Mary Mildred Williams (born Botts, c. 1847 - 1921) was born into slavery in
Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...
and became widely known as an example of a "white slave" in the years before the
Civil War
A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country).
The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...
.
In 1855, her escaped father bought his family's freedom with financial aid from abolitionists, and she, her mother and siblings joined him in
Boston, Massachusetts. After arriving in Boston at the age of seven, Williams's photograph became widely distributed, as her appearance was startling for people who usually classified slaves as "
Other
Other often refers to:
* Other (philosophy), a concept in psychology and philosophy
Other or The Other may also refer to:
Film and television
* ''The Other'' (1913 film), a German silent film directed by Max Mack
* ''The Other'' (1930 film), a ...
". The young girl toured with abolitionist
Charles Sumner, US Senator from Massachusetts. He used her as an example to confront Northerners with the injustice of slavery, and to raise awareness and raise funds for the abolitionist cause. Williams was compared to ''Ida May'', the main character in a popular novel of that name; she was a white girl who was kidnapped and sold into slavery.
Early life
Born Mary Mildred Botts in 1847 in Virginia, Williams was the second child of Seth Botts and his wife Elizabeth (née Nelson), who were both enslaved. Elizabeth had a white father.
Seth and Elizabeth were married in the early 1840s.
Williams had an older brother, Oscar, and a younger sister, Adelaide (also known by her middle name of Rebecca).
At the time of Mary's birth, her mother, brother, grandmother, and aunts were enslaved in
Prince William County, Virginia, near the village of
Washington
Washington commonly refers to:
* Washington (state), United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A metonym for the federal government of the United States
** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...
. Her father was enslaved in neighboring
Stafford County.
The maternal side of Williams' family were the subjects of protracted legal battles waged by descendants of Jesse and Constance Cornwell.
Through her father, Humphrey Calvert, Constance had purchased Williams's maternal great-grandmother, Lettice (known as "Letty"), and grandmother, Prudence Bell (known as "Prucy" or "Pru"), between 1809 and 1812.
According to court and census records, Williams' mother, Elizabeth, was the daughter of Prudence and a white man named Thomas Nelson, who was Cornwell's executor.
Botts was seven when she was freed in 1855, along with her mother and siblings. Her father had previously escaped Virginia and settled in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
, Massachusetts. Her mother moved with the family to Boston to join her husband, who changed his name to Henry Williams.
Between the 1855
state census and
1860 federal census, all of the Botts family members changed their surname to Williams.
In the summer of 1860, Williams’ older brother Oscar died from
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...
.
Legal proceedings
When Constance Cornwell died in 1825, she willed Williams' maternal grandmother, Prudence, her two children Elizabeth (Williams' mother) and Albert, and "the increase of the females forever" to her daughter Kitty Cornwell's eldest son John Cornwell.
She specified in her will that the inherited slaves (or their children) could not be sold, and if Cornwell were to try they would be freed.
Because John Cornwell was not of age at the time of Constance's death, her slaves were to be retained and managed by the executor of her will, Thomas Nelson, until John turned 21 in 1830.
But Constance's will was disputed by her children, who began a legal battle in 1835.
While the legal disputes continued for years, Prudence and her children remained in Nelson's possession. After Nelson died in 1845, J.C. Weedon, his qualified administrator, took possession of Prudence along with her children and grandchildren.
John Cornwell instituted proceedings to recover the family from Weedon in 1847, as they had been willed to him by Constance.
The case of ''Nelson’s Adm’r v. Cornwell'' was decided by the
Virginia Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of Virginia is the highest court in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It primarily hears direct appeals in civil cases from the trial-level city and county circuit courts, as well as the criminal law, family law and administrative ...
in October 1854. It awarded all of the property to John. Cornwell was aided by Prudence's husband and Mary's father, Seth Botts, then known as Henry Williams.
Freedom
In 1855, at age seven, Williams became free through the efforts of her father, Seth Botts, an escaped slave. Botts had settled in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
in 1850, renamed himself as Henry Williams, and worked for the next four years seeking help from prominent abolitionists to gain his family's freedom.
Williams, with financial support from his wealthy backers, bought his family's freedom from Cornwell. During this process, Henry's daughter, Mary Mildred Williams, came to the attention of abolitionist Senator
Charles Sumner.
Relationship to the abolitionist movement
On March 1, 1855, a letter from Charles Sumner dated February 19 and addressed ‘Dear Doctor’ was published in the ''New-York Daily Times'' (originally published in the ''
Boston Telegraph
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- most po ...
'' on February 27) that had accompanied a daguerreotype of Mary Williams.
In the letter, Sumner says:
“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.”
In a subsequent article dated March 9, 1855, reporters of the ''New-York Daily Times'' expressed “astonishment” that the girl was “ever held a slave.”
In early 1855, articles were published about Mary Williams in the ''Boston Telegraph'' and the ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', and copies of her photograph were widely publicized.
After her photograph was published, she accompanied Senator
Charles Sumner on a publicity tour to raise awareness and funds for the abolitionist cause.
The photo and tour made Williams famous. She was compared to fictional character Ida May, heroine of a popular novel about a white girl kidnapped into slavery, ''Ida May: a Story of Things Actual and Possible'' by
Mary Hayden Pike Mary Hayden Pike (''née'' Green) (November 30, 1824 – January 15, 1908) was an American author. She also wrote under the pseudonyms Mary Langdon and Sydney A. Story, Jr.
Biography
She was born Mary Hayden Green in Eastport, Maine, to Elijah ...
(1854). A columnist in ''Frederick Douglass’ Paper'' described her 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.’
Abolitionists emphasized Williams's perceived whiteness to enlist sympathy, and to suggest to Northerners that any child, regardless of appearance, might be snatched 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 Representative
Preston Brooks (D-SC),
nearly beat Sumner to death with a cane on the floor of the Senate in the
Capitol.
Adulthood and death
By 1865, Williams had moved to
Lexington, Massachusetts, along with her parents and sister. Five years later, she was living with her mother and sister in
Hyde Park
Hyde Park may refer to:
Places
England
* Hyde Park, London, a Royal Park in Central London
* Hyde Park, Leeds, an inner-city area of north-west Leeds
* Hyde Park, Sheffield, district of Sheffield
* Hyde Park, in Hyde, Greater Manchester
Austra ...
, a suburb of Boston.
It is unclear why her father did not join them there.
In the 1870 census, the three Williams women were classified as white. Both Williams and her mother identified as white women for the remainder of their lives. When her mother died in 1892, Williams gave her mother's maiden name as that of her white father: “Elizabeth A. (Nelson) Williams.”
Williams never married nor had children.
She became a clerk at Boston's Registry of Deeds, where she worked until at least 1900.
She rented an apartment in the Eleventh Ward of Boston and, according to the 1900 census, she lived there with her “partner,” Mary Maynard. Maynard worked as a bookkeeper and probation officer. She was descended from
Irish and
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
immigrants.
Williams died in 1921 and was buried in Boston.
See also
*
White slave propaganda
White slave propaganda is the term given to publicity, especially photograph and woodcuts, and also novels, articles, and popular lectures, about biracial and pure white slaves. Their examples were used during and prior to the American Civil War t ...
*
Garafilia Mohalbi
Garafilia Mohalbi(y) (; 1817 – March 17, 1830) was a Greek slave that was rescued by an American merchant and sent to live with his family in Boston, Massachusetts. Born to a prominent family on the island of Psara, her parents were killed in 18 ...
References
External links
Ida May: A Story of Things Actual and PossiblePublished 1854
{{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, Mary Mildred
1847 births
1911 deaths
People from Virginia
Abolitionism in the United States
Discrimination based on skin color
Slavery in the United States
19th-century American slaves
20th-century African-American people