Ellen Garrison: Concord’s Young 19th Century African Activist (Caesar Robbins’Granddaughter)
Posted on | September 1, 2010 | No Comments
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.)