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| Mary Edmondson is standing. |
Although that effort,failed,they were freed from slavery by funds raised by the Congregational Church in Brooklyn,New York,whose pastor was Henry Ward Beecher,an abolitionist.After gaining freedom,the Emondsons were supported to go to school;they also worked.They campaigned with Henry throughout the North for the end of slavery in the United States.
The sisters were the daughters of Paul & Amelia Edmondson,a free African American black and an enslave woman in Montgomery County,Maryland.Mary & Emily were two of thirteen children survived to adulthood,all of whom were born into slavery.Since the 17th century,law common to all slave states decreed that the children of an enslaved mama inherited their mama's legal status,by the principle of partus sequitur ventrem.
Their daddy Paul Edmondson,was set free by his owner's will.Maryland was a state with a high percentage of free African Americans.Most descended from slaves freed in the first two decades after the American Revolution,when slaveholders were encouraged to manumission by the principles of the war and activist Quaker and Methodist preachers.By 1810,more than 10 percent of African Americans in the Upper South were free,with most of them in Maryland and Delaware.By 1860,49.7 percent of the African Americans in Maryland were free.
Paul purchased land in the Norbeck area of Montgomery County,where farmed and establish his family.Amelia was allowed to live with her husband,but continued to work for her master.The couple's children work at an early age as servants,laborers and skilled workers.Beginning about age 13 or 14,they were "hired out" to work in elite private homes in nearby Washington, D.C. under a type of lease arrangement,where their wages were sent to the slaveholder.This practice of "hiring out" grew from the shift away from the formerly labor-intensive tobacco plantation system,leaving planters in this part of the United States with surplus slaves.They hired out slaves or sold them to traders for the Deep South.Many slaves worked as servants in homes and hotels of the capital.Men were sometimes hired out as craftsmen,artisans to work at the ports on the Potomac River.
By 1848 four of the older Emondson sisters bought their freedom (with the help of husbands and family),but the master had decided against allowing any more of the siblings to do so.Six were hired out for his benefit,including the younger sisters.
On April 15,1848,the scooner Pearl docked at a Washington Wharf.The Emondson sisters and four of their brothers joined a large group of slaves (a total of 77) in an attempt to escape on the Pearl to freedom in New Jersey.Starting as a modest attempt of escape for seven slaves,the effort had been widely communicated and organized within the communities of free African Americans and free slaves,changing it to a major ans unified effort,without the knowledge of the white organizers or crew.In 1848 free African Americans outnumbered slaves in the District of Columbia by three to one;the community demonstrated it could act in a unified way.Seventy-seven slaves boarded the Pearl,which was to sail down the Potomac River and up the Chesapeake Bay to the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware Canal,from where they would travel up the Delaware River to freedom in New Jersey,a total of 225 miles.At the time,Emily was 13 and Mary was 15 or 16.
The Pearl,with the Fugitives hidden among boxes,began its way down the Potomac.It was delayed by the shift in tides and then had to wait out rough weather from its anchor down the bay.In Washington the alarm was raised in the morning,as numerous slaveholders found their slaves had escaped.Historical accounts conflict and are not clear as to what details are known.Slaveholders put together an armed posse that went downriver on a steamboat.The steamboat caught up with the Pearl at Point Lookout,Maryland;and the posse sized it,towing the ship and its valuable cargo back to Washington,DC.if the posse had gone north to Baltimore,another likely escape route,the Pearl might have gotten away and reached its destination.
When the Pearl arrived in Washington,a mob awaited the ship.Daniel Drayton & Edward Sayers the two white captains,had to be taken into safety as pro-slavery people attacked them for threating their control of property.The fugitive were taken to a local jail.It was later reported that when somebody from the crowd asked the Edmondson girls if they were ashamed for what they had done,Emily replied proudly that they would do exactly the same thing again.Three days of riots and disturbances followed,pro-slavery offices and presses in the city in an attempt to suppress the abolitionist movement.Most of the masters of the fugutives slaves decided to sell them quickly to slave traders,rather than provide another chance to escape.Fifty of the slaves were transported by train to Baltimore,from where they were sold and transported to the Deep South.
Despite Paul Edmondson's desperate efforts to delay the sale of his children so he could raise sufficient money to purchase their freedom,the slave trading partners Bruin & Hill from Alexandria,Virginia a bought the six Edmondson siblings.Under inhumane conditions,the siblings were transported by ship to New Orleans.New Orleans was the largest slave market in the nation,and well known for selling "fancy girl" (pretty light-skinned enslaved young women) as sex slaves.
Hamilton Edmondson,the eldest of the siblings,had already been living a freeman for several years.He worked as a cooper.With the help of donations from a Methodist minister arranged by their daddy,Hamilton arranged for the purchase of his brother Samuel by a prosperous New Orleans cotton merchant to work as his butler.When the merchant died in 1853,Samuel moved with that family and its other slaves to what is now the 1850 House in the Pontalba Buildings on Jackson square.
In New Orleans,the other siblings were forced to stay in an open porch facing the street waiting for buyers.The sisters were handled brusquely and exposed to obscene comments.Before the family could rescue the remainder of its members,a yellow fever epidemic erupted in New Orleans.The slave traders transported the Edmondson sisters back to Alexandria as a measure to protect their investments.
Ephraim Edmondson & John Edmondson,two other brothers who had tried to escape on the Pearl,were kept in New Orleans.Their brother Hamilton worked for and eventually obtained their purchase and freedom.
In Alexandria,the Edmondson,sisters were hired out to laudering,ironing,and sewing,with wages going to slave traders.They were locked up at night.Paul continued his campaign to free his daughters while Bruin & Hill demanded $2,250 for their release.
With letters from Washington-area supporters,Paul met Harry Ward Beecher,a young Congregationalist preacher with a church in Brooklyn,New York who was known to support abolitionism Harry's church members raised the funds to purchase the Edmondson sisters and give the freedom.Accompanied by William Chaplin,a white abolitionist who had helped pay for the Pearl for the escape attempt,Harry went to Washington to arrange the transaction.
Mary & Emily were emancipated on November 4,1848.The family gathered for a celebration at another sister house house in Washington,Harry's church continued to contribute money to send the sisters to school for their education.They first enrolled at New York Central College,an interracial institution in Cortland,New York.They also worked as cleaning servants to support themselves.
In the summer of 1850,the Edmondson sisters attended the Slave Law Convention,an an anti-slavery meeting in Cazenovia New York organized by local abolitionist by local abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld and others to demonstrate against the Fugitive Slave Act soon to be passed by the U.S. Congress.Under this act,slave owners had powers to arrest fugitive slaves in the North.The convention declared all slaves to be Prisoners of war and warned the nation of an unavoidable insurrection of slaves unless they were emancipated.
At this convention,the sisters were included in a historic daguerreotype photograph taken by Theodore Dwight Weld's Brother,Ezra Greenleaf Weld.Also included in the picture are abolitionist Abby Kelley Foster and the legendary orator Frederick Douglass.
While there were many slaves "whom it was impossible to tell from white," The Edmondson sisters' mixed-race appearance may have well suited their role as two of the " public faces" of America slavery.
In 1853,the Edmondson sisters attended the Young Ladies Preparatory School at Oberlin College in Ohio through the support of Harry and his sister,Harriet Beecher,Stowe,author of Uncle Tom Cabin.Since its founding in the 1830s,the school had admitted African American & whites,and was a center of abolitionist activism.Six months after arriving at Oberlin Mary died of Tuberculosis.
That same year,Harriet included part of the Edmonson sisters' history with other factual accounts of slavery experiences in A Key to Uncle's Cabin.
Eighteen-year-old Emily returned to Washington with her daddy,where she enrolled in the Normal School for Colored Girls.Located near the current Dupont Circle,the school trained young African American women to become teachers.For protection,the Edmonson family moved to a cabin on the grounds.Emily Edmonson & Myrtilla Miner the founder of the school,learned to shoot.
At age 25,in 1860,Emily married married Larkin Johnson.They returned to the Sandy Spring,Maryland area and lived for twelve years before moving to Anacostia in Washington,DC. There they purchased land and became founding members of the Hillside Community.At least one of their children was born in Montgomery County before their move to Anacostia.Emily remained her relationship with fellow Anacostia resident Frederick Douglass,and both continued working in the abolitionist movement.Even after the ratification of the 13th Amendment,they remained so close that Emily's granddaughters observed that they were like "brother & sister." Emily died at her home.
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