The Other Madisons

by Bettye Kearse

  There were small fires as well. The former president, while organizing his papers, selected missives and documents for Dolley, his closest confidante, to burn. Madison was likely trying to protect his correspondents’ privacy and shield them from embarrassment. But I can’t help thinking he also hoped to safeguard his legacy.

  In the Madisons’ era, it was not uncommon for well-to-do people to request their private letters to be burned after their death. I learned that Dolley had instructed her niece Anna Payne to go through her personal papers and decide which ones should be destroyed. Dolley was most likely protecting her own privacy.

  The actions of John Payne Todd, Dolley’s son by her first marriage, made matters even more difficult for me. He hadn’t burned Madison’s papers, but he had pilfered and sold many of them. Payne, as he was called, was driven by his need to pay off gambling debts.

  After Payne’s death, in 1892, items from his estate, Toddsberth, were put up for sale in order to cover his unpaid bills. Prior to the sale, the sheriff and a county justice of the peace went through the Madison papers still in Payne’s files and discarded or incinerated most of them. Only documents with monetary value were spared.

  Not all of Dolley’s papers were burned. She left behind a small gem of little-known information about a celebration at the end of the War of 1812: Dolley had indeed ordered slaves to stand around the room holding torches. Few scholars knew this detail, but for two centuries, generations of griots in my family had passed down the story of Jim holding a rushlight at that party. Dolley Madison biographer Catherine Allgor writes: “Dolley may have lost her silver, mirrors and lamps, but she supplied the drama of light for one party by stationing enslaved men throughout the house with pine torches.”

  The rushlight story corroborates our family’s oral history of Jim. (It has always bothered me that I could not find record of Victoria, the young white woman whose love for Jim resulted in his being sold. But several of James and Dolley’s nieces—some whose names were not noted—spent long periods at Montpelier.)

  To shore up my optimism, I turned to two of my cousins, Sean Harley and Jimmy Madison. They had been searching archives and online resources for evidence of our ancestors for many years. Sean, then in his thirties, had engaged in family genealogy since junior high. His great-great-grandfather was Giles Madison, one of Jim’s grandsons. My great-grandfather Mack Madison was one of Giles’s brothers. Giles and Mack married sisters, Fanny and Martha Murchison Strain. Sean and I enjoyed the complexity of our kinship: we were double third cousins once removed.

  My third cousin Jimmy, a descendant of Charles Madison, another of Jim’s grandsons, began his research after he heard my mother’s oral-history presentation at a family reunion. Jimmy decided to devote his retirement years to finding more family documents.

  Sean, Jimmy, and I joined forces and pooled our information. Looking for clues about the lives of our enslaved ancestors, we pored over census data, bills of sale, wills, lists of taxable property, and whatever else we could find. From oral history, we knew that one of Jim’s sons was our ancestor Emanuel, a man we hoped would lead us to his father.

  Though we could not find out how, when, or where Emanuel was acquired, we knew from tax records that by the 1820s, Emanuel lived in Tennessee as the property of Jeptha Billingsley (1780–1863).

  When Sean and Jimmy found documentation of a free black man named Shadrack Madison, more clues emerged. We learned that until Shadrack gained his freedom, (probably before 1816 but not recorded until 1817) he was the property of another member of the Billingsley family, Jeptha’s father, Samuel (1747–1816).

  Were there more clues that suggested a connection between the two African-American men? The archival path linking them was filled with gaps, requiring us to search for more hints, make inferences, and try to turn the scattered pieces of evidence into a coherent story. The next clue came from Montpelier. Jim, according to our family stories, was born on the plantation around 1792. Shadrack, according to census data, was born in Virginia that same year, and Montpelier records (which included shoe sizes for slaves) from 1782 to 1786 list the uncommon name Shadrack among property inventories. My cousins and I conjectured that the emancipated man may have been the namesake of the older enslaved man.

  Another link between Emanuel and Shadrack came from records in Gibson County, Tennessee. Both men lived there for some twenty years roughly from 1828 to 1848.

  County tax records showed that in the 1820s and 1830s, Jeptha Billingsley owned one black poll (taxable slave). In 1834, Jeptha purchased a wife for that poll. The bill of sale, executed in Gibson County, identifies the male slave as Manuel (Emanuel).

  Shadrack arrived in Gibson County in 1828. For at least eleven years prior, he had lived in Bledsoe County. In 1827, only one year before his move, he purchased land from Mary Billingsley, Jeptha’s mother. Abruptly, Shadrack sold the land and left his wife and children behind. (He later purchased his family and brought them to Gibson County.)

  In 1848, several events that might have linked Emanuel and Shadrack occurred. That year was significant for both men. Emanuel and his family were uprooted from Tennessee and taken to Texas, and Shadrack sold two parcels of land in Gibson County. By 1850, according to the national census, he and his family were residing in White County, Illinois. He had been a free man in a slave state for more than thirty years, and now, it seemed, he no longer felt compelled to stay there. My cousins and I surmised that Shadrack might have remained in Gibson County in order to live close to Emanuel and his family, but once they were gone, Shadrack moved his own family to a free state.

  The final, and most significant, clue that there was a close connection between the two men is their surname.

  When they were emancipated—Shadrack by a legal document recorded in 1817 and Emanuel by the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863—neither man took the last name of his owner, Billingsley. Instead, both took the name that I believe was chosen to honor their family credo: Madison.

  As soon as she learned Jim had been sold, Coreen told him to remember that name. It could be a tool, she hoped, that they might be able to use to find each other . . . someday. Now, generations later, the Madison name is, once again, a tool. My cousins Sean and Jimmy and I, unlike innumerable other descendants of slaves, are fortunate to have a name with which to begin to weave a life history. The documentation is scattered and circumstantial, but that is all that is available to us. We have no choice but to accept uncertainty until we can gather more evidence . . . someday.

  Could it be that Shadrack Madison was Emanuel Madison’s father and Coreen’s son? Could it be that Shadrack Madison was our long-lost Jim?

  14

  Elizabeth

  While looking for Jim, I had to rely on circumstantial evidence and conjecture. Not so for my search for my great-great-grandmother Elizabeth, Emanuel’s wife. One of my favorite photographs, the oldest in the box, has always been the one of Elizabeth Madison. (On the back of the picture, someone wrote Ma Madison, into which I read deep respect and affection.) In the cracked, fading image she is an elderly lady seated on a chair in front of a picket fence and a tall tree. She is a free woman in this photo, but Elizabeth had been a slave most of her life. Sitting alone, she gazes down at her hands resting on the folds of her skirt.

  Of all the family stories, Mom’s favorite was about Elizabeth’s grandmother Katie. Here is how my mother told it: In the French-speaking Senegambia region of Africa sometime during the mid-1700s, Katie’s mother, a beautiful African woman, married a French sailor. Over several years, they had three children. Katie was the oldest. When their father died at sea, a well-to-do French merchant asked their widowed mother to come, with her children, to what is now Port Harcourt, Nigeria. He needed someone to clean and cook for himself and his wife.

  Once the family had settled in, Katie’s mother started working for the merchant. Each day, he sent a wagon to make sure she traveled safely to his house. Katie, by then in her early teens, had to re
main home to watch her younger brother and sister. Whenever her mother left their house, she warned Katie to stay inside with all the doors and windows shut tight and locked. Slave catchers were everywhere.

  One bright, sunny day, Katie had a few coins to spend. And she was restless, cooped up in a hot, dark house. Her brother and sister, Katie figured, could not get into much mischief if she left them unattended for just a few moments. To increase the likelihood they wouldn’t tell her mother she had gone out, Katie planned to bring back a surprise treat for them.

  Katie hurried to the market, enjoying her adventure and wondering why her mother made such a big fuss about leaving the house. What could go wrong on such a nice day?

  Katie bought a small cake to share with her siblings, then headed home. Suddenly, as she approached the footbridge, two black men stepped in front of her. She screamed and tried to run away, but one man grabbed her wrists, and the other grabbed her feet. The town constable, who had known Katie since her arrival in Port Harcourt a couple of years earlier, saw what was happening, but he didn’t do anything. Most likely, he had been paid not to interfere.

  It wasn’t long before she found herself in the hull of a slave ship, but it seemed an eternity before the ship reached land. Katie disembarked on the east coast of Florida, where a Mr. Edward Jackson purchased her for his plantation in Pensacola.

  At first, things went well for Katie. She was chosen to be Mrs. Jackson’s personal servant. The mistress enjoyed showing off her French-speaking slave and taught Katie to do dainty domestic work: sewing, embroidery, and making fancy cakes and cookies. Katie had never been in a house with so many stairs, and she liked the feel of her braids bouncing against her back as she ran up and down the steps.

  Katie learned English quickly, but she pretended not to understand it. She reasoned that if she did not want to do something or if she made a mistake, she had an excuse. And Katie loved to listen in on Mr. and Mrs. Jackson’s conversations.

  Every summer, a carnival came to town. On the one day set aside for slaves and free blacks, Toby, a field slave from Togo who worked on one of Jackson’s distant plantations, came to take Katie to the fair. In her excitement, she became careless and spoke to Toby in English. Mr. Jackson, standing nearby, overheard her and realized Katie had deceived him. Enraged that a slave had made a fool of him, he gathered his family and every slave at the front of the mansion. He grabbed a switch, threw Katie onto the veranda, and beat her bloody.

  It took several months for Jackson to get over his anger at Katie, but when she and Toby finally found the nerve to approach Jackson to ask if they could “jump the broom,” he agreed to let them become husband and wife. But he did not allow them to live together, which made Toby Katie’s “abroad husband.” He could see her only on Sundays and a few nights now and then, whenever he could sneak away from his quarters on Jackson’s other plantation. Within a year, they had a daughter, Lilly.

  Lilly grew up to be a fine young woman, but quite a bit shyer than her mother. One morning, Mr. Jackson suddenly became ill, and he sent Lilly to get the doctor. On the way back, about a mile from the plantation, she heard footsteps behind her. She kept walking, her head down.

  “You’re pretty,” a man said.

  She walked faster. He kept pace with her.

  “You’re real pretty,” he said.

  Lilly realized the man was not going to go away and that she probably could not outrun him. She stopped and turned to look him in the face. He took a step back and lowered his head. His hat fell off. As he bent forward to pick it up, his black braids, as long as her mother’s now gray ones, fell over his shoulders.

  “My name’s John Quail,” he said. “I’m Choctaw.”

  “I’m Lilly. I belong to Massa Jackson.”

  They fell in love that very moment.

  The doctor came, and Mr. Jackson’s health improved. He gave permission for Lilly and John to jump the broom, but he would not write up free papers for the bride.

  Jackson’s health declined again, and within three years, he was dead.

  Mrs. Jackson was surprised to learn her husband had left behind a considerable number of debts. To settle them, she sold several slaves, including Lilly and her three-year-old daughter, Elizabeth. It happened while John Quail was away delivering seed to a nearby farm. For months, he searched everywhere and asked everyone about his wife and child, but no one could, or would, help an Indian man looking for a pair of slaves. John Quail never saw his wife and child again.

  Lilly, like Jim, has been lost to history, but her daughter, Elizabeth, the woman in my favorite photograph, became the property of Augustus King in Gibson County, Tennessee, and in 1834 King sold her to Jeptha Billingsley. My cousins and I were elated when Sean found the sales agreement in which Billingsley purchased a female slave, Betsey, from King as a mate for his male slave Manuel.

  Betsey was my great-great-grandmother Elizabeth, Katie’s granddaughter. Manuel was my great-great-grandfather Emanuel, Jim’s son.

  Elizabeth (“Betsey”) Madison’s bill of sale, 1834

  It took several people, including a lawyer, to decipher the faded, handwritten text of that document.

  Bill of sale Registered November 13th, 1835. This agreement made and executed on this the 19th day of November 1834 between Jeptha Billingsley of Gibson County Tennessee of the one part, and Augustus W. King of the same county and state of Tennessee of the other part willful forth that said King this day bargained and sold and delivered then present bargain and sold unto said Billingsley his heirs and assigns a certain Negro woman slave named Betsey of a light mulatto complexion about seventeen years old and for this title and the soundness of said Negro woman slave I do hereby warrant and defend to Jeptha Billingsley his heirs and offerings forever for the sum five hundred dollars payable as followed one hundred dollars in cash paid in hand one hundred and twenty dollars on hire of a Negro boy named Manuel from the 1 day of December 1834 until the 1 day of December 1835 being therefore twelve months two hundred and eighty dollars payable on the 1 day of December 1835, for which the said Billingsley hath executed his note to said King Item second it is further agreed that said King shall keep the Negro woman until the 1 day of December 1835 and to furnish her and increases if any with good clothing and return her and any increases with the boy named to said Billingsley or to his order. Item third it is further agreed that if said King shall prefer he has the privilege of keeping the boy named if he is willing to live with said King and the Negro woman Betsey by paying to said Billingsley the sum of one thousand and twenty dollars six hundred and twenty dollars cash in hand and the balance within one year and return back to said Billingsley his note for two hundred and eighty dollars, but if said Boy or woman or either refuse or unwilling to live with said King then said King is bound to return them to said Billingsley and the increases of said Negro Woman if she should have any. In testimony where of my hand here unto set our hands and seal the day and year above witnessed

  R. P. Raines

  Jeptha Billingsley

  John Parker

  Augustus W. King

  In 2011, when I received a copy of this transaction from my cousins, the consideration the slave masters gave to their property surprised me. King had agreed to “furnish [Elizabeth] and increases if any with good clothing.” Furthermore, at the end of one year, the slaves could decide for themselves whether they wanted to live with King or Billingsley and, more astounding, whether they wanted to live with each other. Elizabeth and Emanuel chose to stay together; thus, this document is tantamount to a marriage certificate, a rare find for descendants of African-American slaves. I held the bill of sale to my chest and closed my eyes. Though still someone’s property, my ancestors, contrary to the standards of that time and place, had been treated like human beings.

  According to various records, Elizabeth and Emanuel had at least twelve children, some born in Tennessee, some in Texas. Most were boys. An 1842 list includes a girl, Manda, but her name does not appear
again. Property data reveal that the remainder of the family lived in Tennessee until 1848, when Jeptha Billingsley sent them to the town of Cedar Creek in Bastrop County, Texas.

  Texas had been admitted to the Union as a slave state in 1845, and Jeptha Billingsley decided to join the throngs of settlers surging into the region. Texas and other cotton-growing states were the “New South.” The “Old South,” which included James Madison’s beloved Virginia, was ailing. Cotton was in much higher demand than tobacco. Jeptha’s son Jesse had moved from Tennessee to Texas in 1834 and later received some twenty-two hundred acres for his leadership in the military. He allotted some of his land to his father, and Jeptha needed slaves to work it. Mom often told a story about what happened next.

  “One morning,” she would begin, “Emanuel, Elizabeth, and their four oldest sons, Shelby, Mack, Henry, and Giles, were about to start out for the cotton field. A white man they had never seen before appeared in their cabin doorway. In the dim light, he peered around the cabin, glancing at four-year-old Charles asleep on his pallet. ‘Wake your young’un. Get your things together.’

  “‘What for?’ Emanuel asked.

  “‘Y’all are heading out. Mr. Jeptha sent me to drive you to Texas, so hurry up. And no back talk.’

  “Before Emanuel and Elizabeth could move, the driver roused the sleeping child, carried him out of the cabin, and put him in an open wagon. Afraid they would never see Charles again, Emanuel, Elizabeth, and the older boys—with no time to gather supplies, food, or clothing—ran to the wagon and jumped on. The driver and a man carrying a shotgun tied ropes around Emanuel’s wrists and clamped chains around the ankles of everyone except Charles.