Read Part One HERE
In this post I will focus on a woman named Jane Johnson. She lived from 1814 - 1872. Jane is believed to have been born into slavery under the name Jane Williams in or near Washington, D.C. Her parents were John Williams and Jane Williams. Little else is known of her early life. She married a man named Johnson and had children with him.
About 1853, Jane and her two children had been sold to John Hill Wheeler, a planter from Noth Carolina and politician then working in Washington, D.C. She worked as a domestic slave in his household. Her oldest son had been sold by a previous master to someone in Richmond, Virginia, and she never expected to see him again.
In 1855, Jane and her sons Daniel and Isaiah, accompanied their master Wheeler and his family by train from Washington, D.C. en route to New York. There Wheeler planned they would take a ship to Nicaragua where he had been appointed as the U.S. Minister. They stopped overnight in Philadelphia on the way. From there, they would proceed by steamboat to New York City to get the ship to Nicaragua.
Pennsylvania was a free state that did not recognise slavery. By its laws, slaves could choose freedom if brought to the state by their masters. At the end of the 18th Century, it had made compromises that enabled Southern members of the national government to keep their slaves in the city for up to six months; past that, they could choose freedom. At that time, the national capital was temporarily in Philadelphia.
Jane emancipated herself and her children by walking away from her former "master", John Wheeler, into the free city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Read Part One Hundred And Twenty-Eight HERE
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