Mary Jane Holmes Shipley Drake | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Mary Jane Holmes November 29, 1841 |
| Died | January 26, 1925 (aged 83) |
| Nationality | American |
| Spouse | Reuben Shipley |
Mary Jane Holmes Shipley Drake was an American slave involved in the Holmes v. Ford case, from which she gained her freedom in 1853.
Mary Jane Holmes was born in Missouri on November 29, 1841, to Robin and Polly Holmes, along with five other siblings (Eliza, Clarisa, William, James, and Roxanna). [1] The Holmes family was enslaved to farmer Nathaniel Ford, who received them while in office as sheriff of Howard County in Missouri. [2]
In 1844, Ford moved both his and the Holmes family, including Robin, Polly, the three-year-old Mary Jane, and the younger James and Roxanna, to Oregon, despite the territorial ban on slavery, promising to free them once their affairs were settled. [3] [4] Unfortunately, Ford refused to free the Holmeses for five years, even after his farm was established. After that, Ford did not free the entire family. According to Ford's account, Holmes agreed to work for his son for a year, and upon his return, would free him, Polly, and their infant son. Ford additionally said that Holmes agreed to leave his other three children in the care of Ford as "wards" to recompense for his support of the family in the years before. Holmes denied any such agreement and claimed Ford held his children as slaves and threatened to sell them back to Missouri under the Fugitive Slave Act. Publication of one of Ford's letters in 1930 later proved this to be true. [2]
After Ford refused to release the Holmes' children, on April 16, 1852, Mary Jane's parents filed a lawsuit against him in order to regain custody of their other four children. [5] During the length of a tedious a 15-month trial, the case made its way to the Oregon Territory Supreme Court. through lower courts and finally reached the bench of Chief Justice George A. Williams of the Oregon Territory Supreme Court. On July 13, 1853, Williams ruled the Holmes children free. [3]
Mary Jane Holmes chose to remain with the Ford family, acting as a servant for a further four years in order to provide income for her parents, who had taken their other children, and moved to Marion County, where they owned a successful plant nursery. [3] In 1857, when she was sixteen and wanted to marry, Ford demanded that the groom, Reuben Shipley (or Reuben Ficklin, depending on the source [6] ), pay him seven hundred and fifty dollars to be able wed Mary Jane, even though she had been legally released from his ownership by the Territorial Supreme Court four years earlier. Shipley, however, did not want to repeat the process, and agreed to pay the $750.
Ruben and Mary Jane married and later bought an 80-acre (32 ha) farm near Corvallis, Oregon. They eventually had six children and became respected members of their community. After Ruben's death, Mary Jane married R.G. Drake in 1875. She died on 26 January 1925, having outlived both husbands, and all but one of her children. [7]
Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that held the U.S. Constitution did not extend American citizenship to people of black African descent, and therefore they could not enjoy the rights and privileges the Constitution conferred upon American citizens. The decision is widely considered the worst in the Supreme Court's history, being widely denounced for its overt racism, judicial activism, poor legal reasoning, and crucial role in the start of the American Civil War four years later. Legal scholar Bernard Schwartz said that it "stands first in any list of the worst Supreme Court decisions". A future chief justice, Charles Evans Hughes, called it the Court's "greatest self-inflicted wound".
Dred Scott was an enslaved African American man who, along with his wife, Harriet, unsuccessfully sued for the freedom of themselves and their two daughters, Eliza and Lizzie, in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857, popularly known as the "Dred Scott decision". The Scotts claimed that they should be granted freedom because Dred had lived in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory for four years, where slavery was illegal, and laws in those jurisdictions said that slave holders gave up their rights to slaves if they stayed for an extended period.
Lucy Delaney was an African American seamstress, slave narrator, and community leader. She was born into slavery and was primarily held by the Major Taylor Berry and Judge Robert Wash families. As a teenager, she was the subject of a freedom lawsuit, because her mother lived in Illinois, a free state, longer than 90 days. According to Illinois state law, enslaved people that reside in Illinois for more than 90 days should be indentured and freed. The country's rule of partus sequitur ventrem asserts that if the mother was free at the child's birth, the child should be free. After Delaney's mother, Polly Berry, filed a lawsuit for herself, she filed a lawsuit on her daughter's behalf in 1842. Delaney was held in jail for 17 months while awaiting the trial.
Polly Berry was an African American woman notable for winning two freedom suits in St. Louis, one for herself, which she won in 1843, and one for her daughter Lucy, which she won in 1844. Having acquired the surnames of her slaveholders, she was also known as Polly Crockett and Polly Wash, the latter of which was the name used in her freedom suit.
Holmes v. Ford was an American court case in the Oregon Territory that freed a slave family in the territory in 1853. The decision re-affirmed that slavery was illegal in the territory as outlined in the Organic Laws of Oregon that were continued once the region became a U.S. territory. In the decision, Chief Justice of the Oregon Territorial Supreme Court George H. Williams ruled against Nathaniel Ford, freeing the children of Polly and Robin Holmes.
Nathaniel Ford was an American politician and Oregon pioneer during the time of the Oregon Territory. A native of Missouri, he worked as a sheriff in that state before moving to the Oregon Country where he was selected as judge in the Provisional Government of Oregon and served in the Oregon Territorial Legislature. Ford also lost a civil case that freed his slaves who he had brought across the Oregon Trail from Missouri.
Daniel Waldo was an American legislator in the Provisional Government of Oregon, the namesake for the Waldo Hills near Salem, Oregon, and the father of two prominent Oregon politicians. He was also a member of the Oregon Rangers militia and fought in the Cayuse War.
Samuel Drake Lockwood was an Illinois lawyer and politician who served as the state's Attorney General, Secretary of State, Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court and the state's trustee on the board of the Illinois Central Railroad.
Samuel Nelson was an American attorney and appointed as judge of New York State courts. He was appointed as a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving from 1845 to 1872. He concurred on the 1857 Dred Scott decision, although for reasons different from Chief Justice Taney's.
Marguerite Scypion, also known in court files as Marguerite, was an African-Natchez woman, born into slavery in St. Louis, then located in French Upper Louisiana. She was held first by Joseph Tayon and later by Jean Pierre Chouteau, one of the most powerful men in the city.
Freedom suits were lawsuits in the Thirteen Colonies and the United States filed by slaves against slaveholders to assert claims to freedom, often based on descent from a free maternal ancestor, or time held as a resident in a free state or territory.
The Matson Trial (1847), officially Matson v. Ashmore et al. for the use of Bryant, was a freedom suit by former slave Anthony Bryant on behalf of his family in Coles County, Illinois. It is noted for the unusual circumstance where Abraham Lincoln, the future emancipator of slaves, defended a slave-owner against a slave. The case pitted Lincoln and former Illinois Attorney General Usher F. Linder against former US Representative Orlando B. Ficklin. Ficklin's case proved successful, and Bryant's family was emancipated based on free soil doctrine.
The Oregon black exclusion laws were attempts to prevent black people from settling within the borders of the settlement and eventual U.S. state of Oregon. The first such law took effect in 1844, when the Provisional Government of Oregon voted to exclude black settlers from Oregon's borders. The law authorized a punishment for any black settler remaining in the territory to be whipped with "not less than twenty nor more than thirty-nine stripes" for every six months they remained. Additional laws aimed at African Americans entering Oregon were ratified in 1849 and 1857. The last of these laws was repealed in 1926. The laws, born of anti-slavery and anti-black beliefs, were often justified as a reaction to fears of black people instigating Native American uprisings.
Robert Wash served on the Supreme Court of Missouri from September 1825 to May 1837. During his term, the pro-slavery judge, who owned slaves himself, wrote the dissenting opinion on several important freedom suits, including Milly v. Smith, Julia v. McKinney and Marguerite v. Chouteau. However, he did join in the unanimous finding for the plaintiff in the landmark Rachel v. Walker case.
Robin Holmes was the plaintiff in an 1852 court case to free his enslaved children in the Oregon Territory.
Reuben Shipley was one of the first Black settlers in the Oregon Territory.
Mt. Union Cemetery is located in Philomath, Oregon. The land for the Mt. Union Cemetery was donated by Reuben Shipley and his wife Mary Jane Holmes Shipley Drake with the stipulation that both Black people and white people could be buried there. The Shipleys were former slaves who donated 3 acres of their land on May 1, 1861. Mt. Union was the first cemetery in the region to permit burials of multiple races.
Polly Strong was an enslaved woman in the Northwest Territory, in present-day Indiana. She was born after the Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery. Slavery was prohibited by the Constitution of Indiana in 1816. Two years later, Strong's mother Jenny and attorney Moses Tabbs asked for a writ of habeas corpus for Polly and her brother James in 1818. Judge Thomas H. Blake produced indentures, Polly for 12 more years and James for four more years of servitude. The case was dismissed in 1819.
Mary Bateman Clark (1795–1840) was an American woman, born into slavery, who was taken to Indiana Territory. She was forced to become an indentured servant, even though the Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery. She was sold in 1816, the same year that the Constitution of Indiana prohibited slavery and indentured servitude. In 1821, attorney Amory Kinney represented her as she fought for her freedom in the courts. After losing the case in the Circuit Court, she appealed to the Indiana Supreme Court in the case of Mary Clark v. G.W. Johnston. She won her freedom with the precedent-setting decision against indentured servitude in Indiana. The documentary, Mary Bateman Clark: A Woman of Colour and Courage, tells the story of her life and fight for freedom.