May - The North Star Monthly

www.northstarmonthly.com MAY 2010 15
Letters from the Past
When writing was a necessity and an art
By Lynn A. Bonfield
Peacham native, Martha Johnson, taught at a freedmen’s school at Port Royal on
the Sea Islands of South Carolina from 1863 until her death in 1871. When
President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation and Union forces took
over abandoned Confederate property, private freedmen organizations were formed to
educate the former slaves.
Peacham native, Martha Johnson,
taught at a freedmen’s school at
Port Royal on the Sea Islands of
South Carolina from 1863 until her
death in 1871. When President Lincoln
issued the Emancipation
Proclamation and Union forces
took over abandoned Confederate
property, private freedmen organizations
were formed to educate the
former slaves. The first teachers at
Port Royal arrived in March 1862.
Martha came a year later when approximately
thirty schools had been
established on the islands with
about two thousand students.
These students attended school
only part time as their labor was
needed in the fields where they were
paid wages, no longer slave labor.
The curriculum began with the alphabet
before going on to classes in
reading, writing, and arithmetic. Of
the 40,000 former slaves on Sea Islands,
there were schools for only a
fortunate few.
The freedmen school teachers
were mainly Northern Anglo-Saxon
Protestant females; all younger than
twenty-eight and mainly educated in
the common schools. Martha had
attended Peacham’s outstanding
academy but then also went to New
Hampshire in 1839 to attend the
Franklin Academy. Every page of
an autograph book (now in a private
collection) the well-liked young
woman kept is full of friendship
poems and best wishes signed from
1839 to 1848 by students and teachers
from each academy.
By 1855, Martha was working
on Blackwell’s Island as a matron to
the female inmates of the New
York State Penitentiary. She returned
to Peacham when her
mother became ill and remained
until 1863 when she received a
commission from the National
Freedman’s Relief Association of
New York to teach newly freed
slaves in the Union occupied areas.
Applicants were reviewed for
health, energy, morality, religious
conviction, and experience.
Martha’s poor health was apparently
overlooked in respect for teaching
experience and deep personal faith,
well exhibited in the following letter
Credit: Vermont Historical Society, MS. 185.
Martha Johnson’s Certificate of Commission issued by the National
Freedman’s Relief Associations.
to her sister, Caroline, nicknamed
Cassie, in Peacham.
Martha was the oldest of nine
children of Betsey Merrill Johnson
(1800-55) and Leonard Johnson
(1797-1890). Her father, an abolitionist,
rang the church bell for an
hour when John Brown was hanged
in 1859. He was excommunicated
from the Congregational church for
using “unchurchly language against
one of his fellow parishioners” in
an argument over “the slavery question.”
In 1867, when brought back
into church membership, he wrote
in his apology letter: “At least, time
has shown that I was right on the
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anti-slavery question.” Martha’s
uncle, Oliver Johnson (1809-89),
was a close associate of William
Lloyd Garrison and served as an editor
for several abolitionist newspapers.
Cassie Johnson, also taught in a
freedmen school spending two
years in Hampton, Virginia. The
Johnson sisters traveled to the
South from Vermont where the
state’s first constitution in 1777 outlawed
slavery; from Peacham, a
town with an active Anti-Slavery Society
organized in 1833 (the third in
Vermont); and from the Johnson
family with strong abolitionist leanings.
After years of poor health during
which time Martha continued to
teach, she died and was buried in the
cemetery of the Episcopal Church
in Beaufort under a stone with the
inscription: “To the Memory of
Martha Johnson, Born at Caledonia
County Peacham, Vermont September
22ne 1822, Died in Beaufort,
South Carolina, December
24th 1871.”
198 Route 2
W. Danville, VT
P.O. Box 196
802-684-3411
nwjinsurance.com
A DIVISION OF NOYLE W. JOHNSON, INC.
Perryclear Plantation
[South Carolina]
May 23rd 1863
Dear Cassie:
Jack Doctor went to Beaufort
yesterday and brought me your letter
. . . and a big bundle that Aunt
Mary Ann sent me. I wrote to her
for a musquito net, calico dress, and
a hat. She sent them and another
dress as a present, two pairs of Pillow
cases, four knives and forks, two
tea spoons, two large spoons, Bowl
Pitcher and pail. . . . You may smile
at my wearing a hat, but everybody
wears them here. It is the best of
anything for this climate as it shades
the face and is cool for the head. . .
. I have not been to church since I
came here for we know no men to
row the boat and is a very hard days
work to go to Beaufort and back
again. We have Sabbath school for
the children and sometimes the men
and women come in and we have a
“prisne” meeting as they call it.
With very few exceptions those that
are Gospel men and women as they
express it, meaning members of a
church, are Baptist and they are not
allowed by the ministers and elders
to go to any other church. . . . I enjoy
our Sabbath school very much for
the children seem to love to come
very much and I feel that with the
blessing of my Heavenly Father I
am sowing the good seed that may
eventually bring forth fruit. . . . [I]
have a school of my own two miles
from here. Go every morning at
half past seven o’clock and return at
half past ten, and three days in the
week I go again in the afternoon at
five o’clock for the benefit of the
men and women who cannot come
in the morning. . . . I have a nice
school of thirty children and twenty
five men, soldiers of the first Colored
S[outh] C[arolina] Regt. They
do Picket duty on this Island. The
headquarters are very near my
school and the Capt. of the company
asked permission for the boys
to come to school. I very gladly
gave them permission to come. It is
uncertain how long I may have
them, but I shall endeavor to do
them all the good I can. They are,
some of them, very fine looking
men. Very few can read anything
more than the letters, but are improving
fast. I have two or three
only that can read in the testament.
I wish you could look in upon me
surrounded by the dark faces, but
bright and pleasant. My school
room [is located] in the Piazza of
the old Plantation house. When I
have all the children and a good
many soldiers, I have to send a part
of them out of doors. . . .
I realize more and more every
day the awful wickedness of Slavery
Bruce and the Crew
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and wonder they are as good as they
are. I have visited them in their
homes as much as I could find time
or strength. They seemed a little
suspicious at first but now they give
me a pleasant greeting and seem
pleased to see me and have me talk
with them. They all seem to have a
strong religious element in their nature.
Cut off from all earthly comfort,
they have gone to God for
consolation. Their childlike faith
and entire confidence in their Heavenly
Father is often a reproof to me
for I have so much more given to
me than these poor degraded children
of our common Father. I have
not yet heard one man or woman
speak unfriendly of their old Massa
or Missus, say they worked them
hard and did not give them enough
to eat and don’t care to see them but
never seem [to] cherish a revengeful
feeling towards them. . . .
The great fear that has prevailed
in the north of the colored people
all working north if they were free–
nothing but Slavery will drive them
from their homes. They are so
strongly attached to their old homes,
they do not like to go to another
Plantation to live and almost without
exception reply when asked if
they would like to go north “I had
rather stay in my old home. I am
used to this place and don’t know
anything about the North.”
[A few sentences urging her sister
to join her as a teacher and reports
that “a graduate of South
Hadley” has come and will teach.] I
do not think it wise for you to come
at this season for it takes time to get
an appointment and you could not
get here before it would be very hot
weather. Today it is as hot as any
weather in Vermont. Sun is so hot
that one can hardly stand it a moment.
Not a breath of air stirring
and summer has not yet come. . .
Write soon to your sister,
Martha
This letter and others written by
Martha Johnson are preserved at the Vermont
Historical Society with parts having
been published in Vermont History 67
(Summer/Fall, 1999) 101-14. Letters in
this series are transcribed as written with
no changes to spelling, punctuation, or capitalization.
Editor’s additions are in brackets;
words missing are indicated by ellipses.
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