Susan Marshall seems to have been Susan Thorne Marshall, daughter of John Stocks and Rebecca Thorne of Charleston. To refresh your memories, Rebecca and her son, Tom, were purchased by John Stocks Thorne from Mordecai Lyon for $500 and then manumitted three weeks later. Rebecca subsequently was known as Rebecca Thorne and remained with John S. Thorne as his common-law wife, bearing him four more children: John, Philip*, Caroline, and Susan. Because Rebecca was a Free Woman of Color, the children were free-born. Thomas died at a very young age; John went on to become a successful tailor; Philip was variously a carpenter and undertaker, and later president of the Friendly Moralist Society; Caroline married Richard Dereef Jr., of the wealthy Charlestonian Dereefs; and Susan, who married into another of Charleston's elite free families of color, and whose uncertain fate makes her the most elusive of the Thorne children.
According to court pleadings in Thorne vs. Fordham (decision reported at 4 Richardson Equity 222 et seq.), Susan Thorne married one Samuel Marshall and together they had two sons, Joseph and Thomas. Circumstances suggest that the couple then left South Carolina sometime after the 1840 birth of their second son, Thomas, for an unknown destination.
At some point and for some reason, Susan apparently elected to risk return to the place of her birth, whereupon she was arrested, with the results as reported in the newspaper report above. I don't think there's any question that she knew the risk she would run by returning, but whatever was calling her back was clearly stronger than her fear of arrest.
The court pleadings noted above further declare that Susan died in November, 1848—interestingly enough, the same month in which she was arrested and arraigned. The space in the pleadings for day of the month of her death, however, is left blank. The place of her death isn't reported, nor is there, for that matter, any mention of her name in the Charleston municipal death records. Did she really pass away or did she simply leave the state again, apparently never to return? I don't yet know. Nor do I yet know what became of her husband and two sons, although I have the growing suspicion that their younger son, Thomas, served in the U.S. Navy during the Civil War, and then spent the remainder of his days in Washington, DC, passing away in 1921. His death certificate identifies his father, however, as "William" Marshall and his mother as "Elizabeth Thorn." (Tantalizing, eh?)
But there is another level of risk mentioned further down in the account, where the newspaper reports with apparent shock that many white South Carolinians—presumably Charlestonians among them—have been aiding and abetting the illegal travels of Free Persons of Color by pretending they were slaves and taking them along in their journeys to the North and to Europe and then returning with them.
The newspaper supposes that these white Charlestonians were simply unaware of the law forbidding Free Persons of Color to leave the state and return, which seems as unlikely as Captain Renault's lack of awareness that there was gambling going on at Rick's Cafe in Casablanca.
That these good Charlestonians would be complicit in flouting South Carolina laws on behalf of Free Persons of Color suggests there may be yet another level of complexity in social and racial relations--at least in Charleston society.
___________________________
* Philip is Jane's 3rd great-grandfather.
No comments:
Post a Comment