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81 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. — 1 tim. 2:12 Isabella, the coloured woman . . . is well known among the Methodists, and . . . was much respected by them. Mr. Latourette assured us the influence of her speaking was miraculous; even the learned and respectable people were running after her. — gilbert vale And now abideth faith, hope, charity . . . but the greatest of these is charity. —1 cor. 13:13 chapter 6 Sanctification and Perfection becoming a religious radical I Isabella migrated to New York City with a “Mr. and Miss Gear” in 1828. She was more fortunate than most freed women relocating to urban centers. She quickly found employment because Miss Gear, a schoolteacher, introduced Isabella to “respectable” Methodist families, and she had excellent letters of recommendation. Isabella left three daughters behind. Getty Dumont recalled that Isabella tried to leave two-year-old Sophia with John Dumont, but he said the child was too young; but later he did take Sophia. The two “colored” females listed in John Dumont’s household in 1830—one “under ten” and another “over ten”—were Diana and Sophia; Elizabeth went to a Gidney family member. Isabella took her troublesome, traumatized son, Peter, to New York. She envisioned better opportunities for him and, typical of the times, thought her son rather than her daughters needed education.1 Isabella’s removal further fragmented her family and ensured her daughters’ neglect and lack of education. Although New York law stipulated that enslaved children be educated, few rural whites obeyed this edict. Diana actually went to school once in Ulster County, but had no idea why she was there; she was 82 isabella van wagenen: a preaching woman ignored by the teacher, so she left. Educational deficiency handicapped Isabella’s daughters, though not because they worked as domestics. Even some unmarried middle-class black women were domestics. However, nonliteracy coupled with rural backgrounds deprived Diana, Elizabeth, and Sophia of higher aspirations and independence. Isabella’s former partner, Thomas, was broken in spirit and worn out physically . The couple’s early visions of a family home had turned to “thin air.” Forced off the Dumont place after emancipation, Thomas had worked odd jobs for a while, but died in the Ulster County poorhouse. Had freedom come earlier, or had Thomas been younger, the couple might have accumulated property and realized modest dreams, as other nonliterate blacks of their generation had done.2 But Isabella Van Wagenen had a gift, a message, and a calling. She would not have been satisfied with obscurity. Isabella did not abandon her children and did not distance herself from them, as some writers suggest.3 New York City was no place for her young daughters. White social services did not accept black children, with the exception of the abusive Municipal Almshouse. Black churches had no support system for working parents. Poor children often wandered the streets; the city had its share of twelve- and fourteen-year-old sex workers. Women such as Isabella faced enormous urban pitfalls. Emancipated without compensation, uneducated, unwise about freedom, and impoverished, they were separated from their children by statute. But New York and New Jersey mothers frequently returned to the “old place,” while wealthy urban whites lamented the dearth of “good help.” They called this black female “floating” population erratic, lazy, and morally loose. In actuality, these women tried to improve their circumstances and maintain ties with their children. For black women, historically, geographical distance from family was often necessary during freedom migrations. This rarely translated into desertion, although distance created vulnerability. By 1849, two unwed daughters had made Sojourner a grandmother. Her inability to provide them with better protection and support was a consequence of slavery.4 Isabella witnessed volatile mob scenes in New York City, whose black population rivaled Philadelphia’s (about fifteen thousand). “Class geography” also characterized New York—a holdover from Dutch days when the free poor, the enslaved, and the master class might live in close proximity, but with the strictest hierarchy. The arrival of Irish Catholics in the nineteenth century brought new tensions. Blacks and Irish were neighbors, labor competitors, and political foes. During Isabella’s first year in New York, the city celebrated the presidential election victory of Andrew Jackson, a Tennessee slaveholder who embodied the Jeffersonian ethos: white farmers and workingmen as the “bone and sinew” of America, universal white male suffrage, states’ rights, African colonization for free blacks...

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