EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: MARY MEACHUM P/86

                                                              Read Part One HERE

In this post I will continue to focus on a woman named Mary Meachum. She lived from 1801 - 1869. On Sunday night, May 20, 1855, a group of about eight or nine freedom seekers set out across the Mississippi  River near St Louis on a skiff designed to take them over to the free state of Illinois. Hours earlier, they had met under the cover of darkness at the home of Mary Meachum. However, the word had gotten out about their escape and armed police agents along with slave catchers were waiting for the freedom seekers on the Illinois shore. In the pre-dawn hours of Monday morning, May 21, the confrontation quickly turned into a firefight, and at least five of the freedom seekers were taken back to St Louis in chains. Within a few days, authorities had also arrested Mary.

The arrest of Marry was big news within her community where she held a number of prominent roles. After being held in the St Louis jail for weeks, Mary faced a trial by jury for "enticing away slaves." On July 16 her attorney filed a motion to quash her indictment, and on Juy 19 her charges were dropped and she was set free to continue life as a free woman in St Louis. 

Mary continued to lead and serve her local community, serving as the president of the Coloured Ladies Soldiers' Aid Society which provided resources and care for black soldiers and enslaved people who had escaped during the war. 

Mary died in 1869.

Read Part Eighty-Seven HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: MARY MEACHUM P/85

                                                              Read Part One HERE

In this post I will continue to focus on a woman named Mary Meachum. She lived from 1801 - 1869. Mary and her husband also helped enslaved people escape to Illinois, where slavey was outlawed. Their work inolved considerable risk due to the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 - a law authorizing the hunting and capture of escaped enslaved people and requirement that they be returned to their enslavers.

Rev John Berry Meachum grew up as an enslaved person in Virginia and Kentucky before earning enough money to purchase his freedom. Before leaving Kentucky, he met Mary, an enslaved person who was set to be moved by her enslavers to St Louis. John followed Mary to St Louis where he bought her freedom and eventually established the First African Baptist Church, the first black congregation in St Louis. Through his work as a skilled craftsman and barrel maker, John was able to buy the freedom of many enslaved people in St Louis. After John's death in 1854, Mary continued their work educating and freeing enslaved people.

Read Part Eighty-Six HERE

 

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: MARY MEACHUM P/84

                                                              Read Part One HERE

In this story I will focus on a woman named Mary Meachum. She lived from 1801 - 1869. Mary and her husband John Berry Meachum were American abolitionists who dedicated their lives to education and freeing enslaved people. Missouri banned all education for black people in 1847. As for of Rev Meachum's church he established a school for free and enslaved black students called "The Candle Tallow School" because classes were held by candlelight in a secret room in the church basement that had no windows to avoid being discovered by the sheriff. 

In 1847, the Meachums moved their classes to a steamboat in the middle of the Mississippi River, which was beyond the Missouri law, He provided the school with a library, desks and chairs, and called it "The Floating Freedom School." 

The Meachum's home on Fourth Street in St Louis was a safe house on the Underground Railroad. 

Read Part Eighty-Five HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: MARY PRINCE P/83

                                                            Read Part One HERE

In this story I continue to focus on a woman named Mary Prince. She lived from 1788 - (appr.) 1833. 

In 1827 Adam Woods and his family travelled to London. They took Mary with them as a servant. Although she had served the Woords for more than ten years, they had increasing conflict in England. Four times Wood told her to obey or leave. They gave her a letter that nominally gave her the right to leave but suggested that no one should hire her.

After leaving the household, Mary took shelther with the Moravian church in Hatton Garden. Within a few weeks, she started working occasionally for Thomas Pringle, an abolitionist writer and Secretary to the Anti-Slavery Society, which offered assistance to black people in need.

The Woods left England in 1829 and returned to Antigua. Thomas Pringle tried to arrange to have Wood free Mary, so she would have legal freedom. However, Wood either refused to free her or allow her to be purchased by someone else. His refusal to free her meant that as long as slavery remained legal in Antigua she could not return to her husband without being re-enslaved and submitting to Wood's power.

After trying to arrange a compromise, the Anti-Slavery Committee proposed to petition Parliament to grant Mary's freedom, but did not succeed.

In 1829, Thomas Pringle hired Mary to work in his own household. She is known to have remained in England until at least 1833. Little is known of her life after this.

Read Part Eighty-Four HERE

 

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: MARY PRINCE P/82

                                                            Read Part One HERE

In this post I continue to look at a woman named Mary Prince. She lived from 1788 - (appr.) 1833.

Mary was returned to Bermuda in 1812, where Robert Darrell had moved with his daughter. While here, she was apparently physically abused by him and fored to bathe him under threats of further beatings. Mary resisted Darrell's abuse on two occasions: once in defence of his daughter, whom he also beat; the second time, defending herself from Darrell when he beat her for dropping kitchen utensils. After this, she left his direct service and was hired out to Cedar Hill for a time, where she earned money for her enslaver by washing clothes.

in 1815, Mary was sold a fourth time, to John Adams Wood of Antigua for $300. She worked in his household as a domestic slave, nursing a young child and washing clothes. There she began to suffer from rheumatism, which left her unable to work. When Adam Woods was travelling, Mary earned money for herself by taking in washing and by selling coffee, yams and other provisions to ships.

In Antigua, she joined the Moravian Church, where she also attended classes and learned to read. In 1826, Mary married Daniel James, a former enslaved man who had bought his freedom by saving money from his work. Her floggings increased after her marriage because Adam Woods and his wife did not want a free black man living on their property.

Read Part Eighty-Three HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800/ MARY PRINCE P/81

                                                            Read Part One HERE

In this story I will focus on a woman named Mary Prince. She lived from 1788 -  (appr.) 1833. She was born enslaved at Devonshire, Parish, Bermuda. Her father was a sawyer enslaved by David Trimmingham, and her mother was a house servant held by Charles Myners. When Myners died in 1788, Mary and her mother were sold as household servants to Captain George Darrell. He gave Mary and her mother to his daughter, with Mary becoming the companion servant of his young granddaughter, Betsey Williams.

At the age of 12, Mary was sold for £ 38 to Captain John Ingham, of Spanish Point. Mary's new enslaver and his wife were cruel and often lost their tempers, and Mary was often flogged for minor offenses.

Captain Ingham sold Mary in 1803 to a salt raker, Robert Darrell, on Grand Turk in the Turks and Caicos Islands, who owned salt ponds. 

As a child Mary worked in poor conditions in the salt ponds up to her knees in water. Due to the nature of salt mining, Mary was often forced to work up to 17 hours straight as owners of the ponds were concerned that if the workers were gone too long rain would come and soil the salt. Generally, men were the salt rakers, while women did ther easier packaging of salt. 

Read Part Eighty-Two HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: MARY ANNE READ RAWSON P/ 80

 

                                                                                    Read Part One HERE

In this post I will continue my story on Mary Anne Read Rawson. She lived from 1801 - 1887. Mary Anne corresponded with figures such as George Thompson in Britain as well as Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison in the United States. Her visitors included Lord Shaftesbury and William Wilberforce. She was a prominent figure in the Sheffield Female Anti-Slavery Society.

Mary Anne was one of the few women who attended the world's first International Anti-Slavery Conference at Exeter Hall in London in 1840, which attracted delegates from America, France, Haiti, Australia, Ireland, Jamaica and Barbados.

In 1841, Mary Anne and her sister Emily, arranged for a day school to be created in the chapel on the ground of Wincobank Hall. The school was open to local children and became very successful. In 1860 the sisters created a trust to provide for its future financial endowment and management. The school continued until 1905.

Mary Anne continued to campaign for the rights of fugitive slaves as well as other local charitable causes up until she retired from public life in 1875. She died in 1887.

Read Part Eighty-One HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: MARY ANNE READ RAWSON P/79

                                                                                   Read Part One HERE

In this post I will focus on a woman named Mary Anne Rawson. She lived from 1801 - 1887. Her parents were Joseph Read and his wife Elizabeth of Wincobank Hall, Sheffield. They were wealthy and encouraged Mary Anne's involvement in good causes. She married William Bacon Rawson, a Notthingham banker and iron founder, but the marriage was short-lived due to William's early death in 1829.

Her abiding interest fom the mid-1820s to the 1850s was a campaign in the Sheffield area against slavery. She was a founding member in 1825 of the Sheffield Female Anti-Slavery society, which campaigned for the rights of slaves in the British Empire. The Sheffield Scoiety was the first to campaign not for a gradual and managed end, but for an immediate end to slavery. The society used lectures and pamphlets to achieve a decrease in sales of slave-produced West Indian goods, such as sugar and coffee. It formally wound up after the passage of the abolition legislation in 1833.

In 1837 Mary Anne became secretary of the Sheffield Ladies Association for the Universal Abolition of Slavery, which continued the case of enslaved workers across the world. The anti-slavery organisations run by women were first started by Lucy Townsend and they were sometimes dismissed as of as marginal interest, but these groups had, in fact, a national impact.

Read Part Eighty HERE

EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: JANE SMEAL WIGHAM P/78

                               Read Part One HERE

In this post I will focus on a woman named Jane Smeal Wigham. She lived from 1801 - 1888. Jane was born in Glasgow, Scotland. Her family resided in Edinburgh but later moving to Aberdeen. They belonged to the Society of Friends, or Quakers.

Jane became the leader and secretary of the Glasgow Ladies Emancipation Society. In 1838, she published an important pamphlet with Elizabeth Pease of Darlington, titled "Address to the Women of Great Britan." This document called for British women to speak in public and to form anti-slavery organisations for women. 

In 1840, Jane became the second wife of the Quaker John  Wigham, who was a tea merchant and an active abolitionist in Glasgow. Their marriage took place in the same year as the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London.

After the Ladies Emancipation Socety ceased activity, Jane, along with some other friends, set up the Edinburgh chapter of the National Society of Women's Suffrage. She established the Edinburgh society as one of the leading British groups supporting the view of American abolitionist and social reformer William Lloyd Garrison.

Jane died in 1888.

Read Part Seventy-Nine HERE