At the corner of King and Broad Street the former home of the writer and anti-slavery activist, Harriet Jacobs
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In this episode, we remember the homes where Harriet Jacobs lived both in Edenton, North Carolina and where she wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl in upstate New York. In her book she told her own story as an enslaved woman, later generations would assume her editor Lydia Maria Child was the author.
Below is a transcript for season 2, episode 3 of Someone Lived Here, the homes where Harriet Jacobs lived.. If you have any questions about the show or suggestions on how to make it more accessible please reach out at someonelivedhere@gmail.com.
For seven years, Harriet Jacobs could not go inside her grandmother’s home. She lived in the tiny attic crawlspace on top of a storeroom off the side of the house. Years later she would write her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl. Her story should have solidified her place in history, but for decades the writer’s true identity was unknown. The place where she hid is long gone, a bank with a drive through has now taken its place, but her story hasn’t been forgotten.
Welcome to Someone Lived Here, a podcast about the places cool people called home. I’m your host Kendra Gaylord.
This is the story about mothers and daughters. Harriet Jacobs, lost her mother at a young age, but her grandmother Molly provided her with love, and later protection. Before Harriet Jacobs was born much of her life was already determined. When her grandmother, Molly, was a child, she had been freed by her father and owner at his death during the Revolutionary War. They left on a boat under British Protection to a European settlement in Florida, but the family was captured by Americans and Molly was sold and separated from her family. She was bought by John Horniblow, and found herself in Edenton, North Carolina. It would take her almost 50 years, but she would buy her freedom and a house, the very house we will be remembering today.
John Horniblow and his wife Elizabeth would give each of their daughters one of Molly’s daughters as wedding presents. Delilah (Harriet’s mother) was given to Margaret. Margaret was sick and often unable to walk without pain. She would not marry, but Delilah would.
Delilah married Elijah Jacobs, a talented carpenter and enslaved man whose goal was to free himself and his family. Harriet’s brother, John would later write, “To be a man, and not to be a man– a father without authority – a husband and no protector– is the darkest of fates. My father taught me to hate slavery, but forgot to teach me how to conceal my hatred.”
Elijah was enslaved at a plantation a couple of towns over. In Edenton, Delilah and their two children lived in one of the outbuild ings behind the Horniblow Tavern. When Elijah was in town for building projects the family would live together under one roof.
Harriet was 6 years old when she lost her mother. Delilah died at 29 and was promised by her owner Margaret that she would care for Harriet. Harriet and her brother would live with their grandmother Molly. Margaret taught Harriet how to read and write. Harriet would later write in her book, “As a child, I loved my mistress; and looking back on the happy days I spent with her, I try to think with less bitterness of this act of injustice.”
The biggest act of injustice came after Margaret died. Harriet was 12. Many in her family assumed, she would be freed in Margaret’s will. Margaret left all of her enslaved people to her mother, but a last minute exception was made for Harriet. Dr. Norcom was Margaret’s doctor, he was also her brother-in-law. On the day she died, the will was adjusted leaving Harriet to Dr. Norcom’s 3-year-old daughter. It was not formally signed by Margaret, although harriet likely need knew that. The change was witnessed by another man, and Dr. Norcom himself. At 12, Harriet moved out of her grandmothers home and move to the Norcom residence a few blocks over.
Almost 30 years later, once free, Harriet would write about her experience in the Norcom’s house. She would change their last name to Flint, and her name to Linda, but she wrote about sexual abuse in such an honest way, which you dont expect from a book written in the early 1800s.
From the chapter: The Trials of Girlhood, she writes , “She will become prematurely knowing in evil things. Soon she will learn to tremble when she hears her master’s footfall. She will be compelled to realize that she is no longer a child. If God has bestowed beauty upon her, it will prove her greatest curse.”
She would later write of her own experience, “The light heart which nature had given me became heavy with sad forebodings. The other slaves in my master’s house noticed the change. Many of them pitied me; but none dared to ask the cause. They had no need to inquire. They knew too well the guilty practices under that roof; and they were aware that to speak of them was an offence that never went unpunished.”
When Elizabeth died, the matriarch of the Horniblow family, died, it was known that she intended to free Molly. But Dr. Norcom had seized Elizabeth’s enslaved people, suggesting they were payment for his mother in laws outstanding medical bills. Dr. Norcom had planned to sell her privately, suggesting to spare her the embarrassment. She refused and on January 1, 1828 she gave her money to Elizabeth’s sister. She purchased Molly and Molly’s son, Mark. In a few months Molly was emancipated. She bought the home where she would live with her son and ran it as a bakery.
Harriet continued at the Norcom’s, stalked during the day by Mr. Norcom and watched at night by a jealous, Mrs. Norcom. She had some protection living a few blocks from her well-respected and connected grandmother, but Norcom was unrelenting. He was planning to build a house for Harriet, 4 miles away from town where she would be his mistress. She would write, “I vowed before my Maker that I would never enter it. I was determined that the master, whom I so hated and loathed, who had blighted the prospects of my youth, and made my life a desert, should not, after my long struggle with him, succeed at last in trampling his victim under his feet. I would do anything, everything for the sake of defeating him.”
Harriet would write about the next period of her life with a bit of shame. She saw Norcom’s weaknesses. He was a doctor, but he was not part of the town’s most elite. But her grandmother’s neighbor, Samuel Treadwell Sawyer, was. He was 30, unmarried and a relative of the governor. They began seeing each other in private. When Norcom ordered her to the isolated home, she announced her pregnancy with Sawyer’s child. When Harriet writes about her pregnancy, she almost asks the reader for forgiveness, which is the saddest part. She was not making choices or decisions. She was a 15-year-old girl who saw the walls closing in around her.
Her grandmother, Molly was shocked, she was unaware of the sexual assault from Norcom, the relationship with Sawyer, and the baby. Mrs. Norcom would no longer allow Harriet into her home, assuming her husband was the father. Harriet moved back into Molly’s home. She thought that Norcom would be so angry he would sell her, and Sawyer would purchase her, but instead Norcom vowed that he would never sell her. As the law saw it, Harriet’s children were Norcom’s property. In that home on the corner of Kind and Broad Street she would have her son Joseph and 4 years later her daughter Louisa.
Norcom began to use Harriet’s children to punish her. On his visits to Molly’s home he was violent to both Harriet and her children, once hitting her 5 year old son, Joseph, unconscious. Harriet was later sent to Norcom’s sons plantation. Although she went alone, they later would send for her children to join her. Harriet saw that her children were only being hurt to hurt her. If she was no longer there, they would once again be young children and to Norcom they would no longer be useful.
After midnight, she walked off the plantation. This was just the beginning of the decades long journey to secure her freedom.
First she hid with a friend, later in the home of a wealthy slave-owning neighbor who saw her need of protection. She spent months in closets and crawlspaces. Norcom issued searches and rewards. In one he writes a description of Harriet at age, 21. “About 5 feet 4 inches high, of a thick and corpulent habit, having on her head a thick covering of black hair that curls naturally, but which can be easily combed straight. She speaks easily and fluently and has an agreeable carriage and address. Being a good seamstress, she has been accustomed to dress well, has a variety of very fine clothes, made in the prevailing fashion, and will probably appear if abroad, tricked out in gay and fashionable finery.”
Months later, he would borrow money for a trip to New York with the hopes of bringing her back himself. He would return empty handed. Molly and Sawyer saw his need for cash and through an unnamed buyer, he purchased his son, his daughter and Harriet’s brother, John. The 3 had recently been sent to jail by Norcom, thinking Harriet would return if she heard where her 6 and 2 year old were.
After their purchase, John was put in chains and the children placed on the cart. Once a mile outside of Edenton, John’s chains were removed and he was instructed to return to his grandmother’s house with the children and report to his new owner, Samuel Sawyer.
Harriet’s hiding place was once again unsafe, she stayed two nights on a boat in swamp surrounded by snakes and mosquitos. When she arrived back to her grandmother’s home she was sick. She was brought to the small shed built off of the house. Her uncle had built a trapdoor in the ceiling. Up above would become her home for 6 years and 11 months. It was 9 feet long, 7 feet wide, with the slope of the roof only 3 feet high. She wrote of her place, “I suffered for air even more than for light. But I was not comfortless. I heard the voices of my children.” No one told Jospeh and Louisa that their mother was up above. We’ll tell the rest of Harriet’s story after a quick break.
Hi – it’s Kendra the host of this show who has been talking to you this whole time. I have a couple of announcements that I wanted to take a minute to make
First of all thank you so much for listening to the show. Making new episodes during this very strange time is really helpful. Something I always try to remind myself is that history is constantly happening, so it helps to reflect on the past while we live in the present.
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Thanks again for listening and now back to Harriet.
No one told Joseph and Louisa that their mother was living in a tiny shed above them, but she would watch them played on the street from a small hole she made, which was her only source of light. Her uncle had built the trap door within a cupboard of shelves. For meals Molly would leave food in the cupboard, then Harriet would move the ceiling above to get them. Molly and Mark left the storeroom unlocked and the windows uncurtained to avoid drawing suspicion.
The physical toll of this prison showed itself quickly. She experienced sensory deprivation, hallucination and periods of amnesia and confusion. Her legs got frostbite. She began to worry that she might lose her ability to walk. She stretched and crawled the length of her space. And saddest of all, she began to measure time by the growth of her children from her view from above.
In her years in hiding, the world continued. Sawyer was elected to the House of Representatives. He had still not formally emancipated their children.
Louisa, soon traveled North with her father and his new wife and daughter. But on her last night in Edenton, Harriet came down the cupboard shelves and reintroduced herself to her daughter. Harriet wrote of that night with her daughter, “All night she nestled in my arms, and I had no inclination to slumber. The moments were too precious to lose any of them.” Louisa was seven now, it had been five years since they had seen each other.
Louisa was later sent from Washington to Sawyer’s cousin in Brooklyn, New York. Slavery was illegal there. but in a letter the cousin wrote she referred to Louisa as “my little waiting maid”. Afraid her daughter was being exploited, Harriet began to plan how she would leave Edenton for good.
Harriet boarded a boat in June of 1842. She was nearly 30, having spent all of her adult life either hiding or enslaved. In New York, she was one step closer to true freedom.
Harriet began to look for work in New York. She applied for a job as baby nurse. She had no references, but the Mary Willis suggested they trial each other for a week. Mary was English and had recently married Nathaniel Parker Willis. I had never heard of him, but in the 1840s he was extremely popular writer and one of the most highly paid. Harriet would continue to work for Mary for many years.
Harriet would move on to Boston for it’s safety. There she would live under the same roof as her two children and her brother was a neighbor . Louisa had never been sent to school as promised by Sawyer’s cousin, Harriet began to tutor the 10 year old, teaching her how to read and write.
Harriet’s brother, John, had become an activist. He would introduce Harriet to Amy and Isaac Post. It was to Amy that she would first tell her story in full. Amy wrote “her story was too sacred to be drawn from her by inquisitive questions, and I left her free to tell as much, or as little, as she chose.”
In the coming years, Amy Post would suggest Harriet write down her story, but Harriet had many reasons to resist. A big one being, the past was painful to remember.
Harriet’s first employer, Mary Willis died in childbirth and in the following years her husband, Nathaniel Willis would remarry. It was through Cornelia that Harriet would finally get her freedom. It was during another close call, when the Norcom family traveled to New York. Cornelia wrote to Harriet of her plan to buy her freedom, Harriet refused. She would write, “to pay money to those who had so grievously oppressed me seemed like taking from my suffering the glory of triumph.” But the plan had already occurred and Harriet was sold in the state of New York making her finally.. free.
In her book she would remember boarding a train to New York the day after, looking directly at every passenger, no longer afraid of seeing a familiar face.
Soon after, Harriet’s grandmother Molly died. After years protecting her secret, Molly and her son had entered a new period of their lives. Mark had married and his wife moved in. Molly finally took communion at her church, as she was no longer holding any secrets.
Molly was one of the reasons Harriet hadn’t told her story and now that she was gone, she began to write. Louisa was visiting her at Idlewild, the upstate New York home of the Willis’s. and although the home is no longer in it’s previous form, based on photos and sketches it was a truly beautiful house. A carpenter gothic (which is my favorite type) and located in the same area as Storm King.
After finishing her book, she found herself in search of a publisher. Harriet Beecher Stowe had suggested she could put parts in an additional non fiction text for Uncle Tom’s Cabin, she found no success getting the book published in Europe, another publisher wanted a preface from her current employer, Nathaniel Willis. Finally a Boston publisher said they would publish if she could get a preface from Lydia Maria Child. She is now most known for her poem “Over the river and through the wood, to grandfather’s house we go.” but most of her writing was anti-slavery.
Lydia Maria Child agreed not only to write the preface, but to edit. She was conscientious with her notes and said she didn’t alter more than fifty words in the whole book. She did suggest Harriet remove an addendum and instead end on the death of her grandmother.
Harriet’s book was published in 1861, making Harriet 48.
Before we hear the rest of Harriet’s story I want to tell you about how this story was almost lost and how one historian brought Harriet back.
Harriet had written her book under the pseudonym Linda Brent, the cover read, “Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl, Written By Herself”. She wrote in her own preface regarding changing names, “I had no motive for secrecy on my own account, but I deemed it kind and considerate toward others to pursue this course.”
At the time it was well known that Harriet was the writer, articles were written, “by Mrs. Jacobs the author of LINDA.” But over the decades, the connection was forgotten. Her obituary in a Boston paper mentions her employment with the Willis’s and refer to her book as “a touching little story of her life, relating therein one of the most painful histories.”
The connection became even more faint and by the 1960s historians assumed that Lydia Maria Child was not only the books editor, but also it’s writer. In the 1970s Jean Fagan Yellin was writing her dissertation. After rereading Incidents she began to question that theory. The writing styles are vastly different. Her research brought her to Edenton, North Carolina. In 1987 she published the paper proving to the academic community that Incident’s was an authentic narrative. And in 2004 she would publish Harriet Jacobs: A Life finally returning the story to it’s rightful owner.
A lot of stories seem to end when the memoir does, but Harriets of course keeps going. She went south and began to help refugees, preparing for what she hoped would be their impending emancipation. She communicated back and forth with the north telling her friends of the conditions and rallying their financial support.
By 1864 Louisa and Harriet opened the Jacobs School in Alexandria, Virginia. There Louisa would teach 75 formerly enslaved people to read and write. What had been delayed for her, she now taught to others.
Later, Harriet would travel back to Edenton. Slavery was abolished, but so much was still the same. The freed people were being cheated out of their crops by their renters. Her grandmother’s home had been sold, but she stayed at the house next door. There she wrote in a letter to a friend, “I am sitting under the old roof 12 feet from the spot where I suffered all the cursing weight of slavery… Those I loved of their hard struggle in life – their unfaltering love and devotion toward myself and Children. I love to sit here and think of them. they have made the few sunny spots in that dark, sacred to me.”
Harriet Jacobs died at the age of 84. She was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge Massachusetts. Louisa would be buried at her side 20 years later. The mother and daughter who lost so many precious years, would spend the rest together.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Someone Lived Here. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts to tell me what you think. We will be releasing new episodes every other Monday this season.
You can see what we’re up to by following on Instagram @someonelivedherepod and Facebook at Some Lived Here. Music is by Tim Cahill. If you have any questions about the show go to our website SomeoneLivedHere.com.
Sources:
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
Harriet Jacobs: A Life by Jean Fagan Yellin
Hudson Valley Faces & Places by Patricia Edwards Clyne
