by John Bailey
Upton decided it was time for a counterattack. The rumors circulating in the city about Miller’s discovery of Polly Moore and the history of Bridget Wilson were taking their toll on the credibility of his damages claim. On December 16, 1845, he filed a writ of habeas corpus in the United States Circuit Court seeking the release of Madison and Adeline. Here, he thought, was an opportunity to put Miller on the back foot and regain the initiative in the battle for public opinion. The supporting petition relied on only one contention: the mother of the two children was “a free white woman—so proved and decreed by the judgment of the Supreme Court of Louisiana.” This was one action Upton was convinced he couldn’t lose.
The writ of habeas corpus was set down for determination at 10 am the very next day, December 17. The response of Miller’s lawyers was as immediate as it was surprising. Overnight, Grymes worked on a petition to the New Orleans District Court asking for a ruling that the judgment freeing Salomé Müller be declared null and void. It was filed early the next morning, prior to the hearing in the United States Circuit Court. Grymes had relied on an article in the Louisiana Code of Practice saying that a judgment “may be annulled in all cases where it appears it has been obtained through fraud, or other ill practices.” According to the petition there had been fraud aplenty. Grymes wrote that Sally Miller:
… well knew she was not of free birth and that she was rightfully and lawfully held in slavery by the said Belmonti.… [She had] fraudulently, maliciously and deceitfully, combining with certain persons, more particularly with F. Schuber and E. Schuber, his wife, and Daniel Miller, induced these persons and others to give testimony to the effect that she, the said Sally Miller, was the child of a certain Daniel Müller.143
Other paragraphs alleged that the testimony that the real Sally Miller had moles on her thighs was “wholly false and fictitious,” as was the claim that she looked like her deceased mother, or that her relatives and friends could recognize her.
When the parties assembled later that morning at the United States Circuit Court, Grymes produced a copy of his petition. He declared that the sole foundation in support of the writ of habeas corpus had been the Supreme Court judgment, and the filing of the nullity petition intended to cut the ground from under that. The woman was a fraud and this is what his client would show when the nullity proceeding commenced in a few months’ time.
The writ of habeas corpus was adjourned off. The attempt to gain the freedom of Madison and Adeline was effectively stymied. The children’s fate depended entirely on whether their mother was a slave or a free white woman, and that issue was now the matter of raging controversy being litigated in both the state and federal courts. The fate of Madison and Adeline would have to wait another day.
The failure to obtain the release of the two children badly shook Upton. He had all but promised Salomé that she would have Madison and Adeline back with her for Christmas. With dismay, he realized that Miller intended to fight them every inch of the way and to take every possible point in every court he could find.
In the days leading up to Christmas, Upton drafted a response to the petition of nullity. It was filed on New Year’s Eve. In it he strenuously argued that there had been no fraud. He then added his strongest point: the decision of the Supreme Court was “final and conclusive and cannot be disturbed.”
The warring sides couldn’t even agree on her name. Grymes in his petition had called her “a person calling herself Sally Miller held in slavery”; while Upton, in his response, described her as “Salomé Müller, an alien, native of the province of Alsace upon the lower Rhine in Germany.”
Upton dropped into his office late one afternoon in January. The courts were still closed for the law vacation, and he planned to clear up a few items of paperwork remaining on his desk. When he opened the door he found a bundle of papers waiting for him. During the New Year’s break the marshal of the United States Circuit Court had dropped off copies of the depositions that had been compiled by Commissioner Hunt during his visit to Monroe in search of Polly Moore. Upton decided to read them. He sat on a sofa next to his desk, and after adjusting his oil lamp so that it directed light over his shoulder onto the pages, he quickly flicked through them. Hunt had collected twelve depositions. Eleven of them had something to say about the life of Polly Moore, and the twelfth was from Polly Moore herself. He would leave that one until last. He placed it on a small table at his elbow.
The first four depositions he read were from the children of Mr. Thomas Grayson, a merchant, now deceased, of Prairie Boeuf. They said that from time to time their father would go to New Orleans to pick up supplies for his store. In those days no steamer made the journey up the Ouachita River, so a neighbor, John Thomasson, ran the passage in his keelboat. After one such journey in 1818, their father had returned with five German children. They were all orphans. According to Betsy Stewart (the daughter of Thomas Grayson), the children had cost her father five hundred dollars. Betsy Stewart’s brother, Wiley Grayson, said that two of them were girls—aged “about six, seven or eight.” Wiley Grayson’s sister, Narcissa Garrett, recalled her father saying that the father of the girls was “a very good shoemaker and that he was thought to have died of grief from having lost a child, a little boy.” Lucetta Rutland, yet another sister, said that the two girls’ names were Dorothy and Sally, and her father had said that “the brother of the girls was drowned coming up from New Orleans and that their father had died suddenly.”
All of Grayson’s children recalled that their father hadn’t kept the two girls for more than a few days. He had sold “their time” to Thomasson, the man who owned the keelboat. Soon afterward, Thomasson had moved to the nearby town of Monroe, where he and his wife opened a tavern. Lucetta Rutland said she had heard of the “cruelty of Mrs. Thomasson to the two girls.”
Upton opened the deposition of Robert McGuire. He was a lawyer who had lived in Monroe since 1819. He said he had seen two Dutch girls frequently around Thomasson’s tavern “where they were treated as servants.” One of them was called Dorothy. Afterward, he “knew the girls by the names of Sally and Polly Miller until they were married.” “It was,” said McGuire, “commonly reported about town that Mrs. Thomasson treated them very cruelly. In consequence of that, some of the citizens made complaints to Oliver J. Morgan, the Parish Judge, who had the girls brought before him and considerable testimony taken.” Mrs. Thomasson had cut one of the girls with a large kitchen knife and stuck the flesh of the other with a fork. McGuire said he had seen the wounds.
Hunt also examined Judge Morgan. He recalled the case, but said he wasn’t required to make a ruling because Thomasson agreed to give up the girls. The judge said he had kept the two little girls at his house until he could find someone to take them. The year was 1823 or 1825, and one of the girls was then between ten and twelve, and the other between thirteen and fourteen. Eventually, the girls were given to James Gleason and his wife, Charlotte.
Both James and Charlotte Gleason made statements. Mrs. Gleason said the girls were named Dorothy and Salina, and they spoke Dutch and tolerable English. She changed Dorothea’s name to Polly and Salina’s name to Sally, because “she thought it was the English name for the Dutch.” Mrs. Gleason said, “Polly would speak of her distress in crossing the sea. … Polly used to say that her mother died on the water and that her father died after he had landed, and so did her brother.” Their being taken away from Mrs. Thomasson caused them to be much talked of in the county, said Mrs. Gleason.
Her husband said that one of the girls was called Salomé, but he had called her Sally. The other was Polly, and she had told him once that her father’s name was Miller.
Upton then picked up the statement of Elisha Thomasson, the son of John Thomasson. He said nothing about his mother’s cruelty to the girls, but he did say the two girls lived in the family until 1825. One was called Dorothy. The other was called Saline.
The remaining two depositions added little. Mary Headon, a resident of Frank
lin Parish, said she “knew two Dutch girls who lived in the family of Mr. Thomasson; they went by the name of Dorothy and Salina.” Richard King, an army major, said he saw two small girls at the house of either Mr. Grayson or Mr. Thomasson, but he couldn’t recall which.
Upton put the last of the supporting depositions aside. They had been somber reading. He had fully expected the evidence substantiating Miller’s claim to have found Salomé Müller to be laughable, but what he had just seen was anything but. He guessed that a jury would find the testimony persuasive, particularly since a parish judge appeared to be affirming the general thrust of what the others had said. Upton tried to think of ways to explain away the depositions. Perhaps it was true that two little girls of Dutch or German origin had arrived in Morehouse Parish in around 1818, but that didn’t make them the children of Daniel Müller. Hundreds of redemptioners had arrived in Louisiana at that time—it could be mere coincidence, even to the similarity of the names. Polly and Sally weren’t such unusual names. Yet, the depositions had identified the girls’ father as a shoemaker and got the details of his death roughly correct. They had said that their mother had died on the water. He wondered about that. There was also the mention of the death of their brother by drowning.
Reluctantly, Upton reached for the deposition of Polly Moore. He began to have a bad feeling about what it might say.
In his first question, Hunt had asked Polly Moore how old she was. She didn’t know exactly, but supposed she would be about thirty-two. Nor did she know where she was born. She said she now lived in the parish of Morehouse, near Point Pleasant, Louisiana.
In the answers that followed (her deposition went to four pages of tight handwriting), Hunt had written down what she had told him of her arrival in Morehouse. She confirmed the statements of the Grayson children that she had only lived a short time with them: “Witness does not recollect how she got to Grayson’s house. Mr. Grayson did not wish to keep witness with his family having several children of his own and witness was transferred to the family of Old Mrs. John Thomasson.”
Polly told Hunt that she and her sister “did not speak the same language as the family of Mr. Grayson … the Graysons called her Dorothy and her sister Salomé, but this was a mistake.” She said she was two years older than her sister. The two small girls then lived with the “family of the Thomasson for several years.”
Polly made no accusations of ill treatment by Mrs. Thomasson and gave no explanation as to why she was given to Mr. and Mrs. Gleason. She said Mrs. Gleason had changed their names again. She became Polly and her sister Sally. This continued the mix-up of their names that had commenced at Mr. Grayson’s house, because she was really Salomé and her sister, Dorothy. They didn’t stay with Mr. and Mrs. Gleason for long. She and her sister lived with James Owen, about two miles away, and then with John Stirling on the Ouachita River. Polly said she had then married John Parker of Ouachita Parish. They had been married for twelve years. After his death, she had married David Moore, only last winter. This was why she was now called Polly Moore.
Hunt had asked about her parents. She had said that “her father was a Dutchman, a shoemaker by trade.” His name was Daniel Miller and her mother’s name was Salomé.
Hunt had then asked her what she knew about the death of her father and mother. He copied down her reply:
Witness recollects getting on board the ship, getting up a very high place—it seemed to her now like a dream. Witness’s mother died on the vessel—her father died coming up the Black River. Witness’s mother was seasick and perish[ed] from the want of something to eat—witness does not know what caused the death of her father. He ate a very hearty dinner on board the boat which he cooked for himself. He then laid down on the boat. Witness heard him making a curious noise. She got up, not having finished her dinner at the table, and went to her father but he was then dead.
Polly also told Hunt that she had an older brother, but she had lost him in New Orleans. He “drowned or someone persuaded him off,” she said. Her sister had married Alexis Hamilton, who lived on the Ouachita. She had two children. Her sister has been dead for three years. She was known as Sally, but her real name was Dorothy Miller.
Hunt’s final question was whether she had any marks on her thighs. She did not. Nor had her sister.
Upton returned Polly Moore’s deposition to the pile with the other eleven. He sat in the gathering darkness of his office, thinking about what he had read. Was it possible? He dare not think about what it meant. There had to be some other explanation. Polly Moore had signed her deposition with a cross. So she wasn’t an educated person. Not that he thought this would make it any easier to shake her testimony—if it ever came to that. He imagined her to be a believable sort of woman, warding off with her own ordinariness any suggestion that she had composed such a complex set of lies. She had got one or two details wrong, like the name of her mother and her belief that she was older than her sister, but mistakes of this kind were explicable given that she had no relatives to pass on the stories of her family. She had said her father was a Dutchman, but again Upton saw nothing in that—in Louisiana, anyone of Teutonic stock was regarded as Dutch.
It became dark. He sat in his chair, buried in thought, as deeply rooted certainties began to decay. Perhaps he had misunderstood what he had read. He looked across at the depositions stacked next to him, but he couldn’t bring himself to pick them up again. No, he knew what they said all right, and it frightened him.
As rumor of the testimonies given by the witnesses in Morehouse Parish began to circulate in New Orleans, many in the German community who had welcomed Salomé Müller back into their fold began to have second thoughts. It was whispered by some who had met her that she had none of the social graces you might expect of a real German woman and her speech was entirely that of a slave. Admittedly, she was a beauty, but it was the olive-skinned beauty of a quadroon, not of a white person. Those who bothered to read the judgment of the Supreme Court reproduced at the back of Miller’s pamphlet saw that there hadn’t been a complete endorsement of Salomé Müller’s German heritage. In effect, she had been given the benefit of the doubt because she looked white, and no one knew where she came from, but now Miller was saying that he did know where she came from—she was born in Georgia, the child of a slave and a white man.
SIXTEEN
NULLITY
Oh run, brother, run! Judgment day is comin’
Oh run, brother, run! Why don’t you come along?
Traditional spiritual
Early in the New Year, Upton received further disquieting news. Miller’s lawyers had another two witnesses ready to give evidence. One was Dorothy Kirchner, a German redemptioner and a blood relative of the Müller brothers, and it appeared she had a few things to say about the lies Eva Schuber had told. The other was Mrs. Coward, and she was only too willing to say how Bridget Wilson had been a slave of her father and had eventually come into the possession of Anthony Williams. Both women were in New Orleans on a visit of just a few days, so Miller’s lawyers arranged for their evidence to be recorded by a commissioner for use at a later date in defense of the seventy-five thousand dollars damages claim.
Upton, Eva Schuber, and Salomé Müller attended the commissioner’s hearing. Eva hadn’t seen Dorothy for over twenty years. They had been at school together in Langensoultzbach, sat in the same classroom, attended the same confirmation lessons at the village church, and had traveled to Louisiana on the same ship. Despite this, when the two women met at the courthouse, they failed to recognize each other. They had to be introduced by the clerk of courts. It was an awkward encounter; they had nothing to say to each other—they had been brought together by lawyers on opposing sides in a contest so bitter it forbade cordiality. They said good morning to each other, then sat apart until it was time for Dorothy to give evidence.
Dorothy Kirchner bore the married name of Dorothy Brown. She told the commissioner that she had wed Brown when she was seventeen and they had move
d to Claiborne County in Mississippi. Only recently, she had returned to Louisiana and now lived in Madison Parish. Her father’s name was Christoph Kirchner and her mother was Salomé Müller—not the Salomé Müller at the center of this case, but the sister of Henry and Daniel Müller.
The first part of Mrs. Brown’s evidence confirmed what the others had said about the terrible voyage to America and the loss of life. Thereafter, however, everything she said contradicted Eva Schuber. She had no recollection of Eva being the godmother of Salomé Müller. She hadn’t seen Eva care for Daniel Müller’s children on the Juffer Johanna, even after Daniel’s wife had died. She had never heard of any peculiar marks on either of Daniel’s daughters—in fact, she had seen Salomé naked when she was a child and there was nothing at all unusual about her thighs. When told of the claim of Daniel Müller (the son of Henry Müller) that he recognized Salomé Müller as his cousin, she was dismissive. He had been only eight when they arrived in America, so he would know nothing. She, on the other hand, had been fifteen.
Then, for good measure, Dorothy Brown boasted that the Kirchner family had experienced no trouble in finding Daniel Müller’s two daughters and one of them was Polly Moore. She told how, in 1832, she had heard that both Sally and Dorothy were living in Monroe in Ouachita Parish, and her own brother, Daniel Kirchner, had visited the two sisters in 1833. He had remained with them for about ten days. Both were then married. Mrs. Brown said she had corresponded with both women after that, although one of them was now dead.
The next day the commissioner took evidence from Mrs. Coward. She repeated the story of Bridget Wilson as she had told it to Miller in her kitchen several months earlier. Bridget was born in 1809 of a slave woman named Candice who belonged to her father. Mrs. Coward’s deposition then read:
Bridget was the first child that Candice had. Witness knew the mother of Candice. Her name was Rachel, and belonged to witness’s father. Rachel was a black Guinea negro. Bridget was of light color—was only a quadroon—her father being a white man and her mother a mulatto. Rachel and Candice are both living— the latter lives in Hines County, Mississippi—witness saw Rachel last Sunday morning in Mobile, where she came to visit her grandchildren. Rachel is about one hundred and ten year old, as near as she could guess. She is entirely blind and of no use to any one.144