list of slaves sold by georgetown university

The number of slaves transported to Louisiana (206) and the number left in Maryland (91) add up to 297, not 272, because some of the 272 slaves initially identified to be sold were substituted with replacements. If youre already a subscriber or donor, thank you! In fact, Harvard, Columbia, Brown, University of Virginia did as well. Were sorry registration isn't working smoothly for you. Why am I being asked to create an account? But this was no ordinary slave sale. Georgetown and the Society of Jesus Maryland Province have issued an apology for their role in this action to more than 100 descendants who had been traced at the time of the apology. 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. 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). Georgetown Slavery Archive Date 1838 Contributor Adam Rothman Relation GSA63 Format PDF Language English Type Text Identifier GSA5 Text Item Type Metadata Original Format Spreadsheet Files Collection Sale of Maryland Jesuit's enslaved community to Louisiana in 1838 Tags Families, Plantations, Slaves Citation [26] Johnson and Batey were to be held jointly and severally liable and each additionally identified a responsible party as a guarantor. These posts focus on the reality of Black life in America after the Civil War culminating in the landmark Brown v Board of Education that changed so many of the earlier practices. She does not put much stock in what she describes as casual institutional apologies. But she would like to see a scholarship program that would bring the slaves descendants to Georgetown as students. Central concepts and key points are illustrated through campus examples. The Jesuits had sold off individual slaves before. More than a dozen universities including Brown, Columbia, Harvard and the University of Virginia have publicly recognized their ties to slavery and the slave trade. In the uproar that followed, he was called to Rome and reassigned. The sale of these 272 slaves, known as the GU272, saved the university from foreclosure. The sale of 272 slaves in 1838 rescued the College from crushing debt. THEY NEED TO BE FOUND AND LINKED. Its hard to know what could possibly reconcile a history like this, he said. A photo of the slave cabins at Laurel Valley in Thibodaux is part of the GU272 Memory Project. Moreover, men and women held in bondage were also part of the day-to-day operation of Georgetown College in its early decades. Although the working group was established in August, it was student demonstrations at Georgetown in the fall that helped to galvanize alumni and gave new urgency to the administrations efforts. 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: Most of the 314 enslaved people were sent to Louisiana, but about a third remained in Maryland or were sold to other locations, according to an article on the website. 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. Now, for the first time, Ms. Crump understood its origins. Ta-Nehisi Coates, National Correspondent, The Atlantic Recorded Thursday, September 29, 2016, at the Washington Ideas Forum. A photograph of Frank Campbell, one of 272 slaves sold to keep Georgetown University afloat, was found in a scrapbook at Nicholls State University in Louisiana. (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. [5] In October of that year, Mulledy succeeded McSherry, who was dying, as provincial superior. [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. Now that we have this data, my hope is that we can use it to open doors and make connections. In letters written to Jesuit superiors in Maryland, one priest who accidentally crossed paths with the slaves in Louisiana after the sale bemoaned the fact that the slaves couldnt practice Catholicism.. Ms. Crump, 69, has been asking herself that question, too. An inspector scrutinized the cargo on Dec. 6, 1838. Now students, professors and alumni want to know what happened to those men and women and what the university will do moving forward. 2023 A Month of Tribute to 31 Women We Should All Know, Rosewood A Typical Race Riot in America. 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. To pay that debt, the university sold 272 slaves the very people that helped build the school itself. As early as the 1780s, Dr. Rothman found, they openly discussed the need to cull their stock of human. The slaves were also identified as collateral in the event that Johnson, Batey, and their guarantors defaulted on their payments. Many institutions owned slaves and Georgetown University was no exception. Upon receipt of these 51, Johnson and Batey were to pay the first $25,000. Twenty-seven years earlier, a document dated June 19, 1838, showed that Maryland Jesuit priests sold 272 slaves to the owners of Louisiana plantations. Twenty-seven years earlier, a document dated June 19, 1838, showed that Maryland Jesuit priests sold 272 slaves to the owners of Louisiana plantations. We see that slavery was MUCH more than depriving people of their liberty and theft of their services, it was the cruel and long lasting emotional devastation of selling away loved ones, taking indecent liberties, cruel and inhumane treatment and so much more. 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. Alfred Francis Russell (1817-1884), 10th President of Liberia. We shop for the best values for you. [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. [41] The Jesuits never received the total $115,000 that was owed under the agreement. We receive a small royalty without cost to you. Slaves and the products they produced were responsible for well over 50% of the entire GNP of the United States. He addressed his concerns to Father Mulledy, who three years earlier had returned to his post as president of Georgetown. Many of them baptized Catholic, they were bought by planters to work. (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 . We can't do it without youAmerica Media relies on generous support from our readers. 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. A fantastic research tool with video camera, navigation programs and so much more. Today, the universitys leaders, students and alumni are grappling with how to confront that history. She was the citys first black woman television anchor. It lists the slaves by name according to plantation where they lived, identifies family groups, and records which ship (1, 2, or 3) they were shipped in. Your email address will not be published. To comment or make suggestions on future posts, use Contact Us. It is interesting that the date was June 19th as many years later, it was on what is now recognized as Juneteenth. He was allowed to continue paying well beyond the ten years initially allowed, and continued to do so until just before the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, during the Civil War. [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. Slaves were collateral and could be used to mortgage land and other goods. It would be better to suffer financial disaster than suffer the loss of our souls with the sale of the slaves, wrote the Rev. At Georgetown, slavery and scholarship were inextricably linked. And she learned that Cornelius had worked the soil of a 2,800-acre estate that straddled the Bayou Maringouin. June 1838 the University benefited from the sale of 272 slaves, some as young as 2 months old to finance the ailing institution. 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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. There is no indication that he received any response. None of those conditions were met, university officials said. Unknown because that portion of history is so like anything that reflects on the horrors of slavery preempted from our history. The sale prompted immediate outcry from fellow Jesuits. [15], While Roothaan decided in 1831, based on the advice of the Maryland Mission superior, Francis Dzierozynski, that the Jesuits should maintain and improve their plantations rather than sell them, Kenney and his advisors (Thomas Mulledy, William McSherry, and Stephen Dubuisson) wrote to Roothaan in 1832 about the growing public opposition to slavery in the United States, and strongly urged Roothaan to allow the Jesuits to gradually free their slaves. GU272 descendent Carolyn Smith gestures toward gravestones of descendants of enslaved people in Houma, La. Remembrance Hall became Anne Marie Becraft Hall, after a free black woman who founded a school for black girls in the Georgetown neighborhood and later joined the Oblate Sisters of Providence. History has attempted to take the sting out of it which is impossible. [47], While the 1838 slave sale gave rise to scandal at the time, the event eventually faded out of the public awareness. 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. The Rev. From these estates, the Jesuits traveled the countryside on horseback, administering the sacraments and catechizing the Catholic laity. [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. [51] Other historians covered the subject in literature published between the 1980s and 2000s. Families would not be separated. We ask our visitors to confirm their email to keep your account secure and make sure you're able to receive email from us. [12], One of the Maryland Jesuits' institutions, Georgetown College (later known as Georgetown University), also rented slaves. . 272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. He was valued at $900. More than half were younger than 20, and nearly a third were not yet 10 years old. (Best for messages specifically directed to those editing this profile. In 1836, the Jesuit Superior General, Jan Roothaan, authorized the provincial superior to carry out the sale on three conditions: the slaves must be permitted to practice their Catholic faith, their families must not be separated, and the proceeds of the sale must be used only to support Jesuits in training. 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). CNN In 1838, the Jesuits who ran Georgetown University sold 272 enslaved people to pay off the university's debts. As a frequent reader of our website, you know how important Americas voice is in the conversation about the church and the world. And they are confronting a particularly wrenching question: What, if anything, is owed to the descendants of slaves who were sold to help ensure the colleges survival? people, women and others in the Catholic Church, Cardinal Cupich: Critics of Pope Francis Latin Mass restrictions should listen to JPII. They were heading to the only Catholic cemetery in Maringouin. This was only a portion of the slaves bought and sold by the Maryland Jesuits over time.[1]. In 1838, the Jesuit priests who ran the countrys top Catholic university needed money to keep it alive. Required fields are marked *. [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. Others, including two of Corneliuss uncles, ran away before they could be captured. [137] Thomas C. Hindman (1828-1868), American politician and Confederate general. But priests at the Jesuit plantations recounted the panic and fear they witnessed when the slaves departed. His children and grandchildren also embraced the Catholic church. Revealed: The Slave Sold to Save Georgetown by Stacy M. Brown March 22, 2017 Frank Campbell was sold in 1838 to help save Georgetown. After the sale, Cornelius vanishes from the public record until 1851 when his trail finally picks back up on a cotton plantation near Maringouin, La. Soon, the two men and their teams were working on parallel tracks. His owner, Mr. Batey, had died, and Cornelius appeared on the plantations inventory, which included 27 mules and horses, 32 hogs, two ox carts and scores of other slaves. Are You A Liturgist With A Passion to Form Young Adults? 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. Maryland Province Archives at Lauinger Library at Georgetown University, A passage from the Rev. The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II An astonishing book. Some of that money helped to pay off the debts of the struggling college. We have been here since the founding of this country, and we are a significant part of the American experience.. The condition of slaves on the plantations varied over time, as did the condition of the Jesuits living with them. Banks would finance land purchases using slaves as collateral. [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. One building was renamed for Isaac Hawkins, first on the list of the 272 human beings sold in 1838. The week also provided opportunities for members of the descendant community to connect with one another and with Jesuits through a private vigil on Monday night, a descendant-only dinner on Tuesday evening and tours of the Maryland plantation where their ancestors were enslaved. [68], Georgetown University also extended to descendants of slaves that the Jesuits owned or whose labor benefitted the university the same preferential legacy status in university admission given to children of Georgetown alumni. The Jesuits ultimately received payment many years late and never received the full $115,000. The articles of agreement listed each of the slaves by name to be sold.

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