Frances Jane Scroggins Brown | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | April 15, 1819 |
| Died | April 16, 1914 (aged 95) |
| Spouse | Thomas Arthur Brown (married 1840/1841) |
| Children | 6, including Hallie Quinn Brown |
Frances Jane Scroggins Brown (15 April 1819 - 16 April 1914) [1] was an African American Underground Railroad station operator. [2] Brown's daughter, Hallie Quinn Brown, co-founded the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). [3]
Frances Scroggins was born into slavery in Winchester County, Virginia, [4] [2] She was freed by one of her grandfathers - a white Revolutionary War officer and plantation owner. [5] Scroggins worked as an indentured servant until her employer moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. [2]
From around 1839, she boarded in the home of James Wilkerson, a freedman who ran a safehouse in the city. [2] During this time, she witnessed enslavers attempting to capture those fleeing slavery, helping to secure their freedom. [2] In one instance, an enslaver attempted to "claim" Scroggins, furious that she had helped an enslaved woman to escape through the Cincinnati network. [2] Known for singing mournful songs by the roadside, Scroggins was called "Crazy Jane". [2]
In about 1840 or1841, she married Thomas Arthur Brown of Frederick County, Maryland, who purchased his freedom in 1843. [4] [2] Thomas Brown worked as a steward on the Mississippi River, and was said to have been the first black express agent in the nation. [6]
The couple settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at a residence called Monongahela House. [2] [7] The Brown house in Pittsburgh became a frequent stop for enslaved people fleeing to Canada on the Underground Railroad. [4] There, aided by a network including freedman physician Martin Robinson Delany and the Reverend Lewis Woodson, they offered food, shelter, and directions onward to safety. [2]
In 1864, because of Frances' poor health, the family moved to Chatham, Ontario, Canada, returning to the US in 1870. [4] The family then settled in Wilberforce, Ohio, where they built Homewood Cottage. [4] [8]
One of the Browns' six children, [9] Hallie Quinn Brown, went on to become a prominent educator and elocutionist, who helped to pioneer African American women's clubs. [10] In biographies of their daughter, the couple are described as having been "learned and passionate about education". [11] Thomas Brown was known as the "walking encyclopedia", while Frances was said to have been very involved with Wilberforce University, where she acted as an unofficial counselor to students. [11] [12]
In Women of Ohio, it was written that:
Mr. and Mrs. Brown exerted a definite influence for good upon the community and “Ma” Brown, as she was affectionately called, lived serenely and did her alms quietly to the ripe age of ninety-five years. [13]
In Front Line of Freedom, Keith P. Griffler numbered Frances Scroggins Brown as "among America’s forgotten children of the revolution", part of "the front line of the struggle against American slavery." [7]
In 2023, Frances Scroggins Brown was included in The Day-Breakers, by poet Michael Fraser, which imagines the lives of Black soldiers who fought for the Union during the American Civil War. [14] [15]
The slave narrative is a type of literary genre involving the (written) autobiographical accounts of enslaved persons, particularly Africans enslaved in the Americas, though many other examples exist. Over six thousand such narratives are estimated to exist; about 150 narratives were published as separate books or pamphlets. In the United States during the Great Depression (1930s), more than 2,300 additional oral histories on life during slavery were collected by writers sponsored and published by the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal program. Most of the 26 audio-recorded interviews are held by the Library of Congress.
The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early to mid-19th century. It was used by enslaved African Americans primarily to escape into free states and from there to Canada. The network, primarily the work of free African Americans, was assisted by abolitionists and others sympathetic to the cause of the escapees. The slaves who risked capture and those who aided them are also collectively referred to as the passengers and conductors of the "Underground Railroad". Various other routes led to Mexico, where slavery had been abolished, and to islands in the Caribbean that were not part of the slave trade. An earlier escape route running south toward Florida, then a Spanish possession, existed from the late 17th century until approximately 1790. However, the network generally known as the Underground Railroad began in the late 18th century. It ran north and grew steadily until the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Abraham Lincoln. One estimate suggests that, by 1850, approximately 100,000 slaves had escaped to freedom via the network.
Wilberforce is a census-designated place (CDP) in Greene County, Ohio, United States. The population was 2,410 at the 2020 census.
Wilberforce University is a private historically black university in Wilberforce, Ohio. Affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), it was the first college to be owned and operated by African Americans. It participates in the United Negro College Fund.
William Still was an African-American abolitionist based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a conductor of the Underground Railroad and was responsible for aiding and assisting at least 649 slaves to freedom towards North. Still was also a businessman, writer, historian and civil rights activist. Before the American Civil War, Still was chairman of the Vigilance Committee of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, named the Vigilant Association of Philadelphia. He directly aided fugitive slaves and also kept records of the people served in order to help families reunite.
The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is a museum in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio, based on the history of the Underground Railroad. Opened in 2004, the center also pays tribute to all efforts to "abolish human enslavement and secure freedom for all people."
In the United States, fugitive slaves or runaway slaves were terms used in the 18th and 19th centuries to describe people who fled slavery. The term also refers to the federal Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850. Such people are also called freedom seekers to avoid implying that the enslaved person had committed a crime and that the slaveholder was the injured party.
Ellen Craft (1826–1891) and William Craft were American abolitionists who were born into slavery in Macon, Georgia. They escaped to the Northern United States in December 1848 by traveling by train and steamboat, arriving in Philadelphia on Christmas Day. Ellen crossed the boundaries of race, class, and gender by passing as a white planter with William posing as her servant. Their escape was widely publicized, making them among the most famous fugitive slaves in the United States. Abolitionists featured them in public lectures to gain support in the struggle to end the institution.
Sarah Jane Woodson Early, born Sarah Jane Woodson, was an American educator, black nationalist, temperance activist and author. A graduate of Oberlin College, where she majored in classics, she was hired at Wilberforce University in 1858 as the first black woman college instructor, and also the first black American to teach at a historically black college or university (HBCU).
Hallie Quinn Brown was an American educator,and activist. Originally of Canada, Pennsylvania, she moved with her parents while quite young to a farm near Chatham, Canada, in 1864 and then to Ohio in 1870. In 1868, she began a course of study in Wilberforce University, Ohio, from which she graduated in 1873 with the degree of Bachelor of Science.
Henry Walton Bibb, was an American author and abolitionist who was born into slavery. Bibb told his life story in his Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave, which included many failed escape attempts followed finally by success when he escaped to Detroit. After leaving Detroit to move to Canada with his family, due to issues with the legality of his assistance in the Underground Railroad, he founded the abolitionist newspaper, Voice of the Fugitive. He lived in Canada until his death.
The history of slavery in Kentucky dates from the earliest permanent European settlements in the state, until the end of the Civil War. In 1830, enslaved African Americans represented 24 percent of Kentucky's population, a share that had declined to 19.5 percent by 1860, on the eve of the Civil War. Most enslaved people were concentrated in the cities of Louisville and Lexington and in the hemp- and tobacco-producing Bluegrass Region and Jackson Purchase. Other enslaved people lived in the Ohio River counties, where they were most often used in skilled trades or as house servants. Relatively few people were held in slavery in the mountainous regions of eastern and southeastern Kentucky; they served primarily as artisans and service workers in towns.
The western part of Virginia which became West Virginia was settled in two directions, north to south from Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey and from east to west from eastern Virginia and North Carolina. The earliest arrival of enslaved people was in the counties of the Shenandoah Valley, where prominent Virginia families built houses and plantations. The earliest recorded slave presence was about 1748 in Hampshire County on the estate of Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, which included 150 enslaved people. By the early 19th century, slavery had spread to the Ohio River up to the northern panhandle.
Anna H. Jones was a Canadian-born American clubwoman, suffragist, and educator based in later life in Kansas City, Missouri.
Anna Elizabeth Hudlun was an African-American humanitarian and civic worker, who earned the names "Fire Angel" and "Chicago's Grand Old Lady" for her work with victims of the city's great fires in 1871 and 1874.
Black Canadians migrated north in the 18th and 19th centuries from the United States, many of them through the Underground Railroad, into Southwestern Ontario, Toronto, and Owen Sound. Black Canadians fought in the War of 1812 and Rebellions of 1837–1838 for the British. Some returned to the United States during the American Civil War or during the Reconstruction era.
Lucie "Ruthie" Blackburn (1803–1895) was a self-emancipated West-Indian, American former slave who escaped to Canada with her husband Thornton Blackburn and helped him establish the first taxi company in Toronto.
Elijah Anderson was a free Black man and leading conductor of the Underground Railroad (UGRR). According to other abolitionist such as Rush R. Sloane, Anderson assisted at least 1,000 slaves to gain freedom.
Kentucky raid in Cass County (1847) was conducted by slaveholders and slave catchers who raided Underground Railroad stations in Cass County, Michigan to capture black people and return them to slavery. After unsuccessful attempts, and a lost court case, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was enacted. Michigan's Personal Liberty Act of 1855 was passed in the state legislature to prevent the capture of formerly enslaved people that would return them to slavery.