Mary Mildred Williams

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Mary Botts, daguerreotype. Julian Vannerson, c. 1855. Massachusetts Historical Society.
A later ambrotype, thought to be a portrait of Mary Mildred Williams and her brother, Oscar. Cutting and Bowdoin, ca. 1855-1856. Collection of Massachusetts Historical Society.

Mary Mildred Williams (born Botts, c. 1847 - 1921), was an enslaved American born in Virginia, later freed through the efforts of her father.  Based on the public perception of her as a white child based on published photographs of her in the press, she was compared to the fictional character of Ida May used by abolitionists before the Civil War to advance the cause of ending slavery in the U.S.

Early life

Mary Mildred Williams, born Botts in 1847, was the second child of Seth Botts and his wife Elizabeth (née Nelson).[1] Seth and Elizabeth were married in the early 1840s.[2] Williams had an older brother, Oscar, and a younger sister, Adelaide (also known by her middle name of Rebecca).[3]

According to court and census records, Williams mother Elizabeth was the daughter of Prudence Bell and a white man named Thomas Nelson.[1] Williams, her mother, grandmother, and her siblings were inherited by John Cornwell, the son of Constance Conrwell's daughter Kitty Cornwell.[4]

Williams, along with her mother and siblings, lived in Prince William County, Virginia, near Washington. Her father, Seth Botts, who had belonged to a different owner in neighboring Stafford County, had fled Virginia sometime in 1850.[1]

Upon becoming free at the age of seven in 1855, Williams and her family joined her father Seth in Boston.[1]

Between the 1855 Massachusetts state census and 1860 federal census, the Botts family had changed their name to Williams.[1]

In the summer of 1860, Williams’ older brother Oscar died from tuberculosis.[1]

Legal proceedings

When Constance Cornwell died, she willed Williams' mother and grandmother to her grandson John Cornwell. She specified in her will that the inherited slaves (or their children) could not be sold, and if he were to try they would be freed.[5] Because John Cornwell was not of age at the time of her death, her slaves were to be retained by the executor of her will, Thomas Nelson, until John came of age in 1830.[5] However, Constance’s will was disputed by her children, and a legal battle began in 1835.[5] The legal disputes continued for years and Prucy and her children remained in Nelson’s possession. When Nelson passed away in 1845, J.C. Weedon, his qualified administrator, took possession of the Prucy and her children.[6] John Cornwell instituted proceeding to recover them from Weedon in 1847, as they were willed to him by Constance.[6] Cornwell fought a protracted legal battle to retrieve these slaves from J.C. Weedon, the executor of Constance’s will. The legal battle was decided by the Virginia Supreme Court in October 1854, and it awarded all of the property to John Cornwell aided by Prudence’s husband and Mary’s father, Seth Botts, then known as Henry Williams.[7]

Freedom

In 1855, at age seven, Williams became free through the efforts of her father, Seth Botts, an escaped slave. Botts had escaped bondage in 1850, renamed himself to Henry Williams, and spent the subsequent four years seeking out the help of prominent abolitionists in Boston in his quest to secure his family’s freedom.[8] Williams, with the help of his wealthy backers, bought the property from Cornwell and ended his family’s bondage. This is how Henry’s daughter, Mary Mildred Williams, came to the attention of abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner.[8]

Relationship to the abolitionist movement

On March 1, 1855 a letter from Charles Sumner dated February 19 addressed ‘Dear Doctor’ was published in the New-York Daily Times (originally published in the Boston Telegraph on February 27) that had accompanied a daguerreotype of Williams. In the letter, Sumner declares: “The daguerreotype mentioned in the following letter is a portrait of one of the family referred to, a most beautiful white girl, with high forehead, straight hair, intellectual appearance, and decidedly attractive features.”[9] In a subsequent article March 9, 1855, reporters of the New-York Daily Times expressed “astonishment” that she was “ever held a slave.”[10]

In early 1855, articles were published about her in the Boston Telegraph and the New York Times, and copies of her photograph were widely publicized.[11][12] After her photograph was published, she accompanied Senator Charles Sumner, a leading abolitionist, on a publicity tour.[13]

The photo and tour made her famous, and she was compared to fictional character Ida May, the child hero of the then popular novel about a white girl kidnapped into slavery, Ida May: a Story of Things Actual and Possible by Mary Hayden Pike (1854).  She was described in the words of a columnist in Frederick Douglass’ Paper as ‘perfectly white, and on that account produces intense excitement. We see daily white fugitives and the cupidity of a slaveholder would suffer him to keep anyone, even his mother, in slavery. When white men learn this, and that their own liberties are in danger, then they will see the reasonable-ness of an unconditional emancipation.’ [14] Abolitionists emphasized her perceived whiteness to enlist sympathy, as well as to frighten Northerners that any child, regardless of appearance, might be snatched away and made a slave.

On May 19 and 20, 1856, Sumner spoke in the Senate comparing Southern political positions to the sexual exploitation of slaves then taking place in the South. Two days later Sumner was beaten almost to death on the floor of the Senate in the Capitol by Representative Preston Brooks from South Carolina, known as a hothead.[12]

Later life and death

Williams never married nor had children.[15] Her mother Elizabeth lived her life as a white woman and died in 1892. Her death certificate listed her maiden name as that of her white father: “Elizabeth A. (Nelson) Williams.” Mary Williams also maintained her identity as a white woman and became a clerk at Boston’s Registry of Deeds in 1900.[16]

She rented an apartment in the Eleventh Ward of Boston. Her “partner” (the term used by the census taker) was a fellow professional named Mary Maynard, the child of immigrants from Ireland and England, who worked as a bookkeeper and probation officer. [16]

Mary Mildred Williams died in 1921 and was buried in Boston.[15]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Mitchell, Mary Niall (2013). "The Real Ida May: A Fugitive Tale in the Archives". Massachusetts Historical Review. 15: 64. doi:10.5224/masshistrevi.15.1.0054 – via JSTOR.
  2. ^ Morgan-Owens, Jessie (2019). "The Enslaved Girl Who Became America's First Poster Child". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2020-06-19.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  3. ^ Mitchell, Mary Niall (2013). "The Real Ida May: A Fugitive Tale in the Archives". Massachusetts Historical Review. 15: 55. doi:10.5224/masshistrevi.15.1.0054. ISSN 1526-3894 – via JSTOR.
  4. ^ Appeals, Virginia Supreme Court of (1892). Reports of Cases in the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia. D. Bottom, Superintendent of Public Print. p. 725.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  5. ^ a b c Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals (1892). Reports of Cases in the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia. D. Bottom, Superintendent of Public Print. p. 726.
  6. ^ a b Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals (1892). Reports of Cases in the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia. D. Bottom, Superintendent of Public Print. p. 733.
  7. ^ Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals (1892). Reports of Cases in the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia. D. Bottom, Superintendent of Public Print. p. 751.
  8. ^ a b Cohen, Joanna (2020). "Seeing Worth and Worth Seeing: Capitalism, Race, and Visual Culture in Nineteenth-Century America". Reviews in American History. 48: 27–35 – via Project MUSE.
  9. ^ "Letter from Hon. Charles Sumner - Another Ida May". New-York Daily Times. March 1, 1855. Retrieved August 7, 2020.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  10. ^ "A White Slave from Virginia". New-York Daily Times. March 9, 1855. Retrieved August 7, 2020.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  11. ^ Gage, Joan. "A White Slave Girl "Mulatto Raised by Charles Sumner"". Mirror of Race. Retrieved July 5, 2016.
  12. ^ a b Morgan-Owens, Jessie (February 19, 2015). "Poster Child: There's Something About Mary". Massachusetts Historical Society. Retrieved July 6, 2016.
  13. ^ Mitchell, Mary Niall (2013). "The Real Ida May: A Fugitive Tale in the Archives". Massachusetts Historical Review. 15: 77 – via JSTOR.
  14. ^ "Frederick Douglass' Paper". Rochester, N.Y. March 16, 1855. p. 3. Retrieved August 7, 2020.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  15. ^ a b Morgan-Owens, Jessie (March 2019). "The Enslaved Girl Who Became America's First Poster Child". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2020-07-10.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  16. ^ a b Mitchell, Mary Niall (2013). "The Real Ida May: A Fugitive Tale in the Archives". Massachusetts Historical Review. 15: 79. doi:10.5224/masshistrevi.15.1.0054. ISSN 1526-3894.

External links

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