conny has recently spoken at the princeton public library i understand some of you may have been at the speech and i'm sure you'll find this very enlightening county thank you very much for coming on this is such a pleasure to be here with you lou and represent princeton public schools and what you do after retirement if you really want to practice your craft which is you know it's on publishing historical biography and this this work is very very exciting well that's great well kind of i think everybody knows you as well as i do but i think will tell more about you besides your work for the schools which you retired back in june after twenty six years of classroom teaching everybody should know that you were for three years a research associate at princeton university's davis center first article studies and you worked on a volume of princetonian while you were there and which was published by the princeton university press you also were co founded with and resolve the children's museum at received a five thousand grant the amistad award for teaching african american history name for the slave ship rebellion you've had a very deep and very wise educational background both as a scholar and as the teacher and hopefully tonight we can talk a little bit about that background and get into betsy stockton and find out little more about her life and your research into her life thank you lou absolutely that people ask me how did you become interested in researching that's the stockton a woman of color and i say well i looked at this portrait as i was doing this first exhibit on her for the toadies museum and i was just drawn in lieu to find out what all kinds of things as much as i could about her life i some specific goals we'll talk about as we go on but so that's that's how she really found me and i felt compelled to tell her story ok so what local repositories of research information did you consult i first used the a store call society of princeton i also used firestone library princeton university's research library where books and manuscripts are used theological seminary library used to know very bendy different kinds of  repositories prince university archives for example when it was first located and sea floor in firestone and now mud library our archives all of those use them all but i think it's good to know because whenever you're you're drawing on history you want to make sure you're drawing from a wide variety of sources and getting and getting as much information as you can and every time i hear about historical individuals and the research that historians do into it each has a historical challenge or research challenge that they talk about what has been your what's been the greatest research challenge for you well there are actually two i'm going to speak about but the but none of these were grounded with primary source materials until i really started to dig into primary sources were lou and the second challenge was so i had to debunk or substantiate those often quoted and then i wanted to find out exactly where when how and why this only did jerry a type photograph of her was taken in a seven hundred sixty three other people have published later portraits that are composites and those are fine but there is one artifact which she also saved her wages for and left to us so we really could see her face and faces really are the ledger on which a life is written and it just drew me in i had to find out about this woman's life you know who took the picture and you know i was i do it was taken into your type studio and i'm not going to give any more details than that you have to read the book but when we know it was taken in seventeen sixty three it was the only life portrait taken of stockton and soon after the giro types went out of fashion because you had just said very very still people couldn't smile because they couldn't hold that pose long enough and therefore they had to keep their mouth shut something i find hard to do and and go for forward with that she's also analyzed her clothing and probably this is the one of the simplest outfits that anyone would ever pose and it really shows that even though she was extremely well known she was also  this is you can see from this little spot there was somebody dripped a piece of little pools of chemicals on the glass plate of that type as they were finishing it so you know that's the original a talked about your research what's been the best discovery of your research what i think you know substantiating this this portrait but i also think that delving into the possibility of a stablish in her parent that he may very well have been her biological father if you look at portraits of course this contemporary painting would have been done years before stopping had her portrait taken there's two or three factors that b ers look for to establish identity of people who are long sense dead so i think that that's a very good working theory about stockton's parentage we know her mother was an african american slave we know her father was white she was called new lotto in her time so that greatest discovery is really digging into that her parentage and funny yes that and finding a  was very very much interested in her teaching materials her teaching methods what made her so outstanding what was a grounding in her childhood that allowed her to learn to read and write at a time before the civil war when it was illegal to teach african americans to read and write in many cases and the states of the south and in some cases of other places as well  i wanted to find out how what did she do to help her students to become as interested in learning as she was herself for example could i peer interrupt classroom i did what's talk about the missionary part just for a second good why and how was she sent to be a christian missionary what what or why she was contracted with a very special professional she went with what was called the mission family of charles stuart and his pregnant bride kiriat and she stood stock and was very adept at everything according to ashville green she could do anything and very very well it was a good thing because five months went by this whaling voyage of stockton wrote a wonderful to our journal on board which we have came back through whalers it was published by asheville green in philadelphia in his magazine and she was sent out with this proviso and it took me a long time to realize lou the reason they gave you gave her this written contract was to keep her from being impressed or taken back into servitude on the watery leg of the underground railroad which i didn't know very much about when i wife team and she was the third member of their mission family along because there she was there for about two and a half years the wife unfortunately became very very sick after the second baby was born after the ship  our baby was born those second child a boy and then a girl and stockton was right there as right hand woman she did all the heavy work but also she was stated saying i want to start school started to completely original schools in hawaii one for children the other for farmers adults the first schools that were founded and why she was just a national princeton school right that might be the first public school for african americans in new jersey and possibly the first of its kind in the north before the civil war yes luckily the historical society has an amazing primary source which i'm always asking my students in my classes to find what is the contemporary document that really establishes the russell the truthfulness of something and in this case it was a superintendent witherspoon street and one of the subjects that are taught reading writing arithmetic geography and you can well imagine she had some insights about geography having gone around the horn in eighteen twenty two she knew a lot of geography even before she went and was able to teach it to her students afterwards but we have the superintendents book of all the schools in princeton and hearses documented that's venters how many students but forty between forty and fifty on a consistent basis you know three three african americans these are not descendants of slaves brought up by southern students that's a myth that's gone by the books  absolutely clear that up yes it is we talked about schooling and schools how many schools and told the doctor and begin teaching in or principal our sheet actually started seven different schools ok one of the her amazing abilities was as a linguist and when i first started researching her rice so what does that really mean well meant that she learned the  language from some to whine boys who returning on the thames whaling ship in five months during that time she was absolutely fluent so you can imagine she was one of the few  people who came off of the whaler and was able immediately to use written work and by lingual work in the eight hundred twenty s and twenty eight in twenty three there was a press that was terrace today in other cases there were charitable institutions because government really hadn't to shoulder the burden for public education so many times there were church supported for example the missionary school that she taught at in upper canada was funded by methodist church lots of the work she did to y was funded by the presbyterian church it's sending arms which was the a b c s am so called american board of commissioners for foreign missions and they were sending people to choctaws they were sending people to india they were sending people to why etc out of boston w matriarch well means that she was the really the founding mother and the person who had the most power now remember lou that when she went in and other missionaries went into this culture in in hawaii all through the islands was not only kinship but queens were very very powerful hereditary queens so it was a royal system and women had a lot of power stockton brought back that kind of power in her person because she had had all these experiences because she was so very brilliant so very charismatic she brought that power as they somebody said she briefly is the fact that hawaii is is not around the corner around the corner so how did she wind up deciding or how did it was decided for her either way you know basically why why  being the missionary why of all places good good good question according to asheville green's writings his published work and his other non published work on her bessie stockton's first idea was to maybe go to africa and the her friends i'm sure the stuart husband and wife said no we're worried that that might be too dangerous for you as a missionary no we want you to go with us stockton lived for most of her life over the president's house right in front of nassau hall and where there was a very tearful goodbye meeting and prayer session held by aspell green for the stockton and at the president's house in front of nasa hall it was ok you three can go together because i trust you three to do your christian duty and i feel very secure that you'll be attacked attended a day at school and her life doesn't feel like parent bragging but she's so brilliant she went she does this she does that she went to the seminary and formal classes oh my goodness she's she's expert in everything she does just like a parent what were the qualities that most impressed you most about her what qualities impressed you most now your your former former teacher but before master teacher not just a teacher over the many years both at the elementary middle school level that many students have worked and thinks modesty is ok you know but sometimes you know you have to say it like it is a lot of students went there and became a very enriching experience for them because they had years a teacher but what i preparedness and inspiring other people she hired other african american women to work with her in her schools and it was a whole construct of the church morning prayer  classes afternoon sabbath classes regular classes on non sabbath days so it was a whole program she put together and she had public exhibitions of students work where they spoke where they received prizes for their or speeches that was published in newspapers and inviting the public to calm and view their work but i'm sure it was wide open but i think her ability to understand and use by lingual ism in several cases was what impressed me most that we talked to her as a professional as a teacher yes a little about her role as a missionary what type of individual w think that her it's a surrogate family which was asbell green and these two of the young when they went out young husband and wife team were her really sort of adopted  has she raised those two children in princeton in fact i just found a picture of the edge hill grammar school this is a map lou of princeton school to which she sent this child that she had brought into the world on board ship imagine i can't you know send him to school there and graduated  bibliography which will be great for other scholars who want to delve into this remarkable period in american history and princeton history and international history and it's fascinating and we're going to talk more stockton when we continue this conversation next week in part two of our series of betsy stockton's life and county issues research and to betsy stockton which is making this so vital and vibrant for all of us who are getting a better understanding of all the years of research and work that you've put into making her come alive for generations of students and educators to come so we thank you and leisure we will be continuing our discussion if you just stay tuned next week we'll have part two in the series of betsy stockton and county azure until then i want to go through you have a good nights they active they healthy stay focused i'll see you next week on another edition of focus on have a good night