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‘Who is Sufficient For These Things?’ Sara G. Stanley and the American Missionary Association, 1864–1868

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Judith Weisenfeld
Judith Weisenfeld
Affiliation:
Ms. Weisenfeld is assistant professor of religion in Barnard College, Columbia University, New York City, New York.
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Extract

The literature dealing with those women and men who dedicated themselves to teaching the newly freed slaves in the South during Reconstruction has grown considerably in recent years. From W. E. B. DuBois's Black Reconstruction in America in 1935, with its positive depiction of the role of these teachers through Henry L.ee Swint's 1941 work, The Northern Teacher in the South, with its negative stereotype to more recent works, we now have a body of literature which has begun to examine this group in a more thorough and complex manner.1 The general stereotype which often appears in the literature is of the missionar teacher as a white woman from New England, fresh from the abolitionist movement. While it is true that many teachers fit into this category, there were also many African-American teachers and missionaries, both women and men.2 A good deal of the literature has dealt, at least briefly, with the ways in which African-American men functioned in the context of such organizations as the American Missionary Association (AMA). However, the experience of these men was different from that of African- American women, in part because these men were more likely to be givenadministrative positions in the organizations, either as principals, field agents, or supported missionaries. Most of the women, then, were more likely to remain “in the trenches” as teachers during their tenure with the missionary society.3

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 60 , Issue 4 , December 1991 , pp. 493 - 507
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1991

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References

1. Among the works in this growing field are DeBoer, Clara, “The Role of Afro-Americans in the Work of the American Missionary Association,” (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1973);Google ScholarMorris, Robert C., Reading, 'Ritrng and Reconstruction: the Education of Freedmen in the South, 1861–1970 (Chicago, 1976);Google ScholarJones, Jacquelin, Soldiers of Light and Love: Northern Teachers and Georgia Blacks, 1865–1873 (Chapel Hill, 1980);Google ScholarRichardson, Joe, Christian Reconstruction: The American Missionary Association and Southern Blacks, 1861–1890 (Atheêis, Ga., 1986)Google Scholar and Anderson, James D., The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill, 1988).CrossRefGoogle ScholarLawson's, Ellen NicKenzie excellent collection, The Three Sarahs: Documents ofAntebellum Black College Women (New York, 1984),Google Scholar introduced me to Sara Stanley's writings.

2. Clara DeBoer in “The role of Afro-Americans in the Work of the American Missionary Association,” States that of 467 blackworkers identified, 174 were women. The number of male workers is not necessarily the same as the number of male teachers. Some of those men included in her number were local or imported ministers whose church work was supported by the American Missionary Association. These ministers did not engage in teaching. DeBoer, p. 492.

3. See Morris, Reading, ch. 3, “The Black Teacher,” in which he primarily deals with African-American men, many of whom were school principles, AMA field agents, or AMA supported ministers.

4. Sara Stanley to American Missionary Association, 4 March 1864. American Missionary Association Archives, Amistad Research Center, Tulane University, New Orleans, La.

5. Thomas Tucker to George Whipple, 22 February 1864, AMA Archives.

6. Lockwood, Lewis C., Mary S. Peake: The Colored Teacherat Fortress Monroe (Boston, 1863).Google Scholar

7. Sara Stanley to George Whipple, 28 April 1864, AMA Archives.

8. Mary Burdick to George Whipple, 23 April 1864, AMA Archives.

9. William Coan to George Whipple, 12 June 1864, AMA Archives.

10. Monthly report of the Bute Street School, April 1864, AMA Archives.

11. This information comes from Mary Burdick's letters to George Whipple during 1864. AMA Archives.

12. Samuel Walker to Prof. Woodbury, 9 July 1864, AMA Archives. Apparently, Woodbury was visiting the home office in New York at the time and had left the mission to Coan.

13. Mary Reed to George Whipple, 18 July 1864, AMA Archives.

14. Sara Stanley to Prof. Woodbury, 21 July 1864, AMA Archives.

15. Sara Stanley to Prof. Woodbury, 29 July 1864, AMA Archives.

16. The list of qualifications to become an AMA teacher were: “A Missionary Sprint, Good Health, Energy, Culture and Common Sense, Good Personal Habits, Experience, Conquering of prejudice.” This last one was for the white teachers. The rules required that they do this or be dismissed. DeBoer, pp. 227–228.

17. Sara Stanley to George Whipple, 6 October 1864, AMA Archives.

18. Blanche Harris to the AMA, 23 January 1866, AMA Archives.

19. Blanche Harris to the AMA, 10 March 1866, AMA Archives.

20. Sterling, Dorothy, ed. We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Cenutry (New York, 1984), P. 277.Google Scholar

21. Richardson, , Christian Reconstructionism, p. 206.Google Scholar

22. Edmonia G. Highgate to George Whipple, 13 April 1865, quoted in Richardson, Christian Reconstructionism, p. 196.

23. Address of Edmonia G. Highgate to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, February 1870, quoted in Sterling, We are your Sisters, p.301.

24. George Whipple, who obviously admired and respected Stanley, and who she respected tremendously considered her too “haughty” from the start. Sara Stanley to George Whipple, 25 March 1865, AMA Archives.

25. Captain Brown to George Whipple, 8 January 1865. Brown was from the Quartermaster's Office for Negro Affairs in Norfolk.

26. Miss Gleason to George Whipple, 6 January 1865; Captain Brown to George Whipple, 6 January, 1865; Captain Brown to George Whipple, 8 January 1865. AMAArchives.

27. Sara Stanley to George Whipple, 25 March 1865, AMA Archives.

28. George Candee to S. S. Jocelyn, 26 April 1864.

29. Sara Stanley, Formal Report from St. Louis, May 1865. AMA Archives.

30. Ibid.

31. Sara Stanley to the AMA, 9 June 1865. AMA Archives.

32. Stanley, Sara, American Misszonary, 03 1867.Google Scholar

33. Sara Stanley to the AMA, 27 June 1865, 19 July 1865. AMA Archives.

34. Sara Stanley to the AMA, 10 July 1865; 1 August 1865. AMAArchives.

35. Sara Stanley, Formal Report from Louisville, Ky., March 1866. AMA Archives.

36. Ibid.; 7 June 1866. AMAArchives.

37. Sara Stanley, Formal Report from Louisville, Ky., 18 July 1866. AMA Archives.

38. Sara Stanley to the AMA, 7 June 1866. AMA Archives.

39. Stanley's health had begun to deteriorate during her work in St. Louis and continued to be taxed in Louisville. She might have been recovering and visiting her family during this period. Sara Stanley to the AMA, 19 July 1865; Formal Report, March 1866. AMA Archives.

40. Sara Stanley to the AMA, 6 April 1868; 2 May 1868. Jacob Shiperd to Mr. Putnam, 7 May 1868. AMA Archives.

41. Lawson, pp. 63–64. It appears that she taught in an AMA training school for black teachers for a short time.

42. Osthaus, Carl R., Freedmen, Philanthropy and Fraud: A History of the Freedman's Savings Bank (Chicago, 1976), p. 49.Google Scholar

43. Rev. Vass, L. C., History of the Presbyterian Church in New Bern North Carolina, (Richmond, VA, 1886), p. 73.Google Scholar

44. Another of John Wright Stanley's sons by a black woman, John P. Greene, became the first black legislator in Ohio. Lawson, p. 321.

45. Vass, , History, p. 135.Google Scholar

46. Franklin, John Hope, The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790–1860, (Chapel Hill, 1943), pp. 31–32.Google Scholar

47. Schweniger, Loren, “John Carruthers Stanly and the Anomaly of Black Slaveholding,” The North Carolina Historical Review 67 (04, 1990): 177, 182.Google Scholar The family name was originally spelled Stanly.

48. Vass, , History, p. 183Google Scholar and chart following p. 126.

49. Lawson, p. 48.

50. The 1830 census shows the family as owning 163 slaves. Schweninger, pp. 177, 187; 184–186.

51. For an account of the path of one family which had been owned by John C. Stanly, see Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, “Gender and Jim Crow: Sarah Dudley Pettey's North Carolina, 1876–1900,” North Carolina Historscal Review, forthcoming. Also see Lawson for information on the Hazle family of New Bern, pp. 46, 49, 309.

52. Lawson, pp.49–51.

53. AMA archives, Brown Co., Ohio, 14 November 1857; Sara Stanley to the AMA, 19 January 1864. AMA Archives.

54. Stanley, Sara G., “Address of the Ladies's AntiSlavery Society of Delaware, Ohio,” 1856 in Lawson, pp. 65–70.Google Scholar

55. See, for example, Lucy Stanton Day to the AMA, 21 May 1564. AMA Archives.

56. In addition to the “Address of the Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society,” there is also extant an essay which Stanley wrote for the the Weekly Anglo-African in April of 1862 on the poetry of John C. Whittier. In this issue of the paper, she, along with Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Mary Shadd Carry, was made an honorary member of a literary society of African-American men. See Lawson, p. 53, 70–79.

57. American Missionary Association Twentieth Annwil Report, 1866, p. 40.