The History of Enslaved People at Georgetown Visitation by Facilitating Meetings and Researching This History

THE HISTORY OF NSLAVED EOPLE E P AT GEORGETOWN VISITATION SPONSORED BY The St. Jane de Chantal Salesian Center Learning, Reflecting, and Teaching May 15, 2018 Copyright © 2018 Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School 1524 Thirty-fifth Street, NW Washington, D.C. 20007 CONTENTS Acknowledgments 1 Preface 2 Research Report 5 Historiography of Visitation’s Enslaved Community 6 Slaveholding at Georgetown Visitation, 1800–50 7 The 1850s and 1860s: Manumission, Emancipation, and Ensuing Litigation 17 Recovering the Identities 20 Lives of Free Black and Enslaved Families in Georgetown 21 The Tilghmans 21 The Mahoneys 22 The Weldons 23 Joseph Dixon 23 Literacy and the Enslaved Community 24 Campus Architectural History 26 Renovations in the late 1850s and early 1860s 27 The “Slave Cabin” 27 Appendix 1: The Enslaved Community of Georgetown Visitation 34 Enslaved People Bought, Sold, and Hired Out by the Convent 35 Enslaved People Hired (Not Owned) by the Convent 40 Appendix 2: Research Summary 41 Appendix 3: Historical Timeline 45 Appendix 4: Committee Members 48 Endnotes 50 Cover image: James Alexander Simpson. Georgetown Visitation Convent, View from P Street Looking North (detail), 1846. Georgetown Visitation Collection. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many deserve our gratitude for their insights and contributions, no matter how great or small: Dr. James Benton; Fr. Matthew E. Carnes, S.J.; Dr. Marcia Chatelain; Dr. Elizabeth Chew; Joseph Ferrara; Kristin Gallas; Sr. Mada-anne Gell, VHM; Sr. Joanne Gonter, VHM; Joseph Leizear; Sr. Mary Paula McCarthy, VHM; Jerry McCoy; Dr. Akela Reason; Dr. Joseph Reidy; Dr. Adam Rothman; Lyla Ward; the St. Jane de Chantal Salesian Center Advisory Board; the School Board of Directors; the Monastery Board of Directors; the staff and faculty of the school; and most of all, the Sisters of the Visitation for their support of this sacred work. 5/15/2018 1 PREFACE 5/15/2018 2 The Steering Committee of The History of published histories. Documentary evidence Enslaved People Project at Georgetown supports this fact, but it has been little studied, Visitation envisions its goals as researching and so why is this subject being researched now? interpreting evidence of enslaved people at this This country’s national story is changing to Monastery and school. The hope is to foster include slavery as part of its narrative. Historic dialogue about not only this history but also the sites such as Monticello, Mount Vernon, and disquiet this evidence may generate. The James Madison’s Montpelier have researched intention is to encourage critical thinking, and interpreted their own enslaved reflection, prayer, and action within our communities, and universities such as Monastery and school community. We hope to Georgetown, Princeton, and Columbia are do so with honesty, humility, and with an eye acknowledging their historical ties to slavery toward restoring the dignity and humanity of via research, symposia, and programming. This the people who had been enslaved at Visitation complicates traditional narratives at these between 1800 and 1862. institutions, but it also enriches them. These and other initiatives show that incorporating The fields of historic preservation and new documentary evidence leads to the education are evolving, so interpretation of formulation of new interpretations, which Visitation’s history must also advance. It is prompts reconciliation with previously held both an educational institution and a historic knowledge. site with 14 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. This study seeks to counter The committee, since its inception in the assumption that the history of such places September 2016, has been honoring the does not need to change. History is not static. process it takes first to research this history and Historical research is an ongoing process that then to reflect on what it means to the Sisters constantly refreshes our knowledge of a and to the school. Quite consciously, they have period. Some of the questions attempted to be awarded equal importance to both so this answered here are much like those asked at difficult past can be taught. The committee other places. Was Visitation’s religious acknowledges that this research needs to be community engaged in slaveholding? Did this presented with care, and that people need time school use forced labor to subsidize its to process this emotional and contradictory educational mission? Can the identities of content. those who were enslaved be recovered? Unearthing these stories now provides a vital The following summary of research was place to begin a conversation about racial written with advice and input from the inequities that still stand in the shadow of this committee, composed of members of the difficult past. This part of Visitation’s history is Monastery, school administration, faculty, and being assembled now because it is also a way to parent and alumnae communities. This acknowledge the origin of legal segregation and committee tasked the St. Jane de Chantal de facto segregation that endures today. The Salesian Center to sponsor this project, with impulse to study one historical topic over Mrs. Olivia Kane serving as coordinator of this another sometimes follows the need to committee’s meetings and Dr. Susan Nalezyty understand present-day challenges. serving as lead researcher. Hired in August 2016 as School Archivist, Dr. Nalezyty brought That enslaved people labored on Visitation’s the experience and skills of a published campus appears in both of this institution’s 5/15/2018 3 historian necessary to the sensitive treatment enslavement at Visitation. Some—including of this important subject. the Tilghman family, Benjamin Mahoney, Thomas Weldon, and Joseph Dixon—have This work seeks to add to Visitation’s story and been traced to years after emancipation. to provide an essential historical context, Others, however, are only a brief count on a which is more complicated and nuanced. First, census record. Wherever possible, evidence this project briefly explores Visitation’s that may overlap has been cross-referenced to historiography—the history of studying its avoid double counting. Often history writing slaveholding history. Then, relying upon does not include the stories of those who documents found in the Monastery Archives cleaned buildings or harvested crops. But and public records, this project expands Visitation’s history must do so, because many previous research by assembling stories about of those who performed these tasks in the first mother superiors, nuns, and chaplains who 62 years of this institution’s existence were inherited, bought, sold, and hired out the enslaved. They worked but received no wages. people they enslaved. These primary sources They could not leave of their own volition and also tell of manumissions, self-emancipations, lived under the constant threat of forced and the freeing of all enslaved people in the migration and separation from their families District of Columbia in 1862. Documents from and communities. these years approaching the Civil War’s beginning provide excellent evidence toward How they were treated must remain in the partially recovering the identities of some who realm of speculation. Favoring a positive view were enslaved at Visitation. And finally, this does not reckon adequately with the debt owed project draws on unpublished archival material to those who labored at Visitation without and early hand-drawn maps to study the freedom or who were sold to subsidize this architectural history of the oldest buildings on institution’s mission. Careful study of campus, which can be associated with its documentation in the Monastery Archives and slaveholding past. in public records enables understanding of specific interactions between the spiritual The research assembled here restores the directors, the mother superiors, and the enslaved community to the school and persons whom they enslaved. These stories are Convent’s memory. To date, 107 people have as varied as the people described; therefore, been identified, either by name or by brief generalizations need no longer prevail, other description in documentary evidence from than that the Convent was deeply typical of its 1800 to 1862, as having been bought, sold, time and place. Closely examining historical hired-out, or inherited by Georgetown evidence can show the human side of Visitation Convent. Among these individuals, Visitation’s past without justifying or some were donated to the Convent, yet never embellishing it. set foot on campus; others were born into 5/15/2018 4 RESEARCH REPORT Susan Nalezyty, Ph.D., School Archivist 5/15/2018 5 The enslavement of one person by another approach: to tell a heroic story of the three contradicts the United States of America’s “pious women,” who established their traditional narrative of freedom, and this Convent and school in a largely rural and wild paradox cannot be disentangled from place. Here, using language that readers today Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School’s might find disconcerting, the authors twice early history either (Figure 1). It is an over-200- mention enslaved people on campus: year-old institution founded in the nation’s capital and with a history that parallels that of [The Sisters] cleaned, salted, and put up their own fish the United States. and meat; grew all their own vegetables, and for that purpose kept a fine garden, the heavier work of which The Sisters of the Visitation have been was done by their negro man or men, the lighter by teaching on the corner of 35th and P Street themselves.2 under every U.S. president except George 1 Washington. These religious women enslaved Also in A Story of Courage, a man enslaved by people, as did many of those presidents. Of the one of the school’s founders, Archbishop first 12 presidents, only two (John Adams and Neale, is described: John Quincy Adams) did not, and the same inconsistency surrounding the country’s early leaders vexes our assessment of this school and The only menial labor then obtainable in the District Convent’s leadership between the years of was that of slaves.

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