A Slave Who Came to Grinnell...and Did Good!

Slavery is much in the news these days, especially since publication of the New York Times 1619 Project.  Historians, pundits, as well as politicians and legislators have voiced sometimes heated opinions about how central to the American economy and society slavery was.  Slaves could hardly have wondered about such things, their lives caught up in the regimen and violence of slavery. 

But if slavery took root in America 400 years ago, it disappeared as a legal institution in America only about 150 years ago. And those slaves who lived long enough to taste freedom saw open before them new vistas of which their enslaved ancestors could not have dreamt. Some of these emancipated slaves found their way to Grinnell. Some were well-known, like Ned Delaney (d. 1861), who had accompanied his Maryland former owners to Grinnell; some others, like Emma Morgan (d. 1872), shone briefly in the pioneer firmament, and then disappeared. But almost all these first Black residents of Grinnell had their first permanent experience of freedom in the new abolitionist stronghold on the prairie.

G. W. Stith (ca. 1896)
(Souvenir General Conference, Methodist Episcopal Church, Cleveland, Ohio, May 1896,  p. 73)

One of these men, George Washington Stith, came north with the Grinnell-area men who helped liberate him in the Civil War.  Altogether Stith spent only five years in the Grinnell area before returning to his Mississippi birthplace, and, so far as I know, he never returned to Grinnell. But Stith's later life shows the impact of the education and religious experience he had gained as part of that early contingent of African Americans who settled J. B. Grinnell's prairie dream. Today's post looks at the life of G. W. Stith, former slave and Reconstruction-era activist.

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G. W. —"George Washington"—Stith was born around 1847 in Warren County, Mississippi. Because he was born a slave, tracking his origins is not easy, but it seems likely that G. W. was a young boy on the Vicksburg-area plantation of Lawrence Washington Stith (1781-1868). The 1850 Schedule of Slave Inhabitants credits planter Stith with just five slaves (all unnamed), one of whom was said to be a five-year-old boy. Ten years later the planter claimed an even dozen slaves, one of whom was a boy thought to be about fifteen years old. Since these ages were only guesses, it seems likely that G. W., who, like many slaves, bore the surname of his master, is the boy recalled in both these schedules.

A Page of the 1860 US Slave Schedule for Warren County, Mississippi

Stith later told the U.S. Freedman's Bank that his father was Henry Stith, and his mother was Lucy; both were slaves, although Henry was born in Virginia (where planter Lawrence Stith was born) and Lucy in Mississippi (to which Lawrence Stith had moved in the early nineteenth century). G. W. had two brothers—Harry and Nathan—and four sisters (Gloria; Sophia; Virginia; and Julianna). In the pre-emancipation South probably the entire family belonged to Lawrence Stith.

Very little survives with which to fill in the details of G. W.'s life as a slave, but when the Civil War brought Union troops to Vicksburg, Mississippi, Stith's life took an abrupt turn. In one of the key campaigns of the Union Army, Vicksburg fell to General Grant in mid-1863. Union troops, who had been marching and fighting for weeks through much of Tennessee and Mississippi, no doubt came into contact with many slaves who took advantage of Union victories to escape slavery. George Washington Stith was one of those who found patrons among the Union Army. As he later testified to a Congressional Committee, the Union "soldiers took great interest in teaching me; and in 1864, when General Sherman returned off the raid up here, the volunteers went home, and I went with them, and remained there up to 1870" (Report of the Select Committee to Inquire into the Mississippi Election of 1875, 2 vols. [Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1876], 2: 1404). Stith told listeners that he had lived his whole life around Vicksburg, except for "six years while I was off to school in Iowa" (ibid., 1394).

Stith did not tell committee members exactly where in Iowa he had landed, but other records reveal that G. W. Stith arrived in Poweshiek County, settling into Chester Township, just northeast of Grinnell.  Records of the Chester Congregational Church document that Stith joined the membership of this church in 1866, shortly after the church was founded. A black man in a small, Iowa agricultural community in the 1860s had to have been rare. How did Stith end up in Chester Township?

Stith's military record indicates that he must not have left for Iowa in 1864 as he said, since he began service as a private with Company K of the 47th Regiment of U.S. Colored Infantry in January 1864 in Vicksburg; that spring, summer and fall he did duty as a teamster, again near Vicksburg. The following spring he traveled as far as Pensacola Florida, where he seems to have been ill for several weeks. Apparently from late summer until November 1865 he was back at work as a teamster, after which the army lost track of Stith, presumably because by then he was en route to Iowa. But how did he learn of Iowa and make his way to Chester Township?

1965 Booklet Recounting the History of the First 100 Years of Chester Congregational Church

Many Iowa men volunteered for the Union Army, and among them were several from Chester Township who took part in the battles around Vicksburg in 1863. Daniel Fuss Hays (1834-1930), for example, enlisted in November 1861, and by early summer 1863 was involved in  the siege of Vicksburg with the Iowa 4th Cavalry. The following year Hays participated in several battles in Mississippi, but spent much of 1864 in Tennessee before completing his service in Georgia in 1865. Other men of the Hays clan were also in Mississippi when Vicksburg fell, including William M. Hays (1839-1911) and John T. Hays (1807-1882). After the war, they all returned to Chester Township as the 1896 plat map shows.

Extract of  1896 Plat Map of Chester Township, Poweshiek County
 With Indication of Various Hays'Properties (indicated by ovals)
(https://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/islandora/object/ui%3Aatlases_12938)

Just as important, the Hays boys, who hailed from Maryland, were known as abolitionists. Indeed, when leaving their natal home in Maryland in the 1850s, they had freed an old slave who had long served their father. Given his freedom, Ned Delaney, the emancipated slave, opted to remain with Miss Deborah Hays (1836-1858) and her brothers and travel to Grinnell, Iowa where he died in 1861 and was buried in Grinnell's Hazelwood cemetery. So it requires a small leap of imagination to think that Daniel Hays, or his kinsmen, having liberated slaves around Vicksburg, might have encouraged G. W. Stith to come north with them. Of course, other Chester Township men also served in the Union Army; a monument to their service still today towers over the compact Chester Cemetery. Like the Hays men, Edward Fisher (1838-1875) had served with the Iowa 4th Cavalry, but Fisher was discharged before the Vicksburg campaign and therefore could not have met Stith in Mississippi. Samuel C. Carter (1841-1924) joined the 4th Iowa Cavalry in 1864, and therefore also missed much of the Vicksburg fighting. The Hays men, therefore, seem the most likely to have taken Stith under their wing and brought him back to Iowa.

Civil War Memorial to Union Troops in Chester Township Cemetery
(photo by Jeff Sparks: https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/94469/chester-cemetery)

When the first religious service in Chester was convened in 1858, Daniel F. Hays as well as several other Hays men and women—Joseph Hays, William Hays, Jehu Hays, Deborah Hays, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Hays, and Joseph Hays, Jr.—were present (Chester Congregational Church, Centennial Anniversary 1865-1965, p. 9). However, when in 1865 the Chester Congregational Church was organized, the Hays men and women did not join the founders, preferring to found a Methodist church nearby in 1867. Among the list of men and women who joined the Chester Congregational Church in 1866, however, was one "Washington Stith" (ibid., p. 26). Perhaps some other Chester men who had served the Union—men like Edward Fisher and Samuel Carter—influenced Stith to join the Congregational Church with them.

Extract of Roll of Members, Chester Congregational Church Centennial Anniversary 1865-1965, p. 26.

When Stith moved into Grinnell to attend the Iowa College Preparatory Department, he transferred membership to the Grinnell Congregational Church. Identified in church records as member 603, "Washington Stith" transferred membership to Grinnell "by letter, Chester, Iowa" in March 1869 (Drake Community Library, Local History Archive, United Church of Christ, First Congregational Church Records, bk. 5: Register of Members, p. 67).

Extract from the Register of Members, Grinnell Congregational Church

Nothing I've found reveals  what education the young Mississippi slave received, but it seems unlikely that Stith managed much formal learning while he was the enslaved property of Lawrence Stith. Perhaps a slim educational background explains why in 1868 "G. Washington Stith" enrolled in the Iowa College Preparatory Department, giving "Chester" as his  home; the following year's catalog recalls "Geo. W. Stith" as a member of the second class, and reports his home as Vicksburg, Mississippi, perhaps an early indication that the one-time slave intended to return to the lands where he had grown up.

1869-1870 Iowa College Catalog, p. 7.

No source explains what Stith did between the time when he joined the Chester church in 1866 and his 1868 entry in Iowa College's Preparatory Department, but it seems likely that Stith used some of that time to remedy his educational shortcomings. The Preparatory Department's curriculum—which demanded learning both Latin and Greek (and soon reading Caesar, Virgil, and the Anabasis), as well as studying Geography, Algebra, and History (American, Greek, and Roman)—would have constituted a formidable task to someone without a basic education. But evidently Stith managed this curriculum, although how easily and with what grades remain unknown.

December 31, 1870 US Freedman's Bank Application from Geo. W. Stith
(Ancestry.com, U.S., Freedman's Bank Records, 1865-74 [database online], Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2005

By 1870 Stith decided to abandon Grinnell and head to Mississippi; exactly when he left Iowa is not clear, but since he missed the June 1870 census in both Iowa and Mississippi, it may be that Stith was already en route to Vicksburg in June. Certainly no later than December 31, 1870, as a U.S. Freedman's Bank application shows, Stith was living in Vicksburg, a single man teaching school and beginning life as a free man in Reconstruction Mississippi. 

1872 Marriage Record of George W. Stith and Mrs. Eliza McKinney
(https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C9BJ-C3N7-K?cc=3477669)

In October 1872, he married Mrs. Eliza McKinney (d. 1933) (the former Eliza Hebron), but no surviving record explains how they met. As her name indicates, Eliza had already been married—in 1869 to Albert McKinney—but what happened to Mr. McKinney after 1869 I did not learn. 

1869 Marriage Record of Albert McKinney and Eliza Hebron
("Mississippi Marriages, 1800-1911," database,   FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:V28T-H31), Albert McKinney, 1869)

The 1880 U.S. Census found Mr. and Mrs. Stith on 3rd North Street in Vicksburg; George,  earning a living as a teacher, was 33; Eliza reported her age as 25, which, if accurate, would mean that she was born in 1855, making her only 17 when she married Stith (and only 14 when she married McKinney). The Stiths' two daughters, Bertha (1874-1933) and Estella (1876-1943), in 1880 were six and four, respectively. By the time census officials found them again in 1910, the Stiths were living at 703 1st North Street; no children remained at home, and Mrs. Stith reported that, although she had given birth to four children, only two survived.

Walker Evans, Photographer, "View in Negro Quarter, Vicksburg, Mississippi, March 1936"
(https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/f9e1dcf0-bad5-0132-da4f-58d385a7bbd0)

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Stith began teaching school almost as soon as he reached Vicksburg; in his 1875 testimony to a congressional committee, Stith said that "for the last four years up to last January—I was justice of the peace and teaching school" (Report of the Select Committee, 2:1404). The Vicksburg Daily Times from early 1872 lists Stith with other teachers, but without identifying at which school he taught. It seems likely, however, that Stith began his teaching career at the Black school placed within the A.M.E. Church, named beneath the "White School" in the list of Vicksburg schools (January 2, 1872).

A comprehensive report on his duties as justice of the peace seems out of reach, but Stith's official duties did bring him to the attention of the authorities when the 1874 local elections in Vicksburg turned violent. In the Reconstruction South, Black office-holders were common in some positions, but in no office more common than as justices of the peace. According to one recent count, during Reconstruction a total of 232 Blacks held the job across the South ("Black Officeholders in the South," Facing Ourselves and History). Compared to some other Southern states, Mississippi could boast—or complain about—a relatively large number of Black officeholders overall. If Tennessee had 20 and Texas 49, Mississippi reported 226 Blacks in office, whether at the local, state, or federal level (ibid.).

These figures provide important context for the 1874-75 troubles when white Democrats attempted to interfere with elections and intimidate Black voters, who overwhelmingly voted Republican. The struggle in Mississippi was particularly violent, with armed white men shooting at Blacks in an effort to reclaim white control of government. In a dreadful prequel to the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, vigilantes in Vicksburg killed as many as 300 persons, among whom was the duly-elected Black sheriff. 

G. W. Stith was caught up in this turmoil, and was later summoned to give testimony to the congressional committee that examined the violence.  Although he himself was not wounded during the melee, Stith testified to having been present when white men instigated a brawl inside the county courthouse, beating up some Blacks and obliging others to run or even jump out windows. Later, when some sixty rebels tried to storm the assembled Black crowd, gunfire broke out around the courthouse. Fleeing the shooting, Stith reported having heard shots around him—"some three or four hundred shots fired in about two minutes...shots were falling around me like hail, same as a man taking up pebbles and throwing them against a fence" (Report of the Select Committee, 2:1396). The aim of the assault was to invalidate the electoral tickets presented by Black voters, delivery of which was part of Stith's duties. Having escaped serious injury Stith soon felt the impact of the events of 1875 as Reconstruction ended with the election of Rutherford B. Hays and the Republican recognition of Democratic (white) control of the South.

Stith enters the historical record again a few years later when a Yellow Fever outbreak afflicted Mississippi. At this point, Stith was President of the Peabody Association in Vicksburg, and therefore was at the forefront of volunteer efforts to alleviate the disease and its social consequences. Stith's duties resonated back in Grinnell where the Grinnell Herald remembered the "colored young man, working in Chester eight years ago." In response to Stith's appeal, someone gathered and sent Stith a donation of $16.50 from Grinnell (Grinnell Herald, September 24, 1878).

Poster for Mississippi Department of Archives and History Lunch Talk, August 20, 2020
(https://www.mdah.ms.gov/event/history-lunch-1878-yellow-fever-epidemic-mississippi)

During the epidemic, Stith again emerged as an important local official, intervening in behalf of the poor, mostly Black populace of Vicksburg.  His October 1878 letter to the Relief Commission, printed in full in the Commission's final report, powerfully articulated the miserable conditions in which Vicksburg's Blacks found themselves.

...Hundreds of the poor colored people here, sirs, are in deplorable condition....We are called upon for assistance in various parts of the city and vicinity, but cannot give the required relief, owing to the fact that we have no funds nor provisions on hand...The suffering in the county outside the city is fearful. In some cases the colored people die without ever having any medical attention whatever, and numbers have not bread in their houses... Help us in God's name, at once, or starvation will be the unwelcome visitor of hundreds of our people here. We ask not for such as you eat and enjoy, but for the very commonest necessaries of daily life (Report of the Executive Committee of the Yellow Fever Relief Commission [Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1879], 36-37).

Stith himself risked infection when he boarded the relief boat John M. Chambers that docked at Vicksburg to deliver supplies; while Stith was discussing relief with officers on board, the ship's chief officer, Lieut. H. H. Benner, fell ill with the fever and soon died, raising the specter of infecting the entire crew and all who had come aboard to discuss relief. Stith evidently avoided the fever, but he did not receive the goods and financial support he had hoped for. Most of the delivery went to another organization overseeing relief, but the materials unloaded from the boat came "with the understanding that the supplies were intended as much for the relief of colored as white people" (ibid., p. 33).

Given his church experience in Iowa, it comes as no surprise that in Vicksburg Stith was deeply involved in church matters. No one knows how close Stith felt to his Iowa Congregational roots, but Mississippi in the 1870s had no Congregational churches (unsurprising, given the distinctly Yankee origins and strong abolitionist sentiments among the Congregationalists). Perhaps because he remembered that the Hays brothers were Methodists, Stith joined the local African Methodist Episcopal congregation. In 1892 he was a reserve delegate to the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, convened in Omaha, Nebraska; in 1896 Stith was a full delegate to  the quadrennial gathering, this time held in Cleveland, Ohio. His conference biography describes Stith as a "local preacher, Sunday School superintendent, class leader, and steward" (Souvenir General Conference, Methodist Episcopal Church, Cleveland, Ohio May, 1896, p. 74).

Headline from Story in Vicksburg American, July 16, 1908

But all was not well within the Vicksburg A.M.E. church: at some point before 1908, the congregation had divided. One faction, headed by a man named Coleman, retained control of the church building on Jackson Road; another group, headed by Stith, had to find another place to worship. But when Coleman tore down the old building without consulting anyone in the other group, Stith brought suit. The judge hearing the case found for Stith, and fined Coleman $25 and costs, although whether this satisfied Stith's party is unclear. The case reveals how deeply the local congregation viewed their religion and the leading role that Stith played in the church (Vicksburg American, July 16, 1908).

The name of George Washington Stith emerges from the record again in 1913, when Jennie Pipes, a single, African American woman, composed her last will and testament. In a personal affirmation of the solid character of Stith, Pipes chose to "nominate and appoint my friend, George W. Stith (colored), executor of this my last Will and Testament, believing that he will do what is right and proper on the premises" (Ancestry.com. Mississippi, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1780-1982 [database on-line], Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015. Original Data: Mississippi County,, District and Probate Courts. Wills. Vol. C: 1910-1927, p. 313).

Undated Photograph of the Gravestone of George Washington Stith, Vicksburg, MS
(https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/174851630/george-washington-stith)

Stith makes no further appearance in the historical record until his August 20, 1926 death. His tombstone bears the insignia and name of the Mosaic Templars, an African American fraternal organization to which Stith belonged.

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Thinking about slaves more than a century ago may seem anomalous in twenty-first-century America. Certainly critics of the 1619 Project think so. But George Washington Stith's life shows us that a slave, who in his infancy had no name, much less any expectation of freedom, once freed and mentored by Union troops, could fulfill great ambitions, becoming a teacher, a local official, a partisan of the poor, and a man whom friends knew to be a "solid character," a man who would do "what is right and proper." 

Grinnell played a part—perhaps a crucial part—in the productive life that Stith fashioned for himself. Churches in Chester Township and Grinnell helped mold the character that students and friends later recognized in him. Iowa College, too, had a part in preparing Stith so that, when political violence or epidemic disease appeared in Stith's world, he could effectively represent those—African Americans, in the main—who had little wealth or medical care and he could argue  powerfully to congressional committees and to military officers in control of epidemic relief. Returning to the same regions in which he had been born into slavery, a free George Washington Stith actively reconfigured the world around him in pursuit of justice and fairness. 

The end of Reconstruction, unfortunately, meant that many of the injustices born of the slave system were revived across the South, and although we cannot know exactly how they affected Stith and his family, the 1874 violence in Vicksburg proves that "freedom" after 1875 meant something different for Stith and his fellow African Americans than it had in the heady days immediately after the Civil War. Slavery as such had disappeared, but many of slavery's injustices gained new life and were visited upon later generations.

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PS. I first heard of George Washington Stith from Professor Mel Oakes, who wrote to inquire about any evidence of Stith in Iowa that I might know about. I was glad to provide a few suggestions, but at the time I mistakenly assumed that Stith, known to be a Methodist later in his life, had belonged to the Sheridan Methodist Church in Chester Township. I now know otherwise, as I explained above, and I apologize for the false start. I have learned much from Professor Oakes's blog, and thank him for the original question and for the materials he has made available online. Those who are interested in learning more about Stith and his family should consult Oakes's website: https://www.patandmeloakes.com/PatandMelOakesFamilySite/GWStith.html

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