Library of Virginia Dictionary of Virginia Biography George Teamoh (1818–d. after 1887), Fugitive Slave Law. Teamoh ran away member of the Convention of 1867– when the ship docked in New York City 1868 and of the Senate of Virginia, was on its return to the United States. He born enslaved in Norfolk. His parents, moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, David and Lavinia, or Winnie, last as winter approached and then settled in names unknown, died when he was a Boston a year and a half later. There he young child. He and the Thomas family worked as a tailor and continued his that owned him moved to Portsmouth education. After a brief, unhappy about 1828. He developed a strong bond marriage that began on May 6, 1863, with family matriarch Jane Thomas. Teamoh returned to Portsmouth in 1865. When Teamoh was about twelve, he was He found his first wife, "emaciated, pale hired out to another family, where he and almost speechless," living in a stable was treated roughly. In 1832 while in Richmond. working in a brickyard he taught himself Teamoh entered politics within to read by listening to white children weeks of his return to Virginia. He singing the alphabet in school and attended a state convention held by identifying words on handbills and African Americans in Alexandria on posters. His clandestine attempts at August 2, 1865, but his experiences literacy were curtailed when the yard's working on the docks focused him on brickmason discovered the used primer workers' rights as well. He organized that Teamoh had found. From about several civic actions during the next 1833 until 1853 he was hired out for a several years including a drive for series of jobs but worked mostly around equalizing the pay for white and black the city's shipyards as a ship's caulker laborers at the Norfolk Navy Yard. In and carpenter. 1867 the main faction of the Portsmouth Teamoh unofficially married an and Norfolk County Republican Party enslaved woman named Sallie in 1841. nominated him as one of its candidates They had at least one son and two for the state constitutional convention daughters. The family that owned her required by the Reconstruction Act attempted to sell her and their children in passed by Congress that year. On Richmond's slave markets in the summer October 22, 1867, when African of 1853. The ownership of the family American men voted in Virginia for the being in doubt, the two older children first time, Teamoh and two white were kidnapped and sold to parts Republicans won the district's three unknown. Sallie Teamoh and their seats. Teamoh received the votes of youngest daughter, Josephine, eventually seventy-four white men. ended up in the hands of a liquor At the convention that met in salesman who sexually abused both Richmond from December 3, 1867, women. through April 17, 1868, Teamoh was a Jane Thomas arranged for member of the dominant radical faction Teamoh's escape from slavery the same and served on the Committee on the year that his wife was sent to Richmond. Executive Department of Government She procured him a job as a carpenter on and the Committee on Agricultural and the Bremen-bound ship Currituck , Industrial Interests and Immigration. He believing that when it was at sea he introduced four resolutions. His proposal would no longer be subject to the that debts created by transactions Library of Virginia Dictionary of Virginia Biography involving enslaved workers since 1 list him as a member. In March 1869 January 1860 be forgiven was deemed a Teamoh served as one of the secretaries violation of the United States at the party's state convention. Voters in Constitution. Another proposed higher Norfolk County and Portsmouth elected taxes on unused agricultural lands. The him to the Senate of Virginia on July 6 incomplete record of delegates' speeches of that year. Teamoh won easily with includes none by Teamoh, but 3,527 votes of 5,685 cast, and improved newspaper accounts indicate that he tired his performance among white voters, of the long bouts of rhetoric from receiving at least 291 votes. Thomas Bayne, of Norfolk, and one His term in the state senate alluded to a comment by Teamoh saying proved to be another disappointment. that he did not want to be a "bane" to the The Conservative Party held a majority convention. He voted with the minority of the seats, and he later concluded that in favor of disfranchising white men the African American senators were who voted for prosecession delegates to powerless against the coalition of the Convention of 1861. On April 17, Conservatives and moderate 1868, he voted with the majority in favor Republicans. At a short session that met of the new constitution that the state's in October 1869, Teamoh voted to ratify electorate ratified in 1869. the Fourteenth and Fifteenth The commanding general of the Amendments to the Constitution as army in Virginia made notes on the required by Congress before Virginia delegates. Of Teamoh he wrote, "Was a could be readmitted to the United States. slave in Norfolk Co. before the war but During the two sessions that met in 1870 ran away and has returned to his old and in 1870–1871, Teamoh sat on the home. Has but little education. Some Committee on Federal Relations. In talent. Radical ." Teamoh later believed 1870 the General Assembly approved a that the constitution was an opportunity bill creating the state's first public school lost and that the opposition press goaded system. Fighting to secure their equal African American delegates into reacting rights of citizenship, Teamoh and most to their attacks rather than focusing on of the African American senators had forming a constitution. Evidence attempted to strike out the requirement suggests that some newspapers unnerved that schools be racially segregated. After Teamoh as well. A few years later he their measure was overwhelmingly wrote that some of his fellow defeated, he joined other bold legislators Republicans ignored the desires of their in casting a symbolic vote against constituents and were so greedy after the passage of the school bill that he almost convention disbanded that they set certainly favored. Virginia up for political and economic In January 1871 Teamoh spoke failure in the future. in favor of an unsuccessful bill to outlaw Three weeks after the convention whipping, describing it as a punishment adjourned, Teamoh attended a only for the poor and one that left people Republican state convention and was who committed petty crimes vengeful. one of its vice presidents. He was The following month, the assembly selected as a delegate to that summer's considered a controversial bill involving Republican national convention, but the the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and meeting's official proceedings did not efforts to construct a direct rail line from Library of Virginia Dictionary of Virginia Biography Washington, D.C., to Richmond. employment available in the state and Teamoh's constituents feared the effects organized the short-lived Laboring of such a line on trade in Portsmouth and Men's Mechanics' Union Association. Norfolk, and he voted against the bill About 1870 Teamoh may have when it failed in the Senate on February fathered a second son. Local tax records 21, 1871, and again when it was from 1872 indicate that Teamoh owned reconsidered and passed two days later. property in Portsmouth, and he arranged He expressed his reservations about the for the purchase of an adjacent lot and bill in a letter published in the Norfolk building that became a public school for Virginian and other state newspapers, the city's black students. He continued and later stated that he refused a working as a caulker, but by the decade's substantial bribe from an agent of the end he complained that he was being Pennsylvania Railroad. His support for shut out from work at the Navy Yard. his community and possibly his Teamoh wrote his memoirs, which he resistance to the payoff led the largely completed in 1874. It is the Petersburg Index on March 18, 1871, to principal source for the events of his life praise Teamoh's integrity. That same and preserves his increasingly critical day, Teamoh joined the majority of comments about his former political Republicans and many Conservatives colleagues. In 1883 he added to it an when he voted for a bill that provided for embittered addendum. the payment of the antebellum state debt, Teamoh's name appears in then totaling more than $47 million. The Portsmouth's personal property tax Funding Act proved disastrous and was records for the last time in 1887. There later regarded as one of the state's most is a strong likelihood that he lived in ill-advised pieces of economic Elizabeth City County in the 1890s. legislation. Property records and city directories Infighting about patronage and indicate that a man named George racial issues fractured the Republican Teamoh lived with a woman named Party in Portsmouth, ending Teamoh's Josephine Teamoh, possibly his career in the General Assembly. Late in daughter, in the locality from 1890 to April 1871 he came into conflict with 1900. A Richmond Planet article from the party's executive committee, and in December 30, 1899, stated that Teamoh October he lost the state senate was then living in Phoebus. A later nomination to a white man. A historian reported that he moved to breakaway faction of Republicans Hampton. The county adjoined the two selected him as its candidate for the towns, and the discrepancies are not House of Delegates.