A Respectable Woman: The Public Roles of African American Women in 19th-Century New York

1 “I Resided in Said CityEver Since”

“I Resided in Said City Ever Since” Women and the Neighborhoods In 1890, Caroline Cornelius (née Smith) resided at 136 West Seventeenth Street in the Sixteenth Ward of New York City. Cornelius recalled, “I was born at Cold Spring Harbor, Suffolk County, New York in November 1836 and when about two years of age so I am told, my parents both of Cuba[, who] are now dead, brought me to New York City and I resided in said city ever since.” She met her future husband, Nicholas Cornelius, in 1855; they lived in the same neighborhood. The couple was married in 1859 at the African Methodist Church in Sullivan Street and moved first to 42 Ridge Street, then to 218 Wooster Street, and then to 224 Second Street. In 1864, Nicholas Cornelius enlisted in the United States Colored Troops, Company K of the Thirty- first Connecticut Regiment. He returned in 1865, and the couple moved to 94 Attorney Street. Caroline Cornelius stated, “After that we lived in the order named at 25 Minetta Lane, then at 224 Sullivan Street, then at 38 Cornelia Street, then at 136 West 17th Street where my said husband died and where we lived several years before his death. I continued to reside at the same place for several years after his death until about 1890.” The couple’s longtime friends Isaac Hodge and Julia Bell, who were neighbors of the Cornelius family, said they were “well and 1 9 intimately acquainted with the above named claimant Caroline M. Cornelius whose maiden name was Cornelia M. Smith and well knew her late husband Nicholas J. Cornelius alias John Johnson, the soldier above named in said city for 35 years.” After 1890, Caroline resided on West Fourth Street with her daughter Sara Boxwill. She also found work “taking care of the residence of Mrs. Renwiek 29 Park Avenue, New York City, during the summer months or until her return from the country.”1 Caroline Cornelius’s autobiography reveals a number of key themes about black women in nineteenth-century New York City. First, there was tremendous mobility among the city’s black population. Caroline Cornelius resided in no fewer than ten different houses and apartments in thirty-five years. Second, black New Yorkers remained in contact with one another even when they no longer lived in the same neighborhood . Finally, black women made decisions about their own lives. When Caroline Cornelius lost her husband, she found employment as a washerwoman. When she moved in with her daughter, she continued to work as a housekeeper on Park Avenue. While scholars of women’s urban history have examined how women used the city and their neighborhoods as places of both leisure and work, most of their studies have excluded black women.2 Yet black women shaped the black urban space of nineteenth-century New York City in a variety of ways. They tried to improve the crowded and squalid living conditions to which limited financial resources and discrimination consigned them. They decided where they and their families would live. They formed strong networks within and beyond their neighborhoods and provided an urban safety net for longtime residents as well as for newcomers, thereby greatly contributing to the stability of the black population despite the many relocations that it had to undergo . They made their homes the center of their household economies, often working from their homes and taking in boarders. They established churches and other institutions and ran their own businesses. And their efforts determined the settlement of the Upper West Side and parts of Harlem in the late nineteenth century. The geography of New York City changed dramatically during the nineteenth century. At the beginning of the century, New York City was 10 | “I Resided in Said City Ever Since” the area below Houston Street. The city began to change, however, in the 1820s.3 The port of Manhattan was booming, and the construction of the Erie Canal in 1825 brought it even more business. Moreover, the burgeoning economy reshaped the geography of the city as commercial spaces opened in the lower parts of the city. Through the 1830s, much of Manhattan Island was still farmland, and it was not uncommon to see “farmers” listed in census and directory sources.4 When railroad “I Resided in Said City Ever Since” | 11 The Residences of Caroline Cornelius, 1860–1890. lines were constructed to the upper...