The Accidental Slaveowner: Revisiting a Myth of Race and Finding an American Family

8. “Out of the Shadows”: The Andrew Family Slaves

Chapter Eight “Out of the Shadows” The Andrew Family Slaves M y inspiration for this chapter and its title is an admonition to me from community historian Emogene Williams as we sat in her kitchen in late July 2009, as I excitedly reported to her on my successful quest to locate the living descendants of Miss Kitty’s eldest son Alford Boyd: “I’m so pleased you’ve worked so hard on the story of Miss Kitty and have been led to her children. But just as important is the story of all those other slaves of Bishop Andrew, the ones no one ever talks about. Nobody ever built a house for them, or built a stone monument to them. Isn’t it high time we bring them out of the shadows?” Having explored the lives and legacies of Miss Kitty/Catherine Andrew Boyd and her children, let us thus turn to the wider circle of enslaved persons connected, in one way or another, to Bishop Andrew. Such a consideration is vital if we are to revisit the powerful tendency in white antebellum and postbellum representations to focus only on the image of the mammy and loyal slave, and if we are to dispel the takenfor -granted assumption in many white-authored representations that the enslaved are important only inasmuch as they relate to white elite history. Most published accounts assert that Bishop Andrew’s connection to slavery, the proximate source of the great controversy at the 1844 Methodist Conference in New York City, came about either through his “unwilling ” ownership of Kitty or through his marriage to his second wife. The historical picture is considerably more complicated. Evidence tells us that at least forty-two enslaved persons, probably more, were in the possession of Bishop Andrew at one point or another during the course of his lifetime. Only about half of these persons were directly associated with Ann Leonora Mounger Greenwood (ca. 1802–54), his second wife. From wills, deeds, memoirs, and other documents, we can determine the names of about thirty-four of this total group of slaves. In many cases 236 ch ap ter eight we can determine their likely sources through bequests, marriages, and gifts. In some instances we can determine, or make reasonable inferences about, their identities and fates after emancipation. My best estimate of these enslaved persons is as follows. They are listed in the apparent chronological order that James Osgood Andrew acquired them from about 1830 onward: Jacob and an unidentified female slave, both owned as early as 1830, possibly inherited from James Osgood Andrew’s father John Andrew. Kitty, and her three children, Alfred (or “Alford”), Russell Nathan, and Emma. (As we have seen, Bishop Andrew claims to have acquired Kitty in a bequest from one of his former Augusta congregants at some point between 1832 and 36, although no such will exists.) In 1840, through the will of Catherine McFarlane of Charleston, South Carolina, the mother of the Bishop’s first wife Ann Amelia McFarlane: the slaves Billy and Lucy, the latter held in trust for the Bishop’s nephew Alexander McFarlane Wynn. Ben, given in 1843 by James Andrew’s mother Mary Andrew to her sons and grandchildren. In 1844, by marrying his second wife, Ann Leonora Mounger Greenwood, Bishop Andrew acquired at least fourteen other slaves, most or all of whom were inherited from her late husband Thomas Greenwood of Greene County, Georgia. Their names were “Nick, George, Tom, Orlando, Elleck, Edward, Addison, James, Jefferson, Peggy, Susan, Lillah and her two children Laura and Allen.” Two other Greenwood slaves residing in the Andrew household during this period were named “Orange” and “Nancy.” In 1855, by marrying his third wife, Emily Sims Woolsey Heard Childers, in Dallas County, Alabama, Bishop Andrew acquired another “parcel” of slaves, numbering at least twelve. Among these were “Loy, Rose, Sal, Martin, Hasly, Nancy, Selvy, Eliza, Jim, William, Wilson, and Louise.” At least nine children were born to enslaved women who were the Bishop’s property. These include the three children of Miss Kitty; three other slaves, five years old and under—postdating his 1844 marriage to his second wife, enumerated in the 1850 census; and three mulatto chil- “Out of the Shadows” 237 dren, five years old and under—postdating his marriage to his third wife, enumerated in the 1860 census. There may, of course, have been other slaves who are not...