Polly Berry
Encyclopedia
Polly Berry, also known as Polly Crockett and Polly Wash (b. ca. 1818 – d. ca. 1870–1880), was an enslaved African American
woman who on October 3, 1839 filed a freedom suit in St. Louis, Missouri
, which she won in 1843 based on having been held illegally as a slave for an extended period of time in the free state of Illinois. In 1842 Berry sued for the freedom of her daughter Lucy Ann Berry
, based on partus (the child is born into the status of the mother), which she won in 1844 in a case argued by Edward Bates
, the future US Attorney General under President Abraham Lincoln
.
Polly Berry's life is primarily known through her daughter's memoir, From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom, the only first-person account of a freedom suit. The daughter published her slave narrative
in 1891 under her married name of Lucy Delaney
. In the 1990s, the case files of these two suits were among more than 300 freedom suits discovered among nineteenth-century Circuit Court records in St. Louis. They provide some facts different from Delaney's account. The Missouri History Museum's Library and Research Center has created a searchable online database of the freedom suit files.
by Joseph Crockett. When she was about fourteen, he migrated west and took her with him to Illinois
, where they stayed for several weeks, despite its being a free state. Illinois as a free state held that slaveholders who brought slaves into the state for extended periods forfeited their rights to their "property," and the slaves became legally free. During that time, Crockett hired out Polly for domestic servant tasks, and she was known as Polly Crockett. Next he took her up the Missouri River for about five years.
Polly was sold to a Major Taylor Berry in St. Louis, Missouri
. She married one of his slaves, said to be a mulatto
, and they had two daughters, Nancy and Lucy Ann Berry
. (Much of this information came initially from Lucy Ann's memoir From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom (1891), whose version of her mother's life was that she was born free, kidnapped and sold into slavery.)
Following the Major's death, his widow Fanny Berry married Robert Wash, one of three Missouri State Supreme Court justices. Fanny Wash died a few years later. Despite the provisions of Major Berry's will to free the slaves after his and his wife's deaths, Fanny's widower Robert Wash sold Polly's husband to a plantation
in the Deep South
. The Berry daughters reclaimed Polly Berry (also called Polly Wash at the time, in reference to her master's name) and her daughters from Wash.
Polly Berry prepared her daughters for escape. While Nancy Berry was accompanying Mary Berry Coxe and her new husband on their honeymoon to Niagara Falls
, she fled successfully across the river by ferry to Canada
, which had abolished slavery. There she first stayed with a friend of her mother's and settled in Toronto
, where she married and had her own family in freedom.
The mother Polly Berry escaped in 1839, after being sold to Joseph M. Magehan, a lumberman, because of conflict with Mary Berry Coxe. She traveled as far as Chicago
before being captured by slave catchers under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793
. They returned her to St. Louis and her master Magehan. She resolved to protect her daughter Lucy Ann, who was only 12 years old.
Once returned, Berry/Wash filed a freedom suit in the St. Louis Circuit Court on October 3, 1839, on the basis that she had been illegally held as a slave in Illinois (Polly Wash v. Joseph M. Magehan). Her attorney was Harris Sprout. It was not until 1843 that her case was tried, but she successfully proved her case in court. While the case was pending, Wash was hired out as a laundress to earn money against her upkeep. Delaney's memoir suggests that Wash's attorneys proposed the strategy of filing separate suits for her and her daughter, to prevent a jury's worrying about taking too much property from one slaveholder.
Martha Berry Mitchell, another of the married daughters of the late Major Berry, claimed the slave girl Lucy Ann Berry as a domestic servant. Angered over the girl's lack of skills with laundry, Mitchell got into a physical confrontation with her, which Lucy Ann resisted. Martha and her husband David D. Mitchell decided to sell the young slave downriver. (Mitchell was the US regional superintendent for Indian Affairs.) Before being shipped away, Lucy Ann escaped to the house of a friend of her mother.
Polly Berry (then known as Polly Wash) immediately filed suit on September 8, 1842 as a "next friend" of her daughter against David D. Mitchell. Because her own case had not yet been tried, Wash as a slave had no individual legal standing, but the law allowed her to file a suit on behalf of her minor daughter. According to the doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem, which assigned the status of children according to that of the mother, since Lucy Ann was born to a woman considered free at the time in Illinois, she should also have been free. The young slave was remanded to jail, where she was held for 17 months rather than being hired out, as was customary. Wash's attorneys were successful in ensuring that Lucy Ann Berry was kept in St. Louis, but it appeared Mitchell enforced her imprisonment. Usually enslaved prisoners were hired out, with the wages given to the owner.
On June 6, 1843, Polly Wash was declared a free woman by an all-white jury, on the basis of witnesses who testified she had been held as a slave in Illinois, where the law ruled slaveholders' forfeited their rights to slaves if they stayed in the state. This precedent of "once free, always free" had been set in the 1824 case of Winny v. Whitesides. Because Polly Wash had filed a separate case for her daughter, the case had to be heard.
Lucy Ann's case was not heard until February 7 and 8, 1844. Her attorneys argued that Lucy Berry's freedom was based on her birth to a woman who had been proven to be free based on having been held illegally in Illinois. Francis Butter Murdoch, former district attorney for Alton, Illinois
, prepared the case. (He had prosecuted the murder of Elijah Lovejoy in Alton by anti-abolitionists.)
Wash also gained the aid of prominent Whig
politician and judge Edward Bates
. Although a slaveholder, he argued the case in court. He would become US Attorney General
under president Abraham Lincoln
. Murdoch handled numerous "freedom suits" in St. Louis. With Wash's case settled by the principle of "once free, always free," Bates was able to convince the jury that her daughter Lucy Ann Berry should be considered free as well. As the scholar Eric Gardner writes, "To Bates--as to the majority of the Missouri Supreme Court for several years--such a principle actually depended on recognizing and allowing legal slavery: if an individual African American was not "once free"--through birth to a free mother, residence, manumission, or other circumstances carefully specified in state law--then she or he had no legal right to demand freedom. This syllogism, of course, explains why Bates could be a slaveholder and still support Lucy [Berry] Delaney; this premise is why, he argues by extension, the jury could do the same."
The record of the decision said, "it is therefore considered by the Court that said Plaintiff be liberated and entirely set free from the Defendant and from all persons claiming by, through, or under him by title derived since the commencement of this suit." Lucy Ann was 14 years old. Her and her mother's cases were two of 301 freedom suits
filed in St. Louis Circuit Court from 1814-1860, for which records were discovered in the 1990s.
Wash filed a second suit on behalf of her daughter, for $1000 in damages against David D. Mitchell for false imprisonment. This case was not known until the discovery of Circuit Court records in the 1990s, as Delaney did not address it in her memoir. By this suit, Wash and Murdoch may have been trying to preclude Mitchell from appealing the court's decision, in addition to seeking reparations. The suit was later dropped without trial.
More than 45 years later, after a life of civic activism, in 1891 Lucy Ann Berry Delaney (then married) published her memoir From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom. The only first-person account of a freedom suit, the slave narrative was devoted mostly to recounting her mother's struggle for their freedom from slavery. Delaney dedicated the book to the Grand Army of the Republic
, which had secured the freedom of slaves throughout the South in its victory in the American Civil War
. She described her adult life and full participation in religious and civic organizations.
It was not until the 1990s that the Wash and Berry case files were discovered among 301 freedom suits filed in St. Louis dating from 1814 to 1860. Some suits had been filed against the leading families of St. Louis, such as Chouteau, Cabanné
, Sarpy
and Papin
, who were slaveholders before and after the Louisiana Purchase
. Under the St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project, the case files are available to scholars for research, and a searchable database is online.
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
woman who on October 3, 1839 filed a freedom suit in St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
, which she won in 1843 based on having been held illegally as a slave for an extended period of time in the free state of Illinois. In 1842 Berry sued for the freedom of her daughter Lucy Ann Berry
Lucy Delaney
Lucy Ann Delaney, born Lucy Berry , was an African-American author, former slave, and activist, notable for her 1891 narrative From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom...
, based on partus (the child is born into the status of the mother), which she won in 1844 in a case argued by Edward Bates
Edward Bates
Edward Bates was a U.S. lawyer and statesman. He served as United States Attorney General under Abraham Lincoln from 1861 to 1864...
, the future US Attorney General under President Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
.
Polly Berry's life is primarily known through her daughter's memoir, From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom, the only first-person account of a freedom suit. The daughter published her slave narrative
Slave narrative
The slave narrative is a literary form which grew out of the written accounts of enslaved Africans in Britain and its colonies, including the later United States, Canada and Caribbean nations...
in 1891 under her married name of Lucy Delaney
Lucy Delaney
Lucy Ann Delaney, born Lucy Berry , was an African-American author, former slave, and activist, notable for her 1891 narrative From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom...
. In the 1990s, the case files of these two suits were among more than 300 freedom suits discovered among nineteenth-century Circuit Court records in St. Louis. They provide some facts different from Delaney's account. The Missouri History Museum's Library and Research Center has created a searchable online database of the freedom suit files.
Biography
In her 1839 case, Polly deposed that she was held as a child in slavery in Wayne County, KentuckyWayne County, Kentucky
Wayne County is a county located in the U.S. state of Kentucky. As of 2000, the population was 19,923. Its county seat is Monticello. The county was named for Gen. Anthony Wayne. It is a prohibition or dry county.-History:...
by Joseph Crockett. When she was about fourteen, he migrated west and took her with him to Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, where they stayed for several weeks, despite its being a free state. Illinois as a free state held that slaveholders who brought slaves into the state for extended periods forfeited their rights to their "property," and the slaves became legally free. During that time, Crockett hired out Polly for domestic servant tasks, and she was known as Polly Crockett. Next he took her up the Missouri River for about five years.
Polly was sold to a Major Taylor Berry in St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
. She married one of his slaves, said to be a mulatto
Mulatto
Mulatto denotes a person with one white parent and one black parent, or more broadly, a person of mixed black and white ancestry. Contemporary usage of the term varies greatly, and the broader sense of the term makes its application rather subjective, as not all people of mixed white and black...
, and they had two daughters, Nancy and Lucy Ann Berry
Lucy Delaney
Lucy Ann Delaney, born Lucy Berry , was an African-American author, former slave, and activist, notable for her 1891 narrative From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom...
. (Much of this information came initially from Lucy Ann's memoir From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom (1891), whose version of her mother's life was that she was born free, kidnapped and sold into slavery.)
Following the Major's death, his widow Fanny Berry married Robert Wash, one of three Missouri State Supreme Court justices. Fanny Wash died a few years later. Despite the provisions of Major Berry's will to free the slaves after his and his wife's deaths, Fanny's widower Robert Wash sold Polly's husband to a plantation
Plantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...
in the Deep South
Deep South
The Deep South is a descriptive category of the cultural and geographic subregions in the American South. Historically, it is differentiated from the "Upper South" as being the states which were most dependent on plantation type agriculture during the pre-Civil War period...
. The Berry daughters reclaimed Polly Berry (also called Polly Wash at the time, in reference to her master's name) and her daughters from Wash.
Polly Berry prepared her daughters for escape. While Nancy Berry was accompanying Mary Berry Coxe and her new husband on their honeymoon to Niagara Falls
Niagara Falls
The Niagara Falls, located on the Niagara River draining Lake Erie into Lake Ontario, is the collective name for the Horseshoe Falls and the adjacent American Falls along with the comparatively small Bridal Veil Falls, which combined form the highest flow rate of any waterfalls in the world and has...
, she fled successfully across the river by ferry to Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, which had abolished slavery. There she first stayed with a friend of her mother's and settled in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, where she married and had her own family in freedom.
The mother Polly Berry escaped in 1839, after being sold to Joseph M. Magehan, a lumberman, because of conflict with Mary Berry Coxe. She traveled as far as Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
before being captured by slave catchers under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793
Fugitive Slave Act of 1793
The Fugitive Slave Clause of the U.S. Constitution guaranteed the right of a slaveholder to recover an escaped slave...
. They returned her to St. Louis and her master Magehan. She resolved to protect her daughter Lucy Ann, who was only 12 years old.
Once returned, Berry/Wash filed a freedom suit in the St. Louis Circuit Court on October 3, 1839, on the basis that she had been illegally held as a slave in Illinois (Polly Wash v. Joseph M. Magehan). Her attorney was Harris Sprout. It was not until 1843 that her case was tried, but she successfully proved her case in court. While the case was pending, Wash was hired out as a laundress to earn money against her upkeep. Delaney's memoir suggests that Wash's attorneys proposed the strategy of filing separate suits for her and her daughter, to prevent a jury's worrying about taking too much property from one slaveholder.
Martha Berry Mitchell, another of the married daughters of the late Major Berry, claimed the slave girl Lucy Ann Berry as a domestic servant. Angered over the girl's lack of skills with laundry, Mitchell got into a physical confrontation with her, which Lucy Ann resisted. Martha and her husband David D. Mitchell decided to sell the young slave downriver. (Mitchell was the US regional superintendent for Indian Affairs.) Before being shipped away, Lucy Ann escaped to the house of a friend of her mother.
Polly Berry (then known as Polly Wash) immediately filed suit on September 8, 1842 as a "next friend" of her daughter against David D. Mitchell. Because her own case had not yet been tried, Wash as a slave had no individual legal standing, but the law allowed her to file a suit on behalf of her minor daughter. According to the doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem, which assigned the status of children according to that of the mother, since Lucy Ann was born to a woman considered free at the time in Illinois, she should also have been free. The young slave was remanded to jail, where she was held for 17 months rather than being hired out, as was customary. Wash's attorneys were successful in ensuring that Lucy Ann Berry was kept in St. Louis, but it appeared Mitchell enforced her imprisonment. Usually enslaved prisoners were hired out, with the wages given to the owner.
On June 6, 1843, Polly Wash was declared a free woman by an all-white jury, on the basis of witnesses who testified she had been held as a slave in Illinois, where the law ruled slaveholders' forfeited their rights to slaves if they stayed in the state. This precedent of "once free, always free" had been set in the 1824 case of Winny v. Whitesides. Because Polly Wash had filed a separate case for her daughter, the case had to be heard.
Lucy Ann's case was not heard until February 7 and 8, 1844. Her attorneys argued that Lucy Berry's freedom was based on her birth to a woman who had been proven to be free based on having been held illegally in Illinois. Francis Butter Murdoch, former district attorney for Alton, Illinois
Alton, Illinois
Alton is a city on the Mississippi River in Madison County, Illinois, United States, about north of St. Louis, Missouri. The population was 27,865 at the 2010 census. It is a part of the Metro-East region of the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area in Southern Illinois...
, prepared the case. (He had prosecuted the murder of Elijah Lovejoy in Alton by anti-abolitionists.)
Wash also gained the aid of prominent Whig
Whig Party (United States)
The Whig Party was a political party of the United States during the era of Jacksonian democracy. Considered integral to the Second Party System and operating from the early 1830s to the mid-1850s, the party was formed in opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson and his Democratic...
politician and judge Edward Bates
Edward Bates
Edward Bates was a U.S. lawyer and statesman. He served as United States Attorney General under Abraham Lincoln from 1861 to 1864...
. Although a slaveholder, he argued the case in court. He would become US Attorney General
United States Attorney General
The United States Attorney General is the head of the United States Department of Justice concerned with legal affairs and is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States government. The attorney general is considered to be the chief lawyer of the U.S. government...
under president Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
. Murdoch handled numerous "freedom suits" in St. Louis. With Wash's case settled by the principle of "once free, always free," Bates was able to convince the jury that her daughter Lucy Ann Berry should be considered free as well. As the scholar Eric Gardner writes, "To Bates--as to the majority of the Missouri Supreme Court for several years--such a principle actually depended on recognizing and allowing legal slavery: if an individual African American was not "once free"--through birth to a free mother, residence, manumission, or other circumstances carefully specified in state law--then she or he had no legal right to demand freedom. This syllogism, of course, explains why Bates could be a slaveholder and still support Lucy [Berry] Delaney; this premise is why, he argues by extension, the jury could do the same."
The record of the decision said, "it is therefore considered by the Court that said Plaintiff be liberated and entirely set free from the Defendant and from all persons claiming by, through, or under him by title derived since the commencement of this suit." Lucy Ann was 14 years old. Her and her mother's cases were two of 301 freedom suits
Freedom suits
Freedom suits were legal petitions filed by slaves for freedom in the United States and its territories before the American Civil War, including during the colonial period. Most were filed during the nineteenth century. After the American Revolution, most northern states had abolished slavery, and...
filed in St. Louis Circuit Court from 1814-1860, for which records were discovered in the 1990s.
Wash filed a second suit on behalf of her daughter, for $1000 in damages against David D. Mitchell for false imprisonment. This case was not known until the discovery of Circuit Court records in the 1990s, as Delaney did not address it in her memoir. By this suit, Wash and Murdoch may have been trying to preclude Mitchell from appealing the court's decision, in addition to seeking reparations. The suit was later dropped without trial.
Lives in freedom
Polly Berry lived with her daughter Lucy Ann for the rest of her life. At first they worked together as seamstresses. Polly Berry managed to visit her daughter Nancy and grandchildren in Toronto in 1845, and the younger woman offered to settle her there. Berry chose to return to Lucy Ann and her familiar St. Louis roots. She died without seeing her husband again.More than 45 years later, after a life of civic activism, in 1891 Lucy Ann Berry Delaney (then married) published her memoir From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom. The only first-person account of a freedom suit, the slave narrative was devoted mostly to recounting her mother's struggle for their freedom from slavery. Delaney dedicated the book to the Grand Army of the Republic
Grand Army of the Republic
The Grand Army of the Republic was a fraternal organization composed of veterans of the Union Army, US Navy, US Marines and US Revenue Cutter Service who served in the American Civil War. Founded in 1866 in Decatur, Illinois, it was dissolved in 1956 when its last member died...
, which had secured the freedom of slaves throughout the South in its victory in the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
. She described her adult life and full participation in religious and civic organizations.
It was not until the 1990s that the Wash and Berry case files were discovered among 301 freedom suits filed in St. Louis dating from 1814 to 1860. Some suits had been filed against the leading families of St. Louis, such as Chouteau, Cabanné
Cabanne's Trading Post
Cabanne's Trading Post was established in 1822 by the American Fur Company as Fort Robidoux near present-day Dodge Park in North Omaha, Nebraska. It was named for influential fur trapper Joseph Robidoux...
, Sarpy
Peter A. Sarpy
Peter Abadie Sarpy was the owner and operator of several fur trading posts, essential to the European-American development of the Nebraska Territory, and a thriving ferry business. A prominent businessman, he helped lay out the towns of Bellevue and Decatur, Nebraska...
and Papin
Papin
Papin is a surname, and may refer to:* Christine Papin , French murderer* Denis Papin , French physicist, mathematician and inventor* Jean-Pierre Papin , French former football player...
, who were slaveholders before and after the Louisiana Purchase
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition by the United States of America of of France's claim to the territory of Louisiana in 1803. The U.S...
. Under the St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project, the case files are available to scholars for research, and a searchable database is online.
See also
- Elizabeth Key GrinsteadElizabeth Key GrinsteadElizabeth Key Grinstead was the first woman of African ancestry in the North American colonies to sue for her freedom from slavery and win. Elizabeth Key won her freedom and that of her infant son John Grinstead on July 21, 1656 in the colony of Virginia. She sued based on the fact that her...
- Marguerite (woman of color)Marguerite (woman of color)Marguerite Scypion, also known in court files as Marguerite , was an African-Natchez woman, born into slavery in Saint Louis, Missouri Territory. She was held first by Joseph Tayon and later by Jean Pierre Chouteau, one of the most powerful men in the city...
- Charlotte DupuyCharlotte DupuyCharlotte Dupuy, also called Lottie Charlotte Dupuy was still living in 1860. She and her husband Aaron were listed by name as free persons in the 1860 Census for Fayette County, Kentucky. They were respectively 70 and 76 years old...
- Dred ScottDred ScottDred Scott , was an African-American slave in the United States who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom and that of his wife and their two daughters in the Dred Scott v...
External links
- "Freedom Suits", St. Louis Circuit Court Records, Missouri Historical Society (St. Louis, MO), searchable online database of cases
- "Freedom Suits", African-American Life in St. Louis, 1804-1865, from the Records of the St. Louis Courts, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, National Park Service