list of slaves sold by georgetown university list of slaves sold by georgetown university

[65], On April 18, 2017, DeGioia, along with the provincial superior of the Maryland Province, and the president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, held a liturgy in which they formally apologized on behalf of their respective institutions for their participation in slavery. The university itself owes its existence to this history, said Adam Rothman, a historian at Georgetown and a member of a university working group that is studying ways for the institution to acknowledge and try to make amends for its tangled roots in slavery. [5] McSherry delayed selling the slaves because their market value had greatly diminished as a result of the Panic of 1837,[24] and because he was searching for a buyer who would agree to these conditions. All of this was new to Ms. Crump, except for the name Cornelius or Neely, as Cornelius was known. This sale was the culmination of a contentious and long-running debate among the Maryland Jesuits over whether to keep, sell, or free their slaves, and whether to focus on their rural estates or on their growing urban missions, including their schools. What Does It Owe Their Descendants? Now students, professors and alumni want to know what happened to those men and women and what the university will do moving forward. This resulted in families being split for economic reasons with no consideration of human relationships. The Jesuits ultimately received payment many years late and never received the full $115,000. Peter Havermans wrote of an elderly woman who fell to her knees, begging to know what she had done to deserve such a fate, according to Robert Emmett Curran, a retired Georgetown historian who described eyewitness accounts of the sale in his research. Alfred "Teen" Blackburn (1842-1951), one of the last living survivors of slavery in the United States who had a clear recollection of it. A problem can is not solved without first recognizing it, discussing it and taking steps to rectify the long term damage that continues to this day. As part of Georgetown University's Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation initiative, students in Professor Adam Rothman's fall 2019 UNXD 272 class researched buildings and sites on Georgetown's campus to provide historical context for understanding their significance. John DeGioia, President, Georgetown University. (Ms. Bayonne-Johnson discovered her connection through an earlier effort by the university to publish records online about the Jesuit plantations.). One building was renamed for Isaac Hawkins, first on the list of the 272 human beings sold in 1838. The internal slave trade in the United States, also known as the domestic slave trade, the Second Middle Passage and the interregional slave trade, was the term for the domestic trade of enslaved people within the United States that reallocated slaves across states during the Antebellum period.It was most significant after 1808, when the importation of slaves was prohibited. [22], In October 1836, Roothaan officially authorized the Maryland Jesuits to sell their slaves, so long as three conditions were satisfied: the slaves were to be permitted to practice their Catholic faith, their families were not to be separated, and the proceeds of the sale had to be used to support Jesuits in training,[23] rather than to pay down debts. It would be better to suffer financial disaster than suffer the loss of our souls with the sale of the slaves, wrote the Rev. Georgetown has renamed one of its buildings Isaac Hawkins Hall named after the first enslaved on the list of the account of the sale. At Georgetown, slavery and scholarship were inextricably linked. [8] These consisted primarily of the plantations of White Marsh in Prince George's County, St. Inigoes and Newtown Manor in St. Mary's County, St. Thomas Manor in Charles County, and Bohemia Manor in Cecil County. (RNS) A genealogical association has launched a new website detailing the family histories of slaves who were sold to keep Catholic-run Georgetown University from bankruptcy in the 1800s. (CNS photo/Tyler Orsburn) On Oct. 29, John J. DeGioia, president of Georgetown University, released a university-wide letter announcing that Georgetown would commit to raising around. Their panic and desperation would be mostly forgotten for more than a century. The church records helped lead to a 69-year-old woman in Baton Rouge named Maxine Crump. This coincided with a protest by a group of students against keeping Mulledy's and McSherry's names on the buildings the day before. Michelle Miller reports. [34] Many Maryland Jesuits were outraged by the sale, which they considered to be immoral, and many of them wrote graphic, emotional accounts of the sale to Roothaan. Advertisement In Bayonne-Johnson's hands,. Cardinal McElroy responds to his critics on sexual sin, the Eucharist, and LGBT and divorced/remarried Catholics, Worried you retired too early? THEY NEED TO BE FOUND AND LINKED. March 24, 2017. Some slaves suffered at the hands of a cruel overseer. Jesuit Father Hans Zollner will be a consultant for the Diocese of Romes office dedicated to safeguarding minors and vulnerable people. When the Society of Jesus was suppressed worldwide by Pope Clement XIV in 1773, ownership of the plantations was transferred from the Jesuits' Maryland Mission to the newly established Corporation of Roman Catholic Clergymen. The Society of Jesus, whose members are known as Jesuits, established its first presence in the Mid-Atlantic region of the Thirteen Colonies alongside the first settlers of the British Province of Maryland, which had been founded as a Catholic colony and refuge. You can either click on the link in your confirmation email or simply re-enter your email address below to confirm it. That man, Thomas Mulledy, then the president of Georgetown University, had sold 272 slaves to pay off a massive debt strangling the university. in Fr. 2008 - 2023 INTERESTING.COM, INC. Slaves were collateral and could be used to mortgage land and other goods. The remainder of the slaves were accounted for in three subsequent bills of sale executed in November 1838, which specified that 64 would go to Batey's plantation named West Oak in Iberville Parish and 140 slaves would be sent to Johnson's two plantations,[27] Ascension Plantation (later known as Chatham Plantation) in Ascension Parish and another in Maringouin in Iberville Parish. [63][38], The College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, of which Mulledy was the first president from 1843 to 1848, also began to reconsider the name of one of its buildings in 2015. In 1996, the Jesuit Plantation Project was established by historians at Georgetown, which made available to the public via the internet digitized versions of much of the Maryland Jesuits' archives, including the articles of agreement for the 1838 sale. The Rev. Corneliuss extended family was split, with his aunt Nelly and her daughters shipped to one plantation, and his uncle James and his wife and children sent to another, records show. From Equity Talk to Equity Walk: A Guide for Campus-Based Leadership and Practice is a vital wealth of information for college and university presidents and provosts, academic and student affairs professionals, faculty, and practitioners who seek to dismantle institutional barriers that stand in the way of achieving equity, specifically racial equity to achieve equitable outcomes in higher education. However, the total number of slaves is only one way to measure the level of slavery in a country. To this day the search continues. The condition of slaves on the plantations varied over time, as did the condition of the Jesuits living with them. [66] In 2020, the college removed Mulledy's name. When you register, youll get unlimited access to our website and a free subscription to our email newsletter for daily updates with a smart, Catholic take on faith and culture from. The second is now named for a free African-American woman who founded a school for Catholic black girls in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Since 2015, Georgetown has been working to address its historical relationship to slavery and will continue to do so, a Georgetown spokesman said in a statement to Religion News Service on Friday. We encourage you to share the site on social media. The article details how the sold slaves were transported to three Louisiana plantations, where they faced brutal treatment. It also notes slaves who had run away, and those who had been "married off." This is the original list of slaves from the Jesuit plantations compiled in preparation for the sale in 1838. They worried that new owners might not allow the slaves to practice their Catholic faith. As Black Americans as descendants of enslaved people we have always been told youll never know who you are. [37], Before Roothaan's order reached Mulledy, Mulledy had already accepted the advice of McSherry and Eccleston in June 1839 to resign and go to Rome to defend himself before Roothaan. The presidents of Harvard University and Georgetown University discuss their institutions historic ties to slavery in a conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates. . Census of slaves to be sold in 1838 This is the original list of slaves from the Jesuit plantations compiled in preparation for the sale in 1838. They were looking to buy slaves in the Upper South more cheaply than they could in the Deep South, and agreed to Mulledy's asking price of approximately $400 per person. [70], In 2019, undergraduate students at Georgetown voted in a non-binding referendum to impose a symbolic reparations fee of $27.20 per student. Last edited on 25 February 2023, at 03:24, Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, abolition of slavery in the United States, Slavery at American colleges and universities, "Where were the Jesuit plantations in Maryland? Many institutions owned slaves and Georgetown University was no exception. Her great-uncle had the name, as did one of her cousins. In total, there are 167 countries that still have slavery and around 46 million slaves today, according to the 2016 Global Slavery Index.. Roughly two-thirds of the Jesuits former slaves including Cornelius and his family had been shipped to two plantations so distant from churches that they never see a Catholic priest, the Rev. (RNS) A genealogical association has launched a new website detailing the family histories of slaves who were sold to keep Catholic-run Georgetown University from bankruptcy in . To see information on Juneteenth, click here. But few were lucky enough to escape. But the decision to sell virtually all of their enslaved African-Americans in the 1830s left some priests deeply troubled. We encourage you to use these links as we receive a small royalty paid by the partner allowing you to help us without cost to you. They also established schools on their lands. Slavery was much more than the theft of labor; it was the deprivation of liberty for which this country professes so loudly. But thewebsiteincludes a spreadsheet of 314 individuals whom genealogists have identified as being part of the group sold by the Jesuit priests. (RNS) A genealogical association has launched a new website detailing the family histories of slaves who were sold to keep Catholic-run Georgetown University from bankruptcy in the 1800s. The Jesuit leaders running the institution that would later become Georgetown University sold the 272 enslaved men, women and children in 1838 to settle mounting debts threatening the. But he said he could not stop thinking about the slaves, whose names had been in Georgetowns archives for decades. Thomas R. Murphy, a historian at Seattle University who has written a book about the Jesuits and slavery. While the plantations were initially worked by indentured servants, as the institution of indentured servitude began to fade away in Maryland, African slaves replaced indentured servants as the primary workers on the plantations. American Ancestors announced the new GU272 Memory Project website on June 19, the anniversary of Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when some American slaves learned they had been freed. So Judy Riffel, one of the genealogists hired by Mr. Cellini, began following a chain of weddings and births, baptisms and burials. Mr. Cellini is an unlikely racial crusader. [37] As censure for the scandal,[39] Roothaan ordered Mulledy to remain in Europe,[35] and Mulledy lived in exile in Nice until 1843. It is interesting that the date was June 19th as many years later, it was on what is now recognized as Juneteenth. To comment or make suggestions on future posts, use Contact Us. Georgetown University Sold Hundreds of SlavesDoes That Still Matter? The articles of agreement listed each of the slaves by name to be sold. In 1870, he appeared in the census for the first time. But priests at the Jesuit plantations recounted the panic and fear they witnessed when the slaves departed. This admissions preference has been described by historian Craig Steven Wilder as the most significant measure recently taken by a university to account for its historical relationship with slavery. In addition to the summary above, it is our intent to provide you with a more detailed look at the matter by providing videos and books that allow a deeper view. One-hundred-seventy-eight years ago, Georgetown University was free to everyone who was able to attend; it was also massively in debt. Consider the following list: Top 10 Countries with the Highest Prevalence of Modern Slavery (by slaves per 1000 residents) - Global Slavery Index 2018: North Korea - 104.6 (10.46%) Eritrea - 93 (9.3%) Burundi - 40 (4.0%) Central African Republic . Against the conditions agreed upon, families were separated due to this sale. Georgetown University was an active participant in the slave trade selling upwards of 272 slaves from their Maryland run plantation to the deep south in an effort to support the then struggling university in 1838 according to The New York Times. The 1970s saw an increase in public scholarship on the Maryland Jesuits' slave ownership. Following Batey's death, his West Oak plantation and the slaves living there were sold in January 1853 to Tennessee politician Washington Barrow and Barrow's son, John S. Barrow, a resident of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Inspiring Stories of Black History and Achievement, 272 Slaves Sold to Finance Georgetown University. The worn gravestone had toppled, but the wording was plain: Neely Hawkins Died April 16, 1902.. [18] The province was sharply divided, with the American-born Jesuits supporting a sale and the missionary European Jesuits opposing on the basis that it was immoral both to sell their patrimonial lands and to materially and morally harm the slaves by selling them into the Deep South, where they did not want to go. They could then make 40% on the labor of the slave and pay the bank 8%. During this time, the Jesuits funded some of the most prestigious institutions of higher education in America in part through profits earned on their plantations. [50], The 1838 slave sale returned to the public's awareness in the mid-2010s. Shoes and clothing were made in the North and shipped to be used by the enslaved people. On November 14, 2015, DeGioia announced that he and the university's board of directors accepted the working group's recommendation, and would rename the buildings accordingly. By the end of December, one of Mr. Cellinis genealogists felt confident that she had found a strong test case: the family of the boy, Cornelius Hawkins. While they continued to support gradual emancipation, they believed that this option was becoming increasingly untenable, as the Maryland public's concern grew about the expanding number of free blacks. In 2013, Georgetown began planning to renovate the adjacent Ryan, Mulledy, and Gervase Halls, which together served as the university's Jesuit residence until the opening of a new residence in 2003. Mr. Cellini was on the line. William McSherry, the college presidents involved in the sale, from two campus buildings. On June 19, 1838, the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus agreed to sell 272 slaves to two Louisiana planters, Henry Johnson and Jesse Batey, for $115,000 (equivalent to approximately $2.96million in 2021). Share with your friends! [34] During the controversy, Mulledy fell into alcoholism. Thomas Lilly reported. The Rev. There are no surviving images of Cornelius, no letters or journals that offer a look into his last hours on a Jesuit plantation in Maryland. Jan Roothaan, who headed the Jesuits international organization from Rome and was initially reluctant to authorize the sale. Georgetown is not the first or only university to own slaves. Anyone can read what you share. This is not a disembodied group of people, who are nameless and faceless, said Mr. Cellini, 52, whose company, Briefcase Analytics, is based in Cambridge, Mass. New England ship builders made ships to bring people to this country. [56][62] In 2016, The New York Times published an article that brought the history of the Jesuits' and university's relationship with slavery to national attention. Mismanaged and inefficient, the Maryland plantations no longer offered a reliable source of income for Georgetown College, which had been founded in 1789. [51] Other historians covered the subject in literature published between the 1980s and 2000s. Other slaves were sold locally in Maryland so that they would not be separated from their spouses who were either free or owned by non-Jesuits, in compliance with Roothaan's order. [28], Anticipating that some of the Jesuit plantation managers who opposed the sale would encourage their slaves to flee, Mulledy, along with Johnson and a sheriff, arrived at each of the plantations unannounced to gather the first 51 slaves for transport. [27] Johnson allowed these slaves to remain in Maryland because he intended to return and try to buy their spouses as well. The grave of Cornelius Hawkins, one of 272 slaves sold by the Jesuits in 1838 to help keep what is now Georgetown University afloat.CreditWilliam Widmer for The New York Times. Leave a message for others who see this profile. He has contacted a few, including Patricia Bayonne-Johnson, president of the Eastern Washington Genealogical Society in Spokane, who is helping to track the Jesuit slaves with her group. Colleges and universities have placed greater emphasis on education equity in recent years. [35] He ordered McSherry to inform Mulledy that he had been removed as provincial superior, and that if Mulledy refused to step down, he would be dismissed from the Society of Jesus. [8] In reality, by the early 19th century, the Jesuit plantations were in such a state of mismanagement that the Jesuit Superior General in Rome, Tadeusz Brzozowski, sent Irish Jesuit Peter Kenney to review the operations of the Maryland Mission as a canonical visitor in 1820. She later joined the Oblate Sisters of Providence, recognized as the oldest active Roman Catholic sisterhood in the Americas established by women of African descent. Use our links to Amazon anytime you shop Amazon. Cornelius had originally been shipped to a plantation so far from a church that he had married in a civil ceremony. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/us/georgetown-university-search-for-slave-descendants.html. Your source for jobs, books, retreats, and much more. Within two weeks, Mr. Cellini had set up a nonprofit, the Georgetown Memory Project, hired eight genealogists and raised more than $10,000 from fellow alumni to finance their research. Timothy Kesicki, S.J., president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, during a morning Liturgy of Remembrance, Contrition, and Hope. Through the project, genealogists have discovered 8,425 descendants of enslaved people sold in 1838. Some children were sold without their parents, records show, and slaves were dragged off by force to the ship, the Rev. GSA28: William Gaston entrusts a slave named Augustus to Fr. [7], By 1824, the Jesuit plantations totaled more than 12,000 acres (4,900 hectares) in the State of Maryland, and 1,700 acres (690 hectares) in eastern Pennsylvania. African-Americans are often a fleeting presence in the documents of the 1800s. [24], Mulledy quickly made arrangements to carry out the sale. Start Free Trial Now Our membership program offers special benefits for just $99 per year: *Unlimited instant streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows, *FREE Two-Day Shipping on millions of items, *Unlimited, ad-free streaming of over a million songs and more Prime benefits, Join Amazon Prime Watch Thousands of Movies & TV Shows Anytime Start Free Trial Now. It is necessary to keep in mind that these people were free in their native country and enslaved once they got to America. And the 1838 sale worth about $3.3 million in todays dollars was organized by two of Georgetowns early presidents, both Jesuit priests. Many of them baptized Catholic, they were bought by planters to work. Other industries made loads of money indirectly. This was only a portion of the slaves bought and sold by the Maryland Jesuits over time.[1]. Georgetown is not the first or only university to own slaves. In the case of Amazon, please use our links whenever you shop. [29], Not all of the 272 slaves intended to be sold to Louisiana met that fate. And she learned that Cornelius had worked the soil of a 2,800-acre estate that straddled the Bayou Maringouin. Upon receipt of these 51, Johnson and Batey were to pay the first $25,000. . We have been here since the founding of this country, and we are a significant part of the American experience.. [57], In September 2015, DeGioia convened a Working Group on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation to study the slave sale and recommend how to treat it in the present day. The remainder of the slaves were accounted for in three subsequent bills of sale executed in November 1838, which specified that 64 would go to Batey's plantation named West Oak in Iberville Parish and 140 slaves would be sent to Johnson's two plantations, Ascension Plantation (later known as Chatham Plantation) in Ascension Parish and another in Maringouin (Iberville Parish). She listened, stunned, as he told her about her great-great-grandfather, Cornelius Hawkins, who had labored on a plantation just a few miles from where she grew up. Slaves and the products they produced were responsible for well over 50% of the entire GNP of the United States. Now that we have this data, my hope is that we can use it to open doors and make connections. Georgetown University was an active participant in the slave trade selling upwards of 272 slaves from their Maryland run plantation to the deep south in an effort to support the then struggling university in 1838 according to The New York Times. this helps us promote a safe and accountable online community, and allows us to update you when other commenters reply to your posts. One building is now named in honor of a slave who was 65 years old when he was sold in 1838. And she would like to see Corneliuss name, and those of his parents and children, inscribed on a memorial on campus. As part of an ongoing consideration to this atrocity Georgetown is seeking to rectify their prior actions and, in a speech delivered to descendants of the identified descendants delivered this message: Today the Society of Jesus, who helped to establish Georgetown University and whose leaders enslaved and mercilessly sold your ancestors, stands before you to say that we have greatly sinned, said Rev. [46] Due to financial difficulties, Johnson sold half his property, including some of the slaves he had purchased in 1838, to Philip Barton Key in 1844. Photo by Claire Vail. We pray with you today because we have greatly sinned and because we are profoundly sorry. This message was delivered to more than 100 descendants of the original enslaved people who had been sol to finance the institution. Maxine Crump, 69, a descendant of one of the slaves sold by the Jesuits, in a Louisiana sugar cane field where researchers believe her ancestor once worked. The name had been passed down from generation to generation in her family. The Jesuits had sold off individual slaves before. Check out some of the. [50] Curran also published Georgetown University's official, bicentennial history in 1993, in which he wrote about the university's and Jesuits' relationship with slavery. They also knew that life on plantations in the Deep South was notoriously brutal, and feared that families might end up being separated and resold. But on this day, in the fall of 1838, no one was spared: not the 2-month-old baby and her mother, not the field hands, not the shoemaker and not Cornelius Hawkins, who was about 13 years old when he was forced onboard. The date when the last slaves were freed in Texas 18 months after they had officially freed at the end of the Civil War. Please contact us at members@americamedia.org with any questions. The first payment on the remaining $90,000 would become due after five years. June 1838 the University benefited from the sale of 272 slaves, some as young as 2 months old to finance the ailing institution. At the time, the Catholic Church did not view slaveholding as immoral, said the Rev. 272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. She still wants to know more about Corneliuss beginnings, and about his life as a free man. Descendants are learning new links to their pasts as a result of the project. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Join Amazon Prime Watch Thousands of Movies & TV Shows Anytime. Joseph Carberry, 1824 GSA29: Priscilla Queen petitions for her freedom, 1810 GSA30: Edward Queen petitions for his freedom, 1791 GSA31: Proceedings of the General Chapter at White Marsh, May 1789 GSA32: Fanny & her family, 1815 Please visit ourmembership pageto learn how you can invest in our work by subscribing to the magazine or making a donation. [27] The agreement provided that 51 slaves would be sent to the port of Alexandria, Virginia in order to be shipped to Louisiana. The college relied on Jesuit plantations in Maryland to help finance its operations, university officials say. The sale of 272 slaves in 1838 rescued the College from crushing debt. [33], Almost immediately, the sale, which was one of the largest slave sales in the history of the United States,[28] became a scandal among American Catholics. [7] As early as 1814, the trustees of the Corporation of Roman Catholic Clergymen discussed manumitting all their slaves and abolishing slavery on the Jesuit plantations,[10] though in 1820, they decided against universal manumission. Slaves Transported on the Katherine Jackson of Georgetown, Arriving New Orleans 6 Dec 1838, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1838_Jesuit_slave_sale, https://slaveryarchive.georgetown.edu/items/show/9, https://gu272.americanancestors.org/family/all-families, https://gu272.americanancestors.org/sites/default/files/2022-01/GMP%20Ancestor%20Database%202019%2002%2008%20%281%29%20%281%29.xlsx, Send a private message to the Profile Manager, Ascension Parish, Louisiana, Slave Owners, Iberville Parish, Louisiana, Slave Owners, Georgetown University, Washington, District of Columbia, Public Comments: The slaves were also identified as collateral in the event that Johnson, Batey, and their guarantors defaulted on their payments. (The two men would swap positions by 1838.). Georgetown Jesuits enslaved her ancestors. But when Ms. Riffel, the genealogist, told her where she thought he was buried, Ms. Crump knew exactly where to go. [30] In total, only 206 are known to have been transported to Louisiana. The students organized a protest and a sit-in, using the hashtag #GU272 for the slaves who were sold. He demanded that Mulledy travel to Rome to answer the charges of disobeying orders and promoting scandal. The truth was closer to home than anyone knew", "272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. Father Mulledy promised his superiors that the slaves would continue to practice their religion. . [19] At the congregation, the senior Jesuits in Maryland voted six to four to proceed with a sale of the slaves,[20] and Dubuisson submitted to the Superior General a summary of the moral and financial arguments on either side of the debate. The university created the liturgy in partnership with members of the descendant community, the Archdiocese of Washington and the Society of Jesus in the United States. This was a great cause of the wealth of the slaveowners who took advantage of land stolen from the original owners, the Native Americans who had lived here for centuries. What remains is what is owed to the descendants. Several substitutions were made to the initial list of those to be sold, and 91 of those initially listed remained in Maryland. There was no need for a map. We encourage you to visit our website, call us at (202)-687-8330, or email us at descendants@georgetown.edu if you are interested in learning more or sharing your ideas and reflections. It is also emblematic of the complex entanglement of American higher education and religious institutions with slavery. Melvin Robert and Joya Mia Italiano look into Georgetown Universitys response on the Lip News. They were heading to the only Catholic cemetery in Maringouin. [5], On June 19, 1838, Mulledy, Johnson, and Batey signed articles of agreement formalizing the sale. [49] There was periodic and sometimes extensive coverage of both the sale and the Jesuits' slave ownership in various literature. Thomas F. Mulledy and the Rev. The grave of Cornelius Hawkins, one of 272 slaves sold by the Jesuits in 1838 to help keep what is now Georgetown University afloat. [72][70] Georgetown also made a $1million donation to the foundation and a $400,000 donation to create a charitable fund to pay for healthcare and education in Maringouin, Louisiana.