Mary Rice,’a little old gentlewoman’
Posted on | March 25, 2010 | No Comments
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.