to their
“evil communication.” If asked about her status, she should say that she was free. But Jane had said instead, “I and my children
are slaves, and we want liberty.” Still describes Johnson as “tall and well formed,” with a “high and large forehead, of gentle
manners, chestnut color, and seems to possess, naturally, uncommon good sense, though of course she has never been allowed
to read.”
Jane was spirited away, Williamson was sent to jail, and the “half dozen colored men” (including Still) who assisted with
Jane’s escape were accused of “riot,” “forcible abduction,” and “assault and battery” and were forced to stand trial. Accompanied
by Lucretia Mott (and three other female anti-slavery sympathizers), Jane Johnson made a most dramatic, and surreptitious,
appearance in court, in an attempt to provide testimony that would free the accused. Two versions of her testimony are reprinted
in Appendix B.
Still was acquitted; two of the other black men were found guilty of “assault and battery” and were forced to serve a week
in jail. Williamson was found guilty of contempt of court and served a sentence between July 27 and November 3, 1855. Jane
boarded a carriage immediately following her testimony, “without disturbance.” Wheeler would complain in his diary that he
was never able to recover her and her sons as his property.
I tried to locate Jane Johnson through the 1860 and 1880 censuses. In 1860 seventy Jane Johnsons were living in Pennsylvania
alone, forty-seven of whom lived in Philadelphia. By 1880 more than one thousand black women named Jane Johnson were living
in America. If Jane Johnson had wanted to blend facelessly into the African American community, she could have done no better
than to select Johnson as her surname. In fact, Frederick Douglass tells us that he rejected the surname of Johnson when he
escaped to the North precisely because it was so commonly used by other blacks.
As I read these accounts of the case, I recalled a passage in
The Bondwoman’s Narrative
in which Mrs. Wheeler laments that her slave named Jane had run away, thus providing the motivation for acquiring Hannah.
(Still reports that Jane had said that Wheeler had “sold all his slaves” within “the last two years” and had “purchased the
present ones in that space of time” [p. 90], though I have not been able to find any record of these sales in Wheeler’s papers
or in the archives of Lincoln, North Carolina.) I suddenly realized that it was
this
Jane to whom Hannah Crafts refers in chapter 12 of her novel! Ironically, it was the character without a surname, Jane, whose
identity I would most clearly be able to establish among all of Crafts’s black characters, contrary to the laws of probability
applicable to this sort of historical research. This means that Hannah Crafts could not have written her manuscript until
after 1855. It also means that Hannah would have been purchased after Jane’s escape, just as the novel claims. Jane, moreover,
told the Philadelphia abolitionists that she had carefully planned her escape before she had left Washington on her trip with
Wheeler: “I had made preparations before leaving Washington to get my freedom in New York; I made a suit to disguise myself
in—they had never seen me wear it—to escape when I got to New York; Mr. Wheeler has that suit in his possession, in my trunk.”
Hannah Crafts would also avail herself of a disguise in a suit in her escape to freedom—at least as depicted in her novel.
Armed with these new facts about Wheeler and Jane Johnson, I returned to the search for the elusive Hannah Crafts by examining
John Hill Wheeler’s diary.
The Diary of John Hill Wheeler
The biographies of John Hill Wheeler indicated that he kept a diary, now housed in his papers at the Library of Congress.
Would this diary shed any light on Wheeler’s feelings about Jane Johnson’s
“evil communication.” If asked about her status, she should say that she was free. But Jane had said instead, “I and my children
are slaves, and we want liberty.” Still describes Johnson as “tall and well formed,” with a “high and large forehead, of gentle
manners, chestnut color, and seems to possess, naturally, uncommon good sense, though of course she has never been allowed
to read.”
Jane was spirited away, Williamson was sent to jail, and the “half dozen colored men” (including Still) who assisted with
Jane’s escape were accused of “riot,” “forcible abduction,” and “assault and battery” and were forced to stand trial. Accompanied
by Lucretia Mott (and three other female anti-slavery sympathizers), Jane Johnson made a most dramatic, and surreptitious,
appearance in court, in an attempt to provide testimony that would free the accused. Two versions of her testimony are reprinted
in Appendix B.
Still was acquitted; two of the other black men were found guilty of “assault and battery” and were forced to serve a week
in jail. Williamson was found guilty of contempt of court and served a sentence between July 27 and November 3, 1855. Jane
boarded a carriage immediately following her testimony, “without disturbance.” Wheeler would complain in his diary that he
was never able to recover her and her sons as his property.
I tried to locate Jane Johnson through the 1860 and 1880 censuses. In 1860 seventy Jane Johnsons were living in Pennsylvania
alone, forty-seven of whom lived in Philadelphia. By 1880 more than one thousand black women named Jane Johnson were living
in America. If Jane Johnson had wanted to blend facelessly into the African American community, she could have done no better
than to select Johnson as her surname. In fact, Frederick Douglass tells us that he rejected the surname of Johnson when he
escaped to the North precisely because it was so commonly used by other blacks.
As I read these accounts of the case, I recalled a passage in
The Bondwoman’s Narrative
in which Mrs. Wheeler laments that her slave named Jane had run away, thus providing the motivation for acquiring Hannah.
(Still reports that Jane had said that Wheeler had “sold all his slaves” within “the last two years” and had “purchased the
present ones in that space of time” [p. 90], though I have not been able to find any record of these sales in Wheeler’s papers
or in the archives of Lincoln, North Carolina.) I suddenly realized that it was
this
Jane to whom Hannah Crafts refers in chapter 12 of her novel! Ironically, it was the character without a surname, Jane, whose
identity I would most clearly be able to establish among all of Crafts’s black characters, contrary to the laws of probability
applicable to this sort of historical research. This means that Hannah Crafts could not have written her manuscript until
after 1855. It also means that Hannah would have been purchased after Jane’s escape, just as the novel claims. Jane, moreover,
told the Philadelphia abolitionists that she had carefully planned her escape before she had left Washington on her trip with
Wheeler: “I had made preparations before leaving Washington to get my freedom in New York; I made a suit to disguise myself
in—they had never seen me wear it—to escape when I got to New York; Mr. Wheeler has that suit in his possession, in my trunk.”
Hannah Crafts would also avail herself of a disguise in a suit in her escape to freedom—at least as depicted in her novel.
Armed with these new facts about Wheeler and Jane Johnson, I returned to the search for the elusive Hannah Crafts by examining
John Hill Wheeler’s diary.
The Diary of John Hill Wheeler
The biographies of John Hill Wheeler indicated that he kept a diary, now housed in his papers at the Library of Congress.
Would this diary shed any light on Wheeler’s feelings about Jane Johnson’s
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