Blurring the Lines of Race and Freedom by A. B. Wilkinson

Author:A. B. Wilkinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2020-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

5

Mulatto Marriages, Partnerships, and Intimate Connections

In November 1742, justices in Prince George’s County, Maryland, brought Elizabeth Graves up on charges of “intermarrying with a Mulatto” named Daniel Pearl. The court prosecuted Elizabeth because she was a woman of European ancestry who joined in matrimony with a mixed-heritage man, who likely had European and African or Native American ancestry. At the same court session, the grand jury also presented a European man, William Marshall, for the offense of “intermarrying” with a “Mulatto Woman.” The woman was Anne, the sister of Daniel Pearl. While British colonial societies identified the brother and sister of mixed heritage more closely with their African or Native American lineage—according to the racial rule of hypodescent—this did not stop their European spouses from choosing them as partners. The decision by Elizabeth Graves and William Marshall and other Europeans to engage in such “shamefull Matches” with people of mixed descent threatened their liberty. At the same time, for some people of color, unions with “white” partners could provide people such as the Pearl siblings with greater social opportunities.1

Elizabeth and Daniel Pearl, Anne and William Marshall, and other interracial couples fought for their freedom to live together in the British colonies. If they were respected or had connections in the community, they might find a way to avoid severe prosecution. Many lived undisturbed until an angry neighbor or someone with malicious intent turned the couple in to authorities, which may have been the case with the Pearls and the Marshalls. William was arrested, went to jail, and faced seven years of servitude for choosing to wed the Mulatto Anne, but he did not serve the time. Fortunately, he was a planter who could afford a lawyer, who filed a writ of habeas corpus to get him out of jail. William’s attorney escalated his case up to the provincial court in Annapolis, where Maryland’s highest magistrates presided over his brother-in-law’s case as well. Despite initial hardships, it appears that both couples were eventually successful in their efforts. The attorney general dismissed the case against the Pearls and likely granted the Marshalls a similar decision. These two marriages within one mixed-heritage family represent the experience of many couples who resisted persecution and fought to remain free in the English colonies.2

This chapter focuses on the intimate relationships of those identified as Mulatto in the British colonies of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Mixed-heritage people strategically chose sexual partners and found ways to maneuver around anti-intermixture laws to reach freedom for themselves and their children. Most people of blended ancestry united with other people of African, Native American, or mixed lineage with whom they shared cultural and social connections. Other people of mixed descent fought against social stigma and colonial authority to couple with Europeans, despite the negative repercussions of entering into relationships deemed illegal or characterized as socially dishonorable. While local acceptance of interracial sex and relationships played an important role in these decisions, the choice of a sexual partner (if choice was possible) was personal and situational.

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