Our Nig
Page 27
Many of the characters and circumstances of the Hayward family parallel the Bellmont family in Our Nig, further suggesting Harriet E. Adams was associated with the Hayward family:
Nehemiah Hayward, Sr., (1738–1825) was born in Hardwick, Massachusetts, to a family who had emigrated from England to Massachusetts in the 1640s. After amassing considerable property in New Brunswick, he bought 118 acres of land between Milford and Wilton, New Hampshire, in 1781. Like Our Nig’s “Sire,” Nehemiah Sr. bought land that was unincorporated and therefore untaxed. Also like “Sire,” he left his holdings to his son, with the stipulation that his daughter, Sally (like “Aunt Abby”), owned a “right in the homestead” and had the right to occupy part of the house.
Nehemiah Hayward, Jr., (1779–1849), like “Mr. John Bellmont,” inherited this farm from his parents.
Rebecca S. Hutchinson Hayward (1780/81–1850) married Nehemiah Jr. in 1806. A direct descendent of the Pilgrim Anne Hutchinson and the granddaughter of one of Milford’s earliest settlers, she bore nine children, seven of whom lived to adulthood. Like “Mrs. Bellmont,” Rebecca Hayward seems to have possessed a difficult personality.
The Hayward farm, like the “Bellmont farm,” had orchards, sheep flocks, and was located above the fast-flowing Souhegan River in a steep-sided valley.
The youngest Hayward daughter, Rebecca Hayward, like “Mary Bellmont,” died in her teens while visiting Baltimore.
Lucretia Hayward, the family’s other daughter, like “Jane Bellmont,” married a man from Vermont and eventually moved West.
George Hayward, Nehemiah’s eldest son, like “James Bellmont,” worked in Baltimore and returned home with his wife and child after falling ill. He died early and was buried in Milford. Wilson’s son, George Mason, may have been named after George Hayward’s son George M. Hayward. Some of the Hayward family had abolitionist ties. Rebecca Hayward was related to the Hutchinson Family Singers, who gained international acclaim in the late 1840s and the 1850s as progressive supporters of women’s rights, temperance, and the abolition of slavery. Rebecca’s son Jonas Hayward, a Baltimore businessman, who seems to have been an abolitionist, aided the Hutchinson Family Singers when they visited Baltimore in 1844. The Reverend Humphrey Moore, whose strong abolitionist sentiments aroused controversy in Milford, officiated at the marriage of Nehemiah Hayward, Jr., and Rebecca and served as the Hayward family pastor (they owned a pew in his church) until he was elected by antislavery men to the New Hampshire House of Representatives in 1840 and the state senate in 1841.4
1832? 1834? — 1836? 1838?: Attends a Milford public school, probably in District School Number 2, where the Hayward farm was located, according to C. E. Potter’s 1854 map of Milford.5
1842? 1845? 1846?: Leaves the Hayward household, most probably aged eighteen.
1850: Harriet Wilson appears as Harriet Adams in the “Report of the Overseers of the Poor for the Town of Milford, for the Year Ending Feb 15th 1850.” “Harriet Adams” is listed as a “Pauper Not on the Farm,” her cost to the town being $43.84. She does not appear in the “Report of the Overseers of the Poor” for the years 1839 through 1849. Clearly during the year 1849–50, Harriet E. Adams was unable to support herself. She would have been placed with a local family, who would have been reimbursed by the town.6
1850: In the August 24, 1850, census, Harriet Adams is listed as twenty-two years old, black, and resident in the household of Samuel Boyles.7 Presumably this was the family with whom she was placed as a pauper at that time.
1851: Harriet Adams is again listed as a Milford “Pauper Not on the Farm” for the year ending February 15, 1851.8 Clearly she was still unable to support herself.
1851: “Allida,” in her testimonial at the end of Our Nig reports that, most probably in early 1851, an “itinerant colored lecturer” took “Our Nig” (Harriet E. Adams) to W_____, an “ancient town” possessing a straw hat industry. There she became an “inmate” of Mrs. Walker’s household in W_____ and began working as a “straw-sewer” (133). However, so weakened by her “hard treatment” in the Hayward family that her “constitution [was] greatly impaired,” she soon becomes Mrs. Walker’s domestic help instead (133). It is unclear whether Walker is or is not another pseudonym, though Our Nig consistently uses pseudonyms. W_____ is likely to be Ware, Westborough, Walpole, or Worcester, in an area of Massachusetts where straw-sewing industries were concentrated. Arthur Chase describes the “manufacture of straw goods” as “an important industry of the village [of Ware] in former times.” He reports that this industry “was commenced in 1832” but “besides the work done in the shops, straw-sewing was done largely in the houses about town.” A common household industry, “the sewing of hats by hand,” according to Herman DeForest, “was for a long time confined to this part of Massachusetts,” meaning that “a large number of sewers were required.” Braid, brought to Westborough sewers by “stock-carts” from Upton—where the industry began in 1825— was “sewed into straw hats by women in this town.” Isaac Newton Lewis refers briefly to the straw-goods manufacturers of Walpole in his section on the industry of the town. The other W_____ town in this part of Massachusetts is the larger town of Worcester, where again straw goods were produced in quantity, and a town where spiritualism would take a strong hold, supported by Thomas Wentworth Higginson. The 1850 federal census reveals there were approximately two dozen Walker families living in Walpole, Ware, Westborough, and Worcester in 1850. A significant proportion of these Walker families lived in Worcester. There is no sure way of narrowing the list of Walker families, based on available evidence.9 Walker may, of course, be yet another pseudonym.
1851 September/October: Harriet E. Adams had by this time returned to Milford, New Hampshire, to marry Thomas Wilson, whom she met in W_____, according to the testimonial writer “Allida” in the appendix to Our Nig. “Allida” reports that “months passed” between Adams’s being transferred by the “itinerant colored preacher” to “W_____” and his return in the “early Spring” (this seems be an unlikely date; it is more likely to have been some time in the summer). This second encounter, according to Our Nig, saw the preacher accompanied by a man representing himself as a fugitive slave (a house servant): “Suffice it to say, an acquaintance was formed, which, in due time, resulted in marriage.… In a few days, [Frado] left W_____, … and took up her abode in New Hampshire.” Given that “Allida” attests in 1859 to knowing Harriet E. Wilson for only about eight years (i.e., from 1851/52), the dates in the early 1840s that she gives in her testimonial are likely to be errors, considering that Thomas Wilson married Harriet Adams in 1851.
1851: Thomas Wilson marries Harriet Adams on October 6, 1851, in Milford, New Hampshire. No details of age or race are listed. This information was “returned” in April 1852 by Rev. E. N. Hidden, the fifth pastor of Milford’s Congregational church, for the years 1849–58. The records show that Thomas Wilson was from “Virginia” and Harriet Adams from “Milford.”10
1852?: George Mason Wilson born, probably in late May or early June of 1852 (approximately nine months after Thomas Wilson of Virginia married Harriet Adams of Milford). The birth occurred in Goffstown, New Hampshire, a few miles north of Milford in Hillsborough County—where the Hillsborough County Farm was located at the time. Margaretta Thorn reports that the son was born on the “County Farm” while Wilson was “in her sickness” and unable to “pay his board every week.” The county farm was an undesirable, disease-ridden place to live. George Plummer Hadley recounts that “in 1853 some of the inmates were stricken with smallpox, and it was necessary to build a pest-house for the proper care and segregation of the smallpox patients” and concludes, “What tales of sorrow could some of the unfortunates unfold.”11
“Allida” reports that “for a while” the couple settled down, but that the husband ran away to sea: “Days passed; weeks passed,” and Our Nig’s author fell so ill she had to go to the “County House,” where she gave birth to her child, and that “then” the husband
returned. The family then moved to “some town in New Hampshire,” according to “Allida,” “where, for a time, the husband supported her and his little son decently well.… But again he left her as before.” He never returned; the narrator of Our Nig notes that Frado’s husband later died in New Orleans.
1852: In the Farmer’s Cabinet for July 8, July 15, and July 22, Harriet Wilson’s name appears in the “List of Letters in the Post Office at Milford, N.H., July 1, 1852.” Possibly this letter (or these letters) came from her friends in W_____.
1855: “Harriet E. Wilson” appears on the February 1855 Milford “Report of the Overseers of the Poor” listed under “Pauper Not on the Farm” and costing the town $45.45.12
1855: George Wilson is admitted to the Hillsborough County Poor Farm for four weeks beginning August 19, 1855: “Wilson, George Age: 3/Time Admitted: Aug 19, 1855/Former Residence: Milford/Colored/Time of discharge: Sept. 11, 1855/Place of destination: Milford to his mother/No. weeks board: 4/No. days board: 1.”13
1856: “Harriet E. Wilson and child” are listed as Milford “Paupers Not on the Farm” for the year ending February 15, 1856.14
1856? 1857? 1858?: If “Allida” is reliable, “the heart of a stranger was moved with compassion, and bestowed a recipe upon [Harriet E. Wilson] for restoring gray hair to its former color. She availed herself of this great help, and has been quite successful.” Surviving bottles carrying the name “Harriet E. Wilson” have been found in the New Hampshire/western Massachusetts area, suggesting she enjoyed some success in this business. By 1859 Wilson’s hair restorative/regeneration business is being advertised in the Milford Farmer’s Cabinet and elsewhere—such as the Methodist Quarterly Review (in 1860).15
1856: In the Farmer’s Cabinet for October 9, October 16, and October 23, Harriet Wilson’s name appears twice in the “List of Letters in the Post Office at Milford, N.H., October 1, 1856” (as “Harriet Wilson” and as “Harriet E. Wilson”). Possibly these letters are connected to steps Wilson was taking to establish her hair restorative/regeneration business.
1857: “Wilson boy” appears on the list of Milford paupers “not on the farm.” This curt entry, following on from the entry for “Harriet E. Wilson and child” in 1856 suggests that this is George Wilson. This is the first of three entries for 1857–59 that, taken together, seem to support the claim made by “Allida” that Wilson left her son with a family in Milford. Margaretta Thorn tells the same tale: “At length a kindly gentleman and lady took her little boy into their own family.” The author of Our Nig, adds Thorn, “wishes to educate her son.” Thorn also reports that the child “shows promise.”
1858: “Wilson boy” again appears on the list of Milford paupers “not on the farm.”16
1859: “Wilson boy” once more appears on the list of Milford paupers “not on the farm.”17
1859: In her 1859 testimonial, “Allida” states that Our Nig’s author’s health “is again failing” and that she decided to write her “autobiography” as “another method of procuring her bread.” No dates or places are given in this section of “Allida” ’s account of Harriet E. Wilson’s life. In the last chapter of Our Nig, the narrator pleads for support for herself in her present destitute condition and tells how she passed through the various towns of the state she lived in, then into Massachusetts. It is possible she was selling both her hair-care product and her book door to door during this time. However, in the preface to Our Nig, its author notes that writing was an “experiment” undertaken to help her “maintain” herself and her child “without extinguishing this feeble life,” which is not suggestive of door-to-door selling.
1859: “C .D. S.,” the third testimonial writer in Our Nig, reports on July 20, 1859, that he/she has been “acquainted with her [the author] for several years.” He/she has a “deep interest in the welfare of the writer” and testifies that “her complexion is a little darker than my own,” which may suggest that C.D.S. was of mixed descent.
1859: Our Nig was copyrighted on August 18. A copy was deposited at that time “by Mrs. H. E. Wilson, In the Clerk’s office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.” The novel was printed for the author by the printers George C. Rand & Avery of Boston, Massachusetts. Rand & Avery did not usually publish novels, but had published some abolitionist writings. Rand & Avery may have entered the book for copyright on the author’s behalf (a common practice by publishers in order to establish copyright, since this was in their interest as much as their author’s).18
1860 February 13: George Mason Wilson, aged “7 years, 8 months,” died in Milford, New Hampshire, according to the New Hampshire Bureau of Vital Records. He was recorded as black, and his parents are listed as Thomas Wilson of Virginia and Harriet Wilson of Milford, New Hampshire. He died of the “fever.” Because George Mason Wilson died in a census year, his death was also recorded in the Mortality Schedule of the federal census, which lists his cause of death as “billious fever” following an illness of twelve days and gives his “color” as “mulatto.” The Farmer’s Cabinet—Milford’s local paper—reports that a George Mason Wilson died in Milford on February 13, 1860, at the age of “7 years, 8 months,” the “only son of H. E. Wilson.” Harriet E. Wilson’s son thus died within six months of Our Nig’s publication, rendering futile what the narrator describes in Our Nig’s final chapter as an attempt to raise money to support her child by publishing Our Nig.19
1860: No blacks fitting the description of Harriet E. Wilson appear in the 1860 federal census for Hillsborough County, suggesting she had left the area by that time. However, an advertisement for her hair dressing published in 1860 provides a “testimonial” provided by a “Mrs. H. E. Wilson of Nashua.”20
1860–61: Wilson enters into a business relationship with Henry P. Wilson (no relation), who manufactures and sells her hair products, in bottles carrying her name.21 According to P. Gabrielle Foreman and Katherine Flynn, in the period 1860 to 1861 “at least 1,500 ads for Mrs. Wilson’s hair products appeared in a score of papers.”22
1863: “Mrs. Wilson” is listed in Milford’s 1863 “Report of the Overseers of the Poor” under “Support of County Paupers” (in a reorganized record system). This is possibly Harriet E. Wilson. Though she had not previously been given a title in Milford’s town records, her advertisements for her hair-care products had named her as Mrs. H. E. Wilson, and this may have caused a change in her mode of address more generally. After this 1863 entry, Wilson’s name does not appear again in Milford’s records.23
1866/1867: Wilson probably moves to the Boston area within a few years of 1863, most probably in 1866 or 1867. This seems to be associated with an embrace of spiritualism and the seeking-out of a spiritualist career. The evidence for this move is the records of a (second) marriage and a death, both of which suggest that Harriet E. Wilson is the same person as Hattie E. Wilson, a colored Boston spiritualist who emerges in the pages of the spiritualist newspaper the Banner of Light in 1867 (see appendix 2). Likely sponsors of this move into a spiritualist career are C. Fannie Allyn, who became a very prominent spiritualist at this time and who spoke in both Milford and Worcester, Massachusetts and/or Isaiah C. Ray.24
1867: Hattie E. Wilson is listed in the Boston spiritualist newspaper Banner of Light as both a speaker (from May 1867) and as living in East Cambridge, Massachusetts (in June). She is known as “the eloquent and earnest colored trance medium.” She joins the Massachusetts Spiritualist Association. She participates in their conventions and gives an address in favor of labor reform. The Banner now begins regularly to record aspects of Wilson’s involvement with Boston spiritualist activities (for full details, see appendix 2, “Harriet E. Wilson in the Banner of Light and Spiritual Scientist”).25
1867 September: The Banner reports Wilson’s address to a “Great Spiritualist Camp Meeting” in Pierpont Grove, Melrose, Massachusetts, which generated “thrilling interest” by its plea for both “recognition of the capacities of her race” and the “philosophy of prog
ress.”26
1868: Mrs. Hattie E. Wilson is listed in the Boston Directory, Embracing the City Record for 1867. She appears twice: in the general listing (705) and as a “Physician” (623). Her address is given as “70 Tremont.” From this date onwards, Wilson regularly appears in Boston’s city directory. This chronology will henceforth only pick out noteworthy directory entries.27
1868 February: Wilson is elected onto the Massachusetts Spiritual Association Convention’s “Finance Committee,” as recorded in the Banner.
1868 August: The Banner details Wilson’s participations in a camp meeting in Cape Cod.
1868 September: As noted in the Banner, Wilson moves to West Garland, Maine, in October for a few months, while on a lecturing tour in Maine, but before the end of the year returns back to Boston (to 70 Tremont Street).
1869: Wilson moves to 27 Carver Street, as recorded in the Boston City Directory (652, 837).
1869 January: She begins a brief career as a successful platform speaker (as recorded in the Banner).
1869 July: Moves to 46 Carver Street, as recorded in the Banner.28
1870: Wilson starts the process of shifting over from platform speaking to a concentration upon the spiritualist children’s lyceum movement, as is apparent in Banner reports.
1870: The 1870 federal census lists “Hattie Wilson” as a thirty-eight-year-old white female, born in New Hampshire, and gives her occupation as physician. She is living in the household of John Gallatin Robinson, a twenty-six-year-old apothecary born in Connecticut.29
1870 September 29: John Gallatin Robinson and Harriet E. Wilson marry in Boston. The record shows that “Harriet E. Wilson,” born in Milford, New Hampshire, but resident in Boston, declared that she was thirty-seven years old, the daughter of Joshua and Margaret Green, and that this was her second marriage (while her husband’s first). The minister in charge was the Reverend J. L. Mansfield. Despite all the substantial discrepancies with what we know about Wilson, this would still seem to be the Harriet E. Wilson who wrote Our Nig, not least because her death certificate provides corroborative evidence.30 The record also contains a column for the color of the individuals marrying to be noted. In this column, check marks appear for both Robinson and Wilson, but the meaning of these is not clear. For a discussion, see appendix 3. Following this marriage, Wilson usually continues to be referred to as Hattie E. Wilson in Banner news reports, though until the couple split up, most probably in 1877, she also appears as Hattie E. Robinson in the Banner’s listings. See appendix 3, “Documents from Harriet Wilson’s Life in Boston.”