The Princeton Fugitive Slave by Lolita Buckner Inniss

Author:Lolita Buckner Inniss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Published: 2019-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

James Collins Johnson and a young man believed by some to be Archibald Campbell “Spader” Seruby circa 1895. Others suggest that this photo may have been of Johnson’s nephew, Alexander “Ting” Taylor. (Princeton University Mudd Archives, Historical Photograph Collection, Individuals Series [AC67], Box MP4.)

The Webbs lived in an independent household in Maryland, a slave state, in 1860, a fact that suggests that the family was free by that time.106 Harrison H. Webb was granted a license as a reader in the Episcopal Church in 1841 and was ordained as an Episcopal minister in 1854. He became the rector of St. James Church in Baltimore in that year.107 Webb was lauded as a self-made man who was a “fine scholar” and eminent theologian.108 By 1860 the Webb family was living in Baltimore.109 The Reverend Harrison Webb was listed in an 1872 Baltimore city directory as an assistant cashier at the National Freedmen’s Savings Bank.110 Harrison Webb apparently had some wealth at the end of his life; at his death in 1878 he left each of his three children $400 and each of his two grandchildren $100.111

The Webbs, or at least some of them, were apparently light-skinned mulattos. Although Harrison H. Webb Sr. and his wife and children were designated mulattos in the 1850 census, Anetta Johnson’s brother Harrison H. Webb Jr. and his wife and children are listed as white in the 1880 Baltimore census. Webb Jr. is listed as a music teacher or professor of music in the various census reports.

In the 1870s Anetta was married to Jordan Warden.112 He likely died sometime between 1880 and 1885. Anetta may have had no children with Jordan, as none are listed in her household in either 1870 or 1880. Although the 1900 census indicates that James Collins Johnson married Anetta in 1881, this is likely an error (or possibly Johnson’s mistaken reference to his marriage to an unidentified and unverified third wife). According to an 1885 Baltimore city directory, Anetta was living at 812 Low Street, listed as the widow of Jordan Warden.113 A dressmaker named Annette Warden was shown living at 812 Low Street in Baltimore as late as 1894.114 James Waddel Alexander, a brother of Johnson’s fugitive trial attorney, William Cowper Alexander, noted that Johnson “was married for the fourth [sic] time in 1895, at the age of seventy-eight, the bride being a resident of Baltimore.”115 A Baltimore Sun article indicates that Johnson was present in Baltimore in August 1895 for the first time since his escape from Maryland in 1839; he may have traveled there for his wedding to Anetta.116 In marrying so often, and in marrying at all, Johnson was like many other late nineteenth-century blacks who showed a high propensity for formal wedlock, despite having lived under the shadow of slavery and its often brutal aftermath.117 While Johnson’s last marriage likely signaled a high point in his private life, this was also a time of loss: his daughter Emily Johnson Sorter Gordon died on August 9, 1895, possibly while her father was away for his wedding.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.