Ebony and Ivy

by Craig Steven Wilder

  47. For two decades before the Civil War, the trustees of Wake Forest College (1838) in North Carolina kept a death watch over an ill widow, Rebecca Blount. In 1836 her husband died. He gave one enslaved black girl to each of his two nieces and an enslaved black boy to his nephew. Nine enslaved adults, a house and lots in Edenton, a plantation with house and furnishings outside town, and all other furnishings, carriages, and equipment went into trust to support Rebecca Blount. Upon her death, the executors were to transfer the estate to support “poor and indigent young men destined for the ministry” at a planned local Baptist college. For twenty-three years, the trustees anxiously awaited that inheritance, even hiring lawyers to protect the college’s interests by challenging Rebecca Blount’s financial decisions. In November 1859 she died. Wake Forest’s governors immediately convened to seize the property, especially the slaves. They listed six men (Isaac, Jim, Pompie, Joseph, Thomas, and Harry), seven women (Lucy, Caroline, Emma, Nancy, Harriet, Ann, and May), and three children, an increase from the number transferred in the Blount will. Two enslaved people had died but some of the women had given birth, and the trustees claimed these children, or the “natural increase,” as part of the entitlement. Over the college’s objections, Rebecca Blount had sold a few of the children, and the treasurer now negotiated for their return. The latter decision was not intended to reunite families but to maximize profits. On 7 May 1860, the board placed the women, men, and children on sale. The adults were dispersed to various buyers in North Carolina and Virginia. The youngest children were discarded with their mothers. The trustees did not get to sell Mary, a girl who, according to a historian of Wake Forest, had run away, “probably because she feared the ordeal of the auctioneer’s block.” Mary was soon captured in Norfolk. The board paid the bounty and jail fees. They then rid themselves of her at public sale, receiving less than anticipated because of her new reputation for absconding. Altogether, Wake Forest acquired about $12,000 from the sales. It was not its first transaction of this type. For instance, in 1847, Celia Wilder bequeathed roughly $600 to the college: “the sale price of two negro women, and the residue of her estate.” “With the exception of a supervisor of grounds and a single campus policeman, all the workers at Vanderbilt [University] seem to have been black,” notes Paul Conkin. “They cared for grounds, cleaned and maintained buildings, cooked food in the student messes, and worked as porters or servants in professors’ homes. They remained hidden, even resented components of the campus.” Lyon Gardiner Tyler, The College of William and Mary in Virginia: Its History and Work, 1693–1907 (Richmond: Whittet and Shepperson, 1907), 22–23, 37; “Boarding Accounts, 1743–1891,” Office of the Bursar Records, 1745–1875, Special Collections, Swem Library, College of William and Mary; William Gooch to Thomas Gooch, 1727, 1–2, Gooch Letters, James Blair Papers, Box 1, Folder 3, Special Collections, Swem Library, College of William and Mary; Paul K. Conkin, Gone with the Ivy: A Biography of Vanderbilt University (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985), 82–83; George Washington Paschal, History of Wake Forest College (Wake Forest, NC: Wake Forest College, 1935), I:213–19, 217–18n.

  48. Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life (New York: Penguin, 2010), 155–64; Helen Bryan, Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2002), 162–66; Henry Wiencek, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), 282–88; John Parke Custis to Dear Mama, 5 July 1773, in Joseph E. Fields, comp., “Worthy Partner”: The Papers of Martha Washington (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994), 152–53; entries for May and April 1773, in Donald Jackson, ed., The Diaries of George Washington (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1978), III:178–83; Patricia Brady, Martha Washington: An American Life (New York: Viking, 2005), 74–89.

  49. William R. Davie to Spruce Macay, 3 September 1793, William R. Davie Papers, Folder 13, UNC; William D. Snider, Light on the Hill: A History of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 3–23; Green, History of the University of South Carolina, 19–20.

  50. Bruce, History of the University of Virginia, I:258–59, 284.

  51. Christopher Grant Champlin eventually represented Rhode Island in the United States Senate. See the Champlin brothers’ correspondence with their captains and factors, and Christopher Grant Champlin to Christopher Champlin, 6 September 1784, Commerce of Rhode Island, 1726–1800 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1914–15), esp. II:227–28.

  52. Unsigned letter to Samuel Johnson (ca. 1760), Samuel Johnson Papers, Box 1, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University; “Constitutions of the Publick Academy in the City of Philadelphia,” in Minutes of the Trustees of the College, Academy and Charitable Schools of the University of Pennsylvania, vol. 1, 1749–1768, 9; Christopher J. Lucas, American Higher Education: A History (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1994), 108; Virginia D. Harrington, The New York Merchant on the Eve of the Revolution (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1964), 33–34; Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade, III:131; Edward Peterson, History of Rhode Island (New York: J. S. Taylor, 1853); Estate Papers of the Malbone Family, and Godfrey Malbone Sr.’s Account Book, Malbone Family Collection, Rhode Island Historical Society.

  53. “Census of Negro Slaves of 16 Years Age or Upward, in Each Town in Massachusetts, 1754,” Massachusetts State Archives; Edgar J. McManus, Black Bondage in the North (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1973), 72–87; John Winthrop, 1754 Almanac, Almanacs of Professor John Winthrop, Box 4, Vol. 13, Harvard University Archives; Account of the Number of inhabitants, in the Colony of Connecticut, January 1, 1774, Together with An Account of the Number of Inhabitants, Taken January 1, 1756; A Return of the Number of Inhabitants in the State of Connecticut, February 1, 1782, and Also of the Indians and Negroes (Connecticut, 1782); “A List of the Ratables of the Several Townships & Precincts in the County of Somerset in the State of New Jersey, of July 1784 with the Assessments Made Upon,” and the county lists, reel 18, New Jersey State Archives.

  54. Lucius R. Paige, History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630–1877 (Boston: H. O. Houghton, 1877), 286–92; Stephen Paschall Sharples, Records of the Church of Christ at Cambridge in New England 1632–1830: Comprising the Ministerial Records of Baptisms, Marriages, Deaths, Admission to the Covenant and Communion, Dismissals and Church Proceedings (Boston: Eben. Putnam, 1906).

  55. Samuel Curwen, “His Colledge Laws, 1731,” Curwen Family Papers, 1637–1808, American Antiquarian Society; entries for 4 April 1737, 21 March 1740, and 3 September 1751, Records of the Harvard Faculty, I:90, 125, 342–43, Harvard University Archives; Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, XIII:410–13, 458–59; Samuel Eliot Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, 1636–1936 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936), 115.

  56. “The Lawes of the Colledge Published Publiquely Before the Students of Harvard College, May 4, 1655,” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts (Boston: By the Society, 1935), XXXI:330–40; “John Leverett’s Diary, 1707–1723,” 14–15, 44, Papers of John Leverett, Box 8; David Cressy, “Gender Trouble and Cross-Dressing in Early Modern England,” Journal of British Studies, October 1996, 438–65; “Benjamin Wadsworth’s Book (A. Dom. 1725) Relating to the College,” 454–58; John Burton, “Collegiate Living and Cambridge Justice: Regulating the Colonial Harvard Student Community in the Eighteenth Century,” History of Higher Education Annual, 2007, XXIII:86; entries for 30 March 1753 and 26 October 1753, Harvard University, Faculty Minutes, 1725–1890, II:6, 12–13, Harvard University Archives; entry for 1 October 1754 in “Rev. Edward Brooks Journal, 1753–1762,” 15.

  57. Entry for 20 February 1753, Judgments of the President and Tutors of Yale College, 1751–1768, in Faculty of Yale College Records; “Yale University Corporation and Prudential Committee Minutes,” esp. entries for 16 October 1723, 10 September 1760, 22 November 1763, 31 July 1765.

  58. Entry for 9 November 1748, �
��Minutes of the Proceedings of the Trustees of the College of New Jersey,” vol. I; entries for 3 June 1755, 1 March 1763, 23 April 1763, and 2 September 1773, in “Minutes of the Governors of King’s College,” vol. I, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.

  59. Columbia University, The Black Book, or Book of Misdemeanors in King’s College, New-York, 1771–1775 (New York: Columbiana at the University Press, 1931), 3, New-York Historical Society; Catalogue of the Governors, Trustees and Officers, and of the Alumni and Other Graduates, of Columbia College (Originally King’s College), in the City of New York, from 1754 to 1882 (New York: Printed for the College, 1882), 9, 14.

  60. Leverett Wilson Spring, A History of Williams College (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917), 306.

  61. George Moses Horton, The Poetical Works of George M. Horton: The Colored Bard of North-Carolina: To Which Is Prefixed the Life of the Author (Hillsborough, NC: D. Heartt, 1845), 12–18; Joseph Caldwell to Samuel Stanhope Smith, President of the College of New Jersey, 5 September 1811, Joseph Caldwell Papers, Folder 1, Wilson Library, UNC; Kemp P. Battle, History of the University of North Carolina: From Its Beginnings to the Death of President Swain, 1789–1868 (Raleigh, NC: Edwards and Broughton, 1907), I:261–62.

  62. See also, Mark Auslander, “The Other Side of Paradise: Glimpsing Slavery in the University’s Utopian Landscapes,” Southern Spaces, May 2010. Clifton K. Shipton, Biographical Sketches of Those Who Attended Harvard College in the Classes 1761–1763 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1970), XV:56–67; Freeman Hunt, Lives of American Merchants (New York: Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine, 1856), I:556–57; Justin Winsor, ed., The Memorial History of Boston, Including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630–1880 (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1882), IV:155n.

  63. Betsey Stockton developed her expertise in Mosaic institutions, early Judaism, and biblical geography by studying in the president’s library at Princeton. “Betsey Stockton” clipping file and biographical file, library of the New York State Historical Association; obituary, Cooperstown Freeman’s Journal, 3 November 1865; Escher, “She Calls Herself Betsey Stockton,” 98–102.

  64. Phebe Jacobs was working at Bowdoin when John Brown Russwurm, the third black person to graduate from an American college, gave the commencement address in 1826. Málaga is a Moorish city on the southern coast of Spain. King, “Still Embattled, Yet Emboldened”; “An Honored Negress,” Farmer’s Cabinet, 11 April 1850; John B. Russwurm, “The Condition and Prospects of Hayti,” ed. Philip S. Foner, Journal of Negro History, October 1969, 395–97; Mrs. T[homas]. C. Upham, Narrative of Phebe Ann Jacobs (London: W. and F. G. Cash, 1850); Louis C. Hatch, The History of Bowdoin College (Portland, Maine: Loring, Short, and Harmon, 1927), 41–45; Maria Wheelock’s obituary, Haverhill Gazette, 21 June 1828; George Augustus Wheeler and Henry Warren Wheeler, History of Brunswick, Topsham, and Harpswell, Maine, Including the Ancient Territory Known as Pejepscot (Boston: Alfred Mudge and Son, 1878), 104–6, 206; William D. Williamson, The History of the State of Maine; From Its First Discovery, A.D. 1602, to the Separation, A.D. 1820, Inclusive (Hallowell, ME: Glazier, Masters, and Smith, 1839), 373; William David Barry, “The Shameful Story of Malaga Island,” Reunion, 30 April 1996; John King Lord, A History of Dartmouth College, 1815–1909: Being the Second Volume of A History of Dartmouth College and the Town of Hanover, New Hampshire, begun by Frederick Chase (Concord, NH: Rumford Press, 1913), 629–30; Frederick Chase, A History of Dartmouth College and the Town of Hanover, New Hampshire, ed. John K. Lord (Cambridge, MA: John Wilson and Son, 1891), I:163.

  65. Maria Suhm owned “several slaves.” Last will and testament of Eleazar Wheelock, 4 June 1779; see the letters of John Wheelock, Maria Suhm, and the extended families, in John Wheelock Family Correspondence, MS 934, Rauner Library, Dartmouth College. More than three dozen black people were buried in Hanover during this era. Dartmouth Cemetery Association, “Record of Deaths, Interment and Inscriptions,” March 1929, Baker Library, Dartmouth College. David Ogden of Newark, NJ, to Jonathan Sergeant, 24 July 1761, Ogden Family Papers, Box 2, Folder 8, Firestone Library, Princeton University; Lord, History of the Town of Hanover, 148–89, 301–2.

  CHAPTER 5: WHITENING THE PROMISED LAND

  1. H. Frank Eshleman, Lancaster County Indians: Annals of the Susquehannocks and Other Indian Tribes of the Susquehanna Territory from About the Year 1500–1763, the Date of Their Extinction (Lancaster, PA, 1908), 373–87; Benjamin Franklin, A Narrative of the Late Massacres, in Lancaster County, of a Number of Indians, Friends of this Province, by Persons Unknown. With Some Observations on the Same (Philadelphia, 1764), 3–8; C. Hale Sipe, The Indian Wars of Pennsylvania: An Account of the Indian Events, in Pennsylvania, of the French and Indian War, Pontiac’s War, Lord Dunmore’s War, the Revolutionary War and the Indian Uprising from 1789–1795 (Harrisburg, PA: Telegraph Press, 1929), 462–69.

  2. Eshleman, Lancaster County Indians, 375–86; Franklin, Narrative of the Late Massacres, 8–13; Sipe, Indian Wars of Pennsylvania, 463–67; Wayland F. Dunaway, The Scotch-Irish of Colonial Pennsylvania (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944), 50–71; George W. Franz, Paxton: A Study of Community Structure and Mobility in the Colonial Pennsylvania Backcountry (New York: Garland, 1989), 3–83.

  3. Kevin Kenny, Peaceable Kingdom Lost: The Paxton Boys and the Destruction of William Penn’s Holy Experiment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 140–46; Sipe, Indian Wars of Pennsylvania, 463–67.

  4. Kenny, Peaceable Kingdom Lost, 40–49, 89–90, 217; Franz, Paxton, 340–45; Wilson Armistead, Memoirs of James Logan; A Distinguished Scholar and Christian Legislator; Founder of the Loganian Library at Philadelphia; Secretary of the Province of Pennsylvania; Chief Justice; Commissioner of Property; and (as President of the Council) for Two Years Governor of the Province (London: Charles Gilpin, 1851), 78–91; Frederick B. Tolles, James Logan and the Culture of Provincial America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1957), 159–85. On the background of the colony, see Edwin B. Bronner, William Penn’s “Holy Experiment”: The Founding of Pennsylvania, 1681–1701 (New York: Columbia University Press [for Temple University], 1962); Steven C. Harper, “Delawares and Pennsylvanians After the Walking Purchase,” in William A. Pencak and Daniel K. Richter, eds., Friends and Enemies in Penn’s Woods: Indians, Colonists, and the Racial Construction of Pennsylvania (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 167–72.

  5. In 1711 Robert Livingston sold several thousand acres of Mohawk Valley land to Governor Robert Hunter for the settlement of eighteen hundred Palatines: German Protestants from the Rhine Valley. These immigrants received permission from Queen Anne to come to the Americas, and the governor situated them in a strategically important slice of Indian country. Hunter and Livingston abused this group to a point where they depended upon the charity of the Mohawk, while the governor bound out their children to English families and tradesmen. Among these apprenticed children was John Peter Zenger, later embroiled in the famous freedom-of-speech case after he was arrested for publishing libelous statements against Governor William Cosby of New York. The New Jersey land speculator and attorney James Alexander, a Livingston in-law, represented him in that controversy. Alexander and Lewis Morris had funded Zenger’s New-York Weekly Journal and had editorial control over its content.

  Brendan McConville, These Daring Disturbers of the Public Peace: The Struggle for Property and Power in Early New Jersey (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 30–31; Nathaniel S. Benton, A History of Herkimer County, Including the Upper Mohawk Valley, from the Earliest Period to the Present Times: With a Brief Notice of the Iroquois Indians, the Early German Tribes, the Palatine Immigrations into the Colony of New York, and Biographical Sketches of the Palatine Families, the Patentees of Burnetsfield in the Year 1725 (Albany, NY: J. Munsell, 1856), esp. 32–49; J. David Hoeveler, Creating the American Mind: Intellect and Politics in Colonial Colleges (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), 155–62; Bronner, William Penn’s “Holy Experimen
t,” 59–65; Marianne S. Wokeck, Trade in Strangers: The Beginnings of Mass Migration to North America (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 59–112; “Account of Servants Bound & Assigned Before James Hamilton, Mayor, 1745,” Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Aaron Spencer Fogleman, Hopeful Journeys: German Immigration, Settlement, and Political Culture in Colonial America, 1717–1775 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 69–99; Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), 114–27; Stella H. Sutherland, Population Distribution in Colonial America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), 154–58; Allen S. Fisher, Lutheranism in Bucks County, 1734–1934: With a Restudy of the Indians of the Eastern United States to More Definitely Prove Lutheran Missions Among the Lenape of the Delaware Valley, 1638–1740 (Tinicum, PA: Allen S. Fisher, 1935); Lucy Simler, “Tenancy in Colonial Pennsylvania: The Case for Chester County,” William and Mary Quarterly, October 1986, 542–69; see surveyor’s reports for Nathan Levy and David Franks, 4 October 1765, on warrant granted 13 April 1752, Pennsylvania Counties Papers, 1708–1882, Lancaster County, Box 3, Folder 1, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

  6. Rosalind J. Beiler, “From the Rhine to the Delaware Valley: The Eighteenth-Century Transatlantic Trading Channels of Caspar Wistar,” in Hartmut Lehmann et al., eds., In Search of Peace and Prosperity: New German Settlements in Eighteenth-Century Europe and America (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 172–88; I. Daniel Rupp, A Collection of Upwards of Thirty Thousand Names of German, Swiss, Dutch, French and Other Immigrants in Pennsylvania from 1727 to 1776, with a Statement of the Names of Ships, Whence They Sailed, and the Date of Their Arrival at Philadelphia, Chronologically Arranged, Together with the Necessary Historical and Other Notes, Also, an Appendix Containing Lists of More than One Thousand German and French Names in New York Prior to 1712 (Philadelphia: Leary, Stuart, 1898), esp. 4–18; Barbara Ann Chernow, Robert Morris, Land Speculator, 1790–1801 (New York: Arno, 1978), 8–12.