A Shadow on the Household One Enslaved Family's Incredible Struggle for Freedom

by Prince, Bryan

• ISBN13: 9780771071263
• ISBN10: 0771071264
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-01-05
• Publisher: Emblem Editions

Summary

The extraordinary story of one couple's determination to free themselves and their children from slavery and make a new life in Canada Prior to abolition in 1865, as many as 40,000 men, women, and children made the perilous trip north from enslavement in the United States to freedom in Canada. Many were aided by networks that came to be known as the Underground Railroad. And the stories that emerge from the past about these journeys are truly remarkable. InA Shadow on the Household, Bryan Prince, a descendant of slaves, brings to life the heart-wrenching story of the Weems family and their struggle to liberate themselves from slavery. John Weems, a man who purchased his own freedom, paid the owner of his enslaved wife and eight children an annual fee to keep them together at one plantation. But when that owner died, the Weemses were cruelly separated and scattered throughout the South. Heartbroken and desperate, John resolved to raise the money to buy his family's freedom and reunite them. Mining newspapers, private letters, diaries, estate records, marriage registries, and abolitionist papers for details of a story cloaked in secrecy, Bryan Prince has rescued the Weems family and their plight from historical oblivion. An unforgettable story of love and persistence, played out in four countries (the United States, Canada, Jamaica, and the United Kingdom) against the backdrop of the publication ofUncle Tom's Cabin, a growing abolitionist movement, and the heroic efforts of the Underground Railroad, the Weems family saga must be read to be believed.

Author Biography

Bryan Prince is an award-winning author and a descendant of slaves who came to Canada prior to the American Civil War. Among his many projects, he is a director and historian with the Buxton National Historic Site and Museum, a partner of York University’s Harriet Tubman Institute, and a consulting editor with the Adam Matthew Publications digital project Slavery, Abolition, and Social Justice in England. He is the author of I Came As a Stranger: The Underground Railroad, which won the 2005 Children’s Nautilus Book Award for Non-Fiction. He lives in Buxton, Ontario.


From the Hardcover edition.

Excerpts

The Weems family felt the first troubling rumbles of a distant thunder in 1847, when their by now long-widowed master, Adam Robb, died. Up until then Arabella, her children, her mother, sister, and other family members had been held together and hired out or had laboured on Robb’s farms, which had such exotic and curious names as “Oatry’s,” “The Resurvey on St. Mary’s,” “Coup de Main,” “Wickham’s Chance,” “Spittlefields,” “Smoch Ally,” “The Resurvey of the Wheel of Fortune,” and “The Resurvey on Valentines Garden Enlarged.” Now, the very real possibility existed that they might be forcibly removed from the fields and meadows to which they had become attached.

On May 15 of that year, Adam Robb’s estate was listed and evaluated. Despite his advanced age, Robb had avoided facing the inevitable and had died without having prepared a last will and testament. It therefore fell to his then widowed daughter, Jane Beall, and to his son-in-law, Henry Harding, to put a price on all of his belongings. At that time, Robb’s daughters, Jane and Catharine, were the only two legal heirs acknowledged; John had died several years before, and curiously Alexander was not named. Robb’s assets included a herd of cattle, a flock of ewes and lambs, numerous pigs and horses, a team of oxen, and a large quantity of farm and blacksmith equipment that had been needed on Robb’s huge plantations. Household goods were included — a weaving loom worth five dollars, an old butter churn worth a quarter of a dollar, a bowl and pitcher worth twelve cents, and even a “lot of broken spoons” inexplicably rated at $1.50. Two old muskets worth fifty cents and three leg chains valued at $1.25 each conjure up more ominous images.

Then appeared the long list of “negroes,” male and female, adult and child. Fifty-year-old Mary Jones was worth $75. Fifty-five-year-old John Henson was evaluated at $150. Arabella’s sister, twenty-seven-year-old Annie Maria (hereafter called Annie), $450. Their aging mother, Cecilia, at $15, was worth exactly the same value as a roan cow and only three dollars more than six silver tablespoons. Arabella’s children were also listed: Mary Jane, 16, $500; Catharine, 13, $400; William (Augustus) 12, $375; Adam, 7, $175; Ann Maria, 5, $125; eighteen-month-old Joe was listed along with his thirty-five-year-old mother, Airy, at $325. The age of Richard, who was considered “infirm” and therefore worthless, was not deemed significant enough to list. By comparison, a grey horse named Charley was worth $50, a water bucket 16 1/4 cents, and the Muscovy ducks in the barnyard 37 cents each.

In the following winter, on February 10, 1848, the estate sale was held and the financial ledgers balanced. A few deductions were made to the earlier property evaluation, such as $57.27 for Adam Robb’s funeral as well as $7.50 for taxes paid for his “negroes in George Town.” Another $450 was removed because of the untimely death of the slave Ninian while still in his mid-thirties. His passing denied him the opportunity to be united with his wife, Sarah Ann, and his two daughters, who were already the property of Henry Harding. Although neighbours bought many of the items, most were bought by Adam Robb’s daughter, Jane Beall, and by his grandson, Charles Adam Harding. Thankfully none of the slaves were sold at that day’s auction.

In fact, rather than being sold, some of them actually purchased items from their late master’s estate with pennies saved over the years. Hester Diggs bought a flax wheel and Mary Jones bought several items, including a tea canister, two ovens, bottles, a pitcher, and a set of brass candlesticks. Among Arabella Weems’s purchases were a coffee mill, an iron pot, a walnut table, and chai

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Excerpted from A Shadow on the Household: One Enslaved Family's Incredible Struggle for Freedom by Bryan Prince
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