The slaves were also identified as collateral in the event that Johnson, Batey, and their guarantors defaulted on their payments. Hundreds of Blacks were slaughtered and 10,000 left homeless in this largely unknown event. We shop for the best values for you. Maryland Province Archives at Lauinger Library at Georgetown University, A passage from the Rev. (Ms. Bayonne-Johnson discovered her connection through an earlier effort by the university to publish records online about the Jesuit plantations.). The second is now named for a free African-American woman who founded a school for Catholic black girls in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Since 2015, Georgetown has been working to address its historical relationship to slavery and will continue to do so, a Georgetown spokesman said in a statement to Religion News Service on Friday. [17], Mulledy and McSherry became increasingly vocal in their opposition to Jesuit slave ownership. Twenty-seven years earlier, a document dated June 19, 1838, showed that Maryland Jesuit priests sold 272 slaves to the owners of Louisiana plantations. Some of that money helped to pay off the debts of the struggling college. This resulted in families being split for economic reasons with no consideration of human relationships. There is no indication that he received any response. The worn gravestone had toppled, but the wording was plain: Neely Hawkins Died April 16, 1902.. You can either click on the link in your confirmation email or simply re-enter your email address below to confirm it. On June 19, 1838, the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus agreed to sell 272 slaves to two southern Louisiana sugar planters, former governor Henry Johnson and Jesse Batey, for $115,000, equivalent to $2.79 million in 2020, in order to rescue Georgetown University from bankruptcy. [28] Most of the slaves who fled returned to their plantations, and Mulledy made a third visit later that month, where he gathered some of the remaining slaves for transport. We encourage you to visit our website, call us at (202)-687-8330, or email us at descendants@georgetown.edu if you are interested in learning more or sharing your ideas and reflections. At Georgetown, slavery and scholarship were inextricably linked. [136] Eufrosina Hinard (born 1777), a free black woman in New Orleans, she owned slaves and leased them to others. Start Free Trial Now Our membership program offers special benefits for just $99 per year: *Unlimited instant streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows, *FREE Two-Day Shipping on millions of items, *Unlimited, ad-free streaming of over a million songs and more Prime benefits, Join Amazon Prime Watch Thousands of Movies & TV Shows Anytime Start Free Trial Now. During this time, the Jesuits funded some of the most prestigious institutions of higher education in America in part through profits earned on their plantations. [40] The remaining $17,000, equivalent to approximately $440,000 in 2021,[25] was used to offset part of Georgetown College's $30,000 of debt that had accrued during the construction of buildings during Mulledy's prior presidency of the college. (Best for messages specifically directed to those editing this profile. Timothy Kesicki, S.J., president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, during a morning Liturgy of Remembrance, Contrition, and Hope. [29] Some of the initial 272 slaves who were not delivered to Johnson were replaced with substitutes. Georgetown University (Daniel Slim/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images) Article A genealogical organization launched a free website Wednesday to help those who want to learn more about the. [38] While McSherry initially persuaded Roothaan to forgo removing Mulledy,[37] in August 1839, Roothaan resolved that Mulledy must be removed to quell the ongoing scandal. [27], The articles of agreement listed each of the slaves being sold by name. She is outraged that the churchs leaders sanctioned the buying and selling of slaves, and that Georgetown profited from the sale of her ancestors. Georgetown Jesuits enslaved her ancestors. One building was renamed for Isaac Hawkins, first on the list of the 272 human beings sold in 1838. Now, for the first time, Ms. Crump understood its origins. Items Georgetown Slavery Archive - Georgetown University Father Mulledy promised his superiors that the slaves would continue to practice their religion. The article details how the sold slaves were transported to three Louisiana plantations, where they faced brutal treatment. In 1870, he appeared in the census for the first time. Remembrance Hall became Anne Marie Becraft Hall, after a free black woman who founded a school for black girls in the Georgetown neighborhood and later joined the Oblate Sisters of Providence. Mr. Cellini is an unlikely racial crusader. Central concepts and key points are illustrated through campus examples. The truth was closer to home than anyone knew", "272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. Today, these enslaved people are known collectively as the GU272 Ancestors. Genealogists have identified many of the original people who were sold, along with over 9000 of their descendants. [29] The slaves Mulledy gathered were sent on the three-week voyage aboard the Katherine Jackson,[27] which departed Alexandria on November 13 and arrived in New Orleans on December 6. They also established schools on their lands. We encourage you to share the site on social media. However, the total number of slaves is only one way to measure the level of slavery in a country. Some children were sold without their parents, records show, and slaves were dragged off by force to the ship, the Rev. [63][38], The College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, of which Mulledy was the first president from 1843 to 1848, also began to reconsider the name of one of its buildings in 2015. History of slaves sold for Georgetown detailed in new genealogical Now students, professors and alumni want to know what happened to those men and women and what the university will do moving forward. Georgetown and the Society of Jesus Maryland Province have issued an apology for their role in this action to more than 100 descendants who had been traced at the time of the apology. Cardinal McElroy on radical inclusion for L.G.B.T. In the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and the Catholic Church were among the largest slaveholding institutions in America. [5] McSherry delayed selling the slaves because their market value had greatly diminished as a result of the Panic of 1837,[24] and because he was searching for a buyer who would agree to these conditions. As a Georgetown employee, Jeremy Alexander watched as the university grappled with its haunted past: the sale of slaves in 1838 to help rescue it from financial ruin. Thomas R. Murphy, a historian at Seattle University who has written a book about the Jesuits and slavery. What Does It Owe Their Descendants? While the plantations were initially worked by indentured servants, as the institution of indentured servitude began to fade away in Maryland, African slaves replaced indentured servants as the primary workers on the plantations. By the end of December, one of Mr. Cellinis genealogists felt confident that she had found a strong test case: the family of the boy, Cornelius Hawkins. [65], On April 18, 2017, DeGioia, along with the provincial superior of the Maryland Province, and the president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, held a liturgy in which they formally apologized on behalf of their respective institutions for their participation in slavery. Participants in this discussion are: Drew Gilpin Faust, President, Harvard University. 272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. What Does It Owe Their American Ancestors announced the new GU272 Memory Project website on June 19, the anniversary of Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when some American slaves learned they had been freed. On June 19, 1838, the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus agreed to sell 272 slaves to two Louisiana planters, Henry Johnson and Jesse Batey, for $115,000 (equivalent to approximately $2.96million in 2021). A photo of the slave cabins at Laurel Valley in Thibodaux is part of the GU272 Memory Project. The two women drove on the narrow roads that line the green, rippling sugar cane fields in Iberville Parish. Timothy Kesicki, S.J., president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, during a morning Liturgy of Remembrance, Contrition, and Hope. What remains is what is owed to the descendants. [5] The first record of slaves working Jesuit plantations in Maryland dates to 1711, but it is likely that there were slave laborers on the plantations a generation before then. The remainder of the slaves were accounted for in three subsequent bills of sale executed in November 1838, which specified that 64 would go to Batey's plantation named West Oak in Iberville Parish and 140 slaves would be sent to Johnson's two plantations,[27] Ascension Plantation (later known as Chatham Plantation) in Ascension Parish and another in Maringouin in Iberville Parish. this helps us promote a safe and accountable online community, and allows us to update you when other commenters reply to your posts. Check out some of the. A microcosm of the whole history of American slavery, Dr. Rothman said. His children and grandchildren also embraced the Catholic church. [7], By 1824, the Jesuit plantations totaled more than 12,000 acres (4,900 hectares) in the State of Maryland, and 1,700 acres (690 hectares) in eastern Pennsylvania. Her ancestors, once amorphous and invisible, are finally taking shape in her mind. Georgetown has renamed one of its buildings Isaac Hawkins Hall named after the first enslaved on the list of the account of the sale. Now shes working for justice. The number of slaves transported to Louisiana (206) and the number left in Maryland (91) add up to 297, not 272, because some of the 272 slaves initially identified to be sold were substituted with replacements. June 1838 the University benefited from the sale of 272 slaves, some as young as 2 months old to finance the ailing institution. Only 206 of the 272 slaves were actually delivered because the Jesuits permitted the elderly and those with spouses living nearby and not owned by Jesuits to remain in Maryland. But six years after he appeared in the census, and about three decades after the birth of his first child, he renewed his wedding vows with the blessing of a priest. [31][b] There are several reasons many slaves were left behind. We also posted a 5 part mini-series on the 100th anniversary of one of the most horrific massacres in the history of America. They change every day, so check often. None of those conditions were met, university officials said. [43][44] In 1856, Washington Barrow sold the slaves he purchased from Batey to William Patrick and Joseph B. Woolfolk of Iberville Parish. Photo by Claire Vail. To pay that debt, the Jesuits who ran the school, under the auspices of the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus, sold 272 slaves -- the very people that helped build the school itself.. [50], The 1838 slave sale returned to the public's awareness in the mid-2010s. Many institutions owned slaves and Georgetown University was no exception. (Valuable Plantation and Negroes for Sale, read one newspaper advertisement in 1852.). ", New England Historic Genealogical Society, "They thought Georgetown University's missing slaves were 'lost.' Cornelius had originally been shipped to a plantation so far from a church that he had married in a civil ceremony. Thomas F. Mulledy, president of Georgetown from 1829 to 1838, and again from 1845 to 1848, arranged the sale. To pay that debt, the university sold 272 slaves the very people that helped build the school itself. This has made people reluctant to see the past and this has had a long term harm by remaining hidden and allowed to fester. That building is now known as Freedom Hall. At the time, the Catholic Church did not view slaveholding as immoral, said the Rev. Descendants - Georgetown University [50] Curran also published Georgetown University's official, bicentennial history in 1993, in which he wrote about the university's and Jesuits' relationship with slavery. Ashby's account book at Newtown.For a spreadsheet with all the data transcribed, seeGSA5. [69] Several groups of descendants have been created, which have lobbied Georgetown University and the Society of Jesus for reparations, and groups have disagreed with the form that their desired reparations should take. Freedom Hall became Isaac Hawkins Hall, after the first slave listed on the articles of agreement for the 1838 sale. Georgetown's priests sold her Catholic ancestors. Then she found out in One building is now named in honor of a slave who was 65 years old when he was sold in 1838. Georgetown University Archives The Jesuits had sold off individual slaves before. Slaves were often threatened with having family members sold away, splitting parents from even infants because of minor infractions as determined by the slave owner. This coincided with a protest by a group of students against keeping Mulledy's and McSherry's names on the buildings the day before. Other industries made loads of money indirectly. After the sale, Cornelius vanishes from the public record until 1851 when his trail finally picks back up on a cotton plantation near Maringouin, La. The name had been passed down from generation to generation in her family. African-Americans are often a fleeting presence in the documents of the 1800s. Their panic and desperation would be mostly forgotten for more than a century. In April 2017, Georgetown renamed buildings that had honored university leaders responsible for selling those enslaved Africans to Louisiana plantations. The university itself owes its existence to this history, said Adam Rothman, a historian at Georgetown and a member of a university working group that is studying ways for the institution to acknowledge and try to make amends for its tangled roots in slavery. Within two weeks, Mr. Cellini had set up a nonprofit, the Georgetown Memory Project, hired eight genealogists and raised more than $10,000 from fellow alumni to finance their research. In 1851, Thompson purchased the second half of Johnson's property, so that by the beginning of the Civil War, all the slaves sold by Mulledy to Johnson were owned by Thompson. Other Jesuits voiced their anger to the Archbishop of Baltimore, Samuel Eccleston, who conveyed this to Roothaan. That alumnus, Richard J. Cellini, the chief executive of a technology company and a practicing Catholic, was troubled that neither the Jesuits nor university officials had tried to trace the lives of the enslaved African-Americans or compensate their progeny. Tweet. Georgetown University announces reparations fund to benefit descendants 272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. As Black Americans as descendants of enslaved people we have always been told youll never know who you are. Georgetown University announced on Tuesday it will create a fund that could generate close to $400,000 a year to benefit the descendants of slaves once sold by the university, the latest in the . While the school did own a small number of slaves over its early decades,[13] its main relationship with slavery was the leasing of slaves to work on campus,[14] a practice that continued past the 1838 slave sale. Amazing! Since youre a frequent reader of our website, we want to be able to share even more great, As a frequent reader of our website, you know how important, Georgetown students voted to pay for reparations. Many have been located; however, it is difficult to determine exactly how many were exploited by the University in this financial transaction. To see information on Juneteenth, click here. Slave trade in the United States - Wikipedia You can also manage your account details and your print subscription after logging in. List of people sold by Fr. Thomas Mulledy in 1838 Georgetown Slavery After the Jesuits vacated the buildings, Ryan and Mulledy Halls lay vacant, while Gervase Hall was put to other use.