The Lost German Slave Girl

by John Bailey

  Mrs. Coward said that Bridget could be easily identified because she had marks like raspberries on each of her thighs.

  Upton’s examination concentrated on something that had happened only the night before. Had Mrs. Coward visited the Schuber house? Yes, she had. And had she found what she was looking for? At this question, Mrs. Coward became indignant. She had been three times to Mrs. Schuber’s house to see Bridget Wilson for herself, and on the first two occasions she had been told that Bridget wasn’t in. On the third occasion her nephew had accompanied her, but Mrs. Schuber refused to let him into her house, so he had to wait outside, while she went in alone. She was taken upstairs to a room without any lights where three women were sitting on chairs. Mrs. Schuber pointed out the one with the fairest skin, and said there is Sally Miller. Mrs. Coward had then said, Is that you, Bridget? You should be ashamed of yourself. At that, Mrs. Schuber and the women had laughed and said, That is Sally over there, pointing to another of the three women—one who had kept her hand over her face all the time. Mrs. Coward said she had asked this woman several questions, but received no reply. Mrs. Coward complained that “although she had done nothing offensive” during the visit, Mrs. Schuber appeared very angry and “did not treat her politely.”

  A few months later the marshal of the Circuit Court delivered another three depositions to Upton’s office. They were from people who knew John Wilson. All three said that Wilson had bred a slave girl named Bridget. Two of them, Griffin H. Holliman and Robert McCarty, said they were present at the sheriff’s auction in Mississippi when Jonathon Thomas had successfully bid for her. Holliman thought that the girl would have been about ten or eleven years of age. McCarty said she was thirteen or fourteen. Both witnesses said there had been some dispute about the title to Bridget. Holliman said that after the auction Thomas had “become alarmed” that he didn’t have proper ownership of her, so he got his son-in-law, Anthony Williams, to take her to New Orleans and sell her there.

  Upton wondered if here lay the explanation of why no one in Mobile had heard of Anthony Williams. Williams had never lived in Mobile. He wasn’t a slave trader, either. He was the son-in-law of a farmer from Perry County, Mississippi. Possibly he told Miller that he lived in Mobile because he was attempting to get rid of a slave he wasn’t sure he owned.

  In May 1846, Miller heard the surprising news that Polly Moore had come to New Orleans for a brief visit. This was too good an opportunity to miss. He immediately filed an affidavit in the District Court, saying that he wanted her testimony taken before she returned to her home in Morehouse. The court appointed Mr. O. P. Jackson, Associate Judge of the City Court, to record her evidence, which he did on May 27, 1846, in his office in Royal Street in the French Quarter.

  No one would have ever confused Polly Moore with a slave. She was a fair-skinned, fair-haired, ample woman who spoke with a heavy accent. Judge Jackson took three pages of closely written notes of her testimony. The first two pages recorded her as giving much the same evidence as she gave to Commissioner Hunt in the previous December. She also confirmed that Daniel Kirchner had visited her and that subsequently she and Mrs. Brown had corresponded, although, as she explained, she had to get someone else to write the replies for her.

  On the third page of Jackson’s notes appeared a bombshell. She wasn’t Salomé Müller at all, but her elder sister, Dorothy. The record of her evidence read:

  Thinks she told Mr. Hunt that her name was Salomé, and her sister Dorothy, but upon thinking of it further, she is satisfied that she was mistaken, their names were changed several times, witness being sometimes Salomé & sometimes Dorothy—When I first went up in that Country—could find no body with whom I could converse in my own language, it was some time before we could make ourselves understood in English—Until we learned English, we found it difficult to make them understand us—If we wanted anything we had to point at it—is certain from her own recollection, without reference to what she has heard that she is older than her sister.

  Polly Moore told Jackson that Salomé was “now dead and has been, going on four years.” Jackson wrote down:

  My sister left two children now living and in my care at present. She died on the Ouachita River—was with her during a part of her sickness—was not with her at the time of her death, being sick myself. Saw her buried in the yard in which deponent then lived.145

  If this was Salomé Müller, her death occurred at about the same time that Madame Carl discovered her sitting on the steps outside Belmonti’s cabaret in New Orleans.

  Upton was now fighting Miller in both the federal and state jurisdictions in cases that were costly and time-consuming and gave every prospect of being disasters for both him and his client. By mid-1846, this much had become clear to him: it was time to call a halt—at least to the one he had power to stop. He filed papers abandoning the damages suit and the attempt to obtain the freedom of Madison and Adeline. It was an embarrassing back-down, especially after the windy notoriety he had claimed for himself when he announced the action. Distressing as it must have been for Upton, it was even more distressing for Theodore Grabau, the backer of the action, who was left to pay Miller’s legal costs.

  Even after jettisoning the damages claim, Salomé Müller was still facing the application to have the Supreme Court judgment declared a nullity, and Miller, with vengeance festering in his heart, wasn’t about to abandon that. Here was a heaven-sent opportunity to get back at all those who had tormented him. If he could succeed in having Salomé’s freedom declared a nullity, as well as condemning her and her children to a lifetime of slavery, he could have Eva Schuber, her husband, and all the others who had conspired against him, charged with perjury. It would be a delicious requital for all that they had done to him.

  Upton was stunned at the speed with which their fortunes had plummeted. A mere twelve months had passed since the victory of the appeal. Twelve months ago, he had danced with Sally Miller at the great celebratory ball in Lafayette to welcome her into white society. It was only twelve months since he had filed the suit for seventy-five thousand dollars in damages against Miller and his mother.

  Grymes, showing a mastery of Louisiana’s procedural rules, had lodged the nullity petition at the District Judicial Court of New Orleans and not the Supreme Court. His intention was to bypass Martin’s court and ask Judge Buchanan to reopen his earlier decision. Grymes relied on an article in the Louisiana Code of Practice that, rather ambiguously, read:

  The nullity of a judgment may be demanded from the same court, which has rendered the same, or from the court of appeal before which the appeal from such judgment was taken …146

  During several sitting days, Upton attempted to persuade Buchanan that the Code couldn’t possibly mean that he, sitting as a District Court judge, could hear a petition seeking to overrule a judgment of the Supreme Court that had overruled him in appeal. Grymes urged Buchanan to take the Code as it read—clearly, it clothed him with the authority to investigate if witnesses had lied to him. Lying to a jury was bad enough, but lying to a judge was worse. It had to be stamped out. Buchanan, as the judge who had heard all the evidence in the first place, knew more about what lies the German witnesses had told than did any of the Supreme Court judges.

  Grymes won the argument. The nullity petition was seized by Buchanan, and it did little to relieve Upton’s sense of foreboding when Buchanan announced that he would sit with a jury, whose decision it ultimately would be, so his views on the matter were unimportant. The trial would commence sometime in the New Year.

  A file relating to Miller’s nullity petition is now preserved at the University of New Orleans. On its yellowing pages is a note by Deputy Sheriff Lewis that he attempted to serve some documents associated with the case on Upton at his office on November 23, 1846. Upton refused to accept service. Lewis wrote on the document’s cover sheet: “say they will have nothing to do with the suit.” On November 28, the sheriff made a second attempt at service. The handwritten note reads:
“tendered copy of the within Notice of Trial to W. S. Upton Esq. Attorney of Sally Miller who refused accepting service.”147

  Upton had withdrawn from the case. The man who had lectured the German ladies of New Orleans about their duty toward the woman who had returned from slavery had grown weary. Litigation that he had hoped would bring him fame was now bringing him ridicule. The tide of public opinion was turning, and an increasing number of people in the city believed that he and the German community had been made the dupes of a cunning and manipulative slave. Salomé Müller’s supporters were now harder to find, and Upton was becoming uneasy about who would pay him.

  Eva Schuber remained as steadfast as ever. She called in on Upton at his office and begged him to continue. Upton spoke to her about the difficulties the case now faced. He asked her to consider the evidence arrayed against them, but nothing he said to her shook her resolve. Nothing ever shook Eva Schuber’s resolve. In the years of litigation, reversals, and emotional and financial cost, she never faltered in her belief that the woman Madame Carl Rouff had discovered sitting on a doorstep was the lost daughter of Daniel Müller. If Upton had to be paid, it was Eva who would foot the bill, even if her husband and her family had to suffer for it.

  The court file shows that on December 2, 1846, Upton accepted service. Whether he was being paid again or Eva’s pleas had worn him down, it is impossible to say. But Upton was back. The Salomé Müller litigation had become like a tar baby, and the more he struggled to extract himself, the more he became entangled. He would argue the case alone. Roselius was no longer part of his team, and his brother, Frank, had gone to practice law in New York.

  It took over a year for the nullity trial to commence. The first day of the hearing was January 3, 1848. Upton stood up to announce his appearance before Buchanan—the judge he had previously compared to Pontius Pilate and a racecourse steward. Upton was opposed by lawyers Micou and Claiborne appearing for Miller, and Cannon appeared for Belmonti. A jury of twelve was sworn in—all men, all property holders, and all white.

  This time Miller was the plaintiff, so it was his right to go first. In an attempt to reduce the length of what would otherwise have been an extremely lengthy hearing, Buchanan had ordered that the transcript taken in the original proceedings, and in the now abandoned suit at the United States Circuit Court, could be taken as part of the record. Miller’s lawyers took it in turn to read to the jury the many pages of evidence this case had collected. They read the sworn testimony from all those who had said that Bridget Wilson arrived in Miller’s sawmill in 1822, and the depositions from those in Morehouse Parish who knew Polly Moore from 1818 onward, and those in Alabama and Mississippi who knew John Wilson and the young mulatto slave he owned—all going to show, lawyer Micou said, the quite separate lives of Bridget Wilson and Salomé Müller.

  Micou then placed before the jury several documents new to the case that he felt sure would clinch the matter. The first was a bill of sale dated July 1, 1822, written by the deputy sheriff of Perry County in the state of Mississippi, transferring “a certain mulatto girl named Bridget, to Jonathon Thomas, he being the highest bidder.” The next was a sale note of July 11, 1822 from Jonathon Thomas recording that “in consideration of the sum of three hundred and fifty dollars, to me in hand paid” he “bargained and sold unto Anthony Williams … a certain negro girl Bridget, aged twelve years, yellow complexion.”148

  Finally, Micou held up what he considered the ultimate, absolute proof that Salomé Müller was an imposter. It was the redemption agreement by which Daniel Müller in 1818 had sold himself and his three children in servitude to Thomas Grayson of Morehouse Parish, Louisiana.

  A copy appears on the court file. It is a long document, so in the reproduction below, some of the formal parts have been omitted:

  United States of America

  Be it known that this day before me, John Lynd, Notary Public in and for the State of Louisiana, residing and practising in the City of New Orleans … personally came and appeared Daniel Müller aged thirty seven years, his son Jacob Müller aged ten years, his daughters Dorothea Muller aged eight years, Salemia Müller aged four years and Thomas Grayson who mutually covenant and agree … that whereas by articles of agreement entered into and dated Amsterdam the second day of December 1817 between Captain H. H. Bleeker of the ship Lady Joanna and … in consideration of passage from Amsterdam to a port in the United States of America … And whereas in consideration of the said sum of $_having been for them by the said Thomas Grayson to the said Captain Bleeker paid,… they do by their presents, with the advice and consent of James Petot Parish Judge and of their own free will and accord, bind and put themselves to the said Thomas Grayson to serve him, his Executors and assigns the date hereof, for and during the full term and time of Daniel Müller, three years, Jacob Müller, eleven years, Dorothea Müller, ten years and Salemia Müller, sixteen years, or until Jacob shall have obtained the age of twenty one, and the two girls, Dorothea and Salemia each the age of eighteen next ensuring—during all of which respective terms the said servants … faithfully shall serve, and that honestly and obediently in all lawful things as a good and dutiful servant ought to do and the said master … shall find and provide for the said servants sufficient meat, drink, apparel, washing and lodgings, material and medical attendance, education for the minors according to law, and all other necessities fitting such a servant.149

  There followed the signature of Daniel Müller, and three crosses, being the marks made by his children. The place where the price should appear had been left blank for some reason. According to the evidence of one of Grayson’s daughters, her father had paid five hundred dollars for the seven redemptioners he purchased in New Orleans in 1818 (of which, after the death of Daniel Müller and his son, only five children arrived). Presumably, the amount Grayson had paid to Bleeker for Daniel and his three children was somewhat less than that.

  In the earlier proceedings before Buchanan, one of the redemptioners, Mr. Wagner, had said that the passengers on Krahnstover’s vessels were sold for “one or two years according to their ages.” This may have been generally true, and some of the other witnesses said they had served terms of that order, but not so Daniel Müller and his children. He was bound for three years, while his children were bound for ten, eleven and sixteen years. That Daniel Müller would sign a document selling the childhood of his son and daughters shows how desperate he must have become as he languished on the Juffer Johanna. The agreement binding them to Grayson was signed on April 2, 1818, which meant that Daniel Müller and his children had been kept on board the vessel for twenty-six days after she had docked in New Orleans. Its terms had received the assent of James Petot, a parish judge. This was a requirement of the territorial legislation of 1806 whenever children were bound. It seems that the judge saw nothing in the document to concern him.

  However, the length of the terms of servitude wasn’t a matter Micou referred to when he placed the indenture in the hands of the jury. His purpose was to show how wrong the German witnesses had been. It was clear proof, he told the jurymen, of what had happened to Salomé Müller. She hadn’t been taken southwest to Attakapas, as Eva Schuber had claimed, but in the opposite direction, three counties away, to Morehouse Parish in the northeast.

  Upton commenced his case by calling Eva Schuber. She said it had been more than four years since Madame Carl had come to her house with Salomé Müller, and she hadn’t the least cause to change her opinion that Salomé was the true and lawful child of Daniel and Dorothea Müller, and her goddaughter. Upton then led her through her account of the time Mrs. Coward had visited her house in search of Bridget Wilson. Eva’s version had Mrs. Coward, after identifying one of Eva’s neighbors as Bridget, exclaiming that she would swear in court that she was the slave her father had brought up.

  Upton then put Eva’s neighbor on the witness stand. She confirmed that Mrs. Coward had called her Bridget.

  Fooling Mrs. Coward may have gratified Eva Schu
ber and her neighbor who took part in the charade, but it was hardly a decisive rebuttal of the evidence Miller’s side had assembled, and Upton’s other witnesses weren’t much better. Ezra Hiestand, an attorney in practice in New Orleans, said that he was of German descent, but only remotely so. However, if he met Salomé Müller in the street, without knowing who she was, he would say that she was German. Upton’s next witness, William Meyers, said that in 1822 he worked in Miller’s mill repairing machinery and recalled seeing a little German girl about the place, between eight and ten years of age, who spoke broken English. He thought she was Salomé Müller, although he might be wrong because there were two or three yellow girls about the house. One of them had called Mrs. Canby her aunt.

  Upton read to the jury the evidence of the earlier case before Buchanan, emphasizing the testimony of those who had positively identified Sally Miller as the lost German girl. He took them to the testimony of Wood and Poigneau, who said they had heard a girl speaking German in Miller’s sawmill and how General Lewis had said that the only reason he thought she was a slave was because she associated with slaves. And that was it. Four witnesses and a rehash of the earlier case. The other people Upton had promised in his pamphlet, such as Wheeler, Fribee, and Curran, didn’t appear. None of the German witnesses who had identified Salomé Müller in the earlier trial gave evidence.