Cheesy Grits: Daniel Payne's Anson Street School

Daniel Alexander Payne
Historiographer and Bishop of the A.M.E. Church
First President of Wilberforce College (now University)

My last post described my search for the address of Daniel Payne's school on Tradd Street. The evidence currently suggests that 122 Tradd Street warrants further investigation as the site of his first school, begun when he was only 19 years old.

The Tradd Street school, however, didn't last long, as Payne found that he couldn't make a living with just a few students. So he closed the school and pondered what to do next. No sooner had he closed the school, however, than he something of a spiritual awakening: he perceived that his callings to learn and to teach were in a strong sense sacred callings that he could not abandon without betraying himself and his students, whether enslaved or free.

Payne reopened his school and soon found that his problem had inverted: he had so many students that there was no longer enough room for them. He moved the school once and quickly outgrew those premises as well.

Cheesy Grits: Finding Schoolmaster Daniel Payne's First School in Charleston

Bishop Daniel A. Payne (1811-1893) had two great loves: his church and his students. He served both throughout his life as the first historiographer of the AME Church, then as a Bishop, and then as the first president of Wilberforce College (now University), the first Black-owned and -operated college in the United States.

Bishop Payne was free-born in Charleston, orphaned at a young age and raised by a grand-aunt. The Minors' Moralist Society, which was set up by members of the Brown Fellowship Society for the education of orphans, provided Payne with his first taste of schooling. He demonstrated sufficient aptitude and ability that he soon came under the direct tutelage of Schoolmaster Thomas S. Bonneau. When he reached the age of twelve, he was apprenticed out, as was the custom, first to a carpenter and then to a tailor.

But Payne soon realized that what he really wanted to do was teach. His opportunity came when in 1829, at age 19, he was asked by Caesar Wright, a Free Person of Color, to teach his three children at his home on Tradd Street. He accepted, and was soon teaching not only the Wright children but three enslaved people as well.

Excursus: Maryland, My Maryland: Marriage Licenses Issued to African-American Couples in Oakland (Garrett County) MD 1872 - 1902 (including residency)

I thought it might be useful to post the marriage license list again with the residences of the groom and bride included. The default residence is Garrett County, meaning that if no residence is indicated for either or both parties, the residence should be presumed to be Garrett County.

Excursus: Maryland, My Maryland: Marriage Licenses Issued to African-American Couples in Oakland (Garrett County) MD, 1870-1902

The small African-American community of southern Garrett County of the late 19th and very early 20th century remains elusive. We know they are there because their names are in the federal censuses, there are references to their church activities at Oakland's Bethel AME church in the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper, and there are references to two "colored" schools in the annual reports from the county board of education to the Maryland State Department of Education.

It occurred to me to go through the marriage records for Garrett County to see if African-American couples are explicitly identified as such. And indeed they are. So I've been going through the Garrett County Circuit Court records to see what more we can learn about this community.

Cheesy Grits: Levels of Risk

The attached clipping is from the 9 Nov 1848 Charleston Southern Patriot. It reports the arraignment and subsequent guilty plea of one Susan Marshall, a Free Person of Color, who had left South Carolina and then returned, which was a violation of state law. Marshall was fined $300 and ordered to leave the state by December 10, unless she had been pardoned by "the Executive," which I take to mean the Governor. Should she have remained in South Carolina, she was threatened first by corporal punishment, and, in the event of continued recalcitrance, sale at public auction as a slave.

Cheesy Grits: Historic Preservation on Edisto Island: the Hutchinson and Thorne houses

The post-Civil War period on Edisto Island produced two heros for the African-American community there: James Hutchinson and John Thorne. Both men entered into cooperative agreements with the formerly-enslaved residents of Edisto Island to pool their funds in order to purchase former plantations. The land was then subdivided with the subdivisions then sold back to the investors/residents based on their contributions to the "pool." Both Hutchinson and Thorne retained some land for themselves and their families as well. Almost a century later, the two men were still remembered. Sam Gadsden identified them to Nick Lindsay as "The Two Black Kings of Edisto Island." (I blogged about John Thorne earlier, starting here.)

So what remains of the Hutchinson and Thorne "kingdoms"? Certainly there is a lasting legacy of continued land ownership on Edisto Island. An example would be our friend (and a friend of this blog) Deborah Robinson, whom we initially met through her search for more information about John Thorne. She wanted to know more about the man who had enabled her family to purchase the land on Edisto that they still call home.

But are there personal remnants of Hutchinson and Thorne? The answer is "Yes!", but it's a qualified "Yes."

Cheesy Grits: The Other Desverney Brother

I was pretty excited to have discovered the very strong possibility that one of Valeria's first cousins on the Thorne side, Arthur Desverney, played with James Reese Europe's Clef Club Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 1912, 1913, and 1914. I mean, how can you top that?

But if I've learned one thing from doing family history, it's that you never know what you're going to find next. In this instance, it was Arthur Desverney's older brother, Broughum Desverney.

I'll confess to having been lulled by the description of Broughum's occupation in the 1910 census as an "elevator runner" in an office building. Aside from documenting the kinds of occupations available to black men in NYC in 1910, there wouldn't seem to be much to get excited about his occupation.