Part {I
Influence of Southwest Missouri

on George Washington Carver

$s



21

Fear of being “sold South” was another possible reason
for less hostile relations between master and slave.
Shrantz explains that slaves who could not be managed were
sold “well below the market value” to buyers who came once
a year, buying slaves to work the Southern plantations.
“Their profit” Shrantz says, “lay in buying at bargain
prices undesirable characters no one in this region wanted,
taking them South and selling them to plantations at full
prevailing prices for able-bodied slaves” ({Shrantz
1949¢:"Slavery Days"}. The more taxing work on the
plantations and stories of ill-treatment “drained away the
turbulent element which might have required harsh treatment
to keep it in subjection” and “very likely the fear of
being ‘sold South’ had a repressive influence on the minds
of any border line individuals" (Shrantz 1949¢:"Slavery
Days"). Lorenzo Greene also refers to this practice as “the
ultimate legal form of social control open to the master”
(Greene et. al. 1980:39). Former slave of Fredericktown
Harriet Casey’s account of “niggerbreakers” in Farmington
who “would take care of de slaves who were hard to handle”
illustrates the harsher ways of dealing with slaves along
the river (Rawick 1972a:73). Fillmore Taylor Hancock,
former Greene County slave, explains that his uncle was sold
when his master was angry with him for running away when he
tried to whip him. “Ol Marse sure got mad when my uncle
run. So he sold him to a man named Dokes -- a nigger

trader ob dat neighborhood. Dokes brought niggers an'sold





64

there is much that is distressingly vague, clothed in
literary embellishment” (Fuller 1958a:4). Her
embellishments, such as her description of George‘s illness
during which "Mary poured honey she had doctored with tansy
into his mouth" (Holt 1943:2), were characteristic of many
published works of the time. Dr. George Washington Carver:
Scientist by Shirley Graham and George D, Lipscomb (1944)
takes the idealizations even further, fabricating extensive
passages of dialog and inventing detailed scenes to
illustrate George’s love of nature as in the following
passage in which George worries excessively over the fate of
a fish:
Once he had caught a boy pulling one of the fish
out on a string. The fish would have died! The
boy ran away frightened out of his wits by the
ferocious little dark bit of humanity which had
leaped at him from the woods. Yes, he had to go
and free those baby fishes. They were large
enough now to take care of themselves, but not
when they were hemmed in as he had them. [Graham
and Lipscomb 1944:31
The many directions Carver’s life took allowed just as
many areas of emphasis for biographers. The very titles of
biographical works suggest the different ideals he
represented. Ethel Edward's Carver _of Tuskegee (1971), for
example, emphasizes his influence as a teacher just as

Raleigh Merritt's From Captivity to Fame (1929) emphasizes



75

his religious and political beliefs, a musician, and an
industrious farmer, all traits instilled in George at a very

early age.

influence of Susan Carver
According to Nellie Edwards, Mary was sold to the
Carver’s by the Bayneham family in order to help Susan:
That’s the only one I ever knew of their selling.
The one they sold to Mr. Carver because they felt
sorry for Aunt Sue and they knew she needed help.
That was why he bought her, because she was
getting old. [Fuller 1958(b):Box 1 Tape 10]
Though most biographical works acknowledge that due to
George Carver’s frail health (McMurry 1981:13), he spent
more time with Susan while his brother Jim helped Moses
more, little information about her has been recorded.
Because she died in 1892, the residents interviewed by
Fuller in the 1950s remembered little about her. Sarah
Smith for example, remembered Moses quite well but "didn’t
know Aunt Sue, she died and he married again" (Fuller
1955c:Box 1 Tape 1). In a rare description of Susan, Anna
Cox Toogood quotes Mary Lov Hardin, a contemporary of the
Carvers, aS saying Susan was "a good old-fashioned mother"
(1973:30), a telling statement given Susan had no children
of her own. If "good old-fashioned" was the standard for
Newton County mothers, Susan treated her nieces, nephews,

George, and Jim as her own children an@ earned the respect



11

expressed her fear of the interviewing process: “They want
ta find out how dey treated de ole slaves so’s dey'1ll know
how to treat the young ‘uns when dey makes dem slaves.” The
brief remainder of her interview supports Rawick’s theory
that fear may have caused slaves to hide the negative
aspects of slavery: “My mother uz treated so good dat she
stayed an worked fur de Missus til de Missus died. ... I
was down dare las week, an I calls hit home” {Rawick
1272a:107},

The former slaves had strong motives to downplay the
worst aspects of slavery. The economic climate of the 1930s
also contributed to an almost nostalgic attitude towards
Slavery on the part of many former slaves who could “look
back on their youth under slavery as a time when they at
least managed to have something to eat" (Rawick 1975:xxxii)
The former slaves had very mixed opinions concerning their
present State. Hanna Allen of Fredericktown expresses
nostaligia, saying “I was better off dan de free people. I
think dat slavery taught me a lot” (Rawick 1972a:10}. Also
unhappy with freedom as she experienced it, Rhody Holsell of
Fredericktown, Missouri says she believed “it would been
better to have moved all de colored people way out west to
dem selves” (Rawick 1972a:194}, When asked to tell his
experience in slavery, W. C, Parson Allen of Fredericktown
Staunchly says “I ain’t sayin’ nothing” (1972a;19}. Louis
Hill, however, resented that “de slave had made what de

white man had” and believed “de government should have made


70

farmers to settle in the west, allowing farmers who improved
land for six months to buy it at $1.25 an acre (McMurry
1981:4). According to McMurry the land chosen by Moses and
his two brothers, who also moved from Illinois, lent itself
well to a variety of crops, including both prairie and
timberland and having an abundant water supply with two
springs and a creek near the house. Moses and Susan lived
in a one room hewn-log cabin with the three children of
Moses’ brother whom Moses and Susan raised after his death
(McMurry 1981:4). Moses and his brothers were among the
first of many to be attracted to the terrain of Newton
County. Between 1840 and 1860 Newton County’s population
grew from 2,790 to 9,319.

Though we have these few facts of the Carvers’ history
from the county returns of the federal census and Newton
County land deeds, there has been controversy regarding the
origins of Moses Carver, Holt and other early biographers
suggesting German heritage, Fuller British. Raleigh Merritt
makes numerous references to the Carvers’ German heritage,
as do Graham and Lipscomb who frequently speak of "Frau
Carver" and invent extensive passages of German dialogue
between Moses and Susan. In an autobiographical sketch
George Carver himself says that Moses Carver was “a German
by birth” (qrd. in Kremer 1987:23). In a study on the
Carver family Robert Fuller found no solid evidence to
uphold the theory that the Carvers were of German descent.

Milton Rafferty says that "most of the steck that



28

(Rawick 1972a:21). Likewise, William Black of Hannibal says
his duty was to “take his children to school and go after
dem of an evening. In the mean time I just piddled around
in de fields” (Rawick 1972a:32). Richard Bruner of Nelson
remembers “being a water-boy to de field hands before I were
big enough to work in de fields. I hoed tobacccer when I
was about so high” (Rawick 1972a:59). James Monroe Abbot
of Cape Girardeau had the toxturous duty of keeping flies
from disturbing his dying master: “All dat time he made me
stan’ side o’ his bed--keepin’ de flies offen him, I was jes
seben yar old” (Rawick 1972a:1). He relates a story of his
mother’s dismay when the master finally died and and the
young James proclaimed repeatedly “By God, he’s daid” that
reveals his joy at being relieved of his tedious duties

(1972a:1)}.

free blacks
William Parrish summarizes the limited legal rights of
free Missouri blacks prior to the war:
In pre-Civil War days, Missouri’s free Negroes had
the right to own property, including slaves, and to
sue and be sued. They could testify in court
against another of their own race but not against
whites. Except for these rights, however their
actions were closely circumscribed either by law
or custom. [1973:145

A constitutional amendment in 1947 declared it illegal to



TABLE 2

County
Barton
Jasper
McDonald

Newton

Ages of Southwest Missouri Slaves

14 and under 15 and above Total

10 48% 11 51% 21
151 48% 164 52% 3158
40 56% 32 44% 72

229 52% 214 48% 443

39


35

speak of these Negro soldiers as forming a well-

disciplined and efficient regiment, but they were

bitterly hated by the society. [Pearson n.d.:7-8]
It was the invasion by this troop that decided the battle
resulting in Sherwood’s ultimate destruction. Once the
third largest town in Jasper County, the town of Sherwood
was burned to the ground during this battle on May 19, 1863,
by Union soldiers from the First Kansas Colored Infantry.
The troop was under the command of Col. James M, Williams

(Attoun 1992:"Gone But Not Forgotten").

war at home

Though many former slaves fought for the Unionist
cause, accounts from former Missouri slaves provide evidence
that racism and the resulting danger to slaves was rampant
on both sides. Slaves feared the approach of Confederate
and Unionist troops alike. The narrative of former Missouri
slave Joe Casey provides one example: “My old master run
when dem blue jackets. Dey made me kill chickens and
turkeys and cook for ‘em” (Rawick 1972a:77). Similarly,
George Bollinger, former slave of Bollinger County, tells
how the “Yankees” came during a festive corn-shucking. The
slaves hid in the shucks attesting to a fear of Union
troops, a fear proved well-founded by the troops orders to
ride through the corn shucks. Bollinger says, “When dey
hurd dat, our men com out. Dey looked funny wid shucks ‘en

silks in dey hair. Den de sojers ask’s ‘em things ‘en iff'n


60

sources used in Part TI of this study are the same attitudes
that affected Carver and helped form the views he held his
entire life, views that brought him both harsh criticism and
praise depending on the stage in American history and the
perspective of the critic.

Linda McMurry explains the myth surrounding Carver in
part as the result of a "vision of racial harmony in the
South shared by workers in the interracial movement." "For
them," she says, "Carver became a symbol both of the fruits
of tolerance and the ability of Afro-Americans" {1981:265).
The very traits that made him popular among the interracial
movement, however, were looked down upon by many activists
who saw his acceptance by the white population as an
impediment to black progress. Kremer writes that "Carver’s
solicitousness of whites offended his Tuskegee colleagues"
(1987:8). Kremer goes on to say that eventually hostility
towards Carver gave way to a "mystique" that "gave Americans
what they seemed to need most: tangible success" (1987:11).

His tolerance which simultaneously alienated him from
more radical black activists and elevated him to a symbol of
racial harmony for others can be attributed in part te the
role of whites in his life in Missouri when he was one of a
very small number of blacks and where the majority of
influential figures in his life, both positive and negative,
were white.

Following a brief outline of biographical studies on

Carver will be an examination of how Carver’s life reflects



31

(Parrish 1973:7). Parrish argues that such combinations of
sentiment résulted in a tendency to vote “against extreme
solutions.” Missouri voters backed neither strong
secessionists nor Republicans but leaned toward candidates
with cloudy political agendas, running as “Conditional or
Constitutional Unionists, Unconditional Unionists, and
States’ Rights or Anti-Submission” (1973:6}). These parties
allowed for numerous combinations of opinion of issues which
were not options in the dominant parties.

The battle at Wilson's Creek, approximately ten miles
southwest of Springfield, was a decisive one in determining
public opinion in this part of the state, strengthening
Confederate control. Following the Confederate victory,
“the Union forces retreated all the way to Rolia, 106 miles
north of Springfield” (McPherson 1988:352). The battle
seemed to have strengthened Confederate confidence as an
early McDonald County History suggests: “After their
success at Wilson's Creek, Confederate bands visited every
nook in the county, deprived all Federal sympathizers of
their arms and carried any grain, provisions, cattle”
(Goodspeed Co. 1888:42). McPherson states that “nearly
three-quarters of the white men in Missouri. . . who fought
in the Civil War did so on the side of the Union” but few
Republican votes were cast in the southwest (1998:293).

Of Barton County, the northern-most county discussed in
this study, Van Gilder asserts that “most were sympathetic

with the seceding states, their former homes” (1972:9}. The


63

sources. Discrepancies in George Washington Carver's
biographies reflect the scarcity of concrete facts and the
politically and emotionally charged issues that surround his
life. While we may never be able to completely separate
fabrications from fact, what emerges instead is a history of
perceptions of Carver that reflect the changing and delicate
dynamics his life came to symbolize.

Based more on legends that have developed around
Carver's early life than on ascertainable facts, the
earliest published biographies tend to idealize Carver and
his accomplishments. Rackam Holt’s George Washington
Carver: An American Biography (1943) was the most
influential early full-length work dedicated to Carver.
While it did much to draw attention to Carver’s
accomplishments, Kremer argues that the idealization of
Carver impended serious study. "Holt‘s book," he says,
"reflected the view of Carver held by most Americans during
the two decades after his death: it pictured him as a
flawless, superhuman hero. Holt romanticized and
mythologized her subject in an uncritical account of his
rise from slavery to fame" (1987:2).

Historian Robert Fuller acknowledges the impact of
Holt‘s work, saying that "the bulk of her findings are
substantially true and that “where her statements are
plausible, if unverified, we are inclined to accept them on
the strength of her long association with Carver and his

reminiscences" but that "there are some errors of facts and



TABLE 3

County
Barton
Jasper
McDonald

Newton

Gender of Slave Population

female
17 Blt
180 «57%
47 65%
216 49%

male
4 19%
135° 43%
25 35%
227 «51%

106

Total
21
315
72

443


41

a number of former slaves. Very few narratives from
Southwest Missouri exist, but interviews with former slaves
who worked in other mining areas in Missouri can perhaps
give us some idea of their experiences. Louis Hill, for
example, went to Valle Mines, Missouri to work for Mr.
Boyer, “a Frenchman” and “dug mineral, zinc, etc. I got 50
cents a day. He did all de diggin and I ‘coached’ it from
de head of the drift to de shaft. I had a little car on
wheels day run on a wooden track. I reckon I worked for
him ‘bout two years.” If Hill’s account is typical, women
also worked the mines: “My mother would go out to de big
dirt pile called ‘scrappin’ and would pick out de zinc and
lead chunks and little pieces” (Rawick 1972a:187). He
continues, explaining that “purt near every Saturday we
would take de ore down to Furnace Town and get it weighed
and get a check for it" (Rawick 1972a:187}. Several years
later Hill “went to Mine La Motte and worked on de furnace.
My first work at dat place wass at $2 a day and later on I
became a ‘charger’ and got $2.50 a day,” an amount he
claims “was good wages then” (1972a:185). But the work had
its costs when he “got mine sickness or lead colic from
workin’ in de furnace and had to quit” (1972a:188),

Hill’s method of dealing with this sickness also
attests to the versatility of Missouri slaves. Umable to
work the mines as he had most of his life, he “worked at
sawing wood, chopping wood, and at a soda factory and beer

depot and peddled ice and delivered soda and beer to Knob



83

Diamond, was a monumental event as he describes in a letter
to Claude Bell dated 1941:
The first group of colored people that I ever saw
in my life was a group of singers from Fisk. I
was out in Western Kansas and they came and sang.
I was just a mere lad at that time and the vision
and impression has never left me. I thought it
was the nearest to heavenly music I had ever heard
in all of my life. [Kremer 1987:148-9
His letters and autobiographical sketches indicate that
he was well aware of the violent racism that had developed
in the same region in which he had been nurtured. Perhaps
the most significant event was a lynching he witnessed in
Fort Scott, Kansas. In an undated note to biographer
Rackham Holt, Carver explains that he remained in Fort Scott
“until they linched a colored man, drug him by our house and
dashed his brains out onto the sidewalk. As young as I
was, the horror haunted me and does even now" (Kremer
1987:149). Similar episodes even closer to Carver’s
birthplace in Joplin and Springfield were witnessed by
countless others who fled the region in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. (See pages 50-53 for
discussion of lynchings in Springsfield and Joplin.) Soon
after he found himself a victim of racial prejudice after
being accepted to Highland College by mail and being turned

away when he arrived because he was black (McMurry 1981:24}.


Note on Sources

The bulk of materials published on slavery and the
influence of the Civil War upon African Americans has
focused primarily on areas where the plantation economy
flourished, areas with high concentrations of slaves and
with farmers literate and wealthy enough to leave
substantial records of their culture. Consequently, the
history of the slaves who lived in less densely populated
areas remains largely untold. Born into slavery and raised
by his former masters after the war, George Washington
Carver and his brother Jim grew up in such an area. Moses
and Susan Carver who moved to Southwest Missouri in the
1840s and who took George and his brother Jim into their
home after the kidnapping of their mother, were typical in
Many ways of small farmers of the area. Moses was born in
Ohio in 1812, Susan in Illinois in 1814 (Fuller 1955a:3).
They moved to Newton County with Moses’ brothers Richard and
George in response to the preemeption Act of 1891 which
allowed small farmers to purchase and develop land at very
low prices {Goodspee@ Co. 1884:169). And it was with them
that George and his brother Jim were born as slaves and
where they were reared as the Carvers’ children in the years
following the Civil War. An understanding of the complexity
of the institution of slavery in this region is critical to
an understanding of George Washington Carver and the multi-
faceted life he led.

In the opening of his study on slavery in Yell County,



Foreword

In recent years scholarship in southern history and culture
has grown tremendously and been profoundly reshaped.
Significantly revised interpretations based on new research and
altered perspectives have transformed how scholars understand
traditional subjects such as plantation economics and political
leadership. At the same time scholars have come to give more
attention to previously neglected topics such as slave families
and slavery in the non-plantation rural South. In this
manuscript, Lori Peterson incorporates the outpouring of new
scholarship to present a fresh look at the cultural, social,
economic, and political forces that helped shape the personality
and outlook of George Washington Carver, one of the leading
scientists and humanitarians and most influential African
Americans of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Peterson’s research uniquely considers how the cultural
forces of the 18605 and 1870s Southwest Missouri, and in
particular Carver's own white adoptive parents, shaped Carver's
attitudes toward race, social class, and achievement. Carver,
born into slavery and orphaned, was reared by Moses and Susan
Carver, prosperous and hardworking small farmers who held
negative but ambivalent attitudes toward the institution of
slavery. Although the Carvers themselves counted a slave among

their property, George Washington Carver was educated,

@ encouraged, and given leisure time by his adoptive parents to


38

Early Years of Freedom
family

Many children whose parents were kidnapped by
bushwhackers or soldiers or whose fathers left to fight in
the war, found themselves, like Carver, freed yet orphaned
in 1865. Census records in 1870 indicate that other
families, like Moses and Susan Carvex‘s, raised black
children along with their own. The household of H. L.
Testerman, a McDonald County farmer, for example, includes
Testerman’s wife Isabella, four sons, three daughters and 14
year old Mary Brannum, identified by race as mulatto and by
profession as servant. J. L. Lamance, McDonald County
merchant, listed in his family three daughters, two sons,
and 10 year old mulatto servant Julie Brannum. County
Census returns show that C. B. Walker's household included
the following members designated "black" or "mulatto" (U.S.
Census 1870:Schedule 1): 16 year old Isa Carter, 16 year
old Henry Brannum, and 7 year old James Carter, who would
have been slaves ages 11, 11, and 2 respectively at the
close of the War in 1865.

Marriage records of 1865-1870, show the stability of
families and couples who did survive the war. McDonald
County records the marriages of black couples John and
Margaret Wallace in 1867 and of Joseph and Mary Wallace in
1867. The latter were the parents of three children whose
names appear below their parents in the marriage record:

Fanny Jane aged 10, Joseph M. aged 7, and William Henry 1



69

Carver and the Migsouri Ozarks

Kremer very accurately observes that Carver "defies
easy categorization" (1987:17). The adaptability that
allowed him to move through life as a painter, launderer,
musician, teacher, and agriculturist eluded biographers as
Barry MacKintosh who complained that Carver was not as
effective a scientist as he has been given credit for. This
versatility is characteristic of slaves and former slaves
from the area who had to adapt to a variety of tasks in a
region which did not lend itself to any single cash crop and
in a region where owners usually held only one or two slaves

to perform a wide variety of tasks.' The adaptability of

Ozark slaves posed a threat to the area's white workers and
contributed to the hostility towards Southwest Missouri‘s
black population in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century, the same time period Carver himself fled from

Missouri to attend school in Iowa.

influence of Moses Carver

Moses and Susan Carver were among the earliest settlers
in Newton County, moving to Newton County to take advantage
of the Preemption Act of 1841 and buying 160 acres of land
in Marion Township (Goodspeed Co. 1888;:169). (See Fuller
1955a:3 for full account of the Carvers’ land purchases.)

This act was passed in 1841 to provide incentive to small



78

Civil War

Moses Carver’s political views

While the southwestern counties were overwhelmingly
Confederate, individual opinions on the issues involved are
far more complicated. Moses Carver, a slaveholder whose
neighbors claim "was opposed to slavery," was no exception
(Fuller 1958b: Box 1 Tape 10}, From this and other
observations of early Newton County residents, MoMurry’s
description of Moses Carver as "a slaveowning Unionist"
seems accurate and as such Carver embodied the paradox of
Missouri politics during the Civil War{1981:8).‘ Though in
Southwest Missouri’s minority as a Unionist, Moses Carver
typified the region's residents in his seemingly
contradictory stance on slavery. McMurry writes that "the
tension was felt by everyone along the border but must have
been especially intense for people like Moses Carver who .

+ were Caught in the middle” (1991:8).

werrilla warfare

Perhaps more significant in George‘s life and in his
perceptions of the Civil War was the wreckage wrought by
guerrilla warfare. In an autobiographical sketch written in
1922, Carver remembers most vividly that "at the close of
the war the Ku Klux Klan was at its height in that section
of Missouri" {Kremer 1987:23}). The grueling experiences of

Moses Carver at the hands of invaders substantiate the claim

made in History of McDonald County that in Southwest



D-23

A Study of African-American Culture
jin Southwest Missouri in Relation to

they George Washington Carver National Monument

by

Lori Peterson

Submitted to
National Park Service
Midwest Archeological Center
Linco] "9 dyebraska

ON MICRCFLM = B&W Scans
5/10/2005





26

hired me out to a baker named Henry Tillman to nurse three
children. I nursed there two years. Neither family was @
nice tome.” And, again, the practice split families:

“Miss Diggs owned my mother and all her children” (Rawick

1972a:26).

Both slaves worked by owners and those rented to
employers experienced a wide variety of work that would
later help them adapt to the harsh world left in the wake of
the Civil War. Fil Hancock, a former Springfield slave,
says that on his owner’s 375 acre farm he helped grow
“corn, oats, wheat, rye, and clover.” And these were not
all, but are listed only as the “main crops” (Rawick
1972a:154).

The work of women was also diverse. Some were
responsible for household chores. A small number, such as e
Mariah Watkins with whom Carver lived during his stay in
Neosho, served as midwives. And a good many worked in the
fields alongside men. Sarah Graves of Nodaway County
explains that “my mama worked in the field, even when I was
a little baby. She would lay me down on a pallet near the
fence while she plowed the corn or worked in the field.” In
addition to this intense physical labor, Graves’ mother made
wool, a process requiring her to “shear the sheep, wash the
wool, card it, spin it and weave it” (Rawick 1972a:130).
When she wasn’t engaged in her own work, she would “carry
water for the field hands” and her daughter followed suit

long after the war: “Yes’m. I worked in the fields and I @



85

over those who would be our friends under more favorable
circumstances" and praises the family for never "taking any

other stand than that a ‘man’s a man’" (Kremer 1987;151).

Carver’ s approach to racism

Carver’s critics dismissed him as being too passive in
his views such as Irving Menafee who said he "never did
think too much of Dr. Carver cause all the things he put out
mostly benefited white people" (qtd. in Kremer 1987:9).
Even Booker T. Washington, in a letter criticizing Carver's
career at Tuskegee dated 1911, accuses Carver of not taking
stands and advises him that "pursuing a policy of trying to
please everybody. . .has not resulted in success; and such a
policy seldom does result in success" (Washington 1972:Vol.
10, 593).

Carver’s method of addressing racial issues was to
increase awareness of racist ideas in hopes of removing
them, as in a letter to the Peanut Growers’ Association
which planned to advertise “Pickaninny” peanuts. The
letter, dated 1929, opens rather apologetically, asking the
reader to "pardon me for making these suggestions" but
States explicitly the source and the reasons for his
disapproval, explaining the "unpopularity" of such
“caricatures” among black people, providing examples of
unsuccessful advertisements that employed racist appeals in
the past, and ending with an emphatic request the company

not advertise with "an ugly cartoon" (Kremer 1987:155).



80

Moses Carver’s race horses. In an autobiographical account
written around 1897 Carver recounts his understanding of
this episode:
My sister mother and myself were ku klucked, and
sold in Arkansaw and there are now so many
conflictinng reports concerning them I dare not
say if they are dead or alive. Mr. Carver the
jentleman who owned my mother sent a man for us,
but only I was brought back, nearly dead with
whooping cough with the report that mother &
sister were dead, although some say they saw them
afterwards going north with the soldiers. [Kremer
1987:20)
Carver was one of many slaves orphaned during the Civil War
and who suffered severely at the hands of invaders. Nellie
Edwards tells how "those people out of the hills. . .those
rough men. . .could get by and conld do those things and it
would be blamed onto the North" (Fuller 1958(b) :Box 1 Tape
10).

His early exposure to the trauma wrought by
unrestrained violence helps account for his later refusal to
become actively involved with more radical activists and his
life-long commitment to advancing his race entirely through
peaceful means. As a teacher he emphasized the importance
of personal initiative and the need to "rise to the full

height of your possibilities," encouraging each of his



black couples were required to be legally married after the
war, many marriage records can be found for the years soon
after the war. These often include the names and ages of
children born prior to the legal marriages. The children
were then "legitimized." Probate records frequently record
the fates of slaves upon their owners’ deaths, such as
Newton County’s Jonathon Ross who willed "my son David Ross
to receive my Negro boy Henry," or Peregrin Scott who willed
"freedom to my colored woman Sylvia" (Vineyard n.d. (a}:2,6}.
Transceriptions of county court records compiled by the Works
Progress Administration and available at the Western
Manuscripts Collection in Columbia, Missouri, also provide
valuable information on individuals. These have been most
helpful in determining how the courts handled the problem of
jobless African-Americans after the war as in the case of
Newton County’s William Wright who was allotted funds for
“the maintenance of Milly, a colored pauper” (WPA

n.d, :folder 15440).

WPA slave narratives

Though diaries and journals of African-Americans in
Southwest Missouri during this time period are scarce--I’ve
found none--the slave narratives collected by the Federal
Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration, and
since published in a series edited by George Rawick (1972a,
1975}, provide a large number of first person accounts of

former slaves. Information from the Missouri narratives



50

They imitated institutional patterns with which they
were familar. They construed freedom, it seems,
largely in terms of what they understood to be the
priveleges of whites. [1967:343]
Edward Ayers echoes this idea, noting the otherwise
unavailable opportunities for leadership available to black
ministers: “Black ministers were central figures in their
communities, with a relative importance far greater than
that of their white counterparts” (1992:164}. At another
level, the desire for separation from white churches
evidenced by Southwest Missouri's former slaves is a small
manifestation of deeper, irreconcilable racial tensions that
led to tragic consequences for many blacks and the ultimate

flight in terror of those remaining.

public lynchings

As discussed in a previous section, prior to the war
blacks in rural Missouri enjoyed a relative safety in
comparison with plantation slaves of the delta region. Yet
even then, hints of racism can be seen that viciously
surfaced with the threat posed by newly freed blacks after
the war. Joplin’s refusal to acknowledge the possibility
that “a Negro slave boy owned by John C. Cox, first settler
in Joplin limits, uncovered some heavy rocks while digging
for fish bait” and was thus the first to discover lead in
Joplin serves as an example (Shaner 1948:2). Numerous

accounts contradict this story, denying credit to the slave



1972a. The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, 11.
Westport, Connecticutt: Greenwood Publishing Company.

1972b. Sundown to Sunup: The Life of a Slave. Westport
Connecticutt: Greenwood Publishing Company -

1975. The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography,
Supplement Series 1, Volume 2. Westport, Connecticutt:
Greenwood Publishing Company.

Schlissel, Lillian,

1992. Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey. New York:

Schocken Books.

Shaner, Dolph.

1948. The Story of Joplin. New York: Stratford Hounce Inc.

Shrantz, Ward L.

1949a. Confederate Flag Raised Here When War in Missouri
Starts. Carthage Evening Press. December 29.
1949b. Jasper County Oad Numerous Towns Before Civil War
Carthage Evening Press. December 8.
1949¢. Slavery Days in Ante-Bellum Carthage and Jasper
County. Carthage Evening Press. December 1.
Van Gilder, Marvin L.
1972. The Story of Barton County: A Complete History.
Lamar, Missouri: Reiley Publications.
Wamble, Hugh G.
1967. Negroes and Missouri Protestant Churches Before and

After the Civil War. Missouri Historical Review,

61:321-47,

92


71

settled Missouri came from the British Isles," but that
“Germans were the major immigrant group from the mainland of
Europe" (Rafferty 1981:38). He goes on to say that between
1630 and 1850, which includes the dates the Carvers are
believed to have moved, large numbers of Germans immigrated
to the Ozarks (1981:38). Though the claims of Carvers’
German descent are plausible, Fuller explains that "Carver"
is listed as a British family name (Fuller 1955a:2), a
possibility strengthened by Danner’s assertion that the
Carvers were of English-Quaker stock and not German" (Danner
and Danner 1931:5). Possibly, early biographers emphasized
the possibility of German heritage because of the belief
that Germans were abolitionists and successful farmers.
Milton Rafferty states that the "similarity of soil,
climate, and vegetation to conditions in their homeland"
made the Germans “successful farmers" (Rafferty 1981:38}.
Later biographies such as McMurry’s focus on more immediate
origins traced to Ohio and Illinois (19981:4).

McMurry notes that the Carver farm moré than doubled in
value between 1840 and 1860, the 1860 agricultural census
listing a cash value of $3000 {1981:5}. At this point when
his need for help was greatest, Moses‘ nieces and nephews
had moved away and potential hired help were attracted to
available land on which to start farms of their own.
According to McMurry it was these difficulties combined with
their age that led Moses and Susan to purchase thirteen year

old Mary from a neighbor in 1855 "despite his reputed



32

majority of Barton County votes, 76, were cast for Bell
with 26 for Lincoln (Van Gilder 1972:9). Confederate
sympathies only increased in counties further south nearer
the seceded Arkansas. An early McDonald County history
boasts that “in 1860 John D. Henry and Nathan D. Sherer were
the only two men in McDonald County who voted for Lincoln”
{Goodspeed 1888:42). Similarly, Shrantz uses citings of
Confederate flags as well as the departure of “young men of
federal sympathy” as evidence of Jasper County's Southern
sympathies (Shrantz 1949c:"Confederate Flag") .

To appease slave-holding Unionists Lincoln denied any
intention to abolish slavery, declaring his primary motive
to preserve the Union. John Blassingame explains how on
September 22, 1862, Lincoln “issued his preliminary
emancipation proclamation, but he implicitly excluded the
loyal slaveholding states from its purview” (1964:328).
Effective in retaining Missouri’s support for the Union,
this exclusion of Missouri from the Emancipation
Proclamation made life especially difficult for the state's
slaves. Despite Missouri’s alleged support for the Union,
“slavery died hard, especially in the areas of rural and

southern Missouri” (Parrish 1973:150).

black soldiers
Despite offers of $300 to loyal slaveholders who
allowed the recruitment of their slaves and the option for

loyal slaveholders drafted to send slaves as substitutes,



44

And fiery darts be hurled,
Then can I smile at Satan’s rage
And face a frowning world. [Rawick 1972a:287

Though Missouri law required the establishment of
separate schools in areas with a prescribed number of black
children, difficulties finding teachers, the tremendous
distances between black schools, reluctance of local
officials to enforce state laws, and disorder wrought by the
war on the public school system as awhole hindered the
education of many former slaves during Reconstruction.
County histories show, however, that over time a number of
schools for black children were established in the latter
nineteenth century.

All formal education was brought to a halt during the
war as many school houses were used by the military, and the
general havoc prevented normal sessions. The history of
Newton County Schools compiled by the Newton County
Historical Society claims that there were no schools in
Newton County from 1862-66 and that “on November 1, 1866,
there were only a few school buildings still standing”
(1991:12).

In 1866 Newton County schools Superintendent H. W.
Goodykoontz reported 367 black male, 15 colored female, 1,
423 white male and 1195 white female students with only 8
log buildings and 1 frame building (NCHS 1991:12]. With the
reconstruction of school systems for white students, new

schools for black students were created such as the school



49

included Mrs. Ida Murray, Jefferson Pierce, Mr. and Mrs. G.
W. Sears, Katie Harper, Mr. and Mrs. George Hubbard, Mrs.
Murray, Mr. Cooper, and Mr. and Mrs. Ellis Bland (Unity
Baptist Church n.@.:3}). The earliest recorded church in
Jasper County, however, is perhaps the African Methodist
Episcopal Church organized in 1872 in Joplin. An early
history of Jasper County describes the church's Reverend
John Dorsey as “an affable Christian gentleman” who “labored
zealously and earnestly to accomplish spiritual success” and
lists the following “constituent members: Green Crawford,
George Sears, David Graham, Mary McGee, Lina Engliah, Alfred
Wollard, Sadie Cole, Bettie Richey, Mary Mitchell, Alice
Williams, Prince Barnett, John McCrutcheon, Mary Dennick."
The same history states that only one of these founding
members was still with the church in 1893 (Mills and Company
1883:429). Plagued by early problems establishing
stability, the church “was prompted to rent a house to hold
services in” (1883:429).

Through this separation, Wamble argues, blacks could
gain a sense of freedom not allowed them by white-controlled
institutions:

because church life is voluntary, it offered an
avenue for Negroes to exercise their new freedom. In
civil affairs Negroes had to wait for legislative and
judicial procedures to take their course before scuring
and exercising civil liberties; they could take

immediate--and unilateral--action in religion.



45

in Neosho attended by Carver which was built in 1872 (NCHS
1991:8,9}). Amother school for black children “was in
Operation at that time in the area north east of Newtonia
and was maintained by the Cedar Bluff and Jolly Schools”
(NCHS 1991:8-9).

McDonald County schools underwent similar destruction.
Superintendent A. M. Tatum reported "486 white male and 431
female children, six male teachers" to hold classes in the
adequate remaining "two frame and nine log school buildings”
(Goodspeed Co. 1888:61). No schools for black children are
recorded in Goodspeed’s history. Probably none existed due
to the small number of children, less than the legal
requirement for the establishment of a separate school.
Statistics for 1886 record only “2 colored males of school
age” (Goodspeed Co. 1888:61).

According to an early history of Carthage schools
prepared by the Works Progress Administration, “the history
of schools is broken” from the beginning of the Civil war
until 1868. Though this history does not list specific
schools or teachers for black schools, these schools were
apparently established. A report by the Carthage Public
Schools in 1882 records that 80 of the 1340 children
“between 6 and 20 years of age” attending public schools
during the preceding year were “colored” (WPA n.d.:folder
21989}. Jasper County’s school buildings were also used for
Sunday School for black children on Sundays much as the

Locust Grove school in Diamond which Carver attended on



74

(Fuller n.d. {(c}:Box 2 Tape 6).

Moses also differed from his neighbors in that he did
not regularly attend church, but McMurry says that “his
membership in the Masonic Order suggests that he was not an
atheist" (1981:7). She explains the significance of this
decision on his reception in the community, saying that
“since the church was the center of most social activities
in Diamond, as in other small towns, Moses could easily have
been considered antisocial" (McMurry 1981:7). Kremer says
that while there is nething to account directly for the
almost mystic element in George Carver's religious beliefs,
he was exposed to a variety of approaches to religion and
early on was encouraged to think independently. He "had
gotten a good dose of regular Bible reading during his stay
with Mariah Watkins" and was also influenced by Moses who
"had been a free thinker who distrusted organized religion"
(1987-6).

He was remembered as having what McMurry calls “an
uncanny rapport with animals,” a characteristic that
doubtless helped him in his training and raising of
racehorses (1981:7) and that perhaps made George more aware
of his own skill with plants. Delmar Goodwin remembered
“Uncle Moses had some pet squirrels and they would run up
and down his chair" {Fuller n.d. ({(b):Box 1 Tape 12}.
Likewise, Ida Brock recalled he had a "big bulldog that was
his pet and he cherished that deg so much" (Fuller

n.d.{a):Box 1 Tape 12). Moses was an independent thinker in



84

Another deeply disturbing event in his life occurred
when a black colleague, Nelson Henry, arrived in Ramer,
Alabama with white photographer, Frances Johnston. He
explains in a letter to Booker T. Washington how immediately
a mob was "being made up for the night to take Mr. Henry"
{Kremer 1987:150-51). Helping Henry escape from this
gruesome scene instilled in Carver an even deeper awareness
of the hatred involved in racial tensions and a fear of
violence wrought by those who "were thoroughly bent upon
bloodshed” (Carver qtd.in Kremer 1987:151}.

In a chapter entitled "Carver: Black Man in White
America," Gary Kremer describes the conflicting views Carver
had of positive and negative white figures in his life,
saying that "on the one hand, it was whites who raised him
and helped him, and even loved him. On the other hand, he
saw how irrational and vicious--even deadly--white wrath
could be" (Kremer 1987:151). Instead of strengthening
animosity of the white race, however, these contradictions
instilled in Carver a belief that racial stereotypes in all
forms should be avoided and that people, white and black,
should be judged according to their individual contributions
to society. Kremer explains that "he viewed human beings of
all races as members of a God-created family and was
troubled by whites who refused to share that vision"
(1987:151). In a letter to friends Mr. and Mrs. John
Milholland dated 1905, Carver expresses this view, lamenting

the fact that "Southern people seem to have a way of working


32

year (Woodruff 1971:Book A). Newton County records also
include numerous marriages in the years shortly following
the Civil War. The number and ages of the children attest
to the stability of families begun years before marriages
were legal. Henry H. Simmons and Anna Hudson, “persons of
color with 1 child,” were married on December 7, 1865.
Vincent Isbell and Fanny Hudson, “persons of color with 6
children, 4 girls, 2 boys” were also married on December 7,
1865 (Vineyard n.d.[b]:3}. Marriages not listing children
include Washington Carter to Nancy Crumongton on December
13, 1866 (Vineyard n.d. [b]:8).

The marriages performed after the war were often
formalities to make relationships begun prior to the war
legally binding. Smoky Eulenburg complains of the Missouri
law requiring couples married informally years before to be
legally married for a fee when “de squire came around and we
had to get married all over again under de new constitution.

It would cost $5” (Rawick 1972a:112).

jobs

Due to the nature of agriculture and industry in
Southwest Missouri, the slaves performed a vast array of
tasks enabling, them to perform a wider variety of work in
freedom than former plantation slaves. The variety of jobs
held by former hill slaves suggest a tremendous
adaptability, a versatility George Washington Carver

demonstrated to an extreme degree by serving as cook,



A Study of African-American Culture
in Southwest Missouri in Relation to

the George Washington Carver National Monument

Prepared by Lori Peterson
in accordance with Purchase Order No. 1443PX600094697
under supervision of Co-Primary Investigators

e@ Mary Jo Schneider, Professer
Department of Anthropology, University of Arkansas

and

Robert Cochran, Professor
Center for Arkansas and Regional Studies, University of Arkansas

Submitted to the National Park Service
Midwest Archeological Center
Lincoln, Nebraska 68506-3873
1995


62

between North and South than from the damage wrought by
guerrilla warfare. Growing up in this geographic region
where the Civil War could not be reduced to two sided issues
may have been a factor in Carver's tendency later to not see
complicated issues in terms of black and white but to
approach problems with the goal of offering practical help
to anyone who needed it.

The study will conclude with an analysis of Carver's
flight from Missouri in light of problems in his region.
Carver shared a great deal with the majority of blacks
living in the area who were driven from their homes by the
fear of lynchings. Methods of "frontier justice" operating
in Southwest Missouri fell heavy on the small black
population who had attained the skills to adapt to numerous
circumstances but did not have the numbers to defend
themselves. The paradoxes that have puzzled Carver’s
biographers and brought a strange combination of fame and
resentment are the paradoxes of a people caught in a web of

racial tensions and complicated politics.

Carver's biographies

The sources of information concerning Carver’s early
life are often vague and built largely upon hearsay and
speculation, resulting in discrepancies as to the date of
Carver’s birth, the identity of his father, his loyalties to
Moses and Susan. At a time and in an area where written

records were rare, little could be gleaned from documented



48

reception with a view of providing funds for the erection of
a church building” {1888:222). Likewise a “colored
Sabbath-school, organized at the Baptist Church in May,
1870, was presided over by J. H. Price, Jr., with John
House, assistant, and Philip Givens, secretary” (1888:226).
Later accounts show that their efforts were eventually
successful. According to a bulletin prepared by Neosho
Second Baptist Church, Philip Givens served as the first
minister of in 1876 (Neosho Second Baptist Church 1976).
Three lots were purchased initially for $200 and in 1896 a
new church was built with $500 borrowed from American
Baptist Home Mission. At this time the church merged with
Pleasant Hill Baptist Church. Early members include J. M.
Clendenon who served as church clerk, Mrs. Della White, Miss
Ora and Ophelia Baker (Neosho Second Baptish Church 1976).

Perhaps due to the larger black population in Greene
County, Springfield's Washington Avenue Baptist Church was
established as early as 1867 (Lederer 1986:30). It appears
to have taken a few years more before similar churches
appeared along southern Missouri's western border. Several
black churches, however, were eventually established in
early post-war Jasper County. A bulletin prepared by
Jopin’s Unity Baptist Church traces its origins to the
uniting of two black churches founded around 1881: the first
was Second Baptist Church where Reverend H. H. Curtis served
as pastor, and the second was St. John the Baptist Church

where W. S. Blake served as pastor. Charter members



1860. Schedule

Ninth U.S. Census.

1870. Schedule
1870. Schedule
1870. Schedule
1870. Schedule
1870. Schedule
1870. Schedule
1870. Schedule
1870. Schedule
1870. Schedule
1870. Schedule
1870. Schedule
@ 1870. Schedule

37

4. Newton County.

1, Population. Barton County.
1. Jasper County.

1. McDonald County.

1. Newton County.

2, Industry. Barton County.

2. Jasper County.

2. McDonald County.

2. Newton County.
Barton

3, Agriculture. County.

3. Jasper County.
3. McDonald County.
3. Newton County.


22

dem on de block in St. Louis” (Rawick 1972a:154). Threats
of selling slaves away from the Ozark hills were intended to
prevent disobedience in slaves.

While Charlie Richardson’s father was not sold because
of poor conduct, the demand for slaves in Southern states
can be seen by his account of his step-father’s sale:

There was some buyers from south Texas was after
to buy my step-Pappy for two years runnin’, but
the Marster would never sell him. So one time
they comes up to our place at buying time (that
was about once every year) and while buying other
slaves they asked Mat Warren if he wouldn’t seil
my step-Pappy, cause he was a sure ‘nough worker
in the field --the best man he had and he could do
more work than three ordinary men.

But the Marster tried to git rid of that
buyer agin by saying I don’t take no old offer of
$2000 for Charlie, an’ I won’t sell under $2,055.
The buyer he said right quick like. “Sold right
hare." [Rawick 1972a:294]

This instance illustrates the lengths traders would go to in
acquiring strong slaves and shows the looming threat that

encouraged slaves to remain docile.

family
Family life for most slaves, especially during the

tumult of the Civil War, was, at best, unstable. Separation



18

were under the age of 15. (See Table 2.)

Otto argues that “yeoman slaveholders may have been
more concerned with the appreciation of slave property than
with yearly returns on an investment," allowing farmers to
“endow their descendants with human capital that would
continue to appreciate in value” (1980:47).

Similar factors may also explain the relatively high
ratios of women to men in this area. With the exception of
Newton County, and that an exception by only a narrow
margin, the slave population in this region was
predominantly female. (See Table 3.) Women were
considerably less expensive than men and, able to bear
children, were also an investment in the future. Moses
Carver reflects this tendency to invest in the future.
Having purchased George’s mother, both female and very young
(13 years), he would have eventually had two adult men to
help tend his farm. An 18 year old female slave owned by
Joseph W. Mulugin, valued at $600, cost considerably less
than a 26 year old male owned by Thomas Prigmore and valued
at $800. The small numbers of slaves in the area,
necessarily creating more intimate bonds between owner and
slave, as well as the higher percentages of women and
children, make for an experience fax different from that of

plantation slaves.

treatment of slaves

As these statistics show, the institution of slavery



30

Civil War

wartime politics

Since Missouri was key to numerous pre-war issues, its
political alliances were critical to the direction of the
war. As John Blassingame notes, “Missouri’s admission to
the Union in 1820 was perhaps the most important catalyst in
arousing latent sectional animosities, Missourians led the
South's fight for ‘Bleeding Kansas’ in 1854-58, and Dred
Scott was a Missouri slave” (1964:327). The seemingly
ambiguous status of Missouri as a slaveholding Union state
makes clear political boundaries difficult to draw. Ina
chapter appropriately titled “Missouri in Two Nations,”
William Parrish discusses the tensions resulting from
Missouri’s stance as a Union state while a Confederate
sympathizer held office of governor. The issue of slavery
was especially complicated as pro-slavery attitudes and
Unionist sympathies were not mutually exclusive. Parrish
notes that many Unionists argued against secession to
protect the institution of slavery, that “secession would
harm rather than protect Missouri’s slave property, for with
so much free hostile territory around her, the temptation
for flight might be nearly irresistible” (1973:8). The
southwest corner of the state which included a number of
German and Irish immigrants was especially complicated.
Both the German and Irish groups were simultaneously

“antislavery and to a considerable extent anti-Negro”



54

from a 12.6% black population in 1860 to 1.6% in 1980;
Jasper County from 4.9% to 1.2%; Newton from 4.6% to .4%;
and Barton County from 1.1% to 0 (Gerlach 1986:60, 62, 67,
$3).

The majority of African-Americans fled to areas with
much larger black populations such as Chicago and St. Louis,
leaving behind what Purringon calls “a legacy of lynchings”
which “has been long and painful indeed,” a legacy that
demands further attention to the too often forgotten history

of Southwest Missouri’s black heritage.



72

philosophical opposition to slavery" (1981:5). Moses Carver
was fairly typical as a slaveholder in Newton County,
falling into the 77% of slaveholders owning one or two
slaves in 1860 (See Table 1). He also fell into the
majority of the area’s slaveholders in buying a female who
was relatively young (See Tables 2 and 3). The census
records show also that Moses Carver was one of several
slaveholders in the area to keep children orphaned during
the War and raise them as their own. Being only one of
two children on a farm where survival depended on
adaptability and diversity, George Carver was exposed to
various farming techniques and to the value of
resourcefulness and innovation that he would demonstrate
throughout during his brief homesteading venture in Ness
County, Kansas (McMurry 1981:27-28), his work with
agriculture in Ames Iowa (McMurry 1981:31-46}, and his final
success at Tuskegee, Alabama (McMurry 1981:145-158).

As McMurry notes, "Southwest Missouri in the 1860s was
hardly an auspicious place for the development of black
genius" (1982:4}). Opportunities for education were limited,
George Carver having to leave his home to attend a school
for black children in Neosho and hostility towards the black
population growing at an alarming rate following the Civil
War. Other aspects of the area, suggest that Carver thrived
not entirely in spite of, but in part because of, his
exposure to ways of life in this region. The census records

show that Moses Carver was typical of other farmers in the



24

did respect the family bonds of slaves and in their wills
demanded that they not be separated, it was not until 1865,

that marriages and families were legally acknowledged.

work

Greene says that “the majority of Missouri’s slaves
worked as field hands on farms, but many others were valets,
butlers, handymen, carpenters, common laborers, maids,
nurses, and cooks” (1980:25), The diversity of skills
developed by Missouri slaves, especially in rural Missouri,
gave them a tremendous advantage in the early years of
freedom over slaves confined to the production of a single
crop.

Records show that many slaveholders rented slaves to
farmers, a practice explained by former slave Sarah Shaw
Graves of Nodaway County in Northwest Missouri: “Allotted
means sumethin’ like hired out. But the slave never got no
wages. That all went to the master. The man they was
allotted to paid the master” (Rawick 1972a: 129). Graves’
terminology in explaining the practice shows how deeply the
idea of slaves as property was engrained: “Yes’m when a
slave was allotted, somebody made a down payment and gave a
mortgage for the rest. A chattel mortgage.” Greene
explains that “hiring slaves out was... a profitable gain
for Missouri masters. Not only did they receive payment for
the slaves services, but they did not have to feed or house

the slaves since that was the responsibility of the hirer”



1944. Dr. George Washington Carver. New York,

Greene, Lorenzo, Gary R. Kremer, and Anthony Holland.

90

1980. Missouri’s Black Heritage. St. Louis: Forum Press.

Holt, Rackham.
1943. George Washington Carver: An American Biography.
York: Doubleday.

Hunter, J. H.

New

1939. Saint, Seer and Scientist: The Remarkable Story of

George Washington Carver of Tuskegee, Alabama. Toronto:

Evangelical Publishers.
Kremer, Gary R.

1987. George Washington Carver: In His Own Words.

Columbia: Missouri University Press.
Lederer, Katherine.

1986. Many Thousand Gone: Springfield’s Lost Black
History. Missouri Committee for the Humanities and
Gannett Foundation.

McMurry, Linda 0,

1981. George Washington Carver: Scientist and Symbol.

York: Oxford University Press.
McPherson, James M.

1988. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New

Oxford University Press.

Merritt, Raleigh H.

New

York:

1929. From Captivity to Fame. Boston: Meador Publishing Co.

Miller, Elinor and Eugene D. Genovese.



Arkansas, John Solomon Otto reasons that the imbalance in
the treatment of slavery is due in large part to the greater
availability of sources from the plantations. In areas
where cash crop plantations predominated, he says, “the
wealthier planters were far more likely to leave a written
legacy of letters, diaries, and account books than the
farmers of the back country South--the highlands areas,
where rough topegraphy and poor transportation limited cash
crop agriculture" (Otto 1980:3). Information left in
travel journals also focuses on plantation regions, as he
notes, because "visitors to the Old South invariably toured
the plantation belt, which contained most of the region’s
railroads, stage lines, and navigable rivers" ({1980:35).
Surviving newspapers, another important source for
historians, are also limited in the hills "since prominent
lowland journals were more likely to survive than obscure
back country papers“ (1980:35). This tendency on the part
of scholars to use more readily available sources of the
plantation belt often results in generalizations about
slavery that may not apply to all geographic areas and
limits our perspective of the institution as it existed
eutside of the Deep South.

In applying findings in plantation regions to all

slaveholding areas, "historians,” Otto says, “may have
obscured the diversity that existed in Old South slavery”
(1980:38). This study on African-Americans in Southwest

Missouri is, in part, an attempt to bring the culture of


73

area in growing a wide variety of produce as well as raising
a variety of livestock. The 1860 and 1870 agricultural
census records for Newton County show that he raised horses,
cows, mules, sheep, pigs, oxen, and poultry . He grew
Indian Corn, oats, Irish Potatoes, hay, Flax, Wool, rye,
beeswax, honey, and molasses as well.

Fuller’s interviews with residents who knew Moses
Carver show an even wider range of skills and activities.
dames Robinson discusses his ventures in raising horses:

“He did have a lots of horses. That’s how he made his money,
raising horses, selling them and bringing the money back,
burying it" (Fuller 1958a:23). We are also told that he
built different types of fences such as the stone wall
around the cemetery, walnut tree fence, and a picket fence
(Fuller 1958a:23; Toogood 1973:40).

Though Moses Carver was typical of other small farmers
and slaveholders in the area in many ways, the ways he
differed may also help explain George Carver’s later life.
Linda McMurry says of the Carvers that "their
industriousness and relative prosperity won them the respect
of their neighbors, but Moses, especially, was considered
eccentric" (1981:7). George’s musical interest possibly
came from one of Moses’ “eccentricities.” Moses was spoken
of highly for his playing of the violin, giving George early
exposure to music which he developed throughout his life.
According to Olive Lennon "he played the violin and he could

play the organ and most any of those musical instruments"



72

Missouri "Yankees and Southerners rushed hither and thither
plundering friend and foe alike” (Goodspeed Co. 1888:42}.°
The two Civil War stories told most frequently to

Fuller during his interviews with Newton County residents
both invelve raids by outlaws. The first of these occurred
in the fall or winter of 1863 when Carver refused to tell
invaders the location of his money and was consequently
strung from a tree with hot coals put to his feet. Nellie
Blanche Bayneham Edwards offered the following account:
Those bushwhackers hanged that ‘ole Moses Carver
there on his own farm to get him to tell where he
had money buried. Of course he couldn't tell
because he didn’t have it. Aunt Sue she was a
brave soul -- his wife. There he was hanging
dying and she got a knife and she cut that rope
and got him down. Saved his life. [Fuller
1958 (b) :Box 1 Tape 10)
According to McMurry, this incident left Carver "both with
scars and a distrust of people" and that afterwards he "kept
his money buried in different places all over the farm"
{1983:11) .°
A later attack in which George and his mother Mary were
kidnapped was far more devastating to the Carvers. Moses
sent Union scout John Bentley, who was familiar with the
region’s guerrilla bands, into Confederate Arkansas to find
them. Though Mary was never found, Bentley did return with

George and according to legend was rewarded with one of



Contents

Part I:

African-American Culture in Southwest Missouri 1660-1870

Notes on Sources
public records
WPA slave narratives
county histories and local newspapers
Slavery in the Missouri Ozarks
demographics
treatment of slaves
family
work
free blacks
Civil War
wartime politics
black soldiers
war at home
Early Years of Freedom
family
jobs
schools
churches
public lynchings

flight from Ozarks

4

6

is
i8
22
24

28

30
32

35

38
39
43
46
50

53



77

free time and that most slaves who helped their mistresses
or children who helped their mothers (as is closer to
George‘s case after the war) would likely not have had the
leisure to pursue music, painting, and private meditations
as George did. Research done by Lillian Schlissel based on
the diaries of pioneer women who moved west shows that wives
of early settlers frequently “not only performed their
womanly tasks but also took over men’s work when necessity
arose" (1992:4). A diary entry by Helen Carpenter, written
during a difficult move, suggests that women from Missouri
typically had an even greater load:
Some women have very little help about the camp,
being obliged to get the wood and water. . .make
camp fires, unpack at night and pack up in the
morning--and if they are Missourians they have the
milking to do if they are fortunate enough to have
cows. ([Schlissel 1992:78]
Susan's obligations would not necessarily have always been
easier. But due to his illness, George was relieved of
physically taxing chores by Susan, as well as Moses, thus
having time to develop a far wider range of skills and

interests than other children in the area.


BB

4.See pages 30-32 of this study for a fuller discussion of
Missouri’s politics during the Civil War.

5.See page 36-37 of this study for discussion of guerilla warfare
in this region of the state.

6.That Moses Carver had gold hidden on his property was a widely
held belief among the area's residents. Many believe that Carver's
second wife married him in hopes of finding this treasure,
including Sarah Smith who said that "she couldn’t dig his gold up
and she left. . ." (Fuller interviews: Box 1 Tape 1).

7.See page 53 for discussion of flight from the Ozark region.



56

Overview

scope of study

The first part of this study addressed the ways of life
experienced by slaves and freed blacks from 1860 to 1870 in
Southwest Missouri as a whole. The purpose of this second
section is to place Moses Carver’s farm and George
Washington Carver’s early childhood into this larger context
in order to discern how George Carver’s experiences in
Diamond, Missouri compared with the circumstances of others
in similar situations.

Born during the Civil War, George lived with his mother
and his older brother, Jim, in a slave cabin on the Carver
farm. George and his mother were kidnapped and taken into
Arkansas when he was still a small baby. George was
returned to Moses, but Mary was never found. After the
abolition of slavery, Moses and Susan took George and his
brother Jim into their home and raised them as their own
children, George staying until he moved to Neosho in order
to attend a school for black children and Jim, stronger and
more able to work, staying to help on the farm. From
Neosho, George moved to Fort Scott, Kansas where he
witnessed a lynching on March 26, 1879, the horror of which
made him flee immediately. After briefly maintaining a
homestead, being rejecting to school on the basis of his
color, and working numerous jobs as a clerk, cook, and

housekeeper, George eventually was able to continue his



52

him to the Joplin jail.

The town was in a frenzy, the streets were crowded
and they surged to the jail. ... Gilyard .
was hanged to a telephone pole, after being beaten
and mistreated. While he was being strung up three
shots were fired into his body by men in the mob.

That night unruly mobs gathered and raided the
negro quarters, destroying property and driving the
negroes from their homes. [1948:67-68

Katherine Lederer describes a similar, possibly even
more horrifying, scene in Springfield, where Horace B.
Duncan and Fred Coker were accused of raping a white woman.
The initial arrest and release occurred on Good Friday,
April 13, 1906:

On Saturday night, they were rearrested and
dragged out of the county jail by a mob of several
thousand men and boys. They were hauled forcibly
to the Public Square, where they were hanged and
burned beneath a replica of the Statue of Liberty.
A crowd estimated at 6,000 men, women, and children
looked on. Unsatiated, the mob went back to the
jail, brought Will Allen back, gave him a mock
trial, and repeated the ritual. [Lederer 1986:3]

Following this incident, Lederer says, “hundreds of
blacks left Springfield forever” though the event was
quickly forgotten in the publicity of the April 18 San

Francisco earthquake (1986:4)}).



14

suffused with racist language and perspectives may create a
problem for those readers offended by the stereotypical
portrayal of blacks of an earlier era“ but that the
"grotesque portraits and patronizing descriptions" must be
overcome by the “analytic procedures developed recently by
social historians and folklorists" to "allow access to the
materials of everyday life and encourage us to get beyond
this initial repulsion to the materials" (Abrahams 1992:xv).
These early historians have made many unintentional
contributions to our understanding of race relations in the
late 19th century.

Local newspapers have been useful in the compilation of
information on Southwest Missouri though more often larger
nearby papers such as those in Springfield or Kansas City
report significant events in the less densely populated
areas in Barton, Jasper, Newton, and McDonald Counties.

More recent newspaper articles addressing aspects of local
history are also very useful, especially the series written
by Ward Shrantz on Jasper County history for the Carthage

Press.



43

and 50/100 dollars for pay of keeping a pauper to date” (WPA
n.d.:folder 12785). Two men by the name of Holt appearing
in the 1870 population schedule as a part of Moses Carver’s
household were likely examples of this practice. After the
establishment of Newton County’s poor farm, this practice
was partially replaced. In February 1869, for example, the
Newton County court awarded Joshua Masser eight dollars “for
conveying a pauper colored woman to Poor Farm” (WPA

n.d.:folder 15441).

schools
Accounts of former slaves demonstrate the extreme

importance placed on education, an opportunity denied by law
prior to the war. Some even equated their spiritual well-
being with education as Emily Camster Green, former slave of
Cape Girardeau, suggests: “I cud a been a spiritualis woman
if I’d had a little education. I allus had visions an’us
see thing but I nebber know’d whut dey mean” (Rawick
1972a:141). Similar sentiment is shown in the following
verses from a song quoted by former slave Susan Rhodes of
St. Louis:

When I can read my titles clear,

To mansions in de sky,

I’ll bid fare well to every tear,

And wipe my weeping eyes.

Should earth against my soul engage,


47

Negroes had withdrawn and organized independent churches"
{1967:321). The causes and effects of this separation reveal
much about race relations before and after the War. Wamble
argues that prior to the Civil War the churches had an
equalizing force on the races, explaining that with few
exceptions “churches admitted Negroes and whites by the same
means” and that “churches observed the same policy in
restoring whites and Negroes who, having been excluded from
fellowship, showed a penitent attitude and promised to amend
their ways” {Wamble 1967:324, 325). Especially in the rural
Ozarks, slave religion was closely integrated with that of
the masters. Wamble ascribes the “conspicuous decline of
Negro membership” after the war partially to the fact that
“many Negroes simply moved away, apparently leaving rural
areas for the cities” (1967:334). Those that remained
appear to have taken great measures to establish a complete
separation from white authority that could not be found in
other elements of society.

Evidence exists that a small number of blacks in
Southwest Missouri retained membership in predominantly
white churches. Goodspeed’s history of Newton County, for
example, includes the names of Sarah Anderson and Eliza
Brown, both identified as “colored,” as “probation members”
of the Methodist Episcopal church established in Newtonia in
1871 (1888:21}. Though no exclusively black churches are
recorded in this history, a desire for separation is

evident: “In January, 1878, the African Methodists gave a



76

of her neighbors in her method of rearing them.

It was with Susan that George learned to weave, knit,
and sew. In an autobiographical sketch written in 1897
Carver takes pride in the fact that he "knit Chrochet, and
made all my hose mittens etc. while I was in school" (Kremer
1987:22}).* Samples of his lace and crochet collection are on
display at the Tuskegee Institute (Toogood 1973:30).

Mr. Forbes Brown, a boyhood contemporary of Carver,
attributes George Carver’s success to the lighter tasks
required of him working with Susan:

- - . had he been normally strong, Moses Carver
would have expected him to perform his full share
of labor on the farm, leaving little time to
follow the course he did. Instead, Mose was most
considerate, permitting George to perform only
modest chores and to assist Mrs. Carver in the
housework. Such activities, afterwards, proved a
great blessing, as he used them to great advantage
in earning his living expenses while acquiring
knowledge. [Fuller 1958 (a) :30]

Fuller’s interviews with Carver's contemporaries
suggest that Moses pampered George by allowing him to work
with Susan. But accounts by former slaves show that slave
children frequently worked with the female of the household,
watching children, sewing, and helping with various

household chores.’ The accounts suggest also that working

with women did not necessarily entail substantial amounts of


will be relied on heavily to supplement statistics found in
public records. Compiled during the years 1936-1938, this
collection consists of over 10,000 pages of typescript from
over 2,000 interviews with former slaves, A wonderful and
largely untapped wealth of information, the narratives do
present certain problems. Though George Rawick has
published an unedited edition of the entire collection, they
have not yet been thoroughly indexed, making the study of a
particular issue or, in this case, of a specific geographic
region, very difficult. This problem is compounded by the
fact that most of the Missouri interviewers omitted
questions in their transcriptions, creating unanticipated
shifts in the flow of the narratives.

In the introduction to the Supplementary volumes of his
collection, George Rawick cautions us to observe "the same
reasonable care that competent scholars usually take with
any historical source" (1975:xxix). "First," he says, “the
slave narratives do not generally provide a reliable source
for those seeking to study black speech patterns and black
English" (1975:xxix}. The vastly different methods
interviewers employed in recording dialect can be
misleading. Instructions to interviewers, who were not
trained linguists, regarding dialect leave much room for
individual discrepancies. Citing such authors as Zora Neale
Hurston, Erskine Caldwell, and Ruth Suckow as examples of
those who have made "truth to idiom be paramount, and exact

truth to pronunciation secondary," the instructions sent to


51

{thought to be named Pete), including claims by white
residents David Campbell and William Tingle. An example of
more overt hostility can be seen in the records of “Crimes
and Accidents” in Goodspeed’s history of Newton County.
Prior to 1856, a slave belonging to Mrs. Armstrong of Neosho
was burned at Carthage. According to this brief report the
owner “went up to Carthage to talk with her old slave, and
afterward witnessed his dreadful execution” (Goodspeed Co.
1888:198). Such events were relatively rare in pre-Civil
war Southwest Missouri, giving the impression that racism
was not a significant threat in the peaceful Ozark
mountains. The Civil War was a pivotal point, however,
revealing previously subdued tensions between supporters and
antagonists of black equality. As Michael Fellman states,
“for a tantalizing historical moment. : . the white
community in Missouri disagreed on the race issue”
(1988-50).

The precarious balance quickly and fatally gave way to
violent antagonism toward the small, vulnerable black
community. Shaner describes Joplin’s reaction to the murder
of officer Theo Leslie, allegedly killed by “a tramp negro
named Tom Gilyard” in 1903:

The search for Gilyard was exciting, and he was not
captured until the second day by Lee Fullerton and
M. R. Bullock near Castle Rock. The negro had been
shot in the leg by Leslie and carried a gun.

Fullerton and Bullock disarmed the negro and took


ii
explore his wide-ranging academic interests and to develop his
talents in painting and handicrafts.

Peterson weaves together data from WPA slave narratives,
Census records, county histories, and newspapers in an attempt to
reveal the complexities, ambiguities, and inconsistencies of race
relations in Southwest Missouri before, during, and after the
Civil War. Slavery in the hilly terrain of Southwest Missouri
was very different from slavery in the Planation South. There
were far fewer slaveholiders, and those who did own siaves owned
very few. A far higher proportion of these slaves were women and
children, and nearly a third of the slaves were classified in the
1860 Census as mulatto. Slaves in Southwest Missouri learned
multiple skills because they worked in a diverse agricultural
setting, growing a variety of crops and performing a range of
tasks. Slaves in the area appreciated that their life
circumstances were better than slaves in the Deep South.
Commitment to the institution of slavery was not strong in
Southwest Missouri, even among slaveholders. The Scotch-Irish
hill people who came from Appalachia and the South to settle the
counties of Southwest Missouri brought with them a strong sense
of individualism and suspicion of authority. They felt little
loyalty to political parties, the Union or to the Confederacy.
The large number of political parties prior to the Civil War
active in the area attests to the people’s political diversity
and individualism.

The Civil War and its aftermath intensified existing



68

1870 affected George Washington Carver, how Carver's life in

turn can add to our understanding of the black population in @
Southwest Missouri, and how the complexities emerging in
biographies can be clarified by an understanding of the

society in which he was reared.



23

caused by selling slaves away as well as the practice of
renting slaves, which will be discussed in more depth in the
next séction, separated many families. Richardson
elaborates on the sale of his step-father to slave traders
from Texas, saying that the separation “like to broke my
Mammy up, but that’s the way we slaves had it. We didn’t
let ourselves feel too bad, cause we knowed it would come
that way some time. But my Ma she liked that Charlie and

she feeled it mos’” (Rawick 1972a:294}). The combination of
intense grief and hopeless resignation must also have been
felt by many separated families.

As Lorenzo Greene notes, “many slave children were the
result of interracial sexual unions, sometimes rapes,
between masters and their slave women” (1980:38). The
number of slaves identified by race as mulatto (“m") in the
slave schedules suggests that miscegenation was common in
Southwest Missouri. In 1860, Newton County census records
showed 141 or 32% identified as mulatto, Barton County 8 or
38%, McDonald County 22 or 31%, and Jasper County 89 or 28%.
Betty Abernathy former slave of Cape Girardeau County,
represents many who called their fathers “master”: “Ole
Massa’ John Abernathy was mah daddy. Old Massa’ was mean to

his cullud folks and so was ‘Ole Missis Willie’” (Rawick
1972a:6).

The fact that most slaveholders owned only one slave
provides evidence that few families lived together. Though

some slaveholders, such as Jasper County’s John Chenault,


66

the "strangely checkered career of Carver’s childhood" and
the "romantic haze" that developed around him (1958a:2},
Fuller relies heavily on interviews with Carver's
contemporaries from Newton County as well as on census
records, Federal land records, early letters written and
signed by Carver, plat maps of the area, and existing school
records. Kremer asserts that this study remains "the best
narrative of Carver's early life" (1987:197). Puller also
conducted a study on Moses Carver’s family challenging the
assumption of Carver's German descent held by Holt and
Lipscomb and offering as thorough as possible a family tree
based on oral interviews, cemetery grave stones, and
official records (1955a).

Other unpublished studies include Anna Coxe Toogood’s
"Historic Resource Study" housed at the George Washington
Carver National Monument {1973}, another thoroughly
documented examination of Carver‘s early life that also
provides analysis of the available sources on the topic.
Information on the Moses Carver house can be found in
“Historic Structures Report for Moses Carver Late Period
Dwelling” (NPS:1963) and Charles Porter‘’s "Report of
Investigation of George Washington Carver's Birthplace at
the Old "’Diamond Grove' Plantation Near Diamond, Newton
County, Missouri" (1943).

Linda McMurry’s George Washington Carver: Scientist
and Symbol is the most recent published full length work

offering a thorough account of Carver’s life (1981),



59

extremely complicated society" (Kremer 1987:2). The study
of this complicated society adds much to our understanding
of the man and what he came to symbolize for many diverse
groups of Americans.

Study of slavery and early freedom in the Missouri
Ozarks helps clarify some of the ambiguity surrounding
Carver that has confronted biographers and historians.
Conversély, information supplied by Carver and uncovered by
Carver's biographers contributes to the limited amount of
available information on Missouri‘s black population in the
late nineteenth century, adding to our understanding of a
people who have left the region with few traces of how they
lived and how they were affected by Missouri‘s ambiguous
status as a slaveholding Union state.

The slave narratives collected by the Works Progress
Administration during the 1930s (Rawick 1972 and 1975} offer
opportunities for direct comparison to Carver’s own
biographical statements in interviews with biographers and
in his correspondence and writings currently housed at the
George Washington Carver National Monument in Diamond,
Missouri and The Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Probably
born during the tumult of the Civil War, Carver was in the
same age group as the former slaves interviewed and the lack
of certainty as to the exact date is true of countless
others. Likewise, the attitudes towards Southwest
Missouri’s black population reflected in early county

histories, newspaper accounts, court records and other



16

County’s James Wilson, for example, with only 4 slaves in
1860 owned more than any other slaveholder in Mineral
Township (U.S. Census 1860:Schedule 2). A successful
farmer, Webb likely employed his slaves in the production of
his rye, Indian corn, wool, Irish potatoes, butter, and
molasses, as well as in the maintainance of his milk cows,
cattle, sheep, swine, mules, and horses (U.S. Census
1860:schedule 4). The diversity of livestock and
agricultural products did not require the same magnitude of
slave labor as the labor intensive production of cash crops
along the plantation belt. The small numbers of slaves in
the area reflect this phenonomenon. Almost half of the
slaveholders in Barton, Jasper, Newton, and McDonald
Counties owned only one slave, and slaveholders themselves
constituted a very small percentage of the population. The
majority of the remaining slaveholders owned between 2 and
4, and only three owned over 15. (See Table 1.}

Their small numbers drastically changed the experience
of slaves in Southwest Missouri. The advantages of more
intimate relations between owner and slave likely included
better treatment. However, a disadvantage sensed by many
may have been the lack of interaction with ether slaves
common on plantations. When asked about recreational
activities and if he danced, Jasper County’s Charlie
Richardson answered vehemently, “No! No games, no play, only
work” {Rawick 1972:295}. The highland slaves’ social life

was intertwined with that of the owners, as they accompanied



33

slaveholders in Missouri “stubbornly resisted all attempts
to enlist their slaves” (Blassingame 1964:335). Due to
what Blassingame judges an “ineffectual recruiting system,”
Missouri “furnished only 8,344 Negroes to serve in five
regiments” (1964:338}. These numbers do not accurately
reflect, however, the contribution of Missouri‘’s black
population to the Civil War. “A majority of the Negroes,

recruited in Kansas, Illinois, and Iowa,” Blassingame notes,
“were runaway Missouri slaves” (1964:338}. Recruiters based
in Kansas had the greatest impact on slaves in the
Southwest.

Though Missouri’s official recruitment for black
soldiers was less than successful due to political division
in the state, many black soldiers, especially those from
Southwest Missouri, entered the war through other channels.
Parrish explains how Kansas Senator James “Jim” Lane prided
himself on his success in “kidnapping or enticing Missouri
slaves” to fill the colored regiments, how “he armed them
without any Federal authority and sent them back into
Missouri to seek more recruits from their fellows”

(1973:56).

Other efforts included Brigadier General Thomas Ewing’s
plan to “break the spirit of the rebel sympathizers”
(Blassingame 1964:329). Blassingame discusses his order on
August 18, 1863, “to provide a military escort for all
slaves who wished to escape to Kansas. Any slave who

enlisted was sent to Kansas City, Missouri.” He goes on to


53

According to Burt Purrington, lynching “was viewed as a
kind of frontier justice where court systems were not yet
firmly established or where they were not regarded as a
functioning form of justice” (Purrington 1987:60). Asa
mining community Joplin was subject to large numbers of
fortune~hunting travelers and lacked sufficient means of
controlling crime. Newly freed blacks, as serious threats
to “the preservation of the South’s social, political, and
economic status quo,” were made targets of this “frontier
justice” for “crimes” as trivial as “trying to act like a
white man” or “making boastful remarks” (Purrington 1987:60-
61). According to Purrington, these two incidents, the
“Easter and Tug-of-War Lynchings,” symbolized the fear
experienced daily by Southwest Missouri blacks and were
primary causes in the “Black Exodus from Southwest

Missouri.”

flight from Ozarks

In the life of George Washington Carver, we can see the
conflicting forces controlling the lives of the region’s
black residents. The tremendous diversity of skills
required for the survival of Southwest Missouri farmers was
equally necessary for their slaves. Ironically, Carver's
Ozark home provided him with the very skills he needed to
escape the same region’s intense hatred of his race.
Statistics compiled by Russell Gerlach show the drop in the

black population from 1860 to 1980. Greene County dropped


139

was vastly different in the less densely populated Ozark
mountains. Ward Shrantz examines the reasons for these
differences and how these differences affected the
experiences of slaves and slaveholders in Carthage,
Missouri. [It would appear that because of the necessarily
intimate master/slave relationships, the close proximity to
free states, and the constant threat slaves faced of being
“sold South” that ante-bellum racial tensions were held at
bay and that slaves consequently received better treatment.
Arguing that the treatment of slaves in Southwest Missouri
was milder than that in other areas, Shrantz says that due
to the relatively small numbers of slaves, the owners
"naturally thought of them as individuals known to him and
his family. They were thus, apparently, treated as ‘bond
servants’ rather than slave property" (Shrantz
1949c:"Slavery Days").
Reluctance of Carthage slave owners to separate slave
families is an example of this preferable treatment.
Shrantz says that "the owner’s interest and concern for them
is shown best in county official records of wills" and
cites as an example the will of William M. Chenault which he
acquired from Frank R. Birkhead:
As by brother, John R. Chenault, owns the wife and
children of my Negro man Peter and as I believe it
wrong to separate said Negro man from his wife and
children, I therefore will and bequeath said Negro

man to my brother, John R. Chenault, absolutely.


86

His goal of transcending racial distinctions also
involved educating white and black audiences alike on the
contributions to society made by black Americans. An
example can be found in a letter to Carter Woodson, founder
of the Association for the Study of Negro Life, dated 1929,
in which he asks Woodson to send *a list of the pictures
books, etc., that you handle with reference to colored
people" (Kremer 1987:155}. Carver planned to make these
Materials available to children at black schools and to use
them during his visits when speaking to white and black
audiences.

Carver was confronted with the effects of racism from
infancy when his mother was stolen during the Civil War and
throughout his life, as he witnessed the brutal deaths of
others of his race and as he struggled to gain an education
in the face of such hostility. An understanding of the
positive influences in his life, most significantly Moses
and Susan Carver, helps explain how he maintained a positive
outlook on humanity, his belief that his race did not have
to prevent him from attaining even the highest goals, and
his refusal to harbor resentment based on color against the
white race. In significant ways Carver’s story, with all
its misunderstandings and ambiguities is the story of the
black population driven from Southwest Missouri, whose
lives, like Carver's, were influenced in positive as well as

negative ways by a predominantly white world.


40

running a small laundry business, farming on a homestead,
painting, and ultimately becoming a symbol of
resourcefulness and industry to small farmers throughout the
South. Coming from a region where cotton was never as
important as in the Deep South, Carver had been exposed to
many types of agriculture. As Ayers notes, “in the parts
of the Upper South where climate and soil provided more
congenial circumstances for livestock and food crops. .
farmers took advantage of the opportunities" (1992:191).

And during the reconstruction their resourcefulness helped
the Ozark subsistence farmers: “As a result the areas of
the South most intensely devoted to cash crops witnessed the
least attractive side of producing for the market”
{2992:191).

Trained in slavery to perform a number of tasks, Ozark
slaves were far more likely to develop careers as craftsmen
and artisans than plantation slaves. An example is the
successful career of McDonald County’s Joseph Wallace. A
blacksmith by profession, Wallace ran one of McDonald
County’s five industries listed in the industrial schedule
for 1870 (U.S. Census 1870). Another resourceful Southwest
Missourian was former slave Nelson Danforth, who told an
interviewer he had supported himself in Springfield “by
making baskets, chairs . . . and by hunting, which was his
Main occupation” (Rawick 1975:160).

A huge mining area since the 1840s, Southwest Missouri

provided many jobs working the mines, jobs likely filled by



students to "take his share of the world and [let) other
people have theirs" (letter to L. Robinson qtd.in Kremer

1987:85)}.

81


58

1870 census shows that Carver must have been born in 1860.
Stories of his kidnapping as a six-week old baby, however,
suggest he was born in 1864 (Merritt 1929:11-12). Carver
himself cites 1865, saying he was “about 2 weeks old when
the war closed" (Kremer 1987:20). Moses Carver’s heritage
is also an area of dispute. Early biographers as Rackam
Holt (1943) and Raleigh Merritt (1929) assume he was of
German descent, while research by Robert Fuller (1955) and
genealogical research by Rose Carver Danner (1931) suggest
British origins.

Perhaps even more significant than the discrepancies in
this factual data are the vastly different reactions to
Carver when he achieved fame in later years. Kremer
succinctly explains how social and historical factors have
contributed to diverse receptions of Carver as a symbol of
progress to African-Americans during this century:

The very qualities that made him a here to
Americans of the 1940s and 1950s made him suspect
among blacks and liberal whites in the 1960s and
early 1970s. He was an “Uncle Tom” we said. . .,
pronouncing him to be a subject unworthy of
serious scholarly study. [Kremer 1987:2
The lack of ascertainable facts clouding his early life and
the multi-faceted life Carver led in later years allow for
such conflicting views to emerge and exist simultaneously.
As Kremer notes "Carver was not completely hero or myth.

instead, he was an extraordinarily complex man living in an



82

Carver and Post-Civil War Race Relations

influence of the white community on Carver

Perhaps the greatest irony of Southwest Missouri lies
in the discrepancy between the relatively hospitable
environment provided for slaves prior to the war and the
intense hatred fueled by the Ku Klux Kian that resulted in a
mass exodus of the black population in the years following.’
During Carver’s childhood in Diamond Missouri, he had very
limited contact with other black children or black role
models. With the exception of the Watkinses and his prother
Jim, his influences were primarily white. Nellie Edwards,
granddaughter of a neighboring slave owner, remembers having
Played with George as a child, saying she "hadn’t any idea I
was playing with a lad somebody that was going to be famous
someday" (Fuller 1958 (b):Box 1 Tape 10).

Booker T. Washington portrays Carver as a neglected
orphan who "was allowed to grow up among the chickens and
other animals around the servants’ quarters, getting his
living as best he could" (Washington 1911:225-6). Instead
of perpetuating this negative image of his early childhood
with Moses and Susan, Carver maintained throughout his life
that "Mr. and Mrs. Carver were very kind to me" and he goes
on to say "I thank them so much for my home training" (qtd.
in Kremer 1987:21).

His life was so dominated by white influences that an

encounter with a black choir, long after he had left



27

worked hard too. Plantin’ and harvestin’ in those days was
really work” (Rawick 1972a:131). Annie Bridges, former
slave of Sikeston Missouri shares a similar story of her
mother: “Ma muthah plow’d in de fiel’ an’ ud leave her baby
layin’ at one end of de fiel’, while she plow’d clear ta de
odder an’ kum back” (Rawick 1972a:44).

Though children were largely investments in the future,
slaves as young as four years of age were engaged in work.
As children constituted almost half of the slave population
in the Barton, Jasper, Newton, and McDonald Counties,
examination of typical duties throughout Missouri would be
especially helpful. Nursing children was a common task
assigned to children, especially to young girls. Mary
Divine of St. Louis County explains that "at 4 years old I
had to nurse old man George’s son, Joseph’s baby, and de
baby was most big as me, but I nursed it just de same
honey. . . . TI nursed dat baby for two years, too, and it
sure was crazy ‘bout me. I loved it too, yes, I did. Den
after two years dey sent me to work for de old man’s oldest
son, Jacob. Dey made me do all de cardin' and spinnin’,
make ropes and ply lines, two cuts a day, was my task
“ (Rawick 1972a:103).

Though care of children was generally designated to the
girls, boys were not exempt. Charles Gabriel Anderson of
St. Louis “used to nurse de white folks children when I was
a little boy. I made a better nurse dan most girls, so

jest kept on at it till I was old enough to be a field hand”



Part I
African-American Culture
in Southwest Missouri

1860-1870


42

Lick, Synit, Graniteville and Bonne Teere” (1972a:188}.
Joe Casey of Festus also provides information on work in
mining areas: “We stayed dere free and I went out in de
aiggin’s in de tiff at Valle Mines. Some days I made $5 and
some days made $2. Den went to Mineral Point and
worked for de tiff and mineral” (Rawick 1972a:77). His
master helped him after the war and let them stay in the
same cabin they had inhabited during slavery.

Court records suggest that former slaves without work
were dealt with in much the same way as poor whites.
Newton County Court on Saturday November 11, 1865 it was
“ordered by the court that William Wright be allowed two
dollars per week for maintaining Milly, a colored pauper,
and that a warrant issue to him for the same” ( WPA
n.d.:folder 15440}. The same day he was awarded “eight
dollars to be by him expended in procuring clothing for
Milly.” On February 5, 1866, it was ordered that Wright “be
allowed five dollars per week” for maintaining Milly another
three months. Miss Mildred Fergenson was awarded by the
Jasper County Court on May 16, 1866, the more substantial
sum of two hundred dollars “for keeping Cloe a black woman
one year” (WPA n.d.:folder 10897). This practice was not
reserved for blacks. Keeping the county’s poor in the homes
of wealthier community members seemed to be the standard
method of helping people, black and white, back on their
feet. McDonald County Court, for example, ordered on

November 5, 1867 that Lucinda Pouge “be allowed seventeen



Part If:

Influence of Southwest Missouri on George Washington Carver

Overview
scope of study
Carver's biographies

Carver and the Missouri Ozarks
influence of Moses Carver
influence of Susan Carver

The Civil War
Moses Carver’s political views
guerilla warfare

Carver and Post-Civil War Race Relations
influence of white community on Carver
Carver's approach to racism

Notes and Acknowledgements

References
published Sources
unpublished Sources
census Records

Tables
number of slaves owned
ages of slaves

gender of slaves

56

62

69

75

73

78

82

85

87

89

93

36

98

99

100



36

de answers didden seem right dey hit ‘em over de haid wid
dere guns” (Rawick 1972a:41). Perhaps Betty Brown of Cape
Girardeau best summarizes the experience of slaves caught in
the middle of a war fought more for political and economic

motives than for the abolition of slavery:

Blue belly Yanks, dey had fine blue coats an the
brass button all ovuh the front o’ ‘em, shinin’ like
stahs. Dey call us “little cullud folks,” “cubs,”
and dey burn down Jonesburg. Yes’m we seed
Jonesburg down in ashes. Dem Blu-coats wuz devils,
but de gray-coats wuz wusser. Dey turn over ovr
bee-gums an’dey kill our steers, an’ carry off our
provisions, an'’whu dey couldn’t carry off dey ruint.
[Rawick 1972a:54]

Possibly more threatening than the organized Union and
Confederate soldiers in Southwest Missouri was the damage
caused by guerrilla warfare. In his history of Barton
County, Van Gilder notes that near the border of “Bleeding

”

Kansas,” “biood also was spilled in Missouri” as “bands of
guerrillas, pro-slavery bushwhackers in Missouri and anti-
slavery jayhawkers in Kansas were formed and both open
battle and attacks from ambush developed” (1972:7). Van
Gilder says that “the many bands of guerrillas” often
“preyed upon partisans of both sides, including defenseless

women and children” (1972:9). Damage was so great, he says,

that at one point “not more than six resident families



15

Slavery in the Missouri Ozarks
demographics

Born at some point during the Civil War--accounts as to
the exact year vary--George Washington Carver did not
experience slavery himself, but was affected in many ways by
the social and economic situations the institution had
created and left in its aftermath. Study of the
demographics of slavery in Southwest Missouri shows that
Moses and Susan Carver were typical of this area’s
slaveholders in owning a very small number of slaves, a
phenomenon determined largely by the area‘s economic and
agricultural development. Arguing that “the nature of crops
raised locally and the distance from markets did not make
the mass employment of slave labor economically profitable,"
Shrantz says that it was primarily newcomers to the area,
and wealthy newcomers at that, who owned slaves. He dates
the earliest known slaveholder in Jasper County to 1837 with
"the coming of the Chenault family" (Shrantz 1949c:"Slavery
Days").

As in Yell County, Arkansas, the subject of John
Selomen Otto’s study of highland slaves {1980}, farmers
tended to grow a large variety of crops and raise animals
rather than producing cash crops as cotton and tobacco which
would require intensive slave labor. The resulting
demographics Otto discovered here are also true of Barton,

Jasper, Newton, and McDonald counties in Missouri. Jasper



19

interviewers encourage a "simplicity in recording dialect"
(Rawick 1972b:176). Editors are told to retain "turns of
phrase that the flavor and vividness" such as "piddled in de
fields" or distinct pronunciations such as “marsa" for
"master" but to avoid overuse of dialect that would detract
from meaning such as constant "Ah" for "I" or "uv" for “of"
{1972b:176-77).

He also explains certain "systematic biases" existing
in the narratives, the first of which would lead to a
strongly biased view of the treatment of slaves. on
"matters concerning . . . the sexual exploitation of women,
whipping and punishment," the surviving versions of the
interviews may be “heavily biased in the direction of
grossly exaggerating the humaneness of the institution"
(1975:xxxi-xxxii). The slave narratives were often censored
at the state level before they were sent to Washington, and
controversial topics may have been avoided or omitted in
transcription by the interviewers. The former slaves may
also have felt inhibited during discussion of such subjects
because the majority of the interviewers were white--Rawick
lists Grace White as the only Missouri interviewer known for
certain to have been black--while the former slaves were
“blacks, almost invariably very poor and totally destitute,
and often dependent upon public charity and assistance from
white-dominated charities and public officials"
(1975 :xxxil). A woman identified only as “the wife of

Charles Douthit” of Farmington, Missouri very directly



iii
e@ political divisions among whites in Southwest Missouri, but the

War only solidified white resentment and violence toward African
Americans. Lynchings and mob activity resulted in mass
outmigration from counties of Southwest Missouri. Despite
widespread racism and racial violence after the Civil War, it was
not unusual for white families in Southwest Missouri to accept
government payments for taking both black and white orphans into
their homes.

It was this environment that shaped the character of George
Washington Carver, one of the 19th Century and early 20th
Century's most prominent African American scientists and
humanitarians. Carver learned about crops and good farming
practices from Moses Carver. Susan Carver taught Carver an

@ appreciation of handwork and cooking skills. Carver, as a young
man witnessed brutal lynchings of African Americans and the
flight of African Americans from the Ozarks. But he recognized
at the same time that African Americans in the Ozarks had both
kinship and work ties with white people that raised their skills
and understanding of the potential and limitations of human
mature to a level of complexity far different from that of

African Americans reared in the Deep South.

Mary Jo Schneider, Professor
Department of Anthropology

University of Arkansas



65

his rise from slavery. For others, Carver's religious life
offered inspiration, making him a symbol merging science and
Christianity. In Saint, Seer and Scientist: The Remarkable
Story of George Washington Carver of Tuskegee, Alabama, J.

H. Hunter addresses the religious aspects of Carver‘s life
and work, describing him as a "humble, devout Christian man
whose achievements in so many fields have been... a boon
to mankind" {Hunter 1939:Foreword).

An unpublished paper by Barry MacKintosh expresses the
resentment felt by those who believed Carver's fame was to
some extent undeserved. He attempts to counter idealized
views by Holt and others by examining Carver’s
accomplishments in terms of their scientific merit, arriving
at the conclusion that "George Washington Carver was less
significant for what he did than for what the public
believed of him and for what he symbolized. His
agricultural education and extension work at Tuskegee
Institute in Alabama of rural Southern blacks was
praiseworthy but unspectacular in nature or impact”
(MacKintosh 1974:7). Kremer says that MacKintosh’s often
harsh assertions that Carver’s works were greatly overrated
result in part from a failure to understand the complexities
of the man and of the society in which he lived.

The earliest fully documented study on Carver is an
unpublished report entitled "The Early Life of George
Washington Carver, Parts I and II" by Robert Fuller in

collaboration with Merrill J. Mattes (1958a). Frustrated by


20

(Shrantz 1949c:"Slavery Days"]

An important motive slaveholders had for kind
treatment to slaves Shrantz notes, is the "nearness to the
frontier and non-slavery Kansas" (Shrantz 1949¢:"Slavery
Days"). Shrantz cites David Gibson as a slaveholder who
lost a valuable slave due to poor treatment. He quotes
from an interview with Albert Gibson, the slave’s son as it
appeared in the Press July 21, 1941: “My father’s work
displeased the master and he knocked him flat with a
shovel. When my father was able to get on his feet again he
ran from the field, mounted a horse belonging to his master
and rode away” (Shrantz 1949c:"Slavery Days). The slave was
never seen again. Katherine Lederer discusses the many
Greene County slaves also fled to Kansas in hopes for
freedom {Lederer 1986:5). John Doake, whom Lederer
identifies as a Springfield slave trader, printed the
following notice for two runaway slaves:

Runaway from John S. Doake on the 21st inst., two

NEGRO MEN; LOGAN 45 years of age, bald-headed, one or

more crooked fingers; DAN 21 years old, six feet

high. Both black. TI will pay ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS
for the apprehension and delivery of LOGAN, or to
have him confined so that I can get him. IT will
also pay TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS for the apprehension of

DAN or to have him confined so that I can get him.

[Missouri Historical Society 1857:Slaves and Slavery

Collection]



slaves in the southwestern Missouri Ozarks out of this
obscurity. lLocal-level studies are possibly the most
effective means of understanding the diversity of slavery
and its aftermath. Elinor Miller and Eugene Genovese’s
collection of case studies provide examples of how public
records can be used to reconstruct the social histories of
more remote areas where isolation and low literacy rates
have made written records scarce. Here they call for
"deeper research into the South’s constituent parts" to
increase our understanding of an institution which they say
“remains severely circumscribed by the level of
generalization on which we have been working" (Miller and

Genovese 1974:2).

public records

Such studies necessarily rely heavily on public records
including the county returns of the federal census, a
source which James Bonner claims to be “perhaps the most
reliable data available for a comprehensive study of the
submerged half or two-thirds of population," "a Domesday
Book as rare as anything in the Anglo-Saxon annals" (Miller
and Genovese 1974:30;31). This study will incorporate
information from 1860 and 21870 county returns for Barton,
Jasper, McDonald, and Newton Counties. These records,
available at the State Historical Society in Columbia, are
especially helpful fer the Ozark mountains of Southwest

Missouri where both slaves and slaveholders were largely



2s

{1980:26). The advantage of the employer in this “rented”
labor lay in the fact that “wages for slaves were usually
less than those paid to whites for similar work” (Greene et.
al. 1980:26). The ill effects of this practice were felt
by a number of Southwest Missouri slaves.

In cases where the owners and employers lived far
apart, the practice of “hiring out” slaves split families in
much the same way as actually selling them. For example,
the 1860 slave schedules record that the slaves living with
David Hersick in Granby Township of Newton County were owned
by Mrs. Cunningham Laws of Lawrence County. The grief of
separation caused by hiring out is described by Sarah
Graves, former slave of Nodaway County, who was separated
from her father in Kentucky “‘cause he was allotted to
another man. . . . They never wanted mama to know, ‘cause
they knowed she would never marry so long she knew where he
was. Our master wanted her to marry again and raise more
children to be slaves” (Rawick 1972a:129).

Others in Newton County, the county with the most
thorough records of this practice, who were rented out by
their owners to employers in the same county include slaves
hired by M. F. Crouch and owned by George Barker and two
young boys employed by Nancy Chitwood and owned by M. E.
Rutledge (U.S. Census 1860:Schedule 2). Mary Bell of St.
Louis County was hired out as a child to “a Presbyterian
minister when I was seven years old, to take care of three

children. I nursed in dat family one year, Den Miss Diggs


94
1956. Interview with George Jackson on September 17. Oral @
Histories. GWCNM. Diamond.
1958a. The Early Life of George Washington Carver. GWCNM.
Diamond, Missouri.
1958b. Interview with Nellie B. Edwards. Oral Histories.
GWCNM. Diamond, Missouri.
n.d.(a}. Interview with Ida Brock. Oral Histories. GWCNM,
Diamond.
n.d.{b}. Interview with Delmar Goodwin. Oral Histories.
GWCNM, Diamond.
n.d.{c). Interview with Olive Lennon. Oral Histories.
GWCNM, Diamond.
MacKintosh, Barry.
1974. The Carver Myth. M. A. Thesis. University of @
Maryland.
National Park Service.
1963. Historic Structures Report for Moss Carver Late
Period Dwelling. George Washington Carver National

Monument. Diamond, Missouri.

Neosho Second Baptist Church.

1976. We've Come This Far By Faith: Centennial
Anniversary 1876-1976. Second Baptist Church Souvenir
Bullentin. George Washington Carver National Monument.
Diamond, Missouri.

Pearson, William N.

n.d. Sherwood: The Forgotten Village. Joplin Public r



87

Notes and Acknowledgements

e Special thanks go to Ms. Michelle Hansford of the
Powers Museum in Carthage, Missouri, Mr. Randy Roberts of
the Western Manuscripts Collection in Columbia, Missouri,
Mr. Mark Thomas of the State Historical Seciety in St.
Louis, Dennis Northcott of the Missouri Historical Society
in St. Louis, Ms. Louise Collin of the Joplin Public
Library, Dr. Jeannie Whayne of the University of Arkansas
History Department, Dr. George Sabo of the University of
Arkansas Anthropology Department, Dr. Katherine Lederer of
Southwest Missouri State English Department, Dr. Andrea
Cantrell of the University of Arkansas Library Special
Collections, and, most of all, Superintendent Bill Jackson

e and the staff at the George Washington Carver National

Monument .

1.See pages 23-28 of this paper for further discussion of the work
required of Southwest Missouri slaves.

2.Kremer states his editorial policy in editing of Carver’s
writings as follows: "I have not violated the integrity of
Carver’s inimitable writing style, nor have I altered his form in
any way. Carver was often inattentive to niceties of grammar,
punctuation, and sentence structure. . . . Reading Carver’s letters
today one gets the feeling that he wrote with such passion and
intensity that slowing down to ensure proper syntax or rules of
agreement would have sapped his writing of its vigor. The ideas
could not wait to get out" (Kremer 1987:xi) .

@ 3.See page 26-28 for work performed by slave children.



illiterate and left few clues to their past.

The population census provides the name, age, gender,
and race of every free inhabitant in each household;
identifies individuals able to read and write, able to vote,
and considered insane; and lists personal property values
and real estate values of heads of household. The slave
schedule lists the gender and age of slaves below the names
of the owner and records the number of slave cabins. The
agricultural schedule lists acreage of developed and
undeveloped land, livestock raised, crops grown, and total
value of farms. The industrial schedule lists the name of
each business, source of power, number and wages of
employees, amount and kind of materials used, as well as the
amount and type of products produced. These records will be
used here to determine the average age of slaves, average
number of slaves held by slave owners, and ratios of female
to male slaves. (See Tables 1-3.) Otto suggests combining
information in these schedules to "determine the
composition of the county’s slave force, and assess the

slaves’ contribution to the county’s agriculture" (1980:39}.

Other public records that have proved helpful include
marriage records and probate records. While loss of records
due to fire and inconsistency in methods of record-keeping
from county to county make parallel study of all the area’s
counties ineffective, each isolated piece of information

adds to our understanding of the region as a whole. As



93
@ Washington, Booker T.
1911. My Larger Education. Garden City: Doubleday.
1972. The Booker T. Washington Papers. Louis Harlan, ed.
Urbana: fllinois UP.
Woodruff, Howard, comp.
1978. Newton County Marriages, 1870-75. Missouri
Miscellany, 5.
1977. Will Abstracts: Barton County, 1969-88. Missouri

Miscellany, ¢.

unpublished sources
Civil War Papers.
1863. Enlistment of James Wilson (Greene County) to First
@ Colored Infantry. Missouri Historical Society. Columbia,
Missouri.
Danner, J.D. and Rose Carver Danner.

1931. History of Christian Carver and His Descendants.
George Washington Carver National Monument. Diamond,
Missouri.

Fuller, Robert P.

1955a. Moses Carver and His Family. George Washington Carver
National Monument (GWCNM). Diamond.

1955b. Interview with Mary Hardin on August 11. Oral
Histories. GWCNM, Diamond.

19sS¢e. Interview with Sarah Smith on August 11. Oral

@ Histories.GWCNM. Diamond.



TABLE 1

county

Barton
Jasper
McDonald

Newton

Numbers of Slaves Owned by Slaveholdera

1

6 55%
45 43%
11 44%

52 40%

2-4
5 45%

38 37%

48 37%

5-9

16 15%
6 24%

23 17%

10-14

5

5%
4%
4%

15-19

Total

11

104

25

131

9B


61

elements of slavery in the Missouri Ozarks and how he came
to symbolize so many different things to so many different
people. The diversity of work required of Ozark slaves and
farmers combined with Carver's own personal initiative and
ability helps account for George Carver’s remarkable
versatility as he moved from one occupation to another to
meet his needs. The census records show that in the variety
of his produce and livestock Moses Carver’s farm was typical
of farms in Newton County and that George Carver would have
been accustomed to versatility from a very early age. His
skills were perhaps even more versatile than most because of
his illness which forced him to spend more time learning
tasks from Susan Carver and left him leisure time to pursue
his interests in music and art. The relatively small number
of black influences on Carver and the positive influence of
Moses and Susan helps account for his later acceptance of
white approval that he was criticized for by activists.

A study of the Civil War and its effects on Moses
Carver and George will follow, examining stories surrounding
Moses Carver, including Moses’ being hanged by bushwhackers
searching for gold and the kidnapping of George and his
mother, Mary. Biographers and former neighbors seem to
agree that while Moses Carver owned slaves, he shared
abolitionist sentiments, an ambiguous stance but not an
uncommon one in this area bordering free Kansas to the west
and Confederate Arkansas to the South. Like many others in

the area, the Carvers suffered far less from the conflict



67

documenting events in his life and offering explanations for
his rise to fame. She observes the difficulties in
"separating the real George Washington Carver from the
symbolic portrayals of his life" and attempts to show that
"Carver was more than a folk saint; he was a real person
with all the complexities and contradictions inherent in
human nature, and these were exaggerated by the fact that he
was black in a white America" (1981:vii-viii).

While Carver has been studied extensively in numerous
biographies and all of his writings and correspondence have
been collected at the Carver National Monument in Diamond,
Missouri and at the Tuskegee Institute Archives in Tuskegee,
Alabama, his life remains somewhat enigmatic. The addition
of information on other slaves and former slaves in the
region, the narratives collected by the Works Progress
Administration, and various public records all suggest that
much of the misunderstanding surrounding Carver that has
resulted in such diverse accounts of his life stem in part
from the ambiguous status of slaves in the area he was born.
Like others in the area, both the nurturing and hostility
came from whites, creating the "vicious circle“ Kremer says
he “never learned to escape" (Kremer 1987:8) .

The objective of this project is neither to prove or
disprove existing theories as to Carver’s influence or
origins nor to provide a thorough analysis of his life but
to add to the wealth of material on Carver by trying to

understand how conditions in Southwest Missouri from 1860 to



12

some provision for de slaves when dey turned dem loose”
(1972a:189). Non-commital in many responses, Joe Higgerson
of Sedalia eagerly invited the interviewers inside, claiming
simply he was “so happy to have company” (1972a:173).

If possible biases are taken into account, however,
Rawick says the narratives have many important uses and can
be trusted on issues where there was less motive to skew
information. Uses he suggests and which will be employed
here include evidence on women who did field work during
slavery, provisions for slaves residing in slave cabins,
and family relations. I have found the narratives also to
be a rare source of information on the lives of children who
lived as slaves. Since this project began in 1936, 75 years
after the start of the Civil War, most of the former slaves
still lucid at the time of the interviews were children in
1865, and their stories reveal much concerning relationships
between parents and children, the duties of children, the
clothing of children, and offer a unique perspective of the
Civil War.

The Missouri narratives can be found in two published
volumes, both edited by Rawick. The first is in Volume 11,
and the second is in Volume 2 of the Supplement, a
collection Rawick combined after a thorough search for all
narratives that may have been “hidden" from the authorities
in Washington in local libraries and historical societies.
While a large percentage of the Missouri narratives never

made it to Washington, Rawick says that this was more the



Library.

Porter, Charles III.

1943. Report of Investigation of George Washingon Carver's

Birthplace at the Old ‘Diamond Grove’ Plantation Near
Diamond, Missouri. George Washington Carver National
Monument. Diamond, Missouri.

Slave Owners, Jasper County Missouri, 1861.

n.d. Taken from record of tax assessor John Hornback,
Joplin Public Library.

Slaves and Slavery Collection.
1857. Notice of Runaway Slave in Springfield. Missouri
Historical Society, St. Louis.
Sutton, Ruth. Comp.
1971. Jasper County Marriage Records: Book C.
Toogood, Anna Coxe.

1973. Historic Resource Study and Administrative History.
George Washington Carver National Monument. Diamond,
Missouri.

Unity Baptist Church.

n.d. Commemorative Bulletin:1901-1975. George Washington

Carver National Monument. Diamond, Missouri.

vineyard, Mrs. John.

95

n.d.(a). Newton County Missouri Records: Abstracts of Wills

and Administration, 1839-1869. St. Louis Public Library.
n.d.(b). Newton County Missouri Records: Marriage Records

through 1869. St. Louis Public Library.


17

their masters to church, entertained the masters’ children,
worked alongside their masters in the fields. Due to their
smaller numbers, highland slaves did not have the
opportunities to engage in corn-shuckings, Saturday night
dances, Christmas holidays and other activities unique to
slave culture in the Deep South that gave plantation slaves
a sense of distinct identity.

The high percentage of children in these counties
reflects both the economic hardships of the area and a
tendency of farmers to invest in the future. Slave children
cost a great deal less than adults and appreciated in value
as they grew. A list of Jasper County’s slave owners in
1861 taken from the records of the tax assessor, John
Horback, and now available in the Joplin Public Library,
provide the number and valuation of each owner's slaves.
When the information of these records is combined with data
from the 1860 slave schedules which give the gender and age
of each slave, we find a significant discrepancy between the
value of children and adults: Patrick Raney’s 5 year old
female slave was valued at $250 where Edward Way’s 21 year
old female slave was worth $600. Similarly, Lilburn
Arthur’s 8 year old male slave, valued at $300, is worth
significantly less than William Board’s 15 year old male
slave valued at $700. Lack of funds combined with an
awareness that relatively small investments would grow
consistently and considerably in value may explain why

approximately half of this region’s slave property in 1860


46

Sundays. In 1870, it was “ordered that E. P. Searle be
allowed to use the schoolroom for singing school purposes
and for teaching a Sabbath school for colored children” {WPA
n.d.:folder 21989).

Faced with numerous hardships in Reconstruction
Missouri, not the least of which was lack of adequate
schools, newly freed black Missourians learned to read and
write in a number of different ways. Former slave Lula
Chambers, who moved to Joplin around 19006, discusses the
difficulties of early black schools: “Right after de war
dey sent colored teachers through de South to teach colored
people and child, do you know, dem white folks just
crucified most of ‘em” (Rawick 1972a:82). Former Missouri
Slave Louis Hill “larned ta read at Mine La Motte when a
white man taught me in evenings at da mine between shifts”
(Rawick 1972a:185). Harriet Casey of Fredericktown learned
to read from her sister, who “come and got me after freedom
and learned me de alphabet. De first thing I ever learned
to read was, ‘I see you Tom. Do you see me?’” (Rawick

1972a:74}

churches

Gaston Hugh Wamble offers an interesting discussion of
changes taking place in Missouri Protestant churches after
the Civil War, showing that “prior to the Civil War whites
and Negroes shared a common religious life in many

Protestant churches of Missouri” though “by 1880, however,



91

1974. Plantation, Town, and County: Essays on the Local
History of American Slave Society. Urbana: [Illinois

University Press.

Mills and Company

1883. A History of Jasper County, Missouri. Des Moines:
Mills and Company.

Newton County Historical Society (NCHS).

1991. From Buzzard Glory to Seed Ticks: A History of the
Schools in Newton County Missouri. Casseville: Litho
Printers,

Otto, John Solomon.

1980. Slavery in the Mountains: Yell County, Arkansas,

1840- 1860. Arkansas Historical Quarterly 39: 35-52.
Parrish, William E.

1973. A History of Missouri: 1860-1875, 3. Columbia:

Missouri University Press.
Purrington, William.

1987. The Easter Tug-of-War Lynchings and the Early
Twentieth-Century Black Exodus from Southwest Missouri. ‘In
Visions and Revisions: Ethnohistoric Perspectives on
Southern Cultures. George Sabo and William M. Schneider,
eds. Athens: Georgia University Press.

Rafferty, Milton.

1981. Historical Atlas of Missouri. Norman: Oklahoma

University Press.

Rawick, George P.


22

teach any black, slave or free, to read or write. To
further prevent the advancement of free blacks, the Missouri
General Assembly “had begun to restrict the immigration of
free Negroes into the state as early as 1825” (Parrish
1973:245). Such hindrances led Greene to assert that “the
distinction between free blacks and slaves was often vague”
(Greene et. al. 1980:62).

Surviving records document a small number of free
blacks in Southwest Missouri. According to county records
available at the Joplin public library, John Morgan and
James Madden were free blacks in Jasper County. The 1860
Census records a James Maddin [sic], a 69 year old farmer
identified as black and living with his wife Nancy and
children Julia, W.C., Nancy and Melissa. Maddin possessed
no real estate.

Occasionally slaves were granted freedom in the wills
of their owners. Newton County probate records cite that on
November 4, 1858, Peregrine Scott of Grand Falls, willed
“freedom to my colored woman Sylvia” (Vineyard n.d. (a):6}.
According to the same records Scott died on March 7, 1859,
and if his request was granted, Sylvia experienced freedom

for several years before most Missouri slaves.



13

result of disorganization that any intentional attempt to
prevent their being seen. Some tasks of the Federal
Writer's Project in Missouri, he says, were "farmed out to
the county Historical Surveys which were collecting county
records and doing local histories and which were not usually
part of the Writer’s Project" (1975:xvii). These may still
be found in the Western Manuscripts Collection in Columbia,
Missouri.

The narratives from the counties involved in this study
will be used as much as possible, and narratives of slaves
in similar circumstances in other areas in Missouri will

also be examined.

county histories and local newspapers

Local and county histories have also been extremely
valuable. The biographical and anecdotal information in the
histories compiled by the Goodspeed Company record history
at a time when the events immediately before and after the
Civil War were still relatively recent. While these
histories focus primarily on the wealthier individuals who
were able to afford subscriptions to the histories and thus
contribute material, they are still incredibly useful--it
was the wealthier men who were most likely to own slaves.
Another drawback to these early histories is the racist bias
of the authors and contributors. Roger Abrahams addresses
this issue in the opening of his study on corn-shucking

traditions, saying that "dealing with accounts which are



57

education at Simpson College in Iowa, supporting himself
with a small laundry business. He had enrolled to study art
and music but eventually pursued agriculture more earnestly
and transferred to State Agricultureal College at Ames,
Towa. After he earned his degree in 1896, Booker T.
Washington offered him the position of Director of the
Agricultural Experiment Station at Tuskegee, Alabama. It was
at Tuskegee that Carver made his most well-known
contributions to agriculture, discovering ways of growing
and utilizing such crops as the sweet potato and the peanut
that would not wear out the soil as cotton had. His later
life has been extremely well-documented, but information on
his early life consists primarily of hearsay. Though the
exact details of Carver‘s early life are sketchy, the work
of numerous biographers and scholars have provided us with a
great deal of information that contributes to an
understanding not only of Carver himself but of life for the
small black population in Southwest Missouri.

Due to the scarcity of written records left by farmers
in the Ozarks combined with the destruction of existing
records wrought by the Civil War, there are numerous areas
of contention surrounding George Washington Carver. Though
Carver named as his father a neighboring slave who was
"killed shortly after my birth while hauling wood to town on
an ox wagon" (gtd. in Kremer 1987:20), there is some dispute
as to who his father was (McMurry 1981:10}. Likewise there

is discrepancy as to the exact year of Carver’s birth. The




89
References Cited
Published Sources
Abrahams, Roger D.

1992. Singing the Master: The Emergence of African
American Culture in the Plantation South. New York:
Pantheon Books.

Attoun, Marrti.
1992. Gone But Not Forgotten. Joplin Globe. April 36.
Ayers, Edward L.

1992. The Promise of the New South: Life After

Reconstruction. New York: Oxford University Press.
Blassingame, John W.
1964, The Recruitment of Negro Troops in Missouri During the
Civil War. Missouri Historical Review, 58: 326-338.
Edwards, Ethel.
1971. Carver of Tuskegee. Cincinnati: The Psyche Press.
Fellman, Michael.

1988. Emancipation in Missouri. Missouri Historical

Review, 83: 36-56.
Gerlach, Russel L.

1986. Settlement Patterns in Missouri: A Study of

Population Origins. Columbia: Missouri University Press.
Goodspeed Publishing Company.

1888. A History of Newton, Lawrence, Barry and McDonald

Counties. Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing Company.

Graham, Shirley and Julian Messner Lipscomb.



34

state that “the plan was so effective that in a few weeks
the border counties were practically devoid of slaves”
{1964:330).

Former slave William Black tells how his father and
other Hannibal slaves found protection in the Union army:
“Dey enlisted de very night dey got Kansas City and de very
next morning de Pattie owners were dere on de trail after
dem to take dem back home, but de officers said dey were now
enlisted U. S. soldiers and not slaves and could not be
touched” {Rawick 1272a:30). Former slave Richard Bruner’s
account also reflects tension between Confederate soldiers
and their former slaves fighting for Kansas Union troops:
“I was a runaway nigga; I run away when I was about grown
and went to Kansas. When de war broke out I joined de 18th
United States Colored Infantry, under Capt. Lucas. I fit
three years in de army. My old Marsa’s two boys just older
then me fit for de south” (Rawick 1972a:60).

The influence of black regiments in Southwest Missouri
is seen vividly in William Pearson's brief history of
Sherwood, a former village in Jasper County. His account
also speaks of the enlistment of Jasper County blacks and
local hostility towards them:

A regiment of colored troops--the first Kansas

colored infantry--took stations at Baxter Springs
about this time and began to make occasional trips
into Jasper County. Included in their number were

quite a few Jasper County Negroes. Reports.



96
Woodruff, Mrs. Howard, comp. @
1971. Marriage Records: McDonald County, Missouri Book “A,”
1865-1878 and the 1861 Tax List. McDonald County Public
Library.
Works Progress Administration,
n.d. Minutes of Barton, Jasper, McDonald, and Newton
County Courts. Files 767, 10897, 12285, 12785, 15441,

21989. Western Manuscripts Collection. Columbia, Missouri.

Census Records
Eighth U. S. Census.

1860. Schedule 1, Population. Barton County.

1860. Schedule 1. Jasper County.

1860. Schedule 1. McDonald County. e
1860. Schedule 1. Newton County.

1860. Schedule 2, Slave Inhabitants. Barton County.
1860. Schedule 2. Jasper County.

1860. Schedule 2. McDonald County.

1860. Schedule 2. Newton County.

1860. Schedule 3, Industry. Barton County.

1860. Schedule 3. Jasper County.

1860. Schedule 3. McDonald County

1860. Schedule 3. Newton County.

1860. Schedule 4, Agriculture. Barton County

1860. Schedule 4. Jasper County.

1860. Schedule 4. McDonald County. @


37

remained in the county” (1972:9). Parrish ascribes the
influx of slaves to St. Louis in the winter of 1861-62 to
“the fighting in Southwestern Missouri and northwestern
Arkansas” (1973:71).

While destruction by guerrillas affected all residents
in the area, hostility towards the relatively small number
of staves and former slaves seems to have been especially
strong. Greene explains how the “guerrillas terrorized
blacks to retard enrollment,” citing as an example “the
infamous guerrilla leader William Quantrill who threatened
to kill anyone answering Lincoln’s call fer volunteers”
{1980:81}. Blassingame also speaks of “widespread
disloyalty and guerrilla warfare on the Kansas-Missouri
border” and guerrillas who “blocked attempts of slaves to
enlist” (1964:329,336). Betty Brown of Cape Girardeau tells
ef “bushwackers” and “Ku Kluxers” who go roun’ killin all de
cullud men an’ bayanettin’ de cillern. . . . Dey sho’ wuz

bad” (Rawick 1972a:54) .