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. We encourage you to use these links as we receive a small royalty paid by the partner allowing you to help us without cost to you. The enslaved African-Americans had belonged to the nations most prominent Jesuit priests. During this time, the Jesuits funded some of the most prestigious institutions of higher education in America in part through profits earned on their plantations. So in June 1838, he negotiated a deal with Henry Johnson, a member of the House of Representatives, and Jesse Batey, a landowner in Louisiana, to sell Cornelius and the others. [70], In 2019, undergraduate students at Georgetown voted in a non-binding referendum to impose a symbolic reparations fee of $27.20 per student. [16] Mulledy in particular felt that the plantations were a drain on the Maryland Jesuits; he urged selling the plantations as well as the slaves, believing the Jesuits were only able to support either their estates or their schools in growing urban areas: Georgetown College in Washington, D.C. and St. John's College in Frederick, Maryland. And they were sold, along with scores of others, to help secure the future of the premier Catholic institution of higher learning at the time, known today as Georgetown University. One building was renamed for Isaac Hawkins, first on the list of the 272 human beings sold in 1838. [35] He ordered McSherry to inform Mulledy that he had been removed as provincial superior, and that if Mulledy refused to step down, he would be dismissed from the Society of Jesus. [8] These consisted primarily of the plantations of White Marsh in Prince George's County, St. Inigoes and Newtown Manor in St. Mary's County, St. Thomas Manor in Charles County, and Bohemia Manor in Cecil County. Georgetown is not the first or only university to own slaves. [4] Many of these slaves were gifted to the Jesuits, while others were purchased. Relationship Counseling - Marriage resources, Falling in Love Finding God Marriage and the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Sacred Heart Seminary and School of Theology, The problem of hatredand how Christians are contributing to it, Jesuit sex abuse expert appointed to Vatican office for child protection, Sin, hell and scrupulosity: How to repent during Lent (and how not to). 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. We have been here since the founding of this country, and we are a significant part of the American experience.. We receive a small royalty without cost to you. So Judy Riffel, one of the genealogists hired by Mr. Cellini, began following a chain of weddings and births, baptisms and burials. 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). [18], The Maryland Jesuits, having been elevated from a mission to the status of a province in 1833,[17] held their first general congregation in 1835, where they considered again what to do with their plantations. [58] In November of that year, following a student-led protest and sit-in,[59] the working group recommended that the university temporarily rename Mulledy Hall (which opened during Mulledy's presidency in 1833)[60] to Freedom Hall, and McSherry Hall (which opened in 1792 and housed a meditation center)[61] to Remembrance Hall. We shop for the best values for you. Continue scrolling down for more amazing information, videos, books and value items. They recognize that despite their principals, they recognized the theft of labor, the destruction of families and the long term devastation that this inflicted on an entire race of people. ALL OF THE PEOPLE LISTED ON THIS PAGE HAVE PROFILES. [2] As the sole ministers of Catholicism in Maryland at the time, the Jesuit estates became the centers of Catholicism. 51 slaves were to be sent to Alexandria, Virginia, then shipped to Louisiana. There is no indication that he received any response. Descendants are learning new links to their pasts as a result of the project. Revealed: The Slave Sold to Save Georgetown by Stacy M. Brown March 22, 2017 Frank Campbell was sold in 1838 to help save Georgetown. Other industries made loads of money indirectly. The article details how the sold slaves were transported to three Louisiana plantations, where they faced brutal treatment. 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. Timothy Kesicki, S.J., president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, during a morning Liturgy of Remembrance, Contrition, and Hope. In the uproar that followed, he was called to Rome and reassigned. Required fields are marked *. CONTENT MAY BE COPYRIGHTED BY WIKITREE COMMUNITY MEMBERS. Twenty-seven years earlier, a document dated June 19, 1838, showed that Maryland Jesuit priests sold 272 slaves to the owners of Louisiana plantations. [50], In 1981, historian Robert Emmett Curran presented at academic conferences a comprehensive research into the Maryland Jesuits' participation in slavery, and published this research in 1983. We pray with you today because we have greatly sinned and because we are profoundly sorry. This message was delivered to more than 100 descendants of the original enslaved people who had been sol to finance the institution. The hope was to eventually identify the slaves descendants. Maryland Province Archives at Lauinger Library at Georgetown University, A passage from the Rev. William McSherry, the college presidents involved in the sale, from two campus buildings. However, the total number of slaves is only one way to measure the level of slavery in a country. [63][38], The College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, of which Mulledy was the first president from 1843 to 1848, also began to reconsider the name of one of its buildings in 2015. 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 $2.96 million in 2021). Georgetown and the College of the Holy Cross renamed buildings, and the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States pledged to raise $100 million for the descendants of slaves owned by the Jesuits. [70], The Corporation of Roman Catholic Clergymen was created in 1792 to preserve the property of the. The notation betrayed no hint of the turmoil on board. Unknown because that portion of history is so like anything that reflects on the horrors of slavery preempted from our history. What Does It Owe Their Descendants? This admissions preference has been described by historian Craig Steven Wilder as the most significant measure recently taken by a university to account for its historical relationship with slavery. It is better to prevent than to attempt to remedy. They also established schools on their lands. As a Georgetown employee, Jeremy Alexander watched as the university grappled with its haunted past: the sale of slaves in 1838 to help rescue it from financial ruin. And she would like to see Corneliuss name, and those of his parents and children, inscribed on a memorial on campus. He has contacted a few, including Patricia Bayonne-Johnson, president of the Eastern Washington Genealogical Society in Spokane, who is helping to track the Jesuit slaves with her group. Behind her are sugar plantations and the sugar mill where her ancestors worked. Ms. Crump, 69, has been asking herself that question, too. When you register, youll get unlimited access to our website and a free subscription to our email newsletter for daily updates with a smart, Catholic take on faith and culture from. [4][a] Several of the Jesuits' slaves unsuccessfully attempted to sue for their freedom in the courts in the 1790s. . The articles of agreement listed each of the slaves by name to be sold. [24] When he returned in November to gather the rest of the slaves, the plantation managers had their slaves flee and hide. [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. In November, the university agreed to remove the names of the Rev. Ms. Crump is a familiar figure in Baton Rouge. if you are trying to comment, you must log in or set up a new account. In the list are links to affiliate partners. [45] Patrick and Woolfolk's slaves were then sold in July 1859 to Emily Sparks, the widow of Austin Woolfolk. None of those conditions were met, university officials said. [8] In reality, by the early 19th century, the Jesuit plantations were in such a state of mismanagement that the Jesuit Superior General in Rome, Tadeusz Brzozowski, sent Irish Jesuit Peter Kenney to review the operations of the Maryland Mission as a canonical visitor in 1820. But six years after he appeared in the census, and about three decades after the birth of his first child, he renewed his wedding vows with the blessing of a priest. She is outraged that the churchs leaders sanctioned the buying and selling of slaves, and that Georgetown profited from the sale of her ancestors. The church records helped lead to a 69-year-old woman in Baton Rouge named Maxine Crump. Mr. Cellini, whose genealogists have already traced more than 200 of the slaves from Maryland to Louisiana, believes there may be thousands of living descendants. [39], While Roothaan ordered that the proceeds of the sale be used to provide for the training of Jesuits, the initial $25,000 was not used for that purpose. Georgetown University (Daniel Slim/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images) Article A genealogical organization launched a free website Wednesday to help those who want to learn more about the. 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. It has been stated that value of slaves in America was more valuable than all the industrial and transportation capital of the United States in the first half of the 19th century. The ship manifest of the Katharine Jackson, available in full at the. [37], Before Roothaan's order reached Mulledy, Mulledy had already accepted the advice of McSherry and Eccleston in June 1839 to resign and go to Rome to defend himself before Roothaan. In all, the Jesuits sold 314 men, women and children over . The Society of Jesus, whose members are known as Jesuits, established its first presence in the Mid-Atlantic region of the Thirteen Colonies alongside the first settlers of the British Province of Maryland, which had been founded as a Catholic colony and refuge. Thomas F. Mulledy and the Rev. What can you do to make amends?. Participants in this discussion are: Drew Gilpin Faust, President, Harvard University. Census of slaves to be sold in 1838 This is the original list of slaves from the Jesuit plantations compiled in preparation for the sale in 1838. As early as the 1780s, Dr. Rothman found, they openly discussed the need to cull their stock of human beings. 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. It would not survive, Father Mulledy feared, without an influx of cash. The next year, Pope Gregory XVI explicitly barred Catholics from engaging in this traffic in Blacks no matter what pretext or excuse.. Georgetown University announced on Tuesday it will create a fund that could generate close to $400,000 a year to benefit the descendants of slaves once sold by the university, the latest in the . [24] He located two Louisiana planters who were willing to purchase the slaves: Henry Johnson, a former United States Senator and governor of Louisiana, and Jesse Batey. 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. Meet Paul Haring, the CNS photographer who covered the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and the election of Francis, numerous international papal trips and the daily action of Vatican life for over a decade. 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? [10], Due to these extensive landholdings, the Propaganda Fide in Rome had come to view the American Jesuits negatively, believing they lived lavishly like manorial lords. . We can't do it without youAmerica Media relies on generous support from our readers. Moreover, men and women held in bondage were also part of the day-to-day operation of Georgetown College in its early decades. Were sorry registration isn't working smoothly for you. Amazing! Jesse Batey died in 1851 and the White Oak Plantation was sold. Peter Havermans wrote of an elderly woman who fell to her knees, begging to know what she had done to deserve such a fate, according to Robert Emmett Curran, a retired Georgetown historian who described eyewitness accounts of the sale in his research. Some wrote emotional letters to Roothaan denouncing the morality of the sale. You can either click on the link in your confirmation email or simply re-enter your email address below to confirm it. The two feared that because the public would not accept additional manumitted blacks, the Jesuits would be forced to sell their slaves en masse. Thomas Hibbert (1710-1780), English merchant, he became rich from slave labor on his Jamaican plantations. Now students, professors and alumni want to know what happened to those men and women and what the university will do moving forward. Soon, the two men and their teams were working on parallel tracks. To see the posts, click here. Joseph Carberry, 1824 GSA29: Priscilla Queen petitions for her freedom, 1810 GSA30: Edward Queen petitions for his freedom, 1791 GSA31: Proceedings of the General Chapter at White Marsh, May 1789 GSA32: Fanny & her family, 1815 2008 - 2023 INTERESTING.COM, INC. [41] The Jesuits never received the total $115,000 that was owed under the agreement. [71] The university instead decided to raise $400,000 per year in voluntary donations for the benefit of descendants. When the Society of Jesus was suppressed worldwide by Pope Clement XIV in 1773, ownership of the plantations was transferred from the Jesuits' Maryland Mission to the newly established Corporation of Roman Catholic Clergymen. And the money raised by the sale would not be used to pay off debt or for operating expenses. A notation on the second page indicates that it was discovered by Fr. GSA28: William Gaston entrusts a slave named Augustus to Fr. To comment or make suggestions on future posts, use Contact Us. Anyone can read what you share. (The two men would swap positions by 1838.). John DeGioia, President, Georgetown University. He listened . What remains is what is owed to the descendants. [5], On June 19, 1838, Mulledy, Johnson, and Batey signed articles of agreement formalizing the sale. This indispensable guide presents academic administrators and staff with advice on building an equity-minded campus culture, aligning strategic priorities and institutional missions to advance equity, understanding equity-minded data analysis, developing campus strategies for making excellence inclusive, and moving from a first-generation equity educator to an equity-minded practitioner. The New York Times would like to hear from people who have done research into their genealogical history. Share. Timothy Kesicki, S.J., president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, during a morning Liturgy of Remembrance, Contrition, and Hope. Freedom Hall became Isaac Hawkins Hall, after the first slave listed on the articles of agreement for the 1838 sale. It is necessary to keep in mind that these people were free in their native country and enslaved once they got to America. June 1838 the University benefited from the sale of 272 slaves, some as young as 2 months old to finance the ailing institution. (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 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. Isaac Hawkins was the first enslaved person listed in the 1838 sale document. 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 She feels great sadness as she envisions Cornelius as a young boy, torn from everything he knew. Father Mulledy took most of the down payment he received from the sale about $500,000 in todays dollars and used it to help pay off the debts that Georgetown had incurred under his leadership. If youre already a subscriber or donor, thank you! This sale was the culmination of a contentious and long-running debate among the Maryland Jesuits over whether to keep, sell, or free their slaves, and whether to focus on their rural estates or on their growing urban missions, including their schools. History must be faced in order to heal and move forward! Enslaved, marginalized and forced into illiteracy by laws that prohibited them from learning to read and write, many seem like ghosts who pass through this world without leaving a trace. Maxine Crump, 69, a descendant of one of the slaves sold by the Jesuits, in a Louisiana sugar cane field where researchers believe her ancestor once worked. She listened, stunned, as he told her about her great-great-grandfather, Cornelius Hawkins, who had labored on a plantation just a few miles from where she grew up. Leaders in policy, business, technology, science, history, arts and culture engaged with top journalists on the most consequential issues of our time. [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. Kenney found the slaves facing arbitrary discipline, a meager diet, pastoral neglect, and engaging in vice. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/us/georgetown-university-search-for-slave-descendants.html. [53], With work complete, in August 2015, university president John DeGioia sent an open letter to the university announcing the opening of the new student residence, which also related Mulledy's role in the 1838 slave sale after stepping down as president of the university. For Black History Month 2021, we focused on Black Medical Achievements, Inventors and Scientists.To see those posts, click here. Your email address will not be published. A Jesuit reports on the slaves' religious life in Louisiana, 1848, Chatham Plantation, Ascension Parish, Louisiana. [21], Meanwhile, in order to fund the province's operations,[22] McSherry, as the first provincial superior of the Maryland Province,[17] began selling small groups of slaves to planters in Louisiana in 1835, arguing that it was not possible to sell the slaves to local planters and that the buyers had assured him that they would not mistreat the slaves and would permit them to practice their Catholic faith. Melvin Robert and Joya Mia Italiano look into Georgetown Universitys response on the Lip News. He was about 48 then, a father, a husband, a farm laborer and, finally, a free man. [54] Despite the decades of scholarship on the subject, this revelation came as a surprise to many Georgetown University members,[48][55] and some criticized the retention of Mulledy's name on the building. Some of that money helped to pay off the debts of the struggling college. This is the original list of slaves from the Jesuit plantations compiled in preparation for the sale in 1838. Slaves were collateral and could be used to mortgage land and other goods. The U.S. Department of State defines modern slavery as "the act of recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing, or obtaining a person for compelled . The Jesuits used the proceeds to benefit then-Georgetown College. They could then make 40% on the labor of the slave and pay the bank 8%. We pray with you today because we have greatly sinned and because we are profoundly sorry.. They were looking to buy slaves in the Upper South more cheaply than they could in the Deep South, and agreed to Mulledy's asking price of approximately $400 per person. Georgetown Jesuits enslaved her ancestors. However, the history of the sale and the Jesuits' slave ownership was never secret. The 1970s saw an increase in public scholarship on the Maryland Jesuits' slave ownership. William McSherry, the college presidents involved in the sale, from two campus buildings. Another building has been renamed Anne Marie Becraft Hall in honor of a free Black woman who established a school in the town of Georgetown for Girls of color. [35][34] Benedict Fenwick, the Bishop of Boston, privately lamented the fate of the slaves and considered the sale an extreme measure. James Van de Velde, a Jesuit who visited Louisiana, wrote in a letter in 1848. This was only a portion of the slaves bought and sold by the Maryland Jesuits over time.[1]. [46] Due to financial difficulties, Johnson sold half his property, including some of the slaves he had purchased in 1838, to Philip Barton Key in 1844. Georgetown University in Washington, seen from across the Potomac River. ). [48] In 1977, the Maryland Province named Georgetown's Lauinger Library as the custodian of its historic archives, which were made available to the public through the Georgetown University Library, Saint Louis University Library, and Maryland State Library. [37] Roothaan was particularly concerned because it had become clear that, contrary to his order, families had been separated by the slaves' new owners. Twenty-seven years earlier, a document dated June 19, 1838, showed that Maryland Jesuit priests sold 272 slaves to the owners of Louisiana plantations. Eventually, Roothaan removed Thomas Mulledy as provincial superior for disobeying orders and promoting scandal, exiling him to Nice for several years. Georgetown is not the first or only university to own slaves. Tweet. But this was no ordinary slave sale. In exchange, they would receive 272 slaves from the four Jesuit plantations in southern Maryland,[5][24] constituting nearly all of the slaves owned by the Maryland Jesuits. [5] The first record of slaves working Jesuit plantations in Maryland dates to 1711, but it is likely that there were slave laborers on the plantations a generation before then. Books and Textbooks One of the greatest ways to advance your life choices and future. Mr. Cellini is an unlikely racial crusader. 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. Banks would finance land purchases using slaves as collateral. Georgetown is not the only institution that has prospered on the backs of enslaved people. Slavery was much more than the theft of labor; it was the deprivation of liberty for which this country professes so loudly. A Reader on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation A microcosm of the history of American slavery in a collection of the most important primary and secondary readings on slavery at Georgetown University and among the Maryland Jesuits Georgetown Universitys early history, closely tied to that of the Society of Jesus in Maryland, is a microcosm of the history of American slavery: the entrenchment of chattel slavery in the tobacco economy of the Chesapeake in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the contradictions of liberty and slavery at the founding of the United States; the rise of the domestic slave trade to the cotton and sugar kingdoms of the Deep South in the nineteenth century; the political conflict over slavery and its overthrow amid civil war; and slaverys persistent legacies of racism and inequality. Georgetown University was an active participant in the slave trade selling upwards of 272 slaves from their Maryland run plantation to the deep south in an effort to support the then struggling university in 1838 according to The New York Times. Father Van de Velde begged Jesuit leaders to send money for the construction of a church that would provide for the salvation of those poor people, who are now utterly neglected.. Georgetown was a prominent Jesuit priests. The children with Mr.. But when Ms. Riffel, the genealogist, told her where she thought he was buried, Ms. Crump knew exactly where to go. More than half were younger than 20, and nearly a third were not yet 10 years old. 272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. 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: An inspector scrutinized the cargo on Dec. 6, 1838. As Black Americans as descendants of enslaved people we have always been told youll never know who you are. [50], The 1838 slave sale returned to the public's awareness in the mid-2010s. The Rev. in Fr. The two women drove on the narrow roads that line the green, rippling sugar cane fields in Iberville Parish. A Reflection for Friday of the First Week of Lent, by Jill Rice.