She listened, stunned, as he told her about her great-great-grandfather, Cornelius Hawkins, who had labored on a plantation just a few miles from where she grew up. [7] In 1830, the new Superior General, Jan Roothaan, returned Kenney to the United States, specifically to address the question of whether the Jesuits should divest themselves of their rural plantations altogether, which by this time had almost completely paid down their debt. The university created the liturgy in partnership with members of the descendant community, the Archdiocese of Washington and the Society of Jesus in the United States. We encourage you to share the site on social media. He has contacted a few, including Patricia Bayonne-Johnson, president of the Eastern Washington Genealogical Society in Spokane, who is helping to track the Jesuit slaves with her group. [17], Mulledy and McSherry became increasingly vocal in their opposition to Jesuit slave ownership. Twenty-seven years earlier, a document dated June 19, 1838, showed that Maryland Jesuit priests sold 272 slaves to the owners of Louisiana plantations. She runs a nonprofit, Dialogue on Race Louisiana, that offers educational programs on institutional racism and ways to combat it. Cardinal McElroy responds to his critics on sexual sin, the Eucharist, and LGBT and divorced/remarried Catholics, Worried you retired too early? ", What We Know: Report to the President of The College of The Holy Cross 2016, "Historical Timeline: Events Affecting the GU272 from the 1838 Sale to the Present", "Bill of Sale from the Heirs of Jesse Batey to Washington Barrow, January 18, 1853", "Bill of Sale for Land and People from Washington Barrow to William Patrick and Joseph B. Woolfolk, February 4, 1856", "Bill of Sale for Land and 138 People from William Patrick and Joseph Woolfolk to Emily Sparks, Widow of Austin Woolfolk, July 16, 1859", "Henry Johnson's Sales of Enslaved Persons, 18441851", Report of the Working Group on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation 2016, "University Requests Change in Use for Ryan Hall and Mulledy Hall", "Renovation of Former Jesuit Residence Beginning May 19", "Slavery's Remnants, Buried and Overlooked", "Georgetown University to rename two buildings that reflect school's ties to slavery", "Announcing the Working Group on Slavery, Memory & Reconciliation", "Concrete Expressions of Georgetown's Jesuit Heritage: A Photographic Sampler of Campus Buildings and the Jesuits for Whom They are Named From the University Archives", "Heeding Demands, University Renames Buildings", "Mulledy Name To Be Removed From BrooksMulledy Hall", "President's Response to Report of the Mulledy/Healy Legacy Committee", "Georgetown Apologizes, Renames Halls After Slaves", "Georgetown Apologizes for 1838 Sale of More Than 270 Enslaved, Dedicates Buildings", "Georgetown University Plans Steps to Atone for Slave Past", "For Georgetown, Jesuits and Slavery Descendants, Bid for Racial Healing Sours Over Reparations", "Georgetown Students Agree to Create Reparations Fund", "Catholic Order Pledges $100 Million to Atone for Slave Labor and Sales", "Saving Souls and Selling Them: Jesuit Slaveholding and the Georgetown Slavery Archive", "Foundation and First Administration of the Maryland Province, Part I: Background", "Catholic Slaveowners and the Development of Georgetown University's Slave Hiring System, 17921862", Report of the Working Group on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation to the President of Georgetown University, The Lost Jesuit Slaves of Maryland: Searching for 91 people left behind in 1838, What We Know: Report to the President of The College of The Holy Cross, Slavery, History, Memory, and Reconciliation Project, Video of Isaac Hawkins Hall dedication ceremony from C-SPAN, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1838_Jesuit_slave_sale&oldid=1141447737, This page was last edited on 25 February 2023, at 03:24. American Ancestors announced the new GU272 Memory Project website on June 19, the anniversary of Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when some American slaves learned they had been freed. Advertisement In Bayonne-Johnson's hands,. Corneliuss extended family was split, with his aunt Nelly and her daughters shipped to one plantation, and his uncle James and his wife and children sent to another, records show. They were looked on not as humans but as collateral and sold to secure the future of this great Catholic institution that hold such a place of honor to this day. [19] At the congregation, the senior Jesuits in Maryland voted six to four to proceed with a sale of the slaves,[20] and Dubuisson submitted to the Superior General a summary of the moral and financial arguments on either side of the debate. Dr. Rothman, the Georgetown historian, heard about Mr. Cellinis efforts and let him know that he and several of his students were also tracing the slaves. [16] Mulledy in particular felt that the plantations were a drain on the Maryland Jesuits; he urged selling the plantations as well as the slaves, believing the Jesuits were only able to support either their estates or their schools in growing urban areas: Georgetown College in Washington, D.C. and St. John's College in Frederick, Maryland. Share. The remainder of the slaves were accounted for in three subsequent bills of sale executed in November 1838, which specified that 64 would go to Batey's plantation named West Oak in Iberville Parish and 140 slaves would be sent to Johnson's two plantations,[27] Ascension Plantation (later known as Chatham Plantation) in Ascension Parish and another in Maringouin in Iberville Parish. Tweet. After the Jesuits vacated the buildings, Ryan and Mulledy Halls lay vacant, while Gervase Hall was put to other use. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/us/georgetown-university-search-for-slave-descendants.html. Alfred Francis Russell (1817-1884), 10th President of Liberia. Georgetown University was an active participant in the slave trade selling upwards of 272 slaves from their Maryland run plantation to the deep south in an effort to support the then struggling university in 1838 according to The New York Times. [39], While Roothaan ordered that the proceeds of the sale be used to provide for the training of Jesuits, the initial $25,000 was not used for that purpose. [5] In October of that year, Mulledy succeeded McSherry, who was dying, as provincial superior. Participants in this discussion are: Drew Gilpin Faust, President, Harvard University. He was allowed to continue paying well beyond the ten years initially allowed, and continued to do so until just before the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, during the Civil War. During this time, the Jesuits funded some of the most prestigious institutions of higher education in America in part through profits earned on their plantations. In 1844, Henry Johnson sold a share of Chatham and would eventually sell the remainder of his land and enslaved people to John R. Thompson in 1851. So Judy Riffel, one of the genealogists hired by Mr. Cellini, began following a chain of weddings and births, baptisms and burials. Our membership program offers special benefits to college students including: * Unlimited FREE Two-Day Shipping (with no minimum order size), * Exclusive deals and promotions for college students, Georgetown University confronts its history with slavery. A Reflection for Saturday of the First Week of Lent, by Christopher Parker. Moreover, men and women held in bondage were also part of the day-to-day operation of Georgetown College in its early decades. Now comes the task of making amends. James Van de Veldes. To see the posts, click here. Were sorry registration isn't working smoothly for you. Georgetown is not the only institution that has prospered on the backs of enslaved people. As part of Georgetown University's Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation initiative, students in Professor Adam Rothman's fall 2019 UNXD 272 class researched buildings and sites on Georgetown's campus to provide historical context for understanding their significance. Georgetown Reflects on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation Georgetown is engaged in a long-term and ongoing process to more deeply understand and respond to the university's role in the injustice of slavery and the legacies of enslavement and segregation in our nation. [32] An unknown number of slaves may also have run away and escaped transportation. The name had been passed down from generation to generation in her family. It was his Catholicism, born on the Jesuit plantations of his childhood, that would provide researchers with a road map to his descendants. Their panic and desperation would be mostly forgotten for more than a century. On June 19, 1838, the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus agreed to sell 272 slaves to two Louisiana planters, Henry Johnson and Jesse Batey, for $115,000 (equivalent to approximately $2.96 million in 2021). Several substitutions were made to the initial list of those to be sold, and 91 of those initially listed remained in Maryland. Mismanaged and inefficient, the Maryland plantations no longer offered a reliable source of income for Georgetown College, which had been founded in 1789. Georgetown is not the first or only university to own slaves. Other industries made loads of money indirectly. She feels great sadness as she envisions Cornelius as a young boy, torn from everything he knew. This coincided with a protest by a group of students against keeping Mulledy's and McSherry's names on the buildings the day before. New England ship builders made ships to bring people to this country. The institution came under fire last fall, with students demanding justice for the slaves in the 1838 sale. It lists the slaves by name according to plantation where they lived, identifies family groups, and records which ship (1, 2, or 3) they were shipped in. [29] The slaves Mulledy gathered were sent on the three-week voyage aboard the Katherine Jackson,[27] which departed Alexandria on November 13 and arrived in New Orleans on December 6. More than half were younger than 20, and nearly a third were not yet 10 years old. [64] Mulledy Hall, a student dormitory that opened in 1966,[65] was renamed as BrooksMulledy Hall in 2016, adding the name of a later president, John E. Brooks, who worked to racially integrate the college. Alfred "Teen" Blackburn (1842-1951), one of the last living survivors of slavery in the United States who had a clear recollection of it. Leave a message for others who see this profile. There is no indication that he received any response. While the plantations were initially worked by indentured servants, as the institution of indentured servitude began to fade away in Maryland, African slaves replaced indentured servants as the primary workers on the plantations. This resulted in families being split for economic reasons with no consideration of human relationships. But the revelations about her lineage and the church she grew up in have unleashed a swirl of emotions. Thomas F. Mulledy, president of Georgetown from 1829 to 1838, and again from 1845 to 1848, arranged the sale. The Jesuits used the proceeds to benefit then-Georgetown College. Your email address will not be published. The U.S. Department of State defines modern slavery as "the act of recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing, or obtaining a person for compelled . [49] There was periodic and sometimes extensive coverage of both the sale and the Jesuits' slave ownership in various literature. Georgetown is not the first or only university to own slaves. [24] He located two Louisiana planters who were willing to purchase the slaves: Henry Johnson, a former United States Senator and governor of Louisiana, and Jesse Batey. Slaves were often threatened with having family members sold away, splitting parents from even infants because of minor infractions as determined by the slave owner. While it would seem as if there would be some mention of this in history, it remained largely unknown. Now, for the first time, Ms. Crump understood its origins. people, women and others in the Catholic Church, Cardinal Cupich: Critics of Pope Francis Latin Mass restrictions should listen to JPII. [51] Other historians covered the subject in literature published between the 1980s and 2000s. ). James Van de Velde, a Jesuit who visited Louisiana, wrote in a letter in 1848. The two feared that because the public would not accept additional manumitted blacks, the Jesuits would be forced to sell their slaves en masse. Hundreds of Blacks were slaughtered and 10,000 left homeless in this largely unknown event. 51 slaves were to be sent to Alexandria, Virginia, then shipped to Louisiana. All of this was new to Ms. Crump, except for the name Cornelius or Neely, as Cornelius was known. The site includes a searchable database with genealogies of descendants who have died. Others, including two of Corneliuss uncles, ran away before they could be captured. Continue to scroll for fascinating Videos and Books to enhance your learning experience. The Jesuits decided that the elderly would not be sold south and instead would be permitted to remain in Maryland. Upon receipt of these 51, Johnson and Batey were to pay the first $25,000. In 1851, Thompson purchased the second half of Johnson's property, so that by the beginning of the Civil War, all the slaves sold by Mulledy to Johnson were owned by Thompson. ALL OF THE PEOPLE LISTED ON THIS PAGE HAVE PROFILES. But the 1838 slave sale organized by the Jesuits, who founded and ran Georgetown, stands out for its sheer size, historians say. But six years after he appeared in the census, and about three decades after the birth of his first child, he renewed his wedding vows with the blessing of a priest. The grave of Cornelius Hawkins, one of 272 slaves sold by the Jesuits in 1838 to help keep what is now Georgetown University afloat. The Society of Jesus, whose members are known as Jesuits, established its first presence in the Mid-Atlantic region of the Thirteen Colonies alongside the first settlers of the British Province of Maryland, which had been founded as a Catholic colony and refuge.
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