Offspring

To my knowledge, the earliest record of David Twine is his D.C. marriage record to Christina Gray, 20 December 1848. The next year the couple had a daughter Ann E. Twine, who is listed in the 1850 census but not in subsequent records. I suspect she is the same person as Mary Eliza Twine, who later married an Ignatius (Nathan) Gross of Frederick, MD and Baltimore. She may be the sister of Rebecca Twine who in the 1870 census is listed as born 1848.

The 1850 census shows David and Christina Twine residing in Washington Ward One, with their one year old daughter Ann E Twine and an eight year old Malinda Clark. David is a hack driver.

A decade later, the 1860 census records David Twine living in Washington Ward Three, with no sign of his wife Christina, who presumably died in the interim. He is living in a household with the 55 year old free black washwoman Nancy Johnson, and in the same dwelling structure as the free black hackman James F. Anderson. His daughter, previously listed as Ann E. Twine in 1850 is in 1860 listed as an “Eliza Twine,” ten years old, residing in Washington Ward Two with a William and Mary Brown, both age 60, who are perhaps the little girl’s paternal or maternal grandparents. They had presumably consented to raise the child since the widower David Twine felt incapable of the task.

Three years later, on April 7, 1863, David Twine married Sarah Anderson, a cook, born 1839, daughter of Jefferson Anderson and Lucinda “Lucy” Penny. It is possible that these Andersons were kin to the hackman James F. Anderson, with whom Twine had been residing in 1860. (Sarah’s younger brother was also named James.) In 1868, the city directory records the married Twine couple living at 387 10th street, with David employed as a coachman.

The 1870 census shows David Twine residing in Washington Ward Two with his wife Sarah Twine, along with his mother in law, Lucinda Anderson, and Sarah’s younger brothers, the waiter John Anderson, age 20, and James Anderson (14), and with Sarah’s sister Margaret (Penny) Miner (age 38) and Margaret’s evident son Benjamin Miner (12).

The 1880 census shows David and Sarah Twine living at 1608 M Street, with Sarah’s mother Lucinda Anderson and no others. Sarah Twine is recorded in the D.C. death records dying on 22 August 1892, two years before David Twine’s death. (I am unsure where she was buried). It does not appear that David and Sarah had children together.

Like many DC hackmen, Twine was occasionally charged with violations of the hack law and related statues. On 30 June 1853, the Evening Star reports he was held over for trial for a hack law violation, and again on 23 Sep 1881, he was one of many hackmen charged with failing to clean up manure on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Ann E. Twine, Eliza Twine, Mary Eliza Twine Gross and Rebecca Twine Gross: The Same Person?

The identities of David Twine’s daughters, variously listed as Ann E., Eliza, Mary Eliza, or Rebecca, are somewhat confusing. As noted above, the 1850 census lists only one child of David and Christiana Twine, Ann E Twine. As noted below, David Twine’s granddaughter Katie Gross’s death certificate lists her mother’s maiden name as Rebecca Twine, who must be the same Rebecca Twine listed in the 1870 census as a servant in DC, working for the white publisher John Hart Hawes, the future US Consul to Hakodate (Hakodadi), Japan (1872-1875).

This Rebecca Twine (and possibly Ann E. Twine) might be the same person as “Mary E. Gerter Twine,” who on 27 May 1872 married Ignatius Gross in the District of Columbia. One month earlier, on 20 April 1872, an Ignatius B, Gross, born and raised in Frederick Maryland, opened a Freedmen’s Bank account in Baltimore, Maryland. He lists as his address Number 52 Park Street in Baltimore and as his parents Thomas and Nanny, both deceased, and as his siblings Daniel, Sarah, and Thomas. Thomas, he indicates, is in “Maryland, Africa,” meaning the colony set up for repatriated African Americans by the Maryland Colonization Society, known as “Maryland in Africa,” which later became part of the nation of Liberia. This is consistent with accounts of Thomas Gross, former slave of the late William Potts, consenting to colonization in Maryland in Africa, Liberia in 1849.

The 1880 census for Baltimore records Ignatius Gross, married to named Rebecca, born about 1851 in the District of Columbia. They have two children, David Gross, age seven (about 1873) and Catherine Gross, age one month.

Four years later, in 1884, the following death announcement appears in the Frederick Maryland Daily News, reprinted from the Baltimore American:

The Daily News
Frederick, MD
Friday, January 18, 1884
Page 4

The funeral of Nathan Gross, a well-known colored man, who died on Saturday, took place yesterday morning from his home, 33 Oxford street. He was a native of Frederick, and about 55 years old. He had suffered for about two years from consumption, and had been confined to his bed for nearly two months. He had been employed as a porter by Messrs. J. J. Nicholson & Sons, bankers, West Baltimore street, for the past fifteen years, and had always been found faithful in the discharge of his duties. He was a member of St. Francis Catholic Church, Calvert and Pleasant streets, and also of the beneficial organizations of St. Benedict and the Good Samaritans. High mass was said for him, and the remains were buried in St. Paul’s cemetery on Liberty road. He leaves a wife, two children and two brothers. He received every attention from his employers during his illness.—Balto. American.

Two years later, on 13 March 1886. the following death notice appeared in the Evening Star of Washington D.C: Departed this life on Friday morning, March 12, 1886, at 10:30, Mary Eliza Gross, daughter of David Twine. Her funeral will take place from the residenc eof her father, No. 1148 Fifteenth Street, between L and M street northwest, on Sunday afternoon, March 14 at 3 o’clock, Friends of the family are invited to attend.

Mary Eliza Gross was buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery, the largest Catholic cemetery in Washington DC. (Her husband Ignatius Gross, who had died two years earlier, had been Catholic, so she had presumably converted.)

The 1886 District of Columbia city directory records a Rebecca Gross living at the same address, in the home of her father David Twine, 1148 15th street. This would suggest she might be same person as Mary Eliza (Twine) Gross. Whatever the name she was using, her two young children, discussed below, were presumably residing there as well, and got to know their grandfather well. As reviewed below, he would remember them in his will.

David Twine, Dr. Spencer Baird, and the Smithsonian Institution

On July 6, 1876, Dr. Spencer Fuller Baird, then Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian penned a note to David Twine: “Dear Twine, -enclosure with(in?), for $50 for account of which $24 is in advance. Please sign and turn the accompanying receipt for Jubilee service.” The Jubilee being referenced might be the US Centennial marked two days earlier, on, July 4, 1876, or might reference that the 30th anniversary of the Smithsonian Institution, which was to be marked the next month.

The note’s mention of an advance suggests that Twine had a long-term connection with Dr. Baird. A newspaper account of Baird’s death, eleven years later (discussed below) asserts that David Twine had worked for Dr. Baird for forty years.

In any event, seven years after Baird’s note to Twine, on 11 April 1884, David Twine was hired as a laborer at the Smithsonian National Museum. Baird had been elevated to Secretary of the Smithsonian in 1878, following the death of his predecessor Dr. Joseph Henry. Twine worked as a messenger and as coachmen for Dr. Baird, and later for Baird’s successor, Dr. Samuel Pierpoint Langley, the third Smithsonian Secretary.

Twine’s deep emotional connection to Dr. Baird is suggested by an account of Baird’s funeral in Oak Hill Cemetery, in the Washington Critic, on 30 November 1887, written in the racially pejorative language of the day:

“A touching sight was the visible emotion of one of the family servants, David Twine, the coachman, a venerable old darky with gray hair, who had been in the family’s service for forty years. As the remains of his late master were borne of the chapel he could not restrain his tears, and seemed overcome with sorrow. “

A later newspaper account, written during the period of Secretary Langley’s tenure, notes that Langley gave his old clothes to his coachman David Twine, and would at times amuse himself by giving Twine electrical shocks, through a battery he had installed under the coachman’s seat.

David Twine died September 29, 1894 at Freedmen’s Hospital. He was funeralized at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church. where he was a member, and was buried at Mount Zion Cemetery on October 2, 1894. His will, witnessed on September 11, 1894, 18 days before his death, bequeaths to his grandson David Gross of Baltimore $100; to Mary L. Green of the District of Columbia. $100; to his mother in law Lucinda Anderson, $20; to his granddaughter Pauline Gross of Baltimore his gold watch and a picture frame from his room; to his grand daughter Katie Gross of Baltimore his silver watch. He appoints his friend and Smithsonian co worker William T. Black as the estate executor.

The court inventoried his entire estate at $505.59.

Who was Mary L. Green? The 1900 census does list a Mary L. Green, washerwoman, born March 1850, residing at 1225 28th street, in Georgetown near Rock Creek Park. She is living with her sister Liza Ogelton. Four years earlier, the City Directory lists Mary L Green at the same address, as the widow of Thomas Green. On 20 October 1880, a Mary Anderson married a Thomas E, Green in the District of Columbia. It is thus possible that the Mary Green mentioned in David Twine’s will was his sister in law, Mary Anderson. Alternately, she may have been a close friend of David Twine.

Whatever the connection, there are several newspaper accounts noting the refusal of Twine’s executor William Blake to pay the $100 bequest to Mary L. Green. For this failure, a bench warrant was issued on 19 March 1897 for Blake; I am not sure of how the case was ultimately resolved.

David Twine’s Descendants: The Gross Family

David Twine’s 1894 will mentions three grandchildren with the surname Gross, but does not mention his daughter Rebecca (Twine) Gross. I can see no mention of Rebecca Gross in the DC City Directory after 1886; perhaps she is indeed the Mary Gross who died in March 1886, six years before David Twine’s death in 1894. It would seem that after their mother’s death, the three children returned to Baltimore, where they had lived prior to their father’s death, and where they may have had kinfolk.

(Nine individuals with the Gross surname are buried in Mount Zion; I am not sure if any of them are related to the Twine-Gross line.)

What became of the three grandchildren enumerated in David Twine’s will, David Gross, Pauline Gross and Katie Gross, who appear to have been the children of Rebecca Twine Gross?

1. David Gross was perhaps named for his grandfather David Twine. David Thomas Gross’ 1936 Social Security claim index lists his birth date as 24 Feb 1873 (which was about nine months after the D.C. marriage of Ignatius Gross and “Mary Twine”). He appears to have resided in Baltimore his adult life, appearing in the 1910, 1920, 1930, and 1940 censuses, as well as multiple Baltimore city directories, employed variously as a driver (like his grandfather) and as an office building janitor and a porter in the Telephone Exchange. At some point, probably in the late 1890s, he married a woman named Alice (maiden name unknown). In the 1950 census, Alice Gross is listed as widowed so David Gross must have died prior to then.

The couple had one daughter Elizabeth D. Gross, born around 1900, who married the musician Harrison Morton Dodd around 1913. The couple had one daughter Dorothy E. Dodd, born around 1914. By 1930 Elizabeth (Gross) Dodd was divorced, once more living with her parents David and Alice Gross, and with her sixteen year old daughter, Dorothy E. Dodd.

In the 1940 census, Dorothy is listed as a married woman, with the surname “Davenport,” living without her husband with her mother Elizabeth and grandparents David and Alice Gross. (Curiously, Dorothy’s age is incorrectly given as 21 in the 1940 census, and she is listed as high school senior). In the 1950 census she is listed as married to a Bernard Smith, residing in the household of her widowed grandmother Alice Gross. I am not sure if Bernard and Dorothy Smith had children.

By 1942, Dorothy’s mother Elizabeth is married to Alfonso Alexander McLaren (1902-1981), who had been born in Jamaica The couple is also listed in the 1950 census, residing in the household of Elizabeth’s mother Alice Gross. I am not sure if the McLaren couple had any children of their own.

2. Catherine or Katie Gross. As noted above, the 1880 census lists Catherine Gross as a one month infant, living with her parents Ignatius and Rebecca Gross.

She appears at some point to have married Rogers Monroe, a laborer in the gas office, and is listed as residing with him in Washington DC in the 1920 census, at 729 50th street.

On 25 July 1930, “Katie Monroe” marries Henry Bazamore (1888-1971) in Detroit, Michigan. She dies 23 July 1936, at age 56, in Detroit. Her death certificate informant was her brother David Gross, who lists her parents as Nathan Gross and Rebecca Twine. I am not sure Henry and Katie had any children, or if Katie had children by her previous marriage to Rogers Monroe.

One puzzle is that the marriage certificate for Katie , which records her father’s name as “Gross,” lists her mother’s name as “Pauline,” which, according to the will of David Twine, was the name of one of his granddaughters, presumably a sister of Katie and David Gross.

3. Pauline Gross. Other than the reference in David Twine’s 1894 will, and the assertion on Katie Gross’s death certificate that her mother was “Pauline,” I have not found any record of Pauline Gross, to whom David Twine bequeathed his gold watch. (Note that the 1884 obituary of Nathan Gross mentions two surviving children of Nathan Gross, but that David Twine’s 1894 will references three grandchildren with the surname Gross.)

As of this writing, I am unsure if there are any living descendants of David Twine.

Like many members of my family, I have been rather uncertain about the early life and background of my mother’s father, Isadore Epstein, who was evidently born 17 April 1886 or 1887 and who died 30 July 1952 in Philadelphia, PA.

To begin with, we have been uncertain of his parentage or the location of his birth. His headstone in Mount Sharon Cemetery (Springfield, Delaware county, Pennsylvania), references him in Hebrew as “Israel bar Elijah,” that it so say Israel son of Elijah. My mother Ruth Epstein Auslander believed Isadore’s father’s name was “Alex” and his mother’s name was Ann (and that her younger sister Ann Epstein Bruckner had been named for her). Ruth thought that like her mother Yetta, Isadore had come from Ukraine, but she was not confident of this. Ruth’s older brother Lou Epstein was under the impression his father Isadore came from “Bryansk” in Russia, which held a Jewish community that was closely related to Ukrainian Jewish communities.

There is some uncertainty about Isadore’s year of birth. His headstone lists his age at death as 66 years, which would imply a birth year of 1886. His death certificate, however, lists his birth year as 17 Apr 1887.

There are not entirely clear records of Isadore’s immigration or his marriage to his wife Yetta, whose gave as her her maiden name “Anderson,” a name which her children did not believe to be her original maiden name. (As I discuss in another post, I have not succeeded in locating any immigration records for Yetta, and remain uncertain as to her natal surname.) It is quite possible that Isadore and Yetta were never legally married but rather only lived in a common law marriage, within which they raised seven children. starting with Morris Epstein, born in Reading on 26 Dec 1924.

Immigration Record for Isador?

The most likely passenger list manifest for Isador is of an “Itzchok Epstein”, age 21 (so born about 1890), occupation tailor, arriving in New York City on 22 May 1911 of the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria, from Hamburg (p. 1, line 24). He indicates that his most recent residence in the Old World was with his mother “Hanna Epstein” in Bobruisk (often termed the “second city” of Belarus), and that he was born in Bobruisk. “Hanna” would be consistent with the family’s recollection that Isadore’s mother was named Anna. Isador indicates he is intending to stay with his cousin Joe Epstein, at 372 Cherry Street, on the Lower East Side.

Listed on line 23 of the passenger manifest, evidently traveling with Isadore is Eli Levin, age 19, also a tailor from Bobruisk, who most recently stayed with his father Reuben Levin in Bobruisk. He will be staying with his brother Abraham Levin at 58 Montgomery Street in New York, an address immediately adjacent to where Joe Epstein was living. It seem likely that Isador and Eli were cousins of some sort. (It may be significant that on April 7, 1886, a marriage took place in Bobruysk between Shmul’ Shaya Levin, son of Rakhmiel’ Levin, and Sora Gitlia Epshtein, daughter of Shlioma Epshtein. )

in the 1910 census, a Joe Epstein, occupation painter in a shop, resided on Monroe Street, adjacent to Cherry Street. He lived with his wife Bessie (Esther nee Zugman) and their four daughters Rose, Millie, Tillie and Rachel. His 13 June 1925 Naturalization petition indicates he was born in Vitebsk, Russia. (By 1920, the family had moved up to 112th street.)

Where was Isadore in 1920?

Isadore appears in the 1920 city directory for Reading, Pennsylvania, where Isadore, Yetta, and their children would reside through the 1920s and the 1930s. The 1920 directory lists him as a tailor residing at 500 S. 15th Street in Reading. Isadore is also listed in the Reading city directory in other years, including 1927, 1929, 1934, 1940, and 1941. A newspaper notice from 2 May 1929 notes that the court has authorized the sale of a house belonging to Isadore and Yetta Epstein, perhaps as the result of a foreclosure. We know from family stories that Isadore, who struggled with alcoholism through his life, had frequent financial challenges. The children recalled nights in Reading at which, due to eviction, they had to sleep on cutting tables in a tailor’s shop.

Isadore’s soon-to-be wife, Yetta Anderson, is listed in the 1920 census as residing in Baltimore Ward 6, Maryland on Jackson Square, adjacent to her sister Bessie (born Massie) and brother in law Abraham Labb (born Lebed). I had thought that perhaps Isadore lived in Yetta’s environs, and that is how they met prior to moving to Reading, PA. However, there is no Isador Epstein listed in the 1920 census residing in the Baltimore area in the 1920 census. There are over 100 Isador or Isidor Epstein’s, born in Russia, nationwide listed in the 1920 census. Of these around 25 were born in the 1880s , whom I thought at first might be “our” Isadore, residing in Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Mount Vernon NY, New London CT, Chicago, and St. Louis Missouri.

The 1930 census in Reading PA does clearly list “Ischdol” Epstein and his wife “Jennie, who must be Yetta, living with their four sons, Maurice, Harry, Charles, Louis. Isador’s immigration year from Russia is given as 1913. He is working as a tailor in the pressing industry, and the family lives at 309 Belvedere Street in Reading. He is still an alien. Isadore and Yetta are listed in the 1940 census in Reading with all seven of their children; the 1940 census, however, does not list year of immigration.

Knowing Isador’s likely immigration year and the fact that as late as 1930 he remained an “alien,” narrows the candidates in the 1920 census. Considering only unnaturalized tailors or workers in the clothing industry, born around 1886-87 in 1920 who immigrated around 1913, and who do not appear in the 1930 census, the most promising candidate is an “Isaac” Epstein, birth year illegible. He immigrated in 1913, is still an alien, and is working as a clothing presser. Residing in Manhattan Assembly District 2, at 114 Chrystie Street, the heart of the Lower East Side (one block from the present day Tenement Museum) in the home of his niece Bella Lipschitz, with her cousin Elizabeth Epstein. “Isaac” is listed as married, but the identity of his wife is unclear. (The 114 Chrystie street address is one mile northwest of Joe Epstein’s location in 1911 at 372 Cherry Street.)

NOTE: There are two other 1920 candidates who can be safely eliminated:

A, Isadore Epstein, born 1891, immigrated 1911, living in Leonia, Bergen County, NY, married to Rebecca Epstein, with daughters Lily age 8, and Ida, age 5. A tailor in his own shop. Claims that immigration papers are submitted. By 1930, he is naturalized and the family is still living in Bergen County, so he can be removed from consideration

B. Isador “Estein” (sic), born 1887, immigrated 1912, married to an Annie, working as a tailor in a tailor shop in St. Louis, with two young daughter, Fannie, age 4, and Ida, aged 10 months. However, this couple and their daughter appear in St Louis in the 1930 census, so this cannot be “our” Isador.

It is also possible that Isador was evasive with the 1930 census enumerator, and that he actually immigrated earlier than 1913 or thereabouts, in which case many other Isador Epsteins would need to be considered.

Dora and Samuel Epstein

Isador’s son Lou Epstein recalled that his borhter Mo was under the impression that Isador had two brothers, Jacob Epstein and Yuri Epstein, and one sister, Dahle Epstein. Through DNA searches, I have recently made contact with Mark Evans, my “new” second cousin. who is clearly the grandson of Dora Epstein, who must have been Isadore’s sister “Dahle.” Dora (b. 1899) married Samuel Epstein (b. 20 November 1899). According to family stories, Sam adopted Dora’s surname, to assist with his immigration. The family recollection is that Dora immigrated one year prior to Samuel.

Samuel Epstein’s Naturalization Declaration (23 May 1927) is consistent with this story. It indicates he was born in Bobruysk, Belarus., and lived a 2851 West 24th street, Brooklyn. He states he arrived in New York on the the ship “Seitan” from Bremen, Germany in April 1910.

Consulting the passenger manifest lists for 1910, Sam appears to have been the “Gerschon Epstein,” age 22, (so born around 1888) a tailor, on the ship “Zieten” which arrived in New York on 21 April 1910. He lists as his destination Moische Rosenblum, 279 (Prince?) street, NY, NY. “Gershon” states he had been living most recently with his mother, “Masele” (?) (perhaps Mazal?) Epstein, in Bobruisk. (If the family story is correct, Samuel may have misrepresented his natal name, so perhaps his mother in fact had a different surname in Bobruisk.)

Moische Rosenblum may be the same person as Moses M Rosenblum, age 52 (b. 1858), widowed, tailor listed in the 1910 census, residing in Manhattan Ward 7, in the home of his son Abraham Rosenblum. Moses had immigrated about 1887. (Moses may also appears in the 1900 census. married to Eve, at 69 Norfolk Street Street, Manhattan. Ward 7, also in the heart of the the Lower East Side, about three blocks east of the present day Tenement Museum. )

Dora Epstein, in turn, appears to have been established in New York City by this time. The 1910 Federal census, enumerated on 19 April, records Dora Epstein, residing in the home of her sister in law Beckie Epstein on Essex Street, in the Lower East side. Beckie’s son Joe, age 7 lives with them, Beckie is married but it is not clear where her husband is living.
Presumably, within days of the census enumeration, Dora and Samuel wee reunited, following his arrival on the Zieten on or about 21 April. I am not sure if the couple had already been married in Belarus, or if they were formally married in the United States. Dora’s 1910 census entry lists her as single, but I have not found a US marriage record for Dora and Sam. (They may never have undergone a US legal marriage process, just as Isadore and Yetta don’t appear to have been legally Nor havmaried.) e I found a passenger manifest or any naturalization papers for Dora Epstein.

In any event, a decade later, the 1920 census clearly records Samuel and Dora Epstein residing on Prince Street, Ward 4, Newark NJ, with their five year old son Harry Epstein, who was born 11 January 1915. This is the same name that eleven years later Isadore and Yetta would give to their second son, Harry Epstein, born 26 Aug 1926 in Reading PA. Is this coincidence, or were the two couples perhaps naming their sons (who were first cousins) after a common ancestor in the Old Country? (JewishGen’s list of Duma Voters in Belarus does have a 1907 listing for “Girsh Epshsteyn,” son of Lipin, living in Bobruysk, who might a relevant kinsman.)

The 1930 census shows Sam and Dora, with 15 year old son Harry, living at 2859 W. 24th street in Brooklyn, Apt. 241, more or less consistent with Sam’s 1927 Naturalization Declaration form. His World War II registration in 1941 shows Harry working at Rosenbaum Bakery in Brooklyn.

Henry Epstein served in the US Army during World War II, perhaps, his sons think, in the Motor Pool, and was evidently stationed on Okinawa late in the war. (Just before he time he went into the service, he and Gloria Orans (daughter of Morris Orans and Gertude Langer) were married in Elkton, MD in 1941). After discharge, it appears, Harry Epstein began to call himself “Hank Evans,” and his three sons took the surname Evans as well. The 1950 census records Hank Evans, with his wife Gloria, living with their sons Mark and Tedd on Long Island, Hempstead, in Nassau County. NY. Hank is working as a photoengraver. Hank died 14 OCT 1988, and Gloria passed away 25 JUN 1994.

I am not sure how much contact there was during this period between siblings Isadore and Dora. Mark Evans, Dora and Sam’s grandson, recalls family stories about Dora’s brother, ”Uncle Itshka.” I don’t know if the two Harry Epstein’s ever met. By an interesting coincidence, Mark Evans and his family lived for years in Cleveland Park in Washington DC. near where my sister Bonnie and I grew up near Chevy Chase Circle. My late mother Ruth would have been thrilled to know that Dora’s family was so close.

Sam and Dora’s grandsons recall that Sam, like his son Harry (Hank) Evans (Epstein), was active in the ILGWU (the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union), and were of a progressive, pro-labor bent. I do find this an intriguing coincidence: my father’s mother’s family, the Zeltzer and the Weinstein lines, were also from the Bobruisk area and certainly were involved in Yiddish pro-labor progressive social movements, in Belarus and in the United States. Nathan Shaviro, the husband of Sema Weinstein (sister to my great grandmother Chava Weinstein Zeltzer) regularly wrote for the Gerechtigkeit (Justice), the ILGWU newspaper and helped edit it.

My mother Ruth Epstein Auslander often said she felt right at home in my father’s Zeltzer extended family network, and it may be that part of this sense of familiarity was a shared political and cultural orientation, with roots in Bobruysk!

What became of Isadore and Dora’s brothers Yuri and Jacob Epstein?

Yuri Epstein

A possible candidate: Yeer (?) Oscher Epstein, born 1889, arrives on 19 April 1913 in New York from Bremen on the SS Wittekind, line 16, occupation dyer. Most recently staying with his father Isle (?) Epstein in Bobruisk. Intends on staying with cousin Rubin Nafels (?) at 41 Canal Street, New York. Born Bobruisk, Minsk.

This individual’s naturalization declaration of 19 April 1933 gives his occupation as a painter, born 25 October 1888 in Minsk, residing at 321 E. 121st street New York, residing with his wife Nettie, b, 1901. Three children: Murray 9b 22 Sept 1919) , Rose (b. 25 Aug 1921) , and Eve (b. 27 May 1924). The family in 1930 resided at 243 E. 182st in the Bronx, and in 1940 at East 178th Street in the Bronx.

Of these children, Murray (Mortimer, Morton) Epstein in 1950 was residing in Manhattan, married to Ann, working as a clerk in a finance department.

Rose Epstein appears to have kept her surname, and to have died in September 1994; buried at Springfield Gardens, in Queens.

Jacob Epstein
Possible candidate 1: Jacob Epstein , born 1886, arrives on 2 May 1910 on the Carmania, sailing from Liverpool to New York. He is from Minsk, occupation tailor; his most recent residence was with Simel (?) Epstein, his father in Minsk. He is intending to say with his cousin Selden Slits (?) on 84th street in Brooklyn.

Possible candidate 2: 26 December 1908 Naturalization Declaration of Jacob Esptein, (sic) born in Minsk, 10 April 1884, immigrated through Quebec, Canada, arriving via the Boston and Maine railroad 10 October 1894. Resides at 157 Lexington Ave., NY.

A World War II draft registration card records a Jacob Epstein living at 112 Baruch Place, near the East River, giving his birth at December 1884 in Minsk, and employer as Bernstein and Gummer.

However, Sharon reports Lou recalled a family story that Jacob was a sheep farmer who had stayed behind in the Old Country.

Acknowledgements: Many thanks to Linda Kelly for assistance to putting together many pieces of this puzzle, and to Sharon Hann for her years of work reconstructing Epstein family history.

Mark Auslander and Avis E. Williams
23 April 2022

The proposed South River (Welaunee) Forest zone spans approximately 3,500 acres in southeastern Fulton County and southeastern unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia. The land is in the watershed of the South River, evidently referenced as the Welaunee or Weelaunee by indigenous Muscogee Creek inhabitants. This land has a complex indigenous history, incorporating some of the Soapstone Ridge that was the site of numerous indigenous quarries during the late Archaic and early Woodland periods. During the 18th century these lands were well within the territory of Muscogee Creek, gradually being pressed by expanding white trading and settler interests from Florida, South Carolina, and coastal Georgia. From at least the 1790s onward there appear to have been scattered white farms, often based in the enslaved labor of persons of African and indigenous descent, intermixed with Muscogee Creek settlements as well as hunting and gathering zones on these lands. The development of the cotton gin and the increasing industrialization of cotton processing vastly accelerated white demand for agricultural land, to be worked by an enslaved people of African descent.

By 1821, the white expropriation or theft of Muscogee land in this region of Georgia culminated in the fourth Georgia land lottery, in which these lands were divided into 202.5 acre plots, distributed to white men who qualified for the drawing. This essay briefly considers the experiences of enslavement with this 3,500 acre zone, and on continued structures of labor discipline that continued on these lands during the post slavery Reconstruction and Redemption eras.

The Transitional Era: Muscogee Creek, White Penetration, and Early Enslavement

We begin with the transitional era from c. 1750 to about 1820 when enslaved people of African descent, owned by Muscogee Creek. may have resided in these lands or close by them. From 1751 slavery was legal in Georgia. As noted, there were scattered white owned farms through Creek controlled areas between the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers from the 1780s onward. Increasing numbers of African-descent people were also held by Muscogee Creek in involuntary servitude.

Over much of the 18th century, there are accounts of escaped black slaves from the Carolinas and coastal Georgia finding their way into Creek territory, and being, in essence, adopted into local communities. Some African-descent people lived in forms of slavery which Gary Zellar (2007) maintains was not as coercive as the slavery system that had been established in British North America. However, after the invention of the cotton gin, cotton cultivation became increasingly profitable and more and more Muscogee Creek turned to a labor system modeled on the enslavement of African-descended people.

It is unclear if Estelvste (African Creeks), free or enslaved, resided with what is now termed the South River Forest zone, which was located within the Lower Creek region of the Creek Confederacy. As noted, there were certainly enslaved people owned by Creek within the general vicinity (Saunt 2005, Zellar 2007).

The most famous Muscogee Creek slave-based plantations in the region were Chief William McIntosh’s complexes at “Lochau Talofau” on Acorn Bluff on the Chattahoochee River in Carroll County and at Indian Springs, Butts County, respectively about 35 miles southwest and 50 miles southeast of the South River Forest zone. McIntosh owned over 100 enslaved people, and his children owned a number of other people of African or Afro-indigenous descent as well. Many of these enslaved individuals’ names are recoverable from documents associated with claims made against the Upper Creek, after William McIntosh was assassinated (or executed) in 1825 at Acorn Bluff for signing the Treaty of Indian Springs. (Littlefield 1979; May 1996).

Among the individuals owned by the McIntosh family, was Sarah Davis (1799-1886), who was as at one point owned by the daughter of William McIntosh, Rebecca McIntosh Hawkins, who in 1831 married Benjamin Hawkins, an educated, “mixed-blood” Creek and sometime business partner of Sam Houston. After Chief McIntosh was executed by Creek warriors in 1825, Sarah was part of the forced emigration party led by Ben Hawkins and John Sells to Arkansas Indian Territory in 1830.

When Rebeca Hawkins left Indian Territory for Texas, she sold Sarah to her brother Daniel Newnan D.N.) McIntosh. who later served as a colonel in the Confederate States Army. Sarah worked as a house slave/servant for him.

By 1853, Sarah Davis purchased her freedom and became a free African Creek merchant who lived in the Creek Agency settlement, west of present day Muskogee before (and after) the Civil War. She ran an inn that served meals and was a major force in the community. Her grandson was Joseph Davison, an important Creek Freedman leader, His descendants continue to reside in Oklahoma, along with thousands of others descended from enslaved Afro-native peoples owned by the McIntosh faction and other members of the Muscogee Creek elite.

Sarah Davis and many other members of her family are buried in the Old Creek Agency cemetery near Muscogee OK, in which an estimated 1,000 African Creek individuals are interred. The cemetery, on private land, is currently unavailable to visits by loved ones and descendants. As we honor this endangered forest, a site of so much tragedy, let us also think of that distant forested cemetery which remains a site of great injustice, compounded by the fact that most Creek Freedmen descendants were in 1979 stripped of tribal citizenship and remain legally outside of the tribe.

The 1821 Land Lottery

The white settler theft of Muscogee (Creek) lands in this region of Georgia, between the Ocmulgee and Flint rivers, was finalized in the 1821 land lottery, in which eligible white men drew for 202 and a half acre plots, including the land that now constitutes the 3500 acres of the proposed South River or Welaunee Forest. What is now DeKalb county was then part of Henry County. Districts 1-18 of Henry were distributed through the lottery, including District 15, in which the proposed forest zone is located.

Naming Names: The Enslaving and the Enslaved

1. Slaves of Lochlin Johnson

Among the first white winners of the lottery was Locklin Johnson (18 Feb 1787-17 July 1861) who then resided in Cooper District, Putnam County, where he appears to have already owned four slaves. He drew lot 73, at the confluence of the South River and Blue Creek, two miles southeast of where we stand, and in time acquired lots 72,73 56, and 67. The historian Franklin Garret reckoned Johnson’s plantation “the finest in the county,” by which he meant the most productive.Johnson at various points represented the county in the State Senate, served as as county sheriff, postmaster and road commissioner, and was an Inferior Court judge, as well as land speculator in what later become Atlanta. By the time he died in 1861, Locklin Johnson owned eleven people who toiled on these lands, and he may have rented many others.

Through DeKalb County probate records, we are able to identify by name most of these enslaved people, who resided, according to the 1860 slave schedule, in three dwellings. In his will, Johnson Lochlin Johnson bequeathed his his slave Aley valued $300, “and her issue” to his daughter Margaret M.P Lichtenstadt (wife of Maurice Ludwig Lichtenstadt). To his daughter Nancy P. Farrar (wife of Jesse Farrar, a real estate agent) the “negro girl” Harriet and her issue, worth $500. To his daughter his daughter Jane E.L. Robinson (wife of James Robinson) the “negro girl” Emily ($500) and her issue. All of this was consistent with the frequent practice of slaveowner planted to bequeath their daughters with younger women slave who might serve as their enslaved maids and personal attendants (this is precisely how young Sally Hemmings came into the household of Thomas Jefferson as a gift to Jefferson’s wife from her father).

Other enslaved people were sold at an estate auction on New Year’s Day, 1862, on the front steps of the DeKalb County courthouse in nearby Decatur:

Laura and her children Emma and Herman, were sold to David Kiddoo (of Cuthbert, GA)
Wyatt, sold to James Robinson (Jane’s husband) then in Atlanta
Ben, sold to Jesse Farrar (husband of Nancy), then in Atlanta Ward 4
Anthony, sold to Mary K. Richie, via her guardian.
Jake, sold to M.L. Lichenstandt (Margaret’s husband: Maurice Ludwig Lichenstadt)

We are not sure yet of what become of Tobe (also known as Cornelius W) and the “boy” John, who are listed in the estate’s inventory and appraisement records, but not the auction records.

We see likely traces of some of these individuals in the first Freedmen’s Census, of 1870, nine years later.

A. Wyatt Johnson appears as a day laborer living in Atlanta’s Ward 4, living in the household of the black blacksmith Sidney Perkins.

A “Benjamin Johnson” is working as a sharecropper in Panthersville, evidently on same land he and his family had been held on during slavery. Among his daughters are 12 year old Harriet and one year old Emma, who might have been named for the Harriet bequeathed in 1861 to Lochlin Johnson’s daughter Nancy, and for the Emma, who was the daughter of Laura, sold to David Kiddoo of Cuthbert County. (All this suggests that various kind was sold or distributed apart from one another during 1861-62. Ben Johnson ten years later is listed as working on a farm in the same neighborhood.

Aley and Jake, as we have seen, were acquired by Dr. Maurice Ludwig Lichtenstadt, a prominent physician whose patients during the Civil War included Alexander Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederacy. Aley may have become Ally Johnson, born 1837, who appears in the 1870 census, living in Atlanta Ward 1, with her husband Green Johnson, a blacksmith

The same year “Jack Lemons,” born 1812 , and his wife Harriet, born 1810, are living together in Atlanta’s West End. Perhaps this is the formerly enslaved Jake, and he and Harriet, separated by the 1862 auction, reunited following Emancipation.

2. Slaves of Nathan Turner

The plantation of slaveowner Nathan Turner was located in lot 71, just to the east of Lochlin Johnson’s plantation. He enlisted in the Confederate Army as 1st Sergeant March 4, 1862. He was Elected Jr. 2nd Lieutenant September 8, 1862. and Died of disease at Vicksburg, Miss, January 28, 1863. His estate inventory that he owned the following enslaved persons:

—Eady, woman 36 years, and child, also Solomon, a boy, 4 years, valued at $1300
—Margaret, girl, 15, $1500
—King, boy, 15, $1500
—Clinton, a boy, 13, $1500
—Minty, a girl, 12, $1200
—Allick a Boy, 5 years, $1000

His will bequeaths the 14 year old slave girl Margaret to his daughter Frances Ann Turner, and his 12 year old slave “Minta” to his daughter Sarah Eliza.

Most of these individuals remained in Panthersville into the era of freedom. In the 1870 census, twenty one year old Minty (now known as Aminda) is married to a Nathan Turner, in household #11, the is now in the proposed forest zone.

In another part of Panthersville, “Edy” Razenback, 40 ( previously Eady) is married to Edmund Razenback, 40 (who was not in the Turner inventory) with her sons Alexander Razenback, 15 (must be “Allick”) and Solomon Razenback, 10 who were both in the Turner estate inventory).

3. Slaves of Rev. Elijah Clark

Another prominent slaveowner in the forest zone was the Methodist Minister Rev. Elijah Henry Clark, 3 Dec 1835-12 Jun 1898, who represented DeKalb County in the Georgia House of Representatives and who became a Captain in the Georgie Infantry 42, company D. His father William Henry Clark owned 39 slaves in a different part of the county. Rev Clark himself occupied lot 78 and owned 14 slaves, who resided in three slave dwellings, in 1860.

We can surmise the identities of some of these individuals from the 1870 “Freedmen’s census” which shows the following four free black families living next door to Rev. Clark, five years after Emancipation:

Dempsey Clark, 70, b. 1800
Harriet Clark, 45
Louisa Clark, 20
Ousley Clark, 10

Dempsey Clark, 36
Cordelia Clark, 35 , b. 1835

Bill Clark 25. b 1845
Sally Clark, 24
Amanda Clark, 11
Cordelia Clark, 10 months

Thomas Clark 40
Catharine Clark 34
Marena Clark 10
Ella Clark 7
Hannah Clark 3
Jacob Clark 3 months

(All of these individuals over the age of five were presumably owned by Rev. Clark or his family prior to 1865, when freedom finally came to Georgia.

These black Clark families are still listed in the 1880 census, continuing as sharecroppers farming in Panthersville.

4. The slaves of George P. Key

The slaveowner George P. Key occupied lots 82 and 83, the site of the Intrenchment Creek Trailhead (where protest and ceremonial events in support of the Forest were held in 2021 and 2022) as well as the southern section of the later Atlanta Prison farm. (Key Road is named for this family.) Key owned 19 slaves in 1860. George Key’s father Chiles Keys (Jan 30 1784-Mar 4 1846) died intestate in 1846. He owned 21 slaves in 1840 The section of his probate inventory listing enslaved people unfortunately is missing. Other enslaved only two individualsReuben and Lively, are mentioned in probate records).
,
It is not precisely clear which individuals were owned by George Key, but five years after Emancipation, the following black families of sharecroppers were living next door to George Key: Henry and Kizziah Thrasher Phillip and Fanny Mitchel. George Middlebrooks, Annise and Mary Middlebrooks, and Alonzo and Eliza Walker. We surmise some or all of these individuals were owned by the white Key family.

5. Slaves of James Moore and William Cobb

The slaveowner James Moore (born Cork, Ireland, 6/28/1798; d. 5/14/1856) is recorded as owning six slaves in 1850, on lots 110 and 111, on lands that would later become the northern sections of the Atlanta Prison Farm. After his death in 1856, only two enslaved people are listed in probate records; Fanny and Mary, who were both sold at auction to Moore’s neighbor, William T. Cobb. The 1860 slave schedule indicates they were born 1837 and 1841.
William Cobb, a miller, achieved a degree of fame during the Battle of Atlanta, when on the night of 22 July 1864, he guided Gen. Patrick Cleburne of Gen. Hardee’s Corps ( Confederate) through the forest, in a failed assault on f Union General McPherson’s Army of the Tennessee

One wonders what Fanny and Mary thought as they watched these fateful proceedings.

W speculate that Fanny appears six years later in the 1870 census, as “Fanny Stanners” in Panthersville, born c 1834, in household #t328, married to Bailey Stanners

6. Slaves of Robert Cobb

William Cobb’s apparent brother Robert Cobb, resided on Lot 84 (between Georgie Key and Augustus Pitts). He died in 1865 and his probate records for 6 April 1865 (three days before Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House ) indicate the following slaves in his estate:

Dare, a negro man, valued at $3000
Lee, a negro man, 3500
Sy, a boy, 19 years, 4000
Jane, negro woman and 4 children, 6500
Pegg and 3 children, 5000
Alissa (? ) and a child, 50
Eliza, a girl, 3000

Turner appears five years later in the 1870 census living in Panthersville as sharecropper Turner Cobb, heading a substantial family:

Turner Cobb 58 (b. 1812)
Matilda Cobb 35
Juliann Cobb 18
Mary C Cobb 12
Lucy Cobb 10
George Cobb 8
Polly Cobb 6
William Cobb 3
Andrew J Cobb 3 month
Allen Cobb, 20
Offelia Cobb, 1

Since none of these individuals are listed in the Robert Cobb inventory, it seems likely that most were owned by someone else in the area; and that the family was reunited after Emancipation.

7. Slaves of Justice Augustus Pitts

Justice Augustus Pitts held property on lots 51 and 76. He owned 6 enslaved people in 1860.

In1870, five years after Emancipation, two doors from Judge Pitts in Panthersville, lived a free black family comprised of:

Holland Pitts 25
Margaret Pitts 25
James Pitts 10
Eliza Pitts 8

Next door to Holland Pitts, lived the free black family

Ephraim Pitts, 25 (b.1845)
Elvira Pitts, 21
Sally Pitts, 4
Margaret Pitts
Irena Clark, 60
Rachel Clark, 10

Ten years later, Ephraim Pitt’s family remained in Panthersville, near Judge Pitts’ home:

Ephaim Pitts 35 Self (Head)
Elvira Pitts, 25 Wife
Sarah Pitts, 14 Daughter
Margaret Pitts, 13 Daughter
William Pitts, 9 Son
Ephriam Pitts, 8 Son
Isaiah Pitts, 6 Son
Caroline Pitts, 3 Daughter
Infant Pitts, 5/12 Son

8. Slaves of James F. Stubbs

In 1860, James F. Stubbs owned 14 slaves. Ten years later, the census lists several free persons of color likely to have come off of the old Stubbs place, including Henry Stubbs, a 13 year old farm laborer in the household (#42) of former slaveowner James Stubbs

Also in 1870 in Panthersville. Dilsey Stubbs, born 1820, headed a household twelve households away from Judge Augustus Pitts.

Dilsey Stubbs 50
Charles Stubbs 17
Alexander Stubbs 10
Lucy Stubbs 7

Future research, based on Probate records, Indian Agency files, church documents, land records, and other materials may be able to help us compile a more complete picture of the enslaved people who labored and resided on the lands of the proposed South River Forest, during the successive periods of Muscogee Creek and white control, and to tell more fully the story of free people of color who worked this land during the post-Emancipation era.

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Appendix I. Known Names of the Enslaved in the South River Forest zone (list in progress of formation)

Aley (owned by Lochlin Johnson, then Margaret Lichtenstandt )
Harriet (owned by Lochlin Johnson, then Nancy Farrar )
Emily (owned by Lochlin Johnson, then Jane E.L Robinson
Wyatt (owned by Lochlin Johnson, then James Robinson)
Ann. owned by Lochlin Johnson
Ben , owned by Lochlin Johnson, then Jesse Farrar)
Anthony (owned by Lochlin Johnson, then Mary K. Richie via guardian)
Jake owned by Lochlin Johnson, the, then M.L. Lichtenstadt)
Laura and her children Emma and Herman ( owned by Lochlin Johnson, then David Kiddoo)
John, a boy, owned by Lochlin Johnson
Tobe (alias Cornelius W) owned by Lochlin Johnson,
Fanny (owned by James Moore, then William Cobb)
Mary (owned by James Moore, then William Cobb)
Turner Cobb (owned by Robert W. Cobb)
Dare (owned by Robert W. Cobb)
Lee, (owned by Robert W. Cobb)
Sy, (owned by Robert W. Cobb)
Jane (Perkerson?), and 4 children (owned by Robert W. Cobb)
Pegg and 3 children, (owned by Robert W. Cobb)
Alissa ? (Hollingsworth?) and a child (owned by Robert W. Cobb)
Eliza, a girl, (owned by Robert W. Cobb)
Holland Pitts (owned by Augustus Pitts)
Ephraim Pitts (owned by Augustus Pitts)
Henry Stubbs (owned by James Stubbs)
Benjamin McWilliams
Eady, (owned by Nathan Turner)
Solomon (owned by Nathan Turner)
Margaret, (owned by Nathan Turner)
King, (owned by Nathan Turner)
Clinton (owned by Nathan Turner)
Minty or Aminda (owned by Nathan Turner)
Allick, or Alexander (owned by Nathan Turner)

Acknowledgements: Research on this project has been conducted in the Archives of the DeKalb History Center, the Kenan Research Center of the Atlanta History Center, the Georgia Archives, and the Probate and Real Estate offices of the DeKalb County Courthouse (Decatur, Georgia). We are grateful for the guidance of Creek Freedmen leaders and community historians Rhonda Grayson, Sharon Lenzy, and Akua Maat in deepening our understanding of early Muscogee Creek enslaved history in Georgia and environs. Many thanks to Margaret Spalding, Jaqueline Echols, Joe Peery, Craig Womack, Gerardo “Abundia” Tristan, Guillermo Zapata, and Johnna Gadomski for sharing their perspectives on the complex struggle to interpret, protect and remediate the South River watershed and forest zone.

References

Lifflefield, Daniel F, .Jr, 1979. Africans and Creeks: From the Colonial Period to the Civil War. Greenwood Press.

May, Katja. 1996. African Americans and Native Americans in the Creek and Cherokee Nations, 1830s to the 1920s. Collision and Collusion. Garland Publishing.

Saunt, Claudio. 2003. Atlanta, White and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of an American Family. Oxford University Press.

Zellar, Gary. 2007 African Creeks; Estelste and the Creek Nation. University of Oklahoma Press.