The Edmonson Sisters

The Edmonson Sisters. Alexandria Heritage Trail. , The West End in the 19th century centered on Duke Street and Diagonal Road. Large undeveloped, the area was devoted to stockyards, agricultural shipment, and "a" notorious business: the slave trade. The house at 1707 Duke Street (left) was part of a two-acre complex owned by Joseph Bruin, partner in Bruin and Hill, a successful slave-trading enterprise. The property included this building used as a slave jail and office, a house where Bruin lived with his family, slave pens, and various outbuildings. From here, Bruin purchased, warehoused, and transported thousands of slaves for sale in the Deep South from 1844 to the beginning of the Civil War. In 1848, Mary Edmonson, 15, and Emily Edmonson, 13, who had joined four of their siblings and seventy-one other blacks in a failed attempt to escape slavery on the Pearl, were purchased by Bruin and destined for auction in New Orleans and a likely fate as "fancy girls" in that city's brothels. Their story and their father's efforts to free them became a call to action for the abolitionist movement., The Business of Slavery , As children of a free black father, Paul, and slave mother, Amelia, the Edmonson children were legally slaves. Their lives were relatively stable on their father's farm near Sandy Spring, Maryland, until the poor health of their owner raised concern that the children would soon be sold. This frequently happened to settle estates, to pay debts, or to punish rebelliousness. According to some accounts, by the time of the Civil War, between 500,000 and 800,000 enslaved people had been forcibly moved by this interstate commerce., Freedom , Paul Edmonson's efforts to free his daughters brought him to New York City in the fall of 1848 and eventually to the Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn, led by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. Rev. Beecher took up the Edmonson's cause, preaching about the fate of the Christian, light-skinned Edmonson sisters should they be sold down south, and quickly raised Bruin's asking price of $2,250. By November 1848, Mary and Emily were free., [Captions and asides:] , While in captivity at Bruin's slave jail, the Edmonson sisters worked washing clothes. The remains of a cisterns (circle of bricks in the ground), left, is near the location of the wash house., Fear of being sold was a constant in a slave's life. A changed agriculture economy reduced demand for slave labor; a thriving interstate business then developed selling slaves west and south. Those bound for auction were transported by ship or rail, or walked over land in "coffles.", Paul Jennings, a butler belonging to Senator Daniel Webster and once owned by President James Madison; freeman Daniel Bell; and Samuel Edmonston, a "hired-out" slave and brother to Mary and Emily, organized the Pearl escape. Of the white crew, Daniel Drayton and Captain Edward Sayres, served four years in prison for the escape; most of the captured fugitives were sold in New Orleans., The Pearl fugitives left Washington, D.C., for the trip north on April 15, 1846. The Pearl was captured near the mouth of the Potomac River and brought back to Washington., Abolitionists encouraged the freed sisters to become teachers and, by 1853, Mary (left) and Emily (right) were studying at Oberlin College. Mary died of tuberculosis soon after; Emily returned to Washington, D.C., to help educate young black women. Emily married shortly before the Civil War and eventually moved to Anacostia with her husband. She remained a life-long friend of her neighbor, Frederick Douglass. Emily died in 1895., The Edmonson sisters (standing on either side of abolitionist Gerrit Smith, center) joined Frederick Douglass (in dark jacket to right of table) and others in Cazenovia, New York, in 1850 to protest the Fugitive Slave Act, a federal law requiring officials and citizens in free states to help capture runaway slaves., Rev. Henry Ward Beecher in 1860. His sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, published the anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, in 1852 and later wrote extensively about the Edmonson family and the efforts to free Mary and Emily. She also helped support the sisters during their time at Oberlin., In front of you, above, is a bronze sculpture of the Edmonson sisters by Erik Blome, dedicated in 2010.