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C h a p t e r 5 A Dark Gloominess Hanging over the Land: Slavery I saw in these southern provinces so many vices and corruptions increased by this trade and this way of life that it appeared to me as a dark gloominess hanging over the land. —John Woolman, Journal, chapter 2 Elizabeth Woolman, John’s oldest sister, died at thirty-one on March 17, 1747.1 This was a formative event for John, emotionally trying and instructive at the same time. Elizabeth had contracted smallpox, and during her waning days John had gathered reports from those who were with her and kept a record of the stages of her demise. He hoped to learn from Elizabeth’s death, and years later when he wrote his journal he expected that his readers would gain from her example as well. Initially, Elizabeth responded to her illness with “sadness and dejection of mind,” and she expressed regret for her “wanton and airy” conduct as a young girl. Eventually, however, she found comfort and tried to reassure her mother by telling her, “Weep not for me; I go to my God.” On her last morning she told someone near, “I have had a hard night, but shall not have another such, for I shall die, and it will be well with my soul.”2 These were her last recorded words. They were precious to John and all Elizabeth’s family, and it is quite likely they were spoken to a former slave. Earlier in the decade John had served as a witness when his grandfather Henry Burr made his will, and he had watched as Burr appointed John’s father Samuel to serve as an executor of the estate. Thomas Shinn was there as a witness alongside John. The beneficiaries included John’s mother, six of his 98 Chapter 5 uncles and aunts, and someone without a last name whom Burr identified as “my Negro woman, Maria.” Maria was fifty years old, and Burr had held her in slavery for many years. Township records indicate that she was living in his house as a slave in 1709.3 Sometime before he wrote his will, Burr formally granted Maria and her daughters their freedom, and in his will he left her provisions and equipment that he believed she might need as she started a newly independent life. He bequeathed her a spinning wheel for linen, another for wool, an iron kettle, a pot, and “the bed whereon she generally lodges, with the bedstead and furniture thereto belonging.” He left her a cow, a flock of chickens, and “all the provision that is left in the house . . . both the eatables and the drink,” which in the end included wheat flour, cheese, pork, molasses, and rum.4 Although John does not mention her in his journal, Maria was intimately involved in the life of his family, both when she was a slave and after she was legally released. She was probably in the room when Elizabeth died. John and his brother Asher served as the executors of their sister’s estate, and one of their first responsibilities was to settle accounts with Maria. On the day after Elizabeth’s death, acting in his role as executor, John paid Maria eighteen shillings and nine pence.5 Over the next decade, Maria worked as a weaver and lived with a man named Tony. She had two daughters, one named Isabella and the other sharing her name, Maria.6 At the time of the older Maria’s death in 1760, Isabella was living with John’s mother, and during the 1760s both sisters would move into Asher’s house. In 1771, Abner Woolman acknowledged these women’s service to his extended family by remembering them in his will.7 Similarly, in 1772 when John’s mother drafted her will, she made bequests to “Negro Issabel” and “her sister Maria who lived with me.”8 While there were no slaves living at the house on Rancocas Creek when Woolman was a boy, the older Maria and her daughters maintained close ties with the family, and this strongly suggests that even as a young man he was intimately familiar with slavery and its long-term implications. As an adult he never lived with black servants, but he employed former slaves and the children of slaves. He hired men he identified as “Negro Primus” and “Negro Sam” for a variety of tasks including cleaning ditches, helping with construction , beating and...

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