Tag: Ephraim H. Foster

Sally Thomas  (1787 – 1850)

by James A. Hoobler.

On to Liberty (Theodore Kaufmann, 1867; Metropolitan Museum of Art) 

Born into slavery in Charlottesville, Virginia, Sally Thomas, the slave of Charles Thomas, bore two sons to John, her owner’s brother – John, born in 1808, and Henry, born a year later. Around 1817 Sally and her children were sent over 550 miles to Thomas family land near Nashville. Here her owner allowed her to take in laundry if she gave him some of the profits. Ceding control over her, he made her a “quasi-slave,” who could rent her own house, move about freely, buy, sell, and negotiate her own business contracts. Although in time her owner even stopped requiring her to share her earnings with him, Sally was still legally considered his property.

Justice John C. Catron (portrait by Chester Harding, Tennessee Portrait Project/TSLA)

 In 1827 attorney John C. Catron fathered Sally’s third son, James P. Thomas. Sally and her children lived then at the corner of Cherry (4th Avenue) and Deaderick Streets, a block from the Davidson County Courthouse.  There she ran her laundry business, saving money to purchase the freedom of her children. Sally’s oldest son, John, worked for a Nashville barge captain, even taking his last name. Captain Rapier, who had taught John to read and write, saved his own money to free John, and in 1829 his executors obtained permission from the Alabama General Assembly to use estate funds to purchase John’s freedom. 

In 1834 Sally learned that she, Henry, and James were being returned to Virginia to settle her owner’s estate. Fearing they would be sold separately, she urged Henry to escape. Hiding by day, avoiding farms where he might be spotted, Henry fled north to Louisville, Kentucky, only to be caught and jailed. Still chained, he miraculously escaped the first night in a stolen boat. Surviving a plunge over the Falls of The Ohio, he crossed into Indiana, where a sympathetic individual removed his chains. Henry eventually arrived in Buffalo, New York, where he worked as a barber; he later moved to Canada.  

Meanwhile, to keep James from being sold away from her, Sally persuaded attorney Ephraim Hubbard Foster to help her buy the child from John Martin, the Thomas relative who owned him. Martin wanted $400 for the seven-year-old, but Sally had saved only $350. Foster agreed to lend her the other $50 and arranged the sale with Martin. Although Sally soon paid off her debt to Ephraim Foster and personally held James’s bill of sale and “free papers,” under Tennessee law James was still considered Foster’s slave. Since the 1834 state Constitution required free blacks to leave Tennessee immediately or return to slavery, James had to appear to be someone’s property in order to remain in Nashville.

Senator Ephraim H. Foster (portrait by Washington B. Cooper, Tennessee Portrait Project / Cheekwood Museum of Art)

Sally purchased her own freedom with the assistance of Godfrey M. Fogg (nephew of educator Francis B. Fogg, and law partner of Ephraim Foster), who loaned her part of the money. Deeds in the Davidson County Courthouse list Sally as the property of G. M. Fogg, and James as the property of Ephraim Foster – legally Sally and James would remain slaves until the courts ruled them free and permitted them to remain in Tennessee as free persons. Regrettably, Sally died in 1850, before such a ruling was made. James, now running a barbershop in the house Sally had rented at Deaderick and Cherry, purchased a grave site for her in City Cemetery, erecting a tombstone inscribed, “Sally Thomas 1787-1850.”  On March 6, 1851, Ephraim Foster petitioned the Davidson County Court to allow him to free James. The court found in favor of the petition, Foster posted a bond, and James was free. James’s own petition to be permitted to remain in Nashville was also approved, with the posting of a good character bond. Ironically, James was the natural son of Tennessee’s Chief Justice, John C. Catron, whom Andrew Jackson had appointed to the U. S. Supreme Court during his last days in office, when the court was expanded to nine members. Thus Catron’s Dred Scott ruling that African Americans were property and had no citizenship rights applied to his own son.  (2009)

Dedication ceremony for new Sally Thomas grave marker, 2009

Sally Thomas died during Nashville’s 1850 cholera epidemic. In 1908 her tombstone could still be found, but by 2005 it was no longer standing. In 2009 a replacement tombstone for Sally Thomas was dedicated in a well-attended ceremony at City Cemetery.

Previously published in Monuments & Milestones, the Nashville City Cemetery newsletter.

The story of the Thomas-Rapier family is the subject of the book In Search of the Promised Land: A Slave Family in the Old South by John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger (Oxford University Press, 2005).

University of Nashville in the DAB

by Mike Slate.

The Dictionary of American Biography, an esteemed multi-volume reference work, contains essays on individuals who died before 1981. One portion of its master index lists the subjects of the biographies by the college or university they attended. Under “University of Nashville” are seventeen names: William Barksdale, John Bell, Jacob McGavock Dickinson, Andrew Jackson Donelson, Tolbert Fanning, Ephraim Hubbard Foster, Henry Hitchcock, Cave Johnson, John Berrien Lindsley, George Earle Maney, Robert Paine, Gideon Johnson Pillow, James Davis Porter, Wickliffe Rose, William Walker, John Anthony Winston, and William Yerger.

Lindsley Hall, the main classroom building of the University of Nashville, still stands near the Howard Municipal Office Building at 2nd and Lindsley.

Of these seventeen, ten are also featured in The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History & Culture, and we refer the reader to that volume for their biographies. Here we offer introductions to the remaining seven, not only to highlight their lives but also to illustrate the extensive influence of the University of Nashville.

William Barksdale (1821-1863), born in Rutherford County, Tennessee, attended the University of Nashville and studied law in Columbus, Mississippi. He became editor of the Columbus Democrat before serving in the U.S. Congress from 1853-1861. An advocate of slavery, Barksdale rose to the rank of brigadier-general during the Civil War. He died of wounds received at the Battle of Gettysburg.

Jacob McGavock Dickinson (1851-1928) was born in Columbus, Mississippi, but moved to Nashville and became one of the city’s most accomplished citizens. From the University of Nashville he received the A.B. degree in 1871 and the A.M. the following year. A well-known lawyer and judge, Dickinson served as president of the American Bar Association from 1907-1908. His appointment as Secretary of War under long-time friend William Taft is another of his many achievements. An interesting fact not mentioned in the DAB (but noted by Margaret Lindsley Warden in Nashville: A Family Town) is that at various times Dickinson was the owner of three of Nashville’s historic estates: Ensworth, Polk Place, and Belle Meade.

Henry Hitchcock (1829-1902), an Alabama native, graduated from the University of Nashville in 1846 and from Yale in 1848. He was pro-Union and served under Sherman during that General’s march to the sea. A scholarly jurist and able speaker, Hitchcock organized the law school of Washington University in St. Louis and was its first dean. Like Dickinson, he served as president of the American Bar Association (1889-1890).

Born in Franklin, Tennessee, George Earl Maney (1826-1901) graduated from the University of Nashville a year before Hitchcock but, as a Confederate brigadier-general, fought against Sherman in the Atlanta Campaign. After the War, Maney became president of the Tennessee & Pacific Railroad and was elected to the state legislature. From 1881 to 1894 he served as a diplomat in South America.

In 1814 Robert Paine (1799-1882) moved from North Carolina to Giles County, Tennessee. The DAB reports that he was “ready to enter the sophomore class of Cumberland College [a forerunner of the University of Nashville]” when a religious experience moved him to preach. In 1846, after serving for sixteen years as president of LaGrange College in Alabama, he was elected Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and moved to Aberdeen, Mississippi. He is the author of Life and Times of William McKendree.

John Anthony Winston (1812-1871), born in Madison County, Alabama, “spent some time at Cumberland College” in Nashville and became a successful planter, owning plantations in four Southern states. He was governor of Alabama (1853-1857), and, after the Civil War, was elected to the U.S. Senate. An ardent Confederate, he was denied his Senate seat after refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the United States.

William Yerger (1816-1872), born in Lebanon, Tennessee, graduated from the University of Nashville in 1833. He moved to Jackson, Mississippi, where he developed one of the largest law practices in the state. Although he opposed secession, Yerger was elected to the state legislature and remained in that office throughout the War. At war’s end, he was instrumental in bringing Mississippi back into the Union.

The seventeen DAB articles on men who attended the University of Nashville reinforce the importance of that institution in our city’s history. In addition, Nashville-related entries in standard reference works remind us that our history often ceases to be only “local” and becomes national or even international in significance.