In 1835, Concord bicentennial was held, and the night before, the teacher of public school asked all the children who wanted to walk in the procession to stand. “All arose but one colored girl, a good scholar, and belonging to a respectable family. The teacher asked her if she would not like to go. She said, No; — that on some former occasion, she had been ill-treated and crowded out of the procession, and her mother said she should never go again. And besides, she said, no one would walk with her. – Thereupon, Abba Prescott, only nine years old, arose in her seat, and said, ‘She would walk with her, — she was as willing to walk with her as with any one.’ The teacher said, ‘perhaps your mother will not be willing.’ She answered with spirit, ‘I know she will.’ She did not misconceive her mother. From her she had derived that spirit both by nature and culture. The colored girl said her mother would not consent. She proposed to go and persuade her, which she did. And notwithstanding the incredulous gaze of the school, which seemed to say, When the trial comes you will retract… yet on the morrow she appeared in the procession holding the colored girl by the hand, and went with her in the procession, and into the church and through the day, beneath the gaze of curiosity, surprise, ridicule, and admiration.”

The little girl was Ellen Garrison, age 13, Caesar Robbins granddaughter, who was attending the grammar school in the center of town in the fall session ending November 30, 1835 (as she had the previous year). Her name appears on the school register kept by the teacher. So, too, does the name of ten-year-old Abigail M. W. Prescott, the daughter of the onetime merchant and politician Timothy Prescott and his wife Maria, and the future bride of George M. Brooks. The two were classmates at the time, and undoubtedly, Abigail Prescott and Ellen Garrison marched together into the meeting-house for the celebration.

- Maria K. Prescott became actively engaged in the Concord Female Antislavery Society, CFASS, launched in the fall of 1837, after the abolitionist lecturer Angelina Grimke and her sister Sarah spoke in town.

Two months after the CFASS was founded, the society met “at Mrs. [Susan] Garrison’s home.” We know this because Timothy Prescott made a note about the meeting in his daily diary. It is a simple record, no different from his other entries, put down on paper without comment. But how fitting that the husband of Maria and father of Abigail should be our source? And how interesting that the Garrisons’ signing over their right to the house provided by Humphrey Barrett five months’ earlier did not deter the ladies of the anti-slavery society from holding their meeting!

- Susan Garrison subscribed to petitions calling for end to slavery in DC and to slave trade, 1838; opposing annexation of Texas, 1838; and denouncing removal of the Cherokees from Georgia.

- Ellen Garrison, age 15, signed petition on behalf of the Cherokees! She lived up to her surname, identifying strongly with the radical abolitionists led by Garrison and Wendell Phillips. In 1847 she signed onto petition, headed by William Whiting, calling for Massachusetts to withdraw from the Union. (It had 92 signatures.)

by Faith Ferguson for the Drinking Gourd Project

Concord’s Untold Revolution: A Series from the Drinking Gourd Project, dedicated to preserving the Caesar Robbins house as an educational center for the untold stories of Concord’s early Africans, Abolitionists & other civil liberties advocates

We can’t know what Caesar Robbins thought or felt as he worked fortifying Dorchester Heights for the cannon that Henry Knox led back from Ticonderoga in early spring of 1776. But we know he was there, working as a soldier, a patriot of the American Revolution, because we have his enlistment record. And yet fighting for freedom from Great Britain, Robbins was enslaved by Simon Hunt of Concord.

By 1783, slavery was formally ended in Massachusetts and Caesar Robbins built himself a house.

Caesar Robbins House, Concord, MA

Caesar Robbins House Cellar Beam (courtesy Steve Moga)

It is a small house-a humble house even. But the history it represents is anything but humble, and the people who lived in that house made and inspired tremendous contributions to Concord and beyond. Who were these people? Who was Caesar Robbins and why is his house so special?

Caesar Robbins was a kind of patriarch of Concord’s colonial African community. He was the only African citizen of Concord listed as a landowner in the 1798 Direct Tax enumeration, listing all the property owners in Concord at the very beginning of our country. His extended family is connected to many of the other families of African descent, and his tenacity and endurance in providing a homesite for them is truly remarkable

Robbins was born around 1746; we don’t know if he was born in Concord, in Africa, or elsewhere. In 1769 he married Phillis, who was owned by Phebe Bliss Emerson, and her husband Concord’s Rev. William Emerson. Caesar and Phillis soon had a daughter, also named Phillis. Little Phillis remained a slave in the household of the Rev. Emerson; he included a note to her in a letter from Ticonderoga, “tell Phillis to be a good girl.”

Since Phillis’s mother died in about 1771, and her father Caesar was enslaved and working for the Hunts, little Phillis was mostly raised by Cate, another slave in the Bliss-Emerson household, and her husband Boston (who was owned by Samuel Potter.) 1n 1795, little Phillis married Cato Ingraham, a slave of Duncan Ingraham. When they freed themselves from Ingraham, they lived near Walden Woods in deep poverty.

Caesar Robbins remarried twice, first to Catherine, then to Rose. He had an extensive family, who occupied his house for six continuous generations. They included a daughter who became a dressmaker in Providence RI, and another daughter Susan, who married Jack Garrison, a self-emancipated slave from New Jersey. Their son John Garrison worked as a farm laborer-he worked for more than 30 years for the Ripley family at the Old Manse, and worked alongside Henry Thoreau on the famous Wedding Garden for the Hawthornes.

John married a Susan as well-this Susan Garrison was deeply involved in the Abolition work of Concord’s Female Anti Slavery Society. The society met at least once at her house (Grandfather-in-law Caesar Robbins house, too) where she served delicious cookies. The interior of the modest house retains some architectural details of the early 19th century, like a hand-molded chair-rail, that tell us that the residents sought a level of dignity and gentility in their daily lives beyond mere subsistence. Such a parlor would have made a suitable room for the ladies of the Society. (And Society member Martha Prescott said in her diary that she thought Susan Garrison had more sense than most of the well-born ladies in Concord.)

These few glimpses of the residents of the Caesar Robbins house barely skim the surface of what we know about their lives, of the magnitude of their contributions to Concord’s history, and the great epic sweep of the nation’s history as well. We know of near neighbors who also served in the Revolution, and fought in Massachusetts’ fabled 54th with Robert Gould Shaw; of friends who made significant agricultural innovations; of family members who inspired poetry and more from Concord’s sages, Thoreau and Emerson; and Peter Hutchinson, family member who was the first Concordian of African descent to vote in Concord..

This humble house is a link and a witness to some of the most important and real history that we have. It is the only standing house built by an early African resident of Concord. It in, we have been given a unique gift: the opportunity to create a center where we can teach these stories to our youth and the visitors from across the US and the Globe who come to Concord each year.

The Drinking Gourd Project, along with many town historic organizations, is working to restore the Robbins house for use as a civil liberties educational center. You can help by coming to April Town Meeting and voting YES on article 35 for CPC funding approval and article 36 to lease land next to the North Bridge parking lot as the new location for the Robbins House Educational Center. For further information, please see www.drinkinggourdproject.org.

Brister’s ditch fence shown above, a mound of dirt with a ditch running beside it on the right, was likely created by Brister Freeman about 200 years ago to keep his animals enclosed.

Naturalist J. Walter Brain discovered Brister’s ditch fence, using Thoreau’s survey map, in the Hapgood Wright Town Forest. Allan Schmidt, former member of the Trails Committee, used it to locate Brister’s home site on the Brister Freeman’s Trail Map in the town forest kiosk. Both are helping author Elise Lemire and the Drinking Gourd Project plan a stone marker to memorialize this site. Map available at: http://www.concordma.gov/pages/ConcordMA_NaturalResources/conservationland/townforestmap.pdf

by Polly Attwood

Editor’s note: The following is part of a series from the Drinking Gourd Project, dedicated to preserving the Caesar Robbins house as an educational center for the untold stories of Concord’s early Africans, abolitionists and other civil liberties advocates.

Many residents and visitors to Concord know the story of John Jack, whose grave can be seen at the Old Hill Burying Ground – the epitaph is well known. What is less well known about his life is that he, while still enslaved, worked to earn his own freedom at a cost of 120 pounds, and went on to become the owner of 8 1/2 acres of land here in Concord.

When he died, he left his property to “Violet,” who may have been his wife. She was, at the time of John Jack’s death, under the “ownership” of Susannah Barron. Because she was not free, the entire inheritance reverted to her owner.

Mary Rice was so moved by his story that she used to tend his grave and plant lilies around it. She had quite a resume for one who was described a “little old gentlewomen” – she was a school teacher, running an infant school in the ell of the Wrights Tavern; she was also a station master on the Underground Railroad, sheltering those who were making their way north to freedom, and a founding member of the Concord Female Anti-Slavery Society.

She and Mrs. Horace Mann wrote a petition to Abraham Lincoln, with the signatures of the children of Concord, begging the president to ensure that no children be enslaved. His reply, together with archival copies of the petition and the signatures, can be seen in framed exhibits in each of the public elementary schools.

Her abolitionist activity, and that of other staunch anti-slavery protestors here in Concord, became even more focused and determined after the Fugitive Slave Act became law in 1850. The act meant that any enslaved man, woman or child who had escaped north, could be recaptured and returned to their former masters.

This brought the issue of slavery to the very doorstep of people in Massachusetts.

An issue that had seemed, perhaps, far away, was suddenly affecting people who were here in this state.

Anti-slavery society meetings and fundraisers were happening here in Concord, and the women in town – the wives, daughters, sisters and aunts of all those famous and weighty men – were the ones who pushed and prodded the men into becoming active and vocal in the Abolitionist Movement.

They hosted speakers – Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown – they all spoke here in Concord, and were actively supported in their opposition to the institution of slavery.

This is a part of Concord’s history that has, in the past, been eclipsed by the other aspects of the story of Concord – the Revolution, Minutemen, the Transcendentalists, the literary accomplishments of the famous residents.

The Drinking Gourd Project, having established tours that include the early African men and women and the abolitionist sites, complete with maps, is now focusing on saving the house built by Caesar Robbins in 1780. He was formerly enslaved by Simon Hunt, and built his house on Barrett land, with permission from Barrett. The house was lived in by six generations of his descendants for almost 100 years, and was moved to its current location on Bedford Street in the 1870s. We have the chance to move it closer to its original location, near the North Bridge, and turn it into a focal point for this “Untold Revolution,” the Caesar Robbins Education Center. Please support us in this aim, and help us make known some important strands of the history of this town.

You can help by coming to April Town Meeting and voting yes on Article 35 for CPC funding approval and Article 36 to lease land next to the North Bridge parking lot as the new location for the Robbins House Educational Center. For further information, please see www.drinkinggourd.cchumanrights.org.

by Liz Clayton

Editor’s note: The following commentary is part of a series from the Drinking Gourd Project, dedicated to preserving the Caesar Robbins house as an educational center for the untold stories of Concord’s early Africans, abolitionists and other civil liberties advocates.

Dressed in her hoop skirt, scarf and shawl, Rosa Hallowell set out tea cups and saucers, while Susan Ryan put out the Brooks Antislavery Cake she’d baked, preparing for the Nashoba Brooks School CFASS (Concord Female Anti-Slavery Society) meeting.

Waiting for her visitors, Rosa talked about what drew her to the Bigelow House on Sudbury Road, where she lives. “My ancestors Edward and Norwood Hallowell were colonels in the Civil War’s all-black 54th Regiment, and their parents were abolitionists whose summer home was an Underground Railroad station. So when I heard that this house was a stop on the Underground Railroad, it called to me.” Rosa has since portrayed Ann Bigelow for the Drinking Gourd Project four times.

Soon 32 sixth-grade girls, with their teacher Lucy Douglas, stepped through Rosa’s front door and back 160 years, curtsying to Frederick Douglass (played by Guy Peartree) and Henry David Thoreau (Richard Smith) before taking their seats at “Ann Bigelow’s” table.

Ann and her husband, blacksmith Francis Bigelow, were active abolitionists who helped with the famed escape of Shadrach Minkins in February 1851. Minkins was the first fugitive seized in New England under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act.

“There was a knock on our door at 3 a.m., and when Francis opened it, there stood the vigilante Lewis Hayden with Shadrach Minkins,” Ann recounted. Hayden had just stormed a Boston courtroom, and carried Minkins away into a sea of antislavery protestors. Shadrach was arrested while working as a waiter at the Cornhill Coffeehouse in Boston, because his master in Virginia sent an agent after him four months after the Fugitive Slave Act passed. “We fed Shadrach, and our neighbors Mary and Nathan Brooks gave him clothes and money, raised by selling Brooks Cake. We don’t hide fugitive slaves — we put Shadrach up in our guest room, where we felt he had a right to stay.”

Next Thoreau stood up to ask the girls, “Do you think people should be bought and sold like cattle? How many of you would speak out to end a system like that?” All hands went up. “My mother and sisters are very active in Concord’s Antislavery Societies, and we’ve taken in several fugitive slaves on their way north. Often I drive them to the train station, give them money for their journey, and even travel with them for a stop or two on the train.”

Then Frederick Douglass took the floor, singing in his deep voice: “When the sun comes back, and the first quail calls, Follow the drinking gourd…. The drinking gourd is another name for the big dipper — pointing us to the North star so we can follow it to freedom.” He talked about growing up with his Grandmother Bailey — never realizing he was enslaved until the age of 6, when she walked him up to the main house, introduced him to scads of half brothers and sisters, and left him there without a good bye. “I learned fast what it meant to be somebody’s property then,” he said. “Later I ran away to Massachusetts and read William Garrison’s paper The Liberator, then became an abolitionist myself so that I could tell people what it’s like to be enslaved. I came here to Concord several times to speak out against slavery, and visited often with the Thoreaus.”

After sipping tea, tasting Brooks Cake, and reading about the female abolitionist described on their name tags, the girls left with a connection to Concord history they hadn’t made before, through some of Concord’s untold but equally revolutionary stories.

To learn more, read “To Set this World Right: The Antislavery Movement in Thoreau’s Concord” by Sandra Petrulionis. The Drinking Gourd Project, along with many town historic organizations, is working to restore the Robbins house for use as a civil liberties educational center. You can help by coming to April Town Meeting and voting yes on Article 35 for CPC funding approval and Article 36 to lease land next to the North Bridge parking lot as the new location for the Robbins House Educational Center. For further information, please see the Drinking Gourd Project’s Web site.

Members included:

Mrs. D. Gerrish, PresidentMiss Helen Louisa Thoreau, Vice President & Founding MemberThoreau’s sisterThe Thoreau home was a haven for fugitive slaves.(1812–1849)Mrs. Tewksbury, TreasurerMrs. Mary Brooks, Secretary & Founding Member“Perfectly fearless” Mary Merrick Brooks, wife of Concord lawyer Nathan Brooks, was the cornerstone of the Concord anti-slavery efforts and she corresponded quite frequently with Wendell Phillips, understanding that his visits played an important role in raising anti-slavery awareness in Concord. The Brooks home was situated at the intersection of Main Street and Sudbury Road, where the Concord Free Public Library is now located. It was moved to 45 Hubbard Street in 1872, prior to the Library’s construction.Susan Barrett, Founding MemberIn October of 1837, not long after a visit from Sarah and Angelina Grimké, the Concord Female Antislavery Society was formed. Its founding members included Mary Brooks, Prudence Ward, Susan Garrison, Cynthia, Sophia and Helen Thoreau, Mary Wilder, Susan Barrett, Maria Prescott, and Lidian Emerson.Mrs. Ann Bigelow Wife of blacksmith Francis Bigelow, Ann was a most earnest, devoted, and influential abolitionist from the start and to the end. She welcomed to her house most of the well-known anti-slavery orators and friends, and also many a fugitive slave, including Shadrach Minkins. The Bigelows lived across the street from Mary Brooks, at 19 Sudbury Rd.“Mr. Nathan Brooks and Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson were always afraid of committal, we women, never,” Ann Bigelow remembered proudly at the end of the century.Mrs. Lidian Emerson, Founding MemberRalph Waldo Emerson’s wife. Lidian was an abolitionist and expressed her feelings by draping a black cloth over the gate and fence posts outside her house on July 4, 1855. She was protesting the continued presence of slavery in the United States.(1802-1892)Mrs. Susan Garrison, Founding MemberWife of John Garrison, a fugitive slave from New Jersey who found freedom in Concord and was a hard working laborer. CFASS members visited Mrs. Garrison to discuss their plans and to eat her “delicious cookies.”Mrs. Harriet Hanson RobinsonA Lowell mill-girl who had written for the Lowell Offering, Harriet married William Stevens Robinson, an anti-slavery newspaper editor who used the pen-name “Warrington.” Besides helping her husband with his anti-slavery and reform activities, Harriet Robinson became active in the advancement of women’s rights.(1825-1911)Mrs. Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau, Founding MemberThoreau’s mother(1787–1872)Miss Sophia Thoreau, Founding MemberThoreau’s youngest sister(1819–1876)Mrs. Joseph Ward & her daughter Miss Prudence Ward, Founding MemberThey lived with the Thoreaus at 255 Main St.Ann Whiting Louisa WhitingMrs. Mary Wilder, Founding MemberFirst President of CFASS, and wife of Trinitarian Reverend John Wilder, who regularly invited abolitionists to speak at his church.Miss Mary Rice A little old gentlewoman who lived behind the Old Burying Ground, “quaint in dress and blunt of speech and with the kindest heart that ever beat.” She was a ‘stationmaster’ in the Underground Railroad and went from school to school to collect 350 signatures of Concord schoolchildren on a petition to President Lincoln asking him to abolish slavery.Mrs. John BrownWife of the abolitionist John Brown, who was controversial because of his use of violence. Franklin Sanborn brought the Browns to live in Concord in 1857.Mrs. Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, aka Caroline Downes Brooks HoarThe daughter of Concord lawyer Nathan Brooks, stepdaughter of his wife Mary Merrick Brooks (president of the Concord Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society), a contemporary of Henry David Thoreau and girlhood companion of his sister Sophia. Caroline Brooks assiduously avoided sugar produced by slave labor and that she helped her stepmother make the famous “Brooks Cake” to raise funds for antislavery purposes.(1820-1892)Mrs. Abigail May Alcott, “Abby” Bronson Alcott’s Unitarian wife — abolitionist, women’s rights activist, and pioneer social worker, supported her husband and the Fruitlands community through her labor and resources. She provided the model for “Marmee” in her daughter Louisa May Alcott’s novel, Little Women.(1800-1877)Miss Louisa May Alcott While she is best known for her writings, Louisa May Alcott was also a supporter of reform movements including antislavery, temperance, women’s education, and women’s suffrage (right to vote).“I became an abolitionist at a very early age, but have never been able to decide whether I was made so by seeing the portrait of George Thompson hidden under a bed in our house during the Garrison riot, and going to comfort the ‘poor man who had been good to the slaves,’ or because I was saved from drowning in the Frog Pond some years later by a colored boy.”(1832-1888)Miss Ellen Emerson The first daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Lidian lived in Concord throughout her life. She did not marry. Her adulthood was devoted to family, community, and religion.Mrs. Harriet Tubman Born into slavery on the eastern shore of Maryland as Araminta “Minty” Ross, is perhaps the most famous individual hero of the Underground Railroad. She was toughened by slavery from an early age, suffering from a blow to her head by a slavemaster that caused her to suffer from seizures the rest of her life. Tubman had escaped to Pennsylvania in 1849, but she returned in 1850 to help some of her relatives who were up for auction. Harriet also returned to Maryland in 1851 to bring her husband, John Tubman, to Pennsylvania only to find he had taken another wife and did not to wish to return with her. This incident perhaps toughened Tubman as nothing else; rather than grieve the loss, she instead dedicated herself to helping others escape. She never remarried. John Brown referred to her as “General Tubman.”(1820-1913)Mrs. Martha Bartlett Wife of Dr. Josiah Bartlett of 35 Lowell Rd.(1857-1905)Maria Prescott In October of 1837, not long after a visit from Sarah and Angelina Grimké, the Concord Female Antislavery Society was formed. Its founding members included Mary Brooks, Prudence Ward, Susan Garrison, Cynthia, Sophia and Helen Thoreau, Mary Wilder, Susan Barrett, Maria Prescott, and Lidian Emerson.Miss Angelina Grimké Angelina and her sister Sarah, converted Quakers and abolitionists from South Carolina, were the first women in the United States to publicly argue for the abolition of slavery. They made a revolutionary speaking tour in New England, and visited Concord in 1837, after which the Concord Female Anti-Slavery Society was formed.(1805-1879)Miss Sarah Grimké Sarah and Angelina Grimké, converted Quakers and abolitionists from South Carolina, were the first women in the United States to publicly argue for the abolition of slavery. They made a revolutionary speaking tour in New England, and visited Concord in 1837, after which the Concord Female Anti-Slavery Society was formed.(1792-1873)

Brooks Cake Recipe

To raise funds for the antislavery cause, Mary Brooks baked and soldher signature tea cake, widely known as Brooks Cake. It was served atall Concord anti-slavery meetings. This tea cake tastes great with jam.

Ingredients

One pound flour (4 cups)One pound sugar (2 cups)Half pound butter (2 sticks)Four eggsOne cup milkOne teaspoonful baking sodaHalf-teaspoonful cream of tartarHalf-pound currants (8 ounces), add in half of itMakes two loaves(Directions not given in original recipe.)This makes two loaves; and, if such faithful hands and careful eyes ashers attend to its making, it will be fit for the banquet of the gods. Thedevoted woman lived to see the cause for which she so earnestlylabored as successful as was always her recipe for “Brooks Cake.”

— from the writings of William S. Robinson, 1877

Notes:

Mary Merrick Brooks was the daughter of a slave owner, the wife of a conservative senator, and the leading, most persistent abolitionist in town! The Brooks house was moved from its original site where the main Concord library now stands, to 45 Hubbard St. in 1872.