Passing Strange (51 page)

90
Ibid., 128.

91
Ibid., 315.

92
Ibid., 282.

93
Ibid., 283.

94
Ibid.

95
Ibid., 114.

96
Ibid.

97
Adams,
Education,
313.

98
King,
Mountaineering,
228-29.

99
Ibid., 281.

100
“Clarence King’s ‘Mountaineering,’ ”
Scribner’s Monthly
4, no. 5 (Sept. 1872): 643.

101
Review,
Appletons’ Journal of Literature, Science and Art
7, no. 158 (Apr. 6, 1872): 388.

102
Howells, “Meetings with Clarence King,” in Hague,
Memoirs,
153, 155.

103
Goetzmann,
Exploration and Empire,
377; Wilkins,
King,
161n; Wallace Stegner,
Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1954), 243.

104
Henry Adams, “Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada,”
North American Review
114, no. 235 (Apr. 1872): 445.

105
King,
Mountaineering,
296.

106
This account of the diamond hoax comes from Wilkins,
King,
171-85, and Bartlett,
Great Surveys,
187-205. See also Robert Wilson,
The Explorer King: Adventure, Science, and the Great Diamond Hoax—Clarence King in the Old West
(New York: Scribner, 2006).

107
San Francisco Chronicle,
Nov. 28, 1872, cited in Bartlett,
Great Surveys,
203.

108
Nation
15 (Dec. 12, 1872): 380, cited in Wilkins,
King,
185.

109
CK to S. F. Emmons, 30 Jan. 1873, Clarence King Papers, APS.

110
Ibid., 1 Apr. 1873.

111
CK to JTG, 15 Feb. 1873, Gardiner Collection, NYSL.

112
CK to S. F. Emmons, 30 Jan. 1873, Clarence King Papers, APS.

113
On the details of this arrangement, see below (chapter 4) and “In Trust: The Fortune Which John H. Prentice Gave to His Dead Friend’s Family,”
Brooklyn Daily Eagle,
Jan. 10, 1882, 4; “Secret Trust,”
Brooklyn Daily Eagle,
Feb. 22, 1884, 4 ;
Van Cott v. Prentice and others.

114
CK to S. F. Emmons, 30 Jan. 1873, Clarence King Papers, APS. In 1873 King would have drawn a government salary of a minimum $3,850 per year. Clifford M. Nelson, e-mail communication to author, Sept. 12, 2007.

115
Bronson,
Reminiscences,
3.

 

CHAPTER 3: BECOMING ADA COPELAND

1
The earliest record of Ada Copeland’s own story of her origins can be found on the birth certificates of her children. See below, chapter 6.

2
In 1860 Georgia’s Troup and Harris counties, which encompass the West Point metropolitan area, together produced some 32,884 bales of cotton, each bale weighing 400 pounds. Troup County ranked as the state’s fourth wealthiest county and among the state’s top five slaveholding counties. See David Williams,
Rich Man’s War: Class, Caste, and Confederate Defeat in the Lower Chattahoochee Valley
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998), 206; Julie Turner et al.,
Travels through Troup County: A Guide to Its Architecture and History
(La Grange, GA: Troup County Historical Society, 1996), 10.

3
“Testimony of John M. Ward,”
Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee Appointed to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, Georgia,
vol. 2 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1872), 1085.

4
Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census,
Negro Population, 1790-1915
(Washington, DC: GPO, 1918), 57.

5
See the analysis of the 1860 census data in Williams,
Rich Man’s War,
198-208.

6
See Clarence L. Mohr,
On the Threshold of Freedom: Masters and Slaves in Civil War Georgia
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986), esp. 20-67.

7
Louise Calhoun Barfield,
History of Harris County, Georgia, 1827-1961
(Columbus, 1961), 292.

8
On the utility of the slave narratives as historical testimony, see Ira Berlin, “Slavery as Memory and History,” in
Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk about Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation,
ed. Ira Berlin et al. (New York: New Press, 1998), xiii-xxii; C. Vann Woodward, review of
The American Slave: A Composite Biography,
by George P. Rawick,
American Historical Review
79, no. 2 (Apr. 1974): 470-81; David Thomas Bailey, “A Divided Prism: Two Sources of Black Testimony on Slavery,”
Journal of Southern History
46, no. 3 (Aug. 1980): 381-404.

9
See “Dink Walton Young, interviewed August 1, 1936,” “Life Story as Told by Aunt Easter Jackson, Ex-Slave,” “Rias Body, Ex-Slave, interviewed July 24, 1936,” all accessible on “Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938,” a digitized resource available at the Library of Congress American Memory Web site,
http://memory.loc.gov
(accessed Aug. 10, 2005).

10
Ada King, Certificate of Death, 156-64-404943, City of New York, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

11
Kaye Minchew, director, Troup County Historical Society, e-mail communication to author, Sept. 22, 2004.

12
1850 U.S. Federal Census, Slave Schedule, Harris County, GA,
http://content.ancestrylibrary.com/iexec/?htx=View&r=5542&dbid=8055&iid=GAM432_91-0170
and
http://content.ancestrylibrary.com/Browse/view.aspx?dbid=
8055&path=Georgia.Harris .Dowdells.3 (accessed Aug. 13, 2007). The slaves seem to be residing on two separate tracts of land. A photograph of Copeland’s house is published in Barfield,
Harris County, Georgia,
611.

13
“Will of William Copeland Sr.,” Harris County, GA, WB 2:82, 17 July 1858/April Session 1859, Harris County Courthouse, Hamilton, GA. Citation courtesy of Lea Dowd, Cataula, GA.

14
1860 U.S. Federal Census, Slave Schedule, Harris County, GA,
http://content.ancestrylibrary.com
/iexec /?ht x=View& r=5542 & dbid =7668 & iid = GA M653_146-0456 & fn =Wm & ln = Cope land&st=d&ssrc=&pid=1368167 (accessed Aug. 13, 2007).

15
See advertisement placed by William Copeland, Jun., in the
Harris County Enterprise,
Jan. 9, 1862, 2.

16
See the entry for William Copeland, 1880 U.S. Federal Census, District No. 786, Harris County, GA, SD 4, ED 57, p. 22, and the adjacent pages of census records that document the black Copeland families living in the immediate vicinity. See also the entry for William Copeland, 1870 U.S. Federal Census, Hamilton Post Office, Harris County, GA, p. 250 (accessed on
Ancestry.com
).

17
“Inventory and Appraisement of Estate of Wm. Copeland . . . Recorded Georgia Harris County,” Harris County Courthouse, Hamilton, GA. Citation courtesy of Lea Dowd.

18
Brenda E. Stevenson,
Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 182.

19
For the correlation between monetary value and childbearing potential, see Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman,
Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), 76.

20
See the entries for Adaline Copeland and her family in the 1870 U.S. Federal Census, Hamilton Post Office, Harris County, GA, pp. 252-53.

21
See the entries for Scott and Adeline Copeland in the 1880 U.S. Federal Census, Valley Plains, District No. 786, Harris County, GA, SD 4, ED 57, p. 14.

22
Lea Dowd, personal communication to author, Aug. 7, 2005. For a not always accurate introduction to the local genealogies, see also Barfield,
Harris County, Georgia,
665-68.

23
Lea Dowd, “Descendants of Dock Copeland,” genealogical research report prepared for author, August 2005.

24
The records from the 1890 federal census are largely lost, an enormous loss for scholars of the American past. On the destruction of the 1890 census records, see Kellee Blake, “ ‘First in the Path of the Fireman’: The Fate of the 1890 Population Census, Part I,”
Prologue
28, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 64-81. Although it is widely reported that the records were completely destroyed by fire in 1921, Blake explains that many of the records, though heavily damaged, survived until 1934 and 1935, when they were destroyed as being of little use. Scott Copeland does not appear in the 1900 census. But the 1910 census records him as living in Militia District 726 in the White Sulphur Springs area of Meriwether County, Georgia, just north of the Harris County line on the road to Hamilton, and notes that he has been married to his present wife, Emily, since 1887 (see the records for 1910 U.S. Federal Census, White Sulphur Springs, Meriwether County, GA, SD 4, ED 4, sheet 10). This would imply that his first wife, Adeline, disappeared from his life between the time of the summer 1880 census and the moment of his remarriage. Although she seems too old for the Ada Copeland of our story, these dates do correspond to the time at which Ada left Georgia and moved to Manhattan:
http://content.gale.ancestry.com
/ Browse /view.aspx?dbid =7884 & path = Georgia.Meriwether.W hite +Sulphur+Springs.84 .20&rc=&zp=50 (accessed Aug. 13, 2007).

25
“The Price of Negroes,”
Harris County Enterprise,
Jan. 9, 1862, 1.

26
Mohr,
Threshold of Freedom,
212.

27
Williams,
Rich Man’s War,
20, 151-67; Mohr,
Threshold of Freedom,
210-32.

28
See, for example, the ads in the
La Grange Reporter,
Mar. 3, 1865.

29
See Eleanor Davis Scott and Carl Summers Jr., eds.,
The Battle of West Point, April 16, 1865
(Chattahoochee Valley Historical Society, publication no. 20, 1997).

30
“Excitement in Harris County” [from the
Columbus Enquirer
],
La Grange Reporter,
Dec. 8, 1865, 2.

31
“Are the Freedmen Abused? ”
La Grange Reporter,
Feb. 16, 1866, 2.

32
Whitelaw Reid,
After the War: A Tour of the Southern States, 1865-1866,
ed. with an introduction and notes by C. Vann Woodward (1866; repr., New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965), 367-68.

33
Quondam [“our own correspondent from LaGrange,” Troup County, GA, Tuesday, June 4, 1867], “Affairs in Georgia,”
New York Times,
June 10, 1867, 8.

34
“Report of Freed-People murdered or assaulted with intent to kill, in the counties of Harris, Troup and Meriwether during the year 1867,” in “Freedmen’s Bureau Report of Outrages Committed against Freedmen in Georgia,”
http://freedmensbureau.com/georgia/gaoutrages2.htm
(accessed Aug. 13, 2007).

35
The Condition of Affairs in Georgia: Statement of Honorable Nelson Tift to the Reconstruction Committee of the House of Representatives, Washington, February 18, 1869
(repr., Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1971), 134.

36
Report of the Joint Select Committee Appointed to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States
(Washington, DC: GPO, 1872),
Alabama,
vol. 1, 70-77;
Alabama,
vol. 2, 1043-48, 1114-25.

37
“Testimony of V. J. Jones (colored),” in
Report of the Committee of the Senate upon the Relations between Labor and Capital,
vol. 4,
Testimony
(Washington, DC: GPO, 1885), 626.

38
Jacqueline Jones,
Soldiers of Light and Love: Northern Teachers and Georgia Blacks, 1865-1873
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 59 and appendix 1, 229.

39
Richard R. Wright,
A Brief Historical Sketch of Negro Education in Georgia
(Savannah: Robinson Printing House, 1894), 21.

40
“Testimony of Rev. E. P. Holmes (colored),” in
Relations between Labor and Capital,
4:609.

41
“Testimony of C. S. Giddens,” ibid., 4:651-52.

42
Department of Commerce,
Negro Population,
419, 426.

43
Jones,
Soldiers of Light,
62 ; Paul A. Cimbala,
Under the Guardianship of the Nation: The Freedmen’s Bureau and the Reconstruction of Georgia, 1865-1870
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997), 220.

44
“Testimony of W. H. Spencer (colored),”
Relations between Labor and Capital,
4:577.

45
Wright,
Brief Historical Sketch of Negro Education,
24.

46
Unsigned report, dated Augusta, GA, Oct. 8, 1868, in “Miscellaneous Lists and Memoranda,” in U.S. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Land, “Record of the Superintendent of Education for the State of Georgia, 1865-1872,” record group (hereafter RG) 105-M799, reel 28.

47
John D. Withum, “Teacher’s Monthly School Report, March 1868,” in U.S. Bureau of Refugees, “Record of the Superintendent of Education for Georgia, 1865-1872,” RG 105-M799, reel 21.

48
Daniel McGee, “Teacher’s Monthly School Report, Sept. 1868,” ibid., reel 22.

49
Fannie Neal, “Teacher’s Monthly School Report, Dec. 1869,” ibid., reel 24.

50
Eliza Brown, “Teacher’s Monthly School Report, Dec. 1869,” ibid., reel 24.

51
Clifford L. Smith,
History of Troup County
(Atlanta: Foote and Davies, 1933), 136.

52
James Weldon Johnson,
Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson
(1933; repr., New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 110-12.