Jordan Anderson or Jourdon Anderson (December 1825 – April 15, 1907) was an

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...

and former

slave Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

noted for an 1865 letter he dictated, known as "Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master". It was addressed to his former master, Colonel P. H. Anderson, in response to the colonel's request that Mr. Anderson return to the

plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. Th ...

to help restore the farm after the disarray of the war. It has been described as a rare example of documented "slave humor" of the period and its

deadpan Deadpan, dry humour, or dry-wit humour is the deliberate display of emotional neutrality or no emotion, commonly as a form of comedic delivery to contrast with the ridiculousness or absurdity of the subject matter. The delivery is meant to be blun ...

style has been compared to the

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Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has pr ...

Life

Anderson was born in December 1825 somewhere in Tennessee. By the age of seven or eight, he was sold as a slave to General Paulding Anderson of Big Spring in Wilson County, and subsequently passed to the general's son Patrick Henry Anderson, probably as a personal servant and playmate as the two were of similar age. In 1848, Jordan Anderson married Amanda (Mandy) McGregor. The two eventually would have 11 children together. In 1864,

Union Army During the American Civil War, the Union Army, also known as the Federal Army and the Northern Army, referring to the United States Army, was the land force that fought to preserve the Union (American Civil War), Union of the collective U.S. st ...

soldiers camped on the Anderson plantation and freed Jordan Anderson. He then may have worked at the Cumberland Military Hospital in

Nashville Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and th ...

before eventually settling in

Dayton, Ohio Dayton () is the List of cities in Ohio, sixth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County, Ohio, Montgomery County. A small part of the city extends into Greene County, Ohio, Greene County. The 2020 United S ...

, moving with the help of the surgeon in charge of the hospital, Dr. Clarke McDermont. There Anderson found work as a servant, janitor, coachman, or hostler, until 1894, when he became a sexton, probably at the Wesleyan Methodist Church. He held this position until his death. His employer, Valentine Winters, was father-in-law to McDermont.

Letter

In July 1865, a few months after the end of the Civil War, Colonel P. H. Anderson wrote a letter from Big Spring, Tennessee to his former and now freed slave Jordan Anderson asking him to come back and work the plantation, which had been left in disarray from the war. Harvest season was approaching with nobody to bring in the crops; the colonel was making a last-ditch effort to save the farm. On August 7, from his home in Ohio, Jordan Anderson dictated a letter in response through his

abolitionist Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The British ...

employer, attorney Valentine Winters, who had it published in the '' Cincinnati Commercial''. The letter became an immediate media sensation with reprints in the ''

New York Daily Tribune The ''New-York Tribune'' was an American newspaper founded in 1841 by editor Horace Greeley. It bore the moniker ''New-York Daily Tribune'' from 1842 to 1866 before returning to its original name. From the 1840s through the 1860s it was the dom ...

'' of August 22, 1865, and

Lydia Maria Child Lydia Maria Child ( Francis; February 11, 1802October 20, 1880) was an American abolitionist, women's rights activist, Native American rights activist, novelist, journalist, and opponent of American expansionism. Her journals, both fiction an ...

's ''The Freedmen's Book'' the same year. In the letter, Jordan Anderson describes his better life in Ohio, and asks his former master for $11,680 in back wages. Jordan calculated wages at $25 a month for 32 years for himself and $2 a week for 20 years for his wife Mandy, plus accumulated interest but less the costs for their clothing, "three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy". He asks the back wages be delivered via the Adams Express company, stating: "If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future." Anderson asks if his daughters will be safe living in Tennessee and able to have an education, since they are "good-looking girls" and Anderson would rather die "than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters... how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine." The letter concludes: "Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me."Jordan Anderson (1865). " Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master" The people mentioned in the letter are real and include George Carter, who was a carpenter in Wilson County. "Miss Mary" and "Miss Martha" were Colonel Anderson's wife, Mary, and their daughter, Martha. The man named "Henry", who had plans to shoot Anderson if he ever got the chance, "was more than likely Colonel Patrick Henry Anderson's son, Patrick Henry Jr., whom everyone called Henry, and who would have been about 18 when Anderson left in 1864." The two daughters, "poor Matilda and Catherine", did not travel with Anderson to Ohio, and their fate is unknown; it is speculated that whatever befell them was fatal, or they were sold as slaves to other families before Anderson had been freed. "V. Winters" in the letter was the aforementioned Valentine Winters, a banker in Dayton, and founder of Winters Bank, for whom Anderson and his wife felt such respect that in 1870 they named one of their sons Valentine Winters Anderson. Colonel Anderson, having failed to attract his former slaves back, sold the land for a pittance to try to get out of debt. Two years later, he was dead at the age of 44. Prior to 2006, historian Raymond Winbush tracked down the living relatives of the colonel in Big Spring, reporting that they "are still angry at Jordan for not coming back", knowing that the plantation was in serious disrepair after the war.

Death

Anderson died in Dayton on April 15, 1907, of "exhaustion" at 81 years old, and is buried in Woodland Cemetery, one of the oldest "garden" cemeteries in the United States. Amanda died April 12, 1913; she is buried next to him.

Aftermath

Dr. Valentine Winters Anderson, Jordan Anderson's son, was a close friend and collaborator with Paul Laurence Dunbar, a noted African-American author. A character called "Jeremiah Anderson", who is asked by his former master to return to the plantation and refuses, appears in Dunbar's short story, "The Wisdom of Silence". Michael Johnson, a historian at

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...

, investigated the people and places mentioned in order to verify the document's authenticity. He found that 1860 slave records named a Colonel P. H. Anderson in the right county, and that some of his slaves, although not referred to by name, matched the sexes and ages of those in the letter. Jordan Anderson, his wife, and children also appear in the 1870 census of Dayton; they are listed as black and born in Tennessee.

References

External links

Scan of ''New York Daily Tribune'', August 22, 1865

Newspaper Article found in ''Cleveland Daily Leader''
August 28, 1865 * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Anderson, Jordan 1825 births 1907 deaths People from Dayton, Ohio People from Wilson County, Tennessee 19th-century American slaves American letter writers Burials at Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum People of the Reconstruction Era People who wrote slave narratives 20th-century African-American people