Episode 4 - Talk Some Little About You

Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant
Episode 4: “Talk Some Little About You”
Published on  August 4, 2020

Note: This transcript was generated by Otter.ai with light human correction

Kathryn Gehred 

Hello, and welcome to Your Most Obedient and Humble Servant. This is a Women's History podcast where we feature eighteenth and early nineteenth century women's letters that don't get as much attention as we think they deserve. I am your host, Kathryn Gehred. If you've listened to our previous three episodes, you may have noticed a trend in the letters I've picked, which is that every letter so far has been written by a wealthy white woman who has a connection to an even wealthier white man. We had one from Martha Washington, one from a lady friend of George Washington, and there was another one from a granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson. This is a problem because as I say, every episode, I want this to be a Women's History podcast, and I can't really say that it's Women's History podcast if I'm only sharing the experiences of wealthy elite, white, women. So this week, I am very excited to share a letter from an enslaved woman named Hannah Valentine so we can get a perspective of the early nineteenth century from a different lens. Before I dive into the letter, I want to make a couple things clear, I want to talk a little bit about history and the nature of the work that we do. The point of this podcast is to bring primary sources to you in an interesting way. So, that usually for this podcast is focusing on correspondents and letters. Historians depend on written documents to write their histories, we call them primary sources. Pretty much as a historian, if you can't back up your argument with primary sources, you don't have a historical argument. But what happens when you're studying somebody who, because of racism and white supremacy, was sometimes legally banned from learning how to read and write. Enslaved people couldn't testify in court that couldn't get legally married. Very often, enslaved people were buried in unmarked graves. So, a lot of sources that historians go to for early American history just don't exist when you're writing about enslaved people. And if they do exist, because there's evidence that more slaves were writing letters to each other than you might think, there's the next level of which archivists, file clerks, librarians, historians, of two hundred years ago would consider those papers, important enough to save the way that somebody like Thomas Jefferson's granddaughters letters would be preserved. I just want to say that this isn't something just like, 'oh, the letters aren't there. What can we do?' The letters may very well have been there, but just have not been saved, because of racism. So you see a lot in early American history, people writing about enslaved people who don't have as many sources backing up what they're saying, because a lot of those sources for various reasons, no longer exist, sometimes get dinged for not having the amount of primary sources that another historical research source would have when it's just simply impossible to do so. So, we find ourselves in catch 22, where you cannot write the history of enslaved people, because we cannot have the sources that people would consider legitimate. And if you try to use something like oral histories, people get really upset sometimes when you try to do history, from oral histories, because oh, people can say, oh, it's not it's not factual. But what is a solid, incontrovertible historical fact is that enslaved people existed, and experience the world in just as many nuanced and complicated ways as historical white people, we just simply do not have the written records of that. And, the trap that a lot of historians and white historians particularly fall into, is writing about slavery, as though because we don't have these sources, that enslaved people weren't experiencing reality in the same way that white people were. So, I just want to make that point, clear, and that I'm writing I want this podcast to represent not just elite white women's experiences, I am going to do a lot of podcasts from the perspective of elite white women, because that was what I've studied, and those are the letters that I've had time to pour through and find the really juicy ones. But always remember that just because we have more of one perspective than another perspective, doesn't mean that one is necessarily more valid. We've got twenty thousand documents from George Washington's perspective. We don't have any documents from some of his enslaved people's perspective, but their thoughts, their memories, their family connections are just as important.

Okay, so that's my tangent on that, but now, as I say, all that stuff, but these letters not existing, I'm gonna go into one of those letters that does actually exist. Alright, so now let's dig into a little bit of the context of the letter I'm going to look into this week. It's from 1837, it's from Hannah Valentine, a forty-three year old enslaved woman who lived in Abingdon, Virginia, and she wrote it to her daughter Eliza, who had gone to live in Richmond with her father and their owners, David and Mary Campbell. David Campbell had recently been elected Governor of Virginia. So his family and a small group of enslaved people all move together to the Capitol for as long as that position lasted, because several letters actually quite a few letters exist from the enslaved people at Abington there actually has been more scholarly work done on this household than usually you get in a situation like this. So, I was actually able to find some research and scholarly articles about Hannah, which was a huge help in putting this podcast together. But I do really quick want to say I found one mention of her where they they quote the same letter that I'm about to read, and they call her an elderly wife. But if you look, she was only forty-three years old when she wrote this. So I just wanted to really quickly say this is a Women's History podcast, and we don't call forty-three year olds, elderly here, but hear a little bit more about Hannah. Her husband was an enslaved coach driver named Michael. And at the time that this letter was written, she had six children. So, her oldest son was Richard twenty-six years old. Her daughter, Eliza was twenty-one. And Eliza is the person Hannah wrote this letter to her son, David Byrd was twelve, at this point, she had a daughter named Jane who was five Mary who was two and the son named Page, we don't know exactly how old he was, at the time of this letter page ended up actually being sold later in his life, for insubordination, and we'll get a little bit more into that in a little bit. There's evidence that David Campbell, the owner and the governor of Virginia for a little while, was actually the father of one or more of Hannah's children. I will say this, that it was incredibly common for white plantation owners to have children with their slaves, and it's just one of those horrifying realities of the institution of slavery that we need to acknowledge more frequently. David Campbell was your classic wealthy member of the Virginia Gentry, he had a lot of land and money. He built a brick home called Montcalm in 1827, which is where he was reading the letter from Montcalm. David Campbell and his wife, Mary had no children together, but they did have a niece named Virginia who moved in with them, and that they sort of wanted to take over their household after they died, they raised her as though she was their child. When he was elected governor of Virginia in 1837. He and his family moved about 300 miles away to Richmond, they took Michael with them, as well as he and his children, Eliza and Richard and a few other enslaved people. So Hannah, was separated from her husband and several of her children for about three years. And during this time, Hannah sort of managed the house of Montcalm, there was probably an overseer there, but Hannah kind of ruled the house while her family was in Richmond. So, it's an interesting situation, and during this time, Hanna wrote them letters now she couldn't read or write at the time of these letters. So what she did was she dictated them to some unknown at this point, white man who could read and write, it might have been the overseer, we don't know. You'll see in the letter, she teases whoever's reading the letter a little bit, which I think is interesting. I just want to point out what we have here are the words of a black woman, as transcribed by a white man, now read almost two hundred years later by a white woman. So we have quite a few degrees of separation here between this letter and the actual source. So, keep that in mind as you listen. So without further ado, here is the letter.

Hannah Valentine to Eliza Valentine. Abington, November 1 1837.

"Dear Eliza

I received yours & Richards Letter day Before yesterday with great pleasure I have been quite uneasay since for an opportunity to write to you. You must not expect [me] to write to you Often as it is some trouble to get a person to write for Me - I have written to Michel by Nancy Singleton. Your Children are all well and doing very well - and have never suffered from sickness one moment since you Left here they talk some Little about you but do not appear to miss you a great deal I am not as well my selfe as I would wish to be although I am still about and so all my Business but am Quite unwell - Your Little Daughter Mary is one of the best Children in the world and is very Little like a child - You must make Miss Virginia Read this Letter over 3 or four times as I Have to get some of the first Cut of young Gentlemen to write them - tell My Dear son Richard that I will Have a few Lines written to him to day his Wife and Friends are all well. His Wife has not yet Received his Letter but I will try and send it to Her between this and Sunday. Give My best Love to Michel & David tell Michel that I am very Happy to Hear that he Has seen all his Relations tell them all they must behave themselves and be as Genteel as they posibly can and try and take Good care of their Master & Mistress Knowing they are the Best Friends they have in this World. tell David he must be a good Boy as Nothing Will give me as much pleasure as to hear of his Good Conduct and it is all my thought for fear you not conduct your selves as Genteel as I would wish you to do. tell Miss Virginia I will Send Her Cloak by Ginny Robinson in about 4 weeks as it is impossible for me to send it sooner. Give My Love to Mistress & Master Most Particularly and to Miss Virginia & My Good Husband Michel tell him he can form no Idea how much I Have thought of him since he Left this place and how much I have missed him- Aunt Lucinda and Mary Send their Love to you all and to Master, Mistress & Miss Virginia. I Have no Strange news to write to you about Our Town more than I Have told you- Theodore Sterricks send his best Love to Richard & Your Selfe and sais Richard Must Kiss Eliza three times for Him. He sais he has no news that will be interesting to you but that he waited on Sam White & Jane Good to be married Last Saturday night James Turner & Sam Calliway join me in Love to you all and will write to you all to day I expect - Mary tells Me to say to Miss Virginia that she must not forget Her but Remember her in her Prairs tell her that our New Station Preacher is Named Winton Late from Wythe Station there has been a Great Revival of Religion her among the Methodists and about 30 Have joined the Church among the Rest was Mr. Craig & C Mrs Andrew Gilson had a fine son on Saturday Night Last and they are Both well. Miss Ellen White Received a Letter from Miss Mary Last Monday She was well & Sent her Love to all Masters Servant on the Hill - tell David that Easter sent her Love to him and expects to Receive A Letter from him shortly - No More at Present But Remain you Most Affectionate Mother Until Death

Hannah Valentine"

Kathryn Gehred

And then in the margins, there's some notes.

"Tell Richard that Aunt Lucinda says she has dreamed about him several times since he left here."  And then another one, "Give my love to all Michael's brothers and sisters and tell them all to write to me, tell Richard that Mary says he must write to her."

Okay, so there's the letter. A lot of the times when I go through these, I tried to identify every person named apart from the family, I haven't been able to identify anybody that was listed in this letter. So I'm just going to stick mostly to the family. I wanted to talk a little bit about that opening section. So, the first thing she writes about is getting her daughter news of the grandchildren. She says they do not appear to miss you a great deal. The first time I read that, I sort of thought it seemed a little bit callous, like oh, your kids don't miss you. But obviously reading it again. Of course, she wouldn't want to hear that her kids were just pining away and missing her and all of that. So, this is definitely Hannah, sort of assuaging her daughter letting her know, don't worry, your kids are doing all right, I thought the bit about your daughter is very little like a child is interesting. Obviously, child rearing in the 1830s was different than child rearing today, you've probably considered better to not be like a child than it was to be like a child, but it also leads to some rather sad things about the fact that as an enslaved person, you really didn't get much of a childhood at all. So, it's probably a good thing for somebody to be more mature, because they were going to have to deal with adult responsibilities pretty early on. She obviously writes about missing her husband quite a bit. I think that's one of the aspects of slavery, people focus a lot on sort of corporal punishment, and all of those horrible, nasty things that absolutely did take place during slavery, but something that was just sort of very common, and even somebody who would say that they were would sort of say, Oh, I was one of the good slaveholders, you know, but even somebody who that would say that would have no qualms in just separating a family for like three years at a time like this, right. But as an enslaved person, you have zero power over whether you can see somebody in your family. And then there's constantly that also underlying pressure of not only can this person just go away for a period of time that you have no control over, they could sell that family member at any point, and the only way to keep up a correspondence with somebody is to write letters. And it was very difficult to travel long distances that could be like their dead, you could never see them again, or have any idea what they're up to for the entire rest of your life. Now, she also mentioned her husband, meeting up with some of his family members in Richmond, in the modern imaginary, we sort of think of plantations as the sort of isolated units, right that everybody on the plantation was related to each other, and they didn't really see other enslaved people at different plantations very often. But this is not true.

Almost every plantation had Sundays off, and people would travel and visit. And when people got sold to neighboring plantations, you would have sort of family units in different areas around the state that people were very aware of where their family members lived. So, there's actually more interconnectedness and families on different plantations than you might expect. So Michael is, of course, aware that he has family in Richmond, and even though he's going to Richmond with his owners, and he has very little say over the matter, he can take advantage of this and say hello to some people that he might have not seen in a very long time. So, it sort of shows the way that family ties worked in institution where you had very little control over where you were living or what you were doing at any time. And then there's also Hannah's advice to those family members and to her children, where she talks about your masters or your best friends in this world. I could definitely see somebody using that in historical paper saying, See, you know, slavery is not so bad. We've got somebody saying your masters are their best friends. But again, let's look at this source a little bit critically, this is an enslaved woman, speaking to a white man who's writing a letter that she knows is going to be read by her white masters. So even though this is a letter to her daughter, and she also wrote letters to her husband, she knows that this is not a private communication. This is something that's going to be passed through different people. When you are born into slavery, you have a certain expectation of being subservient, as an enslaved, to person in order to be considered to be behaving well, that means you have to behave like less of a human being, you have to be apologetic, you have to be subservient. Whereas in Western society and in human society in general, sort of being an adult means standing up for your beliefs and having opinions and having some control over your life. So, you're a human who's being forced into this little restrictive box, that doesn't fit, and if you try to break out of that box that is seen as criminal and punishable. So, a situation that occurs because of this is somebody like Hannah, who is the mother of children, obviously loves her children and wants her children to stay with her and close to her and survive and be successful, but in order to do that, she has to tell them to be less of a full human being. Because if your child is trying to stand up and be a strong person and be a full human being, they very well might be taken away from you. And this is something that does, in fact, happen to Hannah Valentine with her son Page. We know that David Campbell sold page for insubordination. Page does, however, run away from where he was ever sold to. So he escaped, and actually went back to Montcalm, where Hannah kept him hidden. If you've read Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, this is what happens in her situation as well. And, this is something that's not super uncommon, because, again, we sort of imagined an enslaved person runs away, follow the drinking gourd, go up north, try to get free. But if you don't have a solid connection of people who are helping you and leading you on that Underground Railroad, there's very little you can actually do to run away and go up North and be free. When your entire community, the people you've known your entire life are still in the area. So, a lot of times when people ran away, they did actually stay within the area where they were, even though that was incredibly risky. But sometimes that was the only option you had. So Page, ran away, stays in the area goes back to Montcalm, and his mother keeps him hidden. The only reason they caught him was because he stole a hog and killed it from a neighboring plantation, and they were able to track him with dogs back to the Montcalm plantation. And both Hannah and her son were sentenced to a whipping that she was spared for this, so this happens later, this is about twenty years later, but she spared from this because she's sixty-two that page was whipped. Now exactly what happens after that? I'm not sure but Paige apparently stayed in the Abingdon Virginia area, and ran sort of a smuggling ring in town. This is all happening obviously later from when Hannah's writing telling people to behave. But this sort of shows I think you can either as an enslaved person, play the part, try to give up your humanity, be subservient, but some people just aren't cut out to do that. And somebody like Page wasn't, and it made his life very difficult, but it was one of the options that was actually at play. And Hannah was in a position to see the consequences of both.

Alright, they talk about family news, the little line where she says you must make Miss Virginia read this letter over three or four times as I have to get some of the first cut of young gentleman to write them I think is interesting because, it to me, it leads to a situation where there's this man who's sort of being a little petulant about having to write a letter for her. And so she's saying, 'Don't worry, we'll make sure we read it three or four times because you had to write it down,' talking about people who are having children. This is common amongst all the letters that we found. There's always these little gossip. Well, not necessarily gossip, but just like who's in good health who's sick, who's getting married, who's having babies, situations like that. That's just how correspondence works. Again, I can't I wasn't able to identify all of these people. But you can see get sort of a little insight into what's going on at this town at this time. I do want to mention something about the Methodist preacher though. So, most of the slaves were Methodists at the time. So, the the mentions of Methodism are interesting because we know historically that David Campbell was opposed to Methodism. And yet, nearly all of the slaves at Montcalm became evangelical Methodists, which says a little something I think about that relationship. Also, the Campbells', niece, Virginia was a Methodist. So here is Hannah's writing specifically to Virginia letting her know about the new Methodist preacher that's coming to town, in a letter that she knows is going to be read out loud to David Campbell, who was opposed to Methodism.

So from some of this other research that's been done by other fantastic historians, which I will link to in the notes of this podcast. We know that during David's term as governor, his wife, Mary Campbell, became very disgusted with the way that her niece was behaving in society in Richmond society, that she she was so disgusted by it she secluded herself in her bedroom, and refused to take meals with a family. I don't know. I would like to know more about this. This is I would like to read more of those letters to figure out what was Virginia doing that got Mary so mad. So Mary's getting a bit of a reputation for not being sociable, whereas Virginia is maybe getting a reputation for being a little too sociable. And meanwhile, Hannah is running the household at Mountcalm. It was her house, and she didn't have her owners to really answer to apart from letters. And she basically was living your life the way that she wanted to, again, coming from the primary sources when the Campbells returned to their house, after the three years, they said they found a lot of things missing or stolen. This delights me.

Kathryn Gehred 

I always love when enslaved people are accused of stealing things, because they themselves have had their lives stolen. They are property. So imagine, again, put yourself in the mindset of an enslaved person, you are technically property, but that chair, which has the same legal rights as you that belongs to somebody that belongs to the same person who owns you. It's just insane. The fact that white people are always freaking out newsletters over who's stealing what I'm like. I don't know what Hannah was accused of stealing but more power to her. According to the secondary research I found after returning from Richmond, Mary would verbally assault the servants quite a bit accusing people of stealing things. She got very paranoid about it. So what what seems to have happened is while the Campbells were away, Hannah ran the household and the enslaved people who lived at Montcalm were very used to calling the shots. And when David Campbell and his wife returned, they were not able to fully get control of the household, again, we have accounts from other people who visited Montcalm during this time period, one woman wrote, I do not take any management at all, but let the servants go on as they have been doing for years carrying the keys using everything as they wish etcetera, etcetera, I cannot do otherwise. The what the situation seems to have turned into is a household of enslaved people, where their owners are sick and elderly and don't really have much support, and basically, just living in the house, doing exactly what they want. For, for years at Montcalm. Hannah died in 1860. Her son Page eventually, had his smuggling ring found out they said he was discovered with a variety of dry goods, shoes, leather boots, jewelry, pistols, etc, etc. And he was unfortunately shot and killed. One of her other sons, David, who followed more of the straight and narrow path of doing what the plantation owners wanted him to do, was actually freed by the Campbell's, and he was left $500. But, as almost always happens in this situation, the executors really didn't want to give him those $500. And he had a huge legal struggle, trying to get that money from the executors.

The institution of slavery was such an unjust system that there was no way to navigate it healthily, the only thing that could be done to fix the institution of slavery was to end the institution of slavery as quickly as possible. And what ended up happening was, Hannah was able to live at Montcalm managing it the way that she wanted to manage it until her death, one of the people who tried to move into the house to get it ready to sell it after the death of the Campbell's wrote that the Abington negros are the most abominable set that I am acquainted with, because managing a household and living like a human being is abominable. Under the institution of slavery, I think that was just about everything that I wanted to dig into with the letter.

Sorry, it's a little dark. This is just how these things go. But we got a letter from somebody from a different perspective, which I was very excited to find. If you're interested in reading more about Abington house, and people like Hannah Valentine, and some of the other people who survived and left letters at this time, check out the show notes, I will send links to all of the letters that I was able to find and some of the secondary research, and you can dig into it yourself. So thank you very much for listening. I am, as always your most obedient and humble servant.

Kathryn Gehred 

Hello, Kathryn here, I just wanted to pop in. And thank you all once again for listening. If you're interested in reaching out to the podcast, I would be thrilled to hear from you. You can follow us on Twitter or Tumblr at humsrvt. I also finally got a Facebook page up and running. It's called "Your Most Obedient and Humble Servant." And you can follow us there for updates if you want to reach out with letters that you want me to cover have questions, anything like that. And I've also been posting sort of fun little historical tidbits that I've been uncovering in my research. So if that interests you might be a place to check out. Also, if you want to help spread word of the podcast, if you've been enjoying it and you would like to listen to more episodes, a really good way to do that is to log into iTunes and to rate and review us. This will earn you my undying gratitude, and it does something with the algorithm that iTunes will actually help promote the podcast more so it can spread it to more folks, but the best way as always to support a podcast is by word of mouth. So, if you have some friends who were really into Hamilton, but maybe just wanted it to be more historically accurate, maybe you could send them our way. In all seriousness, I just want to thank all of my listeners so much for listening. This has been so much fun and I'm so glad I get to share these letters with everyone. I will be back again in two weeks with an Abigail Adams letter that'll knock your socks off. So thank you. I'll see you soon.