Ashley's Sack

Last updated
Ashley's Sack
Ashley's Sack (Slave Sack c. mid-19th century).jpg
Courtesy Middleton Place Foundation
MaterialCotton, thread
Size29+1116 × 15+34 inches
75 × 40 cm
Created1850s; embroidering added 1921
Discovered Nashville, Tennessee
Present locationCharleston, S.C. [1]

Ashley's Sack is a mid-1800s cloth sack featuring an embroidered text that recounts the slave sale of a nine-year-old girl named Ashley and the parting gift of the sack by her mother, Rose. Rose filled the sack with a dress, braid of her hair, pecans, and "my love always". The gift was likely passed down to Ashley's granddaughter, Ruth (Jones) Middleton, who embroidered their story on to the sack in 1921. [2] [3]

Contents

Ashley's Sack was given to Middleton Place, in Dorchester County, South Carolina, one of the nation's preeminent slavery-era plantation sites. While still owned by Middleton Place, the sack was on long-term loan to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. until 2021 when it returned to Middleton Place. According to Tracey Todd, vice president of the Middleton Place Foundation, the sack is a rare material artifact from a period in United States history when human slavery was legal. Todd stated: "The sack allows us to relate to the enslaved people and feel the same pain today — if you have lost a child or been separated from a parent — that Rose and Ashley felt ... Ashley's Sack is a portal to understanding more about our shared history." [4] [5]

History

Ashley's Sack was purchased for $20 at a flea market in Nashville in the early 2000s. Alarmed by the embroidered story of a slave sale separating a mother and her daughter, the woman who purchased the sack did an Internet search for "slavery" and "Middleton" and then gifted the sack to Middleton Place. [6]

Robert Martin House, Charleston, South Carolina; Martin was a 19th-century slaveowner who owned Ashley and Rose. Ashley may have been sold away after his death. Robert Martin House, 16 Charlotte Street, Charleston (Charleston County, South Carolina).jpg
Robert Martin House, Charleston, South Carolina; Martin was a 19th-century slaveowner who owned Ashley and Rose. Ashley may have been sold away after his death.

On display from 2009 to 2013 at Middleton Place, the emotionally-charged artifact evoked human suffering and endurance. During this period, the identities of Rose, Ashley, and Ruth were unknown. It was viewed by thousands of museum visitors, including Central Washington University sociocultural anthropologist and museum-studies professor Mark Auslander, who has since traced the history of the sack to identify Ashley, her mother Rose, and the author of the needlepoint, Ruth. [6] [7] In the research article he published in 2016, Auslander uses census reports, wills, newspaper announcements of court decrees, and inventory records to reconstruct their history. The historical chains of remaining evidence suggest that Ashley and her mother Rose were owned by a wealthy Charleston merchant and planter, Robert Martin (c. 1790–1852), who was worth over $300,000 at his death in December 1852 (equivalent to $10,550,000in 2022). After his death, evidence suggests Ashley was sold away from her mother in order to raise money for his heirs. [8]

Auslander's archival work retraces the life of Ruth. He posits Ruth Middleton was born Ruth Jones in Columbia, South Carolina, around 1903. Her parents, Austin and Rosa Jones, were servants at the University of South Carolina. Ruth made her way to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and married Arthur Middleton, who was born around 1899 and also from South Carolina. However, Ruth and her husband are never listed as having lived together. She had a daughter, Dorothy Helen, born in Philadelphia in 1919. In 1921, when Ashley's Sack was embroidered, Ruth would probably have been a single mother to a young daughter. Newspaper reports and census records suggest that throughout her life, Ruth worked in affluent households in Philadelphia. By 1928, she was well known in Philadelphia's African-American high society, gaining regular mention in the "Smart Set" and "High Society" pages of The Philadelphia Tribune , the leading African-American newspaper. Auslander writes that Ruth "host[ed] bridge and cocktail parties and [wore] elegant couture". Her daughter, Dorothy Helen, was also known for her fashion sense and authored several "Smart Set" columns. [9]

Ruth died in January 1942 of tuberculosis. Dorothy Helen died in 1988. [9]

Embroidery details

My great grandmother Rose
mother of Ashley gave her this sack when
she was sold at age 9 in South Carolina
it held a tattered dress 3 handfulls of
pecans a braid of Roses hair. Told her
It be filled with my Love always
she never saw her again
Ashley is my grandmother

Ruth Middleton, 1921

Timeline

Professor Mark Auslander's research yields the following timeline (most dates are approximate). [9]

Impact

Heather Andrea Williams describes the sack in the epilogue of her book Help Me to Find My People as a testimony to inter-generational loss and survival. [10] Professor Mark Auslander emphasizes the importance of the sack, and the historical reconstruction of the lives of Ashley, Rose, and Ruth, as a conduit to understanding the endurance of family lineal memory "in the face of terrible fragmentation of family solidarity caused by the domestic slave trade". [9]

"It is an emotional object", said Mary Elliot, museum specialist with the Smithsonian, who worked on the Slavery and Freedom exhibit at the National Museum of African American History and Culture under curator Nancy Bercaw. "This piece is very important to telling that human story", Elliot said. [3]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hoodoo (spirituality)</span> Spiritual practices, traditions and beliefs

Hoodoo is a set of spiritual practices, traditions, and beliefs that were created by enslaved African Americans in the Southern United States from various traditional African spiritualities and elements of indigenous botanical knowledge. Practitioners of Hoodoo are called rootworkers, conjure doctors, conjure men or conjure women, and root doctors. Regional synonyms for Hoodoo include rootwork and conjure. As a syncretic spiritual system, it also incorporates beliefs from Islam brought over by enslaved West African Muslims, and Spiritualism. Scholars define Hoodoo as a folk religion. It is a syncretic religion between two or more cultural religions, in this case being African indigenous spirituality and Abrahamic religion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slavery in the colonial history of the United States</span> Slavery in colonies that became the United States

Slavery in the colonial history of the United States refers to the institution of slavery as it existed in the European colonies which eventually became part of the United States. In these colonies, slavery developed due to a combination of factors, primarily the labour demands for establishing and maintaining European colonies, which had resulted in the Atlantic slave trade. Slavery existed in every European colony in the Americas during the early modern period, and both Africans and indigenous peoples were victims of enslavement by European colonizers during the era.

Eliza Pinckney transformed agriculture in colonial South Carolina, where she developed indigo as one of its most important cash crops. Its cultivation and processing as dye produced one-third the total value of the colony's exports before the Revolutionary War. The manager of three plantations, Eliza Pinckney had a major influence on the colonial economy. During the 20th century, Eliza Pinckney was the first woman to be inducted into South Carolina's Business Hall of Fame.

An African American is a citizen or resident of the United States who has origins in any of the black populations of Africa. African American-related topics include:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pierce Butler (American politician)</span> Founding Father of the United States (1744–1822)

Pierce Butler was an Irish-born American politician who was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Born in the Kingdom of Ireland, Butler emigrated to the British North American colonies, where he fought in the American Revolutionary War. After the war, he served as a state legislator and was a member of the Congress of the Confederation. In 1787, he served as a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, where Butler signed the Constitution of the United States; he was also a member of the United States Senate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Moore Grimké</span> American abolitionist

Sarah Moore Grimké was an American abolitionist, widely held to be the mother of the women's suffrage movement. Born and reared in South Carolina to a prominent and wealthy planter family, she moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the 1820s and became a Quaker, as did her younger sister Angelina. The sisters began to speak on the abolitionist lecture circuit, joining a tradition of women who had been speaking in public on political issues since colonial days, including Susanna Wright, Hannah Griffitts, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Anna Dickinson. They recounted their knowledge of slavery firsthand, urged abolition, and also became activists for women's rights.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charlotte Forten Grimké</span> American anti-slavery activist, poet and educator

Charlotte Louise Bridges Grimké was an African American anti-slavery activist, poet, and educator. She grew up in a prominent abolitionist family in Philadelphia. She taught school for years, including during the Civil War, to freedmen in South Carolina. Later in life she married Francis James Grimké, a Presbyterian minister who led a major church in Washington, DC, for decades. He was a nephew of the abolitionist Grimké sisters and was active in civil rights.

<i>Partus sequitur ventrem</i> Former legal doctrine of slavery by birth

Partus sequitur ventrem was a legal doctrine passed in colonial Virginia in 1662 and other English crown colonies in the Americas which defined the legal status of children born there; the doctrine mandated that children of slave mothers would inherit the legal status of their mothers. As such, children of enslaved women would be born into slavery. The legal doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem was derived from Roman civil law, specifically the portions concerning slavery and personal property (chattels), as well as the common law of personal property.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Museum of African American History and Culture</span> Museum in Washington, DC

The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), colloquially known as the Blacksonian, is a Smithsonian Institution museum located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in the United States. It was established in 2003 and opened its permanent home in 2016 with a ceremony led by President Barack Obama.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Magnolia Plantation and Gardens (Charleston, South Carolina)</span> Historic house in South Carolina, United States

Magnolia Plantation and Gardens is a historic house with gardens located on the Ashley River at 3550 Ashley River Road west of Ashley, Charleston County, South Carolina. It is one of the oldest plantations in the South, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Magnolia Plantation is located near Charleston and directly across the Ashley River from North Charleston. The house and gardens are open daily; an admission fee is charged.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Middleton Place</span> United States historic place

Middleton Place is a plantation in Dorchester County, along the banks of the Ashley River west of the Ashley and about 15 miles (24 km) northwest of downtown Charleston, in the U.S. state of South Carolina. Built in several phases during the 18th and 19th centuries, the plantation was the primary residence of several generations of the Middleton family, many of whom played prominent roles in the colonial and antebellum history of South Carolina. The plantation, now a National Historic Landmark District, is used as a museum, and is home to the oldest landscaped gardens in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">West Ashley</span>

West Ashley, or more formally, west of the Ashley, is one of the six distinct areas of the city proper of Charleston, South Carolina. As of July 2022, its estimated population was 83,996. Its name is derived from the fact that the land is west of the Ashley River.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raid on Combahee Ferry</span> Military operation during the American Civil War

The Raid on Combahee Ferry was a military operation during the American Civil War conducted on June 1 and June 2, 1863, by elements of the Union Army along the Combahee River in Beaufort and Colleton counties in the South Carolina Lowcountry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Female slavery in the United States</span> Overview of female slavery in the United States of America

The institution of slavery in North America existed from the earliest years of the colonial history of the United States until 1865 when the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery throughout the United States except as punishment for a crime. It was also abolished among the sovereign Indian tribes in Indian Territory by new peace treaties which the US required after the Civil War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John H. Wheeler</span> American politician, North Carolina

John Hill Wheeler (1806–1882) was an American attorney, politician, historian, planter and slaveowner. He served as North Carolina State Treasurer (1843–1845), and as United States Minister to Nicaragua (1855–1856).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of slavery in Louisiana</span> Regional history of slavery in the USA

Following Robert Cavelier de La Salle establishing the French claim to the territory and the introduction of the name Louisiana, the first settlements in the southernmost portion of Louisiana were developed at present-day Biloxi (1699), Mobile (1702), Natchitoches (1714), and New Orleans (1718). Slavery was then established by European colonists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruth Starr Rose</span> American artist

Ruth Starr Rose (1887–1965) was an American artist. She was a painter, lithographer and serigrapher, and best known for her paintings of African American life in Maryland in the 1930s and 1940s.

Following the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, emancipated African Americans searched for their lost families and placed want ads to reunify with them.

Abolitionist children’s literature includes works written for children by authors committed to the movement to end slavery. It aimed to instill in young readers an understanding of slavery, racial hierarchies, sympathy for the enslaved, and a desire for emancipation. A variety of literary forms were used by abolitionist children’s authors including, short stories, poems, songs, nursery rhymes and dialogues, much of it written by white women. Pamphlets, picture books and periodicals were the primary forms of abolitionist children’s literature, often using Biblical themes to reinforce the wickedness of slavery. Abolitionist children's literature was countered with pro-slavery material aimed at children, which attempting to depict slavery as a noble pursuit, and slaves as stupid and grateful, or evil.

References

  1. 1 2 McGreevy, Nora. "A Simple Cotton Sack Tells an Intergenerational Story of Separation Under Slavery". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2024-02-23.
  2. "Artifacts that will send a chill down your spine". 60 Minutes . CBS News. February 28, 2016. Archived from the original on July 2, 2017. Retrieved January 11, 2017.
  3. 1 2 Cantu, Leslie (December 29, 2015). "'Filled with my love' Slave artifact to be displayed in new Smithsonian museum". The Summerville Journal Scene. Archived from the original on June 11, 2021. Retrieved January 11, 2017.
  4. Bergengruen, Vera (September 23, 2016). "This scrap of cloth is one of the saddest artifacts at new DC museum". The Kansas City Star . Archived from the original on February 20, 2018. Retrieved January 11, 2017.
  5. Goggins, Ben (January 28, 2016). "Looking for Pearls: Ashley's Sack, Davenport dolls give insight into lives of slaves". Savannah Morning News . Archived from the original on February 2, 2017. Retrieved January 31, 2017.
  6. 1 2 Ayer, Tammy (December 14, 2016). "A stitch in time: CWU professor tracks history of embroidered seed sack to people held in slavery on South Carolina plantation" . Yakima Herald-Republic . Archived from the original on June 11, 2021. Retrieved January 11, 2017.
  7. Dawn, Alford (December 6, 2016). "Story Behind Smithsonian "Ashley's Sack" Uncovered by CWU Professor" (Press release). Central Washington University. Archived from the original on June 11, 2021. Retrieved January 11, 2017.
  8. "The Record: Wednesday, Dec 21, Full Show" (audio). KUOW-FM. December 21, 2016. Archived from the original on April 23, 2018. Retrieved February 3, 2017.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Auslander, Mark (November 29, 2016). "Slavery's Traces: In Search of Ashley's Sack". Southern Spaces . doi: 10.18737/M76M44 . Archived from the original on April 14, 2021.
  10. Williams, Heather Andrea (2012). Help me to find my people: The African American search for family lost in slavery. University of North Carolina Press. pp. 196–197. ISBN   9780807835548.

Further reading