Stony the Road We Trod, Volume 1: The Grimké Family’s Journey from Slavery to Suffrage

By Rosemary T. Curran

When Angelina Grimke pleads with her brother Henry not to punish a household slave, she does not anticipate her "stony road" ahead as a remarkably effective abolitionist speaker. Leaving behind their illustrious slave-holding family, she and her sister, Sarah, take their northern audiences by storm. Yet the very fact of their speaking in public, as women, doubles the opposition they face and leads them to become among the earliest American voices for women's rights. As they and their fellow abolitionists experience violent riots and the burning of their lecture hall, they wonder if their efforts have been in vain. Romance and marriage lead them to a less public life, but in the aftermath of Emancipation and the Civil War, a formidable challenge awaits them in the discovery of their unknown nephews. After their father's death and prior to the war, these promising nephews, children of Henry and his slave mistress, Nancy Weston, are enslaved by their half-brother. Mistreated, abused, and beaten nearly to death, they eventually escape and find their way north, seeking a full education. But will their eventual encounter with their abolitionist aunts redeem the suffering they and their mother experienced at the hands of their southern family?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Jun 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9798385222223

Rosemary T. Curran

Rosemary T. Curran is an author, theologian, and educator who has taught philosophy, ethics, and religious studies at Wheeling University, Smith College, Phillips Andover Academy, and Seattle University. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Ethiopia in 2005–2007 and in 2012–2013, where she taught urban and environmental planning. She is the coauthor of Loving and Working: Reweaving Women’s Public and Private Lives. A graduate of Fordham University and University of Washington, she lives in Seattle.

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Preface

Stony the Road We Trod is the fruit of close to ten years of research and writing, but its origins go back even further. Nearly forty years ago, my colleague at Wheeling University, Debra Beery Hull, and I wrote Loving and Working,¹ a research-based study of the challenges for American women of combining a meaningful career with a healthy family life that included children. It was a challenge that each of us struggled with personally—both of us full-time academic professionals, married, with pre-school children at the time. In addition to empirical research on professional women’s attitudes, we examined the history of women and work and looked at role models, from biblical times to the present, of women who strove to combine a call to a public vocation and a commitment to a family or relational life. Among those we studied were the Grimké sisters, Sarah and Angelina, the abolitionists and proto-feminists, from a slave-holding family in Charleston, SC. Fascinated especially by the struggles of their later domestic life, I vowed to return to their story when my own family and career life allowed for it.

My goal has been to create an accessible story about this amazing family. There are already a number of excellent biographies available, but I wanted to bring their lives to a wider public audience in a more popular style. I was particularly inspired when I saw the film Glory. Here was a compelling fictionalized history of the early Negro regiments of the Civil War—a story that I knew nothing about beforehand, and that greatly enriched my understanding of African American history. When I began the research for this book, I knew almost nothing of Sarah and Angelina’s mixed-race nephews, the children of their brother, Henry, and his slave mistress,² Nancy Weston. When I learned of their dramatic childhood stories—their enslavement and multiple escapes—and their illustrious adult careers as advocates for civil rights and women’s rights, I knew the story had to include them.

I will leave the reader to discover the themes of this book, but I will suggest here that there are several important themes interwoven. If it is a book about an unfinished historical and political struggle for human rights, it is also a book about domestic struggles, love and heartbreak, personal choices, and personal lives. In a way, it is a book about how these inevitably intersect. As a result, the story is told in two volumes, covering three generations of the Grimké and Weld families. I wrote it first as a series of screenplays and then decided to re-write it as a novel.

Writing Historical Fiction

There is an immense reservoir of personal documents from the Grimké, Weld, and Stanley families: voluminous correspondence with each other and with many well-known names of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as with lesser-known friends; personal diaries, newspaper articles, numerous published works, and unpublished manuscripts from each of the main characters. Although most are in collections at the Clements Library at University of Michigan or at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University, there are other sources that are scattered in a variety of other archive collections. It would take many years to read all of it. I had to content myself with a significant sampling of these primary sources, focusing on important turning points and events in their lives. I fear I may have missed something important, but I am confident that what I have read provides a reasonably full account of their lives and personalities.

One of the pitfalls of historical fiction, or in this case, fictionalized biography, is telling a compelling story that is faithful to the facts, but not entirely bound by them. If I have erred in finding the right balance, it has probably been on the side of sticking close to the facts. I very much wanted to tell a true story—neither a glorified hagiography nor a sensationalized drama that ignored the ordinary struggles of daily life.

Obviously, when writing of nineteenth century characters, one does not have access to tapes or videos of their public speaking, much less of their private conversations. Very few of Angelina’s and Sarah’s speeches were recorded in written documents, except for Angelina’s speeches to the Massachusetts Legislative Committee in February 1838 and at Pennsylvania Hall in May 1838, and a few excerpts that were reported in newspapers. In creating these speeches, I have relied heavily on their own written documents: their testimonies on slavery as published in American Slavery as It Is and their anti-slavery and women’s rights pamphlets. I have sometimes put words written by Angelina in Sarah’s mouth and vice versa. This seems justified because the sisters were in constant discussion of the issues and borrowed ideas freely from each other. It is not always clear which of them said or wrote a particular phrase or expressed a notion first. I have occasionally paraphrased or updated the language, and added sections that condense a particular line of thinking in a more oral style.

For their personal conversations, I have relied mostly on their correspondence and their diaries which reveal, as much as is possible, their personal thoughts and struggles. Necessarily, though, these have been supplemented with dialogue and descriptions that are my own creation. I have tried to maintain some semblance of the style and formality of mid-nineteenth century conversation and manners, while still making the characters humanly natural and recognizable to a twenty-first century audience. By far the majority of the characters and events in these volumes are historical. I created a few minor characters and a few events where they were needed to fill out the story, but I have indicated that they are fictional in the notes. Only in one or two cases have I deliberately departed from what I knew to be factually the case, and I have also noted those situations, and my reasoning for those departures.

Still, one is left with a considerable amount of interpretation of lives, where the historical record leaves us uncertain. Some of that interpretation may be controversial. Below I have indicated some of those challenges of interpretation or historical accuracy.

Language

Charleston Dialect

In the 1840s it is likely that white and black inhabitants of Charleston and its surroundings would have shared a distinctive southern dialect with variations depending on levels of education and exposure to standard English grammar vs. less exposure and more direct African influence. It is difficult to know how to reproduce these differences exactly. For one thing, the influences on the Charleston dialect are varied, and in any era individuals in the same place will speak differently.³ The most notable, consistent element of the Charleston and Low Country dialect is the dropping of the r, especially at the end of words. Dropping of a final g was also common. There can also be a Canadian type use of oo in place of ou, as in hoose vs. house, but that was less common. The replacement of eye or I with Ah was less pronounced in Charleston, but more common in upland areas. Grammar and vocabulary could also be distinct. In the first chapters I have tried to produce a general impression of the Charleston dialect with a range of levels of deviation from standard or northern English usage. I do not pretend to expertise in these language variations, and I introduce these differences only to indicate a general distinction from Northern English, and to a lesser extent between southern classes. For instance, Angelina and her sisters would have had Charleston accents, but probably spoke with mostly (but not completely) standard English grammar; Henry who spent more time among plantation slaves and with his mistress, Nancy, may have adapted his speech more to their local usage. Nancy’s speech was likely to be a mix of the African influenced vernacular of the slaves (AAVE)⁴ and the more standard Charleston speech that she was exposed to as a house slave. While Gullah was spoken in the Sea Island areas, its influence on upper class Charleston would have been minimal. Slaves from that area who were brought to Charleston would have spoken it.

Quaker Speech

When Sarah moved to Philadelphia and joined the Quakers she adopted the Quaker style of speech, using thee, thou, and thy for both second person singular and second person plural, and the corresponding verb forms. Angelina also adopted this after she came to Philadelphia and joined the Quakers, as is evident from her extant letters to Sarah from around 1830 on.⁵ Many of Sarah’s letters to Angelina from that period do not seem to have survived, but in letters to others, such as Sarah Douglass, she uses the Quaker form. Birney⁶ mentions that they both used Quaker speech despite discomfort with some of its ungrammatical forms. They would probably not have used it consistently in conversation with non-Quakers such as their sister Anna and other family members. However, Angelina does use it in her first letter to William Lloyd Garrison and later the sisters use it in their correspondence with Theodore Weld. After they broke with the Quakers around 1838, they discontinued using it, except perhaps, by habit, with their remaining Quaker friends.

Master-Slave Sexual Relations

There is much debate on the issue of the nature of these master-slave liaisons, and undoubtedly most of them were coercive and abusive, amounting to rape. Kerri Greenidge in her 2022 scholarly work on the Grimké family,⁷ asserts this when she states that Henry began a relationship with Nancy Weston that, if not based on multiple acts of rape, was shaped by Henry’s violent nature and Nancy’s powerlessness.⁸ However, she states that Nancy may have seen the relationship as an opportunity to gain status as a femme sole who could own property and have some control of her own circumstances. She goes on to say Nancy would never be reduced to a stereotype . . . . She often stood between Henry and her fellow enslaved people in order to prevent a beating, and from her cabin, she managed to assert some control over her time in the same way that her fellow colored Westons did in Charleston . . . . She raised her own chickens and pigs on the small plot of land next to her cabin and grew her own vegetables. . .She also insisted that Henry provide for her and their children . . . . If they could not be legally freed, Nancy argued, at least she would be allowed to ‘act for herself in such a way as she may think will promote her own well-being.’⁹ Henry, for his part, showed her tenderness at times that he rarely showed to other enslaved people. In a letter to his white son, Montague, Henry speaks of taking Nancy into his own house and nursing her continuously through a fever for over two weeks. By the time he wrote the letter, she had been free of fever for three days, but he still wanted her to rest and to wait until her own house got warm before he would let her return to it.¹⁰ Nancy also nursed Henry through his final battle with typhoid in September 1852. Nancy believed Henry when he promised to provide for her and their children and to send them back to Charleston when they were old enough.¹¹

Although she was his slave, it does not appear that Nancy was without power in the relationship. The power differential between them was ambiguous, as evidenced by the testimony that she could throw Henry to the ground, not suffer any consequences, and effectively prevent him from ever again using force with her. A difference in power does not preclude the possibility of relationships that are affectionate and consensual. One might even contend that given the history of patriarchy most traditional marriages could be said to involve a difference in legal status and economic power. As an enslaved woman there was a power difference between Nancy and Henry, but it was not absolute. There were mutual benefits, and their arrangement appears to have been voluntary and affectionate on both sides. The testimony from Nancy herself and her children argue that their relationship had that character, despite their unequal legal status. Based on that evidence and the evidence of her ability to assert herself and resist any physical abuse from Henry, in this work she is portrayed as having consented to their relationship. Whatever her initial, private feelings were for Henry (which may have grown warmer over time), she undoubtedly calculated that she had something to gain from the relationship as well.

In Lift Up Thy Voice, Perry says that from the perspective of Charleston society, being in love with a black woman would have been a more grievous sin than conceiving children by raping one. He also suggests that the move to Cane Acre from Charleston allowed Henry and Nancy more freedom to live as a couple.¹²

Additional Resources

I found it fascinating to learn more about the practical details of nineteenth-century life in the United States—population facts, such as the fact that the slave and free-colored population of Charleston County in 1850 and 1860 significantly outnumbered the white population; the changes in lighting sources; the changes in modes of transportation. Often, I had to restrain myself from going down a rabbit-hole of research on a minor detail. I have recorded much of this historical detail in endnotes. However, because this is a novel, I have eliminated the more arcane or detailed discussions from the final version. However, a version with the full, original endnotes is available at the book’s website: www.Grimkelegacy.com That website contains material to enrich the reading of the book including discussion questions, a family tree, timeline, notes on historical characters, and more.

1 Rosemary Curran Barciauskas and Debra Hull, Loving and Working, Bloomington: Meyer-Stone Books,

1989

.

2 I use the term mistress knowing that it may not accurately describe Nancy’s position. She was mistress (as in chief housekeeper) of the household at Cane Acre. Today, we would term her Henry’s lover or partner, since mistress usually connotes an extramarital relationship when there is a living wife. Henry was a widow at the time of their relationship. But, of course, the position of wife to Henry was not an option for Nancy in antebellum South Carolina.

3 "Older Southern American English. Wikipedia. See particularly the sections on Charleston and Grammar and Vocabulary. https://en.wikipedia.org

4 African-American Vernacular English, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org

5 Birney, Grimké Sisters. Chapters

8–11

.

6 Birney, Grimké Sisters.

7 Greenidge, Grimké Family Legacy.

8 Greenidge, Grimké Family Legacy,

111

.

9 Greenidge, Grimké Family Legacy,

113–14

.

10 Bruce,

3

, quoting Henry Grimké to E. Montague Grimké, July

21

,

1851

. See also Greenidge, 114

.

11 Bruce,

3

, note

6

quoting Archibald Grimké, Memoirs.

12 Perry, Lift Up,

235–37

.

Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to the wonderful librarians at William L Clements Library, University of Michigan, who helped me find and use the Weld-Grimké Family Papers, including the recently added 2012 Addition, and to the kind and helpful librarians at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center (MSRC) of Howard University which is home to the Grimké Family Collection, the Grimké-Weld-Stanley Early Papers, and the Angelina Weld Grimké Collection.

From the early days of writing this historical novel I have relied on colleagues and friends to read multiple drafts in various formats. Foremost among them were historian Rosanna Gatens Renn, Ph.D., former Director of the Center for Holocaust and Human Rights Education at Florida Atlantic University, and theologian and author, Diana Villegas, Ph.D. They have spent many, many hours reading and discussing this work with me from its early stages to the present day. Without their willingness to read, critique and advise me on this book over many years, and their constant support and encouragement, I know these two volumes would never have been completed. There are no words to thank them enough.

Other friends from various parts of my life also read and commented on drafts of the books at various stages. Among them were Mary Anderson, Judith McDonald, Sher Sellman, Debra Hull, and my dear, recently departed friend, Kathy Collins. In the last few months, English professor and author, Thomas Tryzna, Ph.D. read a quasi-final draft and offered invaluable encouragement and advice on publishing.

My immediate and extended family members have also listened patiently as I shared my enthusiasm for this story and my daily struggles to make progress and complete it. I am grateful that my son and daughter and their partners share my interest in the continuing struggle for African American civil liberties, for remedies to racism, and for women’s rights and full equality in the workplace and in the home. My family, friends, and companions have honored my need to keep writing even when they (and I) might have preferred that I come out and play with them.

I am grateful for the guidance of the editors at Wipf and Stock, and for the opportunity to share this book with a wider audience.

It is perhaps not customary, but I also want to acknowledge my gratitude to the subjects of this work. I have come to love Sarah, Angelina and Theodore, Frank and Lottie, Nancy, Archibald, and Nana. They were real people who, imperfect as they were, nevertheless laid the groundwork for immense progress in civil rights and in the status of women. To them, and to their friends and co-workers mentioned in this novel, we all owe profound thanks. As was said of Sarah at her funeral, their deeds were wise and beautiful.

South Carolina

1

Henry and Nancy

1844–1852

Nancy Weston moved slowly but efficiently as she walked through the Grimké family home removing the signs of mourning—the dark drape at the entry way, covered pictures, and the children’s mourning clothes. It had been six months since the mistress, Selina Simmons Grimké, died.¹ Selina had been unwell since the birth of her youngest son, Thomas, nearly ten years earlier, and even before her death much of the running of the household had fallen to Nancy.

At thirty-four Nancy had an exotic beauty that reflected her mix of African and white ancestors: high cheekbones, dark eyes and caramel-colored skin. She carried herself with the dignity of an Abyssinian queen, but she was, nevertheless, a slave, and it showed in the tired lines around her eyes and the stubborn stoicism of her demeanor. She relied on her private reserve of faith to maintain a sense of inner worth in the face of the indignities she suffered personally, and the far worse abominations inflicted on her fellow slaves. The latter had been the cause of a recent disagreement with her master, Henry Grimké.

Henry Grimké was the fifth son and ninth surviving child of Judge John Faucheraud Grimké and his wife, Mary Smith Grimké. Of the fourteen children born to Mary, eleven had lived to adulthood. Henry’s eldest brother, John, was a well-known Charleston physician, while two of his other brothers, Thomas and Frederick, had had prominent careers in the law. Henry, too, was educated in the law and had worked for a time as a partner with his brother, Thomas. But in the years to come, it would be Henry’s older sister, Sarah, and his youngest sister, Angelina, who would bring the greatest notoriety to the family name.

Although Henry and his family lived in a townhouse in Charleston for most of the year, he was also the owner of the rice plantation of Cane Acre which lay about twenty-five miles east of Charleston and of the two or three dozen slaves who worked the plantation.

Nancy knew Henry not only relied on her to keep his children in line and the Charleston household running smoothly, but also looked to her for counsel, sympathy and companionship as he mourned the loss of his wife. Nancy was, in some ways, the antithesis of Selina who had been a soft, indecisive, cosseted southern woman. Selina, unlike many other Charleston mistresses, tried at times to be kind to her household slaves.² But she ended up managing them whimsically, and it seemed to Nancy that she had been willfully ignorant and oblivious to their harsh realities.

Henry came upon Nancy as she was gathering his eldest daughter, Henrietta’s, dark dresses to put them away. Hullo, Nancy, you busy? he inquired.

Of course, she was. Every minute of time wasted during the long days, meant a shorter night’s sleep. But she looked at him with an ironical smile and just said, Neveh too busy for you, masteh.³ So often recently, she knew, he just needed someone to talk to. She listened as he complained about this and that, and she answered truthfully when he asked about the children. Well, Henrietta and Tom be learnin’ fine, Nancy said as she folded clothes, but Montague, you know, he still playin’ mean tricks on Tom. Just cain’t seem to keep from pickin’ on him. Henry looked away helplessly and muttered. Yeah, they be boys.

Nancy was frustrated by his unwillingness to deal with Montague’s behavior. But this conversation was an opportunity not to be wasted. I got something on ma’ mind, too, masteh Henry, Nancy added as she summoned up her courage. Don’ know if y’all heard, but that crazy, mean overseer out at Cane Acre– the new one, Rufus, I guess. He done told the field hands they gotta work this Sunday—and next Sunday, too. He raised their quota a’ weedin’ and so now he punish them for not meetin’ it. That just plain crazy, masteh. Ain’t neveh been done before.⁴

Henry was annoyed, as always, when there was trouble on the plantation, and he didn’t want to be bothered with it. Nah, cain’t be. How d’ya know that, anyway, Nancy? Who told ya?

I got my ways, masteh, ya’ know that! No question it’s true.

Not your business, Nancy. Why you botherin’ me with this? Henry said impatiently.

It’s Sunday. It’s the Lord’s day. Bible says Keep holy the Sabbath—no workin’ that day. It be a sin to make ‘em work! Nancy appealed to his family’s strict religious code, which Henry largely ignored. However, Nancy knew that without a day of rest for three weeks, the plantation slaves would be exhausted, angry, and desperate, if not downright rebellious. And their Sunday church gathering was a small but essential consolation for their hard lives.

Henry understood that his own siblings might remonstrate with him, too, if he let this overseer get out of control. They’d accuse him of neglecting his duties, which they did regularly anyway. Nancy might be saving him some trouble. Sometimes Nancy reminded him of his younger sister, Angelina, who had often chastised him on his treatment of the house slaves. He sighed at the recollection of those tumultuous days in his twenties when he’d just married Selina and he still shared the townhouse with his mother and his three unmarried sisters. He’d drunk a lot then.

Ah, come on, Nance, don’ ya start in! Let’s talk a’ somethin’ nice, Henry grumbled.

Nancy was adamant. Promise me you’ll speak to Rufus and give him a piece a’ yo’ mind, masteh, and I’ll tell ya all sorts of nice things, Nancy rejoined. Please, sir, she added quietly and formally.

Henry walked away disgruntled. Nancy was pretty sure he’d do something to keep his overseer in line and to avoid unrest among the slaves. Still, she wasn’t sure if she’d crossed a line with this request. She very rarely said anything about the plantation, although she was quick to complain if one of the house slaves were unfairly or too harshly punished. Even before Selina died, Henry was happy to let Nancy manage the house staff as she saw fit. She didn’t tolerate laziness or nonsense from them, but for the most part they knew she would be fair.

Satisfied in his marriage, Henry had long ago ceased to bother the younger female slaves with the wandering eye and unwelcome advances of his youth. What he wanted most was companionship and a comforting love. He’d had the latter with Selina, but Nancy provided a different kind of companionship than he’d known with his wife. She was more than a full partner in the care of the children and the running of the household. She was smart and he liked the sharp and witty repartee they shared, even at his own expense. He would never acknowledge it, but in truth, he feared her disapproval.

It was many months before he began to think of Nancy in a new way. He began to touch her occasionally or stand close by, and Nancy knew he wanted more. Strangely, she did, too. There were no tempting choices for her among the house slaves or even among the best of the plantation slaves.

As the tension between them grew, Nancy knew she had to decide.⁵ Henry would not force her—instinctively she knew that. If she rebuffed him, however, it would be difficult for both of them. She could implore him to trade her away to another household for an equally competent house slave, or they could retreat to the cold, mutually resentful relationship of master and slave. He might even seek another wife, and that would deprive her of the status and authority she currently had.

It happened naturally enough, although not for a year and half after Selina’s passing. Nancy had helped Henry to plan and host a dinner for the sixtieth birthday of his older brother Dr. John and his wife, and six of their mutual friends. Nancy had arranged for the young people’s meal and then overseen the cooking and service of the supper. She had moved noiselessly around the table replenishing wine. Henry watched her unobtrusive ease and dignity with admiration, and he couldn’t help but see that one of the other male guests looked at her with a more lascivious interest. He was surprised how it had disgusted him.

He had retired to his chamber when the last guest had left, and the evening was over. Nancy was there turning down his bed. She looked up and he moved toward her. "Nance, I just gotta say, it was a real’ good dinner and a nice party . . . couldn’t a’ done it without ya’. He thought he might even shake her hand if she let him, but she moved toward him and somehow his arm slipped around her waist, and she lifted her face to him expectantly.

Ah, Nance! was all Henry could say as he touched her face. There were few words and no hesitation. And no turning back.

Henry and Nancy’s relationship was awkward and stormy at times. A few months after that fateful night of the party, Henry had grown angry when he felt she had crossed him one too many times. He raised his arm to strike her, but she blocked it, her eyes blazing, and she pushed him hard enough that he fell to the floor. He stomped away, furious but abashed. She refused to speak to him. In two days, he was over it, and he never raised a hand against her again.⁶ Although he couldn’t have identified it, Nancy’s fierce dignity only increased his admiration and affection for her.

Having made the boundaries clear, their mutual ease born out of years of companionship, grew along with their newly discovered joy in the pleasure of nights together. But Nancy’s new status as Henry’s lover could not be hidden from the other household slaves, and Charleston society would tolerate this situation only as long as it was invisible and denied. It was one thing for masters to regularly violate their young female slaves; it was quite another for a slave woman to be set up as the mistress of a white household, and even worse to be the object of genuine and enduring affection.⁷

His children were now adolescents, complicating matters further. Henry began to think that if he made Cane Acre his primary residence, he could avoid the potential censure of his family and social circle in Charleston and maintain a more natural relationship with Nancy. Nancy had mixed feelings about leaving Charleston, and the matter remained unsettled until the fall of 1848 when she realized she was expecting their first child. For her, that decided the question.

She agreed to move to Cane Acre with Henry and manage his household there, but she wanted to have her own small cabin nearby. Henrietta was about to be married. Montague and Thomas were away at school much of the time, and they would mostly stay in Charleston when they were home. Henry, on his part, welcomed the chance to distance himself from Charleston society where he had always felt that he compared unfavorably to his more successful and upstanding brothers and his pious sisters.

Archibald Henry Grimké was born at Cane Acre in 1849 and his brother, Francis, a year and a half later.⁸ Henry spent many evenings with his second family in Nancy’s rough little house, and there he found the sense of belonging that had eluded him for most of his life.

Occasionally he thought of his older sister, Sarah, and his younger sister, Angelina, who had gone north to join those crazy abolitionists. Banished from Charleston because of their anti-slavery pamphlets, Henry had not seen those sisters for nearly twenty years. Despite their constant arguments and profound differences of view, he still had a fondness for Angelina, and he wrote to her and Sarah occasionally with news of the family and his children. He even decided to send his younger son, Thomas, to their school in Belleville, New Jersey for several years.⁹ He never mentioned Nancy. They would never understand.

Cane Acre, South Carolina Summer 1852

In that lowland rice country of South Carolina, the heaviness of the sultry summer afternoons would linger long after the sun sank through the oak forest. Early on one of those evenings, a young man of nineteen was peering out of an upper window in the massive, brick plantation house. His mongrel, Machiavelli, was by his side. Henry’s firstborn son, Montague, recently returned from school, stood back from the window just enough to avoid being seen from the outside. He watched with a disgusted sneer as his father walked slowly toward a nearby grove of black gum trees. Montague knew that Henry was headed to the small building beyond the spreading green copse, a two-room cabin standing by itself, slightly apart from the plantation slave quarters.

As he stood watching, Montague, thought momentarily of his mother, Selina, who had died when he was eleven. He remembered her as a faint, sickly presence in the house, a silky ghost who gathered him into her vast skirts on occasion. But more often, she had left him and his older sister and younger brother to their mammy, Nancy Weston.¹⁰ What he remembered more bitterly was that Nancy, a household slave and later the de facto mistress of the house, was not given to indulging his adolescent arrogance nor to tolerating his occasional meanness to his siblings. The awkward young master chafed at his father’s deference to this slave woman who showed no inclination to subservience to either himself, or it seemed, to his father.

It was only in the last several years, when Nancy was visibly pregnant and his father had installed her in the little house at Cane Acre, that Montague’s vague fears were confirmed. When he saw that Nancy’s firstborn was nearly as light-skinned as his own brother, Thomas, Montague could no longer ignore the nature of his father’s visits to the cottage. Turning away from the window he gave Machiavelli a vicious kick.

Montague, however, was the last person on Nancy’s mind. As she hung the laundry outside her little house, she hummed a familiar hymn and glanced tenderly at her two babies sitting nearby on the doorstep. Francis, the one-and-a-half-year-old, was slightly swarthier than his three-year-old brother, Archibald. She could see Henry’s strong nose on both of them. Nancy touched her lower belly where she was feeling the first tiny flutters of her third child.

Over the clothesline, she saw Henry coming from a distance. She finished the laundry in a hurry and took the boys with her into the house. She splashed some water from a basin onto her face, patted the perspiration from her neck and underarms, and pulled her wiry hair into a tight bun. Nancy’s penetrating eyes and well-defined mouth gave her a serious, even austere, appearance. Despite the deep lines of fatigue on her face, the striking attractiveness of her youth was still evident.

Archie, kin you wash yo’ face while I clean up Frank here?

Archie walked over to a bowl of water that was on a low table. He carefully dabbed some water on his face and hands, wiping them with a nearby rag. For a moment Nancy watched his childish competence with amused pride. Then she hurried to wipe Frank’s bottom. She put on his shift as he squirmed energetically. She was just finishing when Henry knocked, then let himself in. Archie ran over to hug his knees, and Henry tousled his head fondly.

Henry Grimké, we glad to see you. But din’ I ask that you wait fo’ me to let you in! Nancy gave him a fond but slightly irritated glance. She set Frank down on the floor. Henry picked up Archie and spoke directly to him.

Archie, you heah how yo’ Mama speaks to me? What do you think of that welcome for yo’ Papa? Henry asked. He looked at Nancy ruefully, with a kind of childlike appeal, as he let Archie slide down. He held out a small parcel of ham hocks.

I knocked, din’ I? Anyway, heah, you can add this to our suppah.

Nancy picked up Frank and walked over to Henry, accepting the parcel along with an arm around her waist and a kiss on her cheek.

Well, come on, then, she said. If you wan’ suppah, then you bettah keep the babies outta ma way. Heah—you take Francis!

Henry reached for baby Frank. He sat down on the bench near the rough table and placed the baby on his lap. Archie brought Henry the one treasured book his papa had given them, an illustrated book of bible stories. Solemnly he climbed onto the bench next to Henry and wordlessly opened the book to his favorite page—a picture of Noah’s ark with two giraffes and two elephants being led onto it. He looked up eagerly at his father.

At fifty-one, Henry was stocky and round-shouldered, and he looked more tired than vigorous. But he smiled quietly at Archie’s eagerness. Henry was often puzzled that he found more contentment in this shabby little cabin on his plantation than he ever had in the well-appointed parlors and abundantly provisioned dining rooms of Charleston society.

Ah, this one agin’, Archie? Ya like this story of Noah, do ya? Henry chuckled and began to talk about the illustration.

So, my boy, who is this?

Archie answered very quietly. Is No- wah.

And what is this strange creature, Archie?

Archie shook his head doubtfully and looked up shyly at his father’s face. He looked at the illustration again and his face lit up. G’raf—It’s a g’raff! Henry roared with laughter, but then started to cough violently. When his coughing stopped, he looked proudly at Archie.

Oh, you’se a cleveh boy! Henry glanced over at Nancy, who was busy stirring a pot of rice, but secretly enjoying the family scene. She hid a slight smile. Henry laughed again, Cleveh, like your mama!

Yes, Archie, it’s a Gi-raffe! Now listen, ‘Noah was a righteous man. Noah walked with God. And Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.’ Now, son, look at these lettahs.

Henry pointed to Noah’s name in the book. What is this first lettah, Archie?

Nnnnn. . . Archie looked at Henry doubtfully again, and repeated, Nnnnn. . . N! Archie said triumphantly. It’s N for N-n-n-nno- wah!

Exactly right, my boy! Henry responded, giving Archie an approving nod. Frank pounded his fists on the table and reached over to grab the book. Henry moved Frank’s hand away and jostled the baby on his knee to distract him. A moment later Henry began to shake with a cough, and Nancy looked up anxiously, noticing the grayness and fatigue on his face. She stared out the small window with a deep sigh.

After their supper of rice and a few greens cooked with the ham hock, Henry read to the two little boys in the small, rough bed they shared. Frank fell asleep, and Archie began to nod off. Henry kept on reading until Archie’s breathing was even and deep, his arm flung over his baby brother.

Henry looked up as Nancy took off her apron, pulled a shawl around her shoulders, and walked out to the dark porch. She held her hands on her abdomen attentive to the slight movements within. After a moment Henry followed her out the door and put his arms around her from behind. They stood together for a few minutes looking out at the dark fields and half-mooned sky. Nancy turned her face sideways toward him.

Babies ‘sleep?

Henry smirked, Yeah—you wore ‘em out today!

Nancy lifted her eyebrows. Got that wrong—they wore me out. Archie don’t stop a-chatterin’ all day long. And Frank’s into everythin’.

Henry chuckled, Yeah, guess so. They be boys. He stifled a cough. Nancy turned to look at him intently, frowning. Henry seemed not to notice. He took her hand and held it to his cheek. She moved his hand to her belly, and they stood quietly again. Together they walked back past the sleeping boys into the one bedroom of the house. Henry stood behind Nancy stroking her hair and her face and then moving his body into hers. She reached