The Bone and Sinew of the Land

by Anna-Lisa Cox

  African American Farming Settlements in the Northwest Territory States, 1800–1860

  1. Ancestry.com, 1830 United States Federal Census [database online] (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010). Images reproduced by FamilySearch. Original data: Fifth Census of the United States, 1830 (National Archives and Records Administration [NARA] microfilm publication M19, 201 rolls). Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29 (National Archives, Washington, DC); Ancestry.com, 1850 United States Federal Census [database online] (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009). Images reproduced by FamilySearch. Original data: Seventh Census of the United States, 1850 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M432, 1009 rolls); Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29 (National Archives, Washington, DC); Ancestry.com, 1860 United States Federal Census [database online] (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009). Images reproduced by FamilySearch. Original data: 1860 US census, population schedule (NARA microfilm publication M653, 1,438 rolls. Washington, DC: NARA, n.d.). [All regular population census schedules were accessed online on Ancestry.com, starting in January 2013 through to October 2017. A shortened citation format will be used for the rest of the book.]; Emma Lou Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana Before 1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993); Cheryl Janifer LaRoche, Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad: The Geography of Resistance (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013); Juliet Walker, Free Frank: A Black Pioneer on the AnteBellum Frontier (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983); Stephen A. Vincent, Southern Seed, Northern Soil: African-American Farm Communities in the Midwest, 1765–1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999); Coy Robbins, Forgotten Hoosiers: African Heritage in Orange County, Indiana (Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1994); Deborah Rotman, African-American and Quaker Farmers in East Central Indiana: Social, Political and Economic Aspects of Life in Nineteenth-Century Rural Communities: Randolph County, Indiana (Muncie, IN: Archaeological Resources Management Service, Ball State University, 1998); Xenia Cord, “Black Rural Settlements in Indiana Before 1860,” in Indiana’s African-American Heritage, ed. Wilma Gibbs (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press, 1993); Coy Robbins, Reclaiming African Heritage at Salem, Indiana (Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1995); “Enoch Harris,” obituary, Kalamazoo Telegraph, March 25, 1870; Keith Griffler, Front Line of Freedom: African Americans and the Forging of the Underground Railroad in the Ohio Valley (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004); Aimee Lee Cheek and William Cheek, John Mercer Langston and the Fight for Black Freedom, 1829–65 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996); Wayne L. Snider, All in the Same Spaceship: Portions of American Negro History Illustrated in Highland County, Ohio, U.S.A. (New York: Vantage Press, 1974); David Gerber, Black Ohio and the Color Line, 1860–1915 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976); J. H. Battle and William Lerner, History of Morrow County and Ohio (Chicago: O. L. Baskin, 1880); William Katz, Black Pioneers: An Untold Story (New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 1999); Mary Ann Brown, “Vanished Black Rural Communities in Western Ohio,” in Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, I, ed. Camille Wells (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987); Zachary Cooper, Black Settlers in Rural Wisconsin (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1994).

  Author’s Note

  1. I am thankful for my research intern, Alexandra Piper, whose dedication and hard work helped me to find many of these settlements.

  2. William F. Cheek and Aimee Lee Cheek, John Mercer Langston and the Fight for Black Freedom, 1829–65 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 179–180, 199. My research into a small sample of census reports comparing local land deed and tax records shows this pattern to hold true, but further research is essential to recover a full picture of the wealth of African American farmers in this region before the Civil War.

  Introduction

  1. “Visit to the West,” Liberator, September 30, 1853, 154. Accessed on Ebscohost.

  2. Christian Wolmar, The Great Railroad Revolution: The History of Trains in America (New York: PublicAffairs, 2013); Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 199–210. See Chapter 9 in this book for a full discussion of tarring and feathering as a tool of pro-prejudice organizers.

  3. “Tour to Ohio and Michigan,” Liberator, December 2, 1853. Accessed on Ebscohost.

  4. Ibid.

  5. A few works have looked at African Americans in the rural antebellum Northwest Territory and states, although most have assumed that the settlements they covered were unusual or unique. However, these books have been invaluable in laying the groundwork for this book. They include Cheryl Janifer LaRoche, Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad: The Geography of Resistance (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013); Stephen Vincent, Southern Seed, Northern Soil: African-American Farm Communities in the Midwest, 1765–1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999); Juliet E. K. Walker, Free Frank: A Black Pioneer on the Antebellum Frontier (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983); Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, America’s First Black Town: Brooklyn, Illinois, 1830–1915 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002); Leslie Schwalm, Emancipation’s Diaspora: Race and Reconstruction in the Upper Midwest (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009); Leon Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790–1860 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970); Wilma Gibbs, Indiana’s African-American Heritage: Essays from Black History News & Notes (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press, 2007); William Loren Katz, Black Pioneers: An Untold Story (New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 1999); Emma Lou Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana Before 1900: A Study of a Minority (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1957); David Gerber, Black Ohio and the Color Line, 1860–1915 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991); Benjamin Wilson, The Rural Black Heritage Between Chicago and Detroit, 1850–1929: A Photograph Album and Random Thoughts (Kalamazoo, MI: New Issues Press, Western Michigan University, 1985).

  6. Stephen Vincent, Southern Seed, Northern Soil: African-American Farm Communities in the Midwest, 1765–1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), Table 1, xii; “Negro Population: 1790–1915,” US Department of Interior, Census Office, Federal Census Report, Washington, DC, 1918, 44–45, www.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/00480330ch02.pdf.

  7. “Negro Population: 1790–1915,” 44–45; Clayton E. Cramer, Black Demographic Data, 1790–1860: A Sourcebook (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997), 149; James Campbell, Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787–2005 (New York: Penguin Books, 2007), 57–98, 243; Antonio McDaniel, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot: The Mortality Cost of Colonizing Liberia in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Bronwen Everill, “‘Destiny Seems to Point Me to That Country’: Early Nineteenth-Century African American Migration, Emigration, and Expansion,” Journal of Global History 7, no. 1 (2012): 53–77.

  8. Leslie Schwalm, Emancipation’s Diaspora: Race and Reconstruction in the Upper Midwest (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 34; Vincent, Southern Seed, xiii–xiv; Juliet E. K. Walker, The History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship, vol. 1: To 1865 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 95–96.

  9. The idea that this region could be home to a “middle ground” between various cultures was first proposed by Richard White in The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). His theories of settlement and cultural accommodation could well bear rich harvest if applied to African-descended people in the Northwest Territory states.

  10. See Chapter 1 for more on the African Americans at Fort Allison in the Indiana Territory and those who fought in the War of 1812 in that region; see Chapter 5 for African Americans manning forts along the Arkansas territorial border.

  11. For more on the concept of freedom as applied to African Americans
and property ownership in the early republic, see Eric Foner’s excellent The Story of American Freedom (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), which informed my use of “freedom” as thought of by African Americans in the antebellum Northwest territories and states. See Chapter 2 for more on the creation of the Northwest Ordinance and its ties to the time and ideals of its creation.

  12. “National Convention of Colored Men—Negro Colony in Ohio,” Cleveland Daily Herald, August 26, 1843, n.p. President Andrew Jackson coined the phrase “bone and sinew” during his famous farewell speech in March 1837: “The planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer all know that their success depends upon their own industry and economy, and that they must not expect to become suddenly rich by the fruits of their toil. Yet these classes of society form the great body of the people of the United States; they are the bone and sinew of the country—men who love liberty and desire nothing but equal rights and equal laws” (Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, Farewell Address of Andrew Jackson to the People of the United States; and the Inaugural Address of Martin Van Buren, President of the United States [Washington City: Blair and Rives, 1837]). The term was then used by African American leaders frequently in the 1840s as a way of appropriating language meant to be applied only to white men.

  Chapter 1: “Life, Liberty”

  1. Tract Book of Gibson County, Indiana, for the NE 1/4 of the NE 1/4 of section 21, township 3S, range 12W (40 acres), August 15, 1815, Charles Grier purchaser, Princeton Public Library, Princeton, Indiana.

  2. Allan Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt: Farming on the Illinois and Iowa Prairies in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1963), 73–74.

  3. For more on the desirability of Wabash River valley land and land sales of the Northwest Territory lands, see Malcolm J. Rohrbough, The Land Office Business: The Settlement and Administration of American Public Lands, 1789–1837 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968).

  4. I am indebted to Richard Roosenberg, president and founder of Tillers International, for sharing his experiential and research-based knowledge of frontier farming in the antebellum Northwest Territory states. Original notes from May 15, 2015, meeting in author’s possession, along with follow-up email communications.

  5. A young woman called Eliza Little, who—like Keziah—had been born and raised in bondage until her teens, reported on her satisfaction at owning and working the land of her frontier farm with her husband, from clearing it to finally being able to farm it. As she explained, “I could handle an axe, or plow or, any thing. I felt proud to be able to do it—to help get cleared up, so that we could have a home, and plenty to live on.” Benjamin Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery. The Refugee: or, The Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada. Related by Themselves, with an Account of the History and Condition of the Colored Population of Upper Canada (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1968), 163.

  6. Gibson County Negro Registry, Princeton Public Library, Princeton, Indiana, 1851. Like many of these early settlers, Keziah and Charles are both described as very dark skinned or “black.”

  7. Andrew R. L. Cayton, Frontier Indiana (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 188–193.

  8. M. Scott Heerman, “In a State of Slavery: Black Servitude in Illinois, 1800–1830,” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 14, no. 1 (2016): 114–139.

  9. Margaret Cross Norton, Illinois Census Returns, 1810–1818 (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1935), xi; Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011).

  10. W. Faux, Memorable Days in America: Being a Journal of a Tour to the United States Principally Undertaken to Ascertain, by Positive Evidence, the Condition and Probable Prospects of British Emigrants; Including Accounts of Mr. Birkbeck’s Settlement in the Illinois, and Intended to Show Men and Things as They Are in America (London: Printed for W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1823), quoted in Denise Gigante, The Keats Brothers: The Life of John and George (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), 286.

  11. Paul Finkelman, “Evading the Ordinance: The Persistence of Bondage in Indiana and Illinois,” Journal of the Early Republic 9, no. 1 (spring 1989): 21–51, doi:10.2307/3123523.

  12. William K. Klingaman and Nicholas P. Klingaman, The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2013).

  13. “Communicated,” Princeton Clarion, May 30, 1872, front page. This narrative of how Charles Grier arrived in Indiana is from his own obituary. This is how he and his family wanted his story told. The details may turn out to be slightly different, but for the purposes of this book I am honoring the way that Charles Grier wanted the story of his coming to the Indiana Territory to be known.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Loren Schweninger, “The Fragile Nature of Freedom: Free Women of Color in the U.S. South,” in Beyond Bondage: Free Women of Color in the Americas, ed. David Gaspar and Darlene Hine (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2004), 106; Ellen Eslinger, “Liberation in a Rural Context,” in Paths to Freedom: Manumission in the Atlantic World, ed. Rosemary Brana-Shute and Randy J. Sparks (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2009), 363–379.

  17. Indiana would soon enough pass similar laws, as well as prejudiced laws barring service in the militia and the ability to testify in court. But these were early days on the frontier, and many laws were ignored or lightly adhered to, including the ban on slavery. Still, any of these laws would hang as a threat over settled African American pioneers. Newly arrived whites could use the Black Code laws to force them to leave. There were many examples of this. See Nikki Taylor, Frontiers of Freedom: Cincinnati’s Black Community, 1802–1868 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005); Ross Bagby, “The Randolph Slave Saga: Communities in Collision” (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 1998), 153; Stephen Middleton, The Black Laws in the Old Northwest: A Documentary History (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993).

  18. “Communicated,” Princeton Clarion, May 30, 1872, front page; “Black History/Little Africa,” Lawrence County Historical Society, accessed July 13, 2016, www.lawrencelore.org/blackhistory.

  19. Annelise Morris, “Jumping the Legal Color Line: Negotiating Racial Geographies in the 19th Century” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Historical Archaeology, Seattle, Washington, January 6–11, 2015), accessed April 2, 2016, www.academia.edu/11559423/Jumping_the _Legal_Color_Line_Negotiating_Racial_Geographies_in_the_19th _Century. Pioneers and frontiers are not uncomplicated things in America. Even as the Morrises, Griers, and other pioneers of African descent were trying to make a new start and build a new nation, they were also a part of the destruction of other nations. For while the church at Fort Allison wanted to see freedom and equality grow, its vision did not encompass the Native peoples who were already there. This system of forts was put into place specifically to assist in settling a region that was not yet even officially in the hands of the United States. This was the region that saw Tecumseh rise to resist the unjust and brutal killing of people and theft of land in the Northwest Territory.

  20. For more on this Evangelical abolitionist movement in the Northwest Territory, see James David Essig, “Break Every Yoke: American Evangelicals Against Slavery, 1770–1808” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1978).

  21. Lawrence County, Illinois (Lawrence County Historical Society, 1995), 325; Combined History of Edwards, Lawrence and Wabash Counties, Illinois: With Illustrations… and Biographical Sketches of Some of Their Prominent Men and Pioneers (Philadelphia: J. L. McDonough & Co., 1883), 70–72, 270; “Fort Allison,” Lawrence County Historical Society, accessed June 16, 2016, www.lawrencelore.org/fort-allison.

  22. Emma Lou Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana Before 1900: A Study of a Minority (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1957), 11–12.

  23. Cayton, Frontier Indiana, 188–193; “Communicated,” Prin
ceton Clarion, May 30, 1872, front page.

  24. Some travelers from the urban areas of the Northeast expressed surprise at the amount of work women were doing alongside men on frontier farms in the Northwest territories and states at this time. See Samuel Bernard Judah, “A Journal of Travel from New York to Indiana in 1827,” Indiana Magazine of History 17, no. 4 (December 1921): 338–352.

  25. John Wood Sweet, Bodies Politic: Negotiating Race in the American North, 1730–1830 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 251–253; Roger Kennedy, Mr. Jefferson’s Lost Cause: Land, Farmers, Slavery and the Louisiana Purchase (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 149–151.

  Chapter 2: Interlude

  1. Paul Finkelman and Tim A. Garrison, “French and Indian War (1754–1763),” in Encyclopedia of United States Indian Policy and Law, ed. Paul Finkelman and Tim A. Garrison (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2009), 323–324, doi: 10.4135/9781604265767.n228. For more on Native Americans and the fur trade in this area, see Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); John Timothy Fierst, “The Struggle to Defend Indian Authority in the Ohio Valley–Great Lakes Region, 1763–1794” (master’s thesis, University of Manitoba, Canada, 2000).

  2. For more on how this loss angered colonists, especially George Washington, see Taylor Alan, American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750–1804 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2016). Malcolm J. Rohrbough, The Land Office Business: The Settlement and Administration of American Public Lands, 1789–1837 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 3–25.

  3. Peter H. Wood, “From Estaban to York: African Americans in the Purchase Territory During Three Centuries,” in The Louisiana Purchase and Its Peoples: Perspectives from the New Orleans Conference, ed. Paul E. Hoffman (Lafayette: Louisiana Historical Association and Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Louisiana, Lafayette, 2004), 9. My thanks to Peter Wood for this citation, information, and his encouragement.