Harriet Jacobs in New Bedford

By Peggi Medeiros and Mayor Jon Mitchell

In 1861, Harriet Ann Jacobs published a masterpiece, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Her book is the first and only narrative to give voice to a woman who escaped slavery. Cornelia Grinnell Willis not only purchased Harriet's freedom, but she also developed a bond with Harriet and her daughter, Louisa, that lasted a lifetime. Both women suffered trauma as children and miraculously survived. They also had close ties to New Bedford that have not been examined previously. Cornelia married Nathaniel Parker Willis, considered an American Dickens during his lifetime though largely forgotten today. Join author and local historian Peggi Medeiros as she traces the fascinating lives of the Jacobs, Grinnell and Willis families in and out of New Bedford.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Mar 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781439669266

Peggi Medeiros

Peggi Medeiros is a research historian focused on New Bedford's artists, families and homes. She currently writes a column for the New Bedford Standard Times and blogs for the paper. She is a frequent guest lecturer at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, the Rotch Jones Duff House & Garden Museum and the Dartmouth Heritage Preservation Trust. She was a contributing writer for the Standard-Times publication The Charles W. Morgan Returns to New Bedford.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Harriet Jacobs was born on February 11, 1813, in Edenton, North Carolina, on Albermarle Sound. Her parents were Elijah Knox and Delilah Horniblow. As an enslaved woman, she had the rare gift of knowing her actual birth date, her parents and her brother, John. In comparison, her friend from Rochester, New York, Frederick Douglass, did not know the date of his birth; he spent his entire life returning to Maryland, desperately trying to solve his puzzle, but he never did. Cornelia Grinnell Willis was born in New Bedford on May 19, 1825, to Cornelius Grinnell Jr. and Eliza Tallman Russell. Cornelia was the youngest of ten children. Little did she know that her city was about to become the whaling capital of the world.

There was a twelve-year age difference between Harriet and Cornelia, but each girl suffered traumas in their childhoods. When she was six, Harriet realized that she was a slave who belonged to Margaret Horniblow. After Margaret’s death, Harriet became the possession of a perverted master. Cornelia’s trauma came when her father hanged himself in her family’s barn when she was just five years old. She was later adopted by Joseph Grinnell and his wife, Sarah Russell Grinnell. Cornelia’s adoption meant that she was loved and cared for by both her father’s brother and her mother’s sister.

Harriet Jacobs had roots in New Bedford that went back to 1795, when some of her family members escaped from North Carolina and fled to New Bedford. When their master sent an agent to retrieve them, it resulted in court cases in both Massachusetts and Rhode Island. When Harriet and Cornelia Grinnell Willis finally met in 1850, they formed a friendship that lasted until their deaths. Harriet’s daughter, Louisa Matilda, and Cornelia’s children looked after one another throughout their lives.

While living at Idlewild, the Willis’s country estate, Harriet wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself. This narrative laid out the special horrors faced by enslaved women for the whole world to see. It forms a pair of narratives along with Frederick Douglass’s 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.

This book is a history of Harriet Jacobs, John S. Jacobs and Cornelia Grinnell Willis and their lives both inside and outside of New Bedford. This book also contains the histories of their children and Cornelia’s husband, Nathanial Parker Willis, who was known as the American Dickens, and who, in the nineteenth century, was as famous as Dickens. Willis was a fascinating, conflicted man. He was often slandered and misunderstood but surfaced again in the current century because of Harriet Jacobs. As a friend of Mary Todd Lincoln during the Civil War in Washington, D.C., he was one of the voices in George Saunders’s brilliant novel Lincoln in the Bardo.

1

CORNELIA’S GRANDFATHER

Cornelia was, without a doubt, named after her father and grandfather, Cornelius Jr. and Cornelius Sr. Captain Cornelius Grinnell—Cornelius Sr.—was one of those flamboyant men who turns up in New Bedford histories. He was born on February 11, 1758, in Little Compton, Rhode Island; he soon relocated to what was then Bedford. During the American Revolution, Captain Grinnell served for two months and twenty-eight days under the command of Captain George Claghorn. Claghorn later became a master shipwright and built the USS Constitution in 1794, which is still afloat in Boston Harbor and is the oldest American naval ship in existence. In New Bedford, you can still find a monument to Claghorn that reads:

Near this site was located the shipyard of Colonel George Claghorn, Builder of U.S. Frigate Constitution and ship Rebecca, the first whaler to double Cape Horn. His service in the War of the Revolution covered a period of five years—as First Lieutenant, Captain, Major.

By 1780, Captain Grinnell was living in New Bedford with his wife, Sylvia. William M. Emery painted a lovely portrait of Sylvia as a girl in his book The Howland Heirs:

She was residing with her aunt Mrs. Judith Russell when Captain Grinnell first saw her at the spinning wheel and was charmed with her graceful figure and movements. Her children all bore the impress of her features.

Cornelia’s second home, the Joseph Grinnell Mansion. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Historic American Survey.

The best description of Captain Grinnell was written by Daniel Ricketson in his book History of New Bedford; this 1858 book is the earliest and best history of New Bedford. In 1792, Captain Grinnell took the brig Mary to Le Havre, France. On board was Seth Russell, the son of the ship’s owner. Ricketson reported, While in Havre, the captain and his passenger, [Russell], who were intimate friends, were invited out to dine. They were expected to look like proper gentleman, so Grinnell found a barber.

While the knight of the comb and brush was at work upon the hair of Mr. Russell, [Captain Grinnell] stood behind, giving the barber directions; and when the operation was finished, his companion’s hair was curled, frizzled and powdered in a most charming manner, the excessive fashion even of that day, by the winks and nods of [Captain Grinnell], exceeded.

An embarrassed Russell went back to the brig and washed away the work of the barber. While in port, Grinnell had his portrait made.

It represents him in the fashion of that day: buff waistcoat, white cravat with sky-blue-colored coat, ruffled shirt and wrist-bands, his hair brushed back and powdered, the countenance fresh and expressive of frankness; before him lies a chart, and in his right hand he holds a pair of dividers.

Later Ricketson described Cornelius further.

Captain Grinnell was a gentleman of the old school, hospitable, urbane, a man of sound judgment and unswerving integrity of character. In his personal appearance—particularly his countenance—he was said strongly to resemble the great Lafayette. He retained until his last years the costume of his earlier days and was remarkable for the neatness of his person. When passing through our streets, with his quaint but tasteful costume—usually of dark green broad-cloth of the best quality—his handsome white-topped boots of the highest polish, knee-breeches and cane in hand.

This was Cornelia’s attractive, witty and wealthy grandfather. Unfortunately, her father was outshone by his father and brothers. Cornelius Jr. was the oldest of a brood of children; three of his brothers, Joseph, Henry and Moses, made fortunes in New York through the family firm, Grinnell & Minturn.

Cornelia’s mother, Eliza, was herself one of the spectacular Russell girls; they were considered the most beautiful girls in New Bedford. Her sister Catharine married Joseph Anthony, and her other sister Susan married Moses Grinnell. After Cornelia’s mother died, her father married her younger sister Mary. Thanks to Joseph Anthony, we have an incredibly valuable document: a diary from 1823, when the sisters were all young. When the diary was started, Eliza was fifteen and already married to Cornelius Grinnell, Cornelia’s father. At the time, the Grinnell and Anthony families were both members of the Society of Friends, but they all soon left and became Unitarians. Joseph was twenty-five and managing a fleet of whaling ships for the Rotch and Arnold families. His closest friend, Moses Grinnell, was sent by the Rotches on a voyage to learn how to be a proper merchant at the age of twenty. As Zephaniah Pease noted in his introduction to the diary:

The long trip was to assist him to fulfill his ambition to become a great merchant. He was not bent upon pleasure. He first made an intensive study of conditions in the countries he visited in South America. He investigated the products, what was consumed in home production, the amount of surplus for export, prices, costs of transportation, rates of exchange.

It is assumed that Anthony kept a diary so that he could give it to Moses when he returned to New Bedford. Since Moses was already engaged to Susan Russell, it made sense that he would want to know every detail of what happened while he was away.

The diary gives us a glimpse into the lives of the young privileged people who lived in New Bedford at the time. Joseph mentioned his work in the diary, but it is mostly about life outside the counting house that makes it an important source when one is attempting to form a picture of Cornelia’s parents. Cornelius and Eliza were already married in 1823, but Cornelius was still unsure of what exactly he wanted his life to be.

Eliza and her sisters were not only beautiful, they also were tiny. In April 1823, Joseph recorded, "The girls, with Warren and Moses, dined with us. In the afternoon, the girls came down to the counting room to be weighed—Mary 94, Sue 90, Katy 88. Warren and Moses were Anthony’s closest friends; they dined together, went on day trips together and seemed to have had a great deal of fun. We even know what the friends ate; in June 1823, Anthony recorded that he had roast beef.

[Roast beef is] a rarity at this season. He devoured stall-fed wild pigeon and partridge pie, fried oysters, venisoned mutton, souse and sausages. He had strawberries in his boss, James Arnold’s, garden, attended a corn pudding party and a cherry and cucumber party. Joseph enjoyed radishes from the seed that grew this year and apples which grew on [his] English royal dwarf, [which he] received from France this spring. It was in bloom when set out. The color red and white and very fine flavor.

We also know that Joseph set casks of very good wine to settle; he bottled his own Madeira and port, which were sailed in by whaling ship around the Horn of Africa. It was commonly believed that this made the wine better, as it kept well in hot weather.

The Russell girls were fond of pretty dresses, music and other amusements that the strict Society of Friends did not approve of. At the same time that Anthony was writing, a controversy with the New Lights was rocking the Society. New Light members felt that divine guidance came from within, as opposed to the far stricter members, who believed divine guidance came from exterior forces. By the end of the conflict, most of New Bedford’s first families—the Grinnells, Anthonys, Rotches and Arnolds—had left the Society of Friends and joined the Unitarian or Episcopal Churches.

Anthony recorded, Mary and Susan had another visit this forenoon from the overseers of the meeting to labour with them respecting their dress and address and informed that they should make a complaint to the meeting. On April 17, he added this record:

The overseers of the meeting entered a regular complaint in the preparative meeting this day against Mary and Susan for not conforming to the Discipline in all the important points of dress, address, attending disorderly meetings (viz. the marriage of Jeremiah Winslow and mine) and frequenting