Wednesday, May 8, 2024

A00020 - The Civil War Soldiers

The Civil War Soldiers

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Joseph Evins

Charles Finnemore

Sanford Jackson

William Jennings

Genalvin Marse

Charles Thompson

Christopher Thompson'

James Thompson

John Thompson

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Civil War Tablets

THE TOWN OF AMHERST IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE PUBLIC VIEWING HOURS FOR THE EXHIBIT OF THE CIVIL WAR TABLETS STARTING JULY 26, 2021

ABOUT

The Civil War Tablets were donated to the Town of Amherst by the Grand Army of the Republic in 1893 to commemorate the 300+ soldiers from the Amherst region who served in the Union forces, including those African Americans who served in the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment and 5th Calvary. 

Amherst residents Christopher, John, Henry James, and Charles Thompson who served in the 54th Regiment, are among those memorialized in the plaques. The Thompson brothers were among the troops to arrive in Texas in 1865, one of the final hold out states to admit defeat during the Civil War. They were among the troops to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation and formally mark the day that all slaves in the United States were freed, which is now a national holiday, Juneteenth. The Thompson brothers are laid to rest in the West Cemetery in the Amherst. 

Amherst resident, Dudley Bridges, Sr., spent the last years of his life advocating and fundraising to honor these handcrafted memorials with prominent and befitting placement within the community. The exhibit is curated and guided by Debora Bridges, daughter of Dudley Bridges Sr. and descendant of the Thompson's. 

VISITING INFORMATION


Location: Bangs Community Center at 70 Boltwood Walk in Amherst, MA 01002

Hours: Tuesday through Thursday from 10:00 AM - 3:00 PM

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A00019 - Pelleman Williams (Class of 1844), Dartmouth Graduate and Well-Known Educator, Vocalist and Organist

 Prof. P. M. Williams (1816-1882) was Wendell Phillip MacNeal’s grandfather, and husband of Mary Harris of Connecticut. Pelleman attended Amherst and Dartmouth Colleges in the early 1840s and was one of the vice presidents of the 1849 Connecticut State Convention of Colored Men. He taught African-American children in Connecticut and New York before heading to New Orleans in about 1864 to teach in schools newly established through the American Missionary Association and the Freedman’s Bureau. When Straight University (now Dillard) was formed in [1868], he was appointed principal of the Normal School. The school was burned to the ground by a mob in 1877. It was rebuilt, only to be burned again in 1891. In addition to being a well-known educator, Pelleman was a proficient vocalist and organist.

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A00018 - Edward Jones (Class of 1826), First Black Graduate of Amherst College and Missionary to Sierra Leone

 


Edward Jones (1807–1865) was an African American missionary to the colony of Sierra Leone. Jones was a prominent missionary and figure in the colony of Sierra Leone; he was the first naturalized citizen of Sierra Leone (though he retained his American citizenship). Jones was the first black principal of Fourah Bay College and held the post for 15 years.[1] He was the first Black American to graduate from Amherst College in Massachusetts.[2] Edward Jones was the brother of Jehu Jones, a prominent African-American preacher.

Early life[edit]

Edward Jones was born in Charleston, South Carolina and became part of the mulatto elite of that majority African-American city. Many free mulattoes were freed slaves who had fought in the American Revolutionary War for the Patriots and then freed for their loyalty. Edward Jones's father, Jehu Jones, in 1798, had bought his freedom for $140 (~$2,564 in 2023) from his owner, a tailor who had taught him the craft, and also bought freedom for his wife Abigail and children.[3] Jones Sr. became wealthy from his investments in real estate and eventually a hotel owner catering to white travelers. He bought his first slave in 1807,[4] although William Cooper Nell claimed that this was a legal action in order to give the slaves their freedom.[1] According to historian Bernard E. Powers, the senior Jones associated himself with elite white Charlestonians and "seldom kept the company of even light-complexioned free blacks and never of slaves."[5] Nonetheless, Edward Jones was proud of his African heritage, and was a member of the Brown Fellowship Society in Charleston.

During his time at Amherst, Jones was involved in the first African American newspaper, Freedom's Journal, with John Brown Russwurm and Samuel Cornish.[1]

Immigration to Liberia[edit]

After his time at Amherst, Jones planned to go to Liberia as a doctor; however, a reference from a faculty member ended that plan.[1]

In February 1829, he joined the Andover Theological Seminary and the African Mission School in Hartford which was run by the Episcopal Church; eighteen months later he was ordained as a priest.[1]

Jones immigrated to Liberia but did not stay long before immigrating to the colony of Freetown, Sierra Leone.[6]

Life in Sierra Leone[edit]

It is in Sierra Leone that Jones is most remembered as a great leader and one of the patriarchs of a prominent Krio family. Jones was a superintendent of the liberated African village of Kent, Sierra Leone and it was there he met one of the Nova Scotian settlers, Hannah Nylander, and married her. Jones had married into another prominent family; his wife was of half Nova Scotian (Black Loyalist descent, making her ultimately of Black American descent) and half German through her missionary father, Gustav Nyländer. In all, Jones married three times and buried all of his wives in Sierra Leone. Jones also fathered six children, only one whom lived to adulthood.[7]

Jones was also the first principal of the newly established Fourah Bay College in Fourah Bay, Sierra Leone (a suburb of Freetown). It was there that the only known portrait of Edward Jones was hung on the wall. Jones died in England in 1865.

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A00017 - Henry Martin Tupper (Class of 1859), Founder of Shaw University

 Henry Martin Tupper (April 11, 1831 – November 12, 1893) was an American Baptist minister who founded Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Beginning with bible and literacy classes in December 1865, it was the second university established for African Americans following the end of the civil war, and the second oldest historically black college and university (HBCU) in the Southern United States,[1][2] as well as one of the oldest co-educational universities in the country. When the institute moved into a new building in 1871, it was renamed as Shaw Collegiate Institute in honor of a major donor. Tupper served as the University's first president from its founding until his death in 1893.

Early life and military career[edit]

Henry Martin Tupper was born on April 11, 1831, to Earl and Permellia Norris Tupper and raised on a farm in Monson, Massachusetts. He was the eldest of nine children. His grandfather, Ezra Tupper, and great-grandfather, William Tupper, had both fought for the colonies in the American Revolutionary War. His paternal ancestry has been linked to a family of prominent Lutheran dissenters who left Germany and settled in England during the reign of Henry VIII. He was a distant relative of Martin Farquhar Tupper, an English poet of the 19th century. Clergyman Thomas Tupper, an ancestor of Henry Martin Tupper, emigrated from England to Barbados in the early 17th century. He later helped found the town of Sandwich, Massachusetts.[3][4][5]

Neither of his parents were practicing Christians nor did Martin attend church as a child. He received little formal education until he turned eighteen, when he enrolled in Monson Academy. He converted to Christianity while at the Academy. In order to fund his continuing education, he took a job as a school teacher in New Jersey, where he was baptised in a nearby Baptist church. Later he joined a congregation in Wales, Massachusetts, near his hometown of Monson.[3]

Tupper attended Amherst College and graduated in 1859. He received his divinity degree from Newton Theological Institute in 1862. While at school, he organized bible studies for African-American youth. He also worked as a missionary among recent immigrants in Boston as part of his training. He had planned to serve as a missionary to Africa, however the Civil War intervened. Shortly after being ordained as a minister, he enlisted in the Union Army. Though his education would have qualified him for a military commission, there were no openings in the officer corps, so he enlisted as a soldier.[3]

Tupper was assigned to the Army of the Potomac, Ninth Corps, under the command of Ambrose Burnside. He participated in the Battle of Fredericksburg. He was transferred to General Sherman's Fifteenth Corps in time for the Vicksburg Campaign. He was injured at the Battle of Jackson.[3]

Though Tupper was not an officer, he frequently served as a chaplain, ministering to sick and injured soldiers, and organizing prayer meetings and bible studies among soldiers. While in the army, he became acquainted with the plight of African-American slaves. This inspired his later work.[3]

Marriage and family[edit]

On January 25, 1864, he married Sarah Baker Leonard of Stafford, Connecticut. She later joined him in his work, helping teach freedwomen as he taught the men. They had two children, Elizabeth Caroline and Edward Leonard Tupper. Sarah's older brother Judson Wade Leonard, a successful businessman in woolen textiles, helped support Shaw University financially. The medical school was named for him.[4]

Founder and president of Shaw University[edit]

After the Civil War, Tupper was commissioned by the Home Mission Society to act as a missionary to freed slaves in the American South. Discharged from the Union Army on July 14, 1865, he and his wife Sarah departed for Raleigh, North Carolina, on October 1 to begin his work. Traveling via train through Portsmouth, Virginia, they had delays due to extensive damage to the rail network caused by the Civil War; they arrived in Raleigh on October 10. The Tuppers began working among the freedmen. He procured food and clothing from the Freedman's Bureau to help support the many homeless black men in Raleigh.[3][6]

On December 1, 1865, Tupper began teaching bible study classes to freedmen in the Guion Hotel (located where the North Carolina Museum of History is now located). This first bible class marks the traditional foundation date of Shaw University. He used the class as an opportunity to teach the freedmen to read and write, encouraging them to become Baptist ministers, and start their own congregations. In March 1866, Sarah Tupper began teaching freedwomen in similar classes.[3][6][7]

Having outgrown his temporary location at the Guion Hotel, Tupper purchased a plot of land, using $500 saved from his military service. On the plot, located at the corner of Blount and Cabarrus streets in Raleigh, he constructed a two-story timber building to serve as both a school and church. He named this the Raleigh Institute; it was the first permanent home what would develop as Shaw University. The Home Mission Society and the Freedman's Bureau jointly provided funding for the Institute.[6][7]

As the school grew, Tupper searched for more space. Nearby to the south was the estate of Paul Barringer, the patriarch of a prominent North Carolina political dynasty. When the land came up for sale, Martin Tupper raised $13,000 for its purchase, mostly from private donors solicited personally by Tupper. The largest single donor was Elijah Shaw, a resident of Wales, Massachusetts, who donated $5,000.

In his honor, the first building on the new campus was named Shaw Hall, and the school was renamed the Shaw Collegiate Institute. Tupper and his students and faculty moved into their new location in 1871. Expansion proceeded quickly, as the first men's dormitory opened in 1872, and the first women's dormitory, Estey Hall (named for another Northern benefactor, Jacob Estey of Brattleboro, Vermont), opened in 1874.

Under Tupper's leadership, the school became chartered by the state as a university in 1875. It added a medical and pharmacy program (Leonard Medical School) in 1881, and a law program in 1888. Each of these programs were the first of their kind for African-American students.[3][6][8] Note: Howard University, a historically black university, dates its law school to 1869, when a law department was established by John Mercer Langston.[9] Along with two students, Nicholas Franklin Roberts and Edward Hart Lipscomb, Tupper was an editor of the quarterly journal, African Expositor, founded in 1878.[10]

Tupper's role as the founder of the first university dedicated to educating freedmen attracted opposition. During the Reconstruction era, his home was burned to the ground by the Ku Klux Klan. He and his wife fled and hid in a nearby cornfield.[3] In 1870 the trustees of the local Second Baptist Church of Raleigh sued Tupper on charges of defrauding its members in relation to his fundraising for Shaw College. The suit was settled in his favor in 1875.[6]

Death[edit]

Tupper died on November 12, 1893, following a prolonged illness. His funeral was reportedly one of the most attended in the history of Raleigh to that time. Tupper was buried on the campus in front of Shaw Hall.[3][6]

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A00016 - Robert Purvis, African American Abolitionist Who Most Likely Attended Amherst Academy

 Robert Purvis (August 4, 1810 – April 15, 1898) was an American abolitionist in the United States. He was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and was likely educated at Amherst Academy, a secondary school in Amherst, Massachusetts. He spent most of his life in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1833 he helped found the American Anti-Slavery Society and the Library Company of Colored People. From 1845 to 1850 he served as president of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society and also traveled to Britain to gain support for the movement.

Of mixed race, Purvis and his brothers were three-quarters European by ancestry and inherited considerable wealth from their native British father after his death in 1826. Purvis's parents had lived in a common law marriage, prevented from marrying because his mother was a mixed race free woman of color, of Sub-saharan African, Jewish, and Moroccan descent. The sons chose to identify with the black community and used their education and wealth to support abolition of slavery and anti-slavery activities, as well as projects in education to help the advance of African Americans.

Early life[edit]

Purvis was born in 1810 in Charleston, South Carolina. His maternal grandparents were Dido Badaraka, a former enslaved woman, and Baron Judah, a Jewish American native of Charleston. His mother Harriet Judah was born a free woman of color. Purvis's father was an immigrant from Great Britain.

As an adult, Purvis told a reporter about his family. His maternal grandmother, Badaraka, was kidnapped at age 12 from Morocco where she was already a slave, she was then transported to South Carolina on a slave ship, and sold as a slave in India. He described her as dark-skinned with tightly curled hair, she was most likely of Sub-Saharan African descent as evidenced by her name and her physical description. She was freed at age 19 by her master's will.[2][3] Harriet's father was Baron Judah, born in Charleston of German Jewish and Spanish-Portuguese Jewish descent.[1] Baron was the third of ten children born to Hillel Judah, a German Jewish immigrant, and Charleston native Abigail Seixas, his Spanish-Portuguese Jewish wife.

Purvis told the reporter that his grandparents Badaraka and Judah had married. This claim has been questioned by 21st-century biographers, given the social prominence of the Judah family in Charleston. Judah's parents owned slaves. In any case, Badaraka and Judah had a relationship for several years, and had two children together, Harriet and her brother. In 1790, Judah broke off his relationship with Badaraka when he moved with his parents from Charleston to Savannah, Georgia. In 1791 he moved to Richmond, Virginia. There he married a Jewish white woman and had four children with her.[4]

William Purvis was from Northumberland. His father died while he was a child, and his mother moved to Edinburgh for her sons' education. He immigrated to the United States as a young man with some of his brothers to make their fortunes. William became a wealthy cotton salesman in Charleston and was a naturalized United States citizen.[1][5]

William Purvis and Harriet Judah lived together as husband and wife, but racial law prevented their marriage. The couple had three sons: William, born in 1806; Robert, born in 1810; and Joseph, born in 1812.[5] In 1819 the family moved north to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where the boys attended the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society's Clarkson School. William intended to consolidate his business affairs and return with his family to Britain, where he thought his sons would have better opportunities. He died in 1826 before they could move.[citation needed]

William Purvis had intended his sons to be educated as gentlemen, and Robert and Joseph Purvis likely attended Amherst Academy, a secondary school in Amherst, Massachusetts. There is no evidence that either Robert or Joseph Purvis attended Amherst College, a common misconception.[6] (Amherst College catalogs from the 1820s do not list them as enrolled.) The brothers returned to Philadelphia, where their family was among the black elite. After their father died, Purvis and his two brothers were to share an estate worth $250,000. In 1828 the oldest brother William died of tuberculosis. Robert and Joseph inherited increased shares of the estate; they used their wealth to support their political activism and public service.[7]

In 1832, Purvis married Harriet Davy Forten, a woman of color and the daughter of wealthy sailmaker James Forten and his wife Charlotte, both prominent abolitionists and leaders in Philadelphia. Like her parents and siblings, Harriet Forten Purvis was active in anti-slavery groups in the city, including the interracial Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society.[8]

The Purvises had eight children, including son Charles Burleigh Purvis (1841-1926). He became a surgeon and professor for 30 years in the medical school at Howard University. In addition, the couple raised Harriet's niece, Charlotte Forten Grimké, after her mother died. In her later life, Harriet Forten Purvis lectured publicly against segregation and for expanded suffrage for all citizens.[8]

After Harriet died, Purvis married Tacie Townsend, who was of European descent.[3] She was from Byberry Township (now Northeast Philadelphia), where Purvis had moved after the 3-day riots threatened his safety. As a public figure, he was criticized for this marriage by both whites and blacks who cared about the color line.[citation needed]

In 1833, Purvis helped abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison establish the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia and signed its "Declaration of Sentiments". Living for nearly the rest of the 19th century, Purvis was the last surviving member of the society.[1] That same year, he helped establish the Library Company of Colored People, modeled after the Library Company of Philadelphia, a subscription organization. With Garrison's support, in 1834, Purvis traveled to Britain to meet leading abolitionists.[9]

In 1838, he drafted the "Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens Threatened with Disfranchisement",[10] which urged the repeal of a new state constitutional amendment disfranchising free African Americans. There were widespread tensions and fears among whites following Nat Turner's slave rebellion of 1831 in Virginia. Although Pennsylvania was a free state that had abolished slavery, state legislators persisted in passing this amendment to restrict free blacks' political rights. Free men of color in Pennsylvania did not regain suffrage until after the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, following the Civil War.[citation needed]

From 1845 to 1850, Purvis served as president of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, a biracial organization. As a supporter of the Underground Railroad, Purvis served as chairman of the General Vigilance Committee from 1852 to 1857, which gave direct aid to fugitive slaves. According to his records, Purvis estimated that from 1831 to 1861, he helped one slave per day achieve freedom, aiding a total of more than 9,000 slaves to escape to the North. He used his own house, then located outside the city, in Byberry Township, as a station on the Underground Railroad.[1] One of these slaves was Madison Washington, who Purvis harboured during his escape to Canada.[11] Purvis built Byberry Hall on the edge of the Quaker-owned, Byberry Friends Meeting campus. Byberry Hall, which still stands today, hosted anti-slavery speakers and was across the street from Purvis's home.[12] Among the enslaved Africans he assisted was Thomas J. Dorsey, who became one of three of the top caterers in Philadelphia in the 19th century. Purvis was a friend of both Thomas and his son William Henry Dorsey, who was an artist and collector of Black history. William compiled hundreds of scrapbooks of Black history during the 19th century and built a collection that he laid out in his home in Philadelphia.

Purvis supported many progressive causes in addition to abolition. With Lucretia Mott, he supported women's rights and suffrage. He was a member of the American Equal Rights Association while Mott was president. Purvis also attended the founding meeting of the Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association.[1]

He supported temperance and similar social issues. He believed in integrated groups working for greater progress for all. By the end of the Civil War, which gained the emancipation of slaves and suffrage for black men, Purvis had reached his late 50s and became less active in political affairs.[citation needed]

Lombard Street riot[edit]

Main article: Lombard Street riot

Irish Catholics, often competitors for the lowest-paying, unskilled and menial jobs, perceived successful African-American residents in the city as flaunting their success. Immigrants expressed their frustrations and jealousy in various attacks on blacks.[13][14]

A three-day race riot began on August 1, 1842. The mostly Irish rioters set fires and attacked firefighters and police as they went, heading for Purvis's home, where they protested outside for forty hours. Purvis and his home were reportedly saved from the Irish mob solely by a Catholic priest's intervention.[15]

Death and legacy[edit]

Neither of Purvis's elder sons survived the American Civil War. Both William P. Purvis (1832–1857) and Robert Purvis (1834–1862) were buried in the Byberry burial ground in northeast Philadelphia.[16] When the burial ground of St. Thomas African Episcopal Church was closed, where his mother had been buried in central Philadelphia, Purvis had her remains transferred to Fair Hill Burial Ground in Philadelphia's Fairhill neighborhood. His wife (1810-1875) and daughter Georgianna (1848-1877) who had died of consumption were buried here, as he was in 1898.[17][18]

His abolitionist efforts are memorialized by the state of Pennsylvania[19] and by the National Park Service.[20]

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