Oberlin Heritage Center Blog

by Melva Tolbert, OHC Volunteer

About 4 years ago, the Oberlin Heritage Center traveled to Sandusky, Ohio as part of their education program for staff and volunteer docents. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend, but continued to have an interest in the history of Sandusky’s involvement with Underground Railroad and wanted to learn more.  This past October, my husband and I ventured out and found two locations connected to this history: the Second Baptist Church and the Follett House Museum.  The experience was memorable and I want to share it with all of you.

We found the Second Baptist Church (on Decatur St.), which is said to have been one of the most active locations in the Sandusky Underground Railroad network. We were fortunate to find one of its members at the neighboring parsonage and he invited us in for a brief tour of the current building.  The historic placard in the front yard explained the Underground Railroad activity that occurred there.  With the view of Lake Erie in plain sight from our location, it was easy for me to visualize the freedom seekers’ journey to Canada.  The gentleman led us into the small sanctuary with its large stained glass windows and purple family pew cushions.  The original church was founded as a Zion Baptist Church in 1849 by a group of formerly enslaved peoples and freeborn Blacks. Just prior to the Civil War, the church was organized at its present site under the name First Regular Anti-Slavery Baptist Church. The sanctuary that we stood in dates to around 1930, and was constructed around the original church’s wooden framework.

 

Second Baptist Church, March 17^th 1957. Photo Courtesy of the Sandusky Library.

I asked whether there was a basement, which our guide confirmed there was, so we followed him downstairs to a large room with tables, chairs, and a large commercial kitchen.  Our guide then showed me a side room that housed the furnace. Thinking about how the space may have been used in the era of slavery, I could image that many people seeking refuge could find some rest and comfort here before continuing on to Canada.

 

The following day, I arrived at the Follett House for a tour.  The original use of the home was for Oran and Eliza Follett and their children.  The home is now owned and operated by the Sandusky Public Library, which documents the history of both Sandusky and Erie County. My tour began in the den of Mr. Follett, who was known primarily for being a publisher, president of the Sandusky, Dayton, and Cincinnati Railroad, and for his involvement in the local banking industry.  His wife was a homemaker and active in the local community providing aid to those in need.

 

The Follett House, ca. 1984. Photo Courtesy of the Sandusky Library.

The docent led me to the front parlor and rear parlor pointing out the massive fireplaces which illustrated the family’s wealth.  There was a temporary display in the rear parlor of people connected to Sandusky’s early Underground Railroad activity, including the Folletts. We then continued the tour into the basement of the home.  There were several quilts displayed and old maps of the Sandusky area.  The tour led us to the second floor which contained four large bedrooms for the family and then to another staircase to the fourth floor (attic) where the tour ended.

My desire is to continue visiting and learning more about this incredibly historic area of Ohio, and I urge all of you to do your own exploring as well.

 

For more information on the Sandusky Underground Railroad Network, feel free to visit the following websites to plan your own experiences:

Erie County Underground Railroad Historic Walking Tour

Follett House Museum

NPS Visit Underground Railroad Sites

By Melva Tolbert, Oberlin Heritage Center Volunteer

In keeping with the theme of freedom and the Underground Railroad, I recently visited Norfolk, Virginia which is rich in history and stories of freedom. After a stop at the Norfolk Visitors Bureau, I set out to find the Norfolk Waterfront. I ventured a couple of blocks to the Elizabeth River and found an Underground Railroad historic marker which denotes the place where many enslaved blacks sought freedom along the waterfront.

Prior to the Civil War, the waterways along the east coast served as a transportation mode that brought enslaved Africans and free blacks to the east coast. It also was the site for a busy commercial activity. This historic marker highlighted the story of George Latimer, an enslaved black man seeking freedom like thousands like him in the North. George and his wife Rebecca escaped by the waterways to Boston and he did not return to his owner.

George Latimer 
Thayer & Co. (Boston, Mass.)–Lithographer
New York Public Library Digital Gallery

Because such a large number of blacks were employed in the shipping industry (shipyards, boats, and steamships) they were able to quietly assist African Americans with securing transportation heading North. Additionally, whites, either for a fee or by aiding the efforts of the Underground Railroad movement, transported enslaved men and women out of the Virginia and North Carolina area. It is believed that thousands of people were able to reach northern cities and Canada through these heroic efforts. Much like the abolitionist of Oberlin, you could find men and women in another part of the country who were committed to the message of freedom and the network of the Underground Railroad (on water).

Link to Waterways to Freedom interactive map and historical information

by Melva Tolbert, Oberlin Heritage Center volunteer

As my husband and I recently traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio for a family reunion, it was a great opportunity to spend time visiting some historic sites in a city that was so active in the struggle for freedom. My brief time at the Oberlin Heritage Center (OHC) has helped me gain a greater appreciation of not only the local history of Oberlin, but the history that encapsulates some other communities in Ohio. I became curious of Cincinnati’s local history after touring the OHC Freedom Friend’s History Walk that touched on the connection between the seminary in Cincinnati and the early settlers of Oberlin.

After a few word searches, I found information on the Harriet Beecher Stowe House. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the classic novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1852, which depicts the horrors of slavery in the south. Additionally, I found information on the former location of the Lane Seminary which held debates on the issues of slavery. A historical marker sits in front of a Cadillac dealership that was the former site of the seminary. It is in walking distance of the Beecher House. As our visit to Cincinnati was winding down, I made my way towards Madison Avenue in Cincinnati to seek out the only remaining building that documents a turbulent time in Cincinnati’s history as well as our nation.

The Beecher House is located in the historic Walnut Hills neighborhood of Cincinnati and served as the residence of Harriet Beecher Stowe and her father, Rev. Lyman Beecher, the president of Lane Seminary. When I arrived at the house, a number of adults and children were touring the first and second floors. Once you enter the house, you find yourself in a large foyer and facing a long hallway which stretches into the back addition. I was told that the first three rooms were the original structure of the house. The front room to the right, which may have served as the parlor, had a poster board presentation on the Rev. Lyman Beecher, the Lane Seminary, and individuals in the community including local abolitionists. Our tour guide spoke of a community that was benefiting economically from the commercial activity along the Ohio River and the conflict over not viewing slaves as equals. Many students at the seminary and local abolitionists found the conditions unacceptable and sought immediate emancipation for those enslaved. Lyman Beecher was portrayed as part of the former, which resulted in the turmoil at the seminary. A fourteen day debate on the issues of slavery ensued over the merits of emancipation versus slavery.

In the room that was considered the family dining room, a large timeline depicted the activities of the family, the Lane Seminary, and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s work and family, including her husband and children. Harriet had her own personal struggles with the issue of slavery which led to her writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin. She felt it was important to document the difficulties of slavery particularly as
people left the south for Ohio. In 1835, the timeline indicated that many students left Lane Seminary and traveled to nearby Cumminsville, Ohio and then unto Oberlin, Ohio to continue their studies and work towards emancipation.

My visit to the Harriet Beecher Stowe House led full-circle to another guided tour by the Oberlin Heritage Center entitled Scholars and Settlers, which led us through the early settling and growth of Oberlin College. This tour began at the corner of College and Main Streets in Oberlin and proceeded along the brick and paved walkway around Tappan Square. As our small group walked along College Street near the  Oberlin Conservatory of Music, I was pleasantly surprised to see the former location of the large wood dormitory that housed those early settlers from Cincinnati.

by Ron Gorman, Oberlin Heritage Center volunteer docent, researcher and trustee

Frances (“Fanny”) Jackson came to Oberlin in 1860 with a dream – a dream “to get an education and to teach my people”, she said. “This idea was deep in my soul. Where it came from I cannot tell, for I had never had any exhortations, nor any lectures which influenced me to take this course. It must have been born in me.”   It was a big dream for a 23 year old woman who ten years earlier had been bought out of slavery by her aunt. But it was a dream that had been nurtured at the Rhode Island State Normal School, would blossom at Oberlin, and would inspire the dreams of thousands of others. [1]

Fanny M. Jackson
(courtesy Oberlin College Archives)

Fanny Jackson entered the Oberlin College preparatory school in 1860, where after a year of study she would make a bold decision. She would enroll in the baccalaureate program (the “gentleman’s course”) at Oberlin College, rather than the literary program commonly prescribed for women. “The faculty did not forbid a woman to take the gentleman’s course,” she explained, “but they did not advise it. There was plenty of Latin and Greek in it, and as much mathematics as one could shoulder.” But with an unquenchable dedication that would characterize her life, she “took a long breath and prepared for a delightful contest.” [2]

At that time no African American woman had ever graduated from Oberlin’s baccalaureate program. But Jackson felt comfortable in Oberlin, even though she felt she “had the honor of the whole African race upon my shoulders.” She would room with the families of Professors Henry Peck and Charles Churchill, and would always acknowledge “the influence upon my life in these two Christian homes, where I was regarded as an honored member of the family circle.” [3]

Jackson’s teaching career began during the extended Oberlin College winter breaks, when she taught a night school, as described by the Lorain County News in 1864:

This School is open to all the Colored people of Oberlin, both young and old, who desire to receive instruction in the elementary branches, reading, writing, spelling, grammar, etc., and is most ably conducted by Miss F.M. Jackson, a young lady of rare accomplishments and devotion to the work. On the evening of our call the exercises were most interesting. The pupils were mostly adults, who, after a hard day’s labor[,] embracing the opportunity afforded them for self-improvement, bent their minds to the task before them with an earnestness and concentration that were truly gratifying. Miss Jackson has the knack of at once interesting and instructing, a fact evidently well appreciated by her scholars who appeared to enter with great enthusiasm into all her novel plans for their improvement. [4]

Jackson found her work with adults who had been kept in ignorance by slavery and prejudice to be immensely rewarding. “It was deeply touching to me to see old men painfully following the simple words of spelling; so intensely eager to learn”, she explained years later. “I felt that for such people to have been kept in the darkness of ignorance was an unpardonable sin, and rejoiced that even then I could enter measurably upon the course in life which I had long ago chosen.” [5]

For practically all of Jackson’s tenure at Oberlin, the United States was embroiled in Civil War. Jackson watched closely as her white classmates enlisted in droves to fight for the Union cause and her black classmates were turned away – admonished that “this is a white man’s government… white men are able to defend and protect it.”  When the federal government finally did allow black men to serve in 1863, the state of Massachusetts raised the first black northern regiment: the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Jackson, voted “class poet” by her college classmates, wrote a poem in honor of the men who enlisted in this regiment, which included eighteen Oberlinites.  It was published on page one of the Lorain County News and minced no words as to what the men of the 54th were fighting for: [6]

Now, Freedom stands holding with uplifted face,
Her hands, dipped in blood, on the brow of our race.
Attest it! my country, and never again
By this holy baptism, forget we are men,
Nor care, when we’ve mingled our blood in your battles,
To sneer at our manhood and call us your “chattles.”  [7]

But in this same year of the Emancipation Proclamation and bloody draft riots, Jackson noted that “a very bitter feeling was exhibited against the colored people of the country, because they were held responsible for the fratricidal war then going on.”  It was in this volatile environment that the faculty of Oberlin College embarked on a bold endeavor. “It was a custom in Oberlin that forty students from the junior and senior classes were employed to teach the preparatory classes,” Jackson explained.  “As it was now time for the juniors to begin their work, the Faculty informed me that it was their purpose to give me a class, but I was to distinctly understand that if the pupils rebelled against my teaching, they did not intend to force it.” [8]

Unlike the voluntary classes she had taught so far, Jackson would be teaching a compulsory class of mostly white students – the first African American teacher to do so.  Certainly the faculty’s hedge against forcing the issue would be considered unacceptable and discriminatory by today’s standards, but in 1863 America, where the Supreme Court of the land had a standing ruling that descendants of Africans were “so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect”, Jackson understood that “it took a little moral courage on the part of the faculty to put me in my place against the old custom of giving classes only to white students.”  What she didn’t mention was that it took even greater courage for herself to accept the offer. But where the cause of education or the advancement of her race or gender was at stake, Jackson would never back away from the challenge. The result was, in her own words, “an overwhelming success”: [9]

Fortunately for my training at the [Rhode Island] normal school, and my own dear love of teaching, tho there was a little surprise on the faces of some when they came into the class, and saw the teacher, there were no signs of rebellion. The class went on increasing in numbers until it had to be divided, and I was given both divisions. One of the divisions ran up again, but the Faculty decided that I had as much as I could do… [10]

The Principal of the Preparatory Department was “delighted” with the results.   A visiting reporter from an African American Philadelphia newspaper described it even more glowingly: [11]

It affords us much pleasure to say, that we never saw a teacher who took so much pains to explain every thing so clearly, as did Miss Fanny, to her class. Her manners are very pleasant and graceful. Her class is very large, being composed of both white and colored. She is the first colored person that ever taught in this institution, and we are proud of her. In the class she now teaches, the young white men and girls were a little prejudiced against her, when she was first placed as a teacher over them by the Faculty, but now they deem it an honor to be taught by her. [12]

Indeed, one student was so upset after his first class that “he came into his boarding place, flaming with indignation, and threatening to write at once to his parents and get taken home again, because his teacher was a woman, and a BLACK woman. But his matron persuaded him to a little delay, and it was not long before he preferred Miss Jackson to any other teacher.”  [13]

In 1865, Fanny Jackson graduated from Oberlin College with a bachelor’s degree. Interestingly, she was not now the first black woman to do so.  Mary Jane Patterson had attained that honor at Oberlin in 1862 (and perhaps was the first black woman in the country to earn that degree). Both women would now be offered teaching positions at the Institute for Colored Youth in Pennsylvania, but ironically Jackson would be appointed Principal of the Female Department, while Patterson would become her assistant. [14]

Mary Jane Patterson
(courtesy Oberlin College Archives)

Jackson was thrilled about the Institute and her prospects, writing:

In the year 1837, the Friends [Quakers] of Philadelphia had established a school for the education of colored youth in higher learning. To make a test whether or not the Negro was capable of acquiring any considerable degree of education. For it was one of the strongest arguments in the defense of slavery, that the Negro was an inferior creation formed by the Almighty for just the work he was doing. It is said that John C. Calhoun made the remark, that if there could be found a Negro that could conjugate a Greek verb, he would give up all his preconceived ideas of the inferiority of the Negro. Well, let’s try him, and see, said the fair-minded Quaker people. And for years this institution, known as the Institute for Colored Youth, was visited by interested persons from different parts of the United States and Europe. Here I was given the delightful task of teaching my own people, and how delighted I was to see them mastering Caesar, Virgil, Cicero, Horace and Xenophon’s Anabasis. We also taught New Testament Greek.  [15]

Already after her first week of teaching, the Quaker managers of the Institute declared her a “very valuable acquisition” and noticed a “greater animation of manner and a louder and clearer mode of speaking among the girls.” In her first year, enrollment in the Female Department almost doubled.  She lived and taught by a simple philosophy: “Many a child called dull, would advance rapidly under a patient, wise and skillful teacher, and the teacher should be as conscientious in the endeavor to improve himself as he is to improve the child.” [16]

By 1869 the managers were so impressed that they promoted her to head Principal of the entire Institute, the first African American woman in the country to take such a position. At that time, Mary Jane Patterson resigned and took a teaching position in Washington, D.C. Two years later she too would become a Principal, of the Preparatory High School for Colored Youth (the forerunner of prestigious Dunbar High School).

The focus of the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia at this time was to train students to become teachers themselves, a task that was not only sacred to Jackson, but was critical in this era of Reconstruction, when millions of freedmen needed and yearned for education. Indeed during the interval from 1861 to 1875, the Institute would send 56 known teachers to the South, comparing favorably with the 290 known teachers sent from the much larger Oberlin College, which sent far more than any other northern academic institution. [17]

But Jackson realized that not all students were meant to be teachers, and so as the Reconstruction era came to a close in the late 1870s, she embarked upon what she called an “Industrial Crusade”, to bring industrial education to the Institute: [18]

At a meeting of the public school directors and heads of some of the educational institutions, I was asked to tell what was being done in Philadelphia for the industrial education of the colored youth. It may well be understood I had a tale to tell. And I told them the only place in the city where a colored boy could learn a trade was the House of Refuge or the Penitentiary, and the sooner he became incorrigible and got into the Refuge or committed a crime and got into the Penitentiary, the more promising it would be for his industrial training. It was to me a serious occasion. I so expressed myself. [19]

Despite the tremendous regard the managers of the Institute held for their Principal, they were reluctant to move in this direction. But Jackson would not be deterred. It would take a decade of diplomatic persuasion, but ultimately the industrial school would become a reality. By this time Fanny Jackson had become Mrs. Fanny Coppin, marrying the Reverend Levi Coppin of Baltimore’s African Methodist Episcopal Church, who had been impressed by her “irreproachable character” and her “undisputed leadership in all matters of race advancement.” [20]

In 1890 a large celebration was held to honor Mrs. Coppin’s 25th anniversary with the Institute. By then thousands of students had studied under her tutelage, 3/4ths of the black teachers in Philadelphia and nearby Camden were graduates of her Institute, and there was a waiting list to get in.  In addition to her schoolwork, she founded the Women’s Exchange and Girls’ Home for disadvantaged females in Philadelphia, and wrote a women’s column for an influential African American Philadelphia newspaper. [21]

Through the 1890s, the industrial college turned out to be an unqualified success, training bricklayers, shoemakers, carpenters, printers, plasterers, tailors, dressmakers, and stenographers.  Mrs. Coppin insisted that women be included in the courses as well as men.  “During my entire life, I have suffered from two disadvantages,” she told one audience, “first, that I am a woman; second, than I am a Negro.”   But as the 19th century drew to a close and the 20th century was ushered in, changes were in the air.  Mrs. Coppin began to have health problems.  Reverend Coppin was appointed a Bishop in South Africa.  And the managers of the Institute requested that Mrs. Coppin “tone down” her beloved academic curriculum, claiming that it was “pitched too high”, and began a move towards a re-organization that stressed more elementary courses and “manual training” in its stead. [22]

These factors, to varying and unknown degrees, likely influenced Mrs. Coppin’s decision in 1902 to resign from the Institute after 37 years of service.  But she left on good terms.  The newly appointed “Committee to Re-organize the Institute” reported: “Your committee has much satisfaction in recording the high esteem that they have found general for the past work of the Institute and the enlightened views of its devoted head, Frances J. Coppin. Radical changes in the future will not of course discredit the work of the past…”  [23]

That same year the Coppins moved to South Africa. Mrs. Coppin called it “a fortunate incident to finish my active work right in Africa.”  But failing health brought her back to Philadelphia a year later, and there she continued to decline. In her final year of life, at age 75, she wrote her autobiography at the request of her friends.  Published shortly after her death in 1913, the book was characteristically only one third about herself, and the remainder about teaching methods and biographical sketches of her colleagues and students. Even the portion that was about herself was full of praise for others. “My obligation to the dear people of Oberlin can never be measured in words,” she wrote. [24]

But that obligation was paid forward – many thousands of times.

 

SOURCES CONSULTED:

Fanny Jackson-Coppin, Reminiscences of School Life, and Hints on Teaching

Linda Marie Perkins, Fanny Jackson Coppin and the Institute for Colored Youth (PhD dissertation)

Levi Jenkins Coppin, Unwritten History

“Oberlin Colored School”, Lorain County News, Feb 10, 1864, p. 2

“Sketches by the Wayside”, The Christian Recorder, August 26, 1865, p. 2

“To the 54th Mass. Volunteers”, Lorain County News, June 10, 1863, p. 1

“A Worthy Enterprise”, Lorain County News, February 4, 1863, p. 3

“A Fortnight in Oberlin”, National Anti-Slavery Standard, March 11, 1865, p. 3

“Fannie Jackson Coppin, Class of 1865“, Oberlin College

Ronald E. Butchart, “Mission Matters: Mount Holyoke, Oberlin, and the Schooling of Southern Blacks, 1861-1917”, History of Education Quarterly, Spring 2002

William E. Bigglestone, They Stopped in Oberlin

John Mercer Langston, From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capitol

“Scott v. Sandford“, Legal Information Institute

“Fanny Jackson Coppin” graduate file, Oberlin College Archives, RG 28/2, Box 208

Robert Samuel Fletcher, A History of Oberlin College From its Foundation through the Civil War

“Mary Jane Patterson (1840-1894)”, Notable Black American Women

“The Grandeur of our Triumph”, Lorain County News, Nov 15, 1865, p. 1

“From Slavery Onward”, Oberlin Weekly News, Aug 22, 1889, p. 3

“Prejudice at Oberlin”, National Anti-Slavery Standard, July 9, 1864, p. 2

“Notes by the Way”, The Christian Recorder, Nov 27, 1902, p. 1

“Gala Week in Philadelphia”, New York Age, July 5, 1890

“Philadelphia Anniversary”, New York Age, Oct 4, 1890

Ellen N. Lawson and Marlene Merrill, “The Antebellum ‘Talented Thousandth’: Black College Students at Oberlin Before the Civil War,” The Journal of Negro Education, Spring 1983, pp. 390-402

James H. Fairchild, Oberlin: The Colony and the College, 1833-1883

Roland M. Baumann, Constructing Black Education at Oberlin College

“About CU“, Cheyney University of Pennsylvania

“Minority Student Records“, Oberlin College Archives, RG 5/4/3

 

FOOTNOTES:

 

By Melva Tolbert, Oberlin Heritage Center volunteer

September 9, 2015

 

While recently visiting my daughter, who resides in New Orleans, Louisiana, we decided to spend an afternoon at the Whitney Plantation in Wallace, LA.  Jessica is a history major and an elementary school teacher.  She had been to the plantation before and was pleasantly surprised with the approach that was taken that distinguished it from other plantation tours.  The focus was not on the owners of the plantation, but on the enslaved people.

We drove almost an hour away from the city and passed by other plantations on our way.  As we pulled into the large gravel parking lot you could see the large white “big house”.  We entered the welcoming center which sold tickets, books and displayed the journey that people from western African had taken  from their homeland to the Caribbean Islands, the Atlantic coast and Gulf of Mexico to work the land.  The display also illustrates the involvement of the early Catholic popes and the British monarchies involvement in the early slave trade.

Our tour guide gathered together me, my daughter and four young women from Europe on an hour and fifteen minute walk through life in Louisiana in the early 1800s.  Our first stop was Antioch Baptist Church where we watched a video about the plantation and were introduced to some of the children that worked the land.  The plantation was purchased in 1752 by Ambroise Heidel, a German emigrant and he became wealthy producing indigo.  In the early 1800s, his son transitioned the plantation to sugar which was a much more physically demanding product and required many enslaved people.

The Antioch Baptist Church (seen here at a distance behind the slave memorial) was founded by former slaves in 1868.  Originally located about 8 miles from the plantation, it was moved to the Whitney in 1999.  Photo courtesy of Whitney Plantation.

We then visited an outdoor memorial that recorded the words and honored the former enslaved children and families.  These words were captured through the Federal Writers Project (FWP) that was a part of the Works Progress Administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt.  The FWP supported writers during the Great Depression and interviewed former enslaved people from the South.

 

The Allées Gwendolyn Midlo Hall is the name of the slave memorial on the property that is dedicated to the 107,000 people enslaved in Louisiana in the antebellum era.  Photo courtesy of Whitney Plantation.

The Wall of Honor honors all the people who were enslaved on the Whitney Plantation. Their names and the information related to them (origin, age, skills) were retrieved from original archives and engraved on granite slabs.  Photo courtesy of Whitney Plantation.

We continued our walk of the plantation that included the slave quarters, blacksmith shop, overseers home, a jail for runaway slaves, the kitchen and finally the owner’s house.   It was interesting to note that the kitchen resembled the slave quarters, but was actually a part of the owner’s house.  Their food was prepared and then transported to the pantry in the owner’s house.  During this time, our guide detailed the conditions that the enslaved were working under including starvation, castrations, imprisonment, separation from family and mixing with the owner’s family.

Before the Civil War, the Whitney Plantation counted 22 slave cabins on its site.  The large iron cauldrons dotting the plantation landscape were used in refining sugar cane harvested from the fields.  Photo courtesy of Whitney Plantation.

After 1865, the slaves were free, but they had no education, large families and still felt tied to the land.  The former enslaved became sharecroppers and continued to work the land up until it was outlawed in 1965.  The Whitney Plantation was purchased by another owner, preserved and is a part of the National Register of Historic Places.  The new owner wants to educate the public by telling the story of the enslaved.  Additionally, he wants to help people understand some of the challenges we continue to face today is of plantation life.

On my way out, I purchased,  Chained to the Land, Voices of Cotton & Cane Plantations by Lynette Ater Tanner.  I summarized a few of the stories and they are as follows:

Story 1 –  Julia Woodrich was interviewed on May 13, 1940 at the age of 89.  When the master died, her family was sold.  She never saw her brothers or sisters again and because she was so young she remained with her mother.  Her mother had fifteen children and never by the same man.  Each time her mother was sold she had to take on another man, even the master.  She was considered a good breeder.

After the master and misses died, the younger master took over and split up the money and property. Julia remembers when they were freed because the master could no longer take care of them so they lived off of fish and berries.  She remembers that the master would come get her sister and take her to his quarters and then inquired the following day how she felt.

Story 2 – Mrs.  Webb was interviewed August 17, 1940, but unsure of her age.  She remembers her master being the cruelest in St. John the Baptist Parish.  If an enslaved person was disobedient, he would place him in a box and they could not move.  This master was known for having very attractive slaves.  He heard about a slave with a fine physique so he bought him.  Because this enslaved person had been raised with the master’s children he was not used to harsh work, so he refused the hard work.  The master day after day directed him to work in the fields and each time he refused.  He was then told by the master to dig a hole, which he did.  The next day he was told by the master to get into the hole and the master shot him and he fell down in the hole.

Story 3 – Peter Barber was interviewed August 23, 1940 and estimated his age to be 96 years old.  He was proud in describing his life as eventful.  He acknowledges that he was born into slavery on a farm in Charlottesville, Virginia.  He refers to his master as ‘good’ as long as you were working.  He remembers being sold to another master who was a tobacco farmer for $900.00 using both union and confederate money.  Because there was talk of sending him to the Blue Mountains to fight he ran away.   Peter did not talk a lot, but he listened and he knew what the fighting was all about.  Peter and a friend, Jimmie, jumped on a boat that was headed for Cincinnati.  Both of them were put off of the boat since they knew Peter and Jimmie were not passengers.  They walked the remainder of the way.  While in Cincinnati, his friend joined the Army, but they delayed taking Peter.  Now separated from his friend, he took a job on a boat that traveled up and down the Ohio River then another boat to New Orleans.  He never joined the army and traveled the Mississippi for fifty-six years as a loner.  He is proud that his travels allowed him to see 13 presidents, but he never got to see Abe Lincoln.

OHC Note:  In 2014, the Whitney Plantation opened its doors to the public for the first time in its 262 year history as the only plantation museum in Louisiana with a focus on slavery.  For more information, visit www.whitneyplantation.com.