Miss Smith has closed her sch’l. & is coming up to our picnic on Sat. She gave up having an exhibition. The St. M. teacher is preparing for one, & she was to go to Easton today to attend Miss Snowden’s.
Mrs. Thos. had company from Balto. to spend the Sabbath and tonight. He’s returned, but him we’ve sent for our things and will rec. them Friday A.M. We think that girl a curiosity indeed. I would like to see her very much. Mr. & Mrs. Thomas were quite complaining all last week but are better this. I enclose my salary receipt for June & July which squares me up with the Socy. Love to you all & a kind remembrance to the friends. Mr. & Mrs. Thos. join me. Don’t fail to send the money I wrote for. Yr. absent daughter.
Rebecca
Afterword
I ARRIVE in Easton, Maryland, at 1:30 a.m. The Greyhound from Baltimore lets me off at a Texaco station and an all-night convenience store. Since I knew that the town’s taxis stopped running at five p.m., I had made arrangements in advance to have someone from Scottie’s Taxi pick me up. “Call me at home when your bus gets in,” said a pleasant voice on the other end of the phone.
At 1:40 Lord Scott, (Scotty), a handsome, fortyish black man in a shining black Oldsmobile pulls up and takes me to the lovely Tidewater Inn. On the way I explain the reason for my visit. “I am researching an African American woman who founded a school for black children in Royal Oak in the 1860s. Her name was Rebecca Primus, and the school was named for her, the Primus Institute.” Scotty has not heard of the school, but does know Royal Oak. “Call when you are ready to go to Royal Oak tomorrow,” he says. “I’ll take you out there.”
I spend the morning in the Talbot County Library. Ms. Scottie Oliver, librarian of the Maryland Room of the library, graciously pulls all the information on the history of schools in Talbot County and on the history of Royal Oak. A friendly older woman who works in the Maryland Room says, “Royal Oak—I live there—there was only one school in Royal Oak. There is nothing else.” Then, “I shouldn’t say that. There might have been another. If you find out, let me know.”
Three hours later, I have found nothing on the Primus Institute or the school for black children in Royal Oak. I check the library’s holdings on African American History. David White, a scholar who had done research on Primus’s life, had informed me that the library used to have a “Journal on the Proceedings of the Board of School Commissioners” and that this document has information on Primus’s school. I do not come across this publication during my trip.
In the Maryland Historical Trust State Historic Site Inventory there are nineteenth-century schoolhouses listed, but none seems to be Rebecca’s school. I decide to check out one that was built around the same time. It is located across the road from the Pasadena Inn in Royal Oak.
At 12:30 p.m. Scotty and I drive out to Royal Oak. When we get to the Pasadena Inn, I ask the innkeeper, Dell St. Anna, a petite, pleasant woman, if that is the old school for black children. “Yes, I think that’s it,” she says.
She gives me a key and Scotty. and I venture forth. It’s a whitewashed wood cottage. From the outside you can see that an addition has been built on. There are red shutters. Inside there are three rooms, one of which is a bathroom. This schoolhouse is listed in the inventory of historic sites, but the founder is not named and an exact date of its erection is not given. I say, “Maybe this is it.”
I take pictures, walk around the property, and then Scotty and I return to his taxi-van. As we are pulling off he says, “I think you’d probably do better to talk to some of these older black folk down here. I want you to talk to the lady who lives in this house. She’s real sharp, she might remember something about the school.”
The very elegant, honey-toned Ms. Harriet Romero invites us in and offers lemonade. Her soft gray hair is pulled neatly back and reveals the face of a woman who is still very pretty. She wears a floral-print summer shift and her quick mind and able body belie her years. “I’m not going to admit my age, but I am in my eighties.”
Scotty and I sit in the darkened living room. A charcoal toy poodle sniffs my feet.
“No, that wasn’t no school for black children. I don’t know what that was. The school for black children was up on Hopkins Neck.”
“Yes, Rebecca writes some letters from Hopkins Neck, Royal Oak, Talbot County,” I interrupt.
“I’m telling you that was the black school. I went there when I was a child. It used to be segregated, you know. My mother went there too. It’s just past the old black church.”
We talk a little more about her school days, about the years she spent in New York, about her return to Royal Oak to take care of her mother. And then she changes the subject: “Scotty, when are you going to start taking vans up to Atlantic City?” Scotty and I take our cue, thank her, and head toward Hopkins Neck.
Next to the Methodist Church there is a house and then there is what appears to be an overgrown graveyard—though there are some relatively recent headstones. About a third of them have the name Thomas on them. Across the street there is an older black man sitting next to a truck. He works with a radio, one of those popular after transistors but before boom boxes. His skin is a deep, dark brown—no wrinkles. He and Scotty exchange greetings. Scotty asks if he knows anything about an old schoolhouse for black children.
“That’s it,” he says, pointing to a rectangular structure with shingles of rotting, unpainted brown wood next to the graveyard. It is doorless; the front windows appear to be newer, more modern than those in the back.
I walk in. The floorboards are creaky. There is an old woodstove and a very big old table on three legs. Did Rebecca or some other teacher stand behind this table?
Outside, in back of the school, there is an outhouse and more graves, most unmarked. The ground holds water and I sink in before Scottie pulls me onto a log. “You are not in Philadelphia,” he laughs. “Where are your sneakers?”
When Rebecca Primus arrived in Royal Oak she first taught in the church, then, at her insistence, communities in Hartford and Royal Oak raised funds to purchase lumber for a schoolhouse. A Quaker and his Confederate wife sold them the land; black men from the area built the school. Almost four generations of black children attended the school, which remained open until 1929.
I find Rebecca’s school, not in the Inventory of Historic Sites or in the silence of the library, but through the insistence of a black entrepreneur and the memory of a gracious lady who offered me a cool drink on a hot July day.
Appendix
Royal Oak, Dec. 17, 1868
Mr. J.F. Morris, Dear Sir,
Yours of the 14th is just rec’d. & I acknowledge the receipt of your check without delay. I think I shall have no difficulty with it. However, in future I think I shall prefer to have my salary paid into my mother’s hands per order of Miss W. & I will forward the receipt with my report in advance of the money as I’ve heretofore done to the Balto. Asson.
It will be more convient as the nearest bank is eight miles from me. From mother I can rec. what I require for present purposes in small amt. I report at the end of every month. This check should be for November instead of Dec.
Yrs. truly,
R. Primus1
The following letter, to Rebecca’s sister Bell, is important for several reasons. First it is a good comparison with those of Rebecca, in that the writer was also a black teacher stationed in Maryland. Second, the writer mentions Addie in a not-too-favorable light. Is this indignation toward Addie the result of class differences? Third, the letter reveals information about the private life and desire of the writer for certain qualities in a potential mate. But most important, in its description of the trip to Washington the letter portrays the eagerness of black people to exercise their rights, to celebrate their liberation, and to commemorate the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. It also reveals the hostility toward President Johnson that we have seen in both Rebecca’s and Addie’s letters.
Hopewell, Md., April 22
My Dear Belle:
I do not usually mean to pay my corrispondent in their own coin, but in your case, I most certainly have done so though it was unintentional. Procrastination is the thief of time, and he has stolen pretty well on mine, too I have been troubled with a toothache and rheumatisim, and even now the simply holding of my pen pains my hand and shoulder incredibly. Yet in spite of this I have not suffered any by loss of flesh but to the contrary I suffer from the increase of it. I weigh 15 lbs more than I when I came here, isn’t that outlandish.
I am like yourself extremely sorry that you failed to get those pictures of Leila and yourself but if as you say she come back in the spring why spring is now here and you will still have an opportunity to secure them and to distribute them among your friends on which list I flatter myself I belong.
Your dress is perfectly magnificient and did it not savor so strong of money should myself like to have one like it.
The winter here has been much as you represent it, the most extreme cold vacillating to wrm balmy June like days and deceiving us in the belief that winter was over and gone when only last Monday we woke up to find the ground covered with 2 or 3 inches of snow, and though the people commenced gardening in March, they are not much further on than when they commenced.
Never mind Dear about the geography, I am much obliged to you for your trouble and wish further that you would send em the pattern for a hood of a waterproof and for a gored apron if it is not asking too much.
I am astonished at Addie Brown and do not know what to make of her, she has written me again, but i have not ans’ tho she ask me to, and gave me her directions as changed to your street and I suppose to Mrs. Sands.
Gertie Plato writes me of her John’s acceptance of your call and that he was to be on the first of April.
I have broken off with Richard. Now I tell you in confidence and don’t you tell Becca or any one else, much as I regretted leaving you last fall as I did believe it was my salvation (that is the four weeks spent in his father house) handsome and preposessing as he is in company, he is a perfect devil, (to use a vulgar phrase) at home and then to he has no energy or ambition but is insolent, idle and nerveless, depending almost entirely upon his father, and that for a young man just expecting to get married I think was shameful and he is not by any means rich. You know he would never do for me for my husband must be able to gratify my every wish and never say a cross word in my hearing.
The Prof is splendid to entertain me still he is not what I want I prefer one who has not had the same experience that he has, Dear love, I wonder what he would say did he know what I am writing about him, I have a letter of his now awainting a reply. He was to see me two weeks ago.
As I had no holiday at Christmas I took one the past week and in company with the teacher from Darlington and the one from Havre de Grace and one or two of my Balto friends, went to pay a visit to our nation’s capital we shopped in Balto and visited the conference which was sitting at the time and on Monday and Tuesday evenings went to hear Mr. J Meadison Bell the great colored poet, recite his own writings, or readings as he calls them. They were very fine I assure you and I was delighted I wish you could have heard him, perhaps he may visit Hartford as he is travelling through the country. His style is thoroughly dramatic. They are just enacting The Black Crook in Balto. Lucille Western is there.
Tell me please Belle if colored people do not have access to any part of the theatre in Boston, I have had a dispute about it but I forget. I was writing of my Washington trip well we had a delightful time called on Mr. Simpson, he has been very ill with typhoid fever, and is just getting so as to [….] a little on the 16th the colored people celebrated the Emancipation of the District. The Lincoln [….] were down from Balt and together with their own [….] made a fine appearance the procession had all the different trades represented, in it and was headed by a mounted guard of Police followed by a chariot bearing the Goddess of Liberty and her attending maids, inrobed in the flag of our country. The procession was a very long one and had it been a pleasant day would have been very fine, but you can imagine how whitre silk saddle cover and scarfs looked in a drenching rain and with such mud under their feet as no other city but Washington knows.
The whole procession passed the White House and old Johnson stood on the porch with his head uncovered but no one volunteered a simple cheer. I should have told you that the Lincoln Monument was dedicaed on the 16th and that old Johnson went up on the platform and unveiled the statue on the 17th. We visited the house of representatives and the dome of the capitol, took a lungch with Mr. George T. Downing of Newport, attended the impeachement trial heard several reportes and See. Wells testify, and “Beast Brother” make a speech, and at seven o’clock took the cars for home, and as we only had the $1.50 per day for board we only regretted we had not longer to stay.
I heard from Becca while in Balto through Miss Booth and Mis Breiggs who were up there but she has been owing me a letter for a long time and I am [….] looking for it and daily disappointed. Mis Usher writes me she expects to accompany Becca home for the vacation.
My new school house is progressing finely they promise me I shall go in to it the first of May. but I think not before the middle, haven’t you got a donation to give me for it? such will be thankfully received but it is school time and I guess I have wearied you with my nonsense. The kiss you sent me is accepted and I send one in return and believe me as ever your loving friend
Carrie
write soone please Miss Belle Primus
Royal Oak, July 8, 1868
Mrs. H. Primus,
As you have not yet received an expression of thanks from any of the denizens of our little village, I deem it but my duty to express my heartfelt thanks for the action you have taken in prospering the cause of education with us. I refer to your donation of funds for assistance in erecting our model school-house. This benevolent act, my dear madam, is, and will be cherished by the many who are now deriving the benefits of the same.
The lady-like deportment, sterling ability, and real personal worth of your highly esteemed daughter, late in charge of our flourishing school, has been highly commended by all classes, and has been particularly spoken of by our white friends, and she has left us with many deep regrets.
Wishing you much and continued success in your future life, and many years yet to live,
I beg leave to subscribe myself
Your humble sevant,
Charles Thomas.
This letter is from Rebecca’s eccentric friend and colleague Josephine Booth.
Oxford Sept. 31, 1866
Kind Friend:
I wish to tell you how I arrived here. After you left it soon begun to rain and after the boat arrived at Easton it poured down in torrents, but I found a covered conveyance to take me to Oxford twelve miles and reached Nathan Mills’ house about six o’clock. They were good and attntive on the boat and the driver was very good and polite. Mrs. Mills is a pleasant agreeable person and made me a nice soft bed in a good room. They believe in haveing somthing to eat too. There was a nice blazzing fire which was bery acceptable after the day’s journey. I think something can be done here, but Sunday being so stormy there was no service at the Church. Mr. Mills will notify the people and says there are many who will send to this church children to be taught.
I thought you would like to have [….] how I arrived and where I Stopped.
I have found the people friendly and hospitable so far, and any coming among them with plain manners and a desire to benefit them I think will meet with success.
And above all I shall endeavor to impress upon them their moral and religious obligations. Let us Rebecca who have had the advantages of knowledge and Christian culture lift up the standard of truth and peace. That in the pursuit of wisdom they may not forget nor undervalue that wisdom which comes from above. For I am persuaded that if the people knew where their highest privelege lay, they would rise before the world as light out of darkness. If with our mind and heart they shall
serve the Lord, their enemies would be put to flight and condemed. if you should write to Mr. Cook tell him how I arrived and I will also write to him as soon as I shall get located. I thank you for all your kindness to me since I left Hartford and shall remember it in a more substantial manner. My respects to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas although strangers, and hope you are well and enjoying yourself. It was quite rainy and cloudy Saturday and Sunday, still it is cheerful to me.
I think it a good rule not to let outside influences control our feelings, but we can be happy without reference to them. I shall write again soon.
Yours Truly,
Josephine
This is the only letter to Addie that we have. Neither the writer nor the date is noted. It seems to be from her husband, Joseph Tines, as he mentions missing her and the children, which means it must have been written between 1868 and 1870, prior to her death. The towns Howardsville and Silverton are in Colorado. Since this letter was preserved it lends some hope that Rebecca’s letters to Addie might also exist.
Dear Addie. How I would like to see you and the children. When I get home again I will stay if I have to stal to get a living. The place where I am is four miles from Howardsville, The mountains are on all sides of me. I do not see the Sun untill 9 am and at 3 pm it is behind the range on the West. The mine is 10,000 feet above sea level and the mountains rise 3000 ft above us on all sides. It is the grandest sight I ever saw or dreamed of there its lots of snow on the mountains. But not any at the mine. The weather is beautiful. There has not been a snow since I came here. I got into Silverton Sunday night. Monday I went on the train to Howardsville and from there rode a Bronch […]. If you and the babies was here or near enough I could come home once a week I should think I was the lucky man. The work is all right. The board is fine. But you and the children are so far away. As Burd said there is a hell of a loth of land west of Danbury and some of the finest that ever lay out doors. On my trip out here I passed through York State, Penns, Ill, Neb, New Mexico before I reached Denver. I passed three or four colonys [….] dogs. Saw one jack rabbit. I also saw the little owl that lives with them standing on the burrow within 200 miles of Silverton I saw lots of hogs, horses and cattle all fat but what they got on I don’t know for the land looks as bare as could be except the sagebrush, wind mills are to be seen everywhere also wells that flow a great many all day.
Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends Page 30