Harriet and Dangerfield Newby in Slavery and Freedom

• Dangerfield Newby’s families

Where?

• Culpeper County, Va.

• Warrenton (Fauquier County, Va.)

• Brentsville, (Prince William County, Va.)

• Harpers Ferry (Va., now West Va.)

CulpeperCulpeper

Harpers FerryHarpers Ferry

Gourdvine Baptist Church, Culpeper County, Va.

Gourdvine terrain

Brentsville, Va. (Pr. Wm. Co.) and environs to the north

The Newby Family

• Generations

Descendants of Edward NewbyGeneration No. 1

1. EDWARD NEWBY, b. in Lancaster Co., Va., and d. in Culpeper Co., Va. His wife’s name: not found.Child of Edward Newby and his wife

i. HENRY NEWBY, b. 1783, Lancaster Co.; d. 1861, Bridgeport, Ohio.ii. LUCY NEWBY BAILEYiii. Several other children.

Generation No. 22. HENRY NEWBY, b. 1783, Lancaster Co., Va.; d. 1861, Bridgeport, Ohio. Married ELSEY NEWBY, December 1, 1818; her parents are unknown.Children of HENRY NEWBY AND ELSEY:

i. DANGERFIELD NEWBY, b. ca. 1825ii. LUCY NEWBY, b. ca. 1826iii. ELVIRA NEWBY, b. ca, 1828iv. MARY NEWBY, b. ca. 1833 v. GABRIEL NEWBY, b. ca. 1835vi. JAMES NEWBY, b. ca. 1837vii. ANN NEWBY, b. ca. 1839viii. WILLIAM NEWBY, b. ca. 1840ix. FRANCIS NEWBY, b. ca. 1847 x. CATHERINE NEWBY, b. ca. 1849

Generation No. 33. DANGERFIELD NEWBY, b. ca. 1825 in Culpeper Co., Va.; d. October 18, 1859, Harpers Ferry, Va. Married HARRIET JENNINGS at unknown date—ca. 1840; d. early 1880s.Children of DANGERFIELD NEWBY and HARRIET JENNINGS-NEWBY

i. ALICE NEWBY, b. ca. 1843ii. JAMES NEWBY, b. ca. 1848ii. AGNES NEWBY, b. ca. 1852iii. JOHN NEWBY, b. Sept. 1853iv. MARION NEWBY, b. April 20, 1856v. GABRIEL NEWBY, b. ca. 1858vi. LUCY NEWBY, b. 1859

• “Dangerfield Newby was born a slave in Fauquier county, Va., in the year 1825. . . . Dangerfield was married to a slave and was the father of six children. His wife was owned by Jesse. Jennings, of Warrenton, Va., and Dangerfield was desirous of buying her. . . While a slave he worked at blacksmithing and ran on the canal between Waterloo and Fredericksburg. He was a quiet man, upright, quick-tempered and devoted to his family. He never talked much about slavery and kept his intention of joining John Brown, whom he had met in Oberlin [Ohio], to himself. . . .”

Thomas Featherstonhaugh, “John Brown's Men: The Lives of Those Killed at Harper's Ferry.” Publications of the Southern History Association, III (1899), 281-306, at 294-5.

b. ca. 1835

The Newby Family

• Henry and Elsey Newby of Culpeper County– Status of Henry and Elsey

• Elsey’s owner was John Fox of Fauquier County.

• Their son Dangerfield, born ca. 1825

The Newby Family

• Dangerfield’s father, brothers, sisters, and cousins

• Freedom, October 1858– Henry Newby moved to Bridgeport, Ohio, on

the Ohio River with his formerly enslaved family.

• Ohio law ensured their freedom.

Dangerfield and Harriet Newby’s Family, 1858

• Harriet Newby and their six children. • Owned by “Mrs. Gennings” (Virginia Payne Jennings,

whose husband was Dr. Louis Augustine Jennings of Warrenton and Brentsville, Va.) – i. ALICE NEWBY, b. ca. 1843– ii. JAMES NEWBY, b. ca. 1848– iii. AGNES NEWBY, b. ca. 1852– iv. JOHN NEWBY, b. Sept. 1853– v. MARION NEWBY, b. April 20, 1856– vi. GABRIEL NEWBY, b. ca. 1858– vii. LUCY NEWBY, b. 1859

Dangerfield Newby’s Family: the Problem

• Dangerfield Newby’s family was still en-slaved in Virginia.

• Now free and living in Ohio, Dangerfield would take risks if he went to Virginia just to visit his family.

• What was he to do?

Dangerfield Newby’s Family: the Problem

• Harriet Newby’s three letters to Danger-field, April 11-August 16, 1859– “Com this fall with out fail monny or no monney.”– “Dear Husband . . . I want you to buy me as soon as

possible for if you do not get me, somebody else will.”– “do all you Can for me witch I have no doubt you will.”– If I’m sold, “all my bright hops of the futer are blasted.”

Now: Library of Virginia

“Com this fall with out fail monny or no monney.”

Sole Assets of Dangerfield’s Estate, 1859:

•$742

Ohio

John Brown contacts in Ohio—e.g., “Scholar Ian Barford has found evidence, which he shared with this group, that Newby was in Ashtabula when he was recruited by Brown, not in Bridgeport, in southeastern Ohio. From handwritten notes in the carpetbag letters found at the Kennedy Farm and used as evidence in the trials of John Brown and the surviving raiders, both Dangerfield and "G“ (his brother Gabriel) were part of the Underground Railroad and that is how they found out about the Ashtabula center of abolition activity. They went there to join the plan, and Gabriel may have been on his way to Virginia on August 27, 1859.” http://www.afrolumens.org/ugrr/decaro02.htm

$742?

“Come this fall with out fail monny or no monney.”

• $742 in 1859 was worth about $17,000 in 2007*

• *(2/19/09: Inflation calculator: http://westegg.com/inflation/). But place no bets!

Dangerfield Newby attempted to buy his wife and . . .

• His offer was rejected: – “Her master had promised to sell her and one child for $1,000, but

when Dangerfield had raised this amount of money the sale of his wife to him was refused.” (Featherstonhaugh)

• Virginia P. Jennings owned Harriet, but her financial situation was tied to Dr. Jennings, whose financial and personal circumstances were weakening.

• Debt suits• Illness• “feme covert”

Dangerfield Newby attempted to buy his wife and . . .

• What could Dangerfield do?– Dangerfield “was a quiet man,

upright, quick-tempered and devoted to his family. He never talked much about slavery and kept his intention of joining John Brown, whom he had met in Oberlin, to himself.” Featherstonhaugh, 294.

• Dangerfield Newby “was the son of a Scotchman, and was born and raised not far* from the Ferry. His father took the mother and children to Ohio and liberated them. Newby seemed a good-natured, sensible old man. He had a wife and several children that were slaves, and he was impatient to have operations commenced, for he was anxious to get them.”

– Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Recollections of Seventy Years, 2 vols. (Boston, 1909), I, 179.

– * Brentsville to HF: 74 m. Warrenton to HF, 58 m. Culpeper to HF, 86 m.

Dangerfield Newby attempted to buy his wife and . . .

• Was his participation meant only to free Harriet? Or, did he accept John Brown’s cause as well?

Dangerfield Newby attempted to buy his wife and . . .

• Was his participation in John Brown’s Raid meant only to free Harriet? Or, did he accept John Brown’s cause as well?

• Featherstonhaugh: “From Harper's Ferry he [Dangerfield] wrote a letter to his brother [Gabriel] urging him to come on there and bring their brother, James, but he gave no reasons why he wished their presence.”

Dangerfield Newby’s fate

• October 17, 1859: First member of John Brown’s Harpers Ferry raiding party to be killed

Dangerfield Newby’s death

• “On the retreat of the troops, we were ordered back to our former post. While going, Dangerfield Newby, one of our colored men, was shot through the head by a person who took aim at him from a brick store window, on the opposite side of the street, and who was there for the purpose of firing upon us. Newby was a brave fellow. He was one of my comrades at the Arsenal. He fell at my side, and his death was promptly avenged by Shields Green, the Zouave of the band, who afterwards met his fate calmly on the gallows, with John Copeland. Newby was shot twice; at the first fire, he fell on his side and returned it; as he lay, a second shot was fired, and the ball entered his head. Green raised his rifle in an instant, and brought down the cowardly murderer, before the latter could get his gun back through the sash.”– Osborne Perry Anderson, A Voice from Harper's Ferry: A Narrative of

Events at Harper’s Ferry (Boston, 1861), 40.

Aftermath

• What happened to Harriet and Dangerfield’s children?– Featherstonhaugh: Dangerfield’s “wife and

children were, later, sold to planters in Louisiana, and it is not known what became of them.”

• “it is not known”?

Aftermath• Harriet and children were sold to Louisiana.

• Harriet’s and Dangerfield’s children?– Gabriel Newby of Kansas City and St. Louis:

died in 1918

Aftermath

• Dangerfield’s relatives– Henry Newby (father) died, December 31,

1861.– William Newby (brother), 5th Regt., U.S.C.T.,

was wounded near Petersburg, June 28, 1864, and died the next day.

Aftermath

Sappony Church

Aftermath

• Elsey Newby (Dangerfield’s mother) lived in Bridgeport, Ohio, until her death in 1884.

• Gabriel, Dangerfield’s brother, corres-ponded with an amateur historian in the 1890s.

Unsettled business

• Dangerfield’s estate: $742– Suit, Belmont County, Ohio: Lucy Newby, Elvira

Newby, Mary Newby, James Newby, Ann Newby, William Newby, Edwin Newby, and John Newby a Minor by his next friend Gabriel Newby, Plaintiffs, against Harriet Jennings, Lucy Jennings, Agnes Jennings, Dangerfield Jennings, Gabriel Jennings, and James Kelsey, Administrator of Dangerfield Newby, deceased, defendants.

– WHY?

Aftermath

• Dangerfield’s estate, cont.– 1865 resolution: judgment against the

defendants. – How?

• The $742 plus interest went to the plaintiffs.

– Why?

Aftermath

• The Jennings family– Dr. Jennings died of cancer, April 29, 1860, at

ca. 32 years of age– Virginia Payne Jennings moved to Missouri

• Her two children died there at ages 15 and 18

• After losing her husband and being sold to Louisiana, what happened to Harriet’s “bright hops”?

What became of Harriet and her family?

• “His wife and children were, later, sold to planters in Louisiana, and it is not known what became of them.”

Featherstonhaugh, “John Brown's Men: The Lives of Those Killed at Harper's Ferry.” Publications of the Southern History Association, III (1899), 281-306, at 294-5.

Harriet found; Harriet’s bravery

• Harriet Newby met Virginian William Robinson in a Louisiana Freedmen’s Bureau camp.

• They were married and moved to Virginia before 1870.

• Harriet lived in Fairfax County until she died in the early 1880s.

• Some of Harriet’s and Dangerfield’s descendants and other relatives lived near Harriet.

Dangerfield’s and Harriet’s childrenSources: Scott Casper, Sarah Johnson’s Mount Vernon: The Forgotten History of an

American Shrine (N.Y., 2008), and another source.

The Robinson family, 1870

GABRIEL

William Robinson

Harriet Robinson

The Robinson family, 1880

By the 1880s, William Robinson was, among African Americans, a substantial landowner in Fairfax County. Robinson later worked for

Mount Vernon. Harriet died in the early 1880s.

William Robinson was born in Shepherdstown, Va.--about 12 miles north of Harpers Ferry--before West Va. was created.

“Farm Laborer”? He labored on his own land.

Harriet Robinson

Other Newby households, 1880

“Daingerfield,” Agnes’s son, and Harriet’s and Dangerfield’s grandson

Alice Newby Ford, Harriet’s and Dangerfield’s daughter

Harriet Newby, daughter of James Newby & granddaughter of Harriet and Dangerfield Newby

Brentsville, Va. (Pr. Wm. Co.) and environs to the north

Aftermath

• The burial of Dangerfield Newby in Harpers Ferry, 1859, and Reburial, 1899

“John Brown’s Body” and Dangerfield Newby’s Body

• Buried secretly in Harpers Ferry, 1859.

• Disinterred from the grave, July 29, 1899, and reburied at John Brown’s homestead, North Elba (Lake Placid), N.Y., August 30, 1899.

• Thomas Featherstonhaugh, "Burial of John Brown's Followers," New England Magazine, n.s., XXIV (April 1901), 128-34.

Dangerfield Newby and others were disinterred from the Harpers Ferry grave and reburied at John Brown’s homestead, North Elba

(Lake Placid), N.Y., August 30, 1899.

Brown House and Gravesite, North Elba, New York

WHY?

• Why study Dangerfield Newby and his families?– The costs of slavery

• The difficulty of escape

– The strength of family