Ockenga, Starr. On Women and Friendship: A Collection of Victorian Keepsakes and Traditions. New York: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1990.
Perkins, Linda M. “The Black Female American Missionary Association Teacher in the South, 1861-1870.” In Black Women in United States History: From Colonial Times Through the Nineteenth Century. Ed. Darlene Clark Hine. Vol. 3, 1049-1064. Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing Co., 1990.
Peterson, Carla L. “Doers of the Word”: African-American Women Speakers and Writers in the North (1830-1880). New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Piersen, William Dillon. Black Yankees: The Development of an Afro-American Subculture in 18th Century New England. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988.
Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. “The Female World of Love and Ritual.” Signs 1 (1975): 1-29.
Sterling, Dorothy. The Trouble They Seen: The Story of Reconstruction in the Words of African Americans. New York: DaCapo Press, 1976.
———, ed. We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century. New York: W. W. Norton, 1984.
Tate, Claudia. Domestic Allegories of Political Desire: The Black Heroine’s Text at the Turn of the Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
United States Census Office, The Seventh Census of the United States, 1850. Washington, D.C., 1853.
———, The Eighth Census of the United States, 1860 Population. Washington, D.C., 1864.
White, David O. “Addie Brown’s Hartford.” Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin. 41, no. 2 (April 1976): 56-64.
Notes
Introduction:“Beyond the Silence”
1. My title invokes that of Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham’s 1989 article “Beyond the Sound of Silence: Afro-American Women in History,” Gender and History 1, no. 1 (1989): 50-67.
2. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, “Beyond the Sound of Silence: Afro- American Women in History.” Darlene Clark Hine, “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West: Preliminary Thoughts on the Culture of Dissemblance,” Signs 14, no. 4 (1989): 912-20. Valerie Smith, “Loopholes of Retreat: Architecture and Ideology in Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” in Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Meridian Books, 1990). Hortense Spillers, “Interstices,” in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, ed. Carole S. Vance (Boston: Routledge, 1984). Claudia Tate, Domestic Allegories of Political Desire: The Black Heroine’s Text at the Turn of the Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
3. Scholars such as Darlene Clark Hine and Deborah Gray White have insisted that the documents were available but we might have to search in uncommon places for them. Noting that few black women donated their papers to manuscript repositories, White said this is “in part a manifestation of the black woman’s perennial concern with image, a justifiable concern born of centuries of vilification. Black women’s reluctance to donate personal papers also stems from the adversarial nature of the relationship that countless black women have had with many public institutions and the resultant suspicion of anyone seeking private information.” See Deborah Gray White, “Mining the Forgotten: Manuscript Sources for Black Women’s History,” Journal of American History 74 (June 1987): 237-42.
4. For information on how the letters arrived at the Historical Society, see David O. White’s essay in this volume. During the past sixty years, only three scholars have explored the contents of this rich and invaluable archive: David White, former director of the Connecticut Historical Society; Barbara Beeching, former graduate student at Trinity College, Hartford; and Karen Hansen, historical sociologist at Brandeis University.
5. Delmore Schwartz, “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities,” in In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories (New York: New Directions, 1978).
6. Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 1991), p. 96.
7. Lillian Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present (New York: William Morrow, 1981). Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The Female World of Love and Ritual,” Signs 1 (1975): 1- 29
8. Frances Smith Foster, Written by Herself: Literary Production by African American Women, 1746- 1892 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993). Carla L. Peterson, “Doers of the Word”: African-American Women Speakers and Writers in the North (1830-1888) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995)·
PART ONE: The Early Years
1. Charles Thomas served as doorman of the Connecticut General Assembly at the State Capitol. In this capacity, he held a modicum of status within Hartford’s African American community. He was affectionately known as Senator Thomas.
2. The journals of Charlotte Forten Grimké and the letters of Frances Harper were among the only known primary sources relating to the experience of black northern women teachers of the freedmen.
3. Dorothy Sterling, ed., We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York: W. W Norton, 1984).
4. Ibid.
5. Henrietta was born in 1839, Nelson in 1842, and Isabella in 1843·
6. See David O. White’s essay in this volume for more information on Gad Asher, Holdridge Primus’s grandfather.
7. Information about nineteenth-century black Hartford has been culled from the following sources: Elihu Geer, Hartford City Directory. 1860 U.S. Census, Hartford. “The Colored People Who Live in Hartford,” Hartford Courant, Oct. 24, 1915. David O. White, “Augustus Washington, Black Daguerreotypes of Hartford,” Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin 39, no. 1 (Jan. 1974): 14-19. David O. White, “Hartford’s African Schools,” Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin 39, no. 1 (April 1974): 47- 53. White, “Addie Brown’s Hartford,” Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin 41, no. 2 (April 1976) 56- 64. White, “The Fugitive Blacksmith of Hartford: James W. C. Pennington,” Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin 49, no. 1 (Jan. 1984): 5-29.
8. Addie Brown to Rebecca Primus, Dec. 1861.
9. See Barbara Beeching, “The Primus Papers: An Introduction to Hartford’s 19th Century African-American Community,” unpublished master’s thesis. Trinity College, 1995·
Chapter 2 “If you was a man…”
1. I am grateful to Stephanie Shaw for drawing my attention to this connection.
2. Addie Brown to Rebecca Primus, 1859; Addie Brown to Rebecca Primus, Sept. 30, 1867.
3. Date surmised from Rebecca Primus’s letter, Dec. 1865[n.d.]; the year from Addie Brown’s letter, June 30, 1865.
4. John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans (1947; 6th ed., New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988).
5. Jacquelyn Grant, White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and Womanist Response (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989).
Part Two: The Civil War Years
1. James Weldon Johnson, Black Afanhattan (New York: Knopf, 1930), p. 58.
2. Leonard Curry, The Free Black in Urban America, 1800-1850: The Shadow of the Dream (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 23-24.
3. George Walker, The Afro-American in New York City, 1827—1860 (New York: Garland, 1993) pp. 12-13.
Chapter 3 “Like meat to a hungre wolfe”
1. For excellent explorations of women at sea as “part of the blue water work force,” see the essays in Iron Men, Wooden Women: Gender and Seafaring in the Atlantic World 1700-1720, ed. Margaret Creighton and Lisa Norling (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). For a history of African American sailors in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).
2. Addie is referring to Shiloh and St. Phillips, two prominent black churches in nineteenth-century New York.
Chapter 4 “Call you my sister”
1. See Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr., Philip B. Kunhardt III, and Peter W. Kunhardt. RT. Barn
um: America’s Greatest Showman (New York: Knopf, 1995).
Part Three: The Reconstruction Years
1. According to Barbara Beeching, the average marital age among Hartford’s black population in 1860 was 24.6, so Rebecca was older than most of the single men in her community when she left Hartford.
2. The society, founded in 1865 by prominent Hartford whites, sponsored three schools. Its first president was Reverend Calvin Stowe, husband of Harriet Beecher Stowe. It was dissolved in 1869.
3. David O. White, unpublished manuscript.
Chapter 5 “There is great excitement about putting money in the bank”
1. Barbara Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland During the Nineteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), p. 11.
2. In this respect my interpretation differs from that of Karen Hansen, who argues that the community knew of the nature of Addie and Rebecca’s relationship and supported it, but nonetheless encouraged both women to eventually turn their affection to men.
3. See David O. White, “Addie Brown’s Hartford,” Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin, 41, no. 2 (April 1976), p. 64.
4. This tells us that Rebecca is writing Addie on a weekly basis, as she did her family.
5. See White, “Addie Brown’s Hartford,” p. 60.
6. When Addie shares gossip with Rebecca, she often attributes it to Madam Rumor.
7. Rebecca’s aunts Emily and Bathsheba.
8. Her sister Bell might have taken over Rebecca’s school. This is further suggested in later letters.
9. Nelson Primus, Rebecca’s brother.
10. Addie will eventually live with and work for a white family, the Crowells.
Chapter 6 “Justice, impartial justice . .
1. For a discussion of racial uplift ideology see Kevin Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
2. Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1990), p. no.
3. John W. Alvord, First Semi-Annual Report on Schools and Finances of Freedmen, January 1, 1866 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1868), p. 8.
4. Wormwood is recommended for heartburn as well. John Lust, The Herb Book (New York: Bantam, 1974).
5. David O. White writes: “The move to 153 Market Street by Gertrude (Plato) was first noted in the 1866-67 City Directory of Hartford…. Letter was probably written in 1866.”
6. President Andrew Johnson.
7. Peter Schullin and Donel Soyor, “Fraternal Orders,” in Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History, ed. Jack Salzman, David Lionel Smith, and Cornel West (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
8. James A. Miller, “Connecticut,” in Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 643.
9. Mr. Tines.
10. New York.
11. Addie is probably referring to the Weekly Anglo African, the most influential African American journal of the period. Published by Thomas Hamilton and edited by his brother Robert, the journal published the work of Martin Delaney, Frances Harper, Charles Mercer Langston, and Daniel Payne.
12. The term used for those who supported the Confederacy.
13. Reverend F. Israel, the secretary of the Maryland District of the American Freedman’s and Union Commission, was based in Baltimore.
14. Addie is referring to the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, since The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass was not published until 1888.
Chapter 7 “I am pleased to hear of the success of those freedmen”
1. Henry Howard Starkweather (1826-76), a Connecticut state legislator elected in 1856, was also a delegate to the National Republican conventions that nominated Lincoln in 1860 and Grant in 1868. Lincoln appointed him postmaster of Norwich in 1861. He served in the Republican Congress from 1867 until his death. It is not clear why Rebecca feels this way about him.
2. See Tera Hunter, To Joy My Freedom (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).
3. Friendship albums were books exchanged among friends in the nineteenth century.
4. Eliza eludes the slave catchers when she crosses the frozen Ohio River.
5. Emily was a young housekeeper who lived with and worked for the Thomases.
6. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct (New York: Knopf, 1985), p. 59.
7. See references to Nubia in Chapter 8.
8. Rebecca never tells who sends her roses.
9. Richard Lane, the postmaster at Royal Oak.
10. It is most likely that these were political meetings. In December 1866, the Republicans began pushing through the Fourteenth Amendment. There were three Reconstruction Amendments: the thirteenth freed slaves, the fourteenth made African Americans citizens, and the fifteenth gave them the right to vote.
11. Reverend N. J. Burton served as one of the directors of the Hartford Freedmen’s Aid Society in 1867.
Chapter 8 “We must have a school house”
1. Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863—1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), p. 282.
2. Barbara Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland During the Nineteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 144.
3. Actuary of the Baltimore Association for the Moral and Educational Improvement of the Colored People.
4. Rebecca’s cousin, daughter of Aunt Bashy.
5. Children born with a caul were thought to be gifted with second sight, prophesy, and psychic powers.
6. Hartford-based author and poet Lydia H. Sigourney, secretary of the Hartford Female African Society. The society was made up of white women who supported the American Colonization Society. Sigourney is perhaps best known for her books Letters to Toung Ladies and the autobiographical Letters of Life, published in 1866, one year after her death. It is not clear which of her many books Primus refers to here.
7. A prominent Hartford property owner who collected funds for Rebecca’s school.
8. Name originally given to northern Democrats who opposed Lincoln.
9. Lydia Maria Child, abolitionist, author, and editor.
10. Harryette Mullen, Muse and Drudge (Philadelphia: Singing Horse Press, 1995).
11. Use of the term image weavers is inspired by a collective of Philadelphia- based black women filmmakers called Image Weavers.
12. See Richard Fuke, “Hugh Lennox Bond and Radical Republican Ideology,” The Journal of Southern History, vol. XLV, no. 4 (November 1979).
13. One of the young women boarding with the Primuses. Rebecca is comparing her to Emily, the young woman who lived with the Thomases, but left when she became pregnant without being married and asked to return when the baby died.
14. Former president of the Confederacy; spent two years in federal prison following the defeat.
15. See Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of 1845.
16. Mr. Tines.
17. For more information see also Michael Fitzgerald, The Union League Movement in the Deep South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989).
18. Mr. Seyms was Holdridge Primus’s employer.
Chapter 9 “The people are quite cheered up & hopeful once more.”
1. Addie might be referring to the practice of conjuring.
2. Thomas Saunders was the son of William Saunders, a free black tailor from Hartford who was Connecticut’s first agent for William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator. Thomas and his brother Prince were also tailors. (See Barbara Beeching, “The Primus Papers: An Introduction to Hartford’s 19th Century African American Community,” unpublished master’s thesis, Trinity College, 1995.)
Chapter 10 “And all nature is coming forth
and clothing herself in beauty and fragrance.”
1. Primus’s diaries are not in the collection at the Connecticut Historical Society. Given her penchant for writing it is not at all surpri
sing that she kept a journal, and hopefully the diaries, too, are awaiting discovery.
2. Rebecca is referring to the founder and director of Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Connecticut, where Addie Brown and Rebecca’s aunt Emily and her husband were employed.
Appendix
1. Hartford Freedmen’s Aid Society Collection at the Connecticut Historical Society.
Rebecca Primus in Later Life
1. Jeremiah Asher, Incidents in the Life of the Rev. J. Asher, Pastor of the Shiloh (Coloured) Baptist Church, Philadelphia, U.S. (London: Charles Gilpin, 1850). This book was reprinted in 1971 by Books for Libraries Press, Freeport, New York. See pp. 15-20.
2. The obituary of Holdridge Primus is in Obituary Scrapbook, vol. 3, p. 53, Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford.
3. Among the records consulted on Gad Asher and the Primus name were the Guilford Probate Records, vol. 25, 1834-37, pp. 307, 319, 415-16, 434, and 444, and North Branford Deeds, vol. 1, pp. 103, 170, 239, and 240. Thomas Fitch’s book Guilford Private Records, 1784—1815, at the Connecticut State Library, helped to connect Gad Asher to the Primus family. See pp. 1 and 34.
4. Information on the school Rebecca Primus established at Royal Oak and maintained after her departure can be found in the Journal of Proceedings of the Board of School Commissioners at the Talbot County Free Library, Easton, Maryland.
5. Interviews were held with Mrs. Evelyn Thomas Ross (born 1914) and Mrs. Helen Murray (born 1904) on October 15, 1973, at their home in Royal Oak.
6. Talbot County Deeds, County Court House, Easton, Maryland, Folios 75, #304 and #305.
7. Emma to Cousin Rebecca, August 19, 1876, Primus Papers, Connecticut Historical Society.
8. The ledger kept at the Connecticut building in 1876 is owned by the Connecticut Historical Society, but the names of the visitors to the building are printed in Souvenir of the Centennial Exhibition, or Connecticut’s Representation at Philadelphia, 1876 (1877). Rebecca and her mother are listed on pages 251 and 253.
9. Annual Legislative Statistics of State Officers, Connecticut, January Session, 1884, by Palmer Bill, vol. IV, no. 5 (1884), p. 3, and Charles Thomas Obitu
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