Search Results

Sign in Modify your search

Narrow Your Choices

Format

Type

Articles containing

Life event

Date

Subject

Occupation

Era

Availability

 1-10 of 10 Results  for:

  • 1861–1865: The Civil War x
  • Finance, Management, Insurance, and Real Estate x
  • Political Activism and Reform Movements x
Clear all

Article

Ballard, John  

Charles Rosenberg

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
29 February 2012

pioneer settler in Los Angeles County, California, in the 1850s, blacksmith, teamster, firewood salesman, and landowner, was born in Kentucky around 1827. Although it is commonly assumed that he had been enslaved there, he arrived in California a free man prior to the Civil War, and nothing has been established about his previous life.

He was married on 6 November 1859 to a woman named Amanda, born in Texas, by Jesse Hamilton, the earliest pastor of First African Methodist Episcopal church, Los Angeles. Their first two children, Dora and Julia, were born in 1857 and 1859. In 1860 the household included a laborer named Juan Jose, recorded by the census as being of Indian ancestry. Another man of African descent, Oscar Smith from Mississippi lived next door and no race was specified for the other neighbors who had either English or Hispanic names ...

Article

Browne, William Washington  

David M. Fahey

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

fraternal society leader and banker, was born in Habersham County, Georgia, the son of Joseph Browne and Mariah (maiden name unknown), field slaves. As a young child he was called Ben Browne and was chosen to be the companion of his owner's son. A subsequent owner who lived near Memphis trained Browne as a jockey for race circuits in Tennessee and Mississippi. During the Civil War he plotted an escape with fellow slaves. When his owner learned of the conspiracy, he transferred Browne to a plantation in Mississippi. Despite the difficulties of tramping fifty miles without a compass, Browne persuaded three other young slaves to join him in a successful escape to the Union army at Memphis. After learning that his owner could demand his return, Browne fled upriver as a stowaway.

Browne later worked as a saloon servant in Illinois where his barroom experiences made him a teetotaler and ...

Article

Ford, Barney Launcelot  

Maria Elena Raymond

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

, Underground Railroad conductor, barber, and businessman, was born in Stafford County, Virginia, the son of a Mr. Darington (given name unknown), a slaveholder and plantation owner, and Phoebe (surname unknown), one of Darington's slaves. Called “Barney” at birth, he adopted the name Barney Launcelot Ford as an adult to please his soon-to-be wife and to provide himself with a “complete” name.

Ford spent the first quarter-century of his life enslaved. His mother is said to have planted the seeds of education in him as a child by secreting him out of camp at night to meet with sympathetic people who taught him the basics of reading and writing. She may have put herself in mortal danger on many occasions by smuggling in a section of newspaper or a Bible page so that he could practice his studies. Upon his mother's death around 1837 Ford was enslaved on a ...

Article

Harlan, Robert  

Linda Przybyszewski

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

businessman and politician, was born a slave in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, the son of a slave woman of mixed race. His father was reputedly his owner, James Harlan (1800–1863), a white lawyer, Kentucky politician, and the father of the first justice John Marshall Harlan (1833–1911). However, modern DNA analysis of male descendants from both families revealed no match. While still young, Robert Harlan arrived in Kentucky, where he began attending the public schools that were closed to black children. It seems that the boy's mixed-race heritage was not readily apparent, but he was expelled when the authorities learned of it. He continued his education at home, where James Harlan's older sons tutored him in their lessons despite his status as one of several slaves owned by James Harlan.

Robert Harlan began his business career as either a barber or a shopkeeper in Harrodsburg Kentucky He ...

Article

Johnson, Nathan  

Lois Kerschen

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
06 April 2006
Published online:
01 December 2006

who gave Frederick Douglass his last name. No photograph or sketch of Nathan Johnson is known to exist, and details about his origins are obscure. Although he claimed his birth to have been in 1797 in Philadelphia, some records indicate it was as early as 1794 and possibly in Virginia. Born into slavery, Johnson somehow gained his freedom. Eventually settling in New Bedford, Massachusetts, he married the widowed Mary J. Mingo Durfee (also known as Mary Page), ten years his senior, on 21 October 1819. Polly, as she was called, ran a confectioner's shop, and Johnson was a caterer. Through the years he invested in many other businesses, including a dry goods store and a bathhouse. By the time Frederick Douglass arrived in New Bedford in 1838, Johnson was a prominent and prosperous citizen.

Johnson was a delegate every year to the convention of free people of color ...

Article

Johnson, Nathan  

Kathryn Grover

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

abolitionist and entrepreneur, was born in circumstances that are unclear. One undocumented account states that he was born in Virginia; another, simply that he was born into slavery; a third, that he purchased his freedom. It is known that Johnson was in New Bedford on 24 October 1819, the day he married Mary (called Polly) Mingo Durfee Page, who was descended at least in part from the Fall River tribe of Wampanoag Indians.

In 1820 Polly Johnson was working in the home of Charles Waln Morgan, who in June 1819 had come from Philadelphia to New Bedford to marry Sarah Rodman and begin his career as a whaling industry merchant. Nathan Johnson's mother, Emily Brown, who lived with her son in 1850 and was buried with him in New Bedford, claimed to have been born in Philadelphia; so too did his brother Benjamin A ...

Article

Lewis, John Henry  

Cynthia Staples

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
20 May 2021

was born into slavery on a plantation in Enfield, North Carolina. At the conclusion of the Civil War, Lewis left Enfield and traveled north with a Union regiment that was returning to its home base in Concord, New Hampshire. In New Hampshire Lewis honed tailoring skills that would serve him well in later life. By 1880 he made his way to thriving Boston, Massachusetts where he set up business as a merchant tailor. Merchant tailors purchased and maintained the goods and materials necessary to make custom clothing as well as hiring skilled laborers to manufacture the clothing. In prosperous nineteenth-century hubs like Boston, well-made, distinctive clothing was in great demand. Price was not an obstacle to obtaining high quality merchandise. Handsome, articulate, and with an entrepreneurial spirit, Lewis excelled as a merchant, targeting an elite clientele.

With a starting capital of less than one hundred dollars Lewis quickly grew his ...

Article

Parker, John P.  

Frank R. Levstik

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

abolitionist and entrepreneur, was born in Norfolk, Virginia, the son of a slave mother and a white father whose names are unknown. At the age of eight, Parker was sold as a slave to an agent in Richmond, where he in turn was purchased by a physician from Mobile, Alabama. While employed as a house servant for the physician, Parker learned to read and write. In Mobile he was apprenticed to work in furnaces and iron manufactures as well as for a plasterer. Beaten by the plasterer, Parker attempted to escape, only to be captured aboard a northbound riverboat.

From 1843 to 1845 Parker was hired out as an iron molder and stevedore in the Mobile area He proved to be an extraordinarily skilled molder which enabled him to earn enough money to purchase his freedom for $1 800 at the end of the two year period Obtaining ...

Article

Parker, John P.  

Frank R. Levstik

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

John P. Parker was born in Norfolk, Virginia, the son of a slave mother and white father, whose names are unknown. At the age of eight, Parker was sold as a slave to an agent in Richmond, where he in turn was purchased by a physician from Mobile, Alabama. While employed as a house servant for the physician, Parker learned to read and write. In Mobile he was apprenticed to work in furnaces and iron manufactures as well as for a plasterer. Beaten by the plasterer, Parker attempted to escape, only to be captured aboard a northbound riverboat.

From 1843 to 1845 Parker was hired out as an iron moulder and stevedore in the Mobile area He proved to be an extraordinarily skilled moulder which enabled him to earn enough money to purchase his freedom for $1 800 at the end of the two year period Obtaining ...

Article

Speer, Guilford  

David E. Paterson

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

shoe- and harness-maker, businessman, and community leader, was born in Georgia to parents whose names and occupations are unknown. Called simply “Guilford,” he was enslaved to Benajah Birdsong in Jasper County, Georgia. Birdsong died in 1824, and his widow inherited Guilford before she married James Spier, an Upson County merchant-farmer, in 1827. Guilford came to live and work in Thomaston, the legal and commercial center of Upson County.

Guilford married his first wife, Ellen, after she arrived in Thomaston from Columbia County about 1830. Their child, Susan, was born about 1831. Ellen and Susan were both slaves of George Cary, a onetime Georgia congressman, and, after his death, of his son John J. Cary. The younger Cary's chronic financial distress was a long-standing threat to Guilford and Ellen's family.

Spier moved Guilford to his farm Hurricane Place about ...