Harriet E. Wilson
Encyclopedia
Harriet E. Wilson is traditionally considered the first female African-American novelist as well as the first African American of any gender to publish a novel on the North American continent. Her novel Our Nig
was published in 1859 and rediscovered in 1982.
, it achieved national attention when it was rediscovered by professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
.
professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
, and Mitch Kachun, a history professor at Western Michigan University
, brought to light Julia C. Collins' The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride (1865). Maintaining that Our Nig is more autobiography than fiction, they argue that The Curse of Caste should be considered the first fully fictional novel by an African American to be published in the U.S. However, a number of novels and other works of fiction of the period were in some part based on real-life events or could somehow be considered autobiographical—some titles include Fanny Fern
's Ruth Hall
; Louisa May Alcott
's Little Women
; or even Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette (1797). The first known novel by an African American is William Wells Brown
's Clotel; or, The President's Daughter, originally published in the United Kingdom
Eric Garnder theorizes that Our Nig did not receive critical acclaim from abolitionists during its first publication because of the novel's inconsistencies with traditional slave narrative. The abolitionists may have consciously decided not to promote Our Nig because the novel recounts "slavery's shadow" in the North, fails to offer the promise of freedom in the North, and illustrates a protagonist that is assertive towards a white woman.
In the article, “Dwelling in the House of Oppression: The Spatial, Racial, and Textual Dynamics of Harriet Wilson's Our Nig,” Lois Leveen makes the argument that although the story is about a free black in the north, the “free black” is still oppressed. The “white house” represents, as Leveen puts it, “The model home for American society is built according to the spatial imperatives of slavery.” Even though Frado is a “free black” she is still treated like a lower class human being and is often beaten and berated as a slave would be. Leveen makes the argument that Wilson is trying to say that even the “free blacks” weren’t really free.
, the daughter of Joshua Green, an African-American "hooper of barrels", and Margaret Ann (or Adams) Smith, a washerwoman of Irish
ancestry. Her father died when she was very young, and her mother abandoned her at the farm of Nehemiah Hayward Jr., a well-to-do Milford farmer. As an orphan, Adams was made an indentured servant to the Hayward family, a customary way for society to arrange support at the time. In exchange for her labor, the child would receive room, board and training in life skills, or that was the ideal.
Documentary research undertaken by P. Gabrielle Foreman and Reginald H. Pitts convinced them that the Hayward family were the basis of the "Bellmont" family depicted in "Our Nig". (This was the family who held the young "Frado" in indentured servitude, abusing her physically and mentally from the age of six to eighteen. Their material was incorporated in supporting sections of the 2004 edition of Our Nig.)
After the end of her indenture, Hattie Adams (as she was then known), worked as a house servant and a seamstress in households in southern New Hampshire and in central and western Massachusetts
. She married Thomas Wilson in Milford on October 6, 1851. Thomas Wilson had been traveling around New England giving lectures based on his life as an escaped slave, when he met Hattie Adams. Although he continued to periodically lecture in churches and town squares, he soon confided to her that he was never in bondage ("he had never seen the South") and that his "illiterate harangues were humbugs for hungry abolitionists" (these quotes are from page 68 of "Our Nig".)
Wilson abandoned Harriet soon after they married. Pregnant and ill, Harriet Wilson was sent to the Hillsborough County, New Hampshire
Poor Farm in Goffstown, New Hampshire
, where her only son, George Mason Wilson, was born. His probable birth date was June 15, 1852. Soon after George's birth, Thomas Wilson reappeared in her life and took her and her son away from the Poor Farm. Thomas Wilson returned to sea and died soon after. Harriet Wilson returned her son to the care of the Poor Farm.
She then moved to Boston, Massachusetts
to seek a living for herself and her son. While in Boston, Harriet Wilson wrote Our Nig. On August 18, 1859, she copyrighted it, and a copy of the novel was deposited in the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts. On September 5, 1859, the novel was published by George C. Rand and Avery, a publishing firm in Boston.
On February 16, 1860, her son George died in Milford at the Poor Farm, at the age of seven. In 1863, Harriet Wilson appeared on the "Report of the Overseers of the Poor" for the town of Milford.
After 1863, Harriet Wilson's whereabouts were unknown until 1867, when she was listed in the Boston Spiritualist newspaper Banner of Light as living in East Cambridge
, Massachusetts. She subsequently moved across the Charles River
to the city of Boston where she became known in Spiritualist circles as "the colored medium."
On September 29, 1870, Harriet Wilson married John Gallatin Robinson in Boston, Massachusetts. Robinson, an apothecary
, was a native of Canada, having been born in Sherbrooke, Quebec. Robinson was of English and German ancestry; he was also almost eighteen years Harriet Wilson's junior. They resided at 46 Carver Street between 1870 and 1877 when they appear to have separated. City directories after that date show both Wilson and Robinson in separate lodgings in Boston's South End. No record has been found of a divorce, but divorces were infrequent.
From 1867 to 1897, Mrs. Hattie E. Wilson was listed in the Banner of Light as a trance reader and lecturer. She was active in the local Spiritualist community, and she would give "lectures", either while entranced, or speaking normally, wherever she was wanted. She spoke at camp meetings, in theaters, and in private homes throughout New England; she shared the podium with such stalwarts as Victoria Woodhull
and Andrew Jackson Davis
. She traveled as far as Chicago as a delegate to the American Association of Spiritualists convention in 1870.
Mrs. Wilson delivered lectures on labor reform, and children's education; although the texts of her talks have not survived, newspaper reports imply that she often spoke about her life experiences, providing sometimes trenchant and often humorous commentary.
Closer to home, Hattie Wilson was active in the organization and maintenance of Children's Progressive Lyceums, the Spiritualist church equivalent to Sunday Schools; she organized Christmas celebrations; she participated in skits and playlets; at meetings she sometime sang as part of a quartet; she was also known for her floral centerpieces and the candies and confectioneries she would make for the children were long remembered.
When she was not pursuing Spiritualistic activities, Hattie Wilson was employed as a nurse and healer ("clairvoyant physician"). For nearly 20 years from 1879 to 1897, she was the housekeeper of a boardinghouse in a two-story dwelling at 15 Village Street (near the present corner of Dover [now East Berkeley Street] and Tremont Streets in the South End.) She rented out rooms, collected rents and provided basic maintenance.
Despite Wilson's active and fruitful life after "Our Nig", there is no evidence that she ever wrote anything else for publication.
On June 28, 1900, "Hattie E. Wilson" died in the Quincy Hospital in Quincy, Massachusetts
. She was buried in the Cobb family plot in that town's Mount Wollaston Cemetery
. Her plot number is listed as 1337, "old section."
At Wilson's death, her estranged husband Robinson, describing himself as a "capitalist", was living in the town of Pembroke, Massachusetts
with a twenty-four-year-old woman named Izah Nellie Moore. Two years later they married.
Our Nig
Our Nig: Sketches from the Life of a Free Black is an autobiographical slave narrative by Harriet E. Wilson. It was published in 1859 and rediscovered in 1982 by professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.. It is considered the first novel published by an African-American on the North American...
was published in 1859 and rediscovered in 1982.
Our Nig: Sketches from the Life of a Free Black
Wilson's autobiographical novel Our Nig was published in 1859. Our Nig illustrates the injustice of indentured servitude in the antebellum northern United States. The novel fell into obscurity soon after its publication. In 19821982 in literature
The year 1982 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*La Bicyclette Bleue by Régine Deforges becomes France's best selling novel ever.-New books:...
, it achieved national attention when it was rediscovered by professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr., is an American literary critic, educator, scholar, writer, editor, and public intellectual. He was the first African American to receive the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship. He has received numerous honorary degrees and awards for his teaching, research, and...
.
Criticism
In 2006, William L. Andrews, an English literatureEnglish literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...
, and Mitch Kachun, a history professor at Western Michigan University
Western Michigan University
Western Michigan University is a public university located in Kalamazoo, Michigan, United States. The university was established in 1903 by Dwight B. Waldo, and as of the Fall 2010 semester, its enrollment is 25,045....
, brought to light Julia C. Collins' The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride (1865). Maintaining that Our Nig is more autobiography than fiction, they argue that The Curse of Caste should be considered the first fully fictional novel by an African American to be published in the U.S. However, a number of novels and other works of fiction of the period were in some part based on real-life events or could somehow be considered autobiographical—some titles include Fanny Fern
Fanny Fern
Fanny Fern, born Sara Willis , was an American writer and the first woman to have a regular newspaper column. She was also a humorist, novelist, and author of children's stories in the 1850s-1870s. Fern's great popularity has been attributed to her conversational style and sense of what mattered to...
's Ruth Hall
Ruth Hall
Ruth Hall: a Domestic Tale of the Present Time is a roman à clef by Fanny Fern , a popular 19th-century newspaper writer. Following on her meteoric rise to fame as a columnist, she signed a contract in February 1854 to write a full-length novel...
; Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist. She is best known for the novel Little Women and its sequels Little Men and Jo's Boys. Little Women was set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts, and published in 1868...
's Little Women
Little Women
Little Women is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott . The book was written and set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts. It was published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869...
; or even Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette (1797). The first known novel by an African American is William Wells Brown
William Wells Brown
William Wells Brown was a prominent African-American abolitionist lecturer, novelist, playwright, and historian. Born into slavery in the Southern United States, Brown escaped to the North in 1834, where he worked for abolitionist causes and was a prolific writer...
's Clotel; or, The President's Daughter, originally published in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
Eric Garnder theorizes that Our Nig did not receive critical acclaim from abolitionists during its first publication because of the novel's inconsistencies with traditional slave narrative. The abolitionists may have consciously decided not to promote Our Nig because the novel recounts "slavery's shadow" in the North, fails to offer the promise of freedom in the North, and illustrates a protagonist that is assertive towards a white woman.
In the article, “Dwelling in the House of Oppression: The Spatial, Racial, and Textual Dynamics of Harriet Wilson's Our Nig,” Lois Leveen makes the argument that although the story is about a free black in the north, the “free black” is still oppressed. The “white house” represents, as Leveen puts it, “The model home for American society is built according to the spatial imperatives of slavery.” Even though Frado is a “free black” she is still treated like a lower class human being and is often beaten and berated as a slave would be. Leveen makes the argument that Wilson is trying to say that even the “free blacks” weren’t really free.
Biography
Harriet E. "Hattie" Adams Wilson was born in Milford, New HampshireMilford, New Hampshire
Milford is a town in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, United States, on the Souhegan River. The population was 15,115 at the 2010 census. It is the retail and manufacturing center of a six-town area known informally as the Souhegan Valley....
, the daughter of Joshua Green, an African-American "hooper of barrels", and Margaret Ann (or Adams) Smith, a washerwoman of Irish
Irish people
The Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...
ancestry. Her father died when she was very young, and her mother abandoned her at the farm of Nehemiah Hayward Jr., a well-to-do Milford farmer. As an orphan, Adams was made an indentured servant to the Hayward family, a customary way for society to arrange support at the time. In exchange for her labor, the child would receive room, board and training in life skills, or that was the ideal.
Documentary research undertaken by P. Gabrielle Foreman and Reginald H. Pitts convinced them that the Hayward family were the basis of the "Bellmont" family depicted in "Our Nig". (This was the family who held the young "Frado" in indentured servitude, abusing her physically and mentally from the age of six to eighteen. Their material was incorporated in supporting sections of the 2004 edition of Our Nig.)
After the end of her indenture, Hattie Adams (as she was then known), worked as a house servant and a seamstress in households in southern New Hampshire and in central and western Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
. She married Thomas Wilson in Milford on October 6, 1851. Thomas Wilson had been traveling around New England giving lectures based on his life as an escaped slave, when he met Hattie Adams. Although he continued to periodically lecture in churches and town squares, he soon confided to her that he was never in bondage ("he had never seen the South") and that his "illiterate harangues were humbugs for hungry abolitionists" (these quotes are from page 68 of "Our Nig".)
Wilson abandoned Harriet soon after they married. Pregnant and ill, Harriet Wilson was sent to the Hillsborough County, New Hampshire
Hillsborough County, New Hampshire
-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 380,841 people, 144,455 households, and 98,807 families residing in the county. The population density was 435 people per square mile . There were 149,961 housing units at an average density of 171 per square mile...
Poor Farm in Goffstown, New Hampshire
Goffstown, New Hampshire
Goffstown is a town in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 17,651 at the 2010 census. The compact center of town, where 3,196 people resided at the 2010 census, is defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as the Goffstown census-designated place and is located at the...
, where her only son, George Mason Wilson, was born. His probable birth date was June 15, 1852. Soon after George's birth, Thomas Wilson reappeared in her life and took her and her son away from the Poor Farm. Thomas Wilson returned to sea and died soon after. Harriet Wilson returned her son to the care of the Poor Farm.
She then moved to Boston, Massachusetts
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
to seek a living for herself and her son. While in Boston, Harriet Wilson wrote Our Nig. On August 18, 1859, she copyrighted it, and a copy of the novel was deposited in the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts. On September 5, 1859, the novel was published by George C. Rand and Avery, a publishing firm in Boston.
On February 16, 1860, her son George died in Milford at the Poor Farm, at the age of seven. In 1863, Harriet Wilson appeared on the "Report of the Overseers of the Poor" for the town of Milford.
After 1863, Harriet Wilson's whereabouts were unknown until 1867, when she was listed in the Boston Spiritualist newspaper Banner of Light as living in East Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
, Massachusetts. She subsequently moved across the Charles River
Charles River
The Charles River is an long river that flows in an overall northeasterly direction in eastern Massachusetts, USA. From its source in Hopkinton, the river travels through 22 cities and towns until reaching the Atlantic Ocean at Boston...
to the city of Boston where she became known in Spiritualist circles as "the colored medium."
On September 29, 1870, Harriet Wilson married John Gallatin Robinson in Boston, Massachusetts. Robinson, an apothecary
Apothecary
Apothecary is a historical name for a medical professional who formulates and dispenses materia medica to physicians, surgeons and patients — a role now served by a pharmacist and some caregivers....
, was a native of Canada, having been born in Sherbrooke, Quebec. Robinson was of English and German ancestry; he was also almost eighteen years Harriet Wilson's junior. They resided at 46 Carver Street between 1870 and 1877 when they appear to have separated. City directories after that date show both Wilson and Robinson in separate lodgings in Boston's South End. No record has been found of a divorce, but divorces were infrequent.
From 1867 to 1897, Mrs. Hattie E. Wilson was listed in the Banner of Light as a trance reader and lecturer. She was active in the local Spiritualist community, and she would give "lectures", either while entranced, or speaking normally, wherever she was wanted. She spoke at camp meetings, in theaters, and in private homes throughout New England; she shared the podium with such stalwarts as Victoria Woodhull
Victoria Woodhull
Victoria Claflin Woodhull was an American leader of the woman's suffrage movement, an advocate of free love; together with her sister, the first women to operate a brokerage in Wall Street; the first women to start a weekly newspaper; an activist for women's rights and labor reforms and, in 1872,...
and Andrew Jackson Davis
Andrew Jackson Davis
Andrew Jackson Davis , American Spiritualist, was born at Blooming Grove, New York.- Early years :He had little education, though probably much more than he and his friends pretended. In 1843 he heard lectures in Poughkeepsie on animal magnetism, as the phenomena of hypnotism was then termed, and...
. She traveled as far as Chicago as a delegate to the American Association of Spiritualists convention in 1870.
Mrs. Wilson delivered lectures on labor reform, and children's education; although the texts of her talks have not survived, newspaper reports imply that she often spoke about her life experiences, providing sometimes trenchant and often humorous commentary.
Closer to home, Hattie Wilson was active in the organization and maintenance of Children's Progressive Lyceums, the Spiritualist church equivalent to Sunday Schools; she organized Christmas celebrations; she participated in skits and playlets; at meetings she sometime sang as part of a quartet; she was also known for her floral centerpieces and the candies and confectioneries she would make for the children were long remembered.
When she was not pursuing Spiritualistic activities, Hattie Wilson was employed as a nurse and healer ("clairvoyant physician"). For nearly 20 years from 1879 to 1897, she was the housekeeper of a boardinghouse in a two-story dwelling at 15 Village Street (near the present corner of Dover [now East Berkeley Street] and Tremont Streets in the South End.) She rented out rooms, collected rents and provided basic maintenance.
Despite Wilson's active and fruitful life after "Our Nig", there is no evidence that she ever wrote anything else for publication.
On June 28, 1900, "Hattie E. Wilson" died in the Quincy Hospital in Quincy, Massachusetts
Quincy, Massachusetts
Quincy is a city in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. Its nicknames are "City of Presidents", "City of Legends", and "Birthplace of the American Dream". As a major part of Metropolitan Boston, Quincy is a member of Boston's Inner Core Committee for the Metropolitan Area Planning Council...
. She was buried in the Cobb family plot in that town's Mount Wollaston Cemetery
Mount Wollaston Cemetery
Mount Wollaston Cemetery is a historic cemetery at 20 Sea Street in the Merrymount neighborhhod of Quincy, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1855 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.-History:...
. Her plot number is listed as 1337, "old section."
At Wilson's death, her estranged husband Robinson, describing himself as a "capitalist", was living in the town of Pembroke, Massachusetts
Pembroke, Massachusetts
Pembroke is a town in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 16,927 at the 2000 census.The southwestern section of Pembroke is also known as Bryantville...
with a twenty-four-year-old woman named Izah Nellie Moore. Two years later they married.
Memorial
The Harriet Wilson Project of Milford has raised funds to place the Harriet E. Wilson Memorial Statue in the town's Bicentennial Park. It was unveiled November 4, 2006 .External links
- The Harriet Wilson Project
- "Harriet E. Wilson", Paul Lauter, The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Fifth Edition, Cengage, Houghton Mifflin Publishers
- An article from the African American World web site
- Our Nig, electronic edition, University of Virginia Library]
- Interview with Henry Louis Gates (mp3). Gates and a literary critic discuss Our Nig, Wired for Books