John Manross to Frederick Douglass, January 14, 1856
JOHN MANROSS1The U.S. Census of 1850 records a “John Manruss," originally from New York, residing in Hillsdale, Michigan. Local histories list “John Manross” as an attorney who was elected county surveyor of Hillsdale County (1845-49, 1853-55) and marshal of the city of Hillsdale (1856-58). Crisfield Johnson, (Philadelphia, 1879), 83, 112,133. TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Hillsdale[,] Mich. 14 Jan[uary] 1856[.]
DEAR SIR—
I have lately got hold of your history by which I learn that we were almost neighbors. In 1828 1827 I was family teacher for the children of the Rev. Doctor w Wyatt2Probably the Protestant Episcopal Church minister William Edward Wyatt (1789-1864), the son of Canadian immigrants to New York City, where he graduated from Columbia University in 1809. He became associate rector of St. Paul’s Parish in Baltimore, one year after his 1813 ordination. After the 1827 death of the parish’s rector, Wyatt rose to that post and held it until his own death. He also taught theology at the University of Maryland and was a chaplain at the state penitentiary. Disputes between the Episcopal clergy and laity several times blocked Wyatt, a favorite of the laity, from election to the bishopric of the Diocese of Maryland. (Baltimore, 1864). in Baltimore (one month) and for six months the same year I was Classic teacher in the military Academy at Frederick, Md.3Probably the Frederick Academy, which enrolled about one hundred students a year. Opened in 1797, the school offered courses in Latin and Greek, English, and mathematics to boys. In 1830, it received a charter from the Maryland General Assembly, which changed its name to Frederick College and granted it the right to confer “collegiate honors and degrees upon deserving students.” The college was allowed to “admit any of the students to any degree in any of the faculties, arts, and sciences, and liberal programs, except doctors of medicine.” Roger B. Taney, future chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, served on the board of the Frederick Academy from 1802 to 1822, and Salmon P. Chase, Taney’s successor as chief justice, tried but failed to acquire a teaching position there in the early 1820s. Frederick College closed in 1915, and the building was demolished in 1936. Bernard C. Steiner, (Washington, D.C., 1894), 169-73; Steiner, (Baltimore, 1922), 52; Chris Heidenrich,>> (Chicago, 2003), 43. I should have before stated that I was born at Clinton Oneida Co. N.Y. in 1800
I From Aug. 1828 to Aug. 1831 I was teacher at Hillsborough Academy4Founded in 1797, the brick Hillsboro Academy in Talbot County, Maryland, was located on land donated by the planter John Hardcastle, Jr., and managed by a local board of trustees. County tax dollars and an annual contribution from the state legislature allowed the academy to educate two dozen or more students a year until after the Civil War in classics and more elementary subjects. Edward M. Noble, (Fredericksburg, Md., 1920), 291. in Caroline County on the border of Tuckahoe Creek which Separates it from Talbot County
I was well acquainted with Mas.r Andrew Anthony5Andrew Skinner Anthony (1797-1833) was the eldest son of Aaron and Ann Catherine Skinner Anthony and the nephew of Edward Lloyd V. His father apprenticed him as a young man to James Neall, a cabinetmaker, in aston, Maryland. After completing his apprenticeship, Anthony migrated to Indiana, where he married Ann Wingate of Martin County in 1823. He and his bride returned to Talbot County shortly thereafter. In 1826, Andrew’s father died, and he inherited a third of his estate, including eight slaves. Although he increased his estate and owned twenty slaves, Andrew suffered from alcoholism and operated a whiskey shop in his final years. In his , Douglass offers the following assessment of Anthon’s character: “He was known to us all as being a most cruel wretch.—a common drunkard, who had, by his reckless mismanagement and profligate dissipation, already wasted a large portion of his father’s property.” John Manross to Douglass, 14 January 1856, General Correspondence File, reel 1, frames 654-56, FD Papers, DLC; Harriet L. Anthony, annotated copy of Bondage and Freedom, folders 93, 176, Dodge Collection, MdAA; 1830 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 51; , ser. 2, 1:39; Dickson J. Preston, (Baltimore, 1980), 26, 29, 218, 224. and I believe your description of him is quite correct. I think that Captain Auld6Born in St. Michael’s, Maryland, Thomas Auld (1795-1880) was the eldest son of Hugh and Zipporah Auld. Trained as a shipbuilder, Auld supervised the construction of the Lloyd sloop and subsequently became its captain. In 1823 he met and married Lucretia Anthony while a boarder in the Anthony home. Shortly thereafter, Auld became a storekeeper in Hillsborough, Maryland, and inherited Douglass along with ten other slaves from the estate of Aaron Anthony. He later managed a store in St. Michael’s, where he also served as postmaster before retiring to a nearby farm. The 1850 census listed him as a “farmer” with $8,500 worth of real estate. References to Thomas Auld in Douglass’s Narrative and public speeches are generally uncomplimentary, although Douglass disclaimed any personal hostility toward his former owner. The two men met once in the post-Reconstruction period when Douglass visited the dying Auld in St. Michael’s. Aaron Anthony Slave Distribution, 22 October 1827, Talbot County Distributions, V.JP#D, 58-59, MdTCH; 1850 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 1169 (free schedule); NASS, 25 November 1845; NS, 8 September 1848, 7 September 1849; Baltimore Sun, 19 June 1877; Oswald Tilghman, comp., History of Talbot County, Maryland, 1661-1861, 2 vols. (Baltimore, 1915), 1:395; Emerson B. Roberts, “A Visitation of Western Talbot,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 41:235-45 (September 1946); Dickson J. Preston, “Aaron Anthony,” (unpublished paper, Easton, Maryland, 1977), 5, MdTCH. must have moved away before I came there. Edward Harper7Possibly Edward Harper (?-c.1857), who lived mainly in adjacent Dorchester County, Maryland, on land owned by William S. Harper in 1842. Edward Harper owned no slaves, according to the 1840 Census. In 1842, William S. Harper sold his remaining land in Dorchester County to Jacob Wilson, including the land that Edward Harper lived on. 1840 U.S. Census, Maryland, Dorchester County Maryland, 69; Dorchester County Maryland, Chattel Records: 1842-1847, Archives of Maryland (online). and Jo.s N. Carson8James N. Casson of Caroline County, Maryland, (?-c.1832) sometimes used the German to spell his surname. In 1832, fearing the approach of death, he wrote his “last will and testament,” leaving most of his remaining money and forty-five acres of land in Queen Anne’s County to relatives. Significantly, Casson left $1,500 to a James Reyner to take care of an “old negro woman” for the remainder of her life. , 102-03 (online). were merchants under the hill and Mas.r Andrew had a whiskey shop on the hill. After that I lived at Denton 5 years and Greensborough 1 year and returned to Clinton N. Y. in 1837 and came here in 1838.
Your description of scenery and seasons about Tuckahoe,9In , Douglass describes the cabin where his grandparents Betsy and Isaac Bailey resided. , ser. 2, 2:23. is quite refreshing to me as I had not heard much from there since I left.
If I make a few slight [illegible], I hope that they will be received in
kindness. In page 37 you speak of rails thrown over the rafters for a floor, bedstead +c. I suspect they were under the rafters.
You speak of the family of Peakess10Douglass intended to refer to the Pacas when he mentions the Peakess family, a common local corruption of their name. The first Paca to appear in Maryland was Robert, who in 1660 was brought to the Western Shore county of Anne Arundel as an indentured servant. The death of his master soon after their arrival allowed Robert to marry his widow and come into her sizable land holdings. Despite Robert’s success as a farmer and grocer, the estate was encumbered with debt upon his death, and his stepson, widow, and son sought new opportunities in Baltimore County after extinguishing the debt. Since land was cheaper there, they began investing heavily in it; quickly increasing land values laid the foundation for the family’s prosperity. The Pacas became affluent planters in Baltimore and Harford counties and often served in official positions in the government, church and militia. The most famous Paca in the eighteenth century was William (1740-1799), who by the 1760s was a very successful attorney in Annapolis. He became a leading opponent of British colonial policy after passage of the Stamp Act in 1765 and later signed the Declaration of Independence. He contributed much of his own money to the patriot cause, and during the Revolution and afterward he held numerous important governmental and judicial positions. In 1770, his wife inherited half of Wye Island in Queen Anne’s County, and he died there in 1799. Pacas continued to live there at elegant Wye Hall in the nineteenth century and to socialize with the nearby Lloyds and Tilghmans. Gregory A. Stiverson and Phebe R. Jacobsen, (Baltimore, 1976); , 4:618; , 14:123-24. near L Lloyd’s.11At the time of Manross’s residence in Maryland, the patriarch of the wealthy Lloyd family was Edward Lloyd V (1779-1834) of Wye House. One of the state’s largest landowners and slaveholders, he was also its most successful wheat grower and cattle raiser of the time. As a charter member of the Maryland Agricultural Society, a founder of at least two banks, and a speculator in coal lands, he became the wealthiest of a long line of Lloyds that reached back to colonial Maryland. His huge slave holdings increased from 420 in 1810 to 545 in 1830. An eager student of politics as an adolescent and a frequent auditor of political debate at the statehouse in Annapolis, Edward V became a Democratic-Republican delegate to the state legislature as soon as he reached the age of majority in 1800. The following year, he was active in securing passage of a bill removing all restrictions to white male suffrage. From 1806 to 1808 he was a U.S. congressman, voting in 1807 against a bill to end the African slave trade. For the next two years he was governor of Maryland, and from 1811 to 1816 he returned to the state legislature. In 1819 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, from which he resigned in 1826 to return to the Maryland senate, where he was president until 1831. Edward V married Sally Scott Murray on 30 November 1797 and had six children with her. 1810 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 342; Tilghman, , 1:184-210; Hulbert Footner, (New York, 1944), 283-90; Preston, , 26, 30, 48-54, 57-58, 74, 82; , 1403. Among the signers of the Declaration of Independence is Wm. Paca, and one of the name was Governor of Maryland.
I have always understood that they were of the same family (pronounced Peakes) near Lloyds.
Your derivation of the word Tuckahoe12Tuckahoe is an Algonquin term for “root” or “mushroom.” Preston, , 140, 191, 256; Wilstach, , 104-05. may be quite correct, though I understood that it was of indian origin.
In the fall of 1831 I was a soldier in N the famous Nat Turner’s War13Nat Turner (1800-31) was a literate, enslaved carpenter and preacher, and the leader of a slave insurrection in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831. Turner’s band, which consisted of no more than seventy followers, mostly slaves, killed at least fifty-seven whites before being dispersed and captured by the local militia. The revolt triggered retaliatory murders of innocent blacks in the general area, undercut what sentiment there was in the slave states for emancipation, and heightened the Southern fear of servile insurrections. Authorities executed approximately seventeen of Turner’s followers and banished most of the remainder. Turner himself remained at large for over two months; after being captured, he supposedly dictated his “Confessions” to a local lawyer. Tried and sentenced to death on 5 November 1831, Turner was executed by hanging on 11 November 1831. The brief uprising caused a panic among slave owners throughout the South and especially in the Chesapeake Bay region, where whites like Manross were called into special military service to guard against similar outbreaks. Denton was the seat of Caroline County, Maryland. Herbert Aptheker, (New York, 1966); Stephen B. Oates, (1975; New York, 1990); Henry Irving Tragle, comp., (Amherst, Mass., 1971); Randall M. Miller and John David Smith, eds., (Westport, Conn., 1997), 744-46; Cohen, , 1:818; , 6:187; NCAB, 13:597; , 19:69-70. and was stationed at Denton.
At some future time I hope to give you some of the details of that War
and the noble daring of Southern Chivalry
Yours with respect
JOHN MANROSS
P. S. Aug 1, 1864—The above was written as dated and mislaid—
I heard the Rev George Cookman14Born into a wealthy family in Hull, England, George Cookman (1800-41) received a careful education and had begun working in his father’s merchant firm by the age of twenty. Between 1821 and 1823, he visited the United States on business, and during that sojourn became convinced of his duty to preach the gospel. Despite his father’s protestations, he resolved to settle permanently in America and become a Methodist minister. Soon after migrating in 1825, Cookman became a popular figure in the Methodists’ Philadelphia Conference, preaching throughout parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. His powerful sermons won him the position of chaplain to the U.S. Congress. As revivals swept the Eastern Shore, Cookman became the minister of the St. Michaels Methodist Episcopal church in the summer of 1829 and labored to hold it in the denomination. He remained in that position at least through the early 1830s. By 1830, Cookman was married and had two young sons. He had some antislavery leanings and apparently persuaded Samuel Harrison, one of Talbot County’s largest slaveholders, to emancipate his adult male slaves in his will. In March 1841, President William Henry Harrison entrusted Cookman with special dispatches to be delivered to England. Unfortunately, the was lost at sea and Cookman was among the one hundred passengers who perished. 1830 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 6; Thomas H. Sewell, “St. Michaels Methodism” (Sardis Chapel M.E. Church, St. Michaels, Md., 1894), 665-67, 675-78, 680, 707; Matthew Simpson, ed., , 5th rev. ed. (Philadelphia, 1882), 255-56; Preston,, 114-15, 226; , 1:722. preach several times.
At a Camp Meeting in Queen Anns County15Queen Anne’s County, an agricultural community on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, was formed as a political unit in 1706. It is still recognized for its many historical structures, including the Centreville Courthouse, built in 1706, one of only two built in the eighteenth century still in operation. Seltzer, , 1541; Cohen, , 2551. he was reading the opening hymn the first day of the meeting—I cannot repeat the hymn but it was something like the following
“Our spirits take their flight.
“To realms of Joy and bliss.16In 1884 the Methodist Church revised and updated the hymnal used by the United Methodist Free Churches, previously published in 1860. This revised edition contained many hymns dating from the late 1600s. The composer and lyricist of hymn 844 is listed as “Anon.,” so the hymnal does not include a record of its origin, but the lyrics in the fifth stanza are similar to what Manross attempts to quote: “And when our spirits take their flight, / Grant they may live ‘mid saints in light; / O guide them to the realms above, / Where all is joy, and peace, and love!” (London, 1889), 340.
As he repeated the last line the scaffold on which he stood partially gave way and settled a few inches with something of a crash.
He stoped a moment, then smiled and said “We are not gone yet.” ———
[solid line]
You divide the first and last six months in year at Covey’s with the
month of August a mistake of one month only
[Addenda]
I send a communication
If it suits you please have it printed with such alterations or amendments as you please and send me a Dozen printed slips of the same
yours with Respect
[illegible] J. MANNROSS
ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 1, frames 654-56, FD Papers, DLC.