Savannah’s Slave Brokerages of the 1850s

All research and commentary by Jefferson Hall

In the decades that lead up to the Civil War, where were enslaved persons sold? Where were they held… and do any of these sites still exist?

Savannah in the 1850s was a bustling center of commerce, and in many ways the embodiment of the Antebellum South. The prosperity owed its existence to an underclass visible on every street of Savannah, as anyone with a darker shade of skin was greeted differently or expected to walk on one particular side of the street, and some were simply sold away while others watched. Welcome to the world of the commission brokers, a class of businessmen who dealt in slavery as easily as real estate and bonds.

In a previous post we examined the origins of the slave trade in Savannah. But as we all know, the story of the purchase and sale of enslaved persons in Savannah did not end with the closing of the Atlantic trade; it simply changed form, altering and morphing to keep up with changing economics. To be sure, the numbers of enslaved persons to be brought to the auction block was smaller two generations later… but the individual lives impacted were no less important.

1833 Court House, site of sheriff’s sales and slave auctions

By 1790 the Chatham County court house on Wright Square had become a regular locale for slave auctions. Hosting monthly sheriff’s sales, it gradually became recognized as a place for all estate-related sales. After the turn of the 19^th century, with the days of the Atlantic trade over, auctions became smaller and less frequent. As other sites ceased being used or were torn down, the platforms around the court house remained. Forget what you might think of any other potential site; for 75 years (1790-1865)—by far, longer than any other slave sale venue in Savannah—the Chatham County court house endured as a site of sale for enslaved persons. Through two iterations—the circa-1773 building and the 1833 building, a neo-Classical structure (pictured) which preceded the current 1889 W. G. Preston building standing today—the court house at the corner of Bull and President streets hosted three generations of human sale.

From the Savannah Daily Republican, March 4, 1856:

“When I was nine years of age Father took me down town to see the slave trading post, where he purchased a house girl for Mother, she having had considerable trouble with the white girls who went out to work. There was a high platform, which partly surrounded the Chatham County Court House, upon which the slaves were placed for sale. We looked them all over until presently we saw one who looked as if she would be just the one we wanted.

“‘Hey… what’s your name?’ asked Father.

“‘Elsie, Sur,’ answered she.

“‘What’s that scar on your leg and that scratch on your face?’ continued Father as he gave her the once over.

“‘That ‘er scar on my face is where My Missus done hit me with the strup, and I run away from her, this here hole on my leg is where a snake bite me and I took a knife and cut the bite out – and boss if you buy me an’ be good to me, I promise to work ‘til I die,’ screamed old Elsie.

“And so Elsie was our choice and Father paid $2500 for her in Confederate money. As we took her down off of the platform a storm of voices filled the air saying: ‘Buy Me, buy Me, boss, please do,’ while thin black arms waved to us as we drove off with old Elsie on the back seat of our carriage.”

– William H. Ray, undated

Recorded for posterity is the end to the County court house slave stands in 1865. Reduced in an instant to kindling, it was an event noted by the not-unbiased presses of the Savannah newspaper, which was now printed under the direction of Sherman’s army.

“In front of the Court House in this city there has been for many years a number of tables which were used by negro brokers as auction blocks for the display and sale of slaves. The stands have disappeared with the advance of civilization–Sherman’s Army–and have been used to warm Abolition bodies.”

– Savannah Republican, January 6, 1865

It should be understood that the men who engaged in the sale of slaves in this late period of 1840-1864 were not exclusively slave traders. Nor were they quite the “import merchants” we encountered in the 18^th century… who rather cluelessly fell into the business of selling slaves. These men were “commission brokers,” agents who specialized in the buying and selling of any kind of property, whether it be real estate, stock notes, bank notes, commodities… or people. Commission brokers sponsored open auctions at the court house platforms and advertised private sales within the newspapers. To be clear, not all commission brokers engaged in the sale of enslaved persons; in viewing the records and advertisements today it is evident that many brokers chose to steer clear of this aspect of the profession; others however, were not so discerning. Some Savannah brokers of the 1850s who did demonstrably—and repeatedly—engage in trafficking included John S. Montmollin, George W. Wylly, William Wright, T. J. Walsh, Joseph Bryan, J. A. Stevenson, David R. Dillon and Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar… many of whom had offices on the same block.

*Derby Ward graphic:* Commission brokers on Johnson Square

Within the Georgia Historical Society’s library at Hodgson Hall, the printed volumes of Savannah’s City Directories begin in 1858, and within them one does not find any business listings therein for “slave sales,” or anything so straightforward. Instead, one must follow the trail of these commission brokers.

GEO. W. WYLLY

AUCTION & COMMISSION BROKER

Office corner of Drayton Street and Bay Lane

Savannah, Geo.

ATTEND TO THE PURCHASE AND SALE OF

REAL ESTATE, BANK STOCK, NEGROES, &c.

HAS CONTANTLY ON HAND

CARPENTERS, BLACKSMITHS, COOKS, SEAMSTRESSES,

AND FIELD HANDS

Liberal advances made on Properties consigned to him for sale

-Opening leaf of the 1860 Savannah City Directory

The advertisement above alludes to George Wylly’s location at the corner of corner of Drayton and Bull Lane (“e” on the Derby Ward graphic above). George Wylly and John Montmollin began a partnership in June, 1852.

Their leased office was listed at the “corner of Bay Lane and Bull st, rear of the post office.” (“a” on the above graphic) This description would suggest offices at the back of the Custom House, facing the lane, literally just feet from the slave yard and public holding pen that William Wright began in 1853 (“c”).

The advertisements of Wylly and Montmollin in the Morning News grow from infrequent in 1852 to a daily column by early 1856. Advertisements from 1855:

Savannah Daily Republican, July 21, 1855

The partnership between Wylly and Montmollin dissolved effective March 1, 1856, at which time George Wylly moved his office a block to the east, entertaining a brief partnership with Thomas Collins before buying him out in March of 1858. Now occupying the “SE corner of Drayton and Bull Lane,” (“e” on the Derby Ward graphic) Wylly was located just across the lane from the offices of another brokerage, owned by C.A.L. Lamar (“f”). Lamar, in 1858, was the secret owner of a certain racing yacht by the name of the Wanderer, a vessel which would achieve infamy by the end of the year. Wylly’s former partner, John Montmollin was co-owner of the Wanderer. With the dissolution of his partnership with Wylly in 1856, Montmollin maintained an office on “Bull St. opposite Pulaski House,” (“b” on the graphic) and opened in 1856 an enormous storehouse next to the brokerage of David Dillon, where he advertised corn, wheat and slaves “at Montmollin’s Building, west side of Market Square.”

The Montmollin warehouse as it stands today, 21 Barnard Street

Below are some examples of Montmollin’s advertisements; private sales were handled within his properties while public sales were conducted at the stands by the court house:

Savannah Daily Republican, March 4, 1856

Savannah Daily Republican, December 2, 1856

Montmollin was a vocal proponent of reopening the Atlantic Trade, an idea by the 1850s gaining political traction in certain circles. In the last weeks of 1858, hushed rumors began spreading around town.

In October of 1858 the Wanderer left the coast of West Africa with human cargo aboard and authorities in pursuit. It swiftly outran its pursuers, landing on Jekyll Island on November 28 with more than 400 Africans—the last major slave ship to reach the shores of this country. Between December 1 and December 3 its cargo of men and women was dispersed among several smaller vessels and tugs and fanned out in multiple directions; C.A.L. Lamar employed his own tugboat, the Lamar, to ferry a group up the Savannah River. It crept past town in the dark of night December 3 and landed its captives at a dark water crossing some fourteen miles upriver from Savannah… by the South Carolina plantation of one John S. Montmollin.

“If Africans are to be imported, we hope in Heaven that no more will be landed on the shores of Georgia,” remarked the Savannah Republican in the months that followed. The extent of John Montmollin’s role in the Wanderer remained mostly unrecognized during his lifetime; in April of 1859 a federal court grand jury declined to indict him on the charge of “holding African negroes” at his plantation. Only months later he came to a grisly end; killed in June of 1859 at the age of 51 in a boiler explosion on a steamship while conducting business on the river. From the June 11, 1859 Morning News:

With the death of one commission broker, however, another simply took his place. Alexander Bryan leased the old Montmollin storehouse in Decker Ward and continued offering slaves as “A. Bryan’s Negro Mart” without missing a beat. In September, 1859 the following advertisement appeared:

Savannah Morning News, September 30, 1859

The property still stands today. The story of the Montmollin/Bryan warehouse would go on to become one of the most fascinating in Savannah’s history as the Civil War drew to its closing days; its thread may be picked up in a companion post on this blog.

The William Wright “Slave Yard”

Like satellites revolving around a common star, Wylly, Montmollin, Bryan, Dillon and Lamar all seem to have relied on—and maintained their offices around—the Wright slave yard (“c” on the graphic). Maintaining a large holding pen on Bryan Street, by 1858 the Wright slave yard had grown into a behemoth of a property, occupying an entire 60 x 90 foot lot in Derby Ward.

From the December 9, 1858 Savannah Morning News:

The establishment that Joseph Bryan took over was extensive. One finds it listed in the newspapers variously as “near Monument Square,” and “next to Merchants’ & Planters’ Bank,” while the 1860 City Directory lists its location on “Bryan opp. Johnson square.” The sobering fact is that this “negro yard” begun by William Wright a few years before faced Johnson Square.

William Wright’s ledger, 1857 (Georgia Historical Society)

Perhaps the most active of the slave brokers during the 1850s, Wright’s announcements advertising his current offerings were a longtime daily feature in the Morning News. Wright obtained the 30 x 90 foot western half of Jekyll Tything Lot 8 of Derby Ward in 1853, inclusive on the site was an old frame house, circa 1830 and visible in Cerveau’s 1837 painting, “A View of Savannah”.

1853 Vincent Map: Wright slave yard begins (red), expands in 1855 (orange)

The 1853 map of Savannah by Edward Vincent depicts the half lot of No. 8 that Wright purchased that year, which I have marked in red.

Two years later Wright purchased the entire neighboring Lot 7 from Samuel Dayton on November 1, 1855. Wright quickly sold the western half of Lot 7 to the Merchants & Planters Bank, but he maintained his “eastern 7/western 8 combo” as a slave yard and holding pen, encompassing both the orange and red squares.

Though no physical trace of Wright’s establishment still exists today, to give its location some context, the Wright/Bryan property occupied today’s 14 to 22 East Bryan.

“William Wright, now owning all of lot 7 and part of lot 8, enclosed the area and used it as a Negro holding yard. The property had a wooden frame building standing on the premises. On December 1, 1858, Wright sold the above property including the frame house extending from the east side of the Merchants and Planters Bank building to Joseph Bryan.”

– C. Berry, “Site of the European House,” Demolished Buildings notebook, coll. #1320, GHS

Joseph Bryan’s previous place of business had been at J. Bryan & Son, 117 Bay Street (old address system), a location he first advertised from in November, 1852, a lease within the Central Railroad Bank building (“h” on the Derby Ward graphic). While one does find in the newspapers slave sales advertised from his 117 Bay Street location, it was with the purchase of William Wright’s slave yard that Joseph Bryan entered the big leagues. In the category of wasting no time, the same day he advertised his purchase of the Wright property Bryan also posted the following three ads in a row:

Not long after his 1858 retirement William Wright died in 1860, and in an estate sale on the first Tuesday of March, 1861 Wright’s remaining properties were auctioned off on the very same court house steps where he had sold so many other lives away.

Joseph Bryan, in the meantime, continued his business in the yard north of Johnson Square until 1863.

Bryan’s headstone in Bonaventure says nothing of his role as one of Savannah’s most notorious slave traders

It is not hyperbole to claim that Joseph Bryan probably sold more enslaved persons than any other individual broker in 19^th century Savannah. His fortunes peaked in 1859 as he took consignment of the Great Slave Auction of the Butler plantations (also known as the Weeping Time), whose saga we’ll examine momentarily. But even fortune fades to mortality, and “after a long illness” (Morning News, December 7, 1863), Bryan died in December of 1863. His widow leased the old slave yard property to A. H. Sadler and James Hines, who reopened the yard one more time in July of 1864.

Below is an image of Bryan Street, looking north from Johnson Square, circa 1865, which happens to capture a glimpse of the old site. The three-story structure at the forefront of the image was the aforementioned 1856 Merchants & Planters Bank building, which by 1865 was serving as the headquarters for the provost marshal (the blurry object at the center of the image seems to be an American flag being waved from the individuals in the second floor window). It is to the right of that building that I will draw the readers’ attention.

1865 East Bryan Street (Image: Georgia Historical Society)

The office of the provost marshal was advertised within the newspapers on “Bryan street, three doors from Bull street.” In the 1857 “A Card” advertisement pictured above Wright described his own office as the “first door east of the Merchants’ and Planters’ Bank,” syncing up the geography and making his the fourth door from Bull Street. The Wright/Bryan office in question appears to have been a modest one-story brick building, adjoined to the east by a large and featureless wall with a heavy door. To be blunt, one would not find any advertisements encouraging a visit to the fifth door from Bull Street. If my interpretation of the image is correct, there was no visibility into the premises from the square, nor vice versa. The pen was behind the wall with the door (see detail below).

Nearly a decade after the Civil War, on November 2, 1874, Jane Bryan sold the former slave yard property to one John Ryan. The site remained virtually in-tact as late as 1881, when Daniel Purse purchased the property “to the east end of the wooden frame building now standing on the premises.” (GHS coll. #1320) Soon thereafter he demolished the old 1830 frame dwelling depicted in Cerveau’s painting and the office & wall depicted in the 1865 image, erecting instead a new brick range running the full length of the eastern 7/western 8 combo. The 1884 Sanborn Map finds the old slave yard site gone.

By this 1884 Sanborn Map, the slave yard is gone, but the red square marks the spot where it had been (next door, 114 still stands today)

The Stevenson mart (“d” on the Derby Ward graphic) was on the same block of Bryan Street as the Wright/Bryan slave yard. Short-lived though it may have been, surprisingly, a small portion of the building appears to still exist today.

“The undersigned will open on the 1^st January next, a mart for the reception and sale at Auction of Negro property.

J. A. Stevenson”

– Savannah Morning News, December 3, 1862

From January 1, 1863 to the end of 1864, J. A. Stevenson ran a slave mart just a few additional doors down from the old slave yard, in a property at 108 Bryan Street (old style), or today’s 34 East Bryan Street. Promoting “Negroes for sale privately at my mart,” (Morning News, March 17, 1863)

Not even the waning days of the Civil War broke his stride; Stevenson evidently joined the Confederate army—a September 12, 1864 Morning News mentions “Col. J. A. Stevenson’s command” near Atlanta—and left the business in the hands of his associate, J. Kesterson.

“Lot of Prime Negroes for sale at J.A. Stevenson’s, No. 198 Bryan street.

J.G. Kesterson, Agent”

-Savannah Morning News, October 17, 1864

A mere nine weeks later, the Union Army was in Savannah. The 1867 City Directory finds Col. Stevenson back in Savannah and operating a more traditional commission brokerage, sans slaves, at 190 Bay Street (old style), leaving his old leased slave house to other tenants. In 1896 the Citizens’ Bank building was erected on the site; all that survives today of the former building is an exterior stairwell and remnants of a western property wall, now the east wall of 32 East Bryan; the stairs are between the buildings. Depicted in the 1884 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map illustration above, the staircase afforded egress to the basement.

The “staircase predating the buildings,” 34 East Bryan

Enslaved persons brought to Savannah for sale were often temporarily housed in the commercial brokerage houses sponsoring the auction, or the oversized Wright slave yard… or possibly beneath the Pulaski House Hotel on Johnson Square. In 1958, workmen demolishing the old hotel building were startled to discover the sub-grade basement. It was speculated that this was where guests to the hotel might keep their slaves, a theory seemingly confirmed by this undated account by a former slave named George Carter.

“There was a pen under the Pulaski House where they lock up [slaves] whenever they got there in the night, and the man what have them in charge done stop at the hotel. The regular jail weren’t for slaves, but there was a speculator jail at Habersham and Bryan Street. They lock up the slaves in the speculator jail when they brought them here to the auction. Most of the speculators come in the night before the sale and stop at the Pulaski House. The slaves was took to the pen under the hotel.”

– George Carter, undated

Carter referred to a jail at Habersham and Bryan; for the record, this author has never been able to find evidence of such a jail at this site. I might humbly suggest he might have meant instead Barnard and Bryan, the location of the aforementioned Montmollin/Bryan warehouse. As Alexander Bryan boasted of the property in his 1859 advertisements: “The building is in condition and order for the safe keeping of negroes.”

By 1856 there were two large buildings in Decker Ward for the selling or holding of slaves

The Weeping Time

With 1859 came the fall of a titan. Following a massive reversal of fortune, Pierce Butler was forced to sell off his estate’s slaves in one of the largest slave auctions in history. And Joseph Bryan acted as its broker.

The enslaved populace could be viewed and inspected before the auction, and some may have even been held on the premises of Bryan’s slave yard on Johnson Square. As the advertisement below boasted, “The Negroes will be sold in families, and can be seen on the premises of Joseph Bryan in Savannah, three days prior to the day of sale, when catalogues will be furnished.”

The Daily Morning News may have printed the advertisements of the sale, but the newspaper does not appear to have covered the actual event. Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, however, another source quietly did.

In 1863 Fanny Kemble’s Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation was published. Written by the English actress (1809-1893) and former wife of Pierce Butler, whose marriage had crumbled under the strains of their two different worlds and her inability to reconcile the institution of slavery, the book was taken from her 1838-39 observations of plantation life on Butler Island and included glimpses of the population that would be sold off twenty years later. The Journal painted a grim picture—a real-life Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Its 1863 publication was followed the same year by the printing of a quasi-sequel, “What Became of the Slaves on a Georgia Plantation? Great Auction Sale of Slaves, at Savannah, Georgia, March 2d & 3d, 1859,” a 20-page expose pamphlet authored by Mortimer Neal Thomson (1832-1875). A journalist, Thomson attended the 1859 sale with his own agenda in mind, recording for publication the particulars of the event while posing as a potential buyer. As he claimed, “your correspondent was present at an early date; but… he did not placard his mission and claim his honors.”

“The office of Joesph Bryan, the Negro Broker, who had the management of the sale, was thronged every day by eager inquiries in search of information, and by some who were anxious to buy,” Thomson later reported. “For several days before the sale every hotel in Savannah was crowded with negro speculators from North and South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana.” (Thomson, p. 3) Bryan was described by the correspondent as “a dapper little man, wearing spectacles and a yachting hat, sharp and sudden in his movements… as earnest in his language as he could be without actually swearing, though acting much as if he would like to swear a little at the critical moment.” (p. 10)

This sale in March of 1859 was an example of the unthinkable… one of the great Georgia sea-island “plantation societies” forced to sell off, piece-meal, the residents of its community. With 436 slaves listed to come onto the block, the proceedings were too large to be carried out in the isolation of Butler Island and even too large to be carried out in Savannah. The event was conducted at the Tenbroeck race track, three miles west of town, the only venue large enough to accommodate it. Constructed in 1856, the Tenbroeck Course held its maiden horse race in January, 1857; it also served as host for the annual fair of the Agricultural Club of Chatham and Effingham County, which lauded its “fine enclosure, halls, stables, &c., for the convenience of exhibitors and visitors.” (Republican, October 27, 1857) The event held here in March of 1859, however, was unique… it was referred to at the time as the “Great Sale,” and it’s true, there was nothing else to compare. Held on a dismal and enduring rain on Wednesday, March 2 and Thursday, March 3, 1859, the Great Sale was better remembered by history and by those who endured it as “the Weeping Time.” None had ever been sold before.

“Some of them [those to be auctioned] regarded the sale with perfect indifference, never making a motion, save to turn from one side to the other at the word of the dapper Mr. Bryan, that all the crowd might have a fair view of their proportions, and then, when the sale was accomplished, stepped down from the block without caring to cast even a look at the buyer, who now held all their happiness in his hands. Others, again, strained their eyes with eager glances from one buyer to another as the bidding went on, trying with earnest attention to follow the rapid voice of the auctioneer. Sometimes, two persons only would be bidding for the same chattel, all the others having resigned the contest, and then the poor creature on the block, conceiving an instantaneous preference for one of the buyers over the other, would regard the rivalry with the intensest interest, the expression of his face changing with every bid, settling into a half smile of joy if the favorite buyer persevered unto the end and secured the property, and settling down into a look of hopeless despair if the other won the victory.”

– Mortimer Thomson, 1863

As Thomson explained: “The negroes came from two plantations,” owned by Butler, “one a rice plantation near Darien… the other a cotton plantation on the extreme northern point of St. Simon’s.” Thomson remarked that the men, women and children were “brought to Savannah in small lots… the last of them reaching the city the Friday before the sale.” Most, upon arrival, “were taken to the Race-course, and there quartered in the sheds erected for the accommodation of the horses and carriages,” where they were “huddled together on the floor, there being no bench or table.” (p. 4-7) The auction premises were partly sheltered from the rain; “the [auction] room was about a hundred feet long by twenty wide,” and “open to the air on one side, commanding a view of the entire Course. A small platform was raised about two feet and a-half high, on which were placed the desks of the entry clerks, leaving room in front of them for the auctioneer and the goods.” (p. 10)

In addition to describing the surroundings, Thomson’s pamphlet attempted to chisel a human face on the tragedy. Included in his narrative were various episodes of those who were to be sold, including the story of Jeffrey—chattel No. 319, and Dorcas—chattel No. 278, who “had told their loves, and exchanged their simple vows, and were betrothed.” [Editor’s note: I have cleaned up Thomson’s inflections of Jeffrey’s speech that have not aged well]

“Jeffrey, chattle No. 319, marked as a ‘prime cotton hand,’ aged 23 years, was put up. Jeffrey being a likely lad, the competition was high. The first bid was $1000, and he was finally sold for $1310. Jeffrey was sold alone; he had no incumbrance in the shape of an aged father or mother, who must necessarily be sold with him; nor had he any children, for Jeffrey was not married. But Jeffrey, chattle No. 319, being human in his affections, had dared to cherish a love for Dorcas, chattle No. 278; and Dorcas, not having the fear of her master before her eyes, had given her heart to Jeffrey. Whether what followed was a just retribution on Jeffrey and Dorcas, for daring to take such liberties with their master’s property as to exchange hearts, or whether it only goes to prove that with black as with white the saying holds, that ‘the course of true love never did run smooth,’ cannot now be told. Certain it is that these two lovers were not to realize the consummation of their hopes in happy wedlock. Jeffrey and Dorcas had told their loves, had exchanged their simple vows, and were betrothed to each other as clear, and each by the other as fondly beloved as their skins had been a fairer color….

“Be that as it may, Jeffrey was sold. He finds out his new master, and, hat in hand, the big tears standing in his eyes, and his voice trembling with emotion, he stands before that master and tells his simple story, praying that his betrothed may be bought with him. Though his voice trembles, there is no embarrassment in his manner, his fears have killed all the bashfulness that would naturally attend such a recital to a stranger, and before unsympathizing witnesses; he feels that he is pleading for the happiness of her he loves, as well as for his own, and his tale is told in a frank and manly way.

“‘I love Dorcas, young Master; I love her well and true; she says she loves me, and I know she does; the good Lord knows I love her better than I love any one in the wide world—never can love another woman half so well. Please buy Dorcas, Master. We’ll be good servants to you long as we live. We’re to be married right soon, young Master, and the children will be healthy and strong, Master, and they’ll be good servants, too. Please buy Dorcas, young Master. We love each other a heap—do, really true, Master.’

“Jeffrey then remembers that no loves and hopes of his are to enter into the bargain at all, but in the earnestness of his love he has forgotten to base his plea on other ground till now, when he bethinks him and continues, with his voice not trembling now, save with eagerness to prove how worthy of many dollars is the maiden of his heart.

“‘Young Master, Dorcas prime woman—A woman, sir. Tall gal, sir, long arms, strong, healthy, and can do a heap of work in a day. She is one of the best rice hands on the whole plantation, worth $1200 easy, Master, and a first rate bargain at that.”

“The man seems touched by Jeffrey’s last remarks, and bids him fetch out his ‘gal, and let’s see what she looks like.”

“Jeffrey goes into the long room, and presently returns with Dorcas, looking very sad and self-possessed, without a particle of embarrassment at the trying position in which she is placed. She makes the accustomed curtsy, and stands meekly with her hands clasped across her bosom, waiting the result. The buyer regards her with a critical eye…. Then he goes to a more minute and careful examination of her working abilities. He turns her around, makes her stoop, and walk; and then he takes off her turban to look at her head that no wound or disease be concealed by the gay hankerchief; he looks at her teeth, and feels of her arms, and at last announces himself pleased with the result of his observations, whereat Jeffrey, who has stood near, trembling with eager hope, is overjoyed, and he smiles for the first time. The buyer then crowns Jeffry’s happiness by making a promise that he will buy her, if the price isn’t run up too high. And the two lovers congratulate each other on their good fortune.…

“At last comes the trying moment, and Dorcas steps up on the stand.

“But now a most unexpected feature in the drama is for the first time unmasked: Dorcas is not to be sold alone, but with a family of four others. Full of dismay, Jeffrey looks to his master, who shakes his head, for, although he might be induced to buy Dorcas alone, he has no use for the rest of the family. Jeffrey reads his doom in his mater’s look, and turns away, the tears streaming down his honest face.

“So Dorcas is sold, and her toiling life is to be spent in the cotton fields of South Carolina, while Jeffrey goes to the rice plantation of the Great Swamp….

“In another hour… I see Jeffrey, who goes to his new master, pulls off his hat and says: ‘I’m very much obliged, Master to you for trying to help me. I know you would have done it if you could—thank you, Master—thank you—but—it’s—very—hard’ – and here the poor fellow breaks down entirely and walks away, covering his face with his battered hat, and sobbing like a very child.”

– Thomson, p. 16-18

The total proceeds for the Butler family estate sale brought in $303,850 for 429 men, women and children. In a somewhat surreal parting scene, Thomson recorded a throng of Butler’s former slaves gathering around their former owner as he bade them farewell and gave each one the parting gift of a silver dollar. As Thomson remarked: “To every negro he had sold, who presented his claim for the paltry pittance, he gave the munificent stipend of one whole dollar.”

“That night, not a steamer left that Southern port, not a train of cars sped away from that cruel city, that did not bear each its own sad burden of those unhappy ones, whose only crime is that they are not strong and wise. Some of them maimed and wounded, some scarred and gashed, by accident, or by the hand of ruthless drivers—all sad and sorrowful as human hearts can be.”

– p. 20

A Rising Tide: Black Ministers, Educators and Legislators of 19th Century Savannah

Featured

All research and commentary by Jefferson Hall

A primer on Savannah’s Black ministry, and an examination of the unheralded educators who ran clandestine schools in broad daylight on the streets of Savannah

From the time of George Liele to Andrew Cox Marshall and Henry Cunningham, ministerial positions were the only roles of leadership allowed to a person of African descent in Antebellum society. But as generations passed, boundaries fell away—first quietly, as teachers risked the law to instruct children, and children risked punishment to learn—then with a crash as three Savannah men were elected to the General Assembly. Though they were quickly disenfranchised, they fought back, and in the process created new outlets and made new opportunities. The ordination of George Liele and the election Savannah’s first Black Representatives were events separated by less than a century.

Masters of the early pulpit

On December 16, 1856 the Savannah Morning News addressed the passing of a legend, as the ancient Andrew Cox Marshall was laid to rest.

Savannah Morning News, December 16, 1856

He had died in Richmond, Virginia, returning from a fund-raising and good-will tour to secure funds for the church’s new structure on Franklin Square, a tour which had taken him as far as New York before failing health urged him south once more. Presumed to be centenarian, Marshall had long been the face of the First African Baptist Church, presiding over the congregation for more than four decades. But his reach extended beyond Franklin Square. By the time of his death there were four African-American congregations in Savannah… two of which Marshall had taken a hand in shaping, whether intentionally or not.

Three years later, the tally of African-American congregations rose to five, with the formation of Bethlehem Baptist Church in 1859. The result today is that there are no fewer than five historic African-American congregations that predate the Civil War, and that arose out of the days of slavery.

First African Baptist Church—proto-origins in the 1770s—conventional establishment 1788
First Bryan Baptist Church—proto-origins in the 1770s—conventional establishment 1788 (It should be noted that First African and First Bryan share the same history until their 1832 schism)
Second African Baptist Church, begun 1802
St. Stephens Episcopal Church, begun 1855; now exists as St. Matthew’s Episcopal
Bethlehem Baptist Church, begun 1859

Savannah’s Black ministry claims its beginnings with the arrival of George Liele in the 1770s. Born a slave in Virginia about 1751, Liele was brought to Savannah in 1773 by his owner, Henry Sharpe, a Baptist deacon. Ordained a minister in 1775, Liele began preaching where permitted at local plantations. He was given his freedom in 1777, but fighting lingering ownership claims from members of Sharpe’s family following Sharpe’s death, Liele left with the British as they withdrew from Savannah in 1782 following the American Revolution. Liele, his wife and their four children went to Jamaica, where he continued his missionary work for nearly another four decades; his time in Georgia, however, was done.

George Liele served as a marker, a beginning, but his role in Savannah may be viewed less as a congregational minister and more itinerant missionary. The transition from Savannah’s early African-American ministry into something so organized as the “First Coloured Church” —the entity that would give rise to today’s First African and First Bryan—found its beginnings with Andrew Bryan… a man several years Liele’s senior.

Andrew Bryan was born enslaved, probably c.1737. He belonged to a prominent South Carolina family in the Bryans, who were well known to any colonist in Savannah. Joseph Bryan had died in 1732, his three sons—Joseph, Hugh and Jonathan—had played a major role in assisting the Savannah settlement in its earliest days in 1733 (and are the family for whom Bryan Street was named). As the Trustees recorded in their Account Book: “Mr. Joseph Bryan… Himself, with four of his Sawyers gave two months Work in the Colony.” The Bryans “came up again in the midst of the Sickness to assist us with 20 Slaves whose Labour they gave as a free Gift,” Oglethorpe wrote in the summer of 1733. Joseph died in 1735, and though Jonathan’s role in Georgia continued to grow as time progressed, he moved to Georgia only after slavery was permitted. The 1753 land grant map of his property on Hutchinson Island is the oldest surviving map denoting Savannah’s street names.

Andrew Bryan was a coachman and personal servant to Jonathan Bryan. Baptized by Liele in 1782, Bryan was ordained a minister in January, 1788, while in his fifties. Bryan was still a slave at the time; it is worth noting that the first four ministers of the First African Baptist Church were born slaves.

Andrew Bryan (presiding minister 1788-1812), purchased his freedom for 50 pounds sterling in 1789.
Andrew C. Marshall (presiding minister 1815-1856), loaned a portion of the cost of his freedom by one of his owners, date unknown, but probably between 1812 and 1815.
William J. Campbell (presiding minister 1857-1880), was freed by the will of Mary Maxwell in 1849.
Emanuel K. Love (presiding minister (1885-1900), freed with the demise of slavery in 1865.

Six weeks after Andrew Bryan’s ordination, his longtime owner Jonathan Bryan died in March of 1788. The following year the slave-turned-minister bought his freedom from the family for 50 pounds sterling. The Church was a family pursuit, Sampson Bryan (c.1745-1799) was Andrew’s younger brother; if the First Coloured Baptist Church that resulted from these early years may be seen in context, it must be understood as a community effort.

The burial site of Andrew and Sampson Bryan in Laurel Grove South

Moving the congregational meeting house from nearby Brampton Plantation to the western outskirts of Savannah in Yamacraw, the congregation quickly flourished—almost too much so—so that by 1802 plans were already made to split the congregation, an act which gave birth to the Second Coloured Baptist Church—today’s Second African—on the east side of town, this congregation under the direction of Reverend Henry Cunningham.

Henry Cunningham lived from 1759 to 1842; in addition to his ministerial duties he also operated a carriage business. His wife Elizabeth (“Betsy”) was described as a seamstress. Cunningham engaged heavily in real estate; records show that he owned no fewer than five properties in the ten-year span between 1810 and 1820 and no fewer than eleven properties over the larger period of 1808 (the beginning of the tax digests, and therefore the paper trail) and the time of his death in 1842. Eleven properties over those 34 years, including the church itself, at least until it achieved tax-exempt status in 1816.

Two former Cunningham landholdings at Houston & State Streets

According to the November 30, 1815 Republican, Cunningham misplaced some cash…

The grave of Henry and Elizabeth “Betsy” Cunningham, Laurel Grove South

Much like Cunningham, Andrew Bryan was also the holder of record for his congregation’s lot. As official property owner of “Lot No. 12 Yamacraw + Buildings,” Andrew Bryan’s real estate was valued at a worth of $400 in the tax digest of 1809, a valuation which grew over his remaining years. Upon his death in October of 1812, he left behind an estate valued at $3000. He was probably 75 upon his death… the last 23 years of which he lived as a free man. The family dynasty he and Sampson had begun continued with his nephew, Andrew Cox Marshall, a giant of a man who found respect in the communities of both white and Black Savannah, but whose sometimes immovable positions polarized his constituents.

Andrew Cox Marshall was born a slave circa 1755, but the truth is not even he knew when he was born. Later FPOC records would suggest he might have been born as late as 1762, but the birth date of any individual born as an enslaved person in 18^th Century South Carolina was (and is today) reduced to a guess. Brought from South Carolina to Savannah in 1766, he was sold to John Houston and later Joseph Clay. Trained as a coachman—like his uncle—he eventually ended up in the possession of the Bolton family. At the turn of the 19^th century Robert Bolton presided over an extensive Savannah estate; in the 1816 tax digest the Bolton family claimed more than $210,000 in assets, including 21 slaves. Three years later, in the 1819 tax digest the valuation had climbed to $244,000, including at least 13 slaves. The family—who would never again regain that pre-1820 prominence after the cotton bubble burst—lived in a grand New England-style house that no longer exists overlooking Oglethorpe Square.

Marshall purchased his freedom—and that of his family’s as well—in a $200 loan advanced to him by Richard Richardson, Frances Bolton’s husband and the president of the Savannah Branch of the Bank of the United States. The divergence between the two men’s fortunes thereafter became an interesting contrast, as Richardson’s fortunes—dashed after the cotton bubble burst—steadily declined in the early 1820s… while his fortunes of his former slave began to climb. Ironically, 1824—the same year that the Bank of the US foreclose on Richardson’s House—saw Marshall claiming three different properties, assessed at a total value of $8400… more than most White citizens in the town owned. Marshall’s uncle Andrew Bryan had written years before of “having a house and lot in this city, besides the land on which several buildings stand, for which I receive a small rent.” Much of his property came down to his nephew, and by the 1820s Andrew Cox Marshall was the wealthiest man of Color in Savannah, owning properties on lots 11, 12 and 19 in Yamacraw. A minister, landowner and landlord, it is easy to forget that he also owned a dray-cart business; in fact, the 1830 Register of Free Persons eschews his loftier titles for simple “drayman.”

First African Baptist Church on Franklin Square

The year 1832 was a pivotal year for the First Coloured Baptist congregation, but it also saw the schism which would fragment the one church in two. The congregation, outgrowing its old 1812 40-foot by 42-foot frame meeting house on Bryan Street, purchased a used building on Franklin Square. The First Baptist Church’s white congregation had just moved to Chippewa Square, leaving behind their old edifice on Franklin Square. Simmering discontent with Marshall, however, came to a head over his policy favoring the new theology of the Reverend Alexander Campbell; and several parishioners, under the leadership of Deacon Adam Arguile Johnson, broke away. The rebelling contingent returned to the old church meeting house on Bryan Street, reconstituting into what was then known as the Third Coloured Baptist Church—today’s First Bryan Baptist Church, and whose current building in Yamacraw was built between 1873 and 1874.

In terms of his personal life, Marshall married three times over his life; we know little today of this first marriage—even her name had escaped the record. At the time of this early marriage he and his bride were slaves in South Carolina, what little known of her is that she was sold away from him… an inauspicious end to the union, but slavery offered little respect for marriage vows. His second wife was Rachel, a woman to whom he was married for an entirety of 50 years, from slavery, through freedom and into his ministry. Rachel died in 1829, leaving him a widowed gentleman of somewhere between 67 and 73 years old. Undaunted, Marshall married a third time to a woman by the name of Sarah, some 40 years his junior; in the process he became a father again in his 70s. Andrew Cox Marshall had 20 children…19 of whom he outlived. Only Marshall’s 25 year-old son George survived him at the time of his passing; at the time of death Andrew Cox Marshall had presided over the funerals of 19 of his 20 children.

In the spring of 1855 a correspondent of the New York Recorder attended a church service at the First African Baptist Church on Franklin Square and came away moved by what he had heard and witnessed. “Mr. Marshall’s sermon will remain in my memory associated with the discourses of great men,” the correspondent wrote.

“I looked round upon the congregation, and noticed that the audience, without exception, was well dressed; the women chiefly wore head-dresses of Madras handkerchiefs, though many had bonnets, and most of the men wore gloves. Mr. Marshall, I should observe, is in his 100^th year, his hair is as white as snow, his countenance mile, without any wrinkles to mark decrepitude or decay. His voice is one of great sweetness and power; he read his hymn without spectacles; and such reading! In sober truth, I know no Northern Doctor who can read as well. It was read as Staughton used to read, and those who remember that style of giving out psalmody, will long to hear Andrew Marshall. I came to church expecting to hear a wreck of a preacher—a negro preacher. I found in the pulpit a master in Israel. Age has not touched his faculties, his mind is as vivacious and its workings are as true and faithful as are the intellects of men of 30 or 40 years of age.”

– correspondence printed within the May 16, 1855 Savannah Republican

The correspondent concluded: “I regard him as the most astonishing preacher I have ever listened to, when his age, his social position, and his illiteracy are all considered. No pulpit in New York or Boston but would have been honored by such a sermon.”

Andrew Cox Marshall’s vault at Laurel Grove South

Marshall’s epitaph:

“IN memory of Rev. ANDREW COX MARSHALL, Pastor of the First African Baptist Church of Savannah, Whose soul, made meet for Glory, was taken to Emmanuel’s bosom in Richmond, Virginia on his way from the North, where he had been labouring to procure aid to assist in erecting a new Church for his Congregation in Savannah Georgia; and now lies in this silent tomb of his own erection, here deposited in hope of a joyful resurrection to eternal life and glory.

“He was a Man eminent in piety, of a humane, benevolent and charitable disposition; his zeal in the cause of God was singular, his labours indefatigable, and his success in Preaching the Gospel remarkable and astonishing; he departed this life in the One Hundredth Year of his age, leaving a Wife and Family to lament his loss.

“He Baptised 3776. Married 2000 & Funeralised 2400 Persons.”

Henry Cunningham had passed away in 1842, Johnson in 1853 and with Marshall’s passing in 1856 the next generation would see William Campbell presiding over First African and Ulysses Houston at First Bryan. This was a new generation; it was Campbell’s tenure that would see the erection of the current First African Church building we see today, the edifice Andrew Cox Marshall spent his last years fundraising to build. As Campbell’s grave marker in Laurel Grove South proclaims, the church “was erected in 1859 and completed in May of 1861.”

In the mean time, Ulysses Houston ushered in a new prosperity for First Bryan, which had endured a revolving door of ministers in the decades following the schism. Born a South Carolina slave in 1825, Houston was brought to Savannah at the age of five. A nominal slave, he paid his owner $50 a month (for the record, a high amount—many nominal slaves paid half that or less), and eventually gained his freedom. Ordained a minister and elevated to pastor of First Bryan in 1861, he served until his death in 1889. His tenure presided over the end of slavery, the construction of First Bryan’s current building, in addition to the 100^th anniversary of the “First Coloured Church.”

Oh, yes… and he was also a Georgia State Legislator. His, truly, was a new generation….

The Secret Six

There were, in fact, three African-American men from Savannah elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in the brief 1868-1870 era of Reconstruction: Ulysses Houston, James Ward Porter and James Merilus Simms. Houston represented Bryan County, Porter and Simms Chatham. In truth, all three spent far more time out of the Georgia General Assembly halls than in, spending most of their tenures simply attempting to be seated or reseated, following expulsion of the Black members in September, 1868.

Two of these Representatives—James Porter and James Simms—had previously been educators in Savannah, operating clandestine schools before the Civil War. With education naturally a high goal on their agenda, a correspondent offered a cruel taunt within the October 14, 1870 Morning News suggesting the Representatives had been duped by the establishment… or had themselves taken advantage. “The colored people are beginning to understand how the Radicals have fooled them in the matter of education,” the correspondent calling himself “Georgian” began. “The educational enthusiasm of these colored Representatives Sim-mered down, and the money was Porter-ed away. So much for how colored Representatives provide for educating colored children.”

A month later both men were attacked again… this time for simply being paid.

Savannah Morning News, November 12, 1870

These were a racist attacks, much like the occasional reference to Simms as “the little mulatto” (Savannah Morning News, January 19, 1871), “little ‘Fiddling Jim Simms’” (a commentator within the September 3, 1872 Morning News), “our little ‘devilish, fighting, burning,’ mulatto preacher, Jim Simms” (December 11, 1869), or just a casual dismissal of the man: “He hadn’t much to say, but occupied a very long time in saying it.” (October 28, 1868) However, to anyone examining the record today the bona fides of James Porter and James Simms could never be in question, given their history in Antebellum education.

Though education of African-Americans—beyond basic trade skills—was forbidden by law in the Antebellum era, we do know of at least six underground, or illegal, schools for the education of slave children run within the African-American community in Savannah, between 1818 and 1864.

Julien Fromantin

James Porter

James Simms

Mathilda Taylor

Mary Woodhouse

Catherine & Jane Deveaux

How discreet one had to be operating such a secret school in Antebellum Savannah certainly varied over the years, as the pendulum of crackdowns swung to and fro, but it may have required an equal measure of discretion and diplomacy. It seems from the record that only one of the six above was ever actually caught and prosecuted for teaching; odds which suggest that perhaps members of the white community were willing to look the other way at what was conducted discreetly. But then there was James Simms… who, frankly, never shied away from trouble.

A thumbnail biography of each:

Julien Fromantin was the first for whom we have record, operating his school openly between 1818 and 1829 on leased property. In late 1829 An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World was published out of Boston, a pamphlet by David Walker advocating freedom by any means necessary… a publication that sent state legislatures all over the South scrambling to reinforce various bans on Black education. In the wake of this, Fromantin continued his school, but in a more prudent, underground capacity until about 1844.

Matilda Taylor Beasley (1832-1903) was a woman possessing many talents.

By the time she was advertising her restaurant, its attractions and its turtle soup, her career as an educator had likely already come to an end. Dating her school activity is difficult; its beginnings, its end and its duration, as far as I can tell are unknown, but she does seem to have been active in the late 1850s, possibly into the early 1860s. She advertised her restaurant (and occasional boarding house) off of Johnson Square frequently during the 1860s. I find its geography fascinating, in that the restaurant was operating only doors away from—and concurrently to—the Stevenson slave mart, and the old Wright/Bryan slave yard.

In the summer of 1865 Taylor was drawn into court by Mordecai Sheftall for “Recovery of rent. Claim $30.” This evidence of financial difficulty roughly corresponds to the rebranding of the restaurant, as she merged with the man who would become her husband, Abram Beasley. Together, they ran what was in essence a one-stop travel lodge, presumably on the same site.

Savannah Daily Herald, December 28, 1865

Their Railroad House Restaurant operated until 1867, at which point the chairs, tables, bedding items, stoves and bar fixtures were auctioned off; soon thereafter the notice appeared in the newspapers that her old site was for rent.

In the decades that followed her career would take a sharp turn from bar hostess to Catholic nun. Following her husband’s death in 1877, Matilda Taylor Beasley boarded a ship for England, spent her novitiate in London, and returned as Savannah’s first African-American nun; she also founded an orphanage. On East Broad Street, overlooking today’s Mother Matilda Beasley Park, stands large brick building at 439 East Broad, originally built to house an orphanage in 1908. Though the building is postdates Beasley’s lifetime, it represents an extension of her legacy; the Saint Francis Home for Colored Orphans had been founded by Beasley some twenty years before, in 1887.

Mother Mathilda Beasley Park, dedicated 1982 *(left)*; Saint Francis Home for Colored Orphans, 1908 structure *(right)*

Raffle for a milch (milk) cow, Savannah Morning News, January 1, 1890

By the 1890s Mother Superior Beasley had founded her own Catholic order; the Third Order of Saint Francis was a Franciscan order of African-American nuns in Savannah. One other nun is named within the Savannah Morning News in 1893 as a member of “the St. Francis sisterhood,” Sister Frances. The orphanage in question, in the mean time, proved a frequent source of drama.

The following year, in 1895, the orphanage was repeatedly and intentionally set on fire… by the children.

Matilda Beasley passed away quietly in her chapel in December of 1903 at the age of 71.

Savannah Morning News, December 21, 1903

In May of 2014 her home was moved from Price Street into the greenspace of Mother Mathilda Beasley Park.

Beasley Cottage, formerly at 1511 Price Street

James Ward Porter (1826-1895) was born a free man in Charleston. Moving to Savannah in 1856 as choirmaster for St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Porter ran a tailor shop on West Bryan Street. It was within his tailor shop that Porter also operated his school.

Probable location of Porter’s underground school

Old 177 Bryan (today 219 West Bryan) still stands

In January of 1865 Porter would become principal of the Bryan Free School, Savannah’s first legal school for children of Color, just around the corner from his old tailoring shop, within the old Montmollin slave warehouse (and whose story is found elsewhere on this blog). The building was large and commonly used as a general community center, advertised for meetings and concerts.

Following his tenure as a state representative the December 29, 1871 Morning News reported that the “ex-tailor and law maker” was “appointed a temporary Inspector of Customs.” He soon resumed his career as school principal, presiding over the West Broad Street School, which opened in 1878.

James Merilus Sims/Simms (1823-1912) was the only one of these six educators of the Antebellum-era to be caught and punished; Simms was fined fifty dollars and sentenced to fifteen lashes. Born and raised in Savannah, he was self-educated. Previously enslaved just upriver from Savannah at James Potter’s Coleraine Plantation, in 1869 he spoke that in his younger days he had “to wait until midnight, when the overseer of the plantation was asleep, and then walk four miles to a swamp in order to pray to his God without fear of the lash. “The Morning News, never missing an opportunity to offer snark, countered: “We think Jim is a little loose in his recollection of dates. If we mistake not, about the time he says he used to go to the swamp to pray, he was employed in driving a dray for a well known merchant in this city, and spent his nights not in praying but playing the fiddle at ‘disreputable’ balls.” (May 15, 1869)

In 1857 Simms purchased his freedom, or it was purchased for him by his mother Minda Campbell (secondary sources disagree), and was ordained a minister in 1860. While it is not clear if the early-1860s sentence of fifteen lashes for operating a school was ever carried out, soon thereafter Simms left Savannah, exchanging the world he knew for Boston. Younger brother Thomas had made national headlines in 1851, escaping to Boston, only to be returned again in an early test case for the Fugitive Slave Act. Thomas was sold to a plantation in Mississippi before eventually returning to Boston again. Though James Simms had never before set foot in Boston his family name already carried cache within the Abolitionist community. He joined the Union Army, serving as a chaplain during the Civil War, but by the spring of 1865 Simms had returned to Savannah and was offering lectures.

Advertisement in the Savannah Daily Herald, April 26, 1865

Drawn to politics, he embraced the opportunity to run for the Georgia Assembly. Following his expulsion in the legislative purge, he lobbied President Grant in 1869 for the position of Savannah postmaster. In his words, recorded by the May 15, 1869 Morning News, “he did not feel sure the President would give it to him, but whether he did or not he was ready to serve his country and his people in any honest capacity.” He and Porter were reinstated as legislators in 1870, but subsequently lost re-election.

The following year he was appointed 1st District Judge of Chatham County, taking his seat on March 7, 1871 in a courtroom full of curious spectators. The white court officers refused to appear; the court proceedings were instead opened by a stand-in bailiff proclaiming, “O, yea! O, yea! The Honorable District Court for the First Senatorial District is now open. All persons interested will now come forward…. God help the Court!” (Morning News, March 8, 1871)

“God Help the Court!” (Morning News, March 8, 1871)

Shortly thereafter he won a civil suit resulting in $1800 in damages for being ejected “from the white people’s cabin of the steamer Keyport, between Washington and Richmond.” (Morning News, May 19, 1871) Like Porter, Simms was appointed an Inspector of Customs—by 1876 the Morning News remarked, he was “one of the leading Radicals of the Custom House clique.” He lectured and frequently traveled; the editors of the Morning News, in reacting to his lectures in Atlanta, were still unable to reach terms with his confrontational nature. “He is a fair speaker and has no little sense, and but for his incendiary character and mercenary prostitution might be of some service to his race—as it is,” they claimed, “he is their worst enemy” (September 16, 1876). Time has proven this declaration wrong… or at least certainly short-sighted. James Merilus Simms was tireless in his efforts to be heard and recognized, leaving behind a stunning resume… carpenter, social agitator, educator, minister, grand master freemason, author, state representative and judge and advocate.

Did I mention the man even printed his own newspaper?

The Freemen’s Standard, Rev. James M. Simms, Editor

James Simms’ headstone, Laurel Grove South

Mary Ann Woodhouse (c.1806-1884) lived on the north end of Warren Square, Lot 11 Warren Ward. The paper trail on Woodhouse is very light. Described as a “seamstress” in the 1829 Register of Free Persons, her age was listed as 23, suggesting she was born c.1806. In April of 1867, as she petitioned City Council for permission to make repairs and improvements on her lot; she died in 1884.

Mary Woodhouse’s school was within one of these buildings on Warren Ward, Lot 11

Susie King Taylor—born a slave in 1848 and brought to Savannah in 1854 (and who herself attained notoriety as a Civil War-era educator)—was a former student of the Taylor and Woodhouse schools, and wrote years later of her childhood experiences attending the school of Mary Woodhouse on Lot 11, Warren Ward.

“We went every day about 9 o’clock, with our books wrapped in paper to prevent the police or white persons from seeing them. We went in, one at a time, through the gate, into the yard to the Kitchen, which was the schoolroom. She had 25 to 30 children whom she taught, assisted by her daughter Mary Jane.

“The neighbors would see us go in sometimes, but they supposed we were learning trades, as it was the custom to give children a trade of some kind.”

-Susie King Taylor, Memoirs

Finally… no school had a longer tenure than that of Catherine and Jane Deveaux, which seems to have lasted some 30 years. As you may or may not know, an entire post may be found on this blog covering the subject of the Deveaux School.

The 1853 Deveaux house at 513 East York, still stands today

Catherine (c.1785-c.1834) was probably born in Antigua; her advertisements litter the newspapers of the early 19^th century (as may be seen in my prior post on Free Persons of Color), promoting a woman of many skills. She was a cook, she ran a boarding house, she was a seamstress; one advertisement not found is as an educator, but history records that title. Daughter Jane (c.1814-1885) continued the school after her mother’s passing.

Jane Deveaux’s headstone in Laurel Grove South provides an epitaph elegant and simple enough to double as a fitting climax to this post:

S A C R E D

to the memory of

JANE A. DEVEAUX

Died June 12 A.D. 1885

Aged 74 Years,

10 Months 29 Days

A devoted Christian, celebrated

as an early educator of her

people,

she has built for herself a name

more enduring than monuments

of stone or brass.

“A name more enduring than monuments of stone or brass….” We know their names today. Whether regarded as incendiary like James Simms, or pious like Beasley; whether leaving behind a record as full as Simms or as light as Mary Woodhouse, we still know who they were. Whether teaching in a classroom or instructing by example of character, the single most important contribution that they made—in one form or another—was educating Savannah.

The bizarre summer without Forsyth Park

Featured

All research and commentary by Jefferson Hall

Have you ever heard the tale of the strange summer when no one was allowed in Forsyth Park…?

On April 24, 1851, the city approved the plan to create “Forsyth Place,” named for John Forsyth—former congressman, senator, governor of Georgia, minister to Spain and Secretary of State under Presidents Jackson and Van Buren. Intended to be kept in tact as a natural pine forest, many of its pines were removed in the late 1850s and none survived into the 20th century. In 1852 the park was enclosed with an iron fence by John Wickersham and his Broadway-based New York Wire Railing Works company, which advertised frequently in Savannah’s newspapers, geography notwithstanding.

The Forsyth Park Fountain was unveiled in June of 1858; made of cast iron by B.B. & Sons out of New York, it cost $2200. Boasting that it was perhaps “the largest of the kind in the United States,” the 1858 Mayor’s Annual Report remarked, “In the centre of the Park has been placed a beautiful cast iron fountain, the design and taste of which makes it a novel and finished structure. It… serves as a cool and delightful resort for citizens and strangers.”

But in the summer of 1866 Forysth Park became the battleground in a peculiar showdown in Reconstrction-era Savannah. In June, the City Council fired the first volley in the “battle for Forsyth Park.”

“Whereas the Park known as Forsyth Place, was set apart by the citizens of Savannah as a pleasure ground for the citizens thereof and whereas at present it is a public nuisance by the congregation of large numbers of negroes and the mutilation of benches and the destruction of the trees and shrubbery and the use of indecent and profane language to the exclusion of ladies and children and whereas it is the duty of the Mayor and Aldermen to abate all nuisances, therefore be it resolved:

“THAT from and after this date the Mayor be authorized to close all the gates except the one on Bull street north and the southwest gate and station a Police Officer at each one of the described gates and not admit negroes unless they are in charge of children of white persons and that it shall be the duty of said policeman to arrest all persons violating any of the city rules in said park and carry them to the Police barracks.”

– Savannah City Council, June 27, 1866

With a single carried motion Savannah’s City Council had suddenly made it illegal for Americans of African descent to enter Forsyth Park. Almost immediately came the rebuke from the Reconstruction authorities, under the command of General Davis Tilson, the man who had succeeded Rufus Saxton as the commanding officer of the Freedmen’s Bureau affairs in Georgia. Delivering a carefully-worded response from General Tilson, Captain Smith stated that the resolution barring persons of color from a public park conflicted with General Order 8 of the War Department. Military officials, it was stated, would be instructed “not to allow any colored persons to be arrested for entering or attempting to enter the public park so long as white people are not arrested or punished for the same act.” With this warning, and given the opportunity to back down, the City Council instead doubled down and upped the ante.

“The City Council of Savannah, having at the regular meeting on the 27^th day of June last, passed a resolution requiring the Public Park in said city, known as Forsyth Place, to be closed against colored persons… and the Mayor and Aldermen having, on this 12^th day of July, 1866, received a notification from the military authorities of the United States to the effect that said resolution cannot be enforced except as against all persons, white as well as colored…. It is therefore:

“Resolved. That for the present… the said Park be closed against all persons, whatsoever.”

– Savannah City Council, July 12, 1866

And so, in one of the most peculiar events in the history of Forsyth Park, for three months in the summer of 1866 it became illegal for anyone—white or black—to enter Forsyth Park. The public space was closed to all visitors; the fountain inaccessible and paths unwalked. One could only admire the park through its fence. The August 3, 1866 Savannah Morning News lamented the situation.

“Some weeks since… ordinances were passed excluding, first the negroes, and subsequently the whites from the City Park. As a result… this pleasant place of refuge from the heat and dust of the city, continues to be inaccessible.”

One month passed, then a second and finally a third. At long last, with fall in the air, Mayor Anderson and the City Council backed down and on October 18, following a closure of 99 days, the park was reopened.

“The Park—These beautiful grounds from which the people have been excluded for several months past, for reasons known to the public, we are pleased to learn are no longer inaccessible. In conformity with an order of the City Council, the gates were opened last night, and hereafter the park will be attended by a police force sufficient to prevent the recurrence of a necessity for excluding her people from the favorite resort.”

–Daily News and Herald, October 19, 1866

Savannah History Narrative: Sherman’s Occupation of Savannah

Featured

Researched and written by Jefferson Hall, 1993

**A January 1865 newspaper cartoon depicts Sherman leaving a Christmas gift called Savannah in Lincoln’s stocking as the President slumbers behind him**

“Goodbye, Savannah!”

– Mary Chestnut, December 2, 1864

On the morning of December 22nd, 1864 William Tecumseh Sherman slowly rode north on Bull Street, through the squares and up the deserted avenue.

“The city of Savannah was an old place, and usually accounted a handsome one,” Sherman observed years later in his Memoirs.

“Its houses were of brick or frame, with large yards, ornamented with shrubbery and flowers; its streets perfectly regular, crossing each other at right angles; and at many of the intersections were small inclosures in the nature of parks. These streets and parks were lined with the handsomest shade-trees of which I have knowledge, viz., the willow-leaf live-oak, evergreens of exquisite beauty.”

When at last Sherman reached the end of Bull Street he dismounted and proceeded to the roof of the Custom House; there he had a view of the city, the river and the marshlands. The town was silent, the only evidence of war was the still-smoldering ruins of an ironclad called the Savannah, half-submerged in the river, a shattered shell symbolic of the city for which it was named.

Descending the Custom House, Sherman then went across the street to the Pulaski House Hotel. “We rode to the Pulaski Hotel, which I had known in years long gone.” As a young man in 1840, a Lieutenant Sherman had stayed at the hotel; now it was run by a Vermont man with a lame leg, and Sherman inquired about the hotel’s capacity as headquarters for him and his immediate staff. Recalled Sherman: “He was very anxious to have us for boarders, but I soon explained to him that we had a full mess equipment along, and that we were not in the habit of paying board.”

The March to the Sea had begun more than a month earlier, as the last of Sherman’s 62,000 man army left Atlanta in flames. With every expectation of settling in for a siege of Savannah, Sherman’s men had begun to invest the city on December 9, erecting works. Sherman himself anticipated the siege to be a long and drawn-out affair. On December 18 he went to Hilton Head to coordinate the details of a siege with General Foster and Admiral Dahlgren. As he started back from Hilton Head on the evening of the 20th he had no way of knowing that William Joseph Hardee’s 9,000-man Confederate garrison had already begun the process of abandoning the city. Sherman himself spent much of the next 24 hours stuck in the mud and attempting to navigate the shallows of Wassaw Sound when he encountered a tugboat approaching with news: His army had taken the city during his absence… and without a shot being fired. The city lay undefended, and by the time Sherman arrived on Bull Street on that cloudy gray Thursday morning, the town had already been in his possession for a day.

As Sherman sent an officer to find a suitable stable for the horses, he was approached at the Pulaski House by “an English gentleman, Mr. Charles Green, [who] came and said that he had a fine house completely furnished, for which he had no use, and offered it as headquarters.” Green (1807-1881) was an Englishman who had come to Savannah virtually broke in 1833; two decades later he had become one of the wealthiest men in the city. Making a fortune in the cotton trade, Green earned as much as $80,000 a year during the 1850s. He seems to have been the second-wealthiest man in Savannah… outdone only by his business partner, Andrew Low, whose income – a whopping $214,000 in 1855/1856 alone – made Green’s seem almost paltry in comparison.

**House of Charles Green (Sherman’s headquarters in Savannah)**

The wealthy Green had no reason to like the North; a good deal of his business depended on the success of the Confederacy, and he had even been arrested and detained three years before while returning from business in Canada, suspected of being a Southern spy. But on this day he offered General Sherman his house as headquarters. The Green House was a stately mansion on the west end of Madison Square, begun in 1850 and completed three years later, though Green continued improvements until 1861. It had cost $93,000 to build, and it was also the first house in Savannah equipped with indoor plumbing. Green was in no hurry to lose his valuables, as he commented later, and he knew that this was his best opportunity to not see his house molested, and the best chance he would have of salvaging his cotton. But he found Sherman reticent.

“At first I felt strongly disinclined to make use of any private dwelling, lest complaints should arise of damage and loss of furniture, and so expressed myself to Mr. Green; but, after riding about the city, and finding his house so spacious, so convenient, with large yard and stabling, I accepted his offer, and occupied that house during our stay in Savannah. He only reserved for himself the use of a couple of rooms above the dining room, and we had all else, and a most excellent house it was in all respects.”

– Memoirs

Within the hour a US treasury agent arrived to claim possession of the city’s captured cotton. Sherman resisted, and after a brief haggle, he and Agent A.G. Brown arrived at a compromise.

“At that interview Mr. Brown, who was a shrewd, clever Yankee, told me that a vessel was on the point of starting for Old Point Comfort, and, if she had good weather off Cape Hatteras, would reach Fortress Monroe by Christmas-day, and he suggested that I might make it the occasion of sending a welcome Christmas gift to the President, Mr. Lincoln, who peculiarly enjoyed such pleasantry. I accordingly sat down and wrote on a slip of paper, to be left at the telegraph-office at Fortress Monroe for transmission. . . ”

– Memoirs

The message he wrote that day was published in numerous newspapers and became one of the most famous of the war. It read simply:

“To his Excellency, President Lincoln. Dear Sir: I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns, and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton.”

Lincoln received the message on Christmas Eve, and was much moved. He responded on the 28th, “Many, many thanks. . . ”

Charles Green lost his cotton, as did everyone else that day. The estimate was actually conservative; the total tally of cotton accounted for more than 38,000 bales.

Immediately, requests from prominent Confederate commanders came to Sherman, asking him for protection of their families in Savannah; these requests amused Sherman, who thought it strange that soldiers who had denounced him the week before as a barbarian would now place their families’ welfare in his hands. Among those to show up on Sherman’s doorstep asking for protection was Noble Hardee, whose brother had commanded the Confederate evacuation of the city just days before.

Many of the city’s houses were requisitioned for the use of officers, and several families devoted to the Confederate cause suddenly had Union boarders living in their front parlors. The Cohen House, for example, was a large property on the northwest Trust Lot on Lafayette Square.

“Capt Dunbar on Kilpatrick[’s] Staff… again came for Quarters and as Father was out I was obliged to receive him but did so standing up so that he could have no excuse for remaining any longer than his business required him to do. I told him he could probably have our front parlor but as my father was out could not give him a positive answer; in a couple of hours he returned and asked to see me again. I went down to him and he told me the order had been countermanded and he should not require the room. I told him I was glad… when he remarked that he should call again as he wished to be personally acquainted with my Father. I gave him no answer but opened the front door for him and he walked out like a well bred dog.”

– Fanny Cohen, December 24, 1864

Sherman hoped to be off again before long, but a swollen river and visits by dignitaries would delay their departure for another month. In the meantime, it was decided that life should continue as normal as possible in Savannah. General John W. Geary became the town’s military governor during the occupation; Geary had already proven his civic chops as mayor of San Francisco and governor of Kansas in pre-war days. He offered the city a sense of calm and order. He was even later commended by unanimous resolution of a civilian committee for his “urbanity as a gentleman and his uniform kindness to our citizens.”

Though now an occupied town, it was clear that businesses would remain open and newspapers would continue to print… simply under new management. The hometown Savannah Republican resumed print on December 29, after a ten-day hiatus now a radical Unionist newspaper, under the management of John Hayes, the New York Tribune’s war correspondent. Just four days after the army’s arrival churches which had preached to Confederate soldiers the week before now held Christmas day services for the Union. There was some discussion over the fact that some services did not offer prayers for President Lincoln. According to the January 6 Republican, when one Episcopal divine asked Sherman if it would still be acceptable to pray for Jefferson Davis during church services the general agreed it should be so. “Pray for Jeff Davis?” the paper quoted him as replying. “Why certainly! You should pray for him every day, for Jeff Davis and the devil need praying for very much.”

While most facets of everyday Savannah life would continue as before, one in particular could not. In the space of just two weeks, a tradition which as lasted for generations would disappear into smoke on Wright Square.

– Savannah Republican, January 6, 1865

With that one small remark hidden away in the Republican, the slave tables and stands around the court house which had hosted the Sherriff’s Sales the first Tuesday of each month for 75 years were consigned to ash.

The health of the army was excellent. One week after the occupation began the Republican boasted that there had been only twelve deaths in the 60,000 man army. “A majority of them,” the paper reported, “were victims of that fatal camp disease, Chronic Diarrhoea.” During the six week occupation Sherman and his officers had gone to great lengths to keep his army focused and out of trouble, and trouble was easily found. As one Union soldier by the name of “Jake” remarked, “There is the most hoars here that I saw in my life, both black and white. I thought Washington had enough, but this beats that.” By the late 1850s there were nine large brothels operating out of the western suburbs of Yamacraw. Nor was the professional class confined to Yamacraw; one of the more infamous spots of ill repute was located on Abercorn Street, near Taylor, in the Calhoun Square area. So notorious were the happenings there that the January 6, 1865 Republican felt compelled to scold the patrons of this particular “den of infamy” under the headline, “More About Amusements.”

“Day and night this disgusting exhibition takes place, intruded upon the gaze of every passerby, and what is more mortifying Shoulder Straps forget their dignity and mingle in the vulgar crowd. The frequenters of this great public thoroughfare need no further explanation of the kind of evil to which we allude. It is a public disgrace[,] a serious nuisance and ought to be abated at once.”

To keep the troops out of trouble, spirited reviews and drills were held almost daily; even grand military parades were staged through town. While these spectacles were well attended by the city’s communities of color, most of its white residents remained behind locked doors. During the first such parade, however, there were at least two young spectators eyeing the proceedings.

“Every one’s shutters were tightly closed. Nelly and Daisy however, stood on chairs looking out of the parlor windows through the blinds, and watched the troops marching past.

“Every little while one would exclaim, ‘Oh, Mama, is that ‘Old Sherman’?’ and I would answer, ‘I’m sure I don’t know–I never saw old Sherman.’ After repeated questions, always receiving the same reply, they gave up the attempt to locate him; and presently their attention was attracted by the music of the 2d Wisconsin band, which passed playing a very familiar air.

“‘Why!’ suddenly exclaimed Nelly, in indignant astonishment ‘Just listen Mama to that Yankee band–playing ‘When This Cruel War is Over’!’

“’Yes’ –echoed Daisy from her chair at the other window–turning around and flinging out both hands in a gesture of intense indignation–’Just hear them, a playing ‘When This Cruel War is Over’, and they’re doing it themselves, all the time!’”

– Eleanor Kinzie Gordon

Eleanor Kinzie had married William Washington Gordon II on December 21, 1857, but Savannah was not her native environment. Born in 1835, she had been raised in Chicago; hers was one of the founding families of that city, and this Yankee pedigree occasionally came back to haunt her. Upon returning to Savannah on one occasion in 1862 she found their home at Bull and South Broad Street vandalized. “A charming specimen of the refinement of Savannah residents,” she remarked. While it was true that several members of her family fought for the Union, including an uncle at the rank of general, her husband fought in the Confederate cavalry under Joseph Wheeler. She even carried a concealed weapon upon her first venture out into the occupied city, wary of any Yankee “sass.”

Sherman paid a visit to the Gordon home shortly thereafter. Tragedy had struck him during his stay in Savannah as word reached him of the death of his young son Charles, whom he had never even seen. Grief stricken, he found solace in the two Gordon daughters, Nelly, 6, and Daisy, 4. And he wasn’t the only one.

“I was seated by the fire, while the two girls played together. Suddenly the parlor door was flung open, and the maid announced ‘General Sherman.’

“To say I was surprised, is to put it mildly – but I welcomed him and then noticed that the children had retreated behind me. I took hold of Nelly and drew her forward, saying, ‘General here is the girl who was very anxious to see Old Sherman the day of the parade.’

“‘I declare’ exclaimed Nelly, in tremulous tones – ‘I never said Old Sherman. It was Daisy.’

“‘Well, you said it too Nelly’ retorted Daisy equally alarmed. – ‘You did say Old Sherman!’

“The general roared with laughter. ‘Why of course you never said ‘Old Sherman’ he continued – ‘because you and I used to play together when I was a little boy, and now we are going to sit right down and talk it all over.’ With Daisy on his knee and arm around Nelly, he kept them in shouts of laughter till long past their bed time, and when the nurse came for them I had to work to make them go.

“As for the General, he fully enjoyed the home firesides, and the children, and I was truly glad of the visit and the home letters he had been good enough [to] bring around to me in person.

“He told me amusing anecdotes – and gave me an interesting account of one or two ‘close calls’ he had of being captured on his march to Savannah.

“Genl. O. O. Howard’s chief of staff Genl. Strong (Willie Strong) was an intimate friend and playfellow of my brothers (John and Arthur).

“As soon as possible after the occupation of Savannah he came to see me, anxious to know whether he could be any service to me or mine. There was nothing in which he could serve me – but I was glad to see him and talk over old times. He one day begged me to let him bring Genl. Howard to call at some hour when he could seen the children as the General had four little girls of his own whom he had not seen for many months. I consented and one late afternoon Genl Strong called with his chief.

“The children at once made friends – and Genl. Howard took Daisy on his knee. Instantly she noticed he had lost an arm. ‘Oh!’ she cried, ‘You have only got one arm!’

“‘Yes, little girl’ he answered. ‘Are you not sorry for me?’

“‘Yes indeed,’ said Daisy. ‘What happened to your arm?’

“’It was shot off in battle’ said the General.

“’Oh, did the Yankees shoot it off?’ asked Daisy.

“‘No, my dear’ replied the general. ‘The rebels shot it off.’

“’Did they!’ exclaimed Daisy – ‘Well, I shouldn’t wonder if my Papa did it,’ she continued in satisfied tones, – ‘He has shot lots of Yankees!’ ”

– Nelly Kinzie Gordon

With the arrival of the New Year, festivities livened the city, and the restless soldiers enjoyed what frolicking they could get away with.

“The night previous the Boys kept up a Continual Crack of musketry which had it been Any other day would have been sufficient to get every Regt. out under Arms to Resist Attack. Sky Rockets were greatly plentiful new-years night, but we had Hard Tack and meat for Breakfast and meat & Hard Tack for dinner [and] the Same for a Change for Supper.”

– Pvt. Charlie Albertson, 15 Corps, January 4, 1865

Private Albertson was impressed by the town, he was hoping Sherman would let them remain until spring. “We have Shanties Built And I trust he will let us enjoy them a Short time.” But not everyone enjoyed the sight of the shanties. Fanny Cohen, venturing from her home on Lafayette Square, was appalled to find the streets and squares filled with the shanty towns of the Union Army; so many of these impromptu houses, said Miss Cohen, “that I scarcely recognized the streets.” Almost overnight these huts had sprung up, entire miniature neighborhoods, divided into subdivisions by regiment and company. The first of these to go up had been in Monterey Square, as factions from the 20^th Corps stripped the support beams of the house then being built for Confederate general Hugh Mercer. By the next week there was a shortage of available wood, and by January 19 the Republican, lamenting a minor fire on Congress Lane, remarked that there was such a scarcity of building materials that “it will be very difficult to repair dwellings which may be injured by fire.”

On January 11, 1865 Edwin Stanton, the US Secretary of War, arrived in Savannah. Sherman later recalled that Stanton was impressed by the soldiers’ shanty camps.

“I walked with him through the city, especially the bivouacs of the several regiments that occupied the several squares, and he seemed particularly pleased at the ingenuity of the men in constructing their temporary huts. Four of the ‘dog-tents’… buttoned together, served for a roof, and the sides were made of clapboards, or rough boards brought from demolished houses or fences. I remember his marked admiration for the hut of a soldier who had made his door out of a handsome parlor mirror, the glass gone and its gilt frame serving for his door.”

– Memoirs

Many of the soldiers enjoyed the city, spending their free time sightseeing.

“The weather here is very pleasant for winter[;] have had Scarcely any Cold weather, and but little rain… I was in the City… to see the monument of Gen Pulaski who was killed fighting for American Liberty the 9^th of Oct. 1779 at the Siege of Savannah Georgia. It is the prettiest piece of work of the kind I have seen. [It] is made of marble and must have cost a large Sum of money.”

– Charlie Albertson, January 4, 1865

One particular fascination of the troops, however, remained the clock in the City Exchange tower, which due to a long-unrepaired mechanical glitch, rung out invariably fifteen minutes before the hour, inspiring the Republican to remark:

“The gallant veterans who are now temporarily sojourning in our midst denounce the imposition, for [the] North such a simple trouble would not exist one hour, because energy and enterprise could not tolerate it. Let us have the pleasure… of listening to the tones… at the hour and moment indicated by the hands, and may action be perfected between the hands, dial and bell which shall give us correct time.”

Edwin Stanton’s visit to Savannah went deeper than a visit for morale. Sherman remarked that “the negro question was beginning to loom up among the political eventualities of the day, and many foresaw that not only would the slaves secure their freedom, but that they would also have votes. I did not dream of such a result then, but knew that slavery, as such, was dead forever.” (Memoirs, p. 245) Stanton was eager to arrange a meeting with the prominent leaders of Savannah’s African-American community, to discern from them, not only what they understood of recent events, but also where they saw their constituents in a free society. That hastily arranged meeting was held the next day, on January 12, on the second level of the house of Charles Green. Twenty men, mostly Baptist and Methodist ministers, attended the meeting. The delegation elected Garrison Frazier, a minister of the Second African Baptist Church, their spokesperson. The Q&A session was recorded within Sherman’s Memoirs.

“Question. ‘State what you understand by slavery, and the freedom that was to be given by the President’s proclamation?’

“Answer. ‘Slavery is receiving by irresistible power the work of another man, and not by his consent. The freedom, as I understand it, promised by the proclamation, is taking us from under the yoke of bondage and placing us where we can reap the fruit of our own labor, and take care of ourselves and assist the Government in maintaining our freedom.’”

It was this gathering, in part, that would form the basis for Field Order 15, issued just four days later.

“During Mr. Stanton’s stay in Savannah we discussed this negro question very fully; he asked me to draft an order on the subject, in accordance with my own views, that would meet the pressing necessities of the case, and I did so. We went over this order, No. 15, of January 16, 1865, very carefully. The secretary made some verbal modifications, when it was approved by him in all its details, I published it, and it went into operation at once.”

– William T. Sherman, Memoirs, p. 249-50

On February 2, 1865 a crowded house was introduced to Special Field Order 15 at the Second African Baptist Church, on Greene Square. “The pews in the body of the house were filled…. Seats were placed in the aisles and every seat in the house was occupied and there was still a crowd at the door anxious to obtain an entrance.” (Savannah Daily Herald, Feb. 5, 1865) The choir sang America and General Rufus Saxton explained the political reality—they were free.

Sherman finally departed Savannah on January 21, “anxious to get into the pine-woods again, free from the importunities of rebel women asking for protection.” He had found city life, he said, “dull and tame.” He missed the one bit of excitement – a fire on the west side of town on January 27, destroying the Confederate arsenal at Broughton and West Broad, launching artillery in every direction. It was as though Granite Hall, the Confederate arms storehouse, had declared war on the city.

“Soon a single shell exploded, then another and another followed, and very soon, as the flames heated these destructive projectiles they blew up in rapid succession, reminding the old soldiers within hearing of some of the most terrific bombardments of the war. These explosions commenced about 12 o’clock and continued for the space of three hours, scattering the combustable materials of which they were composed, in every direction, setting new fires wherever the contents came in contact with combustable material, and killing and wounding several persons, who incautiously exposed themselves within the range of the flying fragments.”

– Savannah Republican, January 29, 1865

One shell landed as far away as the Pulaski House Hotel on Johnson Square. Another struck the water tower in Franklin Square, showering water into the square from a height of nearly 80 feet, the waterfall glistening against the nearby fire light. As the fire proceeded to consume parts of the Yamacraw district and the shells burst about, many of the ex-slaves panicked, concerned the Confederates had returned to destroy the city. The army was quickly mobilized to put out the fire… in spite of all the lore and bad press that would follow Sherman’s army in the generations that would follow, here in Savannah at least, is one very clear historical example of Sherman’s army putting OUT a fire.

Sherman’s last Corps left the city on February 1. He left behind a small garrison, his stated intention as early as December 24; there had never been any question as to burning the city. There was no strategic value in destroying Savannah. On the contrary, Sherman’s men much improved the condition of the city during the occupation. General John Geary bragged that in their month-and-a-half stay his men had whitewashed some 2200 trees in the city. Sherman later boasted that he had given the city the best government it had ever had under Geary. Such is the stark contrast of war—Atlanta was destroyed, Charleston was devastated and Columbia was burned, but Savannah got a fresh coat of paint and had the moss cleared from the buildings. Savannah remained—physically, at least—one of the most intact major urban centers in the South following the devastation of the Civil War.

By December of 1865 advertisers were lampooning the by-now familiar General Orders found within Savannah newspapers… this one from “Major-General Santa Claus”

Still… not everyone was pleased. “We are now,” Achille deCaradeuc remarked, only “a conquered province of New England.”

They say no one wants to be the last to die for a lost cause, but in this case the irony is somehow fitting. The last Savannahian to die in Civil War combat was a forty year-old man killed defending Columbus, Georgia, on April 16, 1865… Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar, the infamous rogue and wealthy slave trader on Drayton Street, erstwhile owner of the Wanderer, the last documented slave ship to unload its human cargo on Georgia soil.

Now with freedom came the need for education for its African-American community, and a whole industry, underground before 1865, now blossomed like a garden… which leads to our next post.

From Slave House to School House: Rediscovering the Bryan Free School

Featured

All research and commentary by Jefferson Hall

The unlikely story of a slave mart in the middle of town, exchanging whips and chains for pencils and paper… and hope

For years, history has celebrated the accomplishments of the West Broad Street School and the Beach Institute as early centers of African-American education in the years following the Civil War. Considered objectively, however, these schools were relatively late-comers to the scene. The West Broad Street School opened in 1878, and by the time the Beach Institute opened in 1867 it was replacing no fewer than half a dozen schools already existing within Savannah’s African-American community. In March of 1866, the Savannah superintendent of Freedmen’s Schools made reference to a total of six schools:

So while the Beach Institute today garners much-deserved attention, this overlooks the fact that there was an entire contingent of schools that existed on the streets of Savannah in the era between 1865 and 1867. Lost in the shuffle, forgotten, confused or ignored is the epicenter, the ground zero; the first school opened by the Savannah Educational Association in the waning days of the Civil War… the Bryan Free School. Housed within a federally-seized slave mart property, the school was opened in early 1865, predating the Beach Institute by a full two years. Today this building at 21 Barnard Street is just another building within City Market. But the legacy it carries is rich… and virtually unrecognized.

The Reverend James D. Lynch (1839-1872) was a northern Black missionary who came to Savannah in the days following the entry of Sherman’s army into the city. On January 4, 1865, shortly after his arrival, he wrote a letter to The National Freedman, discussing wide-ranging issues from the fact that there had not yet been an emancipation announcement (which would be rectified in part twelve days later with Field Order #15) to imploring funds for the great task ahead of establishing an educational community.

“My Dear Sir,

I have been here for some days. The colored people did not seem to realize that they were free, as their status was not announced by any proclamation….

There are a great many very intelligent colored persons in Savannah. We have been holding large meetings of the colored citizens. The interest evoked has been great, and the promise of good being done is bright.

We have secured from the Government the use of three large buildings.

1. ‘A. Bryant’s Negro Mart’ (thus reads the sign over the door). It is a large three-story brick building. In this place slaves had been bought and sold for many years. We have found many ‘gems’ such as handcuffs, whips and staples for tying, etc. Bills of sales of slaves by the hundreds all giving a faithful description of the hellish business. This we are going to use for school purposes.

2. The Stiles house on Farm Street, formerly used as a rebel hospital, we have also secured for school purposes.

3. A large three-story brick building on the lot adjoining for a hospital for freedmen.

We have organized an Association called the Savannah Educational Association, composed of the pastors and members of the colored churches. There are five very large colored churches in this city, four of them will seat one thousand persons each. Three have fine organs. That the colored people built such churches is astonishing. Hundreds of the colored people are joining the Association as honorary members.”

– James Lynch to The National Freedman, January 4, 1865

The above marked the beginning of the Savannah Educational Association, Black Savannah’s homegrown attempt to educate Black Savannah. As indicated above, the SEA made use of the Stiles house, formerly at Farm (now Fahm) and Joachim (now West Bay), as the Oglethorpe Free School, the second school organized by the SEA. This building is lost to us today, long gone beneath the pavement of West Bay Street. Similarly, the Hospital School is gone as well; any trace of the structure likely removed when the hospital was rebuilt in 1877.

But the Savannah Educational Association’s first school building still stands today.

“The Bryan School House – This large and commodious building, corner of St. Julian and Barnard streets, west of the market, at the present time used as a school house for the colored citizens of Savannah, has a very interesting history connected within its walls. It was built about fifteen years since by John S. Montmollin, a trader in slaves. His death occurred about seven years ago by the explosion of the boiler of the steamer John G. Lawton, his head and upper extremities lodging in the mud; in this condition he was found, and brought to this city and buried. His property then fell into the possession of Alexander Bryan, who until a few days prior to the occupation of Savannah by the Federals used the premises as a jail and office for the barter and sale of slaves.”

– Savannah Daily Herald, March 20, 1865

In today’s City Market concourse two buildings adjoin one another… both of which had been built as slave brokerages. On the northern side, facing Bryan and Barnard at 19 Barnard Street, is a structure built for David R. Dillon in 1855. Its southern neighbor, facing St. Julian and Barnard at 21 Barnard, seems to have been completed the following year, in 1856, for John S. Montmollin. The Tax Digest (GHS coll. #5600CT-70) of 1856 valued the tax assessment of Montmollin’s lot at $4500, but by 1857, his “1/8 Lot I & Impro., Decker Ward” was valued at $11,500. Since tax digests reflect the value of the year preceding, this suggests that the building was erected between 1855 and 1856. (Note: “Impro.” means whatever recent “improvements” have been made to the property in question.)

1857 Tax digest for Montmollin: “1/8 Lot I + Impro. Decker Ward 11,500”

Both properties are found within the “Morrison Book.”

Mary Morrison, *Historic Savannah Survey of Significant Buildings*, 1979, p. 24

The former slave brokerages of Barnard Street as they appear today

Montmollin and the back story of 21 Barnard

In June of 1852 two giants merged. George Wylly and John Montmollin entered into a partnership which lasted for the next four years, as Wylly & Montmollin came to dominate Savannah’s commercial landscape. As “commission brokers,” they did not engage exclusively in the slave trade; commission brokers trafficked in real estate, stocks and commodities—in short, the buying and selling of any kind of properties. In perusing the newspaper ads of the 1850s, some commission brokers evidently chose not to engage in the selling of slaves… others were not so discerning. Slave trading in the 1850s could represent a lucrative portion of any commission broker’s business. The leased office of Wylly & Montmollin was listed at the “corner of Bay Lane and Bull st, rear of the post office;” this would suggest offices at the back of the Custom House, facing the lane. Their advertisements in the Morning News are found as a daily column, where available real estate and slaves were interchangeably listed without discrimination.

Following the dissolution of Wylly & Montmollin on March 1, 1856 Montmollin moved to an office on “Bull St. opposite Pulaski House” and opened a brand new enormous storehouse on Decker Ward’s Trust Lot “I,” (today’s 21 Barnard Street, pictured above) where he advertised corn, wheat and slaves “at Montmollin’s Building, west side of Market Square.” The Tax Digests reveal Montmollin grossed nearly $70,000 in commissions in 1856 alone. Montmollin’s enterprise was huge, and he certainly did not shy away from slave sales, which constituted a considerable portion of his business.

Savannah Daily Republican, October, 1856

These advertisements appeared daily in the Savannah Daily Republican, the October 1 (listing 23 individuals) ad giving way to the October 10 (with 18), which was replaced by the October 22 (26 persons). Sixty-seven people were advertised for sale inside a span of four weeks.

“The building is in condition and order for the safe keeping of negroes,” Alexander Bryan would later advertise of this Montmollin property. This and the fact that the building was sometimes referred to as a “jail,” indicates that it was used as a public lockup for slaves. The basement level served as a short-term below-grade holding pen, more commonly referred to as a “jail.” In addition, the building appears to have had a private auction room or rooms—“Rooms large and pleasant,” Bryan boasted. Montmollin was the agent of sale; individuals that were listed on the market could have been kept on premises within the facility, they might have resided with their former owners until a sale was concluded, they could have been kept at Montmollin’s South Carolina plantation fourteen miles up the Savannah river, or they could have been interned at William Wright’s large slave yard and public lockup, which was just two blocks away on Bryan Street. These commercial slave yards were public venues accommodating short-term (or even long-term) holding. Though the analogy is crude, these lockups were not unlike the public stables around town, where for a fee one could keep one’s property… in this case, a person or persons.

Montmollin blows up, Bryan enters

Long a proponent of the reopening of the Atlantic slave trade; in 1858 John Montmollin took an active role toward achieving this goal. As a financial backer of the racing yacht-turned-slave-ship known as the Wanderer, Montmollin was a partner in the illegal trafficking of African men and women to Georgia soil in December, 1858. He may have even kept a contingent of these trafficked individuals at his plantation, though a federal jury ultimately declined to indict him. Six months later, in June of 1859, the 51 year-old Montmollin came to a grizzly end, killed in a boiler explosion on the river, as the Daily Herald later remarked without sentiment, “his head and upper extremities lodging in the mud.”

Following Montmollin’s death, his business was taken over—and the building leased—by Alexander Bryan, who placed a sign over the doorway reading “A. Bryan’s Negro Mart”. The property was advertised frequently in the Savannah Morning News and listed as Alexander Bryan’s place of business in the 1860 City Directory.

For eight years, and under two proprietors, this property at 21 Barnard endured as an office of slave sale. Then, in 1864, with the arrival of Sherman’s army, the Federal government seized the building and gave it to Savannah’s African-American community. They, in turn, created from it in early 1865 Savannah’s very first legal and legitimate Black school, the Bryan Free School. From slave house to school house, this building stands as a testament to the very best—and the very worst—of the African-American experience in Savannah.

Looking down through the sidewalk grate to the sub-level

“For the advancement and elevation of colored children”

The Bryan Free School had as many as 450 students. James Porter became the principal of the school; while he later went on to helm the West Broad Street School and would soon be elected to the Georgia State Legislature, in early 1865 the Bryan Free School represented a high point for him, for the SEA and for Savannah’s African-American community. Porter had come to Savannah in 1856 and risen quickly to become one of the Savannah’s most prominent figures within the freedmen community. As Charles Hoskins noted:

“Porter soon established yet another school for blacks and used his trade as a tailor to cover up his school activities. Frank Bynes reported that Porter’s tailor shop was located at 177 [Bryan] Street. According to Professor Morse, Porter’s school ‘had a trap door where, when about to be surprised or apprehended, his pupils might save themselves.’”

– Charles Lwanga Hoskins, Yet With a Steady Beat, 2001, p.164

It is interesting to note the address that Frank Bynes suggested, if correct, is today’s 219 West Bryan, in the 1855 building that adjoins the slave brokerage of David Dillon and is only feet away from the Montmollin/Bryan property. Intent on “second-sourcing” this claim I perused the City Directories between 1858-1860, but as African-Americans were not typically listed in the time period, I was unable to find confirmation of Porter’s tailor shop location… but I found nothing to dispute the claim either. Ironically, Porter’s Antebellum school could have been operating one wall away from two slave brokerages.

On July 7, 1865, the Savannah Republican recorded a public “open house” offered by the school, attended by the newspaper and dignitaries. The Republican marveled over the property’s transition from a “hall which not many months since resounded with the cries of the slave dealer as the auctioneer cried down men, women and children, to the highest bidder.”

In addition to housing a school, the building also acted as a community center, regularly hosting large meetings and concerts.

In April 2024 the City of Savannah and the Georgia Historical Society unveiled a marker at the corner of Barnard and St. Julian, recognizing the history of the building.

Marker unveiling, April 10, 2024. Speakers included Savannah Mayor Van Johnson, Lillian Grant-Baptiste & GHS President Todd Groce

The old Montmollin warehouse at 21 Barnard today shows little obvious evidence of its complicated story, but in 1865 this was one of the most important buildings in Savannah. It marked an end; it marked a beginning. It was a transition, and all that came after owed something to what began there. Once a slave brokerage, by 1865 it had been turned from a site of enslavement into a place of enlightenment.

“The building, it is certain, will never again be used for a slave trader’s office, but it should be kept for the purpose of educating the black race, and not to sell them.”

– Savannah Daily Herald, March 20, 1865

Savannah’s S lave Brokerages of the 1850s

Correcting Bad History: Sherman and the Bells of St. John’s

Featured

All research and commentary by Jefferson Hall

Popular lore: Sherman, annoyed by the constant ringing of St. John’s bells, ordered the bells removed to be melted into armament.

The reality: Kinda the opposite… the bells were actually incapable of being rung, and the Union officials wondered aloud if they’d been melted down… by Confederates.

st. john's episcopal savannah small.jpg — St. John’s Episcopal Church, Madison Square

So here’s another unlikely tale that has led numerous tour guides to be dashed against the rocks of credulity by its siren song. The bells hanging in the steeple of St. John’s Episcopal Church were a gift presented to its congregation in November of 1854 by Massachusetts-native Joseph Story Fay (1812-1897), who lived in Savannah between 1838 and 1861. In the era following the Civil War these bells would come to feature in a spurious myth involving Sherman and the need for Northern armament.

According to the tale Sherman—annoyed at the commotion the bells caused in this church neighboring his headquarters—ordered them taken down and sent north to be melted into Union cannon. As the story goes, the bells were saved, either by an impassioned plea by several Savannah women or a letter written by Fay himself to President Lincoln.

This has always struck me as a particularly silly story, and yet for years it has persisted, despite no evidence to suggest it. Nowhere does the incident described appear in Sherman’s (otherwise fairly detailed) Memoirs, nor does any such “Fay letter” exist within the prodigious volumes of the War of the Rebellion compendium series. Simply, if there were any letter to or from the president, it would have been preserved for the record. Hidden away in a corner of the Union-run Savannah Republican of January 19, 1865 is a small article about the bells, proving conclusively that the longtime myth is entirely fiction. These bells—far from being a nuisance—were actually entirely SILENT during Sherman’s stay.

In an interesting inverse of the legend, the Union forces “chiming in” within the below commentary suspected the bells in question had been melted down for Confederate armament….

From the Savannah Republican, January 19, 1865

“St. John’s Church, (Episcopal,) in this city, was presented with a fine set of chiming bells upon its completion, by Mr. Joseph S. Fay, a liberal Boston merchant, who resided several years in this city. Since the outbreak of this rebellion these bells have ceased to chime out their merry peals. What is the cause of this silence? Have these bells, the generous gift of a loyal man, been surreptitiously purloined from their proud positions and cast into rebel cannon, used to deal death and destruction upon the hosts who struggle to maintain the true principles of the donor? We hope not for the honor of our city, for it would be a lasting disgrace, a burning shame, that time could not efface. Let us hear from those bells:

“Those bells, those bells,

Those evening bells;

How many a tale of sadness tells;

Of youth and home, and that sweet time

When last I heard their soothing chime!”

“We want to hear these bells, the gift of a loyal man, ring out a loyal peal for our national victories.”

In short, it appears unlikely that the Union troops removed the bells because they were under the impression that the bells weren’t even there. Not until March did the issue reappear in the newspapers, when it was revealed to the Union editors that the bowls of the church bells were incorrectly hung and had not been rung for ages due to the racket they caused. So to be clear, not only did the bells NOT ring during Sherman’s time in Savannah… frankly, they were INCAPABLE of being rung.

The bells were rehung correctly in time to ring out for July 4 observances.

Sherman, in the meantime, had left Savannah back on January 22, 1865… never having heard a single chime.