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“The Palmy Days of Trade”: Anglo-American Culture in Savannah, 1735-1835
A Dissertation Submitted to the
Graduate School
of the University of Cincinnati
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
Doctor of Philosophy
in the Department of History
of the College of Arts and Sciences
2013
By
Feay Shellman Coleman
M.A., University of Georgia, 1977
B.A., Connecticut College, 1971
Committee Chair: Professor David Stradling
ii
ABSTRACT
This dissertation is a transnational study that traces the religious, economic, and
cultural factors that kept the bonds between Savannah, Georgia and Great Britain strong
and vital long after the United States achieved political independence. Through an
analysis of Savannah’s pre-eminent merchant family, the Boltons, and their associates,
this study demonstrates that enduring connections to Great Britain influenced both the
built environment and cultural spaces that Savannahians occupied for about a century--
from Georgia’s founding in 1735 until 1835.
Evidence drawn from material culture as well as a fresh reading of traditional
sources support this thesis. In addition to documents, primary sources that anchor the
analysis include buildings and neighborhoods where Savannahians worshiped, lived, and
worked in England and America. Because material culture embodies the social meanings
of the economic, religious, and domestic purposes it serves, analysis of specific buildings
and neighborhoods in Savannah as counterparts to English prototypes proves the case for
common culture. Throughout the dissertation, both material culture and a traditional
array of documentary sources reinforce the arguments. Since this study embraces
material culture and urban spatial relationships as potent sources, resulting insights break
boundaries that have limited scholarship in the past. Scholars have long scrutinized
Southern rural elites. And, more recently, historians have concentrated on people at the
bottom of the social scale. This research is a long overdue examination of Savannah’s
prosperous, urban middle class.
Historians of the New Republic often think in terms of what set the United States
apart from Great Britain in the period of nation building before 1835. This dissertation
iii
adds the dimension of continuity to the scholarly conversation. By presenting new
insight into the blending of cultures, this study shows how economic, religious, and
cultural interdependence sustained transnational relationships and diluted the meaning of
politically drawn borders. At the same time it sheds new light on the themes of religion,
gender, class, race, enterprise, and urban life in Savannah.
v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As I begin to draft the final paragraphs of my dissertation, it gives me great
pleasure to look up from the computer monitor to recognize institutions and individuals
who have sustained me through years of study, research, and writing. The University of
Cincinnati provided crucial funding for my graduate work via Graduate Scholarships,
Graduate Teaching Assistantships, and teaching appointments. The much appreciated
assistance of a Charles Phelps Taft Dissertation Fellowship, a Daughters of American
Revolution Fellowship, a Groesbeck Scholarship of The National Society of the Colonial
Dames of America in Ohio, a Miller Fellowship, and a Distinguished Dissertation
Completion Fellowship enabled me to concentrate on research and writing. A Forbes,
Inc. Scholarship to the Victorian Society in America’s London Summer School; a
Cincinnati Branch of the English Speaking Union Travel-Study Grant; and a Charles
Phelps Taft Graduate Enrichment Grant provided the means for me to carry out research
in England.
Sympathetic archivists and librarians are frequently a historian’s best ally. My
work has benefitted from the expertise and dedication of staff members at institutions on
both sides of the Atlantic. I am indebted to the employees of the Guildhall, London; the
Victoria and Albert Museum; the Royal Institute of British Architects; National Archives,
Kew; the British Library; and the Liverpool Public Library. In the United States the
personnel of the Chatham County Court House, Georgia Historical Society, the Southern
Historical Collections of the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, Special Collections of Duke University, and the American Philosophical
Society have cheerfully fulfilled my requests for documents. Mikaila Corday of the
vi
Interlibrary Loan Department at the Langsam Library of the University of Cincinnati
deserves a special mention. I am grateful to her for expeditiously locating and procuring
many obscure books, articles, and documents.
The community within the History Department of the University of Cincinnati has
made the third floor of McMicken Hall like a second home to me. I am grateful for the
camaraderie and intellectual stimulation of my fellow graduate students and faculty
members, especially Aaron Cowan, Rob Gioielli, David Merkowitz, Charlie Lester, Rory
Krupp, and Jacob Melish. The scholarship and penetrating insights of longstanding
committee members, Geoff Plank, Maura O’Connor, and Patrick Snadon have been an
inspiration and aspiration for my own work. I also owe my gratitude to Wayne Durrill
for serving on the committee. Hope Earls, History Department Administrative
Coordinator, keeps the mechanisms of academic bureaucracy well-oiled and running
smoothly. From day one, she has been the “go to” problem solver for me.
Whether or not it would be juicy reading will remain to be seen because I most
certainly will not embarrass him or myself by detailing all the myriad ways in which my
committee chair, David Stradling, has shown me patience over the years I have been his
student. Suffice it to say that he is the kind of person to whom grace and generosity
come so easily that he has long forgotten most of the large and small considerations he
has shown me. His wise counsel has been instrumental to any contribution to the field
this project makes. I solely am responsible for any shortcomings.
I am very thankful for my treasured friends and family who have remained
supportive while they put up with neglect and accepted “dissertation” excuses for too
long. At crucial moments, Evelyn Finnegan, Cynthia Hunter, Sonja Rethy, and Terry
vii
Meredith nudged me along with incentives that ranged from editorial expertise to outright
bribes. My late husband Joseph’s backing and confidence in me stimulated my return to
graduate school 25 years after I earned a masters degree. His untimely death left me
struggling to maintain faith in myself without his daily encouragement. Since her
father’s passing, our precious daughter Weslie has shown the constancy of the North Star
in helping me find the way forward. She has made all the difference.
viii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract ii
Acknowledgements v
List of Figures ix
Introduction 1
Prologue: John Wesley, Savannah, and Communitas 15
Chapter 1: Communitas Takes Root in Savannah, c. 1740-1775 25
Chapter 2: Slavery and an Elite Construction of Class and Race, c. 1785-1825 61
Chapter 3: From Middling Sorts to Capitalist Entrepreneurs: 75
Slavery and the Rise of R. and J. Bolton, c. 1785-1825
Chapter 4: Evangelism, Business Innovation and Changing Views 101
on Slavery in the Communitas, c. 1810-1825
Chapter 5: Communitas and Establishing a Career 127
in Architecture, c. 1810-1825
Chapter 6: The Domestic Style of Communitas: 155
Furnishing a Savannah Parlor, c. 1820
Chapter 7: Education and the Enduring Culture of Communitas 188
in Savannah, c. 1820-1840
Conclusion 231
Bibliography 236
Unpublished Primary Sources: Manuscripts
Published Primary Sources: Books
Visual Primary Sources: Maps
Secondary Sources
Figures 260
ix
LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 1 Feay Shellman Coleman, Schematic Furnishing Plan for The Richardson Parlor
INTRODUCTION
Savannah’s moss draped oaks and camellia blossoms never held the allure of
exoticism for me. For curious tourists those objects evoke the romance, mystery, and
mythology of the South. But for me as child growing up in Savannah, they were the raw
materials of everyday life in imaginative play. I shaped Spanish moss into cozy beds
where teddy bears napped. Buds and petals collected from under Granddaddy’s prized
camellias morphed into the delicacies served at doll tea parties. As I matured the
fantasies of child’s play receded, but my fascination with everyday life endured and
predisposed me to a career that called for interpreting material culture. In due course I
settled in my hometown of Savannah to curate the collections of the Telfair Museum of
Art which included the early nineteenth-century Richardson house and its contents. My
absorption with unanswered questions about the house, its original owners, and the
workings of their everyday lives sent me to the archives. I wanted to understand the
Richardson house in the specific context of Savannah in 1820. Eventually my
investigations took me across the Atlantic to England and back in time to the English
settlement of Georgia in the 1730s.
What I have unearthed is the imprint of a century-long, transnational culture of
reciprocal relationships among people living in Savannah and in the English middle class
enclaves of the City of London and Liverpool. Today the Richardson house is the sole
manifestation of a culture that contributed significantly to life in Savannah from the
1730s until it faded around 1830. I employ the term communitas to refer collectively to
the loosely affiliated individuals who participated in this culture and experienced shared
2
identities.1 The connections linking people within the communitas arose primarily from
common interests rather than formal or hierarchical structures, so they left very little in
the way of institutional records. Another contributing factor to the skimpy and scattered
written records of the communitas is that it flourished when permeable boundaries—in
religious, racial, social, and national identification— as well as mobility--both physical
and social—were the order of the day.2 Family, religious, and economic alliances were
the bonds of communitas that endured despite the geographic and political separation of
Savannah and Great Britain. Those reciprocal relationships remained vital and strong
throughout the colonial period and long after the United States gained independence.
Within the communitas, the embrace of values such as industry and justness
overlapped with and complemented evangelical piety. This strong value system
originated with the emerging urban middle class in England, yet it was flexible enough
for adherents to adapt it to life in Savannah. People connected to the communitas held
sway in Savannah for over a century. Their wealth and leadership meant that their beliefs
and actions affected the city’s life, especially in the realms of education, architectural
style, business, and religion. Their views and behaviors also influenced the cultures of
bound labor, race, and slavery in Savannah. By the early nineteenth century, the anti-
slavery fervor that was sweeping middle class evangelicals in England contributed to the
uneasiness some Savannah communitas affiliates felt about continuing as slaveholders
and, ultimately, to their withdrawal from Savannah. Their orientation to a broader
1 Carol Trosset, “Welsh Communitas as Ideological Practice,” Ethos: Journal of Anthropology 16:2 (June,
1988), 168; Anna Gavanas, “Grasping Communitas,” Ethos: Journal of Anthropology 73:1 (March, 2008),
128. 2 For an interpretation of a settlement near Savannah (Ebenezer) that emphasizes communication networks
rather than nation states and empires, see Alexander Pyrges, “Religion in the Atlantic World: The Ebenezer
Communication Network, 1732-1828” in Pietism in German and North America, 1680-1820 (Farnham,
Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2009), 51-70.
3
Atlantic culture and their minority views on race and slavery diverged from the stringent
laws and customs that were developing around questions of race and slavery in Georgia.
The historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich has observed “People not only make history
through the things that they do in their lifetimes, but people, including ordinary people,
make history through the things they choose to remember.”3 To that I humbly add the
corollary that people also shape history by what they choose to forget. The pro-slavery
culture that dominated the Antebellum South contributed to a historical amnesia that has
hidden the communitas and its contributions to the social, religious, and economic
character of Savannah. Members’ life stories gainsay portrayals of Southerners as
embodying limited regional attitudes, unquestioning pro-slavery sentiments, and wealth
emanating solely from agrarian pursuits. The adoption of financial capitalism and
industrialization by men associated with the communitas also runs against dominant
themes in Southern history. The pages that follow represent a long overdue assessment
of these faithful, profit-minded men, the culture that guided them, and their impact on
Savannah. At the same time this study contributes to the broader literatures of economic
and religious history and to our understanding of the operation of networks in the Atlantic
World.
Over the years, historians of Savannah have channeled their inquiries through a
multitude of interests and templates. Elites have always received attention from scholars,
including the contemporary historians Alan Gallay and Frank Lambert. In recent times
the historians Whittington Johnson, Michelle Gillespie, Tim Lockley, and Betty Wood
3 “Interpreting the Past with Professor Laurel Ulrich,”
http://athome.harvard.edu/programs/ulrich/ulrich3_frameset.html (accessed October 8, 2012). See also:
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth
(New York: Vintage Books, 2001).
4
have devised imaginative ways to study the minimally documented lives of women and
laborers, both bound and free.4 In the main, historians have overlooked the urban middle
class. As with elites, the group was numerically small. Like subalterns, the urban middle
class left little in the way of documentary evidence. Therefore, I have learned as much or
more from other historians’ uses of sources and methods as from specific studies of
Savannah topics.
At the outset, material culture in the form of the English design and furnishings of
the home of the Savannah merchant Richard Richardson stimulated the questions and
provided the evidence that underpins this study. These varied materials include
correspondence, historical archaeology, United States Customs Service records of
imported household furniture, and an inventory of the Richardson House recorded in an
1822 Bill of Sale. Additional supporting evidence comes from designs published in
English pattern books, paintings, Savannah newspapers, Chatham County Court records,
and the papers of several Georgia families. While wealthy families like the Richardsons
made purchases in England, Savannah consumers without connections in England also
had ample access to English manufactured goods such as kitchen wares, wall coverings,
textiles, carpets, and ceramics. Newspaper advertisements detail the range of English
4 F.D. Lee and J. L. Agnew, Historical Record of the City of Savannah (Savannah: J. H. Estill, 1869); G. A.
Gregory, Savannah and its Surroundings (Savannah: Savannah Morning News, 1890); Joseph Frederick
Waring, Cerveau’s Savannah (Savannah: The Georgia Historical Society, 1973); William Andrew Byrne,
“The Burden and Heat of the Day: Slavery and Servitude in Savannah 1733-1865,” Ph.D. diss. Florida
State University, 1979; Alan Gallay, The Formation of a Planter Elite: Jonathan Bryan and the Southern
Colonial Frontier (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1989); Page Talbott, Classical Savannah:
Fine and Decorative Arts, 1800-1840 (Savannah: Telfair Museum of Art, 1995); Whittington B. Johnson,
Black Savannah, 1788-1864 (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 1996); Michelle Gillespie,
Free Labor in an Unfree World: White Artisans in Slaveholding Georgia, 1789-1860 (Athens: The
University of Georgia Press, 2000); Ashley Callahan, ed., The Savannah River Valley to 1865: Fine Arts,
Architecture, and Decorative Arts (Athens: Georgia Museum of Arts, 2003); Walter J. Fraser, Jr.,
Savannah in the Old South (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 2003); Frank Lambert,
James Habersham: Loyalty, Politics, and Commerce in Colonial Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia
Press, 2005); Philip Morgan, ed., African American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry: The Atlantic World
and the Gullah Geechee (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 2010).
5
books, magazines, and products sold in Savannah. Consequently, documentation
establishes both the acquisition of high-style English architectural services and products
in England by Savannah's merchant elite as well as the availability of imported English
goods to the middle classes in Savannah.
The scholarship of historians like T. H. Breen and Richard Bushman who have
examined the cultural meanings of goods that were produced in England but consumed in
America has enriched my thinking on material culture. In The Refinement of America:
Persons, Houses, Cities (1992), Bushman contends that despite the contradiction implicit
in a republican nation looking to the English aristocracy for standards, post-revolutionary
Americans were anxious to display their gentility and respectability by adopting English
manners and products. Between 1800 and 1825 Richardson and other Savannahians did
indeed look to England. But the products and guidance they sought owed less to
aristocratic standards than to an emerging literature of middle class culture that included
publications on architecture, furniture, and style.
Bushman extended his argument to embrace another seeming contradiction by
linking the American quest for gentility with capitalism. Success at capitalist pursuits,
after all, provided the disposable income that was necessary for conspicuous consumption
by members of the middle class. Richardson validates Bushman’s theory on both sides of
the equation. A self-made man, Richardson commissioned his English architect to design
not only a house, but also the Savannah Branch of the Bank of the United States that was
one of the earliest purpose-built banks in the United States. Consequently, the two
buildings bracket Bushman’s argument with the house representing gentility and the bank
standing for capitalism.
6
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s work on material culture and memory has also informed
my own. In her book The Age of Homespun (2000), Ulrich shows how nineteenth-
century Americans interpreted material culture of the colonial period in terms of how
they understood themselves in their own time. Twentieth-century readings of the same
objects reveal that they take on different meanings in a new temporal context. Her grasp
of how the significance of objects changes over time helped me evaluate traditional
interpretations of the Richardson house and come to a deeper understanding of the culture
it represented in 1820.5
After the Richardson house and its furnishings stimulated my interest, I began to
look for documents that might shed light on my questions. The Richardson family and
their relatives in the allied Bolton family left little in the way of manuscripts, but
members of younger generations did write memoirs and genealogies that gave me a few
leads to pursue in developing an understanding of the communitas and Savannah’s
middle class merchants who were active from the 1730s until the 1820s. The recent
digitization of early nineteenth-century publications enabled me to search fairly
efficiently for obscure and far-flung sources and cull tiny bits of information that helped
me comprehend the transnational relationships that influenced Savannahians and the
middle-class culture that nurtured them.
Savannah inspired this study and remains at its center. However, the communitas
was not isolated to Savannah. It was rooted in the English middle class and some of its
affiliates lived in the City of London and Liverpool. Therefore, my work would have
been difficult or impossible if I could not have drawn on two landmark studies of the
5 Maurie D. McInnis in collaboration with Angela Mack, eds., In Pursuit of Refinement: Charlestonians
Abroad, 1740-1860 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999); Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The
Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth, (2001).
7
English middle class, The Middling Sort: Commerce Gender and the Family in England,
1680-1780 (1996) by Margaret Hunt and Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the
English Middle Class, 1780-1850 (1987) by Leonore Hall and Catherine Davidoff. These
scholars’ deep analysis of English middle class culture enabled me to pinpoint similar
values among Savannah merchants and to trace connections.
At the beginning of the 1730s, James Edward Oglethorpe, the well-connected
military officer, Member of Parliament and philanthropist gathered around him twenty or
so like-minded Englishmen to discuss plans for ameliorating unemployment and poverty
in England. From their vantage point in London, they envisioned the last of the original
thirteen North American colonies primarily as a humanitarian undertaking. To strengthen
their bid for a royal charter, they also argued that the proposed colony would have
mercantile and strategic value. In 1732, with the stroke of his pen, King George II
endorsed the plan for his namesake colony. Located between the Savannah and
Altamaha Rivers, Georgia would serve as a buffer between South Carolina and Spanish
Florida as well as provide a haven for representatives of the deserving poor selected from
London’s distressed, urban population. Despite the metropolitan backgrounds of
prospective emigrants, the idealistic Trustees envisioned the settlers supporting
themselves by farming and producing silk for the European market. In addition the
Trustees codified some lofty values in the Georgia charter which included an expectation
of temperance, acceptance of many religions, a prohibition of slavery, and an egalitarian
land tenure system that precluded large landholdings.
On February 12, 1733, just over one hundred English colonists arrived at
Yamacraw Bluff on the Savannah River where their leader, James Oglethorpe, had
8
chosen to lay out the first settlement in the new colony of Georgia. The spot selected for
Savannah was a plateau that stood forty feet above the river on the last high ground
before the muddy red Savannah flowed past hammocks and barrier islands, spread out
into saltwater marshes and estuaries, and, finally, met the Atlantic. An image of
Savannah recorded in 1734 as part of a report to the English trustees suggests that
Oglethorpe’s modular plan for the settlement embodied his vision of a well-ordered,
egalitarian, thriving community.6 (Savannah, 1734) The author of the view, Peter
Gordon, shows four symmetrically placed wards in a rectangular clearing with the river
bank on one boundary and stately yellow pines towering along the other three. One
spacious public square centered each ward. Forty 60’ x 90’ lots for houses arranged in
regular rows formed the northern and southern edges of each square. Four larger parcels
reserved for public buildings faced the squares from the east and west. About eighty
identical cottages occupying lots in the 1734 image imply that industrious settlers could
establish comfortable, if modest, homes in just one year in the New World. Oglethorpe
had devised the modular ward plan with expansion in mind. As new arrivals swelled the
population, the plan would be duplicated to create new neighborhoods. Two more wards
were in the works by 1735 and the first representative of communitas to establish a
permanent residence in Savannah arrived in 1738.
The town, however, did not grow as quickly as Oglethorpe might have hoped.
Between 1735 and 1790, Savannah expanded by only two additional wards, resulting in a
total of eight. Initially, Oglethorpe’s idealistic but unrealistic economic model for the
colony contributed to slow growth in Savannah. Later, the disruption of the American
6 Rodney M. Baine and Louis De Vorsey, Jr., “The Provenance and Historical Accuracy of ‘A View of
Savannah as it Stood on the 29th
of March, 1734,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 73 (Winter, 1989),
784-813.
9
Revolution and the damage Savannah suffered in that conflict inhibited economic
development. Rather than fulfilling Oglethorpe’s utopian vision, Savannah grew and
changed over time in response to real-life environmental and cultural conditions.
From 1790 to 1841, Savannah added ten more wards, raising the total to eighteen,
to accommodate a population of just over 10,000 in 1841.7 Slavery had been legalized in
Georgia in 1750. This factor combined with Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in
1793 fueled the wildfire expansion of cotton as a cash crop in the hinterlands and the
growth of Savannah as a key link in the supply chain providing Georgia cotton to English
mills. Within Savannah’s business community, associates of the communitas figured as
prime movers in conceptualizing and building the cotton trade. Their social and financial
clout peaked with the meteoric rise of the cotton market that occurred between the end of
the War of 1812 and the economic downturn that followed the Panic of 1819. For
Savannah, this was a golden moment in time that Tyrone Power, an English visitor to the
city, hailed as “the palmy days of trade.”8 In a century, Savannah had grown from a tiny
colonial settlement into a small city in a new nation. The ideas and actions of
communitas members contributed significantly to the character of the city from the 1730s
until the 1830s. The narrative that follows probes the actions of individuals who
sustained this transnational culture over a span of four generations.
The Prologue and Chapter One examine the impact on Savannah of two towering
figures in eighteenth-century religious history. John Wesley and George Whitefield were
both essential and peripheral to the communitas at the center of this study. For their
7 John W. Reps, The Making of Urban America, A History of City Planning in the United States (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1965), 185-192; Witold Rybczynski, City Life: Urban Expectations in the New
World (New York: Scribner, 1995), 75-77. 8 Tyrone Power, Impressions of America During the Years 1833, 1834, and 1835 (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea,
and Blanchard, 1836), ii:69.
10
biographers, Savannah appears as a minor episode. Both men alighted in Georgia very
briefly, but their conceptualizations of middle class values and Christian practice deeply
influenced some of the men who became Savannah’s first wealthy and prominent
citizens.
The first chapter opens in the City of London about 1736 where the values of
communitas brought the evangelist George Whitefield and the factory manager James
Habersham (c. 1712 -1775) together as friends and anchored the deep bond they
developed. In 1738 they left London together to undertake an evangelical mission to
Georgia. Upon their arrival at Savannah, they drew on their evangelical faith and middle
class world view in devising survival strategies to address the new circumstances they
encountered. These included formulating positions on race and slavery. Habersham not
only succeeded financially but also expanded the communitas in Savannah. Influential as
they were, Habersham and his like-minded associates did not dominate the discourse on
slavery. In eighteenth-century Savannah, many competing views co-existed partly
because Georgia’s founder, James Oglethorpe, had welcomed to the colony settlers of
different faiths and ethnicities.
Urban, middle class backgrounds and evangelical beliefs framed the issue of
slaveholding for communitas affiliates like James Habersham, but other Georgians came
from circumstances that fostered different views of slavery. As a result, apparently
inconsistent cultures of slavery and race co-existed in late eighteenth- and early
nineteenth-century Savannah.9 Chapter Two analyzes the legacies of the planter William
9 Two former slaves published compelling accounts of how they negotiated the complexities and
contradictions that characterized Savannah’s uncertain racial terrain. See Equiano, Olaudah. The
Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; or, Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself
(London: Printed for the Author, 1789), i:268-272, ii:12, 26-27, 66-71; William L. Andrews and Regina E.
11
Gibbons (1754-1804) which reflect the attitudes he absorbed from his roots in the
Caribbean culture of plantation slavery. Chapters One and Two are only a sampling of
the many varied and complex attitudes about race and slavery that co-existed and
competed in Savannah until the second quarter of the nineteenth century.
Chapter Three returns the focus of the narrative to urban, middle class merchants
of the communitas with an account of the rise of the mercantile firm of R. and J. Bolton.
The firm’s founder, Robert Bolton (1757-1802) established a pattern of risk taking and
financial innovation that his successors in the family business continued. I also argue
that slave ownership was a key element in transforming the economic mentality of
members of the Bolton clan from that of middling sorts into that of capitalist
entrepreneurs. Although slavery was central to the Bolton family’s accumulation of
capital, it became a difficult issue for younger generations of the family who grew even
richer by innovating in the realm of financial capitalism. As their financial assets
increased and slaves decreased as a percentage of their wealth, slavery became a more
complex moral issue for them.
The account of R. and J. Bolton continues in Chapter Four. Here, two sons-in-law
and successors of Robert Bolton (1757-1802) in the family firm of R. and J. Bolton take
center stage. While continuing to uphold the values of the communitas, the new
generation built on profits made in the expanding cotton market that rose meteorically
from the 1790s until the Panic of 1819. With John Bolton (1774-1838) and Richard
Richardson (1785-1833) in the lead, the family firm plunged headlong into the emerging
field of financial capitalism. Tempered by their religious convictions, the shift of the
Mason, eds., Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
2008 reissue of the 1855 edition.), 49-75, 114-115.
12
relative values of their assets from human property to commercial paper stimulated new
thinking about slavery. Bolton and Richardson, however, came to very different
resolutions of their qualms about slavery. In the period of the Early Republic when many
boundaries were negotiable, different members of the Bolton family came to different
relationships with the institution of slavery. Again, as in earlier chapters, most family
members acted according to their own principles while tolerating a diverse range of
attitudes.
Next the narrative returns to England and the City of London to highlight the
economic role of international networks like the communitas in the development of
middle class professions. Chapter Five closely investigates the intersection of
transnational culture with the launching of the architectural career of William Jay (1792-
1837) in Regency, England and Savannah. In this situation the family and evangelical
network come into play, but an equally important theme is the role of England’s
economic empire in creating opportunities for the emerging professional class.
Chapter Six takes up the work in Savannah of the architect William Jay for his
relative by marriage, the merchant Richard Richardson. Even though Jay’s employment
in Savannah took place between 1817 and 1822, after the United States won political
independence from Great Britain, the design and furnishings of the parlor in the
Richardson house draw on up-to-the-minute English style and taste because Savannah
merchants identified strongly with their English, middle-class counterparts. This chapter
reprises the theme of communitas as an economic as well as a cultural network.
The final chapter considers the life and career of Savannah native Robert Bolton
(1788-1857), who, for a time, joined John Bolton and Richard Richardson as a merchant
13
in the family firm before turning to the ministry. Robert Bolton represents yet another
way of coming to terms with slavery and the possibility of tremendous mobility, both
social and physical in the culture of early nineteenth-century America and England. His
enduring ties with Savannahians, despite his rejection of slavery, illustrate how many
people maintained family and personal relationships across the intensifying regional
disputes over slavery. Bolton’s physical separation from Savannah did not break his
emotional and spiritual ties with his birthplace or with a significant segment of its
population who called on Bolton to educate their daughters.
Savannah’s middle-class Anglo-American culture originated with Georgia’s
founding in the 1730s. It took root in the eighteenth century and came into full flower as
the English market for cotton grew exponentially in the decades following 1800.
Simultaneously, the English middle class and Savannah’s top merchants took up
innovations in industry, technology, and finance that compounded their wealth. Then a
blip in the cotton market triggered the financial Panic of 1819. Savannah suffered
another devastating economic blow when a wind-whipped fire destroyed much of the city
on a January night in 1820. The following summer rains pooled in burned out structures
and gave rise to a mosquito population that spread disease. A yellow fever outbreak
reached epidemic proportions in Savannah between July and November of 1820.
Because of misgivings about slaveholding and financial opportunities that arose
elsewhere, communitas affiliates like John and Robert Bolton had departed Savannah
earlier. Following the financial disasters of 1819-1820, Richard Richardson relocated his
family to Louisiana. Savannah slowly recovered from the man-made and natural
disasters in the emerging social climate of the Antebellum South. Many of the
14
communitas affiliates had moved on and its influence waned, but the Richardson house
remained as a monument to their Anglo-American culture.
Note on the Text: In quotations from manuscripts I have made simple corrections
to spelling and punctuation for clarity and ease of reading. Maps referenced in the text
are listed in the “Bibliography” under “Primary Visual Sources: Maps.” Wherever
possible I have included internet links to the maps and images. In text abbreviations for
maps appear as “(date, place).”
PROLOGUE
John Wesley, Savannah, and Communitas
The first stirrings of communitas began in the gothic quadrangles of Lincoln
College at Oxford University in the late 1720s. Known for preparing generation upon
generation of privileged Englishmen for careers in the Anglican clergy or ruling elite,
Oxford University was an unlikely mainspring for a communitas grounded in
nondenominational, evangelical fervor and middle-class values such as propriety,
prudence, and diligence. Oxford both reflected and perpetuated a configuration of social
standing that hardly allowed for upward mobility. High social rank, according to the
prevailing view, emanated from religious affiliation, family lineage and wealth based on
landownership rather than from skilled labor or individual merit. By law, the state
funded the Anglican Church with tax monies and excluded non-Anglicans from
universities and high level positions. In eighteenth-century England the opportunities for
upward social mobility were limited, but gradually expanding. Aspiring to the Anglican
priesthood was one way for bright young men from middle ranks to gain admission to
Oxford. Prime movers in the communitas, John Wesley and George Whitefield attended
Oxford University under these conditions.
John Wesley, who was already established as a tutor at Oxford when George
Whitefield arrived in 1732, soon attracted the younger man to his circle which also
included his brothers Samuel and Charles. Part of what drew Whitefield and the Wesleys
together was their shared middle class backgrounds, although Whitefield, unlike the
Wesleys, was not the son of a clergyman, but the child of an innkeeper. At Oxford,
middling status marked a student as subordinate to the higher ranking gentlemen
16
commoners for whom matriculation was all but a birthright. For the young gentleman,
the goal of a university education was as much or more to establish social bonds with
others of similar status as it was for acquiring academic knowledge. Undergraduates of
modest means like the Wesley brothers occupied an intermediate status between the
wealthy gentlemen and the lowest ranking servitors or scholarship students. On the one
hand middling students like the Wesleys often struggled to pay their tuition bills and did
not even dream of lavish spending on extracurricular activities. On the other hand, they
were not relegated to the rank of servant as were youths like Whitefield who attended
Oxford as a servitor. In exchange for tuition, the servitor did menial labor for college
fellows and other students.1 That their middle class identity marked them as outsiders
surely contributed to the mutual attraction between the Wesleys and Whitefield. It also
significantly influenced their intensifying beliefs about what constituted piety.
The concept of individual conversion, that is, redemption through a born-again
experience, combined with a healthy dose of good works, centered the prescription for
salvation of Wesley’s circle which was described mockingly as the “Holy Club.”
Eventually their emphasis on preaching the word of God expanded while the importance
of ecclesiastical hierarchy, ritual, and ceremony diminished. Other Oxonians derisively
characterized the spiritual practices of the Wesley brothers and their like-minded circle of
friends as “methodism.” Wesley’s religious ideas and practices that began as a reform
movement within the Anglican Church to empower the individual to form a direct
relationship with God eventually coalesced into the independent denomination of
Methodism after Wesley’s death.
1 Harry S. Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Grand
Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1991), 21-29.
17
As they honed their methodist spiritual practices within the Anglican Church,
Wesley’s circle minimized worship practices that reinforced the ruling elite as socially
and morally superior to lower classes. Co-existing with their methodist spiritual concerns
was an equally important but understated repudiation of elite sophistication. Methodism
had both spiritual and social content. As the Whitefield biographer Harry Stout put it,
“insofar as gentlemen defined the essence of the institution [Oxford], they came to
represent the image methodists would subvert. In place of envy there would be
unqualified—and unappreciated—disdain.”2 The methodists rejected upper class
worldliness and identified middle class morality as superior. For instance, Whitefield
compared his own birth at the Bell Inn in Gloucester to “the example of my dear Saviour,
who was born in a manger belonging to an inn” when he wanted motivation to make
good his mother’s expectations that he would bring her more comfort than her other
children. Whitefield’s birth into the middling ranks and donning of “the blue apron” of
the tavern boy did not bring worldly privileges, but it did parallel the life of Christ, a
circumstance more likely than elite birth to provide a head start towards salvation.3
Driven by his eagerness to explore a perceived association between the absence of
worldliness and moral purity, Wesley accepted a call in 1735 to the newly established
colony of Georgia. His duties would include ministering to colonists, but he most avidly
anticipated introducing Christian salvation to noble savages unsullied by the distractions
of civilization. Envisioning Indians as simple beings who would respond to the core
tenets of Christianity, Wesley thought that by gauging the responses from their pure
2 Stout, 20.
3 George Whitefield’s Journals (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1960), 37-38.
18
hearts, he would be able to identify the essence of Christianity and thereby refine and
deepen his own faith.4
Wesley’s friends and followers strongly supported his naive suppositions about
the missionary work as a source of spiritual growth. Other would-be evangelists
sincerely yearned to follow Wesley to Georgia. It soon became obvious, however, that
elite parents did not share their sons’ idealism concerning the spiritual gifts of the lower
classes and raised serious opposition to the idea. One well-heeled Oxonian reluctantly
conceded that “he ought to abide where he is, till his parents cease to forbid him going to
Georgia” while another complained “[my father] will not intrust me with the management
of my allowance, lest I should give it away to charity.” Still another young minister saw
a bright side to his father having seemed “to have lost all affection” for him. He
speculated, “Who knows but this may open a way to Georgia?”5
Given John Wesley’s own idealism, middle class roots, and upper class education,
it is not surprising that some of the assumptions about what he might encounter and how
his mission would unfold in Georgia turned out to be unrealistic. The Oxford-educated
son of an Anglican minister, Wesley had been named a fellow of Lincoln College,
Oxford, in 1726 and ordained a priest in 1728. His search for a clear spiritual path was
developing within his lifelong acceptance of the rites and doctrines of the Established
Anglican Church. Young scholars made up his circle and academe was his milieu.
Whereas his actual experience with working class Englishmen was limited at best, his
4Roger Warlick, As Grain Once Scattered: The History of Christ Church Savannah, Georgia, 1733-1983
(Columbia, S.C.: The State Printing Company for the Rector, Wardens, and Vestry of Christ (Episcopal)
Church, 1987), 17. See also Harold E. Davis, The Fledgling Province, Social and Cultural Life in Colonial
Georgia, 1773-1776 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1976), 214-216. 5 A Collection of Letters, on Religious Subjects, from Various Eminent Ministers; and others to the Rev.
John Wesley (London: Printed for G. Whitfield, 1797), 5-7.
19
practical knowledge of Indians was nil. In the face of these realities life in Georgia
presented some unpleasant surprises.
John Wesley, accompanied by his brother Charles, embarked from England on
October 14, 1735 with high hopes of evangelizing settlers and Indians alike.6 Although
the Wesleys found Georgia much less appealing in reality than it had been in their
imaginings, John became the initial link in the chain of communitas. John’s tenure in
Georgia would be short and troubled. In fact he never again set foot in America after
1738. However, he continued to take interest in the affairs of religion in America after
his return to England and, most importantly, his American experience had lasting
influence on his subsequent career and the preacher he became.7
Ironically, the nature of John Wesley’s appointment put him at split purposes and
allotted him almost no opportunity to preach directly to Indians, noble savages or
otherwise. Although the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts paid
Wesley’s £50 annual salary, the Georgia Trustees had appointed Wesley the official
representative of the Anglican Church in Georgia. General Oglethorpe and the Trustees
set Wesley’s first priority as ministering to colonists both in Savannah and throughout
Georgia. In Wesley’s estimation the travel involved in serving a parish “above 200 miles
in length laughs at the efforts of one man.”8 Consequently, his other duties left him with
very little time to preach to the Indians. Wesley’s mission to Georgia did contribute to
his own religious evolution, but the stimuli came from a wide-ranging population of
European settlers rather than from indigenous people.
6 William Myles, A Chronological History of the People Called Methodists (Liverpool: printed for the
author by J. Nutall, 1799), 2-4. 7 Warlick, 11-22.
8 John Wesley quoted in Warlick, 15.
20
Tolerance for all faiths except Roman Catholicism figured into General James E.
Oglethorpe’s original plan for Georgia. He chose both Anglicans and Dissenters to serve
with him as Trustees of the Georgia project, so a degree of religious diversity was built
into the governance of the colony from its inception. The trustees wanted Georgia to
welcome settlers of many faiths and nationalities, and they succeeded in attracting
German Moravians and Lutherans (Salzburgers), Portuguese Jews, Scots and Irish
Presbyterians, as well as English Dissenters and Anglicans.9 It was among this
heterogeneous population of European descent that Wesley found his spiritual path. As
historian Alison Games has argued for colonists of an earlier period, one might say that
Wesley’s experiences in Georgia gave him a more cosmopolitan exposure than his
Oxford education.10
Wesley’s spiritual growth began even before he reached Georgia, and it originated
from an unexpected quarter. Rather than the Indians, it was a group of Moravians, his
fellow passengers on the Simmonds, who impressed him with the simplicity and purity of
their faith. Curious about how their doctrine and discipline contributed to their calm
response to a terrifying storm at sea, Wesley was eager to learn more. After arriving in
Georgia he established a grueling schedule for his Sabbath. His Sunday schedule ran
from 5 a.m. until 4 p.m. and included a catechism for children, a communion service, and
prayers in Italian, French, and English. At 6 p.m. Wesley kept his last appointment of the
9 David B. Calhoun, Splendor of Grace: the Independent Presbyterian Church of Savannah, Georgia,
1755-2005 (Greenville, S.C.: A Printing Press, 2005), 1-7. 10
Alison Games, Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World (Cambridge and London:
Harvard University Press, 1999), 9-12
21
day with the Moravians with whom he said, “I was glad to be present not as a teacher, but
as a learner.”11
In Georgia, Wesley served as a spiritual resource for residents of the parish
hailing from many religious and linguistic backgrounds including American Indians,
Portuguese Jews, German Lutherans, and Scottish Presbyterians. However, his core
constituency remained middle and working class English Anglican settlers, and they did
not receive him well. This group mirrored many of the religious, social, and political
divisions that created stress fissures in the eighteenth-century Anglican Church. Because
some settlers inferred social and political content from his strict adherence to the letter of
Anglican ritual, Wesley’s style antagonized them. For instance, Wesley ran afoul of
Georgia’s bailiff and his wife when they resisted having their infant baptized by
immersion. Instead of adapting church rites to suit the situation and reaching a
compromise, Wesley declined to baptize the baby. The repetition of incidents like this
promoted controversy, compromised the viability of his ministry, and precipitated his
unceremonious departure from Savannah on December 2, 1737.12
Wesley passed over
his leave-taking with the comment, “as soon as evening prayers were over, about 8
o’clock, the tide then serving, I shook off the dust from my feet and left Georgia after
having preached the Gospel there (not as I ought but as I was able).”13
John Wesley’s efforts met with little success in Georgia, yet some of his Georgia
experiences strongly influenced his subsequent ministry in England. It would be fair to
11
John Wesley quoted in Warlick, 15. For an account of Wesley’s spiritual awakening told from the a
German protestant perspective, see: Philip A. Strobel, The Salzburgers and their Descendants: Being the
History of a Colony of German (Lutheran) Protestants, who Emigrated to Georgia in 1734, and Settled at
Ebenezer, Twenty-five Miles above the City of Savannah (Baltimore: T. Newton Kurtz, 1855), 75-83. 12
Warlick, 16-19 13
John Wesley, Works edited by John Emory (New York and Cincinnati, n.d.), iii:45.
22
say that when he left Savannah in late 1737, Georgia had had a greater impact on Wesley
than Wesley had had on Georgia. Later, after his death, the religious movement Wesley
had initiated had tremendous influence on religion in Georgia through his followers who
split from the Anglican Church and formalized the Methodist denomination. When
Wesley returned to England from Georgia, his methodist approach to Christianity was
still taking form.
As Wesley processed his Georgia experiences, he began to retool his English
ministry by incorporating some of the insights he had gained. First, he disentangled
himself from complications that strict adherence to Anglican rites presented when they
were deemed a prerequisite for spiritual growth. On one hand, his negative experiences
with his Anglican communicants pushed him to question the value of strict adherence to
ritual. On the other, his favorable experiences with the Moravians probably helped him
to loosen the adherence to Anglican form and ritual that his upbringing and education had
inculcated. Similarly, his much-appreciated ministry among non-Anglicans and non-
English speakers pulled him toward a positive awareness of other Christian
denominations. Those experiences also impelled him to emphasize prayer and the word
of God as a means of simplifying his message. In addition, Wesley’s most successful
efforts among the Anglicans centered on small, informal groups that gathered for prayer
in his home. In any case, the familiar institutional surroundings of a parish church did
not exist in Georgia. Anglican services in Savannah took place in a court room as there
was no church building to house Wesley’s ministry.14
Even if there had been a church
14
After several false starts and much wrangling, Christ Church finally inaugurated divine services in a
purpose-built structure in 1750. Carl L. Lounsbury, “Christ Church, Savannah: Loopholes in Metropolitan
Design on the Frontier” in Material Culture in Anglo-America: Regional Identity and Urbanity in the
23
structure, Wesley would not have been able to occupy it consistently since visiting far
flung corners of the parish often required days, if not weeks, of travel.
The experiences of his Georgia episode steered Wesley’s approach to building a
new, English ministry that attracted the middling and lower classes. Before serving in
Georgia, Wesley had advocated charity and visiting prisoners. While giving handouts
and preaching to a captive audience was one thing, the ability to attract thousands of
working people to listen to a sermon on their own time was quite another. His
experiences in Georgia helped Wesley craft a message that pulled in large audiences. He
stressed developing a personal relationship with God through prayer and studying God’s
word as put forth in the Bible. This approach diminished the role of the clergy as a
layman’s intermediary with God. He now traveled each summer to evangelize people
beyond London. After his return from the fringe of the empire, Wesley gravitated to the
eastern edge of the City of London, he preached in the open air before taking over a
ruined foundry on City Road in 1739.15
(1818, London 2-5)
Accessible to the middle and working classes but relatively distant from the elite
areas of the City of Westminster, Wesley’s City Road Foundry clung to the outskirts of
the East side of the City of London. Wesley’s colonial experience helped him make the
mental adjustments that underlay the physical move to the edge of the metropolis. He left
the secure establishment of the Anglican parish structure and entered the nether regions
that dissenters had occupied since the seventeenth century. Whereas Wesley did not
leave much of a mark on Savannah, what he learned there shaped his subsequent ministry
Tidewater, Lowcountry, and Caribbean, David S. Shields, ed. (Columbia: The University of South Carolina
Press, 2009), 58-73. 15
George J. Stevenson, City Road Chapel, London, and Its Associations, Historical, Biographical, and
Memorial (London: George J. Stevenson, 1872), 19-20.
24
and influenced other evangelicals. George Whitefield, for example, followed Wesley’s
lead both to Georgia and to East London. Wesley, Whitefield, and other evangelicals
located prominent charitable and religious institutions in East London that contributed to
the middle and working class identity of the neighborhood.16
Whereas neither Wesley
nor Whitefield lingered long in Savannah, some of the first citizens of Savannah to attain
wealth and high status espoused their evangelical messages and middle class values.
Those Savannahians believed in wholesome family life, education, and piety as well as in
executing their worldly callings with diligence and efficiency for their own benefit and
that of society. In addition, they nurtured the link of communitas between Savannah and
London.
16
I use Jewel L. Spangler’s definition of evangelists as those who “were attracted to, and then worked to
build, a religious society that somehow fit with their understandings of how the world should work.” See
Jewel L. Spangler, Virginians Reborn: Anglican Monopoly, Evangelical Dissent, and the Rise of the
Baptists in the Late Eighteenth Century (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2008), 5,
fn1.
CHAPTER ONE
Communitas Takes Root in Savannah, c. 1740-1775
When George Whitefield and James Habersham met in the 1730s, they were just
two of more than 600,000 Londoners. Shared evangelical fervor and middle class culture
cemented their relationship and also formed the cornerstones of the communitas they
would establish in Savannah. Their decision to travel to Savannah was a choice that took
them to a place both physically and culturally distant from London. On disembarking at
Savannah, they joined 600 residents of a struggling colonial outpost. In the face of these
new circumstances Whitefield and Habersham not only expanded the communitas but
also influenced the intersections and perceptions of slavery, religion, and ethical
responsibility in early Savannah.
As an Oxford undergraduate, George Whitefield, like other members Wesley’s
circle, felt a strong pull to follow his mentor to Georgia. After he received his degree
from Oxford and celebrated his ordination as a deacon in 1736, Whitefield made plans
join Wesley in Georgia and to serve at Christ Church in Savannah, but had to wait
through over a year of delays and postponements before he actually set sail. These delays
proved critical because it was during this hiatus that Whitefield forged a friendship with
James Habersham, the man who would accompany him to Georgia and was essential to
establishing communitas in Savannah.
During the summer following his Oxford graduation Whitefield accepted the
invitation to substitute for his friend Thomas Broughton who was the curate at the Tower
of London. (1818, London 2-6) Accommodating Broughton in this way opened the door
for Whitefield to build his reputation as a stirring preacher in London’s East End. The
26
positive reception of Whitefield’s sermons spread his fame as a preacher, but
sermonizing was only one of his many evangelical activities. In addition to keeping up a
punishing schedule of preaching and catechizing, he visited soldiers in the barracks and
infirmary, converted prisoners at Ludgate and Newgate Prisons, and collected
contributions for the poor.
Whitefield also began meeting with a young men’s methodist society after he
learned that many of the members were attending his sermons. Recalling that “Our Lord
gave me to spiritualize their singing,” Whitefield continued, “after they had taught me the
gamut, they would gladly hear me teach them some of the mysteries of the new birth, and
the necessity of living to God. Many sweet nights we spent together in this way.”1
Whitefield probably met James Habersham, the man who would become his closest
friend, on one of those “sweet nights” passed among young men sharing religious
fellowship and music in the East End of London.2
James Habersham managed two sugar refineries in Goodman’s Fields, not far
from the Tower of London. (1818, London 2-6) It would seem that an Oxford-educated
Anglican clergyman and a factory manager would have little in common, but taking a
closer look at how their paths crossed and how their lifelong friendship developed reveals
the practical wisdom that underpinned a relationship that would have important
implications for Savannah.
Perhaps Habersham came to Whitefield’s attention because of his vocal abilities,
or at least his nerve, because Whitefield often noted in his journals that he and
1 George Whitefield’s Journals (London: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1960), 87.
2 Over thirty years later Habersham reminded Thomas Broughton of their early association at the Church in
the Tower of London when he wrote in support of Cornelius Winter’s ordination. The Letters of James
Habersham, 1756-1775, vol. 6 of Collections of the Georgia Historical Society (Savannah, 1904), 99.
27
Habersham had been singing psalms together.3 On one occasion when Habersham was
absent, Whitefield recalled assembling a group to enforce “the duty of keeping holy the
Sabbath day, … but was afraid to sing a psalm, Mr. H. being at Deal with friends. Where
was my courage then? Lord what am I when left to myself!”4 Whitefield’s reliance on
Habersham for help with the singing, and for companionship points to the close
relationship that was evolving between the two men. The intimacy that Whitefield and
Habersham shared must have gone a long way towards reversing the lonely isolation that
Whitefield had suffered as a student at Oxford. The so-called “boy preacher” with a
burgeoning career was just twenty-three years old and probably very much in need of
camaraderie when he began meeting with religious societies in London.5 Habersham,
too, was a young man in his twenties with few close relationships to anchor his life in
London.
Both typified a significant portion of London’s population in the 1730s. Young
men and boys from throughout the realm converged on London to learn trades, to
establish careers, and, they hoped, to accumulate wealth. For many, however, a time of
learning and working in London was just “part one” of what would be a two-stage
migration that first took them from their birthplaces in the English provinces to the great
world metropolis of London, and then on to stations in Britain’s growing empire.
Embracing a high degree of physical mobility could map a path to upward social mobility
for those born into the lower and middle ranks of eighteenth-century English society.6
3 George Whitefield’s Journals, 116, 119, 123, 124, 125-126, 132.
4 George Whitefield’s Journals, 116.
5 See: Stout, Chapter 2 “Oxford Odd Fellow” and Chapter 3 “London Boy Preacher,” 16-48.
6 Vanessa Harding, People in Place, Families, Households, and Housing in Early Modern London
(London: University of London, 2008), 22, 33. See also Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders with “Introduction”
by Virginia Woolf (New York: The Modern Library, 2002). First published in 1722 Moll Flanders
28
The lives of Whitefield and Habersham aptly illustrate this trajectory of social
ascent. Despite hailing from birthplaces situated at opposite ends of the country,
Whitefield and Habersham shared many experiences typical of the sons of middle ranks
in eighteenth-century English society. Both Whitefield and Habersham suffered
economic hardship and the loss of parents to early death. As a boy George Whitefield
worked in Gloucester, Gloucestershire, helping his widowed mother keep an inn.7
Similarly, Habersham’s family turned to inn-keeping in Beverley, Yorkshire, after his
father’s living as a dyer collapsed. As the youngest child in his family, Whitefield
received the care and attention of his mother and siblings. Habersham, on the other hand,
was the oldest of five children under the age of eight when his mother died in 1722. To
alleviate the burdens of managing so many young children, Habersham’s father sent his
eldest child to live with an uncle who was a grocer in London. The father reasoned that
his brother was well-placed to find a suitable apprenticeship for James where he could
acquire the skill set of a merchant. When his father’s death orphaned him in 1729, James
had been living in London for more than five years.8 Neither Whitefield nor Habersham
could fall back on family or financial security. Given these circumstances, their
friendship must have been a special source of support for both.
When they met in London in 1736, Whitefield and Habersham shared comparable
family and economic backgrounds, the goal of launching their careers, and a strong sense
of religious devotion. Moreover, the religious views that they embraced empowered the
common man to take charge of his own salvation by finding a personal relationship with
illustrates the volatile nature of social status in the changing economic environment of eighteenth-century
England. 7 George Whitefield’s Journals, 40.
8 Lambert, Habersham, 13.
29
God that sidestepped the role of the Anglican priest as an intermediary. A willingness to
take responsibility for themselves played out in their daily lives as well. Buoyed by the
belief that they were doing God’s will, they were not averse to embracing situations that
required risk taking to achieve favorable outcomes, and both achieved successes—
Whitefield as a preacher and Habersham as a merchant-- that offset the social
disadvantages of their early years. The intangible chemistry of friendship channeled
through these commonalities formed the basis of their lifelong attachment. Perhaps their
birth order, that is, Habersham’s position as an eldest child and Whitefield’s role as the
“baby” of his family, provided another catalyst to the bond. From the time that they met
in London and continuing even after Whitefield’s death in 1770 until his own death in
1775, Habersham played the role of an older sibling by sharing Whitefield’s vision and
nurturing his mission. For his part, Whitefield always maintained his regard for
Habersham, so much so that he even named Habersham as the executor of his will.
Whitefield had been visiting Habersham in Savannah shortly before he died at
Newburyport, Massachusetts in September, 1770. As he mourned Whitefield’s death,
Habersham lamented that he had “lost in him The oldest and Dearest Friend I had upon
Earth.”9
Over thirty years earlier as their friendship blossomed while Whitefield was
waiting out a postponement of his departure for Georgia, the young men had become
frequent companions. By the time the sailing date finally arrived, both Whitefield and
9 The Letters of James Habersham, 1756-1775, vol. 6 of Collections of the Georgia Historical Society
(Savannah, 1904), 103. Harry Stout devotes a chapter to discussing Whitefield’s friendships with Howell
Harris and Benjamin Franklin. I would argue that his friendship with James Habersham was equally if not
more important. See Stout, Chapter 12 “An Uncommon Friendship,” 220-233.
30
Habersham had booked passage to Georgia.10
Firsthand accounts from Charles Wesley,
who had returned to England from Georgia after only seven months, and the bad news in
John Wesley’s letters from Savannah, did little to dampen the enthusiasm of friends in
England for missions to Georgia. While Charles grumbled that “the devil himself could
not wish for fitter instruments than those he actuates and inspires in Georgia,” other
members of his Oxford circle still yearned for a crack at spreading the gospel to colonists
and Indians.11
Early in 1738, when John’s messages from Georgia detailed disheartening
troubles and announced his imminent return to England, Charles gathered with some of
the spiritual “brothers” at the London port of Gravesend. Together they composed an
encouraging letter to John. Among the signatories were the future evangelist George
Whitefield and the layman James Habersham.12
Neither woeful accounts, nor dire warnings deterred either man in the least. His
family’s opposition to the mission and knowledge of the Wesleys’ difficulties in Georgia
only increased Whitefield’s resolve to take his ministry there.13
Whitefield assured John
Wesley, “Your coming rather confirms (as far as I can hitherto see,) than disannuls my
call.” He continued, “It is not fit the Colony should be left without a shepherd.”14
Over
the protests of friends Habersham left his promising post in London to join Whitefield’s
evangelical mission.15
And so Whitefield and Habersham were destined to become links
in the chain of communitas that connected Savannah to England, even though the
Wesleys’ disappointments in Georgia promised little hope of favorable experiences.
10
George Whitefield’s Journals, 87. 11
A Collection of Letters..., 12. 12
A Collection of Letters..., 13. 13
George Whitefield’s Journals (London: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1960), 81. 14
A Collection of Letters…, 13-18. 15
The Letters of James Habersham, 103.
31
Their setting off together for Georgia not only illustrates the bond of friendship, but also
exemplifies the broad demographic trend of movement from the counties of England to
London and from London to colonies.
To facilitate his resettlement, Whitefield persuaded the Georgia Trustees to
appoint Habersham schoolmaster, pay his passage to Georgia, and supply him with
provisions for a year.16
Nevermind that Habersham’s education had not extended beyond
the practical knowledge he would need to engage in commerce. Whitefield planned to
tutor Habersham on the Atlantic crossing and beef up his credentials so he would be bona
fide schoolmaster material by the time they landed at Savannah. The roles of both the
clergyman and the layman loomed large as elements of their evangelical plan.
On January 6, 1738, Whitefield and Habersham set sail on board the Whitaker
bound for Georgia. The four-month voyage both intensified their friendship and
confirmed what would be a lifelong pattern of cooperation in which Whitefield attended
to the spiritual and Habersham stood by him with the practical actions necessary to
support his evangelical endeavors. In addition, Habersham held school for the children
on the ship and studied Latin under Whitefield’s guidance.17
Despite the hardships of
ship life—close quarters and sickness—the voyage also allowed time for camaraderie.
Whitefield remembered spending days in “delightful conversation with Mr. Habersham,”
and evenings “with my friend H. very comfortably in religious talk, family prayer,
interceding for absent friends and all mankind, and writing to Christian brethren.”18
Times of relaxation were interspersed with the separate, but complementary, labors of
both men until they landed at Savannah on May 7, 1738.
16
Lambert, Habersham, 34, Stout, 62-64. 17
George Whitefield’s Journals, 108, 110, 122, 123, 142. 18
George Whitefield’s Journals, 107, 112.
32
Ironically, Whitefield actually resided in Savannah for less time than had elapsed
during 1736 and 1737 while he waited to embark from England. The man with the
mission to Savannah alighted there for only eight months. After surveying the situation
in Georgia, Whitefield decided to return to England for ordination to the priesthood and
to gather financial backing for the orphanage he and Habersham were establishing near
Savannah. Habersham, who had joined the evangelical mission somewhat impetuously,
now settled in Savannah permanently. He began life in Savannah as a teacher, a lay
preacher, and an orphanage superintendent, but later rose on the social scale to the ranks
of wealthy merchant, large landowner, and acting Royal Governor of Georgia.19
Before Whitefield sailed for England, he and Habersham had put in place the
basic outline of the orphan house they would call Bethesda. Following the
recommendation of Charles Wesley, who had first proposed an orphanage for Savannah,
Whitefield and Habersham modeled Bethesda on the Pietist orphanage at Halle,
Germany. There, orphans received the practical education and religious instruction that
underpinned productive, God-fearing adults.20
Following the pattern of partnership they
had established in London and fine-tuned on board the Whitaker, Whitefield attended to
the inspiration by preaching and collecting donations throughout the English speaking
world, while Habersham contributed the perspiration as the onsite manager of Bethesda.
For instance, Whitefield wrangled the promise of five hundred acres from the Georgia
19
For more on Whitefield’s network of evangelicals, see Alan Gallay, “Planters in the Great Awakening”
in Masters and Slaves in the House of the Lord: Race and Religion in the American South, 1740-1870, John
B. Boles, ed. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1988), 19-36. 20
Lambert, Habersham, 39.
33
Trustees, but Habersham actually selected the tract, got the deed to the land, and began
constructing the campus and buildings.21
Whitefield and Habersham faced enormous problems in launching Bethesda, not
the least of which were the financial, social, and political instability of the faltering
colony of Georgia. Disease, mismanagement of resources, difficulty in realizing profits
from silk and wine production, and the constant threat of a Spanish invasion from Florida
were just a few of the obstacles colonists faced. On top of that, many settlers roiled with
rancorous discontent over Georgia’s prohibition of slavery and land tenure system that
disallowed large holdings. Whitefield’s orphanage was a struggling institution within the
struggling colony. The name Bethesda designated the institution as a house of mercy, but
in the early years it needed mercy as much as it gave it. The entire colony was poorly
supplied, desperately short on labor, and cash poor. At times when Habersham had
trouble feeding his orphan “family,” Indians provided Bethesda with venison.22
For his part, Whitefield had a flair for fundraising, but he was having difficulties
of his own with the ecclesiastical hierarchy in England. Denied access to pulpits, he fell
short of the contributions necessary to sustain Bethesda, so he took on personal debt to
provide Habersham with a bare minimum of funds to keep the orphanage afloat. Writing
to Habersham at a desperate moment on March 25, 1741,Whitefield acknowledged both
his own and Habersham’s struggles. Then, in a reminder as much to himself as to
Habersham, Whitefield recited a passage from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount: “Let us
only seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all other necessary things
21
Edward J. Cashin, Beloved Bethesda: A History of George Whitefield’s Home for Boys, 1700-2000
(Macon Georgia: Mercer University Press, 2001), 20-21. 22
Letters of George Whitefield for the Period 1734-1742 (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1976),
230.
34
shall be added unto us.”23
Whitefield did not, nor did he need to, include quotation marks
or a citation of the King James Bible for his reader to know the source of those reassuring
lines. Both men were completely familiar with Christ’s words from the Sermon on the
Mount as guiding principles for a well-lived life.
What Whitefield had written to Habersham in 1738, Habersham repeated thirty
years later to his own child. On May 10, 1768, Habersham composed a letter to his son
Joseph. Habersham was sending the youth from Savannah to London in hopes of
restoring his health. But learning how to earn a livelihood and the condition of Joseph’s
soul were also prominent among his parental concerns. Habersham told Joseph that the
precious and immortal soul
is the only object, that should first and primarily engage our Attention, if we
believe what our Saviour says—Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his
righteousness, and all these Things shall be added to you, which I apprehend is as
much as if our Saviour had said, first secure an Interest in the Kingdom of God
and these things, the things of this Life which men are eagerly in pursuit of
shall be superadded and thrown into the bargain, as things with no account with
God.
He continued, adding that securing one’s eternal happiness did not indicate that “you
should by any means neglect your Worldly Employment- Every man ought to be
industrious and diligent in that Station wherein Providence has placed him.”24
Many years elapsed between Whitefield’s letter to Habersham and Habersham’s
repetition of the same Bible verses to his son Joseph. Habersham’s life in those
intervening years confirms that the advice he gave his son had also shaped his own
identity as a pious merchant. But that is getting ahead of the story. When the Whitefield-
23
Matthew, 6:33 quoted in the Letters of George Whitefield for the Period 1734-1742 (Edinburgh: The
Banner of Truth Trust, 1976), 256-257. 24
Letters of James Habersham, 1756-1775, 69.
35
Habersham narrative began, Habersham was certainly pious, but he was not yet a
Savannah merchant. In 1741 Habersham was fulfilling what he considered to be a
spiritual mission as the superintendent of Bethesda.25
With more than fifty mouths to feed, Habersham must have been more than
troubled when the Trustees cut back on the store they stocked to supply colonists.
Shortly thereafter Habersham used a gift to Bethesda to purchase a schooner so that he
could transport his own supplies from nearby Charleston. Simultaneously, a former clerk
for the Trustees, Francis Harris, opened a store and began collaborating with Habersham
to bring goods from Charlestown for consumption by both the orphanage and the
townspeople. Still on the other side of the Atlantic, Whitefield not only supported the
effort by shipping supplies for the orphanage, but also by selecting consumer goods for
Habersham to sell in Savannah for cash.26
Savannah’s pre-eminent commercial concern,
Harris and Habersham, evolved from what started out as a survival strategy for a
religious mission.27
Both Whitefield and Habersham regarded engaging in commerce as essentially
consistent with a deep spiritual calling. In fact, the survival of Bethesda seemed
contingent on a combination of devotion and business savvy.28
Throughout 1742 and
1743 Habersham soldiered on as Bethesda’s superintendent and used the profits from his
business to keep the orphanage solvent. When Whitefield returned from England in
25
Lambert, Habersham, 40. Preachers who came after Whitefield such as his spiritual descendant William
Jay also chose Matthew 33:6 as the text for expounding on striking a desirable balance between the
spiritual and material. See: William Jay, “The Profitable Pursuit” Standard Works, ii:282-287. 26
Letters of George Whitefield, 324-325. 27
Lambert, Habersham, 57-58. 28
Frank Lambert, “Pedlar in Divinity”; George Whitefield and the Transatlantic Revivals, 1737-1770
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 8. Lambert argues that Whitefield adopted the commercial
techniques of the consumer revolution to spread the transatlantic religious revival.
36
1744, Habersham relinquished his official post at Bethesda, but continued to take an
active interest and contributed generously to Bethesda throughout his life.29
Habersham made an apparently seamless transition from lay preacher to merchant
partly because of a lucky circumstance and partly because both he and Whitefield
believed that earning a living in commerce could co-exist with a spiritual commitment.
In other words, they accepted the notion that a “pious merchant” was not an oxymoron.30
Taking a second look at Habersham’s advice to his son indicates just how thoroughly
integrated the spiritual and commercial were in his own thinking, because he interpreted
the meaning of the Sermon on the Mount in the language of commerce: “first secure an
Interest in the Kingdom of God and these things, the things of this Life which men are
eagerly in pursuit of shall be superadded and thrown into the bargain, as things with no
account with God” [emphasis added]. Even though spiritual values reigned supreme in
Habersham’s worldview, contributing to the commonweal ranked a close second. So he
stressed, “I need not say, because you are first enjoined to secure your eternal happiness,
that you should by any means neglect your Worldly Employment- Every man ought to be
industrious and diligent in that Station wherein Providence has placed him.”31
The
religious and social convictions that Habersham highlighted to his son were the same
principles that by dint of his example Habersham also established as standards identified
with elite status in Savannah.
29
W. Calvin Smith, “The Habershams: The Merchant Experience in Georgia,” in Forty Years of Diversity:
Essays on Colonial Georgia edited by Harvey H. Jackson and Phinizy Spalding (Athens: The University of
Georgia Press, 1984), 40. 30
For other examples of pious merchants, see “Robert Spear, Esq.” in The Autobiography of William Jay
edited by George Redford and John Angell James (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1855), ii:75-93
and Chapter VI “Prosperity” in William J. Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock”: Memorials of the Rev. Robert
Bolton and Mrs. Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1860), 57-69. 31
Letters of James Habersham, 1756-1775, 69.
37
As one of the first Savannahians to achieve financial and civic prominence,
Habersham stood out as an exemplar. Consequently, his middle class values and
evangelical beliefs influenced people throughout the community, especially those who
hoped to duplicate his ascent of the social ladder by “industrious and diligent” execution
of their “Worldly Employment.” Although Habersham had experienced the benefits of
social advancement, he endorsed a relatively static social order that did not allow
unlimited upward mobility. Believing as he did that “Providence” placed the individual
in a “Station” on earth, Habersham accepted fundamental inequalities among human
beings as divinely ordained.32
Individuals could and should excel within the boundaries
of their role or “station,” and were not necessarily entitled to personal freedom. As a
consequence of this belief, for example, Habersham did not resent or question his own
youthful status as a bound apprentice or hesitate to place his son in a similar
circumstance.33
And, like his spiritual mentor Whitefield, Habersham concluded that
slave labor was essential to Georgia’s economic viability and supported its legalization in
Georgia which took effect on January 1, 1751.34
Even though inequalities among humans were a given for both Whitefield and
Habersham, the principle that all humans should have equal access to eternal life through
Christian rebirth was set just as firmly in their thinking.35
To that end, both Whitefield
32
Letters of James Habersham, 1756-1775, 69. 33
For an analysis of legal proceedings to recalibrate the balance between freedom and forms of bondage
among American laborers, see: Christopher Tomlins, “Early British America, 1585-1830,” in Douglas Hay
and Paul Craven, eds., Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562-1955 (Chapel
Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 117-152. 34
Betty Wood, Slavery in Colonial Georgia, 1730-1775 (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1984),
see Chapters 2-5 for a discussion of the debate over introducing slavery in Georgia. 35
Letters of James Habersham, 1756-1775, 96. James Habersham Letter to “William Knox, Esq. under
Secretary of State to the Right Honbl the Earl of Hillsborough- Whitehall, November 26, 1770: “rejoicing
at their [African slaves] being brought from a Land of Darkness, and having the Opportunity of being
Partakers of our Common Salvation, to which, both bond and free are equally entitled;…”
38
and Habersham endorsed educating slaves to enable them to read the Bible.36
For
Habersham, property, including human property, was not a reward, but a responsibility
for a man of his standing.37
As he saw it, he had a moral duty as a property owner to treat
those in his household humanely and to expose them to Christianity. Simultaneously
both law and custom subordinated wives, children, apprentices, indentured servants, and
slaves to the male head of household, the master. The opposition many Savannahians
expressed towards Habersham’s views suggests they adopted a less paternalistic view of
the relationship between slave and owner. However, Habersham’s stature in the
community meant his practices and beliefs received recognition and some toleration, if
not widespread acceptance.38
Whitefield and Habersham Enlarge Communitas
Habersham and Whitefield may have been in the minority, but they were by no
means alone in their convictions.39
As the historian Alan Gallay has so cogently set
forth, the elite Bryan family of South Carolina also supported Whitefield’s view that
acquainting slaves with proper Christian teachings would make them better slaves as well
36
Frank Lambert, “’I Saw the Book Talk’: Slave Readings of the First Great Awakening,” The Journal of
Negro History, 44, 4 (Autumn, 1992), 188. 37
Francois Dermange, “Calvin’s View of Property: A Duty Rather Than a Right,” in Edward Dommen and
John D. Bratt, eds., John Calvin Rediscovered: The Impact of his Social and Economic Thought (Louisville
and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 33-51. 38
Jack P. Greene, “Travails of an Infant Colony: The Search for Viability, Coherence, and Identity in
Colonial Georgia,” in Harvey H. Jackson and Phinizy Spalding, eds. Forty Years of Diversity: Essays on
Colonial Georgia (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1984), 278-309. 39
Other Savannahians with views sympathetic to Whitefield and Habersham were members of the Bolton,
Gibbons, Bryan, Bourquin, and Fox families. See: Robert Bolton, Letter to Cornelius Winter, February 16,
1771 quoted in Robert Bolton, Genealogical and Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England
and America (New York: John A. Gray, Printer, 1862), 102-103. For more on Christian support of slavery
in a broader context, see: Christopher Leslie Brown, “Christianity and the Campaign Against Slavery and
the Slave Trade” in The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. VII Enlightenment, Reawakening and
Revolution, 1600-1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 521-523.
39
as potential candidates for eternal life.40
Just as Whitefield had inspired Habersham to
join his mission, Whitefield also drew others to Georgia as he preached and solicited
donations for Bethesda throughout England and North America. Among those who came
to Savannah under Whitefield’s spell were a girl from Philadelphia named Mary Bolton
(1725-1763) and a lay preacher from London, Cornelius Winter (1742-1808). Both, like
Whitefield and Habersham, represented evangelical middling sorts who had fallen to the
lower end of that class distinction. And both would contribute substantially to the
communitas that was taking root in Georgia.
Mary was a daughter of Robert Bolton (1688-1742), who had emigrated from
Yorkshire to Philadelphia 1718, and of his wife, Ann (1690-1747).41
Members of the
Bolton family had numbered among the throngs who flocked to hear Whitefield when he
preached in Philadelphia. His message so impressed them, and their financial situation
was such, that Robert and Ann gave Whitefield permission to take their daughters Mary
and Rebecca to live at Bethesda in the spring of 1740.42
Less than a year later on December 27, 1740, Whitefield united James Habersham
and Mary Bolton in holy matrimony. Although she was almost a decade younger than he
was, Habersham found that his bride’s “pious prudent behavior exceeded those of twice
40
Alan Gallay, “The Origins of Slaveholders’ Paternalism: George Whitefield, the Bryan Family, and the
Great Awakening in the South,” The Journal of Southern History LIII, 3 (August, 1987), 369-394; The
Formation of Planter Elite: Jonathan Bryan and the Southern Colonial Frontier (Athens: The University
of Georgia Press, 1989). 41
Four generations of males named Robert Bolton appear in this narrative. Number one (1) was born in
England in 1688, married Ann Curtis Clay, and died in Philadelphia in 1742. The second was the son of
the first. Number two (2) was born in Philadelphia in 1722, married Susannah Mauve, and died at
Whitebluff, near Savannah, in 1789. The third was the son of the second. Number three (3) was born in
Savannah in 1757, married Sarah McClean, and died in Savannah in 1802. The fourth was the son of the
third. Number four (4) was born in Savannah in 1788, married Anne Jay, and died in Cheltenham in 1857.
For more information on the Bolton family see Robert Bolton, Genealogical and Biographical Account of
the Family of Bolton in England and America (New York: John A. Gray, Printer, 1862). 42
Robert Bolton, Genealogical and Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England and America
(New York: John A. Gray, Printer, 1862), 67ff.
40
her years.”43
Mary affected Savannah’s communitas through her role as Habersham’s
spouse and helped to enlarge the group of believers by influencing her brother and sister
to settle in Savannah. Whereas Whitefield had recruited Mary and the other Boltons
from Philadelphia, he drew Cornelius Winter from his following in the City of London
just as he had influenced Habersham to join him a generation earlier. When Winter
followed Whitefield to Savannah, he reinforced the transatlantic evangelical ties and
engaged in a ministry destined to elicit from whites many differing and contentious views
on slavery and managing slaves.
Whitefield, like the Wesleys, had alighted briefly in Savannah before returning to
England. Unlike the Wesleys, however, Whitefield crisscrossed the Atlantic on several
subsequent occasions as he pursued ministries in both America and England. Just as
Habersham stayed behind as the institutional anchor for Whitefield during his absences
from Savannah, other laymen played similar roles in London. By 1741, Whitefield’s
supporters in London were building a structure to shelter his ministry from the
inconveniences of open-air preaching. Unhappy about its location near John Wesley’s
Foundry, Whitefield dubbed it “The Tabernacle” because he hoped it would be
temporary. (1818, London 1-5) But that was not to be. Worshipers frequented the
Tabernacle and they replaced the original frame building with a permanent brick structure
in the 1750s.44
It was within the walls of this Tabernacle that Whitefield’s preaching first
stirred Cornelius Winter’s soul.45
43
Cited in William B. Stevens, “A Sketch of the Life of James Habersham, President of His Majesty’s
Council in the Province of Georgia,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 3 (December, 1919), 158. 44
Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield: The Life and Times of the Great Evangelist of the Eighteenth-
Century Revival, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1980), ii, 49. 45
William Jay, Standard Works of the Rev. William Jay of Argyle Chapel, Bath (Baltimore: Plaskitt and
Co., and Armstrong and Plaskitt, 1833), 3:13.
41
At that time, Winter was an apprentice water-gilder to a distant relative with
premises in Bunhill Row. (1818, London 1-5, 2-5) Except for being even less
auspicious, Winter’s early experiences paralleled those of Whitefield and Habersham.
He was born into a family of small tradesmen, orphaned at an early age, and endured an
unsettled childhood. Of the three, only Whitefield secured a university education. As
adolescents both Winter and Habersham began their occupational lives as apprentices in
London, hearkened to Whitefield’s evangelical message, and found vocations within his
ministry. In addition, both of these life stories played out across the same urban
geography of the City of London. (1818, London 1-5, 1-6, 2-4, 2-5, 2-6)
Years later, in a series of autobiographical letters written for publication, Winter
recounted his transition from trade to full-time ministry.46
No doubt intending for his
own pilgrimage to serve as model for other evangelical Christians, Winter imbedded
within his self-representation both his life story and a strong articulation of the middle
class world view and value system. In fact, similar middle class outlooks had shaped
both Winter and Habersham as well as countless other middling sorts from the City of
London who shared similar histories and standards of diligence and piety. Rising from
humble circumstances, working in trade, and rebirth in Christ were themes that ran
through many lives as they played out against the backdrop of the City of London. Here,
46
William Jay composer and compiler of “Memoirs of the Life and Character of the late Rev. Cornelius
Winter” in Standard Works of the Rev. William Jay of Argyle Chapel, Bath (Baltimore: Plaskitt and Co.,
and Armstrong and Plaskitt, 1833), iii. Jay first published his “Memoir of the Life and Character of the late
Rev. Cornelius Winter” in England soon after Winter’s death in 1808. It was published in subsequent
editions in England and America until the late1850s. It belonged to an evangelical protestant biographical
body of work that in which life stories followed a standard formula: modest birth, practical education,
career in trade, dedication to evangelical Protestantism, prosperity, service to chapel, and good death. For
many life stories in this format see: George J. Stevenson, City Road Chapel, London and its Associations,
Historical, Biographical, and Memorial (London: George J. Stevenson and New York: Methodist Book
Concern, [1872]).
42
within a walking city of no more than one square mile, the middle class evangelical
culture arose and thrived throughout most of the “long eighteenth century.”
In Winter’s words, his lineage was “an effectual antidote against pride.”47
The
son of a shoemaker by trade and his second wife, Cornelius Winter was the youngest of
nine children and the only one who survived beyond his twenties. His mother gave birth
to Winter in Gray’s Inn where his father was head porter in his declining years. (1818,
London 2-4) After the deaths of both parents, the eight-year-old Winter roamed the
streets of London until he was taken in at the Charity School of St. Andrew’s Parish,
Holborn. (1818, London 2-5) There he received shelter and education until a distant
relative claimed him as an “apprentice.”
Winter’s relation justified withdrawing him from school against his will by
implying that in exchange for the boy’s labor, he would instruct the boy in the craft of
water gilding. What was closer to the truth was that the relation used Winter as a servant
and whipping boy around the clock for twelve years. Upon the slightest occasion, Winter
remembered, “he would beat me unmercifully. He was never at a loss for a weapon: iron
was the same as wood; consequences were not regarded.” Throughout his life, even into
old age, Winter frequently dreamed he was “with him under his displeasure,” and felt
“uneasiness.” The training Winter received was incidental to his involuntary labors.
Presumably Winter’s relative had chosen not to execute the customary apprenticeship
contract to avoid any pretense of documenting that Winter benefited from the association.
Instead, the harsh taskmaster administered Winter’s apprenticeship as a form of legal
bondage. When the youth determined to escape, his master hastily engineered a
47
Jay, Standard Works, 3:9.
43
contract. The indenture, as Winter remembered, “was antedated, and I continued to wear
the galling chain for four years longer.”48
Winter’s experience illustrates the powerlessness of the apprentice bound to an
unscrupulous master as well as the fact that eighteenth-century law and custom permitted
many forms of unfree labor. The practice of chattel slavery, as Winter would encounter it
later in his life when he traveled to Georgia, was only one category of unfree labor. Also
obligated to work for the benefit of others were married women, children, indentured
servants, apprentices, military conscripts, and impressed seamen. Any young person
such as Habersham or Winter who served an apprenticeship knew what it was to owe his
labor to another. Winter’s reference to “the galling chain” underscores the involuntary
nature of his apprenticeship. Simultaneously it also suggests why middleclass
Englishmen like Winter and Habersham did not perceive slavery as a moral outrage.
After all, bound labor was an integral part of the economic system. Although Winter
took issue with the improper behavior of his master, neither he nor Habersham
questioned the legitimacy of their own unfree status as apprentices.
For Winter, regular attendance at the Anglican parish church of St. Luke’s Old
Street relieved his dreary existence as an exploited apprentice. (1818, London 1-5)
Despite his own low status in the ecclesiastical and social hierarchy that St. Luke’s
represented, Winter echoed the “common and very strong prejudices against the
Methodists and Dissenters” that Anglican elites often voiced. At the same time Winter
felt the stigma of poverty and subjugation. He confessed, “When my clothes were
disgracefully bad, which was sometimes the case, I absconded from my own church, and
48
Jay, Standard Works, 3:11-12.
44
occasionally wandered into a meeting-house.”49
The push of social exclusion rather than
the pull of theology initially propelled Winter into Whitefield’s orbit.
Once attracted into the charismatic preacher’s gravitational force, Winter’s life
turned in ever tighter revolutions around Whitefield until he became one of Whitefield’s
most intimate companions. Early on, Winter’s “very small intervals from secular employ
were occupied in spiritual services.” Even though his participation was limited, Winter’s
devotion impressed Whitefield’s lay assistants. They called on Winter to join their cadre
of lay preachers. Little by little, while insuring that his “time for business might suffer as
little encroachment as possible,” Winter began to sermonize. Then the unthinkable
happened. Winter fell out, once and for all, with the relative who had trained and
eventually employed him as a water-gilder. Winter recalled “when the breach between
my relation and myself became entire, I knew not what to do. The trade I had been
brought up to did not afford many masters.” In desperation, Winter confided in a church
friend, a Mr. How, whom he described as “an excellent man, and though in trade, at
which he worked hard, of good preaching talents and some learning.”50
Mr. How
arranged for Winter to supply a congregation that lacked a full-time minister as a stopgap
until he could find secular work. But bleak prospects for employment coupled with a
growing dedication to a full-time ministry stimulated Winter to seek ordination.
Here Winter’s tradesman training in lieu of a university education presented a
substantial obstacle. Typical candidates for the clergy, such as the Wesleys and
Whitefield held the prerequisite degrees from Oxford or Cambridge as evidence of
classical education and theological orthodoxy. Yet, Winter believed there was way
49
Jay, Standard Works, 3:12. 50
Jay, Standard Works, 3:19-20.
45
forward. Winter recalled that Whitefield frequently lamented the want of ministers in
America and “he sent some who were equally deficient in point of learning with myself,
and I concluded, from the kind reception their ministry had met with, my labours, with
the blessing of God, might be acceptable also.”51
With this unconventional path to
ordination in mind, Winter joined Whitefield’s household where he assisted in the
ministry and prepared for a mission to America. Throughout the later 1760s Winter
worked earnestly and looked on as Whitefield found situations in America for other
protégés. Not to be discouraged in his ambitions, Winter kept renewing his requests until
Whitefield matched him to an American appointment, an appointment that fully initiated
Winter into Savannah’s communitas and the controversies surrounding slavery. Even
though Winter’s Georgia ministry is only a tiny incident in the long and muddled history
of slavery, there is value in analyzing it because it demonstrates how English, middle
class values contributed to the culture of slavery that developed in eighteenth-century
Savannah.
Before leaving England Whitefield explained to Winter relatively little about what
his assignment in Georgia would entail. All Winter learned was that a legacy of
Reverend Bartholomew Zouberbuhler, the late rector of Christ Church, Savannah, had
established funding for a catechist to instruct his own slaves as well as any others that
might be gathered into a flock. It was only after the two had set sail for America that
Whitefield began to drop hints to Winter that he might find himself at the center of an
imbroglio when he disembarked at Savannah. Mentioning that his audience might fit
easily into the cramped cabin they occupied on the Atlantic crossing was as close as
51
Jay, Standard Works, 3:22.
46
Whitefield came to telling Winter about the deep divisions that existed among Georgia
slaveholders on educating and evangelizing slaves.52
Whereas Whitefield dared not risk giving Winter the low-down on his American
assignment, Habersham assumed that Winter knew exactly what to expect, so addressed
the issue forthrightly. Winter recalled that on the day he reached Savannah, “Mr.
Habersham met me at the door, embraced me in his arms, saying, ‘I will be your friend if
nobody else will.’ … Mr. Habersham clapping me upon the knee, repeated, ‘I will be
your friend, if nobody else will; I shall stand by you: you shall instruct my Negroes,
whoever else refuses you.’” As Winter pondered Habersham’s salutation, it reminded
him of Whitefield’s mentioning that he must not wonder, if for attempting to instruct the
Negroes, he was “’whipped off the plantation.’”53
Winter had pursued a Georgia ministry as a route to arriving at the goal of
ordination back in England. Being cast in the role of a martyr willing to withstand
floggings for the souls of slaves took him by surprise. Nevertheless, Winter decided to
make the best of it as he stepped into his new role. Luckily for us, his recollections of the
experience provide an opportunity to examine the efforts of Savannah merchants like
James Habersham and Robert Bolton (1722-1789) as they tried to bring slavery into line
with their middle-class conception of the social contract.
On the December evening in 1769 when Habersham first welcomed Winter to his
home, he had been residing in Georgia for thirty-five years. Slavery, however, was a
relatively recent introduction. The Trustees initially had barred slavery from Georgia.
And, despite coming under a steady barrage of petitions to reverse the policy, they upheld
52
Jay, Standard Works, 3:29. 53
Jay, Standard Works, 3:29.
47
the ban until the end of 1750. Some of the pressure for slavery came from large
landowners in neighboring South Carolina, who wanted to expand into Georgia the
plantation system they had brought with them from Barbados and successfully
entrenched in the South Carolina low country. A comparison of the slave-based wealth
of South Carolinians to their own meager assets, influenced many Georgians to contend
they could not prosper in a subtropical climate without a slave labor system.54
Yet, some
Georgians found slavery troubling and supported the Trustees’ prohibition. Persuaded by
the economic arguments favoring slave labor, still others advocated introducing slavery
with limits and requirements for owners. They prevailed. When the Trustees lifted the
prohibition of slavery on January 1, 1751, they simultaneously put in place a slave code
that “amounted to a rigorous code of behavior for Georgia’s whites.”55
Georgia’s first slave code incorporated the considered opinions of both its London
authors and a group of colonists who advised them. Provisions aimed at limiting the risk
of rebellions and supporting humane treatment characterized the views of Habersham and
other colonists who had advised the Trustees. In conjunction with his fellow committee
members, Habersham recommended measures that the Trustees adopted, such as a low
ratio of slaves to whites (five slaves to one white supervisor), legal penalties for owners
who injured slaves, and the obligation for masters to provide Christian instruction for
their slaves.56
After only five years a new document modeled closely on the South
54
Ralph Gray and Betty Wood, “The Transition from Indentured to Involuntary Servitude in Colonial
Georgia,” Explorations in Economic History, 13, 4 (1976), 353-370. 55
Betty Wood, Slavery in Colonial Georgia, 1730-1775, (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1984),
84. 56
The President, Assistants, and Councilmen to Martyn, 10 January 1749, Colonial Records, 25:347-348
and The President and Assistants to the Trustees, 26 October 1749, Colonial Records, 25:430 -437 cited in
Betty Wood, Slavery in Colonial Georgia, 1730-1775, (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1984), fn
16, fn 20, 225.
48
Carolina slave code supplanted Georgia’s inaugural code. Among other things, the new
rules eliminated the owner’s obligation to provide Christian instruction.
While many slaveholders gladly abandoned any pretense of complying with the
standards outlined in the original code, Habersham continued to live by and promote his
values even though they no longer held the force of law.57
Because Georgia’s first slave
code and the influence of men like Habersham briefly raised the possibility that Georgia
slavery would take a form that occupied a middle ground between draconian plantation
slavery and other forms of unfree labor, Habersham’s thinking and conduct as a
slaveholder call for a closer examination. Winter’s mission to Savannah offers a rare
opportunity to peek into the world of Savannah’s middle class evangelical merchants and
to explore the culture of slavery that Habersham and Bolton established in their own
households.
Unlike the elites of neighboring South Carolina, men like Habersham and Bolton
had no personal experience as slaveholders to reference as they weighed policies on
slavery to implement in Georgia. Consequently, their thinking about slavery was not
shaped by participation in a longstanding, plantation culture, but by the middle class
economic and religious values they had embraced as young men making their way in the
world. Of course, they were exposed to information about slave management from many
sources. Even so, Habersham and others like him drew heavily on their own experiences
and values to conceptualize the model that guided their understanding and
implementation of proper relationships between masters and slaves.
57
Betty Wood, Slavery in Colonial Georgia, 1730-1775. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1984.
49
Middle class men like Habersham and Bolton understood the household as the
basic unit of social organization.58
For them, the household was the corporate entity that
centered family, religious, and economic life.59
More broadly inclusive than the nuclear
family, the household could incorporate immediate family and distant kin as well as
unrelated individuals such as apprentices, servants, and slaves. The members of a
household occupied various ranks within the whole, made different types of contributions
to the common benefit, and reaped different rewards for their labors. In no way
egalitarian or democratic, the household was a hierarchical entity typically headed by a
senior male who shouldered the responsibility for both the physical and spiritual
wellbeing of those under his roof. As has been noted, for a head of household like
Habersham, the property he controlled was not only an asset and but also a responsibility.
Consciousness of his duties as both a proprietor and steward underpinned
Habersham’s pledge to allow Winter access to his slaves. Attending to the spiritual
development of slaves, enabled Habersham to see himself as a duly accountable head of
household. Conversely, Habersham viewed slaveholders as skirting their responsibilities
when they
foolishly insinuated, that they [slaves] are scarcely reasonable Creatures, and
not capable of being instructed in the divine Thruths of Christianity; an
absurdity too obvious to deserve any refutation, and I am ashamed to have
occasion to make this observation, as daily Experience evinces, that there are
many ingenious Mechanics, among them, and as far as they have had
Opportunity of being instructed, have discovered as good abilities as are usually
found among the people of our Colony. …60
58
Naomi Tadmor, Family and Friends in Eighteenth-Century England: Household, Kinship, and
Patronage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 18-72. 59 For an interpretation of slaveowners’ paternalism as a form of “corporate individualism,” see Jeffrey
Robert Young, Domesticating Slavery: The Master Class in Georgia and South Carolina, 1670-1837
(Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 9. 60
Letters of James Habersham, 1756-1778, 100-101.
50
Habersham exposed the motivating factor of those who judged slaves to be “scarcely
reasonable” as opposed to having “unimproved Capacities” when he wryly added
“making them [slaves] good tradesmen is immediately profitable, and the Reward of
making them [slaves] good Christians is at a Distance.”61
Habersham dismissed
“immediate profitability” as fallacious on both economic and religious grounds.
Habersham’s reading of the Sermon on the Mount anchored his conviction that worldly
success emanated, first, from seeking God’s kingdom and, second, from diligent
fulfillment of the expectations of one’s divinely ordained station in life.62
The Sermon on the Mount guided Habersham’s analysis of both spiritual and
economic issues. For instance, he not only supported Christian education for slaves, but
also to promoted the long term goal “of one day seeing a congregated Church of
Africans, rejoicing at their being brought from a Land of Darkness, and of being made
partakers of our own Common Salvation, to which both bond and free are equally
entitled.”63
At the same time, he chose long-term benefit over immediate gains in purely
economic matters as well. When he placed an order for slave clothing, he made it clear
to his English agent that “we don’t purpose any saving or rather that is not our motive
tho’ the more saved the better.” Instead, Habersham preferred the London product over
any alternative because it would be “stronger and more durable and consequently warmer
and more comfortable. …” In the same order, he requested material for slave clothing
which was similar to that of “the West country Barge Men [who had] their Jackets made
of a very strong, cheap cloth, I believe called Foul Weather and the Color being Drab or
something like it[.] I should think wou’d suit our dusty Barns as well as their dusty flour
61
Letters of James Habersham, 1756-1778, 101. 62
Letters of James Habersham, 1756-1778, 69. 63
Letters of James Habersham, 1756-1778, 101.
51
sacks.”64
Drawing this parallel between the labors of slaves and English working men
gives yet another indication of Habersham’s thinking about slaves within the household
hierarchy. In the eighteenth-century context where clothing was both functional and a
mark of the wearer’s occupation, class, and status, providing slaves with outfits that were
essentially identical to the garb of the English working men he had known in his youth
once again reinforces the idea that Habersham ranked his slaves as low-status workers
rather than as subhuman, expendable beasts to be worked to death and unceremoniously
replaced.
That Habersham drew comparisons between slaves and English workers does not
suggest that Habersham did not view his slaves as investments and property. He did.
Because familial, economic, and religious aspects of existence converged under the
rubric of “household,” Habersham could simultaneously think of slaves as religious
charges, capital expenditures, and extended family. On one hand, he coldly enumerated
slaves’ deaths from disease as a calculation of lost capital.65
Then, within the same
breath, he lamented the death of a slave as a deeply-felt human loss.66
Because
Habersham did not isolate the different parts of his life, both sentiments could, and did,
crop up in the space of two sentences to the utter amazement of modern readers who are
more accustomed to compartmentalizing their thinking about the various aspects of
existence into discrete categories.67
64
Letters of James Habersham, 1756-1778, 16. 65
Letters of James Habersham, 1756-1778, 22-23. 66
Letters of James Habersham, 1756-1778, 23. 67
For additional readings of this passage, see: Betty Wood, Slavery in Colonial Georgia, 1730-1775
(Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1984), 153; Joyce Chaplin, “Slavery and the Principle of
Humanity: A Modern Idea in the Early Lower South,” Journal of Social History 24:2 (Winter, 1990), 306;
and Jeffrey Robert Young, Domesticating Slavery: The Master Class in Georgia and South Carolina,
1670-1837 (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 46-47.
52
The household of Habersham’s brother-in-law Robert Bolton (1722-1789) also
included unfree laborers. By his will written in 1786, Bolton distributed eight slaves
among his natural children. He also left instructions concerning his “adopted orphan
child Rebecca Teaveaux” that she “be educated to read and write plain” and “kept in the
character of a Handmaid until she arrives at the age of sixteen years.” Although he
provided for her basic education, left her “a cow and a calf,” and called her an “adopted
child,” he also expected her to earn her keep, since he stipulated that she was to be
released from service at the age of sixteen.68
The life plan he mapped for Teaveaux
steered a middle course between those who inherited property and those who were
property. By setting a term for her service, Bolton employed a mechanism that Northern
states would codify when they began to legislate the end of slavery around 1800. The
conversion of the lifelong, inherited status of slavery into a form of servitude with a term
moved those born into slavery one rung up the social ladder. Southerners were aware of
ways of achieving gradual emancipation, but they did not possess the will to enact such a
policy. Winter’s experiences in Savannah suggest that Habersham and Bolton shared a
minority view that appealed to very few white southerners.
After passing his first night in Savannah under Habersham’s roof, Cornelius
Winter relocated the next day to long-term lodgings in the household of Robert Bolton,
Habersham’s brother-in-law. Bolton, like Habersham, felt it was his duty to promote the
possibilities of salvation through re-birth in Christ to his entire household, including
slaves. To forward this endeavor, Bolton facilitated Winter’s ministry in several ways.
68
“The Last Will and Testament of Robert Bolton, Sen, of Savannah” quoted in Robert Bolton,
Genealogical and Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England and America (New York: John
A. Gray, Printer, 1862), 107-108.
53
First, Bolton invited Winter to officiate at family prayers, both morning and evening.69
In addition, Bolton granted Winter’s request to conduct public services in his home. For
the duration of his stay in Savannah, blacks and whites alike gathered in the Bolton home
once or twice during the work week and on Sunday evenings to hear Winter preach.70
Worshiping outside of the institutional and architectural framework of the
Established Anglican church was nothing new for men like Bolton and Winter. In 1756
King George II had granted in trust to Bolton and nine other leaders of a group of
Dissenters a vacant lot in Savannah for the construction of a meetinghouse.71
Bolton
maintained a lifelong dedication to the religious communitas. His frequent hospitality to
Whitefield and support of Winter’s mission are just two examples of how Bolton engaged
in religious activities outside of the Anglican church.72
Another is the interest he took in
the purchase of a former tavern for use as a meetinghouse by friends who lived in the
vicinity of the Ogeechee River, just South of Savannah.73
Although his denominational
affiliation was not an exclusive relationship, there was the institutional center of Bolton’s
spiritual life. Beginning at the time he served as one of the Trustees for the group of
Dissenters who petitioned the crown in 1756 for a grant of land to construct a
meetinghouse in Savannah, and continuing through his service near the end of his life on
69
Winter’s student William Jay wrote devotional books for the use of families in daily services. Jay’s
books went through many editions in England and America. For early nineteenth-century advice on the
conduct and content of family worship, see: William Jay, Prayers for the Use in Families, or, The Domestic
Minister’s Assistant (London: Ward, Lock and Co., 1800) and Short Discourses to be Read in Families
(Bath: Printed and sold for the author by M. Gye, 1805). 70
Jay, Standard Works, 3:29. 71
Other Trustees included Jonathan Bryan, James Edward Powell, James Miller, Joseph Gibbons, William
Gibbons, Benjamin Farley, William Wright, David Fox, Jr., and John Fox. Calhoun, Splendor of Grace,
18-21. 72
Gawin L. Corbin, contributor, “Collections of the Georgia Historical Society, Other Documents and
Notes: The First List of Pew Holders of Christ-Church, Savannah,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 50:1
(March, 1966), 80. 73
Robert Bolton, Letter to Cornelius Winter, February 16, 1771 quoted in Robert Bolton, Genealogical and
Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England and America (New York: John A. Gray, Printer,
1862), 102-103.
54
the committee formed in 1784 to rebuild the structure damaged in the Revolution, Bolton
remained “a pillar of the Presbyterian church.”74
For his part, Winter hoped to follow his mentor Whitefield’s path to Anglican
ordination, but his best chance for a ministry lay outside the Establishment since he was
anything but a mainstream candidate for the clergy. His qualifications for the ministry
rested solely on his religious conversion and dedicated work as a lay preacher among
middle and lower classes of the City of London. Winter keenly regretted that his
academic education at the Anglican charity school had ended prematurely and abruptly
when his relation claimed him as an apprentice. Nevertheless, Winter reckoned that
considering the weakness of my capacity, and that for many years I had no settled
place of abode, nor any person to assist me; that I have been constantly employed
in preaching the word almost every night of the week to different congregations,
and twice or thrice every sabbath … , I have cause to be thankful for the little
[education] I have acquired.75
While his apprenticeship and later experiences as Whitefield’s assistant in the City of
London did not provide him any academic credentials for ordination, they did familiarize
him with the methods and strategies employed by Dissenters, evangelicals, and others
outside the Anglican establishment.
Because they lacked the facilities of parishes and state-supported religious
structures, evangelicals had popularized, and Winter adopted, the practice of meeting
with followers in private homes. And when domestic settings proved inadequate, they
74
“Proceedings and Minutes of the Governor and Council from October 30, 1754 to March 6, 1759” in The
Colonial Records of the State of Georgia (Atlanta: The Franklin-Turner Company, 1906), 7:312-313;
Adelaide Wilson, Historic and Picturesque Savannah (Savannah: privately printed for subscribers by
Boston Gravure Company, 1889), 64; Harold E. Davis, The Fledgling Province, Social and Cultural Life in
Colonial Georgia, 1733-1776 (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1976), 57. 75
Jay, Standard Works, 3:24.
55
preached in the open fields to accommodate greater numbers. When the open fields
proved too inclement, preachers like John Wesley occupied buildings constructed for
other purposes such as the ruined Foundry on City Road. Gradually an architecture of
purpose-built independent chapels and meeting houses developed, but preachers were
also as likely as not to adapt any available structure to the purposes of worship.
As he initiated his mission to Georgia’s Negroes, Winter followed the precedent
of preaching in private homes. Nevertheless, Winter appreciated the utility of a purpose-
built structure for recognition and institutional validation so he proposed leasing the
unoccupied Lutheran Church building in Savannah. The Lutherans refused Winter’s
request merely because he “preached to, and aimed at instructing the negroes.”76
Winter
recalled he could scarcely stir about town without hearing white people comment “with
an accent of contempt, ‘There goes the Negro parson.’”77
Members of Council even
considered a motion to silence Winter by declaring him a nuisance to the province. The
failure of the motion suggests that, despite holding minority views on slave education,
men like Habersham and Bolton commanded enough respect in the community to provide
some cover for Winter’s mission.
The resistance of higher status groups to what they perceived as any kind of
empowerment of an underclass was an attitude that evangelicals like Winter had also
encountered in London. The Duchess of Buckingham voiced the rationale of the English
conservative establishment when she challenged her peer, the Countess of Huntingdon,
76
Jay, Standard Works, 3:29. 77
Jay, Standard Works, 3:29.
56
for supporting Wesley, Whitefield and other evangelicals.78
In a letter to the Countess,
the Duchess of Buckingham lambasted methodist doctrines as being
most repulsive and strongly tinctured with impertinence and disrespect towards
their superiors, in perpetually endeavouring to level all ranks, and do away with
all distinctions, as it is monstrous to be told that you have a heart as sinful as the
common wretches that crawl on the earth. This is highly offensive and insulting,
and I cannot but wonder that your Ladyship should relish any sentiments so much
at variance with high rank and good breeding.79
Although her thrust was to defend the social barricades that protected the privilege of
English elites from incursions by the middle and working classes, the assumptions
underpinning the Duchess’s reasoning essentially conformed with those of Georgians
who opposed Christianizing and educating slaves. Both elites balked at any potential
disruption of the social (and economic) hierarchy they dominated. Many evangelicals,
Habersham included, upheld the status quo when it came to the earthly social order. For
instance, he asserted “every man ought to be industrious and diligent in that Station
wherein Providence has placed him.”80
Where Habersham differed was in his conception
of the hereafter. What many among English elites and Southern slaveholders would not
subscribe to was Habersham’s faith in a Common Salvation “to which bond and free are
equally entitled .”81
For many elites on both side of the Atlantic, the idea of universal
78
Lady Huntingdon maintained longstanding and complex relationships with both Wesley and Whitefield.
Whitefield bequeathed his American estates, including Bethesda, to Lady Huntingdon. As one of
Whitefield’s executors, James Habersham corresponded her Ladyship. Letters of James Habersham, 1756-
1775, 101-111, 117-119, 126-131. For a recent appraisal of her life, see: Alan Harding, The Countess of
Huntingdon’s Connexion: A Sect in Action in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford and New York: Oxford
University Press, 2003). 79
Duchess of Buckingham. Undated letter to Lady Huntingdon quoted in Aaron Crossley Hobart Seymour,
The Life and Times of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon (London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., 1839), I, 27;
and Sarah Tytler, The Countess of Huntingdon and Her Circle (London: Sir Issac Pitman and Sons, Ltd.,
1907), 47. 80
Letters of James Habersham, 1756-1775, 69. 81
Letters of James Habersham, 1756-1775, 101.
57
“free and equal entitlement” to anything represented an unacceptable subversion of social
order.
Class standing placed slaves on the lowest rung of the social ladder even before
racial prejudices came into play. While Winter and Habersham had not personally
experienced racial prejudice, they had felt the limitations of class distinctions. In fact,
their English working class heritage and affiliation with non-Anglican religious practices
squarely placed them within the population the Duchess of Buckingham deemed “the
common wretches that crawl on the earth.” Their willingness to envision equal
entitlement to heaven must have been grounded in an appreciation of the human need for
some sort of access to upward mobility—a need that they shared with slaves, having
themselves experienced the hardships of low class status early in life.
Even with the considerable opposition to his mission, Winter carried on. When
he could secure the owner’s permission, he took the Christian message out to the
plantations where most slaves lived. And, again for this endeavor, he employed the tried
and true methods he had learned among the English evangelicals in the City of London.
He went to his audience rather than expecting them to come to him. And, just as
Habersham had joined Whitefield in raising psalms when he preached in the fields and
hinterlands before leaving England in the 1730s, Habersham was also there to support
Winter as he preached in Savannah and at plantations during 1769 and 1770.82
On other
occasions Bolton accompanied Winter to “give him countenance” and assist in the
singing.83
82
Letters of James Habersham, 1756-1775, 101. 83
Jay, Standard Works, 3:30.
58
Winter’s own assessment of the effect of his preaching on a plantation slave
audience was that “it was like shooting darts at a stone wall.” He recalled, “The greatest
part of my poor congregation was either asleep, or making some of their figures upon the
wainscot, or playing with their fingers, or eating potatoes, or talking with each other.”84
Savannah’s more sophisticated, urban slaves parried Winter’s invitations to worship by
facetiously bantering “they were too wicked to be made good now.”85
Although these
behaviors discouraged Winter, they did not particularly surprise him. Life in the City of
London had accustomed him to the disengaged, skeptical, and even hostile audiences that
evangelicals encountered when they preached in public spaces. In hindsight it shamed
him, but Winter remembered that time was when he scoffed at non-Anglicans and
entertained companions at cards by taking “undue liberty with Mr. Whitefield’s ministry
in the way of burlesque.”86
Eventually, Winter wrote, “the scales of ignorance then fell
from my eyes, a sense of my misery opened gradually to me, and I diligently inquired
what I should do to be saved.”87
Because repeated exposures to evangelicals had brought
him into the fold, Winter expected that persistence with the slave audience would
eventually pay off.
In addition to persevering, Winter intended to focus his efforts on the few slaves
who seemed “pleased by his errand.”88
Winter envisioned simultaneously teaching them
the way of salvation and to read. Members of the core group would then assist Winter in
the work of conversion and education. Here, again, he would be implementing a strategy
familiar to him from London where evangelicals depended on lay assistants to help
84
Jay, Standard Works, 3:30. 85
Jay, Standard Works, 3:29. 86
Jay, Standard Works, 3:12. 87
Jay, Standard Works, 3:13. 88
Jay, Standard Works, 3:29.
59
spread the Word and literacy. Winter pursued his mission to the slaves for the better part
of a year before sailing for England in December of 1770. Viewing ordination as a boon
to his Georgia ministry, Winter set off for London with letters of recommendation in
hand and every intention of returning to Savannah to resume his ministry once the
Anglican Bishop of London had installed him in holy orders. He hoped that ordination
would remove some of the obstacles that had impeded his progress among the slaves.
For instance, in a letter to a London associate, Habersham anticipated Winter’s ordination
as the means “by which his Sphere of usefulness will be more enlarged, and, as I have
before observed, he will by that means, be more acceptable among the white people and
will be much more so among the Blacks, who are in this Instance in particular much
influenced by example.”89
Habersham’s view that ordination would mute the opposition
of whites to Winter’s mission and blunt the “Negro parson” taunt was probably naïve.
But the question remains moot since Winter never achieved Anglican ordination and
never returned to Savannah.
Back in England, Winter shook off his disappointed ambition with the comment:
“For what end I was permitted to go to America, and why prevented from settling there,
is among the secrets of the Almighty.”90
And with that he set about finding a new
trajectory for his ministry in England. Eventually Winter accepted the offer of ordination
from Dissenters and discovered his métier as a teacher. In that capacity he established a
humble, private academy in his home where he prepared pious nonconformists for
careers in business and the ministry.91
89
Letters of James Habersham, 1756-1775, 101. 90
Jay, Standard Works, 3:31. 91
One of Winter’s favorite students who remained a lifelong friend was William Jay (1769-1853). Jay
realized the promise Winter saw in him when he became the celebrated pastor of the Independent Argyle
60
By the end of the 1780s the communitas that Whitefield and Habersham had
conceived in London fifty years earlier was still active in both places. Laymen such as
Robert Bolton and preachers like Cornelius Winter had also contributed to the strong,
transatlantic communitas that connected England and Savannah by means of mutually
held moral and economic principles. This foundation created the opportunity for
successive members of the communitas to continue applying these values in their
economic and social lives. Although similar views persisted among some members of
the communitas, there was not one generally accepted value system in Savannah,
especially in terms of slavery.
Chapel at Bath and a prolific author of religious guidance books. Not incidentally, Jay was also the father
of the architect William Jay (1792-1837) and the father-in-law of Robert Bolton (1788-1857).
CHAPTER TWO
Slavery and an Elite Construction of Class and Race in Savannah, c. 1785-1825
After an administrative tenure of less than twenty years, the Georgia Trustees
abandoned their utopian project at the end of 1750. They lifted the prohibition of slavery
and relinquished their charter to the king, who dispatched a royal Governor to rule
Georgia. In addition to allowing slavery, the new government instituted the head right
system for distributing land which let settlers assemble large holdings by claiming
acreage based on the size of their families and the number of slaves they owned. These
policy changes facilitated the expansion of South Carolina planters into Georgia and set
the stage for their emergence as Georgia’s colonial elite.1
From the outset, according to Oglethorpe’s plan, Georgia’s residents represented
many faiths and cultures. Sephardic Jews and Lutheran Salzburgers, Rhineland Germans
and French-speaking Swiss as well as a smattering of Scots, Russians, and Italians
numbered among the early settlers. However, just as many or more Savannahians hailed
from London. The legalization of slavery in 1751 further complicated the cultural mix by
allowing land-hungry South Carolina planters to develop plantations dependent on slave
labor in Georgia.
Several generations of the elite Gibbons family illustrate a pattern of migration
that extended a slave-based plantation lifestyle from the West Indies to South Carolina
and from South Carolina into Georgia. Part of the first wave of West Indian planters to
1 Sarah B. Gober Temple and Kenneth Coleman, Georgia Journeys, Being an Account of the Lives of
Georgia’s Original Settlers and Many Other Early Settlers from the Founding of the Colony in 1732 until
the Institution of Royal Government in 1754 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1961), x-xi; Stewart, 21-
86.
62
settler in South Carolina, Joseph Gibbons was born on New Providence Island, the
Bahamas, in 1696. By 1726 he had moved his family to Bear Bluff, South Carolina,
where his wife Ann gave birth to their son William. Twenty six years later, in 1752, the
younger William married and moved his new bride to Georgia near Savannah where their
son, yet another William, was born in 1754.
When he died at the age of fifty, William Gibbons (1754-1803) left no personal
letters. However, some of the account books and legal documents relating to his estate
administration record the material belongings of this William Gibbons Analyzing how
he distributed his personal property among his heirs reveals an elite mentality regarding
race and slavery that differs significantly from the accommodation of slavery that
communitas members James Habersham and Robert Bolton exemplify.
Representatives of the Bolton and Gibbons families numbered among the
relatively homogeneous group of forty-three men who petitioned the crown to grant them
land for a dissenting meeting house. Despite their shared views on religious matters,
their behaviors toward slaves were quite different, but not mutually exclusive. In the
years around 1800, Savannah’s diverse population abounded with differing views on
slavery. Even within relatively small subgroups, opinions could diverge drastically. The
legacies of the Savannah planter William Gibbons show that some of his assumptions
about slavery and race were at variance with the positions of the Habersham and Bolton
families. Whereas English urban and religious experiences motivated the Habershams
and Boltons, deep roots in a Caribbean plantation culture colored Gibbons’s actions.
The Gibbons family prospered in Georgia during the fifty years following the
legalization of slavery. By 1803, when William, a third generation Gibbons, wrote his
63
will he was a wealthy, if not robust, man. He owned 69 slaves and about 8,000 acres of
land in six Georgia counties. His household furnishings and personal effects included
many high style, luxury items. While he consistently patronized Savannah craftsmen, he
also acquired many of his personal belongings from some of America’s most renowned
craftsmen. On his visit to New York in July 1802, he bought furniture, silver flat and
hollow wares, ceramic wares, books, prints, and clothing. Among the craftsmen he
patronized were the furniture makers Samuel and William Burling, George Shipley, and
Duncan Phyfe; the silversmith Thomas Warren; and the tailor Christand Baher . Even
among elite Savannahians, William Gibbons stood out.2
For example, Gibbons’s personal property was included in a sampling of
Savannah estates probated between 1800 and 1855 that was used to develop a measure of
elite status for a study of dining customs and objects related to dining. Information
commonly found in estate inventories served as the basis for developing the standard.
The indicators of elite status were the vocations of planter, professional, widow, factor, or
spinster; an estate value exceeding $3,000; and owning at least seven of these ten items:
sideboard; teaware (ceramic, britannia ware, or silver); ceramic dinner service; silver
(flatware and or hollowware); forks; table linens; specialized glassware for entertaining;
liquor, wines, cordials; slaves; and books. A survey of forty-two inventories dating
between 1800 and 1855 yielded twenty-six individuals that met the criteria for elite
status. William Gibbons was one of only seven people who owned examples of all ten of
the objects listed as status indicators.3
2 Household Account Book of William Gibbons, 1802-1803; Will of William Gibbons, 1803; Inventory of
William Gibbons, 1804. 3 Feay Shellman Coleman, Nostrums for Fashionable Entertainments (Savannah: Telfair Academy of Arts
and Sciences, Inc., 1992), 10-11. Estate inventories are anything but uniform. They vary from being very
64
The types of furnishings that Gibbons purchased conveyed both his wealth and
gentility. Acquiring luxury goods not only illustrated the purchaser’s means, but also
alluded to the important social skills of knowing what to buy, how to use it, and how to
care for it. The form and materials of an object reflected the owner’s taste. Refined
craftsmanship of an object suggested that its owner possessed an equal measure of
refinement. Finally, ownership of luxury goods implied belonging to a social circle
whose members shared similar social values. Since possessions reflected and cemented
the owner’s social position, looking at what William Gibbons left to each of his legatees
can tell something about the social expectations he had for the recipient.4
There were nineteen beneficiaries of William Gibbons’s will. His heirs included
two surviving siblings, eight nephews and nieces, the three children he is presumed to
have fathered, his presumed conjugal partner, the wife of a kinsman, a charity, and three
slaves. Gibbons structured the will so that the names of the beneficiaries appear in a
logical progression that begins with Gibbons’s oldest and closest relative and proceeds to
the younger beneficiaries and ends with legacies to non-relatives. Simply reading the
will and noting the sequence of names reveals Gibbons’s placement of each individual
within the family hierarchy. Then a closer look at what he left to whom further clarifies
his view of each individual’s standing and reveals a distinct status for family members
who were free people of color.
Gibbons’s sister Sarah Telfair was just four years his junior. She ranked as his
closest relative and the first beneficiary named in his will. Among other things, he
bequeathed to her a pair of mahogany card tables, a mahogany sideboard, and half of his
detailed to being very vague. Establishing seven out of ten possible indicators of wealth as the measure of
status allows for some of the inconsistencies in inventories. 4 Richard Bushman, The Refinement of America (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), xi-xix.
65
books. That the card tables and sideboard were made of mahogany, an exotic, tropical
wood, rather of a lesser, local wood indicates they were luxury items. Neither card tables
nor sideboards were found in below average households. Only those people with the
means and leisure to entertain owned purpose-built card tables and sideboards. In fact,
the sideboard was a relatively new form of furniture in 1800. Sideboards first came into
use in America in the 1780s when dinner parties became fashionable. The books also
marked their owner as a well-heeled person with access to education and leisure for
recreation.
After making his bequests to Sarah Telfair, William Gibbons established legacies
for his eight nephews and nieces. They ranged in age from seven to twenty years. Six
were the children of his sister Sarah and her husband Edward Telfair. Two were the
children of his sister Mary Gibbons Jones who had died in 1792 and her husband George.
When he named his nephews’ and nieces’ fathers as two of his executors, William
Gibbons undoubtedly anticipated that they would look after the interests of their children
who were all minors when he wrote his will. William Gibbons left rural real estate in
either Jackson or Camden County, Georgia and town lots to each of the four boys. He
bequeathed town lots but no rural land to three of the four nieces. The town lots were
located in Brunswick, Savannah, or the village of St. Gall, which was a Savannah
neighborhood on the western edge of town. 5
In addition to real estate, Gibbons left personal items to his nephews and nieces.
As the eldest child of his generation, Josiah Telfair enjoyed some perks. His uncle left
him the accoutrements of a gentleman: a gold watch, a gray horse, a gun, and a
5 In some cases Gibbons described his land holdings by the name of the ward and number of the lot. Those
properties are indicated on the Savannah town plan. Where he identified his properties by the names of
adjoining property owners, I have not been able to locate the properties on the town plan.
66
mahogany writing case. As the first-born son in his branch of the family, Noble
Wimberley Jones inherited a gun and a mare with a colt. Gibbons bequeathed to the
second and third Telfair sons a gun and gold sleeve buttons, respectively.
Just as gendered assumptions about who could become a planter drove the
bequests of rural lands to boys and town lots to girls, the expectation that girls would
preside over genteel parlors and dinner tables was behind Gibbons’s decisions to leave
heirloom jewelry as well as silver flat and hollow wares to his nieces. All of the nieces
except the youngest received personal mementos. One inherited his mother’s wedding
ring, another got a ring with her namesake’s hair in it, and the third received a ring with
an aunt’s hair. Gibbons knew that a stylish and tasteful display of silver was an
indispensable component of a fashionable dinner party, so he left the girls items such as
twelve dessert spoons, a teapot and stand, and a sugar dish with a cream pot to match.
Even the youngest niece, seven-year-old Margaret Telfair, inherited a silver milk pot.
The next beneficiary named in Gibbons’s will was a child named Maria, the
daughter of his former slave Salley. Like Gibbons’s niece Margaret Telfair, she was
about seven or eight years old in 1804.6 Maria and her siblings Emma and John Charles
were the children of Salley, who had been William Gibbons’s mulatto slave before he
freed her by deed of gift on February 10, 1796. The childrens’ names are entered in
Gibbons’s household account book next to purchases such as “one pair of earrings for
Emma” and “a leather cap for John Charles” hint at a familial connection.7 Their
6 Since Gibbons did not document that he manumitted any of the children, my guess is that Salley gave
birth to them after she was freed on February 10, 1796 so they were born free. Lending support to the idea
that Maria was born around 1796 is a November 1802 entry in Gibbons’s account book of the amount paid
for Maria’s tuition. If she was born in 1796, Maria would have been six in 1802. 7 For more on the social meaning of shopping, see: Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor, Collaborative Consumption
and the Politics of Choice in Early American Port Cities” in Gender, Taste, and Material Culture in Britain
67
inheritances provide even stronger circumstantial evidence that he was their father.
Salley’s mother was an enslaved woman named Lucretia who belonged to William
Gibbons’s kinsman John Gibbons.8 Since Salley was a mulatto and her mother belonged
to John Gibbons, there is a chance that he was Salley’s father. That William Gibbons
named John Gibbons both as an executor and a guardian of Maria, Emma, John Charles,
and Salley lends some weight to the hypothesis that he was Salley’s father and the
children’s grandfather.9 One wonders if Maria ever played with her first cousin Margaret
Telfair who was the same age. Clearly, William Gibbons cared about both of the little
girls. And his bequests suggest that he thought that in some ways their lives might run
parallel.
Beginning in 1802 and continuing through 1803 Gibbons paid teachers for
Maria’s schooling. Just as he had bequeathed “one doz silver dessert spoons” to his niece
Sarah Telfair, Gibbons earmarked “6 large, plain silver tablespoons” and “6 silver
teaspoons” for Maria. Imbedded in his commitment to Maria’s education and in the
legacies of silver is the presumption of gentility. Emma also received a specific bequest
of silver, but as the younger sister she inherited only “6 large silver tablespoons.”
In addition to the individual bequests Gibbons made to his presumed daughters,
he designated a group of household furnishings for them to share. These included a new
mahogany breakfast table. Stylistically, the breakfast table was on a par with the
sideboard he left to his sister Sarah Telfair. Both pieces were crafted from top of the line
mahogany. But the forms of the pieces—sideboard and breakfast table—embody a subtle
and North America, 1700-1830 edited by John Styles and Amanda Vickery (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 2006), 125-149 8 When and how Salley was transferred from the ownership of John Gibbons to William Gibbons is not
known. 9 Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the older man and the boy share the same given name.
68
distinction. A sideboard was a centerpiece for entertaining, while a breakfast table was
for family use. Here Gibbons tacitly acknowledged that his sister and her heirs would
move in a wider circle than his daughters were likely to attain. To each he was providing
what was appropriate to her station.
A new maple field bedstead that Gibbons left to his daughters conveyed a similar
meaning. Gibbons had purchased it from the top-flight New York craftsman George
Shipley in the summer of 1802. It was the best of its kind, yet in both material and form
it was a lesser object than the large mahogany bedstead he left to his sister. The material,
maple, is an American wood and the form of a “field” bed is light-weight and smallish.
Nevertheless, few Savannahians could ever hope to own an elegant and expensive item
made by a New York craftsman. Here, again, the higher status object went to the higher
ranking person, yet what the girls inherited suggested their entitlement to a genteel
lifestyle.
In addition to furniture, Gibbons also left what might be considered trousseau
items to the girls. There was a set of blue and white bed curtains that probably had been
made for the field bed from several yards of “London Blue Chintz” that Gibbons bought
in New York in 1802. Textiles were among the most expensive furnishings that
homeowners acquired, so Gibbons’s bequest of damask tablecloths and fine linen sheets
and pillowcases outfitted the girls well. Kitchen utensils and tablewares were also
included in their inheritance.
Although there were similarities between Maria, Emma, John Charles and their
cousins, there were also important differences. For instance, Gibbons made direct
bequests to the Telfair and Jones children even though some of them were quite young.
69
Conversely, the legacies that Gibbons established to provide for Salley, Maria, Emma,
and John Charles were left to his brother Barack Gibbons and kinsman John Gibbons in
trust for the beneficiaries. It is clear that Gibbons understood that his family would need
white male legal surrogates to protect their interests. And it seems that his confidence
was well placed. After Barack Gibbons and John Gibbons died in 1814 and 1816,
respectively, Alexander Telfair administered the trust. By the time Telfair took over as
trustee, Savannah required that free people of color have “guardians,” so Telfair served in
that capacity as well as acting as trustee until his death in 1832.
Because their own fathers supported them, the Telfair and Jones children did not
need immediate income from the property they inherited from their uncle. The situation
for Maria, Emma, John Charles, and Salley was different. William Gibbons designed
legacies to produce current and long term income. He left real estate comprising town
lots and farm acreage as well as slaves in trust for each of the children. As the first-born
male, John Charles also received a valuable interest in a lot and buildings on the
Savannah River and the right to his own property when he turned twenty-one. Reaching
adulthood also gave him the responsibility for his mother.10
William Gibbons’s principle heir was his brother Barack. He inherited most of
his brother’s personal property as well as a life interest in two plantations and the slaves
that worked them. Although they were not blood-relatives, Salley and John Gibbons’s
wife Ann received bequests of specific articles. Whereas Gibbons had assigned his better
10
In the case of Robert Wright and his mother Sylvia, friends convinced Thomas Wright to leave property
to his son rather than his partner because the gendered assumption was that a male would be more
interested in and capable of managing property. Thomas E. Buckley, “Unfixing Race: Class, Power, and
Identity in an Interracial Family” in Sex, Love, and Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History
edited by Martha Hodes (New York and London: New York University Press, 1999), 168-169.
70
linens and furnishings to his daughters, he left an “old mahogany bedstead,” “coarse
sheets,” and “common castors” to Salley.
In one of the final paragraphs of his will, Gibbons manumitted the Negro man
Big, his wife Peg, and a mulatto girl named Harriet. As he had done for other legatees,
Gibbons provided Big and Peg with an inheritance that he felt was appropriate to their
station. In addition to their freedom, he offered the couple the free use of as much land as
they themselves could cultivate on one of his plantations. Although they did not rank
high enough with him to receive an outright gift of land, he did provide them with a
means of making a living. The last beneficiary of his will was not so fortunate. Harriet
was granted her freedom and nothing more.
In an effort forestall attempts to re-enslave his former bondspeople, Gibbons
stipulated that his executors “take the necessary measures to have their freedom
complicated agreeably to the law of the State.” This caveat and the careful reference he
made to the documentation of Salley’s manumission show that Gibbons was aware of the
growing opposition among whites to increasing the population of free people of color.
The trend continued and intensified. Just over ten years after William Gibbons’s death,
the executor of John Gibbons’s will had to apply to the Legislature of the State of
Georgia to pass a law to validate the manumission his slaves.11
In Georgia the feeling
against free people of color was so high that the legislature was willing to rein in
slaveholders’ property rights rather than risk that manumissions would swell the
population of free people of color.12
11
The name of Salley’s mother Lucretia appears in the estate inventory of John Gibbons, so she received
her freedom if his executors carried out his wishes. 12
Records documenting jurists’ struggles to balance competing interests in lawsuits challenging white
males’ legacies to slave partners and mulatto children form the basis for Bernie D. Jones’s analysis of the
71
Some states established legal standards to define the exact admixture of ancestry
that determined a person’s racial status as either black or white. According to Walter
Johnson, other states, including Georgia, “gave race a completely different imaginative
existence by basing legal presumptions about status on the basis of observation and
reputation.”13
Because this construction of race complements William Gibbons’s
hierarchical worldview, it makes sense to interpret his legacies to Salley and their
children as more than sentiment and support. The property--real estate, slaves, and
personal belongings--that William Gibbons earmarked for Maria, Emma, and John
Charles was meant convey their stature and guarantee their freedom.
On April 23, 1804 Barack Gibbons appeared at the probate court in Savannah,
Georgia, where he qualified as the executor of the will his brother William had signed on
September 21, 1803. The document encapsulated a hierarchical worldview in which
there were ranks and roles for slaves, free people of color, and whites. Gibbons’s
bequests to persons in all three of these ranks reveal his thinking about how to provide for
people he cared about most deeply. His legacies also implied the beliefs that 1) certain
types of belongings were the prerogative of certain ranks and 2) that class would be more
important than race in determining social status. The latter assumption was a
miscalculation. Gibbons’s thinking was that of an elite, eighteenth-century planter. But
his legatees would live in a nineteenth-century world driven by a capitalist market
economy.14
Antebellum period. Bernie D. Jones, Fathers of Conscience: Mixed Race Inheritance in the Antebellum
South (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 2009). 13
Walter Johnson, “Inconsistency, Contradiction, and Complete Confusion: The Everyday Life of the Law
of Slavery,” Law and Social Inquiry, (22, 2 (Spring, 1997), 410. 14
James Oakes, Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc., 1982), 57. Needless to say Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World that Slaves Made (New
York: Pantheon Books, 1974) and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese (Within the Plantation Household: Black and
72
When William Gibbons died, his son John Charles was only four years old. So,
the father’s worldview and attempts to shape his son’s future may have had very little
influence on John Charles’s adult life. Clearly the world John Charles lived in was very
different from the one his presumed father had experienced or envisioned for him. There
are a few hints of enduring legacies that linger in the records of William Gibbons’s estate
administration. First, John Charles did receive access to schooling. In 1819 Alexander
Telfair paid Sereno Taylor, Principal of the Burlington Academy, for his tuition and
board. Since Taylor’s name has been linked with the American Colonization Society,
there is the slight possibility that John Charles’s own relatives were trying to export him.
Or perhaps Taylor was sympathetic to educating free people of color when others were
not.15
Second, John Charles still owned at least one slave from his father’s estate in
1819. But by 1819 a bill for medicine indicates that the slave, Cuffee, may have been
more of a liability than an asset. Although he continued to hold slaves, John Charles
became a carpenter not a planter. William Gibbons’s nephews, not his son, inherited the
family plantations. That is an economic reality that undoubtedly made John Charles’s
worldview very different from his father’s. When his name was written in his father’s
account book and will, it appeared as “John Charles,” but in government records from the
1820s and 1830s it is was reduced to the diminutive “Jack.” In the racial climate of the
White Women of the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988) and their concept of
paternalism looms large over Southern history. William Gibbons could serve as “Exhibit A” in an
argument supporting paternalism. But his children lived in a world more like the one that scholars such as
Oakes, Stephanie McCurry, Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households, Gender Relations, and the
Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country (New York: Oxford University Press,
1995) and Michele Gillespie Free Labor in an Unfree World: White Artisans in Slaveholding Georgia,
1789-1860, (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000) have described where no group dominated
and middling and poor whites had a measure of economic and political power. 15
Adele Logan Alexander, Ambiguous Lives, Free Women of Color in Rural Georgia, 1789-1879
(Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1991), 77-80.
73
Antebellum period it must have been very difficult for John Charles to garner the respect
and reputation his father had envisioned for him.
Whereas Gibbons’s white legatees occupied social positions that remained stable
throughout the Antebellum period, the non-whites named in his will probably did not find
the comfortable niche Gibbons had envisioned for them. In a climate of hardening racial
attitudes and restrictive legislation, free blacks found it difficult to flourish. Throughout
the slaveholding South, the fear among whites that free people of color might harbor
fugitive slaves or instigate rebellion stimulated restrictive legislation. Similarly, whites
fearing economic competition barred free blacks from education, economic opportunities,
and citizenship. Because the very existence of free non-whites contradicted the
fundamental premise of race-based slavery, many whites hoped to diminish their
numbers. By the early nineteenth century, fallout from race-based slavery was squeezing
free people of color into an increasingly constricted social space in Georgia. Initially
Georgia’s founders had excluded slavery, but by 1800 all black people, slave or free,
were being treated like slaves.16
In the decades following the legalization of slavery, the variety of cultural
backgrounds represented in Georgia’s population meant that many attitudes about slaves
and slavery co-existed. Similarly, the novelty of slavery contributed to a degree of
fluidity in public policy regulating the institution and allowed individuals quite a bit of
latitude in their behavior concerning slaves. His status as an elite planter distinguished
William Gibbons from urban, middle class communitas members like the Habershams
and Boltons. Yet they all participated in the same religious community. As the
16
Ira Berlin, Slaves without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1974), 93-94.
74
administration of William Gibbons’s estate has shown, by the 1820s tolerance of
permeable boundaries around slavery were giving way to harsher laws and customs
regulating slavery that presaged the Antebellum era.
CHAPTER THREE
From Middling Sorts to Capitalist Entrepreneurs:
Slavery and the Rise of R. and J. Bolton, c. 1785-1825
Over a span of several generations, middle class attitudes characterized
communitas members of the Bolton family. The foundations and rise of the Savannah
mercantile firm of R. and J. Bolton exemplify how the aspirations of middling sorts
shifted from satisfaction with a “modest competency” and the lack of social mobility it
implied to a middle-class desire to accumulate wealth and pursue upward social mobility.
Whereas these economic and social changes were occurring throughout the United States,
slavery was not a factor in every situation. The firm of R. and J. Bolton, its antecedents
and successors, illustrates how three generations of Bolton family responded to these
changes in the specific context of Savannah where slaves and slavery played a key role in
the economy. Initially, they embraced slaveholding as a means of accumulating capital.
Gradually, however, as stakeholders in the Bolton firm moved their business interests
towards manufacturing and financial capitalism, their attitudes towards slaveholding
began to change. Nevertheless slaves initially capitalized the firm of R. and J. Bolton.
Similarly, storing, insuring, shipping, and selling the products of slave labor continued as
the source of the firm’s profits even as members of the firm entered into pioneering
capitalist ventures such as banking, insurance, and stock brokerage. Whereas some
individuals associated with the firm eventually made personal decisions to liquidate their
holdings in slaves, they continued to rely on the products of slave labor for their wealth.
76
Savannahians recognized R. and J. Bolton as the city’s pre-eminent mercantile
firm in the years around 1800, but Robert Bolton (1722-1789) laid the initial groundwork
for the enterprise much earlier. Like his fellows in the communitas, James Habersham
and Cornelius Winter, Bolton shared strong religious convictions and middle class
origins. As with the other two, Bolton’s early life, in his birthplace of Philadelphia, held
little promise of affluence.1 His parents, Robert (1688-1742) and Ann Bolton (1690-
1747) were so strapped by business reverses that even after they sent two daughters with
Whitefield to his orphanage in Savannah, it took magnanimous acts of charity to allay
their “fears and terrors” of poverty. A family member looking back recalled that these
measures “gave them a good competence, so that they needed no more.”2 For the
Boltons, however, relief and gratitude must have been mixed with regret that they were
dependent on charity to attain a measure of financial stability.
Without parental resources to rely on, the younger Robert (1722-1789) left
Philadelphia and, for a time, tried to establish himself as a saddler in nearby Trenton,
New Jersey. After failing in that endeavor, he returned to Philadelphia, embraced
Whitefield’s evangelical message, and set out to join his sisters who were living at
Bethesda near Savannah. After settling in Savannah, Bolton married in 1747 and the
following year, he petitioned the Georgia Trustees to grant him a lot in Savannah.3 The
wording of his request for a land grant presented Bolton in terms that would appeal to the
1 Four persons named Robert Bolton figure in this chapter. The first moved from England to Philadelphia
where he died in 1742. The second is his son who was born in Philadelphia in 1722 and died at Savannah
in 1789. This Robert Bolton fathered the Robert Bolton who was born in Savannah in 1757 and died there
in 1802. The fourth Robert Bolton was born in Savannah in 1788 and died in England in 1857. 2 Whitefield and his friend William Seward came to the financial rescue by installing Bolton as the master
of a modest school, settling a small annuity on his wife, and taking two of their daughters to live at
Bethesda in Savannah. Robert Bolton, Genealogical and Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in
England and America (New York: John A. Gray, Printer, 1862), 70. 3 Robert Bolton, Genealogical and Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England and America
(New York: John A. Gray, Printer, 1862), 70-71, 90.
77
Georgia Trustees’ vision of the deserving poor achieving a “modest competency”
courtesy of noblesse oblige.4 Describing him as a “saddler and Brother-in-law to James
Habersham having lived and carried on his Trade about four years in the town of
Savannah,” the endorsers of the petition claimed also to know “him to be a very
industrious sober man.”5 The Trustees approved grants of Lot No 3 in the third Tything
of the Upper New Ward, Savannah; farm Lot No. 8; and garden Lot No. 147 east of
town.6 In the trustees’ estimation of his needs, proper diligence in managing these
properties would provide Bolton with a fairly small, but adequate living. The rub was
that the economic opportunities and risks inherent to capitalism stimulated a volatile
business cycle that brought into question the validity of a “modest competency.” As had
been the case with Bolton’s parents in Philadelphia, earnest labor often failed to provide a
comfortable living. Achieving a modicum of financial security seemed to necessitate
accumulating capital and putting it to work as a buffer against hard times.
Already out of favor among Georgians, the economic model of “modest
competency” was discarded once and for all in 1750 when the Trustees relinquished their
charter and the Crown took over governance of the colony, legalized slavery, and lifted
the limits on landholding. In response to the new economic environment Bolton began to
accumulate property. He purchased land from Thomas Hill in 1752.7 Then in 1752,
1755, 1758, and 1768 he petitioned the crown for an extension to his original farm lot, a
lot in the village of Hardwick, 450 acres in St. Philips Parish, and 500 acres in St.
4 Daniel Vickers, “Competency and Competition: Economic Culture in Early America,” William and Mary
Quarterly, 3d ser. 47 (1990), 3-29.
5 “Proceedings of the President and Assistants from October 12, 1741 until October 30, 1754” in The
Colonial Records of the State of Georgia (Atlanta: Allen D. Candler, 1906), 6:240. 6 Entry of Claims for Georgia Landholders, 1733-1755 compiled by Pat Bryant (Atlanta: State Printing
Office, 1975), 6-7. 7 Entry of Claims for Georgia Landholders, 1733-1755 compiled by Pat Bryant (Atlanta: State Printing
Office, 1975), 7.
78
Thomas Parish, respectively.8 Unlike his first petition of 1748 that portrayed Bolton as
“deserving,” the petition of 1768 pitched his case more like a businessman applying for a
bank loan to finance a venture. Now he referenced his “Six Children and Eight Negroes”
when seeking an additional five hundred acres to augment his existing four hundred fifty
acre holding.9 In other words, he offered up the children and slaves as a form of
collateral.
Between 1748 and 1768 Robert Bolton had secured the wherewithal to invest in
eight slaves. To augment what he earned as a saddler, Bolton worked as an innkeeper,
vendue master, and shopkeeper. 10
Even so, on at least one occasion his wealthy brother-
in-law felt it necessary to intercede on Bolton’s behalf. In a letter to Benjamin Franklin
recommending Bolton’s appointment as postmaster, James Habersham called Bolton an
honest, prudent, and punctual man before confiding that “he has lately buried an excellent
wife, and is left with seven fine children… and as his trade has lately declined, any
additional means of getting him money, must greatly assist him.”11
The number and
variety of Bolton’s occupations suggests that one source of income was never adequate
for Bolton to position himself where he wanted to be financially.
In the years following the Revolution, Bolton and his second wife moved four
miles outside of Savannah to the little community of White Bluff, Georgia. At the time
of his death in 1789 Bolton owned ten slaves, twenty-five head of cattle, twenty-five
8 Entry of Claims for Georgia Landholders, 1733-1755 compiled by Pat Bryant (Atlanta: State Printing
Office, 1975), 7; “Proceedings and Minutes of the Governor and Council from October 30, 1754 to March
6, 1759” in The Colonial Records of the State of Georgia (Atlanta: The Franklin-Turner Company, 1906),
7:199; “Proceedings and Minutes of the Governor and Council from January 6, 1767 to December 5, 1769”
in The Colonial Records of the State of Georgia (Atlanta: The Franklin-Turner Company, 1907), 10:439. 9 “Proceedings and Minutes of the Governor and Council from January 6, 1767 to December 5, 1769” in
The Colonial Records of the State of Georgia (Atlanta: The Franklin-Turner Company, 1907), 10:439. 10
Harold E. Davis, The Fledgling Province, Social and Cultural Life in Colonial Georgia, 1733-1776
(Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1976), 56-7. 11
Letters of James Habersham, 1756-1775, 23-4.
79
hogs, two horses, and two sheep, but almost no household luxuries associated with high
status. Six pictures, one silver ladle, and one silver watch were among the few
possessions that were not basic necessities.12
The concentration of eighty-five percent of
the value of his personal property in income generating slaves and livestock implies that
he had prospered enough to live adequately, but had little or nothing to spare.
Although their lives played out in very different ways, Habersham, Winter and
Bolton each had grasped opportunities that presented themselves as the capitalist
economy expanded and began to blur old social and economic boundaries. Habersham
rose to elite status and Winter turned away from trade to enter the ministry. Of the three,
Bolton best illustrates the life of a modest entrepreneur who accumulated a considerable,
but not stellar, legacy of capital for his heirs. That slaves represented almost seventy-five
percent of Bolton’s legacy underscores the important role slavery played in the expansion
of American capital. Wealth inherited in the form of human property provided Bolton’s
only son Robert (1757-1802) with the capital he needed to begin building a very
successful business. His heirs, in turn, extended the enterprise expansively. Their
business ventures became so diversified that some of them seemed to have no connection
to slavery whatsoever. Further, some of Bolton’s descendants even divested themselves
of slaves, but that does not change the fact that slave labor initially had given them the
working capital to build their prosperity.13
12
“Schedule of Appraisement of the Personal Property belonging to the Estate of Robert Bolton, Senr.,
Decd., July 29, 1789” transcribed in Robert Bolton, Genealogical and Biographical Account of the Family
of Bolton in England and America (New York: John A. Gray, Printer, 1862), 109. 13
Seth Rothman, “The Unfree Origins of American Capitalism” in Matson, Cathy, ed., The Economy of
Early America: Historical Perspectives and New Directions (University Park, Pa.: The Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2006), 339-347.
80
As it had been with his contemporary Habersham, the religious beliefs that
molded Bolton’s life had not precluded him from embracing the economic advantages of
slaveholding. In fact, Bolton had a family history of slaveholding. Back in Philadelphia,
at the time of his death in 1742, Bolton’s father owned a mulatto girl and a Negro man
named York.14
In Savannah the younger Bolton not only acquired slaves, but also took
an active part in implementing public policies for slave control. For several years
between 1768 and 1775 Bolton served as a commissioner of the Savannah workhouse.15
Unlike institutions of the same name in England, the Savannah workhouse was only
marginally involved in lodging and employing the poor. It primarily functioned as a
lock-up where owners reclaimed captured runaways and deposited recalcitrant slaves for
the administration of corporal punishment.16
Concomitant with his work to Christianize
slaves, Bolton also executed legally sanctioned public policy measures to enforce their
subjugation. Consequently, a significant part of his legacy to his children was a pattern
of upholding slavery on both the individual and societal levels.
In addition, Bolton also bequeathed to his only son, yet another Robert Bolton,
legacies of property and a strong identification with the middle class and spiritual values
he had shared with Habersham and Winter. The son, young Robert Bolton (1757-1802),
14
“An Inventory of All and Singular of the Goods and Chattels of Robert Bolton, Late of Philada.,
Deceased” transcribed in Robert Bolton, Genealogical and Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in
England and America (New York: John A. Gray, Printer, 1862), 75-77. Although his name is given as
William rather than Robert Bolton, other details published in The Boston Weekly News-letter suggest that
Robert Bolton (1688-1742) also modeled the behavior of educating African Americans. Possibly in
response to Whitefield’s belief in teaching African Americans to read, Bolton welcomed African
Americans at his school in Philadelphia where the practice received a cold reception from other whites.
See Frank Lambert, “’I Saw the Book Talk’: Slave Readings of the First Great Awakening,” The Journal of
Negro History, 77, 4 (Autumn, 1992), 187, 197 fn 11; Nancy Slocum Hornick, “Anthony Benezet and the
Africans’ School: Toward a Theory of Full Equality,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and
Biography 99, 4 (October, 1975), 399-421. 15
Harold E. Davis, The Fledgling Province, Social and Cultural Life in Colonial Georgia, 1733-1776
(Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1976), 154. 16
Betty Wood, “Prisons, Workhouses, and Control of Slave Labour in Low Country Georgia, 1763-1815”
Slavery and Abolition (1987), 8, 3:248-249.
81
who had been a boy of about thirteen when Cornelius Winter initiated his mission in the
Bolton household, must have embraced the evangelist’s message. Family lore has it that
as an adult, “Like his father, he was a great encourager of Gospel preachers.”17
He also
continued his father’s participation in the affairs of the Independent Presbyterian Church.
Like others associated with the communitas, Robert Bolton was perfectly willing to cross
denominational boundaries to worship. From the 1780s until his death he maintained a
pew in Christ Church. He also took a leadership role in the parish, serving as a member
of the vestry in the 1790s and contributing generously to the costs of rebuilding the
church after the great Savannah fire of 1796.18
Part of Bolton’s middle class upbringing in Savannah was a solid education for
trade that complemented the religious way of life inculcated at home. As a descendent
retold it, “He received the best education which the infant colony afforded, and was
placed out in early life in one of the first commercial houses of Georgia.” On one hand,
he was not apprenticed to learn the skilled craft of a saddler as his father had been. On
the other, he did not go north to pursue a classical education at Princeton like his elite
cousins, the sons of James and Mary Bolton Habersham. In the Savannah counting house
where he served his apprenticeship, Bolton “improved his advantages and acquired a
thorough knowledge of business….” He must have matched what he learned as a
apprentice with an uncanny business sense as well as “the blessings of God and his own
industry, integrity, and economy….”19
In the twenty years that elapsed between the
17
Robert Bolton, Genealogical and Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England and America
(New York: John A. Gray, Printer, 1862), 126. 18
Robert Bolton, Genealogical and Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England and America
(New York: John A. Gray, Printer, 1862), 125-126; Account Book, Vol. 1., Cash Book, 1782-1811 (Christ
Church Records, Georgia Historical Society); 19
Robert Bolton, Genealogical and Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England and America
(New York: John A. Gray, Printer, 1862), 121.
82
British evacuation of Savannah at the end of the Revolution in 1782 and his death in
1802, Bolton amassed a large fortune. Even though records of his enterprise are few and
scattered, several constant themes emerge as being central to Bolton’s life and business
strategy.20
They are a strong religious grounding, the co-mingling of family and business
relationships, a mind to expand business ventures, and a willingness to think about capital
in new ways. When the next generation inherited Bolton’s legacy, they maintained and
even enlarged his vision.
Robert Bolton (1757-1802), a man still in his mid-twenties, returned to Savannah
from his service in the American Revolution as a seasoned veteran, a husband, and father
in the same year that the Treaty of Paris was signed. He and Sarah McClean of Maryland
had married in 1781. A daughter Sarah was born in Philadelphia in 1782.21
After settling
in Savannah Sarah gave birth to five more children who survived infancy. They were
Ann, Robert, James, Frances, and Rebecca. In addition to their natural children, Robert
and Sarah Bolton raised his orphaned cousins John, Edwin, and Curtis Bolton. As
Bolton's household numbers increased, his success as merchant also burgeoned. For
most of the children in the household, coming of age involved a marriage that
strengthened family ties within the firm. Having trusted relations in positions of fiscal
responsibility provided the firm with a shield against malfeasance.
Holy matrimony was a mechanism through which Robert Bolton and his heirs
intertwined family and enterprise so tightly that one type of relationship was all but
20
For the analyses of business records surviving from similar firms, see John R. Killick, “Bolton Ogden &
Co.: A Case Study in Anglo-American Trade, 1790-1850,” Business History Review XLIII, 4 (Winter,
1974), 501-519 and “Risk Specialization and Profit in the Mercantile Sector of the Nineteenth Century
Cotton Trade: Alexander Brown and Sons, 1820-1880,” Business History Review (January, 1974), 1-16. 21
Sarah McClean Bolton was a widow when she married Robert Bolton. John Jackson (b. 1777), who was
born to Sarah Bolton and her first husband, Dr. Jackson, probably lived with his mother and stepfather.
Robert Bolton, Genealogical and Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England and America
(New York: John A. Gray, Printer, 1862), 138.
83
inextricable from communitas. The business partnership of “Newell and Bolton” arose
from his sister Rebecca's marriage to Thomas Newell (1747-1810).22
After Newell
dropped out of the picture, Bolton brought two of the cousins he had raised, John and
Curtis Bolton, into the business as the eighteenth century closed. In due course each
received shares of the firm, which was renamed “Robert and John Bolton” in 1796.23
Robert and Sarah Bolton's daughters Sarah and Ann married the cousins, John and Curtis,
respectively. Another daughter, Frances, married Richard Richardson who had entered
the firm around 1802 as an apprentice clerk. One of Richardson’s sisters married
Frances’s brother James McClean Bolton and a second sister married another member of
the firm. Richard’s brother James and Frances’s brother Robert teamed up to manage the
firm’s interests in Liverpool. In 1810 Robert married Anne, the daughter of the Reverend
William Jay (1769-1853) whose son Cyrus married a daughter of Robert Spear (1762–
1819). A leading Manchester cotton merchant with longstanding business connections to
the Savannah Boltons, Spear was also known for his piety and philanthropy.24
In a time
when communications were slow and success in business depended on decisions made on
both sides of the Atlantic, the necessity of having trusted partners explains the role of
marriage ties within business relationships
For a few years after Robert Bolton (1757-1802) died, his cousin John continued
in Savannah as the firm’s principal partner. Then he and his brother Curtis expanded the
firm’s interests to New York, leaving Richard Richardson in charge of the business in
22
Virginia Steele White, “James Keen’s Journal of a Passage from Philadelphia to Blackbeard Island,
Georgia for Live Oak Timber, 1817-1818,” The American Neptune XXXV:4 (October, 1975), 245. 23
Transcription of advertisement from Columbian Museum and Savannah Advertiser, April 29, 1796, p. 3,
c. 4 (Walter C. Hartridge Collection, Georgia Historical Society, Savannah). 24
The Autobiography of William Jay edited by George Redford and John Angell James (New York: Robert
Carter and Brothers, 1855), i:108.
84
Savannah. By 1818 what had begun as an artisan’s shop in Savannah had grown into a
multinational business with partners in Savannah, New York, and Liverpool who
operated as commission merchants with interests in the fields of shipping, insurance,
banking, and stock brokerage.
Robert Bolton (1757-1802) Builds the Business Empire of R. and J. Bolton
In the early days of their business partnership, Robert Bolton (1757-1802) and his
brother-in-law, Thomas Newell, began expanding Bolton’s father’s practice of importing
consumer goods to Savannah. Unlike Robert Bolton, Sr. (1722-1789), who as an artisan-
merchant in colonial Savannah that sold English saddles in addition to the products of his
own craftsmanship, the younger Bolton would continue in business as a purely mercantile
enterprise.25
In 1785, not long after the elder Bolton had retired to White Bluff, the firm
of Newell and Bolton expanded their operations in the Atlantic network of trade by
importing and selling a cargo of thirty-five African slaves.26
Then, in the early 1790s,
Bolton and the Manchester merchant Robert Spear (1762-1819) collaborated to
popularize Georgia Sea Island cotton with English mill owners.27
American planters paid
Bolton’s firm a commission for handling the sales of their cotton crops to English buyers.
By the late 1790s, Bolton’s own ships were not only plying the Atlantic to exchange
American cotton at Liverpool for English and European goods to sell in Savannah, but
also were carrying shipments between European ports. For instance, Newell and
Bolton’s brig Fame was sailing from London to Venice with a cargo of fish when a
25
Walter J. Fraser, Jr. Savannah in the Old South (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press,
2003), 66. 26
James A. McMillin, The Final Victims: Foreign Slave Trade to North America, 1783-1810 (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 2004), 121. 27
“Memoirs of the Life and Character of the Late Robert Spear, esq. of Manchester,” The Investigator
(May, 1820), I, 1:4-5; Robert Bolton, Genealogical and Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in
England and America (New York: John A. Gray, Printer, 1862), 124, 149.
85
French privateer seized the craft.28
Bolton further diversified his holdings with
investments in other businesses related to shipping such as a rope-walk in Baltimore that
he co-owned with a friend he called “the worthy James Piper.”29
The expansive business thinking that impelled Bolton into a broad spectrum of
ventures also underlay his increasing sophistication in matters of finance. For instance,
he was beginning to think of business as having an identity independent from the
household. Evidence of this is that, unlike his father whose slaves had been part of his
personal estate, Robert Bolton (1757-1802) designated certain slaves as assets of the
business partnership of R. and J. Bolton. Consequently, Bolton’s will stipulated how his
two-thirds interest in the slaves of R. and J. Bolton should be apportioned among his
heirs. Although family continued as an integral part of economic life, viewing slaves as
business rather than personal assets signals a shift away from the traditional organization
of economic life around the household and a move towards the separation of business
into its own sphere.
Similarly, Bolton’s central role in implementing a joint stock issue to finance the
construction of Savannah’s City Exchange in 1799 indicates a growing facility with the
mechanisms of financial capitalism. Bolton served as one of the trustees managing the
stock offering of two hundred shares worth $100 each. An initial payment of $15 entitled
the bearer of a certificate to hold one share in the Exchange upon paying the $85
28
Robert Bolton, Letter to a French friend, October 28, 1800, quoted in Robert Bolton, Genealogical and
Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England and America (New York: John A. Gray, Printer,
1862), 124-125. That Bolton cited Thomas Newell as the master of Fame suggests that his role in the
partnership was as a sea captain. 29
“The Will of Robert Bolton of Savannah, Merchant” transcribed in Robert Bolton, Genealogical and
Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England and America (New York: John A. Gray, Printer,
1862), 131. Known as a Methodist, Piper apparently developed qualms about slavery. By converting
lifelong servitude to a specific term, he freed the slaves employed at the ropewalk. See T. Stephen
Whitman, The Price of Freedom: Slavery and Manumission in Baltimore and Early National Maryland
(Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1997), 108.
86
balance.30
Bolton and his firm purchased sixty-one shares.31
Because other Savannah
merchants only acquired a share or two here and there, and the City of Savannah initially
held just twenty-five of the two hundred certificates issued, the Bolton firm was the
principal shareholder in Savannah’s Exchange until the City of Savannah bought out its
interest in 1812.32
As his financial backing of the City Exchange building implies, Robert Bolton
took upon himself the mantle of civic responsibility. In addition to providing the
wherewithal for a major, municipal building, Bolton also dedicated his time to city
government. He served his fellow Savannahians as an Alderman and as a Justice of the
Inferior Court.33
A Third Generation of Savannah Boltons Takes the Reins
When, in 1796, John Bolton (1774-1838) rose to the rank of junior partner, he and
his older cousin Robert Bolton (1757-1802) renamed the firm “Robert and John
Bolton.”34
Robert’s death in 1802 elevated John to the role of senior partner. Under
John’s leadership, he and the men who entered the firm later persisted in expanding the
30
Stock Certificate Savannah Exchange, March 4, 1799 1812 (Mackay-Stiles Papers, Southern Historical
Collection, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). 31
Indenture, John Bolton, Executor of R. and J. Bolton, and the Mayor and Aldermen of Savannah, April
22, 1812 (Mackay-Stiles Papers, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, The University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill). 32
Georgia General Assembly, Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Georgia for the year
1800 (Louisville, Georgia: James Hely, Printers to the State, 1801), 30, 36; The Georgia and South
Carolina Almanac for the year of our Lord 1803 (Augusta, Georgia: John Erdman Smith, 1802), pages not
numbered; Georgia General Assembly, Senate, Journal of the Senate of the State of Georgia for the year
1802, November Session (Savannah, Georgia: By Order of the Executive, [1803]), 16; Frederick D. Lee and
J. L. Agnew, Historical Record of the City of Savannah (Savannah: Morning News Steam Power Press,
1869), 160. 33
Thomas Gamble, A History of the City Government of Savannah, Georgia from 1790 to 1901 (Savannah:
City Council, 1901), 131-132; Joseph Frederick Waring, Cerveau’s Savannah (Savannah, Georgia: The
Georgia Historical Society, 1973), 13. 34
Columbian Museum and Savannah Advertiser, April 29, 1796, p. 3, c. 1, transcription in Walter C.
Hartridge Collection (Georgia Historical Society).
87
scope of their enterprise.35
By 1804 R. and J. Bolton had dropped “the Dry Good and
Grocery business” and wholly redirected their efforts to “foreign trade and dealing in
domestic produce.”36
They broadened their business as ship owners and commission
merchants while simultaneously branching into manufacturing and financial capitalism.
As Americans born between 1776 and 1800, the heirs of Robert Bolton (1757-1802)
belonged to the generation the historian Joyce Appleby has admired for “the multifarious
ways that as individuals confronting a new set of options, they crafted the political style,
social forms, and economic ventures of an independent United States.”37
Among the vessels the firm acquired between 1804 and 1809 were the sloop
Lively and the schooner Nancy White. Lively’s hull dimensions, rigging, and hold
capacity of six tons suggest she plied the local rivers and sounds to service nearby
communities. Richard Richardson’s purchase in Baltimore of the Nancy White, a
schooner with the capability of carrying ninety-four tons, furthered the firm’s
involvement in the American and West Indian coastwise trade.38
When, on a May
afternoon in 1807, the Boltons launched the first ship built in Savannah since the
Revolution, an enthusiastic group of spectators gathered on the shoreline to witness its
christening with the name Gossypium, the Latin word for cotton.39
Capable of carrying a
264-ton cargo, the ship betokened the firm’s presence in transatlantic commerce and was
35
Columbian Museum and Savannah Advertiser, December 10, 1802, p. 2, c. 1, transcription in Walter C.
Hartridge Collection (Georgia Historical Society). 36
Columbian Museum and Savannah Advertiser, March 31, 1804, p. 1, c. 1. 37
Joyce Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans (Cambridge,
Massachusetts and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000), vii. 38
Chatham County Deed Book, 2C:308-309; Winthrop Lippitt Marvin, The American Merchant Marine:
Its History and Romance from 1620 to 1902 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1902), 363. 39
The Letters of Robert Mackay to his Wife Written from ports in America and England, 1795-1816 with an
introduction and notes by Walter C. Hartridge (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1949), 70; note
108, 285.
88
emblematic of the past profits and future hopes vested in the lucrative cotton trade.40
Once the brothers John and Curtis Bolton (1783 -1851) established the firm’s presence in
New York City, Curtis branched out into a new type of shipping venture. Drawing on the
experience and contacts he had gained as a young man acting as a supercargo for the firm
in France, Curtis acquired a partnership in the packet line Francis Depau had opened in
1822 to provide scheduled service between New York and Havre.41
In the early1830s,
Bolton joined Depau’s sons-in-law Samuel M. Fox and Mortimer Livingston in the
business which continued as Bolton, Fox, and Livingston until Bolton left the concern
around 1838.42
That the Bolton’s ship Gossypium would carry cotton east from Georgia across
the Atlantic is entirely foreseeable. What is more intriguing is that Gossypium sailed
westward from England in 1809 laden with tons of coal destined for Savannah.43
Because the adoption of coal as a fuel was an important impetus to the industrial
40
Republican and Savannah Evening Ledger, May 23, 1807. Although much larger than vessels utilized in
the coastwise trade, Gossypium was small by transatlantic standards where merchantmen routinely carried
900 tons. See: Robert Greenhalgh Albion, The Rise of New York Port, 1815-1860 (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1939), 46-47. 41
“The Old Packet and Clipper Service,” Harper’s Magazine, 68, 404 (1884), 221. 42
Curtis’s sons Curtis Edwin (1812-1890) and Jackson lived in France around 1832-1833. Jackson studied
medicine while Curtis worked in the counting house of one of his father’s business associates in Havre.
Cleo H. Evans, Curtis Edwin Bolton, Pioneer Missionary: History, Descendants and Ancestors (Fairfax,
Virginia: Privately Printed, 1968), 57a, 59, 68; Robert Bolton, Genealogical and Biographical Account of
the Family of Bolton in England and America (New York: John A. Gray, Printer, 1862), 119; John W.
Jordon, Colonial and Revolutionary Families of Pennsylvania, Genealogical and Personal Memoirs
(Baltimore: Clearfield Company, Inc.,1978 reprint of New York and Chicago 1911 edition), I, 331; John E.
Sunder, The Fur Trade on the Upper Missouri, 1840-1865 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993)
54; An Old Resident [William Armstorng], The Aristocracy of New York, Who They Are, and What They
Were: Being a Social and Business History of the City for Many Years: Part I (New York: New York
Publishing Company, 1848), 14; Robert Greenhalgh Albion, Square-Riggers on Schedule: The New York
Sailing Packets to England, France, and the Cotton Ports (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1938),
127, 138; Robert Greenhalgh Albion, The Rise of New York Port, 1815-1860 (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1939), 45. 43
Richard Richardson, Entry of Merchandise at Savannah Duty Declaration for the ship Gossypium,
October 13, 1809. Georgia Historical Society, Keith Read Collection.
89
revolution in America, the Bolton’s early involvement with importing and promoting coal
is significant.44
John Bolton figured prominently in the process of popularizing mineral fuel in the
United States, first as an importer of bituminous coal to Savannah from England, and,
subsequently, as the President of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company which was
conceived to transport anthracite from Pennsylvania coal fields to the Hudson River at
Kingston, New York, and from there to New York City. Because records are incomplete,
there is no reliable estimate of exactly how much English coal the Bolton firm supplied to
Savannah. The only known cargo at this time is the twelve tons that arrived aboard
Gossypium in October of 1809. That tonnage would only generate enough heat to warm
six or seven homes over the course of one winter season.45
The coal may have been
imported to fire domestic heating devices such as the “eight elegant stove grates with
polished Steel fronts, fenders, and fire arms to match” that a Savannah merchant
advertised for sale in 1802.46
The presence of such a grate in a Savannah parlor would
have signaled the owner’s high status. Even as late as the 1820s an observer of
Philadelphia society quipped, “’In houses of pretension the coal-grate, with its
44
During the colonial period water, wood, and animal fuels typically provided the power, heat, and light for
American industries and homes. As eastern cities grew in area and wealth, coal began to displace cord
wood as a heating fuel. Developing American coal resources had begun in the 1740s when deposits in
Virginia, and later Pennsylvania, augmented the supply from England. Domestic sources of coal increased,
gradually overtook, and extinguished the demand for English imports by the midpoint in the nineteenth
century. Sean Patrick Adams, “US Coal Industry in the Nineteenth Century,” EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited
by Robert Whaples. January 23, 2003. URL http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/adams.industry.coal.us (last
accessed September 27, 2010); Sean Patrick Adams, “Warming the Poor and Growing Consumers: Fuel
Philanthrophy in the Early Republic’s Urban North,” The Journal of American History 95:1 (June, 2008),
72-91. 45
Sean Patrick Adams, “Warming the Poor and Growing Consumers: Fuel Philanthrophy in the Early
Republic’s Urban North,” The Journal of American History 95:1 (June, 2008), 73. 46
Columbian Museum and Savannah Advertiser, June 18, 1802, 3:4.
90
ornamentation of brass and steel, was a necessity in the parlor, even if the ten-plate stove
and the wide fireplace performed their duties with cordwood in the kitchen.’” 47
There is also the chance that the coal was imported to Savannah for commercial
uses such as firing the forges of blacksmiths or the ovens of bakers. At this point one can
propose possibilities but not give definitive explanations of coal use in early nineteenth-
century Savannah. However, it is certain that by importing and promoting coal Bolton
was following a consistent pattern of business innovation as he marketed the fuel that
would be a key to industrializing America.48
Richard Richardson, who had risen in the firm from a clerk to partner and married
Frances Bolton, also placed his confidence in technology and the efficiency of
mechanization when he purchased a steam cotton press. This acquisition extended the
firm’s services to baling clients’ cotton in preparation for shipping.49
Hoping to
introduce the textile industry, John Bolton and six other shareholders petitioned the
Georgia Legislature in 1810 to incorporate the Wilkes Manufacturing Company “for the
purpose of manufacturing cotton and woolen goods [by machinery].”50
With the
legislature’s blessing on their “laudable and patriotic” undertaking, the managers erected
the factory beside Upton Creek about eight miles outside of Washington, Georgia. The
47
John Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott, History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884 (Philadelphia: L. H.
Everts and Co., 1884), 3:2261. 48
David E. Nye, Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energies (Cambridge and London: The
MIT Press, 1998), 76-82. 49
Chatham County Deed Book, 1814-1816, 2F:169. 50
Clayton, Augustus Smith, A Compilation of the Laws of the State of Georgia: Passed by the Legislature
since the Political year 1800 to the Year 1810, Inclusive (Augusta, Georgia: Adams and Duyckinck, 1812),
667-668; Adiel Sherwood, A Gazetteer of the State of Georgia…” 3rd
edition (Washington, D. C.: P. Force,
Printer, 1837), 86.
91
capstone on the 50’ x 60’, two story brownstone building that read “Bolton’s Mill, 1811”
leaves little doubt as to the identity of the prime mover behind the enterprise.51
Its short life as a financial venture notwithstanding, the first cotton mill south of
Connecticut foreshadowed two practices that endured in John Bolton’s behavior. The
first was a disinclination to rely on slaves. To recruit labor for their enterprise, Bolton
and his fellow investors advertised in a Savannah newspaper for children between the
ages of ten and fourteen. Mill managers hoped to entice parents of more than one child to
turn over their offspring by offering “a house, and as much ground as they can cultivate,
near the factory, rent free, and their children taken as apprentices.”52
Although the
investors in the mill eschewed slave labor, their solicitation of parents for their childrens’
labor shows they considered the household as an economic unit and regarded children as
property obligated to produce income for their parents.
The second tendency manifested in the mill venture was an enduring belief in the
promise of the industrial and transportation revolutions. As president of the Delaware
and Hudson Canal Company from 1826 until 1831, Bolton oversaw the construction of
the canal, the installation of track from the canal to the company’s Pennsylvania coal
mines, and the acquisition from English manufacturers of two locomotives that went into
service in 1829.53
51
Victor S. Clark, History of Manufactures in the United States, 1607-1860 (Washington, D.C.: The
Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1916), I:536-538; Robert Marion Willingham, Jr., We Have this
Heritage: The History of Wilkes County, Georgia, Beginnings to 1860 (n.p.: Wilkes Publishing Company,
1969), 149; Janet Harvill Standard, Wilkes County Scrapbook as Published in the “News Reporter” of
Washington-Wilkes and Surrounding Communities (Washington, Georgia: The Wilkes Publishing Co., Inc.,
1970), A:72. 52
The Republican and Savannah Evening Ledger, December 21, 1811. 53
Robert Bolton, Genealogical and Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England and America
(New York: John A. Gray, Printer, 1862), 115;
http://www.hagley.lib.de.us/library/collections/manuscripts/findingaids/wurtsfamily.ACC1982.part1.pdf
(last accessed September 5, 2010); United States Congress House Committee on Ways and Means,
92
At the same time they were investing in new equipment and machinery, the
partners in the Bolton firm also pushed into the more abstract and equally innovative
realms of financial capitalism such as banking, insurance, and stock brokerage.54
Before
the State of Georgia chartered banks, the Savannah Office of Discount and Deposit of the
First Bank of the United States was the only financial institution in the state. John Bolton
sat on the Board of Directors (1804).55
The Georgia Legislature authorized three banks
between 1807 and 1820. Stakeholders in the Bolton firm figured prominently as
incorporators, directors, and officers for two of those three banks.56
John Bolton, who
was one of the lead investors in establishing the Planters’ Bank in 1807, later held the
post of president (1813, 1815, 1816).57
Richard Richardson followed John Bolton into
banking. In 1814 Georgia lawmakers recognized him as a superintendent of the stock
issue when they enacted legislation to establish the Bank of the State of Georgia. The
same law tasked the fifteen directors of the bank with annually choosing one of their
number as the president.58
They unanimously elected Richard Richardson in 1821.59
Memorial of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company (Washington: Gales and Seaton, 1828); Bayard
Tuckerman, ed., The Diary of Philip Hone, 1828-1851 (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1889),
I:10. 54
My research into the workings of the Bolton firm supports Edwin J. Perkins’s contention that “the
revolution in financial services moved ahead at a faster pace than corresponding revolutions in transport,
energy, and manufacturing.” See: Edwin J. Perkins, American Public Finance and Financial Services,
1700-1815 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1994), 3, 321. 55
Bunce’s Georgia and South Carolina Almanac, or a New and Accurate Calendar for the Year of our
Lord 1804 (Augusta, Georgia: William J. Bunce, 1803), n.p.; Thomas J. Govan, “The Banking and Credit
System in Georgia, 1810-1860,” Journal of Southern History 4, 2 (May, 1938), 166. 56
Augustus Smith Clayton, A Compilation of the Laws of the State of Georgia Passed by the Legislature
since the Political Year 1800 to the Year 1810 (Augusta, Georgia: Adams and Duyckinck, 1812), 632-637;
Lucius Q.C. Lamar. A Compilation of the Laws of the State of Georgia Passed by the Legislature since the
Year 1810 to the Year 1819 (Augusta: T.S. Hannon, 1821), 85, 1241. 57
The Republican and Savannah Evening Ledger (January 25, 1812), 3:2; The Georgia and South Carolina
Almanack for the Year of our Lord 1813, …1815, …1816, …1817 (Augusta, Georgia: Hobby and Bunce,
[1812, 1814-1816]), np. 58
Lucius Q.C. Lamar, A compilation of the laws of the State of Georgia passed by the Legislature since the
year 1810 to the year 1819, inclusive (Augusta: T.S. Hannon, 1821), 85. 59
The Republican and Savannah Evening Ledger (June 13, 1821), 3:1.
93
Prior to that he served as President of the Savannah Branch Bank of the United States
from 1816 until 1821.
In 1814 the legislation before Congress to re-authorize the Bank of the United
States named John Bolton as a commissioner of the stock issue in Savannah.60
Although
John and Curtis Bolton had begun the process of relocating to New York before the new
Bank of the United States began operations in 1816, they, nevertheless, sold the bank
stock to Georgia investors from their counting house at 58 Broadway in lower
Manhattan.61
Then they acted as liaisons between Southern shareholders and the bank
administration in Philadelphia.62
Richard Richardson, who managed the Bolton firm’s
interests in Savannah, sat on the board of directors and was elected President of the
Savannah Branch of the Bank of the United States. Developing a business in financial
services generated more commissions for the Bolton firm. It also strengthened the
invisible web of finance that connected Southern merchants and planters to Northern
financial institutions.
In May 1806, R. and J. Bolton pioneered the insurance business in Savannah with
the financial backing of the Phoenix Insurance Company of London. From their offices
on Lombard Street in the City of London, the company directors approved John and
60
M. St. Clair Clarke and D. A. Hall, Legislative and Documentary History of the Bank of the United States
(Washington: Gales and Seaton, 1832), 519, 586, 597. 61
J & C Bolton, Letter to Stephen Girard, December 20, 1815 (Stephen Girard Papers, The American
Philosophical Society, Philadelphia); Mercein’s City Directory, New York Register, and Almanac (New
York: W. A. Mercein, 1820), 134. 62
J & C Bolton, Letter to William Page, June 11, 1816; J & C Bolton, Letter to William Page, August 29,
1816; J & C Bolton, Letter to William Page, October 18, 1816; J & C Bolton, Letter to William Page,
December 3, 1816; William Page, Letter to J & C Bolton, February 8, 1817; J & C. Bolton, Letter to
William Page, March 3, 1817; J & C Bolton, Letter to William Page, September 30, 1817; William Page,
Letter to J & C Bolton, November 4, 1820 (William Page Papers in the Southern Historical Collection,
Manuscript Department, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill); J & C Bolton,
Letters to J. Pray, 1816 and 1817 (Keith Read Collection, Georgia Historical Society); Letter to Edward
Harden, Letter to Marion Randolph Harden (Edward Harden Papers, Special Collections Library, Duke
University, Durham, North Carolina).
94
Curtis Bolton, trading in Savannah as “R. and J. Bolton,” to underwrite and sign policies
in Georgia and the United States.63
Naming the Boltons as agents was part of Phoenix’s
extension of its overseas operations beyond European cities and into the newer markets
of the West Indies and North America.
Having established numerous North American agencies, including seven in the
United States, between 1804 and 1806, the Phoenix directors dispatched one of their
number to review American operations in 1807. Jenkin Jones set out from London on an
almost two-year fact-finding journey with stops in Canada and the West Indies as well as
in the United States. From Savannah Jones reported back to Lombard Street that he
“found it best to point out in detail to Mr. Richardson (who manages under Messrs
Boltons the Office business) the particular risks to select and those to reject.” Reflected
in Jones’s comment is the fact that even though Phoenix agents possessed qualities the
historian Clive Trebilcock describes as a “combination of respectability, wealth, status in
the community, and commercial verve which Phoenix, rather demandingly, required of
its proconsuls,” they often benefited from instruction in the subtleties of the insurance
business.64
Jones’s mission, therefore, had two goals. One was to evaluate risks and
personnel. The other was to share expertise with agents like Richardson who were new
to the insurance business.
Even as Phoenix expanded North American operations, political disputes between
the United States and Britain were clouding the business atmosphere between the two
nations. When the United States Congress passed the Embargo Act of 1807 and the Non-
63
Clive Trebilcock, Phoenix Assurance and the Development of British Insurance, Vol. 1 1782-1870
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 189; Chatham County Deed Book, 1806-1807, 2A:86. 64
Clive Trebilcock, Phoenix Assurance and the Development of British Insurance, Vol. 1 1782-1870
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 210-221.
95
Intercourse Acts that followed in 1808, some states also enacted legislation to bar English
insurers from American markets.65
Although that never happened in Georgia, the threat
of a law excluding Phoenix may have been a consideration for Richardson who joined
fourteen other men in successfully petitioning the Georgia Legislature to incorporate the
Marine and Fire Insurance Company of Savannah in 1815. Having the capital to invest
and the expertise Richardson developed as a manager with Phoenix probably also
factored into strategizing the launch of an insurance company. The incorporation papers
stipulated the sale of $50 shares as the vehicle for reaching a capitalization of $400,000
and allowed the company to begin writing policies as soon as cash on deposit reached
$200,000.66
In New York, John Bolton also branched out from his beginnings with
Phoenix when he served as the President of New York’s Mercantile Insurance Company
with offices at 18 Wall Street.67
Changing Capital Assets
The economic recovery from the American Revolution set the stage for dramatic
changes in Georgia. Cotton cultivation in the hinterlands rapidly outstripped low country
rice production. Planters tied up ever increasing sums in the slave labor force. At the
same time the merchants of the Bolton family firm were expanding into different types of
ventures and accumulating liquid assets. Although the slave economy fueled the
financial gains of the Bolton firm, slaves actually diminished as a percentage of their total
65
Dalit Baranoff, "Fire Insurance in the United States," EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Whaples.
URL http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/baranoff.fire.final. Accessed March 16, 2008. 66
Lucius Q.C. Lamar, A Compilation of the Laws of the State of Georgia Passed by the Legislature Since
the Year 1810 to the Year 1819, inclusive (Augusta: T.S. Hannon, 1821), 831-832. 67
Commercial Directory : Containing, a Topographical Description, Extent and Productions of Different
Sections of the Union (Philadelphia: J. C. Kayser and Co., 1823), 138; William Armstrong], The
Aristocracy of New York, Who They Are, and What They Were: Being a Social and Business History of the
City for Many Years: Part I (New York: New York Publishing Company, 1848), 14.
96
net worth. A comparison of the last will and testament of the Robert Bolton (1722-1789)
to that of his son Robert Bolton (1757-1802) well illustrates the point.68
Land, slaves, and other tangible personal property comprised Robert Bolton’s
(1722-1789) major legacies. He also provided a cash stipend of twenty shillings (about
four dollars) a year for a needy neighbor.69
When his son Robert Bolton (1757-1802)
wrote his will a little over twenty years later, his bequests also included land, slaves, and
tangible property. What’s more, the younger Bolton (1757-1802) allocated cash legacies
of many thousands of dollars to his four daughters and to several other people and
institutions. He named nineteen slaves in his will, thirteen more than the eight his father
had distributed. Yet the value of those nineteen slaves constituted a much smaller
percentage of the total value of his estate. Within the group of twelve adults and seven
children, six of the male slaves were skilled craftsmen who might have sold for $1,000
each. Even though the appraised value of most slaves was much less than that, if, for the
sake of comparison, we assign the twelve adults with a value of $1,000 each and estimate
each child to be worth $500, the total of $15,500 amounts to a little over twenty-five
percent of the combined value of his slaves and the $44,500 in cash legacies he made.
Measured as a relative share of gross domestic product, $44,500 in 1802 would be the
68
“The Last Will and Testament of Robert Bolton, Sen, of Savannah” transcribed in Robert Bolton,
Genealogical and Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England and America (New York: John
A. Gray, Printer, 1862), 107-108; “The Will of Robert Bolton of Savannah, Merchant” transcribed in
Robert Bolton, Genealogical and Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England and America
(New York: John A. Gray, Printer, 1862), 131-136. 69
Relative values of currency varied tremendously in the United States under the Articles of Confederation
between 1781 and 1789. One calculation values 5 shillings to the dollar in Georgia in 1789. “This Was
New York: The Nation’s Capital in 1789.”
http://numberonestars.com/new_york/new_york_capital_1789.htm accessed May 13, 2010.
97
equivalent of $1,420,000,000 in 2009. Calculated another way, $44,500 in 1802 would
amount to $10,200,000 in 2009 wages paid for unskilled labor.70
Using two different formulas for estimating comparable worth shows that good
faith comparisons of relative value in two different time periods can be misleading. The
value of the dollar is not the only significant variable. Consequently, estimates of the
contemporary value of Robert Bolton’s cash legacies vary according to the calculation
formula applied. Nevertheless, whether his cash legacies were comparable to millions or
over a billion dollars, they amounted to a large fortune. It was so much money that his
father’s only cash legacy of twenty shillings a year pales in comparison.
It would be wrong to mistake correlation for causation but it is hard to overlook
the fact that Robert Bolton’s thinking about slavery changed as slaves diminished as a
percentage of his net worth. Other factors that may have influenced Bolton are also
largely matters of conjecture. What is known is that both Robert Bolton (1722-1789) and
his son (1757-1802) strongly endorsed permitting slaves access to Christian worship.
The father had supported Cornelius Winter in his efforts to evangelize the slave
population during the 1760s, while in 1790 the son had signed a petition of Savannah’s
City Council supporting the former slave Andrew Bryan’s request to assemble a
congregation of slaves and free people of color for Christian worship.71
His concern for their souls notwithstanding, the older Bolton (1722-1789) passed
over the slaves identified in his will with no more comment on their well-being than he
showed for “old and young Blakely,” the cows that he also bequeathed by name. His
70
Samuel H. Williamson, "Seven Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.S. Dollar Amount, 1790 to
Present," MeasuringWorth, 2010. http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/ accessed May 14, 2010. 71
“Permission for Andrew and His Society to Preach on Sundays” transcribed in James Meriles Simms,
The First Colored Baptist Church in North America, Constituted at Savannah Georgia, January 20, A.D.
1788 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1888), 46-49.
98
son, on the other hand, concerned himself with the humane treatment of slaves in two
documents that he drafted within weeks of his death. One was his will signed on
November 19, 1802 and the other was a letter dictated from his deathbed and addressed
to “My Dear Children.”72
In his will “contained in twenty-one pages of paper,” the younger Bolton so
consistently employed the temperate verbs “give,” “desire,” and “wish” that the three
instances stand out where he chose to reinforce commanding verbs with forceful adverbs.
He inserted the antonym of “desire” or “wish,” when Bolton “strictly enjoined” his sons
to share their property in a “brotherly manner” and to avoid “much company and
drinking.” His only other resort to emphatic language was to “strictly forbid a Public sale
of any of my Negroes, either for the purpose of Division or for any other cause; if they
must be sold, they shall choose their own masters.” In addition, Bolton maintained
family groups when he allocated slaves among his heirs. With these measures he went
much farther than his father had in recognizing the humanity of his slaves.73
For Robert Bolton (1757-1802), the elapsed time between completing his will and
expiring was only two short weeks. Too weak to write as his life ebbed away, Bolton
dictated a letter of just over three hundred words to his children. In emphasizing the
72
“The Will of Robert Bolton of Savannah, Merchant” and Letter to “My Dear Children” transcribed in
Robert Bolton, Genealogical and Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England and America
(New York: John A. Gray, Printer, 1862), 127, 131-136. 73
“The Will of Robert Bolton of Savannah, Merchant” transcribed in Robert Bolton, Genealogical and
Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England and America (New York: John A. Gray, Printer,
1862), 129-137. It was probably rare, but not unheard of for slaves to exercise some agency in determining
to whom they would be bound. Early in the nineteenth century when he was a slave in Savannah, William
Grimes repeatedly negotiated to be hired out as a coachman to people of his choosing and was consulted by
owners and potential buyers concerning his willingness to be transferred prior to being sold. Some of his
masters were the well-known merchants Oliver Sturges and Archibald S. Bulloch as well as the physician
Lemuel Kollock whose cousin Henry was pastor of the Independent Presbyterian Church from 1809 until
1819. See William Grimes, Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave edited by William L. Andrews and
Regina E. Mason (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press 2008 reissue of the 1855 edition), 56-
83.
99
importance of pious and ethical behavior, he reprised themes introduced in his will. On
the subject of slavery, however, he went farther than he had in previous statements. He
warned his children to keep it in mind “they are not your slaves by right, but by custom.
God made all free; but man in his depraved state, enslaves man; therefore it is your duty
to make their servitude more a pleasure than a burden.”74
The obvious contradiction of
condemning slavery as immoral, and at the same time perpetuating it, left Bolton’s
descendants to probe their own consciences to determine how they would position
themselves on the issue of slavery.
Many of the Bolton descendants not only permitted, but also promoted access to
Christian worship for slaves and free people of color. Beyond that, the Bolton heirs did
not adopt one consistent position on slavery. And some simultaneously adopted several
different, and apparently contradictory, courses of action vis-à-vis slavery. If any of
Bolton’s descendants made definitive statements of their views on slavery, they have not
come to light. However, the historical record provides circumstantial evidence from the
families of three of his children, Sarah (1782-1851), Frances (1794-1822), and Robert
(1788-1857). In each case they not only shared their father’s discomfort with
slaveholding, but also acted in some way to assuage that uneasiness.75
74
Letter to “My Dear Children” transcribed in William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of
the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs. Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1860), 23; and in
Robert Bolton, Genealogical and Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England and America
(New York: John A. Gray, Printer, 1862), 127. Unlike Robert Bolton who condemned slavery outright,
some authors such as the English clergyman Legh Richmond condoned slavery as a means of introducing
Africans to Christianity. See Legh Richmond, “The Negro Servant” in Annals of the Poor (New Haven:
Whiting and Tiffany, 1815), 149. 75
In their study of phasing out slavery in Pennsylvania Gary Nash and Jean Soderland use Benjamin
Franklin’s vacillation between upholding his economic interest by continuing to own slaves and his often
expressed moral repugnance for slavery to frame their narrative. Similarly, the Boltons continued as
slaveholders even as their discomfort with the institution increased . See Gary Nash and Jean R.
Soderlund, Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath (New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1991) ix-xvi.
100
Robert Bolton (1857-1802) had returned to war-torn Savannah after his service in
the American Revolution and built a business empire. To do this he not only embraced a
new political order, but also mastered new economic circumstances. He led the way in
building markets for new products like sea island cotton and in conceiving new ways of
financing projects through stock issues. His successors continued to explore innovative
approaches to finance and banking. They also numbered among the first Americans to
launch industrial ventures. Through all the changes and challenges they faced, the
middle class values and evangelical religion of the communitas guided their choices at
every juncture.
CHAPTER FOUR
Evangelism, Business Innovation, and Changing Views
on Slavery in the Communitas, c. 1800-1825
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Daniel Mulford, a recent arrival from
New Jersey, was none too impressed with Savannah’s outward appearance. The dead
level site, he wrote to his brother, extended back from the bluff, over the common, and
far into the woods. Unpaved streets filled with loose sand were “patrolled by turkey
buzzards, tame and common as dung hill fowls which scour[ed] the city of every kind of
putrefaction.” The municipality, comprised mostly of wooden structures, was not
compact. Many of the squares in the South end of town were only half occupied. While
the visible infrastructure still showed lingering effects of a fire that, in 1796, had
destroyed two-thirds of the city, the activity in the counting houses and on the wharfs
indicated Savannah was already benefitting from marketing Georgia cotton to distant
English mills. When alluding to the optimism and energy that suffused Savannah’s
business community, Mulford headed his list of “Richest Citizens” with “Bolton” and
“Gibbons,” both of whom had connections to the communitas. Mulford ranked “Bolton”
as number one among the “First Merchants.”1
Affiliates of the communitas in the Bolton family continued to play a prominent
role in the city. Although they held economic power partially based on the institution of
slavery, they also showed signs of moral discomfort with the institution and the laws and
regulations that enforced it. Contributing to antislavery sentiments were the Boltons’
1 Daniel Mulford, Letter to Levi Mulford, January 28, 1809 (Daniel Mulford Papers, Georgia Historical
Society); Walter J. Fraser, Jr., Savannah in the Old South (Athens and London: The University of Georgia
Press, 2003), 158.
102
ongoing economic, religious, and social ties with English evangelical associates of the
communitas who opposed slavery. Inasmuch as they opposed slavery, the Boltons
expressed it by supporting slaves and free people of color in their conversions to
Christianity. Similarly, members of the family worked to mitigate the sting of some of
the laws that governed slaves and free people of color. Members of the Bolton clan never
made statements that put them in the camp of growing abolitionist movement, but some
quietly divested themselves of slaves and moved away from Savannah. Their failure to
make their views known explicitly probably reflected their continuing economic
dependence on products of the slave economy and their unwillingness to make clear
breaks with business associates, friends, and family who continued as slaveholders. The
tension surrounding slavery also limited the growth of communitas in Savannah.
Sarah Bolton (1782-1851) and John Bolton (1774-1838)
Sarah, the oldest child of Robert and Sarah Bolton, received her father’s bequest of
the blacksmith Sam, his wife Harlow, and their two children, Jenny and Sam, when she
was twenty years old in 1802. Two years later when Sarah married her cousin John
Bolton, her property transferred to his control under the law and custom of coverture.
Therefore, when Jenny’s son Samuel Harrison (1818-1900) looked back on his birth into
slavery, he referred to his mother as having belonged to “John Bolton.”2 Neither Sarah
Bolton nor the slaves she brought into her marriage had independent legal identities
outside of their relationships with John Bolton. In the absence of Sarah’s personal
papers, any limited inferences we can draw about her feelings on slavery are grounded in
the public record of John’s life and the autobiography Samuel Harrison published in
2 Samuel Harrison, Rev. Samuel Harrison: His Life Story as Told by Himself (Pittsfield, MA: Privately
printed, 1899), 3.
103
1899. Though the evidence is fragmentary, there is enough to show that John and Sarah
Bolton disentangled themselves from slaveholding when the effort benefitted both their
ethical and financial interests.
At the time of his marriage to Sarah, John Bolton had succeeded Sarah’s father
Robert as the senior partner in the firm of R. and J. Bolton. For the first ten years of their
marriage, Savannah continued as the center of their lives. John developed a business and
civic profile that matched the pattern his cousin and father-in-law Robert Bolton (1757-
1802) had set in the waning years of the eighteenth century. Along with other routine
business transactions the firm continued to buy and sell slaves under John’s leadership.3
Some, like the jobbing carpenter Ned, probably figured into the firm’s skilled labor pool.
R. and J. Bolton may have purchased others like the “mulatto wench, Comfort,” as
domestic workers for the partners’ households. The firm’s handling of the slave cargo of
the Hindostan illustrates that they engaged in transactions involving slaves to realize
profits from their sales as well as to acquire them for the value of their labor.4
John Bolton, like his predecessor, Robert Bolton, shouldered considerable civic
responsibility in Savannah. There, too, he consistently engaged in the practices of a slave
economy. For instance, as an incorporator and president of the Agricultural Society of
Georgia, he managed the group’s assets that included slaves who were leased out to
provide agricultural labor for private individuals.5 His conduct that integrated slaves into
3 Chatham County Deed Books, W:111 (1801); X:196 (1802); Z:105 (1805); Z:515 (1806); BB:70 (1808).
4 Richard Richardson, Letter to Messrs. Jno. S. Adams and Jno. Stoney, November 19, 1808 (1808:452),
Stephen Girard Papers, American Philosophical Society. 5 Clayton, Augustin Smith, A Compilation of the Laws of the State of Georgia : Passed by the Legislature
since the Political Year 1800 to the Year 1810, inclusive (Augusta, Georgia: Adams and Duyckinck, 1812),
585; Richard M. Stites and John Bolton, President of the Agricultural Society, Agreement to lease nine
slaves (property of the Agricultural Society) to Richard Stites to cultivate rice on his Argyl Island
Plantation. June 1, 1810 (Georgia Historical Society, Wayne-Stites-Anderson Papers, folder 46).
104
a wide range of economic activities implied that John Bolton conformed to the norm for
Georgia’s slaveholding culture. To a great extent, John Bolton did act the part of a
committed slaveholder who would uphold the institution of slavery. However, little by
little, Bolton’s thinking began to change and the mantle of slaveholder seems to have
become too heavy a moral burden.
Following his late father-in-law’s lead in business and society did not mean that John
Bolton mindlessly aped his mentor’s practices. The risk taking and innovative behaviors
that Robert Bolton modeled were preferences that John fully embraced and expanded.
Shortly after Robert Bolton’s death, John began to take the firm in new directions. He
withdrew R. and J. Bolton from the retail trade in Savannah to concentrate on shipping
and earning commissions on transactions in the growing cotton market. Whereas Robert
Bolton had developed business relationships with Manchester merchants such as Robert
Spear (1762-1819) without ever traveling to England, John initiated the practice of
stationing partners on both sides of the Atlantic in Savannah and England with his own
voyage to England.
John, accompanied by his wife Sarah, crossed the Atlantic on behalf of R. and J.
Bolton in the spring of 1805. On their itinerary was a visit to Manchester where Bolton
met face to face with the cotton merchant Robert Spear whose agents had often stayed in
the home of Robert Bolton (1757-1802) in Savannah.6 Spear and Bolton shared
important financial interests.7 Moreover, their common cause extended beyond business
because both strongly identified with evangelical Christianity. Spear’s generous support
6 Robert Bolton, Genealogical and Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England and America
(New York: John A. Gray, Printer, 1862), 149. 7 Alfred P. Wadsworth and Julia DeLacy Mann, The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire, 1600-1780
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1931), 233 fn 5.
105
of Christian causes made him a well-known and respected figure in evangelical
community.8 As such he provided the Boltons with a letter of introduction to the one of
his friends and favorite preachers, the Reverend William Jay of Bath. While the Boltons
were calling on Jay in Bath, Jay’s former teacher, mentor, and friend Cornelius Winter
happened to stop in for a visit. What a delight it was for Winter to meet the
granddaughter of Robert Bolton (1721-1789) who had aided his endeavor to Christianize
slaves in Savannah.9
More than a simple coincidence that recalled a personal connection, the meeting of
the Boltons and Winter also suggests that the communitas that Whitefield and Habersham
established lived on in the non-denominational network of evangelicals in England and
America. A nineteenth-century biographer of Whitefield wrote “Cornelius Winter was
the spiritual son of George Whitefield and William Jay the spiritual son of Winter.”10
Religious lineages such as these also had profound social and economic implications for
Savannahians and their English correspondents.
An entrée into the evangelical Christian community within England’s merchant
middle-class instantly exposed the Boltons to a cause many espoused—the anti-slavery
movement. The Bolton’s arrival in England in 1805 occurred at a high point in the
campaign for Parliament to abolish the slave trade which succeeded in 1807. In 1806
Spear lent support to the anti-slavery forces by adding his signature to the petition of
8 “Memoirs of the Life and Character of the Late Robert Spear, Esq. of Manchester,” The Investigator (or
Quarterly Magazine, ed. by W.B. Collyer, T. Raffles, James Baldwin Brown,1, 1 (May, 1820), 1-32;
Thomas Timpson, The Mirror of Sunday School Teachers (London: Book Society for Promoting Religious
Knowledge, 1848), 48-49, 231-233. 9 Robert Bolton, Genealogical and Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England and America
(New York: John A. Gray, Printer, 1862), 149. 10
Joseph Beaumont Wakeley, The Prince of Pulpit Orators: A Portraiture of the Reverend George
Whitefield, M.A. (New York: Carleton and Lanahan, 1871), 294.
106
Parliament from Manchester residents in favor of abolishing the slave trade.11
Signing
the petition was only one manifestation of Spear’s longstanding opposition to slavery.
Another was his participation as a shareholder in Thomas Clarkson’s venture, the Sierra
Leone Company. Founded in 1792 as a British colony for American ex-slaves, the
Sierra Leone project attracted investment from other anti-slavery activists such as Spear’s
Manchester business associates Richard Arkwright, William Brocklehurst, and John
Whittenbury. England’s highest profile opponent of the slave trade and slavery, William
Wilberforce, also owned shares in the Sierra Leone Company.12
Their business and religious contacts placed the slaveholding Boltons of Savannah in
circle of people who openly opposed the institution that underpinned their wealth. Both
Spear and Wilberforce numbered among the friends and admirers of William Jay who
also opposed slavery. The Jay family housed and educated Spear’s second wife until
giving her in marriage in 1801. The nuptials inspired Jay to preach one of his most
popular, published sermons. 13
And, in due time a daughter from that union married Jay’s
second son Cyrus.14
In a section of his autobiography called “Practical Illustrations of
Character in a Series of Reminiscences,” Jay featured both Wilberforce and Spear as
11
Joel Quirk and David Richardson, “Religion, Urbanization, and Anti-Slavery Mobilization in Britain,
1787-1833,” European Journal of English Studies 14:3 (December, 2010), 263-289; “Petition from the
Inhabitants of Manchester in Support of the Foreign Slave Trade Abolition Bill, 1806,” Sheet One
http://slavetrade.parliament.uk/slavetrade/assetviews/documents/a50mancpetitionforabolition.html?ref=true
(accessed April 15, 2010). 12
R. S. Fitton, Spinners of Fortune: The Arkwrights (Manchester: Manchester University, 1989), 215. 13
S. S. Wilson, The Reverend William Jay, A Memoir (London: Binns and Goodwin, n.d.), 116. In 1796
Jay voiced his opposition to slavery in a sermon preached at Whitefield’s Tottenham-court chapel to benefit
the Missionary Society. See: William Jay, The Works of William Jay of Argyle Chapel, Bath (New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1849), i:336-366, ii:75-81, iii:163. See Robert P. Forbes, “Slavery and the
Evangelical Enlightenment” in Religion and the Antebellum Debate over Slavery, John R. McKivigan and
Mitchell Snay, eds. (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1998), 86; William Jay, The
Mutual Duties of Husbands and Wives: A Sermon Occasioned by the Marriage of R. S. of Manchester
preached in Argyle Chapel, Bath, August 16, 1801 (Bath, England: S. Hazard, 1801). 14
George Redford and John Angell James, eds, The Autobiography of the Reverend William Jay, 2 vols.
(New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1855), I:108.
107
Christian exemplars. Jay furthered honored Wilberforce with the dedication of his book
Evening Exercises.15
On her return to Savannah, Sarah Bolton regaled her younger
brother Robert (1788-1857) with a glowing account of William Jay. Sarah Bolton’s story
impressed Robert so much that when he arrived in England in 1806, he sought out Jay,
was taken into the bosom of the family, and subsequently married Jay’s eldest daughter
Anne in May 1810.16
Thus, by reinforcing their business and religious affiliations, the
slaveholding Boltons found their lives tightly entwined with those people in England who
openly opposed slavery.
In the spring of 1806 John and Sarah Bolton sailed west across the Atlantic to resume
life in Savannah. To outward appearances the Bolton’s exposure to the antislavery
movement had had little effect. The firm of R & J Bolton continued routinely to buy and
sell slaves.17
But something in John Bolton’s thinking about slavery had changed. Soon
after his return from England, he and Richard Richardson, Bolton’s brother-in-law,
engaged in a series of slave transfers designed to secure the freedom of the slaves
concerned.18
Over a period of years, Bolton and Richardson helped several slaves through the legal
process of gaining freedom. They probably facilitated these legal maneuvers because the
transactions involved the families of two men who had embraced Christianity and
developed reputations as persuasive lay preachers during their time as slaves. For
15
William Jay, Evening Exercises for the Closet: for Every Day of the Year (London: Hamilton, Adams,
1832). 16
Cyrus Jay, Recollections of William Jay of Bath (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1859), 19-20;
Robert Bolton, Genealogical and Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England and America
(New York: John A. Gray, Printer, 1862), 148-151. 17
Chatham County Deed Books, Z:515 (1806); 2A:139 (1807). 18
Chatham County Deed Books, 2B:18 (1805); 2B:19 (1805); 2B:20 (1807); 2C:136-137 (1809); 2C:307-
308 (1809); 2D:222-223 (1811); 2D:429-430 (1812).
108
example, two of the freed men Andrew Bryan (1737-1812) and his nephew Andrew
Marshall (c.1755-1856) would distinguish themselves in the pastorates of pioneering
African-American churches.19
By securing these men’s freedom, Bolton and Richardson
exemplified their commitment to developing African American preachers who could help
nurture Christianity among slaves and free people of color.20
Although encouraging
Christian formation among African-American slaves was a value that members of the
communitas had continuously embraced from the time of Whitefield and Habersham,
helping slaves accomplish and maintain their emancipation had not been a consideration
for earlier generations of the communitas.21
Between 1806 and 1816 John Bolton deeply immersed himself in the economic
and civic affairs of Savannah. As mentioned above, his business ventures extended in
many directions from building the ship Gossypium (1807) and incorporating the Wilkes
Manufacturing Company in Georgia (1810) to working as the President of the Planter’s
Bank in Savannah (1812, 1813, 1817) and the Chairman of the Union Road Company
(1815).22
In addition, Bolton enhanced the quality of life in Savannah by taking a
19
John W. Davis, “George Liele and Andrew Bryan, Pioneer Negro Baptist Preachers,” The Journal of
Negro History 3:2 (April, 1918), 123-127; Whittington B. Johnson, “Andrew C. Marshall: A Black
Religious Leader of Antebellum Savannah,” Georgia Historical Quarterly LXIX:2 (Summer, 1985), 172-
192. 20
Richard Richardson is often credited with advancing Andrew Marshall the $200 that he used to purchase
his freedom. T. P. Tustin, “Andrew Marshall” in Annals of the American Pulpit by William Buell Sprague
(New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1860), VI: 256; Whittington B. Johnson, “Andrew C. Marshall: A
Black Religious Leader of Antebellum Savannah,” Georgia Historical Quarterly LXIX:2 (Summer, 1985),
178. 21
Alan Gallay, “Planters and Slaves in the Great Awakening” in John Boles, ed., Masters and Slaves in the
House of the Lord: Race and Religion in the American South, 1740-1870 (Lexington, KY: The University
Press of Kentucky, 1988), 33. 22
Union Road Company Stock Certificate #177 (Arnold-Screven Papers in the Southern Historical
Collection, Manuscript Department, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill); The
Georgia and South Carolina Almanack for the Year of our Lord 1813, (Augusta, Georgia: Hobby and
Bunce, [1812]), np; The Planters’ and Merchants’ Almanac for the Year of our Lord 1817 (Charleston,
South Carolina: A.E. Miller [1816]), np.
109
leadership role in civic affairs.23
He served on the boards of the City Exchange (1810,
1812, 1813) and the Chatham Academy (1813, 1817). Other involvements included
contributing time to the Health Committee (1810) and working with groups at the
Independent Presbyterian Church (1814, 1816) where he also served as an Elder. He
numbered among the incorporators of the Savannah Library Society (1815) and as one of
the directors of a Lottery organized to raise funds for the Savannah Poor House and
Hospital (1815). He participated in city government as a Justice of the Inferior Court
(1810, 1811,1812) and as an Alderman (1810, 1817). He also served as a Commissioner
of the Pilotage (1807, 1810, 1817, 1818) and was appointed to the commission
overseeing the improvement of navigation on the Savannah River from Augusta down to
the coast (1817). Bolton sat on the Board of Fire Masters (1804) and even signed onto
the city fire brigade.24
23
Due to Bolton’s largesse, Robert Mackay wrote to his wife, “…every square in town is now enclosed
with light cedar posts painted white and a chain along their tops, trees planted within, and two paved
footpaths across, the remainder of the ground they are spreading Bermuda grass over, and upon the whole
the Town looks quite another thing and very enchanting....” Walter C. Hartridge, ed. The Letters of Robert
Mackay to his Wife Written from ports in America and England, 1795-1816 (Athens: The University of
Georgia Press, 1949), 92. 24
Minutes of the Chatham Academy Commencing the 23rd
of February, 1813, v.ol. 1 (Edward Clifford
Anderson Papers in the Southern Historical Collection, Manuscript Department, Wilson Library, The
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill); The Georgia and South Carolina Almanack for the Year of
our Lord 1810, …1812, …1813, (Augusta, Georgia: Hobby and Bunce, [1809, 1811, 1812]), np; The
Planters’ and Merchants’ Almanac for the Year of our Lord 1817 (Charleston, South Carolina: A.E. Miller
[1816]), np; The Georgia and South Carolina Almanack for the Year of our Lord 1810 (Augusta,
Georgia: Hobby and Bunce, [1809]), np; Frederick D. Lee and J. L. Agnew, Historical Record of the City
of Savannah (Savannah: Morning News Steam Press, 1869), 175; Axley Lowry, Holding Aloft the Torch, A
History of the Independent Presbyterian Church of Savannah, Georgia (Savannah, Georgia: The
Pidgeonhole Press, 1958), 35; Lucius Q.C. Lamar, A compilation of the laws of the State of Georgia passed
by the Legislature since the year 1810 to the year 1819 (Augusta: T.S. Hannon, 1821), 828, 830.
The Georgia and South Carolina Almanac for the Year of our Lord 1810, …1811 and …1812 (Augusta,
Georgia: Hobby and Bunce, [1809, 1810, 1811]), np; The Planters’ and Merchants’ Almanac for the Year
of our Lord 1817 (Charleston, South Carolina: A.E. Miller, [1816]), np; The Georgia and South Carolina
Almanack for the Year of our Lord 1807, …1810 (Augusta, Georgia: Hobby and Bunce, [1806-1809]), np;
The Planters’ and Merchants’ Almanac for the Year of our Lord 1817, …1818 (Charleston, South Carolina:
A.E. Miller, [1817-1818]), np; Lucius Q.C. Lamar, A compilation of the laws of the State of Georgia
passed by the Legislature since the year 1810 to the year 1819 (Augusta: T.S. Hannon, 1821), 1186.
Letter Copy Book, 1797-1817 (Mackay-Stiles Papers in the Southern Historical Collection, Manuscript
Department, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill); Bunce’s Georgia and South
110
As if his commitments in Savannah were not enough, John Bolton began to
pursue new directions in business that took him more and more to New York. As early as
1808 he and his brother Curtis were entrusting their partner Richard Richardson with the
day to day management of R. & J. Bolton in Savannah while they were establishing a toe
hole in the Northern business community.25
Up until the early 1820s John’s name
appeared in the Savannah and New York listings of business directories.26
But by the
mid to late 1820s John had relocated. Among his occupations in New York were stints as
the president of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company (1826-1831) and as Alderman
of the Ninth Ward (1834).27
During the interval when Bolton divided his life between Savannah and New
York, he encountered opponents of slavery when he joined with other evangelicals in
forming the American Bible Society in 1816. Even though some of the prime movers
behind the Society, such as Joshua M. Wallace (1752-1819), Elias Boudinot (1740-1821),
Lyman Beecher (1775-1863), and William Jay (1789-1858), held antislavery, or even
abolitionist sentiments, the initial board of managers tapped the slaveholder Bolton as
Carolina Almanac, or a New and Accurate Calendar for the Year of our Lord 1804 (Augusta, Georgia,
[1803]), np; 25
Georgia General Assembly, House of Representatives, Journal of the House of Representatives of the
State of Georgia at the Annual Session of the General Assembly, begun at Millegeville, on the First
Monday in November, 1808 (Washington, Georgia: Printed by David P. Hillhouse, 1809), 25. 26
Longworth’s American Almanac, New York Register, and City Directory for the Forty Fourth Year of
American Independence (New York: J. Olmstead, 1819), 78; Mercein’s City Directory, New-York Register,
and Almanac… (New York: W. A. Mercein, 1820), 134; Commercial Directory : Containing a
Topographical Description, Extent, and Productions of Different Sections of the Union, Statistical ...
(Philadelphia: J. Kayser,1823), 38, 138. 27
Minutes of the Chatham Academy Commencing the 23rd
of February, 1813, vol. 1 (Edward Clifford
Anderson Papers in the Southern Historical Collection, Manuscript Department, Wilson Library, The
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill); The Georgia and South Carolina Almanack for the Year of
our Lord 1810, …1812, …1813, (Augusta, Georgia: Hobby and Bunce, 1809, 1811, 1812), np; The
Planters’ and Merchants’ Almanac for the Year of our Lord 1817 (Charleston, South Carolina: A.E. Miller
1816), np;
Robert Bolton, Genealogical and Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England and America
(New York: John A. Gray, Printer, 1862), 115.
111
one of twenty-five vice presidents of the organization.28
In recognition of his
contribution of $500, far more than the minimum gift of $150 to attain the status, the
organization named Bolton a “Director for Life.”29
And, indeed, Bolton remained active
in the group until his death in 1838 when he was eulogized in an address to the
membership by their President John Cotton Smith (1765-1845). In his official memorial
Smith recalled Bolton as a highly respected citizen whose “faithful services will be long
and affectionately remembered.” As a personal reminiscence, Smith expressed his
“unmingled admiration,” citing Bolton’s “humble and exemplary walk as a Christian,”
“…his public munificence…” and his many acts private charity that were recorded and
rewarded “on high.”30
On the face of it such high praise for a slaveholder from a man
known for his anti-slavery sentiments smacks of hypocrisy.31
However, there was
nothing disingenuous about Cotton’s remarks.
By 1821, without fanfare John and Sarah Bolton had divested themselves of
slaves. Despite this bold move, nothing uncovered to date indicates that the white
community generated any documentation of Bolton’s change in status as a slaveholder.32
28
The American William Jay (1789-1858) should not be confused with the English Reverend William Jay
(1769-1853) and his son William Jay (1792-1837) who also figure in this narrative. 29
Second Report of the American Bible Society (New York: Printed for the Society, 1818), 35. 30
William Peter Strickland, History of the American Bible Society from its Organization to the Present T
ime (New York: Harper and Brothers, Publishers, 1849), 34, 382; John Cotton Smith, Letter to Rev. Dr.
Bingham, February 21, 1839 quoted in The Correspondence and Miscellanies of the Hon. John Cotton
Smith (New York: Harper Brothers, 1847), 140; also see 315. 31
“…slavery is a national evil, and its peaceful removal must be effected by a combined national
sacrifice.” John Cotton Smith, Letter to Dr. M. L. North, February 7, 1838 quoted in The Correspondence
and Miscellanies of the Hon. John Cotton Smith, LL.D. (New York: Harper Brothers, 1847), 133; also see,
159-160, 162-163, 191, 202-204, 251-260, 32
Perhaps records of the Bolton slaves’ emancipation will come to light, but to date nothing has turned up.
A formal account of the mechanisms Bolton used to skirt the tightening legal restrictions on emancipation
of slaves would be a fascinating find. In the case of William Grimes who escaped from Savannah to New
York City in 1815 and later negotiated his own purchase from the Savannah merchant Francis Harvey
Welman, the Litchfield Historical Society preserves the private correspondence that established the terms
of his self-purchase. See: William L. Andrews and Regina E. Mason, eds., Life of William Grimes, the
Runaway Slave (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), figures 6-10 inserted between pages 82 and 83.
112
That is probably how Bolton wanted it since he depended on slaveholding Southerners
for much of his business. In addition, many of those Southerners were close friends and
extended family as well business contacts. As Mark Noll has shown, many historians
tend to downplay the religious beliefs as motivating factors for deeds. Because I support
Noll’s view, I envision the Boltons acting on their personal convictions, and, at the same
time, avoiding the breaches in longstanding relationships that taking an outspoken stand
might cause.33
The agonizingly sketchy record of the Bolton slaves and their transition to
freedom provides only a skeletal outline of what happened. However, records from
Samuel Harrison (1818-1900), the son of the slave Jenny who had passed as a legacy in
1802 from Robert Bolton to his daughter Sarah, give a few fragmentary vignettes of
Bolton’s personal interactions with slaves and the role of Christianity in their lives.
Harrison’s autobiography gives the reader the rare opportunity read an ex-slave’s account
of his life and the even rarer chance to learn something about Southern slaveholders who
quietly rejected the institution.
When Jenny gave birth to her son Samuel on April 15, 1818, she was in
Philadelphia as the personal servant of Sarah who was by then John Bolton’s wife.
Samuel’s recollection from childhood of family history was that the Bolton household
returned to Savannah after his birth. The Bolton slaves received their emancipation
papers there around 1821. He remembered hearing “his mother say that all were given
their choice to remain in this country or emigrate to Africa.” 34
Although some went to
33
Mark A. Noll, ed., God and Mammon: Protestants, Money, and the Market, 1790-1860 (Oxford and New
York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 7. 34
Given John Bolton’s acquaintances with English proponents of Sierra Leone and with American
supporters of colonization, it’s entirely reasonable that he might have helped his former slaves to immigrate
113
Africa, Samuel’s mother Jenny chose to accompany the Boltons to New York where she
lived for a time with them in their home on Liberty Street.35
That John’s brother Curtis
Bolton emancipated nine slaves and backed their emigration to Liberia in 1830 adds
weight to the credibility of Harrison’s recollection that some of John Bolton’s former
slaves chose a new life in Africa.36
Other tidbits from Samuel Harrison’s biography corroborate that John and Sarah
Bolton had encouraged their slaves to embrace Christianity and maintained a personal
regard for at least some of their former slaves long after their emancipation. Because her
son opened his biography with the declaration, “I have to say in the first place that if,
under God, I am anything or have become anything in this world, it is through a godly
mother’s influence,” it is probable that Jenny developed as a Christian as she passed her
childhood with her parents Sam and Harlow in the Bolton households where they resided.
Partly to shield her son from an abusive stepfather in the late 1820s, Jenny sent Samuel
from New York to live with her brother in Philadelphia. There he learned the
shoemaker’s trade as an apprentice to his uncle and also, like his uncle, heard a call to the
ministry.37
Harrison’s education for the ministry began in upstate New York at a school the
abolitionist Gerrit Smith established for African Americans. In exchange for the manual
to Liberia. Samuel Harrison, Rev. Samuel Harrison: His Life Story as Told by Himself (Pittsfield, MA:
Privately printed, 1899), 3. 35
Shane White, Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City, 1770-1810 (Athens
and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1991), 46-50, 156-157. 36
Early Lee Fox, The American Colonization Society, 1817-1840 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1919), 213; Ruth Scarborough, The Opposition to Slavery in Georgia Prior to 1860 (Nashville, TN:
George Peabody College for Teachers, 1933), 204. For more on colonization, see: Eric Burin, Slavery and
the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society (Gainesville: University Press of
Florida, 2005). 37
Samuel Harrison, Rev. Samuel Harrison: His Life Story as Told by Himself (Pittsfield, MA: Privately
printed, 1899), 3-6.
114
labor of ditching Smith’s land, Harrison and his classmates received academic
instruction. However, shortly after Harrison enrolled, the school folded. Harrison and
two friends pushed west to Hudson, Ohio where they attended Western Reserve College
and Preparatory School. When he terminated his studies in Hudson, Harrison traveled
east via Lake Erie and the Erie Canal to New York City. Penniless and with no means of
continuing home to Philadelphia, Harrison found the Bolton address in a city directory
and made his way to their front door. The family was away in the country. The
housekeeper who answered the door had never met Harrison, but she welcomed him with
offers of food and shelter because she had heard the Boltons speak highly of his mother
even though Jenny’s frequent contact with the family had ended some years earlier when
she had joined her son and brother in Philadelphia.38
Harrison eventually realized his ambition of becoming a pastor. The Berkshire
Association of Congregational Ministers licensed him to preach and ordained him in
1850. Later that year he was called to the Second Congregational Church in Pittsfield,
Massachusetts where he served as pastor for over fifty years. After taking up his ministry
Harrison exchanged letters with members of the Bolton family. Although Harrison did
not specifically name his correspondents, Sarah Bolton’s brother Robert (1788-1857),
who also became a pastor, had supported other African Americans in their ministries and
probably figured in the exchange of letters with Harrison.39
The unfolding of specific events in John and Sarah Bolton’s lives shows they
continued the family tradition of supporting slaves and freed African Americans in their
38
Samuel Harrison, Rev. Samuel Harrison: His Life Story as Told by Himself (Pittsfield, MA: Privately
printed, 1899), 6-13. 39
William J. Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock”: Memorials of the Rev. Robert Bolton and Mrs. Bolton
(London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1860), 36-37.
115
efforts to embrace Christianity. In addition, their behaviors as slaveholders changed over
time as they developed friendships with opponents of slavery, and their religious
convictions and economic welfare dovetailed. Perhaps it is also significant that at the
time they moved to New York, state law already had mandated the gradual end to
slavery. Since many New-York slaveholders were manumitting their slaves before the
legal deadline, it could be argued that the Boltons simply bowed to the inevitable when
their business interests supported it.40
The evidence also tips in another direction. The Boltons’ discomfort with slavery
may have been one of the factors that actually precipitated their own removal from
Savannah to New York.41
Southerners who opted out of slaveholding often found it
socially awkward to remain in the communities where slavery persisted.42
Because they,
too, were meeting challenges of relocation, the Boltons’ may have empathized with their
former bondsmen. The Boltons understood more clearly than other whites that freedom
came at an especially high price when it required giving up everything familiar, from
occupations and homes to friendship and families. By offering their former slaves
choices about where they would settle and by continuing to take an interest in their
welfare, the Boltons demonstrated some appreciation for their former slaves as human
beings struggling to establish themselves under circumstances where racial prejudice
limited their opportunities. Similarly, the reception that Samuel Harrison received when
he arrived at the Bolton home counters the notion that pure expedience drove the decision
40
Leslie M. Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863 (Chicago
and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2003), 72-133. 41
In 1799 William Few, who had been a Georgia delegate to the Constitutional Convention and a United
States Senator, relocated his family to New York because of their opposition to slavery. Betty Wood, ed.
Mary Telfair to Mary Few: Selected Letters, 1802-1844 (Athens and London: The University of Georgia
Press, 2007), xiv-xv. 42
James M. Gifford, The African Colonization Movement in Georgia, 1817-1860 (Unpublished
dissertation, University of Georgia, 1977), 160-161.
116
to emancipate their slaves. The Boltons recognized that emancipation was not a panacea
for African Americans because many legal and social barriers, as well as the peril of re-
enslavement, blocked the advancement of free people of color.43
The contention of the
historians John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger that no other practice has given us
“better picture of humans considered as property than the enslavement and sale of free
blacks” underscores that fact that the obstacles facing free people of color paled in the
face of the prospect of re-enslavement.44
Frances Bolton (1794-1822) and Richard Richardson (1785-1833)
To trace John and Sarah Bolton’s outlook on slavery is to expose a faint but
consistent pattern of behavior. Exploring the stance on slavery of Robert Bolton’s heirs,
his daughter Frances and her husband Richard Richardson, is to layout out an equally
obscure and incomplete set of incidents. But in this case there is the added complication
of having to navigate a maze full of switchbacks and apparent contradictions with no
obvious endpoint. Like her older sister Sarah, Frances Bolton (1794-1822) inherited four
slaves from her father when she was just a child of six. They were Jack, a blacksmith;
George, a painter; Cudjoe, a boy; and Ben whose status was not listed.45
Unlike her sister
Sarah’s slaves whose descendant recorded some of their family history, nothing more is
known of Frances’s slaves. Indeed, very little is known of Frances herself. One must
look to the public record of her husband Richard Richardson’s dealings to glimpse a
snapshot of the couple’s mindset on slavery. Documented there is a jumble of ostensibly
43
For an account of a Georgia slaveholder’s manumission of slaves and of the factors that shaped the
slaves’ choices of where to settle, see: James M. Gifford, “Emily Tubman and the African Colonization
Movement in Georgia,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 59 (Spring, 1975), 10-24. 44
John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999), 192. 45
“The Will of Robert Bolton of Savannah, Merchant” transcribed in Robert Bolton, Genealogical and
Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England and America (New York: John A. Gray, Printer,
1862), 130.
117
contradictory behaviors that run the gamut from helping slaves secure their freedom to
fraudulently holding a free person of color in bondage.46
Frances Bolton and Richard Richardson married in 1811. Richardson had left his
native Bermuda and joined the firm of R. and J. Bolton in Savannah much earlier, around
1802, and entered a partnership with the Boltons in 1808. Between 1805 and 1812
Richardson’s participation as a buyer or witness to several slave transfers proved his
willingness to help enslaved African Americans gain their freedom.47
That the slaves
involved were the preacher Andrew Marshall (c. 1755-1856) and several members of his
immediate family further suggests that Richardson subscribed to the Bolton family
principle of encouraging Christian belief among African Americans.48
In 1805 Richardson witnessed the sale by Hannah Houstoun of “her negro wench
slave Rachel” to the parson Andrew Bryan (1737-1812).49
Bryan, who was a free person
of color, probably purchased Rachel because she was married to his nephew and protégé
Andrew Marshall.50
The terms of the contract stipulated that Bryan was buying Rachel
with the intention of securing an act of the Georgia legislature to legalize her freedom.
Although he paid $500 for Rachel, Bryan agreed to ask only twenty-five cents per year
from Rachel while the official confirmation of her freedom was pending. In 1807 Bryan
transferred Rachel to Richard Richardson under the same conditions. Because
46
Joyce Chaplin has proposed reconciling contradictory behaviors is to apply the eighteenth-century
definition of humanity as “all persons were similar in terms of their common needs, but were not equal in
terms of social and political rights.” Joyce Chaplin, “Slavery and the Principle of Humanity: A Modern
Idea in the Early Lower South,” Journal of Social History 24:2 (Winter, 1990), 299-315. 47
Chatham County Deed Books, 2B:18-20; 2C:136-137; 2C:307-308; 2D:429-30. 48
Andrew Marshall, Rachel Marshall and her daughters, Rose, Peggy, and Amy were the slaves that
changed hands. John W. Davis, “George Liele and Andrew Bryan, Pioneer Negro Baptist Preachers,” The
Journal of Negro History 3, 2 (April, 1918), 123-127; 49
Chatham County Deed Book, 2B:20. Hannah Bryan was a daughter of Jonathan Bryan who, until his
death in 1788, owned Andrew Bryan. 50
Whittington B. Johnson, Black Savannah, 1788-1864 (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press,
1996), 80.
118
manumitting slaves in Georgia was politically unpopular and required legislative
approval, freeing a slave involved more than invoking an owner’s good intentions or
exchanging money.51
One can only guess that those concerned deemed the second sale
necessary because the aging black man, Bryan, faced obstacles in petitioning the
legislature that a well-to-do white man might not encounter. In addition to his age and
race, Bryan’s “mark” rather than a signature on legal documents points to literacy as a
factor.52
After accepting the responsibility for establishing Rachel’s status as a free
person of color, Richardson took on the same task for her daughters Amy and Peggy in
1809 and 1811, respectively.53
In 1812 Richard purchased Andrew Marshall with the
same end in view.54
Speaking of Andrew Marshall, a contemporary clergyman opined “he could
penetrate beneath disguises, and few men, white or black, of any age, could surpass him
in reading human character.”55
Marshall’s choice of Richard Richardson to be his
guardian bears out the observation. By taking on the role as Marshall’s guardian or legal
surrogate, Richardson agreed to formal duties that involved acting on Marshall’s behalf
in legal proceedings such his purchase of real estate from Fanny Bryan.56
Since ever-
changing laws tightened restrictions on free people of color, Richardson carried out the
51
Augustus Smith Clayton, A Compilation of the Laws of the State of Georgia: Passed by the Legislature
Since the Political Year 1800 to the Year 1810, Inclusive (Augusta, GA: Adams and Duyckinck, 1812), 27. 52
Many African American preachers could read, but could not write. Whittington B. Johnson, Black
Savannah, 1788-1864 (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 1996), 18; “Andrew C. Marshall: A
Black Religious Leader of Antebellum Savannah,” Georgia Historical Quarterly LXIX:2 (Summer, 1985),
181. 53
Chatham County Deed Books, 2C, 307-308; 2D, 222-223. 54
Chatham County Deed Book, 2D, 429-430. 55
J. P. Tustin, “Andrew Marshall (1786-1856)” (sic) in Annals of the American Pulpit, William Buell
Sprague, ed. (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1859), 6:258. 56
Whittington B. Johnson, Black Savannah, 1788-1864 (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press,
1996), 76.
119
exchange and then held the property in trust for Marshall.57
Exhibiting a level of loyalty
to Marshall that rose above executing the prescribed duties of a guardian, Richardson also
stepped up to intercede for Marshall when Savannah authorities charged him with theft
and sentenced him to a public whipping in the market-place. Richardson could not
negotiate dismissal of the charges, but he did stand by Marshall to restrain the constable
from breaking his skin or drawing blood.58
The charges against Marshall probably had little merit and served only as a
legally sanctioned means of persecuting him and diminishing him as an economic rival to
white laborers. Racial tensions and divisions in the community over the status of free
people of color and allowing slaves access to worship are more likely than theft to have
generated the charges. Richardson was at the nadir of his power in Savannah when he
intervened for Marshall. Even so, Richardson wielded sufficient influence to save
Marshall from physical injury, but not enough to launch an appeal of the verdict or to
spare him public humiliation.59
Although it might seem logical, it would be wrong to infer a nascent anti-slavery
stance from Richardson’s dealings with the Marshall family. Motivations for Richardson
were probably a combination of his support of Christianity among African-Americans
and the protection of a valuable business relationship he shared with Andrew Marshall.
As a free person of color earning his living as a drayman, Marshall was positioned to
provide Richardson with reliable and competent transport of cargoes between ships and
57
W. McDowell Rogers, “Free Negro Legislation in Georgia before 1865,” The Georgia Historical
Quarterly 16:1 (March, 1932), 1-37. 58
J. P. Tustin, “Andrew Marshall (1786 (sic)-1856)” in Annals of the American Pulpit, William Buell
Sprague, ed. (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1859), 6:257-258. 59
Timothy J. Lockley, Lines in the Sand: Race and Class in Lowcountry Georgia, 1750-1860 (Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 2001), 57-97; Glenn McNair, Criminal Injustice: Slaves and Free Blacks in
Georgia’s Criminal Justice System (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2009), 92-
118.
120
destinations in the city. At the same time he championed Andrew Marshall, Richardson
also fully integrated the cultures of slavery into his domestic and commercial lives.
Richardson spent his first decade in Savannah as a bachelor. During that time he
witnessed many slave transactions and purchased members of the Marshall family with
the intention of freeing them, but his name did not appear in the Savannah Tax Digests as
a slaveholder.60
That changed in 1811, the year of his marriage to Frances Bolton.
Between 1811 and 1820, Richardson owed taxes on as few as two and as many as
fourteen slaves.61
The 1820 census placed a total of nine slaves in the Richardson
household-- three adult males, four adult females, and two females under fourteen.62
White members of the household numbered six males and four females. They were
Frances and Richard Richardson, their four young children, a young woman who was
probably Richardson’s sister, and two young men who may have been extended family
and/or clerks and apprentices.
Although we will never be privy to the details of the personal and working
relationships that existed among the members of the Richardson household, the surviving
structures open a sight line into the mechanical systems of the Richardson home.
Outfitted with state of the art household fixtures, the Richardson dwelling starkly
contrasted with the working conditions most household slaves endured. While visiting
the Savannah area in 1822, the New Englander Jeremiah Evarts nosed around behind the
60
Chatham County Deed Books, 2B:18-20; 2C:136-7; 2C:307-8; 2C:431-2; 2D:6; 2D:105; 2D:143-4;
2D:222-3; 2D:429-32; 2E:444-5; 2E:458; 2F:121; 2F:169; 2F:181; 2F:517; 2G:483; 2G:541, 2H:109-110;
2H:126-7; 2H:474; 2I:341; 2K:318; 2L:375-6; 2L:423. 61
City of Savannah, Tax Digests, 1810-1820. 62
United States Census Bureau, Fourth Census of the United States (1820), Georgia, Savannah.
121
scenes of his host’s home and concluded “Slaves have few conveniences for any kind of
labor. They are obliged to do everything by the hardest.”63
Evidently Evarts was not a guest in the Richardson home. If he had been so bold
as to cross the boundary into the service areas there, he would have found a water
collection system that started on the roof and fed a system of cisterns in the attic and
throughout the house which, in turn, supplied lavatories and flushing water-closets as
well as the scullery, laundry, and showers in the basement. The water collection and
storage apparatus combined with the technologies of domestic comfort, efficiency, and
order that epitomized the values of the metropolitan English middle class released the
Richardson slaves from the time-consuming jobs of supplying fresh water and removing
waste from the house. Simultaneously the plumbing system embodied an assumption on
the part of the owner that his slaves would competently maintain a technologically
advanced mechanical system that embodied current English thinking on household
management.
While his expectations of his household servants and his relationship with the
Bryan and Marshall families depict Richardson as a paternalistic, or even liberal,
slaveholder, his behaviors as a businessman paint a different picture. In the context of his
commercial dealings Richardson regularly transacted business that entered human beings
and objects in the columns of ledger books as comparable property.64
In 1811 and 1815
slaves secured Richardson’s loans to Nathaniel Adams and George V. Proctor,
63
Jeremiah Evarts, Diary, April 5, 1822 (Manuscript Collection 240, Georgia Historical Society). 64
For more on the ready convertibility of a human being into cash, see: Seth Rothman, Scraping By: Wage,
Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009),
234-237.
122
respectively.65
In 1817 Richardson cancelled a bill of sale for three bedsteads, a set of
dining tables and ends, a set of carpets, and a fourteen-year-old Negro girl named Sarah
after Thomas Harris repaid a loan of $800.66
As an executor of the planter John Montalet
(1762-1814), Richardson bought and then resold the decedent’s slaves in the course of
settling the estate.67
Although they were ancillary to the main objective, such as making
a loan or dividing an estate, human beings changed hands as easily as chattels or real
estate.
In other transactions Richardson’s primary objective was to profit directly from
the sale or labor of slaves. For example, Richardson and other members of the Bolton
firm invested in the slave cargo of the ship Hindostan in 1808.68
Later, between October
1821 and November 1822, Richardson made seven shipments totaling 121 slaves from
Savannah to Louisiana.69
Some of the slaves were destined for the slave market in New
Orleans while others disembarked at Terre-aux-Boeufs to work out their lives on the
sugar plantation that provided Richardson a living when he relocated in 1822 from
Savannah to St. Bernard Parish south of New Orleans. Almost a decade later, in 1830,
slaves accounted for 113 of the 117 people living on Richardson’s sugar plantation.70
A Louisiana lawsuit filed in 1822 and resolved in 1823 presents another potent
example of the ambiguity of Richardson’s interface with the institution of slavery. Like
65
Chatham County Deed Books, 2D:150-151, 2F:179-180. 66
Chatham County Deed Book, 2H:109 67
Maximillien Debarnot, traduction et résumé, ““Le Marquis de Montalet: Conférence de Kenneth H.
Thomas, Jr.,” Généalogie et Histoire de la Caribe Bulletin 81 (Avril ,1996), 1596-9; Chatham County
Deed Books, 2G:483, 2G:541, 2H:126-127, 2H:474, 2I:341, 2K:318, 2L:375-376. 68
[Author missing], Charleston, March 16, 1808, letter to Stephen Girard, Philadelphia (Stephen Girard
Papers, American Philosophical Society); John S. Adams, Charleston, March 20, 1808, letter to Stephen
Girard, Philadelphia (Stephen Girard Papers, American Philosophical Society). 69
Dee Parmer Woodtor and Alma McClendon, transcribers, A Partial Transcription of Inward Slave
Manifests, Port of New Orleans, United States Customs Service, Collector of Customs at New
Orleans,1818-1860, Roll 2(1821):437, Roll 3(1822): 520, 521, 571, 593, 594, 657, 757 (URL
http://www.afrigeneas.com accessed March 11, 2011). 70
United States Census Bureau, Fifth Census of the United States (1830) Louisiana, St. Bernard Parish.
123
so much in the history of slavery, Richardson’s actions were contingent on a constantly
reconfiguring set of legal, political, religious, economic, and social customs. As a
consequence it is impossible to ascribe to Richardson one view on slavery or even a
consistent evolution of his thoughts and actions vis-à-vis slavery. Records are spotty and
the documents we do have definitely lend themselves to vastly different, even
contradictory, interpretations. Nothing illustrates this better than the petition a mulatto
slave called “John” filed in the First District Court of the State of Louisiana on May 24,
1822.71
In his lawsuit, “John” referred to himself as Nicholas Tachaud, a free man of
color, and begged the court to release him from the unjust and illegal detention as a slave
in which Richard Richardson was holding him. Counsel for Tachaud called six witnesses
to prove his claim. The defense did not present a case. The jury found for the plaintiff.
Nicholas Tachaud was a free man.
The basic outline of the case exposes Richardson as a man willing to sink to the
lowest depths of exploitation of other human beings to profit from their bondage.
However, another reading of the documents supports the contention of historian Judith
Kelleher Schafer that “some slaves found ingenious and remarkably sophisticated ways
to use the law, lawyers, judges and local courts to gain their freedom. In doing so, they
found a way to make the law act as an autonomous force in the contravention of
slavery.”72
A different understanding of Richardson and his role materializes from a
closer reading of the Tachaud case. Evidence given in court established that Nicholas
71
Tachaud, f.m.c., v. Richardson, No. 469, First District Court of New Orleans, May 24, 1822 (Lexis-Nexis
Microfilm of original in New Orleans Public Library, New Orleans, Louisiana). For a broader context see:
Sue Peabody, “’Free Upon Higher Ground’: Saint-Domingue Slaves’ Suits for Freedom in U.S. Courts,
1790-1830” in David Patrick Geggus and Norman Fiering, eds., The World of the Haitian Revolution
(Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2009), 261-283. 72
Judith Kelleher Schafer, Becoming Free, Remaining Free: Manumission and Enslavement in New
Orleans, 1846-1862 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003), xiii.
124
Tachaud was born in St. Domingue to a free woman of color named Francoise Dupuy.
Several witnesses testified that they knew both Dupuy and the unnamed French officer
who was Nicholas’s father. Mme. Savary went so far as to swear she had been present at
the plaintiff’s birth in 1804. Other witnesses filled in more details. After Dupuy’s death
sometime around 1808, one of her friends, another free woman of color, took charge of
Nicholas. Aunt Rosalie, as Nicholas called her, and Mr. Pelletier, her Frenchman, treated
Nicholas as their child. Nicholas accompanied the couple when they evacuated St.
Domingue for the safety of Charleston, South Carolina, in 1809. Two years later the
threesome relocated to Augusta, Georgia where Nicholas again experienced loss and
separation. Aunt Rosalie died. Mr. Pelletier sold Nicholas Tachaud into slavery.
Knowing just a bit more about Nicholas raises questions concerning Richardson’s
function in the case. For instance, testimony did not reveal why or when Tachaud
relocated to New Orleans. Similarly, no one explained how he came into Richardson’s
possession. Witnesses identified Pelletier, not Richardson, as the person who enslaved
Tachaud. Although the defendant in a courtroom drama usually occupies center stage,
Richardson figured minimally in the trial. If Richardson’s only interest in Tachaud was
financial, his failure to respond to Tachaud’s petition would seem counterintuitive, since
losing the case would involve a significant financial loss. With the court’s 1823 ruling in
favor of Tachaud, Richardson’s involvements in the slave culture appeared to have run
the gamut from aiding slaves in securing their freedom to fraudulently enslaving a free
person of color. But examining Richardson’s behavior in the context of his earlier
involvement in securing freedom for members of the Bryan-Marshall family, a different
explanation of his relationship to Tachaud increases in plausibility. Court testimony
125
indicates Tachaud had proposed to the witness Hermine Boiredon that she purchase him.
That was not within her power, but perhaps she assisted in recruiting Richardson as an
alternate buyer who would help Tachaud secure his status as a free person of color.
Adding weight to notion that Tachaud had some outside help in pitching his case is the
fact that although he was an eighteen-year-old illiterate slave, he was represented by a
counselor at law who presented a watertight legal argument for Tachaud’s freedom.73
Although it would be fascinating to have a full account of Richardson’s role in Tachaud’s
life, that story is unlikely to surface. Perhaps, it is more significant that, given what we
know of Richardson’s behavior concerning race and slavery, either interpretation is
equally probable.
Assuming that he encountered people like Richardson, it’s no wonder that the
English traveler Captain Basil Hall found himself less certain in his views on slavery
after visiting Savannah than he had been before he set foot in America. Reflecting on his
tour of the American south that included a stay in Savannah, Captain Hall confessed,
“Instead of seeing my way better as I went on, I found my ideas on the intricate
and formidable subject of slavery, becoming less clear than I fancied they had
formerly been.” Lacking the benefits of hindsight that the modern observer enjoys, Hall
backed away from the moral indignation that slavery universally inspires today. He
admitted, “The different accounts which different people gave me of the actual condition
of the Negroes, sorely distracted every general conclusion I ventured to draw; while a
73
For the story of another free person of color who fled St. Domingue and settled in Georgia, see: Janice L.
Sumler-Edmond, The Secret Trust of Aspasia Cruvellier Mirault: The Life and Trials of a Free Woman of
Color in Antebellum Georgia (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2008).
126
multiplicity of local circumstances, daily coming to my knowledge, cast adrift all my
own theories on the subject.”74
The intricacies of the slave culture are no more yielding to contemporary analysis
than they were to Captain Hall in 1829. Fluid legal, social, moral, political, and
economic boundaries characterized the life and times of Richard Richardson and are
reflected in his relationship to the slave culture of the first quarter of the nineteenth
century. Perception of economic necessity, understanding of the social contract, and
spiritual beliefs factored into the individual choices of communitas members like John
Bolton and Richard Richardson. For communitas members living in Savannah, the range
of acceptable alternatives concerning slaves and slavery was diminishing rapidly with the
advent of the Antebellum period.
74
Basil Hall, Travels in North America in the Years 1827 and 1828 (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and Carey,
1829) II, 222.
CHAPTER FIVE
Communitas and Establishing a Career in Architecture, c. 1810-1825
The communitas is most readily recognizable as a network that cohered
around religious principles. However, it also functioned as an economic and social
association. In that capacity the communitas was instrumental in bringing to Savannah
William Jay (1792-1837), the architect of the city’s most distinguishing buildings.
Analyzing his training and early career not only illuminates the architectural history of
Savannah, but also demonstrates how informal networks like the communitas enabled
rising middle class professionals to pursue career goals and operated in the context of the
global capitalist economy.
The future architect, William Jay was the second child born to the independent
minister of the same name and his wife Anne Davies Jay. Young William grew up in
provincial Bath and began his architectural career in London as capitalism was
transforming employment patterns and realigning class distinctions in Britain. On one
hand, industrialization pushed rural workers away from agricultural occupations and
toward urban factory jobs at a constantly accelerating pace. On the other, economic
change stimulated new opportunities in the bureaucracy, business, and professions for a
burgeoning, metropolitan middle class. For many individuals a successful career in
medicine, law, or architecture was the springboard to economic security and bourgeois
respectability. In fact, so many gained so much that the middle class and its values
eventually dominated nineteenth-century British culture. Despite the tremendous benefits
that accrued to the middle class as a whole, the downside of risks inherent to capitalism
loomed as a constant threat of economic ruin, prompting the historians Leonore Davidoff
128
and Catherine Hall to characterize the years between 1780 and 1850 as “a time of
heightened fear about both social and economic chaos and the perils of daily life.”1
Both the development of architecture as a profession and William Jay’s career
well exemplify the volatility of the evolving capitalist culture that Davidoff and Hall
evoke. Those who acquired professional skills in hopes of securing a comfortable niche
in the capitalist economy often found financial survival a struggle. Sometimes it took
ingenuity, persistence, hard work, and starting from scratch more than once to achieve a
measure of success. And, as in William Jay’s case, once attained, professional
recognition and solvency did not remain in place for long. As relentlessly as waves wash
back and forth over the shore, his fortunes receded as often as they surged. Although
professional interest alone might have driven Jay’s willingness to depart England to seek
architectural commissions in North America, family and religious networks also factored
into his choosing to sail for Savannah when he departed Liverpool late in 1817.
Analyzing the specifics of Jay’s career also reveals the economic role of the
religious communitas that linked London, Liverpool, and Savannah. Connections made
through the communitas facilitated Jay’s access to training, his first commissions, and,
eventually, his emigration to Savannah in the hope of realizing his professional
ambitions. An examination of the context of the emerging architectural profession also
brings to light other strategies that architects employed to address the risks and prospects
attendant to capitalism. Many prospered, but recognition and economic stability often
eluded men like Jay even though they exhibited the promise of success through their
talent, training, networks, and commissions.
1 Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class,
1780-1850, revised edition (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), xiii.
129
Before the emergence of the English middle class, architects typically came from
two types of backgrounds. Elite families spawned talented amateurs. The working
classes, especially members of the building trades, produced able masons and carpenters
who took on design responsibilities when they became builders or general contractors.
William Jay’s grandfather had been a stonemason and his father learned the trade before
becoming a dissenting preacher in Bath where his son William was born. John Soane
(1753-1837), the most celebrated architect in London at the time of Jay’s arrival there,
was the son of a bricklayer.2
Because both Soane and Jay had family connections to the masonry trades, either
might have found a way into architecture through the time-honored method of training as
a mason and becoming a builder. Both Soane and Jay turned their backs on the craft
traditions of their families, and pursued courses of training connected to the emerging
middle class identity as a professional. Jay acquired the skills of an architect as
apprentice in the office of a London surveyor. Soane, on the other hand, matriculated in
the vestigial architectural program at the Royal Academy.3
Since he was one of a handful of aspiring architects selected for the program
offered at London’s Royal Academy, Soane’s instruction at England’s most prestigious
art institution formed one of three key components for launching a prestigious career.
The second was a Grand Tour of Europe that opened the door to the third, which was
2 Gillian Darley, John Soane, An Accidental Romantic (New Haven and London: Yale University Press,
1999), 1-6. For an overview of architecture in London and Bath, see John Summerson, Georgian London
edited by Howard Colvin (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003; Neil Jackson, Nineteenth
Century Bath Architects and Architecture (Bath: Ashgrove Press, 1991). 3 Soane and Jay represent two poles in approaches to architectural training among many that existed in a
dynamic field. For an account of the education and early career of the English-born architect Benjamin
Henry Latrobe (1764-1820), who, like Jay, tried his luck in the United States, see: Michael W. Fazio and
Patrick A. Snadon, The Domestic Architecture of Benjamin Henry Latrobe (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2006), 4, 18-82.
130
noble patronage. As the architectural historian Pierre de la Ruffinière du Prey has
argued, once the three essentials were in place, years of hard work, some luck, and the
application of a prodigious talent came into play before Soane rose to the top of his
profession.4
Soane’s personal disposition and the recognition he received during his lifetime
assured that some account of his early history in the profession survived. Conversely,
obscurity and mobility all but guaranteed that the average practitioner like William Jay
left few records. Consequently Soane’s experience, by virtue of its accessibility, can
easily be mistaken for the norm, although William Jay and his contemporaries like the
architects portrayed in Charles Dickens’s novel Martin Chuzzlewit (1843) more
accurately reflect the typical experience. In Dickens’s picture of an architectural
enterprise, the fresh young apprentice Martin Chuzzlewit and the long-suffering
journeyman Tom Pinch toil under the thumb of the principal of the firm, Seth Pecksniff.
A carefully sculpted embodiment of sanctimonious hypocrisy, the character of Pecksniff
also represents many of the shortcomings of the architectural profession.
What the average, aspiring architect encountered in attempting to establish a
career was even more challenging than Du Prey’s assessment of the hurdles Soane
cleared in achieving his success. Their experiences corroborate the architectural historian
Andrew Saint in his contention that Dickens’s choice of architecture “was as sound a
canvas as any other on which to splash the dark colours of social heartlessness.”5 Time
and again, the experiences of Dickens’s characters ring true when measured against what
Jay and others of his generation encountered as they began apprenticeships, established
4 Pierre de la Ruffinière du Prey, John Soane, the Making of an Architect (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1982), 5 Andrew Saint, The Image of the Architect (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 51.
131
practices, and eventually looked to the empire for economic opportunities. Even an
outstanding architectural talent like John Soane needed luck and hard work to succeed in
Britian at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. For the likes of William Jay or Martin
Chuzzlewit, professional survival, much less accolades, was even less certain, but much
more typical than Soane’s experience. Turning to the particulars of Jay’s background
illustrates how his family crossed the divide between the working and professional
classes in late eighteenth-century England, thereby setting the stage for the architectural
hopeful to seek a career in his chosen profession.
The architect William Jay’s father, also William Jay (1769-1853), began boring a
toe hole for penetrating the middle class when, as a youth, he attended sermons at a
chapel near his home in rural Tisbury, Wiltshire. Something about the young
stonemason’s apprentice, dressed in the “flannel jacket and white leather apron” of a
laborer, impressed Cornelius Winter when he preached at the chapel Jay attended. Soon
after noticing the young man in the congregation, Winter invited Jay to Marlborough to
attend his “academy of young men for the ministry.” Winter’s pedagogical approach
combined rigorous academic work with practical experience in the pulpit. To this end he
had obtained and licensed private houses for preaching, where he and his students
evangelized the locals. At Marlborough as a youth of little more than 16 years, Jay began
to display his gifts for sermonizing.6
Winter’s strategy for seasoning his young preachers involved engaging them with
the country folk of Wiltshire. He preferred not to expose his budding preachers to the
heady excitement of urban venues. Nevertheless, Winter gave his approval when another
of Jay’s mentors, Rowland Hill (1744-1833) of London, asked the nineteen-year-old to
6 Cyrus Jay, Recollections of William Jay of Bath (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1859), 2-3.
132
supply the pulpit at Surrey Chapel in 1788. (1818, London, 2-5) Despite Jay’s obvious
dedication to his vocation, Hill also felt it prudent to shield Jay from developing the
pretensions to grandeur that metropolitan social success and a large, admiring
congregation might engender in a country boy. Hill confided to a friend, “Still it is very
young days indeed with him; but the other day he was but a very poor boy, getting his
bread by hewing of stones by the sweat of his brow, so he can be no loser, but must be a
considerable gainer by the gospel.”7 Abandoning the flannel coat and leather apron of
the laborer for the clerical collar defined more than a religious commitment. It also
marked Jay’s accession to the middle class. Events like Jay’s social uplift illustrate the
softening of English social boundaries to accommodate the expanding middle class. The
well-born Hill’s concerns that Jay might be in danger of getting too full of himself
betrays the pushback of elitist condescension that co-existed in his psyche alongside his
lifelong commitment to serving the middle and working classes.8
Like his contemporaries Whitefield and Wesley, Rowland Hill eschewed the
social conservatism of the Established Church and reached out to the people of East and
South London. On the south side of the Thames, near the foot of Blackfriars Bridge, Hill
established his Surrey Chapel in 1783. By 1788, when he invited Jay to join his ministry,
the congregation numbered 3,000. But Jay continued to feel the urge to serve country
people, so he declined Hill’s invitation and settled down to work in the village Christian
7 Rowland Hill, Letter of July, 1788 to Mr. Webber quoted in Henry Allon, Memoir of Reverend James
Sherman, including an Unfinished Autobiography (London: James Nisbet and Co., 1864), 250.
8 A contemporary, of John Wesley and George Whitefield, Hill was the 6
th son of Sir Rowland Hill.
Educated at Eton and Cambridge, Hill prepared for the Anglican priesthood, but founded the independent
Surrey Chapel instead. See: 'Blackfriars Road: The Surrey Theatre and Surrey Chapel', in Walter
Thornbury and Edward Walford, Old and New London: A Narrative History of Its People and Its Places
(London: Cassell and Co., Ltd, 1875), vi:368-383.
133
Malford where he boarded in the home of a tradesman.9 In the end, neither the
metropolis nor the country was to hold him. In 1790 he accepted a call to lead the
congregation of the Argyle Independent Chapel at Bath where he remained for over fifty
years.
None of Jay’s moves, from Tisbury to Marlborough, from Marlborough to
Christian Malford, and from Christian Malford to Bath, spanned a physical distance
greater than 40 miles. From its location on the outskirts of Bath, in a newly developed
section located just across the Avon River from the stylish spa that was immensely
popular with English “high society,” the Argyle Chapel formed the hub of Jay’s ministry
which garnered an international following. Middle and upper class Protestants
throughout the English-speaking world turned to Jay’s devotional books for spiritual
guidance.10
Whereas Jay’s reputation as a preacher emanated from his pulpit, his renown
as a writer issued from the private study in his Percy Place home.
Situated about a mile distant from the Argyle Chapel, on the outskirts of Bath
where the town streets met the London Road, the row house in Percy Place strongly
9 Cyrus Jay, Recollections of William Jay of Bath (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1859), 10-11.
10 A few of the many editions of Jay’s writings published in the United States include: Sermons (Boston,
1805), The mutual duties of husbands and wives a sermon occasioned by the marriage of R.S. Esq.:
preached in Argyle-Chapel, Bath, Eng., August 16, 1801 (Boston, 1808), Memoirs of the life and character
of the late Rev. Cornelius Winter (New York, 1811), Sermons (Cooperstown, 1812), Short Discourses to be
Read in Families (Hartford, 1807 and 1812), An Essay on Marriage, or, the Duty of Christians to Marry
Religiously with a few Reflections on imprudent Marriages (New Haven, 1814), The Christian
contemplated in a course of lectures : delivered in Argyle Chapel, Bath (New York, 1826), Morning
exercises, for every day in the year (New York and Boston, 1828), Evening exercises for the closet : for
every day in the year (New York, 1832), Standard works of the Rev. William Jay ... comprising all his
works known in this country; and, also, several which have not, heretofore, been presented to the American
public (Baltimore, 1833), Thoughts on marriage: illustrating the principles and obligations of the marriage
relation (Boston, 1833), Prayers for the use of families : or, The domestic minister's assistant (New York,
1834), The happy mourner, or, Sympathy for the bereaved: presenting the consolations of God to his
afflicted children (Philadelphia, 1837), The works of the Rev. William Jay, of Argyle chapel, Bath (New
York, 1844), Lectures on Female Scripture Characters (New York, 1854), The autobiography of the Rev.
William Jay; with reminiscences of some distinguished contemporaries, selections from his
correspondence, and literary remains (New York, 1855).
134
reinforced Jay’s middle class identity. Well furnished with classic volumes and choicely
supplied with the best of new issues, the nicely arranged study, looked out “beautifully on
an elegant garden, and on bold and lovely hills beyond” according to a visitor who called
on Jay in 1830. Jay took great pleasure in his library, and in the space that housed it. He
told the same caller, “this room is a precious one to me. Here I have composed the most
of my sermons. Here I have prepared the best of my works for the press. Here I have
received my friends and ministers from all parts of the kingdom; and here I have spent
the happiest hours of my life with my family.”11
Jay and his wife, the former Anne Davies, who was the daughter of an Anglican
minister, raised their family of three sons and three daughters in the Percy Place house.12
Rearing the children must have involved conversations about their educations and future
vocations that took place in the treasured study. Visualizing the contrast between the
cozy study and the sparse shelter of the rural stonemason’s cottage from which Jay had
launched his adult life, first as a stonemason’s, and later as a minister’s apprentice,
suggests the enormous advantages Jay was able to provide for his children.
With his own middle class bona fides in place, William Jay aimed to see his sons
secure the same status for themselves. Each of the boys, William, Cyrus, and Edward,
pursued professional training as an architect, a lawyer, and a minister, respectively.
Although the boys began life in a stronger economic position than their father had, their
careers received much less recognition. Nothing in particular distinguished Cyrus’s
11
Thomas Wallace, A Portraiture of the Late rev. Wm Jay,… with notes from his conversations (London:
Arthur Hall Virtue and co., 1854), 27. 12
George Redford and John Angell James, eds. The Autobiography of the Reverend William Jay, 2 vols.
(New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1855), i:99-100.
135
London law practice. Glossophobia cut short Edward’s career in the clergy.13
Unlike his
brothers who remained in England, William probed the perimeters of the empire in his
efforts to establish himself as an architect. From London to Savannah and from
Savannah to Cheltenham and from Cheltenham to Mauritius in the Indian Ocean where
he died, the younger Jay’s physical relocations extended almost as far as the reach of his
father’s pen. Perhaps the elder Jay grieved for his son William when he told an
interviewer, “’I love to go back and think of my dear family, when little, when all were
together. But what changes, what separations, what chasms have years created!’”14
As
the experiences of the Jay family confirm, the expansion of the middle class was not
without great social costs.
When describing his eldest son’s pursuit of architecture, Jay did not look back to
associate his predilection with the family’s history in the building trades. Rather, he
attributed William’s calling to “the turn of his mind.” Then Jay continued, “When he had
fulfilled his schooling, he was apprenticed to an architect and surveyor in London, where,
after his time had expired, he continued for a while, and then went to Savannah in
Georgia.”15
With those short phrases Jay mapped the route that so many followed in
search of financial success. From homes in the hinterlands, they moved on to London,
and thence fanned out into realms of Britain’s imperial influence. What the elder Jay did
not elaborate was the crucial role of the religious network in shaping his son’s training
and career. Given the father’s own recent rise to the middle class as well as the changing
13
George Redford and John Angell James, eds. The Autobiography of the Reverend William Jay, 2 vols.
(New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1855), i:108. 14
Thomas Wallace, A Portraiture of the Late Reverend William Jay,… with Notes from his Conversations
(London: Arthur Hall Virtue and Co., 1854), 121.
15 George Redford and John Angell James, eds. The Autobiography of the Reverend William Jay, 2 vols.
(New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1855), i:106.
136
and uncertain nature of the profession that young William wished to enter, identifying
and securing appropriate instruction was not a straightforward matter. Without
institutional track records and accreditations to rely on, personal connections provided as
good a criteria as any for analyzing the relative merits of the various options for pursuing
training.
With the emergence of professions from older craft traditions, the time-honored
apprenticeship system that was developed as a means of transmitting knowledge, insuring
quality, and, not so incidentally, limiting the number of practitioners in a given skill was
disintegrating.16
The Royal Academy program in architecture marked a new direction in
training with a distinct emphasis on fine art and design. However, the Royal Academy
served very few pupils. Training in architecture for most students involved an
apprenticeship that privileged teaching the practical requirements of building over the
fine art of design. Other changes strained the old system of apprenticeship as well.
Particularly pressing was the need for architects to master new building techniques,
innovative materials, and the novel technologies of the Industrial Revolution. Eventually
this aspect of construction emerged as the independent profession of engineering rather
than a subset of the architect’s skills.
The increasing complexity and areas of specialized knowledge within architecture
as a profession made it difficult for the layman to identify key areas of training. The
outdated, piecemeal apprenticeship system that lacked safeguards to insure that students
actually received training and did not become victims of exploitation made choosing a
master a tricky business. Given the uncertainties of the old apprenticeship system in
16
L. C. Schwarz, London in the Age of Industrialization: Entrepreneurs, Labour Force and Living
Conditions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 209-229.
137
preparing youth for an emerging profession in a world full of new economic realities,
personal connections could loom very large in placing a youth. There is every indication
that William Jay Sr. used his connections to the nonconformist and evangelical
community in the City of London to place his son William in an apprenticeship with the
architect and surveyor David Riddall Roper (1773-1855).
So, how did the Jay family select Roper to be William’s master?17
In the absence
of any personal accounts, several obscure, but salient factors help to explain the
association. First, targeted, classified advertising may have been a resource. William Jay
helped to organize and ardently supported the Missionary Society. Jay’s name appeared
regularly in the Society’s publication The Evangelical Magazine and Missionary
Chronicle from 1795 until the mid-1850s, both in the main text and the classified
advertising supplements that have survived with some issues of the periodical. Jay’s
London preaching engagements, publishers’ advertisements for his books as well as
Coade’s Ornamental Stone and Scagliola Marble Works offer to furnish “his friends and
admirers” with a “finely executed life-size bust” are typical of content relating to Jay.18
Jay, who was undoubtedly familiar with the publication, may have placed or responded to
an advertisement listed under “Apprentices, Servants, and Situations Wanted.”
Second, placing young William Jay under Roper’s supervision may have been a
matter of coincidental proximity. Roper’s office at 10 Stamford Street, near Blackfriars
Road, was very close to the Surrey Chapel where the elder Jay had had his first London
17
The turn around of this question, the reasoning behind Roper’s acceptance of Jay, is just as interesting as
the answer is just as obscure. Architects took apprentices for the income, the labor they provided, and,
sometimes, for personal reasons. 18
The Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, III (1795), 424; IV (October, 1796), 209; V
(1797); VII (1799), 396; VIII (May, 1800), 222; XXVI (1818), frontispiece; XXIX (1819), frontispiece;
XXX (1822), frontispiece; XXX (March, 1822) advertising section 19.
138
preaching engagement and continued to supply the pulpit annually for nearly fifty years.
(1818, London 2-5) During the time his son was an apprentice under Roper, Jay spent
eight weeks in London every summer, so he had ample opportunity to check-up on
William’s progress and well-being.19
Third, two of Roper’s entries in Royal Academy Exhibitions strongly hint that his
religious loyalties resided outside the Established Church. While the allegiance is self-
evident in the Design for a Dissenting Seminary (1798, no. 934), the title of the drawing
of a Villa at Acton for N. Selby, Esq. (1807, no. 1049) does not broadcast the client’s
position as a religious outsider.20
Nicholas Selby was a devout Roman Catholic who
actively supported his parish.21
The fact that Roper publicized his work for adherents of
non-Establishment sects suggests that his sympathies for non-conformity may have
influenced Jay’s thinking that he was a man of suitable moral timbre to have management
of his son.
Fourth, Roper had reasonable professional and business credentials. Although he
had not studied at the Royal Academy, he had served an apprenticeship with the architect
Samuel Robinson who was a Royal Academy graduate. The two men had practiced
together for several years after Roper’s articles expired. By 1807 Roper was well enough
established to occupy his own premises at 10 Stamford Street. The situation of Roper’s
offices on the south bank of the Thames in a mixed neighborhood that included timber
19
Henry Allon, Memoir of Rev. James Sherman, including an unfinished Autobiography (London: James
Nisbet and Co., 1864), 247. 20
Algernon Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors and their Work
from its Foundation in 1769 to 1904 (NewYork: B. Franklin, 1972 reprint of 1906 edition), v. 6, 361. 21
'Acton: Roman catholicism', in T.F.T. Baker, ed., A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 7:
Acton, Chiswick, Ealing and Brentford, West Twyford, Willesden (Woodbridge, United Kingdom: Boydell
and Brewer, Ltd. 1982), 39; “Our Lady of Lourdes, Acton, History” at
http://www.rcdow.org.uk/acton/aboutus/default.asp (accessed January 23, 2010). Selby was a signatory to
this document: John Douglass, An Address of Several of His Majesty’s Roman Catholic Subjects to their
Protestant Fellow Subjects, (London: T. Bensley, 1800), 7.
139
yards; coal wharfs; iron foundries; hat, glass, and engine manufactories; livery stables;
and almshouses suggests an orientation towards the practical rather than the aesthetic and
a middle rather than upper class clientele.22
Fifth, Roper’s participation in the Royal Academy exhibitions and his
membership in the Surveyor’s Club point to the emphasis he placed on professionalism
and collegiality.23
The precise circumstances and relative weights of the various
arguments in the deliberations on where young William would pursue his training are not
likely to come to light. But given what we do know, Roper seems to have been a
reasonable choice.
What Jay learned in Roper’s office is no easier to gauge than it is to deduce how
he entered the apprenticeship. No business records exist to detail Roper’s practice or
Jay’s role there. Even if business records survived, we still would know almost nothing
of Roper’s office culture and the atmosphere he created for working and learning. The
nature of the firm’s projects is another component of the experience that undoubtedly
influenced usefulness of Jay’s apprenticeship. Although we do not have an overall
picture of Roper’s work, two projects that the firm executed during Jay’s sojourn there
suggest something of the nature of Roper’s practice and clientele. One was a structure to
house a charitable institution. The other was a suburban villa for John Blades (1751-
1829), a glass manufacturer whose shop at 5 Ludgate-hill in the City of London was just
22
Engraving, “Parish of Christ Church Surrey,” H. Gardner, Surveyor, 1821 (Crace Collection of Maps of
London. British Library).
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/crace/p/007000000000016u00055000.html 23
Up until 1864 the Surveyors’ Club had no more than 25 members at a time. In 1838 Roper served as a
Trustee of the Club’s Charitable Fund established to benefit impecunious surveryors. Roper was an active
member for over 50 years. See: Peter Bradley, Ways in to Brockwell Park (London: Lambeth Archives
with the Lambeth Local History Forum, 2006), 30, fn 103, 53; The National Archives, City of Westminster
Archives Centre, Surveyors’ Club Papers (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/A2A/records/aspx?cat=094-
2257&cid=0&kw=Surveyors’ Club#0 accessed 1/15/2010).
140
across the Blackfriars Bridge from Roper’s Stamford Street office. The site for
Brockwell Hall was less than four miles farther south on the same route. (1818, London
2-5)
Villas like the one that Roper designed for Blades developed as a popular building
form along with the expansion of the middle class. As tradesmen, manufacturers, and
professionals prospered, they began to separate their residences from their business
premises. By the early nineteenth century, the suburban villa was an important symbol of
upper middle class status.24
Although the suburban villa announced the owner’s
prosperity to all passersby, the suburban villa was not by any stretch of the imagination
comparable to the stately home or a country house of the nobility. Quite the contrary, the
villa called to mind the middle class qualities of the family that occupied it. The villa
was of ample, but not extravagant proportions. The practical, down to earth thinking that
underpinned business acumen also governed the good sense comforts that characterized
the villa lifestyle. Attractively sited within landscaped grounds of kitchen and pleasure
gardens, the villa featured a compact floor plan of comfortable public spaces for
entertaining and dining, more retired spaces for reading and family recreation, and private
spaces for bedrooms, nursery, and schoolroom. Fitting out a villa often meant including
recent innovations in domestic technology such as a Bramah’s patent water-closet,
Gregson’s patent smoke-conductor, and Count Rumford’s kitchen range.25
Service areas,
24
As Davidoff and Hall point out in Family Fortunes, middle class professionals “bought or rented large
villas on the edges of town as did J. W. Whately at Edgbaston Hall.” Davidoff and Hall, 265. 25
“On the Comfort of Houses,” The Repository of Arts (1813), 344, 350; Robert Southey, Letters from
England by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, 1808), I, 158.
141
or the offices, as they were called, fully accommodated all the tasks that servants carried
out to support their employer’s health and leisure.26
As the middle class expanded, so did London. Farm acreage near the city
shriveled as land values increased. As a consequence, the soil expert James Malcolm
explained, the environs of London were “occupied either by the nurseryman or the
gardener, or the gentleman, properly speaking some opulent merchant or tradesman
whose business may require him to be some days of the week at his counting house, in
London, and during the others he amuses himself at his villa.”27
By the early nineteenth
century when John Blades hired Roper to design Brockwell Hall, he was just such a man.
In the 1770s Blades had left his birthplace in the rural Yorkshire village of Lund to seek
his fortune in London “with the proverbial half crown only in his pocket.” When he
procured employment as a porter with a glass vendor in Ludgate Hill, Blades began his
assent through the ranks of the firm that led to his marriage to the owner’s daughter and
eventual sole proprietorship. Along the way Blades realized the benchmarks of middle
class status. His business acumen brought financial success and high profile clients such
as native rulers of Britain’s imperial possessions including the Nizam of Hyderabad and
the Nabob of Oude. In addition, Blades served as “Purveyor of Glass to the Royal
Household.” As he accumulated capital Blades acquired shares in the East India
Company and the Bank of England. Discretionary income also afforded him the time and
resources to involve himself in religious, civic, and charitable organizations. He served
26
For a discussion of the villa in a broader context, see: James Ackerman, “The Villa as Paradigm,”
Perspecta 22: The Journal of the Yale School of Architecture “Paradigms of Architecture” (1986), 10-31. 27
James Malcolm, A Compendium of Modern Husbandry, Principally Written during a Survey of Surrey
Made at the Desire of the Board of Agriculture; Illustrative also of the Best Practices in ... Kent, Sussex,
&c. In which is Comprised an Analysis of Manures ... Also an Essay (London: printed for the author by C.
and R. Baldwin, 1805), i:98.
142
as a Warden of St. Bride’s Church, the Sheriff of London and Middlesex, and a
benefactor of the Lying-in Charity and the Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb. Brockwell
Hall shimmered as the jewel in the crown marking Blades’s rise to the upper echelons of
the middle class.28
Jay’s apprenticeship with Roper from 1809 until 1814 coincided neatly with the
Brockwell Hall project. Although the exact nature of Jay’s involvement in the project is
unclear, one can guess that his contributions to the building process included some of the
more mundane architectural tasks like drafting working drawings and construction
supervision. These types of “hands-on” experiences undoubtedly gave him intimate
knowledge of the project. The commissions Jay received in subsequent years to design
and build high-style villas in Savannah bear out the contention that Jay gained much
useful knowledge through his involvement with the Brockwell project.
A second job that came into Roper’s office between 1811 and 1814 during Jay’s
apprenticeship there was the commission to design almshouses to accommodate some of
the charitable activities of Rowland Hill’s Surrey Chapel.29
Receiving this important
assignment from Hill to design an institutional building certainly suggests that his good
28
Account of the Lying-in Charity for Delivering Poor Married Women at their Own Habitations,
Instituted 1757 (London: Printed by S. Gosnell, 1804), 34; Asylum for the Support and Education of the
Deaf and Dumb Children of the Poor, Plan of the Asylum for the Support and Education of the Deaf and
Dumb Children of the Poor: including Purposes of the Institution; Rules of the Society; and Lists of the
Officers and Governors ... Instituted 1792 (London: Shacklewell, 1807), 23; The Royal Kalendar; or,
Complete and Correct Register for England, Scotland, Ireland, and America, for the Year 1808 (London:
Printed for J. Stockdale, [1808]), 134; Bank of England, A List of the Names of All Such Proprietors of the
Bank of England, Who Are Qualified to Vote at the Ensuing Election ... on ... the 11th of April, and ... the
12th of April, 1809 (London: H. Teape, Printer [1809]), 3; East India Company, A List of the Names of the
Members of the United Company of Merchants of England, Trading to the East-Indies, Who Stood
Qualified as Voters on the Company’s Books the 11th of April, 1809 (London]: Cox and Son, [1809]), 9;
William Nicholls, The History and Traditions of Mallerstang Forest and Pendragon Castle (Manchester:
John Heywood, Deansgate, and Ridgefield, 1883), 89-92; Howard Coutts, “London Cut Glass, The Work
of John Blades and Messrs. Jones,” Antique Collecting 22:2 (June, 1987), 22-24. 29
'Blackfriars Road: The Surrey Theatre and Surrey Chapel', in Walter Thornbury and Edward Walford,
Old and New London: A Narrative History of Its People and Its Places (London: Cassell and Co., Ltd,
1875), vi:368-383.
143
friend William Jay approved of Roper’s treatment of his son. Whether or not William
left Roper’s office on a happy note may never be known, but the Surrey Chapel
Almshouses project certainly lends weight to the proposition. (1818, London 2-5)
Sometimes apprenticeships worked well with benefits for both the master and
apprentice. But too often a young man’s entry into the field of architecture paralleled that
of Martin Chuzzlewit with his master, the architectural hack Seth Pecksniff. In this case
an ill-informed, but well-meaning relative of Chuzzlewit and Pecksniff thought he was
doing them both a favor by underwriting the former’s apprenticeship with the latter.
However, the advantage accrued disproportionately to Pecksniff. Dickens tells the reader
that Pecksniff took in young gentlemen to lodge “in the ancient manner of apprentices,”
but unlike the masters of old, Pecksniff collected the premiums, but imparted no
training.30
And in fact, he had no expertise as an architect. Dickens writes
of his architectural doings, nothing was clearly known, except that he had never
designed or built anything… . Mr. Pecksniff’s professional engagements, indeed,
were almost, if not entirely, confined to the reception of pupils; for the collection
of rents, with which pursuit he occasionally varied and relieved his graver toils,
can hardly be said to be a strictly architectural employment. His genius lay in
ensnaring parents and guardians, and pocketing premiums.31
The women of the Pecksniff household probably did the most for the apprentices.
Possibly the same is true of the Roper establishment. Until the 1840s his residence and
architectural offices shared the same address. As Davidoff and Hall have asserted, the
female relatives of professional men often contributed to the family fortunes by looking
30
Saint, The Image of the Architect, 52. 31
Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, 2 vols. (Boston: Fields, Osgood, and
Co., 1870 reprint of London: Chapman and Hall, 1844 edition), I, 14-15.
144
after the needs of apprentices and pupils.32
Left to his own devices, Pecksniff’s apprentice Chuzzlewit developed a design for
a grammar school that he entered in a competition and promptly forgot until years later
when he happened upon the groundbreaking for a school of his design that was credited
to Pecksniff. Such exploitation of apprentices was not uncommon. The architect George
Wightwick, who began a London apprenticeship in 1818 remembered, “I expected a
tutor; I found only an employer… I found, in short, that I had paid my premium for the
opportunity of self-instruction—…for the privilege of serving my master and picking up
such information as might lie in my way.”33
Entering competitions like Chuzzlewit’s submission for the grammar school was a
common marketing tool that young architects employed. In 1816 William Jay tendered
designs for the Wellington Assembly Rooms in Liverpool. Although the commission
went to another architect, presumably participating in the competition put his name
before the public. But more often than not, the exercise amounted to nothing more than
heeding the friendly maxim ‘if you cannot obtain it, make work.’ Wightwick recalled
keeping busy “by concocting ideal designs and entering competitions”34
The same was
true in Pecksniff’s work room where hypothetical drawings and models inspired the
observer to quip "...if but one twentieth part of the churches which were built in the front
room ... could only be made available by the parliamentary commissioners, no more
churches would be wanted for at least five centuries.”35
32
Davidoff and Hall, 264. 33
Saint, 54. 34
Saint, 54. 35
Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit, i:15.
145
Showing in the annual exhibitions of the Royal Academy theoretically gave
architects another means of attracting a clientele. From the time Roper first allowed him
to submit designs from his firm’s address until he departed for America, Jay entered
designs in the Royal Academy exhibitions. Most of the titles for his entries suggest “airy
castles” typical of student work. Not many architects had patrons, much less middle class
clients that were looking for a Design for a Boat House (1810, no. 842) or a Design for a
Prospect Room (1815, no. 816) or a Design for a Grecian Casino (1812, no. 801).
Again, implicit in Jay’s Design for a Public Library, (1809, no. 831) was the dream of
elite patronage, but of a public-spirited, rather than self-indulgent type. Only the Church
at Savannah, America (1817, no. 891) held any promise of being a real commission.
There is no evidence that the church in Savannah ever existed, so the commission must
have fallen through and the church was not actually under construction as the Royal
Academy entry implied.36
Like exhibiting designs at the Annual Exhibitions of the Royal Academy,
publishing books of plans enabled architects to compete for clients by demonstrating their
design skills to the public and, perhaps, to earn some money as an author. Although
pattern books offered a huge variety of design ideas to middle class consumers, many
focused on plans for suburban villas. E. Gyfford described the form in the title of his
Designs for Elegant Cottages and Small Villas Calculated for the Comfort and
Convenience of Persons of Moderate and of Ample Fortune; Carefully Studied and
Thrown into Perspective (1806). Other authors touting the same form included David
Liang in Hints for Dwellings (1801), Charles Busby in A Series of Designs for Villas and
36
Algernon Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors and their work
from its foundation in 1769 to 1904 (New York: B. Franklin, 1972 reprint of 1906 edition), vi, 238.
146
Country Houses (1808), and Edmund Aiken in Designs for Villas and Other Buildings
(1808). Architects and designers also published guidance on creating interior
surroundings that would project a middle class respectability. Some typical titles are
Charles Busby’s A Collection of Designs for Modern Embellishments Suitable to
Parlours, Dining and Drawing Rooms, Folding Doors, Chimney Pieces, Varandas (sic),
Frizes (sic), Etc. (1810), William F. Pocock’s Modern Finishings for Rooms (1811), and
George Smith’s A Collection of Designs for Household Furniture and Interior
Decoration (1808). While there were other important tastemakers such as Rudolph
Ackermann who published the periodical The Repository of Arts, Sciences, and
Literature, John Taylor of London published all of the titles listed above. The same John
Taylor was a London relation of Issac Taylor whose daughter wrote novels and
prescriptive manuals that Taylor and Hessey published.37
Although Jay exhibited frequently at the Royal Academy during his London
years, he never seems to have won a commission for a “boat house” or a “Grecian
Casino.” In fact, Jay’s only commission for an important building in London probably
came through his father’s religious network, rather than from some form of advertising.38
In 1815 the Reverend Alexander Fletcher awarded Jay his first known professional
commission for the Albion Chapel, Moorfields, London. (1818, London 2-5) Fletcher,
who led a group of Scots dissenters, enjoyed the admiration of the elder Jay whose
37
Davidoff and Hall, fn 114, 494. 38
Although no documentation of the London commission is known, in another instance the Reverend
William Jay recommended his architect son to Thomas Wilson who was well-known among dissenters and
non-conformists for establishing chapels. William Jay letter to Thomas Wilson, August 9, 1826 (Hull
Museums, Collections accession number KINCM:2006.3790). For more on Wilson’s work as a chapel
builder and role model for business-like middle class patronage that combined loans with outright gifts for
church expansion, see: John Handby Thompson, “’An Important Work’: Building a Victorian Chapel” in
David William Bebbington and Timothy Larsen, eds., Modern Christianity and Cultural Aspirations
(London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), 91-92.
147
influence probably helped to secure the commission for his son.39
As Davidoff and Hall
have argued “Kinship and family played a key part in successful professional
establishments.”40
Without it the path to success was more difficult.
The Albion Chapel received a warm critical reception and was immortalized in
Elmes’s Metropolitan Improvements (1830) and Topographical Dictionary (1831).41
Here, again, personal connections may have played a role. In 1820 and 1821 Elmes
lectured on architecture at the Surrey Institution that was located on Blackfriars’ Road
just around the corner from Roper’s Stamford Street office.42
(1818, London 2-5) Since
Roper belonged to the Surrey Institution, he may have been in a position to bring his own
work and that of his students to Elmes’s attention.43
Also an architect, Elmes keenly
perceived the shortcomings in the architectural program at the Royal Academy as well as
the challenges young architects faced in establishing their careers. He railed against the
“ill-constructed and worse-governed Royal Academy” and charged “that the want of a
proper establishment for the instruction of architectural students is one great cause of the
retrograding of art in this country.”44
Despite the support of well-wishers, additional commissions did not materialize
for the young architect. So late in 1817 Jay departed England bound for Georgia where
39
Thomas Wallace, A Portraiture of the Late Reverend William Jay,…with notes from his conversations
(London: Arthur Hall Virtue and Co., 1854), 29. 40
Davidoff and Hall, 263. 41
James Elmes, Metropolitan Improvements; or London in the Nineteenth Century (London: Jones and Co.,
1830), 170; A Topographical Dictionary of London and Its Environs (London: Whittaker, Treacher, and
Arnot, 1831), 7. Also see: G.L.M. Goodfellow, “William Jay and the Albion Chapel,” Journal of the
Society of Architectural Historians (December, 1963, 22, 4), 225-227. 42
Frederick Kurzer, “A History of the Surrey Institution,”Annals of Science (April 1, 2000, v. 57, iss.2),
133. [full article 109-141.] 43
John Debrett, The British Imperial Calendar for the Year of our Lord 1822 ... : Containing a General
Register of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and its Colonies (London: Winchester and
Varnham, [1822]), 263-264. 44
James Elmes, Lectures on Architecture (New York: Benjamin Blom, Inc., 1971 reprint of the London,
1821 edition), 395-398.
148
another connection that involved extended family and communitas promised to help
establish his architectural practice. The Richardson house, which he designed in
Savannah, Georgia for his brother-in-law’s sister’s family, launched the American phase
of his career.45
Both Martin Chuzzlewit and William Jay set off to seek their fortunes in America.
Disgusted by his prospects with Pecksniff, the impatient Chuzzlewit left for America in a
huff, despite the dismay of Pecksniff’s perennial journeyman architect Tom Pinch. “’No,
no,’ cried Tom, in a kind of agony. ‘Don’t go there. Pray don’t. Think better of it.
Don’t be so dreadfully regardless of yourself. Don’t go to America!’”46
Tom Pinch not
only expresses Dickens’s own disapprobation for America, but also embodies the plight
of the risk avoider in a volatile economic environment where respectability is valued and
economic distress is viewed as a personal failing. Although patently competent, Pinch
chose to endure Pecksniff’s abuse rather than strike out on his own and chance failure.
Pinch’s plea to Chuzzlewit did not dissuade him from embarking for America where a
deceptive prospectus induced him to purchase worthless land in a swampy settlement of
log cabins called Eden. There he contracted a fever that almost killed him before he
could return to England poorer than he left.
Whereas Chuzzlewit’s fictional experience in America was disastrous from day
one, Jay’s American sojourn started out well. His work for Richardson stimulated three
new commissions for villas in Savannah. The four “mansions,” as they were termed in
Savannah, established Jay as an imaginative architect and solidly demonstrated his
45
William Jay’s sister Anne married Robert Bolton of Savannah, Georgia. Robert Bolton’s sister Frances
married Richard Richardson of Savannah. William Jay designed the Savannah home of Richard and
Frances Richardson. 46
Dickens, I, 223.
149
astonishingly refined fluency in the Regency architectural vocabulary of spatial
organization, classical ornament, ingenious lighting, and technological innovation. Each,
like a musical composition in the hands of a consummate composer, was an original
variation on the theme of the villa. Jay’s house designs for his Savannah clients were
solid evidence that he had mastered the concept of the middle-class villa while working
on projects such as Brockwell Hall in Roper’s London office. However, the Savannah
villas were not mere imitations of the English prototype. Jay’s designs were
individualized responses to his clients’ needs and scaled to complement Savannah’s city
plan. During his five-year stay in Savannah, Jay also designed a temporary ceremonial
structure for President James Monroe’s visit to the city in 1819 as well as a bank, a
theater, and a customs house. Jay’s public buildings, like his villas, embodied the latest
architectural trends in each of their genres. Although the buildings Jay designed for
Savannah could have represented the beginning of a very promising career, they turned
out to be a large percentage of his life’s work.
Like Dickens’s fictional Eden, Savannah was subject to the vagaries of man and
nature. First, the Panic of 1819 propelled Savannah, along with the rest of the United
States, into an economic decline. The innovations in financial capitalism that initially
had enriched the Savannah merchants of the communitas turned against them overnight
when the Manchester cotton market declined and the money supply tightened. Then in
January of 1820 the worst fire in Savannah’s history destroyed many homes and most of
the business district. The fire claimed concerns vital to everyday life--the City Market,
the bookstores, the printing office, the apothecary shop—as well as those essential to
transatlantic commerce. Commodities stored in “fireproof” warehouses pending
150
shipment were reduced to ash. Two days after the fire, on January 13, 1820, Martha
Richardsone, a survivor of the fire, wrote to a relative, “I intended to have written you
yesterday, but I could not sufficiently compose myself to sit down quietly to do so. Half
of Savannah is gone. … Such a scene of woe never did I witness.” Exploding gunpowder
literally shook the city and windows shattered as the fire consumed Savannah. Some
people escaped with only the clothes on their backs. Many residences on the South side
of town, including the Jay villas, escaped damage, but the fire had destroyed the
commercial lifeblood of the city.47
Later in 1820 heavy summer rains left water standing in the ruins of burned out
buildings where mosquitoes bred. By early autumn, yellow fever gripped Savannah with
a vengeance. Even though the worst was yet to come, Martha Richardsone’s September
letter to a relative lamented, “To give you a list of the dead would fill this sheet. History
does not give any account of the plague half as dreadful. Father, Mother, and child have
been seen on the same hearse going to their graves. More than one instance has occurred
where whole families have been swept away…. Yellow fever and black vomit is our
daily theme and nightly dream.” When the yellow fever cases subsided, the final death
toll came to 695 white people and an estimated 200 African Americans. In December
1820 only 2,500 of Savannah’s pre-epidemic population of 7,500 remained in the city.
The rest had either fled or died. 48
47
Martha Richardsone, Letter to James Screven, January 13, 1820 (Arnold-Screven Papers in the Southern
Historical Collection, Manuscript Department, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill); Walter J. Fraser, Savannah and the Old South (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press,
2003),195-199. 48
Martha Richardsone, Letter to James Screven, September 16, 1820 (Arnold-Screven Papers in the
Southern Historical Collection, Manuscript Department, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill); An Official Register of the Deaths Which Occurred Among the White Population in the City
of Savannah During the Extraordinary Season of Sickness and Mortality Which Prevailed in the Summer
151
Surely Richardsone expressed the sentiments of many when she wrote
“Misfortune loves a twin. It seldom comes single. We have had fire, storms, and yellow
fever. Poor us. Oh how I could weep. Let us pray that it will do good.” As for William
Jay, he was completing several projects when the Panic of 1819 began. The 1820 fire
was a mixed blessing for his architectural practice. Although it destroyed his unfinished
customs house, the fire stimulated a commission to design a new building for the Branch
Bank of the United States at Savannah. In what may be regarded as a calculated career
move to promote his role as a technological expert, Jay published an article on structural
approaches to fireproofing buildings in the The Georgian of January 22, 1820. Jay’s
optimistic and energetic approach to establishing a career in Savannah survived the
double whammy of the financial panic and the disastrous fire. We do not know if the
yellow fever epidemic or creditors’ pending lawsuits precipitated Jay’s final departure
from Savannah. But, in 1823, when he was back in England, he quipped to a friend that
he trusted he would not be returning to America.49
Once back in England, Jay settled in Cheltenham. There he designed some
terrace housing and acted as the developer of at least one project, Pittville Parade.50
When an economic downturn struck in 1828 and the units Jay had built did not sell, he
and Fall Months of the Year 1820 (Savannah: Henry P. Russell, 1820), 23-24; Walter J. Fraser, Savannah
and the Old South (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 2003), 199-203. 49
Martha Richardsone, Letter to James Screven, September 16, 1820 (Arnold-Screven Papers in the
Southern Historical Collection, Manuscript Department, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill); Alexander Gilchrist, Life of William Etty, R.A. (London: D. Bogue, 1855), i, 172; Hanna
Lerski, William Jay, Itinerant English Architect, 1792-1837 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America,
Inc., 1983), 55. 50
Oliver C. Bradbury, “William Jay’s English Works after 1822: Recent Discoveries,” Architectural
History 43 (2000), 187-194.
152
slipped into bankruptcy.51
Eventually a unit was sold and the bankruptcy was discharged
in 1830.
William Jay’s father did not attribute his son’s financial embarrassment to
economic conditions but to personal failing. The father explained, “My son, besides
professional talent and cleverness, had a large share of wit and humor, qualities always
dangerous and commonly injurious to the possessor…. His comic powers drew him into
company not the most friendly to youthful improvement. He was led into expense by
admirers and flatterers… .”52
However, his marriage to Louisa Coulson (1802-1876)
returned William Jay to the steady course of middle class respectability. As Davidoff and
Hall have argued, middle class “homes were seen as providing a bedrock of morality in
an unstable and dangerous world.”53
William Jay’s father underscored this sentiment by
noting “the principles which had been early sown revived, especially under the teachings
of affliction and the conjugal influence of gentle, wise, and consistent piety.”54
William
Jay may have met Louisa Coulson through his brother-in-law Robert Bolton’s ministry in
Henley-on-Thames. Besides her father-in-law’s remarks, other indications of Louisa’s
religiousity are that her youngest son Ernest Coulson Jay entered the ministry and she
was a regular contributor of funds to the London Missionary Society to benefit “Native
Girls.”55
51
Perry’s Bankrupt and Insolvent Gazette; Containing a Complete Register of English, Scotch, and Irish
Bankrupts, Insolvents, Assignments, Assignees, Dividends, Certificates, Dissolution of Partnerships, etc…
(London: William Myers, 1828), 469; Perry’s Bankrupt and Insolvent Gazette; Containing a Complete
Register of English, Scotch, and Irish Bankrupts, Insolvents, Assignments, Assignees, Dividends,
Certificates, Dissolution of Partnerships, etc… (London: William Myers, 1829), 366. 52
Jay, i:106-107. 53
Davidoff and Hall, xv. 54
Jay, i:107. 55
“Chronicle.-Home,” Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle 36 New Series (1858), 781; “Diary
of Churches,” Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle (August, 1862), 561; R. R. Turner,
153
In Dickens's imagination there could not have been a greater hell than America.
But Jay found one. Between 1830 and 1835 Jay dropped from sight. Then he accepted a
government appointment on the island of Mauritius in 1836. He moved his family there,
designed one building, and died of a fever within a year. After Jay’s death his widow
returned to England where she supported herself and her children by keeping a school in
her hometown of Henley. England’s expanding empire presented opportunities to people
brave or desperate enough to risk embracing it. For William Jay, however, it had been a
poor bet. Pushed to the edge of his profession and the edge of empire, he died at the age
of forty-five, leaving his widow and orphans to fend for themselves.56
Despite his middle class upbringing and professional training, William Jay was
never able to sustain a career in architecture. His failure cannot be attributed to lack of
talent or effort. His surviving work still receives a favorable critical reception. And as a
businessman, Jay imaginatively tried many strategies to jumpstart his practice. He was
even willing to take his chances in America and in the eastern reaches of the empire. Yet
he remained obscure and died young without leaving property or life assurance, “the
epitome of masculine responsibility,” to support his widow and minor children.57
Perhaps, in the eyes of his time, this was Jay’s greatest failing. His life proves that even
in a time when the tide was rising for the middle class as a whole, it did not raise all
boats. Although his architectural accomplishments brought Jay very little in the way of
lasting recognition and even less financial stability, his projects carried out for Savannah
clients represent the apogee of the city’s rich architectural heritage. Sadly, remodeling
“Cavendish Theological College (1860-1863): Joseph Parker’s Experiment in Ministerial Training,”
Transactions, The Congregational Historical Society 21:4 (October, 1972), 97. 56
Jay, i:106. 57
Davidoff and Hall, 213.
154
drastically changed two of the villas and demolition completely eradicated a third.
Similarly, the bank fell to a wrecker’s ball, alterations to the theater obliterated the Jay
design, and the customs house was left in ruins after the fire of 1820. Within the body of
work that Jay completed in Savannah, only the Richardson house survives largely
unaltered as a substantive reference to the communitas and Savannah’s longstanding
outward orientation towards England and the Atlantic world. .
CHAPTER SIX
The Domestic Style of Communitas:
Furnishing a Savannah Parlor, c. 1820
An English person totally up to date with the latest London styles of architecture
and furnishings for 1820 could easily have mistaken Richard Richardson’s Savannah
parlor for a counterpart in an upper middle class villa near London. Such was the reach
of the communitas that it wielded influence across the spectrum of culture in Savannah
from religion and business to lifestyle and appearance. At no time before or since has the
aspect of Savannah been more attuned to contemporary English fashion than in the 1820s
when the communitas created a culture that reflected its transatlantic connections.
Putting Richard Richardson’s parlor and its furnishings under the microscope clearly
defines the English middle class presence in the material culture of an American home.
The Englishwoman Mrs. Basil Hall was quick to notice the affinities between Savannah
and her homeland.
On her visit to America in 1827 and 1828, she observed, "Savannah is a very
pretty place, quite like an English village with its grass walks and rows of trees on each
side of the street."1 Extending the analogy, she continued, "the greater number of our
associates here are English or Scotch or connected with them, and this has made the
society particularly pleasing to us."2 It would be easy to dismiss Hall's statements as
offhand remarks out of step with scholarship that emphasizes what was distinctly
American about the decorative arts and architecture in Savannah between 1800 and
1 Mrs. Basil Hall, The Aristocratic Journey, (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1931), 226.
2 Ibid., 227.
156
1825.3 Yet to do so would be to overlook an important key to understanding the
communitas and the scope of its influence on the culture of the city. Mrs. Hall's
observation alludes to economic and cultural connections that Savannahians maintained
with Britain long after the United States achieved political independence. By focusing on
Richard Richardson (1785-1833) and his roles as an immigrant, merchant, and consumer,
this chapter explores the social meanings of the objects that connected Savannah's middle
and upper classes to England. Richardson's home and material possessions suggest that
he belonged to a highly mobile group that was intimately integrated into the Atlantic
world and imbued with cosmopolitan tastes rather than isolated pioneers forging a new
culture in a former colonial outpost.4
Although no longer "colonials," Savannahians still looked to the east across the
Atlantic and to coastal waterways for connections to other places as the nineteenth
century opened. Whether the destination was upriver hinterlands, a nearby coastal town,
or another continent, leaving Savannah frequently required traveling by water rather than
roads. Consequently the ocean voyage that the Georgian Edward Harden recorded in his
journal documented a familiar routine. Harden wrote at Savannah on Sunday, May 23,
1819, "...Bound to Liverpool, and ready to sail the first fair wind."5 Continuing his
account, Harden recalled the sequence of events leading up to his departure. The ship
Oglethorpe rose and fell with the swells in the Savannah River at the four-mile point
mooring. After a day of impatient waiting, Harden and Captain Jayne's other passengers
3 See Katherine Wood Gross, “The Sources of Furniture Sold in Savannah, 1789-1815” (Unpublished M.A.
Thesis, University of Delaware, Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, 1967) and Page Talbott,
Classical Savannah: Fine and Decorative Arts, 1800-1840 (Athens and London: University of Georgia
Press, 1995). 4 Today the Richardson house is known as the Owens-Thomas House. The Telfair Museum of Museum of
Art has owned and operated it as a historic house museum since 1954. 5 Edward Harden, Journal of a Voyage to Europe in 1819 (Edward Harden Papers, Special Collections
Library, Duke University).
157
ferried from Savannah to the ship on the Customs House boat. Mosquitoes hummed and
bit throughout the warm, still night. By 5:30 a.m. the wind was light, but fair;
Oglethorpe weighed anchor. She crossed the bar at 10 a.m., Tuesday, May 25, 1819.6
Harden's description of the Oglethorpe embarking for England conveys how
directly the vagaries of nature influenced lives of nineteenth-century Savannahians.
Wind and tides, not management's timetable, determined a ship's sailing. Similarly,
natural forces and cycles shaped many human endeavors. Savannah's summer rains
brought mosquitoes and the diseases they transmitted: malaria, dengue and yellow fever.
Families calculated the risks every year before deciding to remain in Savannah and face
disease or to depart and endure the hardships of a trek to the interior or an ocean voyage.
Many among the city's affluent residents fled to the Southern upcountry, the Northern
states, and England. Some spent as many as five months away each year, leaving
Savannah in May and returning in November. Because the uncertainties of the
wilderness or the deep challenged those embarking and the uncertainties of surviving "the
sickly months" threatened those remaining, everyone knew each goodbye might be the
last.7 The vagaries of nature that shaped the life of the town and its citizens also give a
good indication of Savannah’s tenuous position on of the edge of the Atlantic world
economy.
Enterprise in Savannah cycled into dormancy as the summer solstice approached.
Many planters and merchants put their local affairs in the hands of others and took their
business dealings to New York and beyond to England. Savannah reawakened when
Georgia's first frost signaled the "all clear" at the end of "the sickly months." Only then
6 Ibid.
7 For a discussion of the expression “the sickly months” see William Harden, A History of Savannah and
South Georgia, vol. 1 (Covington, GA: Cherokee Publishing Company, 1985 reprint of 1919 edition), 292.
158
did residents return to the city, just in time for the arrival of the new cotton crop. The
first murmurs of business activity soon swelled into a constant hum. Nothing was “heard
near the water but the negroes’ song while stowing away the cotton; and every traveler
from the country [was] questioned as to what prices produce bears, what quantities
brought to market, what number of boats loaded are coming down, etc.”8 Ginning,
pressing, baling, and assembling cotton cargoes enlivened Savannah for half the year.
Along the wharves slaves transported cargoes of ships to and from the warehouses,
accompanying “all their labor with a kind of monotonous song, at times breaking out into
a yell, and then sinking into the same nasal drawl.”9 Then, with the annual passing of the
vernal equinox, nature calmed the Atlantic's winter turbulence. Each week more ships
cast off Savannah's wharves for the voyage to New York or the crossing to Liverpool
until inertia again lulled the city into summer slumber.
The social life of the city followed the same seasonal rhythms. By November the
families of merchants and planters populated Savannah. Every tide brought more
anxiously awaited homecomings. Church pews filled, party invitations arrived, schools
reconvened. The town offered ample activity for those not wholly occupied at counting
houses, cotton warehouses, and wharves. Savannahian Mary Telfair wrote to a friend in
New York that she "...dispatch[ed] a Courier daily to the Bluff (our Battery) to watch like
Sister Anne of Bluebeard memory the distant sail" until extended family and friends
disembarked for a winter's stay.10
Although not mentioned in this letter, Mary Telfair
and other elite Savannahians also monitored the marine traffic for arrivals of cargoes of
8 William Tell Harris, Remarks Made During a Tour Through the United States of America in 1817, 1818,
and 1819 (London: Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, 1821), 69. 9 Whitman Mead, Travels in North America (New York: C. S. Van Winkle, 1820), 13-14.
10 Mary Telfair, Letter [184] to Mary Few, c. 1830 (William Few Collection, Georgia State Archives).
159
special ordered luxury goods that had been purchased in Philadelphia, New York, and
England during the summer and autumn months.
The seasonal routine that Harden registered on a spring morning in 1819, took
place less than a century after James Edward Oglethorpe landed on the bluffs of the
Savannah River to establish Georgia, the last of the original thirteen colonies. During the
eighteenth century Georgia had floundered as the original colonists struggled to survive
from 1733 until the Trustees surrendered their charter to the crown in 1752. The
administration of the royal governors brought a modicum of prosperity to the young
colony, but after twenty years the American Revolution disrupted the cadence of growth.
In October 1779 the French bombardment of British-occupied Savannah caused extensive
property damage. Later a devastating fire in 1796 reversed Savannah's post-
revolutionary recovery.11
When the nineteenth century opened, Georgia still lacked the
accouterments of civilization that older colonies had attained much earlier. In 1800
Indian Territory occupied more than half of the area now known as Georgia. White
settlers sparsely populated the coastal region and a strip of land extending north and west
between the Altamaha/Oconee and Savannah Rivers. Villages- Augusta, Darien,
Sunbury- grew up along the waterways as way stations for forest products and rice
destined for export from Savannah.
Despite the shaky beginnings and periodic setbacks, Savannah was a growing port
with a population of about 7,500 by the first quarter of the nineteenth century.12
In
11
For surveys of early Savannah see: Walter J. Fraser, Jr., Savannah in the Old South (Athens and London:
The University of Georgia Press, 2003) and Whittington B. Johnson, Black Savannah, 1788-1864
(Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 1996). 12
William Harden, A History of Savannah and South Georgia. 2 vols. (Covington, GA: Cherokee
Publishing Co., 1981 reprint of 1913 edition), I:292. A private census of Savannah taken in 1798 set the
population at 2,772 whites, 3,216 slaves, and 238 free blacks. See Walter J. Fraser, Jr., Savannah in the
Old South (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 2003), 159.
160
addition, Savannah stood unchallenged as Georgia's largest municipality, even though
new settlers were entering the state and pushing the frontier westward. The river, with its
warehouses, wharves, and ships, had been and would remain the primary conduit of the
city's prosperity and culture well past the 1825 end point of this study.
Between 1800 and 1825, the busy harbor continually enhanced Savannah's
position as Georgia's largest commercial center. With the invention of the cotton gin
around 1790, raising cotton had become profitable for Georgia planters. Increasing
numbers of bales destined for distant mills passed through the port each year. The lively
cotton trade linked Savannah factors both commercially and culturally to upcountry
planters, on one hand, and to New York bankers and English manufacturers, on the other.
English goods and customs continued to appeal to Savannah's white residents, most of
whom were first generation emigrants from the British Isles or their descendants. And
some Savannah residents like Richard Richardson were immigrants from British
colonies.
Richard Richardson first appeared in Savannah in 1802 a few months before his
seventeenth birthday. He had been born in St. Georges Parish, Bermuda, on November 5,
1785, the eighth of twelve children of Mary and Robert Richardson. Richard was six
years old when his mother died in 1791. His father, a house carpenter, remarried within
four years. After his second wife died, Robert Richardson took a third bride in 1801.
Although the Richardsons' home islands of Bermuda were beautiful, they were never
prosperous, so they often exported sons. Joining the exodus in 1802, Robert and other
family members left Bermuda for Savannah. The Richardsons' motive for immigrating
to Savannah is open to speculation. However, the ruinous fire of 1796 had left the city in
161
great need of house carpenters, so Robert Richardson may have been one of the many
practitioners of building trades who came to Savannah to help rebuild.13
(1796
Savannah) Robert Richardson and his wife did not remain long in Savannah because
they had returned to Bermuda by May, 1804. Before leaving Savannah, however, Robert
Richardson placed his son Richard with the well-established Savannah mercantile firm of
R. and J. Bolton. Richard Richardson’s apprenticeship in the Bolton firm introduced him
to the communitas. In just a few years he had thoroughly immersed himself in the family,
business, religion, and lifestyle of communitas.
As a merchant's apprentice during the first years of the nineteenth century,
Richard Richardson would have learned about a wide range of business practices. At that
time the merchant's occupation embraced a broad variety of business functions that make
up distinct fields today. Merchants bought and sold goods, both wholesale and retail;
built and owned ships; operated as ocean carriers for others; traded their own capital and
acted as commission agents or factors for others; assumed marine risks; performed
banking functions; often had a hand in manufacturing; and at times banded together to
sell shares in corporations to raise capital for large projects.14
At that time, however,
each group seeking designation as a corporation had to petition the legislature for a
charter, so the corporation was a relatively rare entity. In the period after 1815,
specialization began to split up the functions of merchants, but when Richard Richardson
joined R. and J. Bolton, the firm covered almost every branch of business.
An ambitious boy, like Richardson, who apprenticed in a mercantile firm
typically began as an errand boy, but could move up through the ranks to copyist,
13
Mills Lane, Architecture of the Old South: Georgia (Savannah: The Beehive Press, 1986), 72-76. 14
George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860. Vol. 4, The Economic History of the
United States (New York and Toronto: Rinehart and Company, 1951), 11.
162
bookkeeper, specialist outdoor clerk, or even chief clerk. Those with special promise or
family ties might become a representative of the firm in a distant city or a supercargo.15
And the most successful of all might receive an invitation to join the firm as a partner.
Never in America had there been so many opportunities for boys from rural or laboring
backgrounds to achieve success as a merchant as there were between 1815 and 1860. But
as C. Wright Mills put it, "the best statistical chance of becoming a member of the
business elite...[was] to be born into it."16 While the Boltons inherited their shares in the
family firm, Richard Richardson realized his partnership through hard work and
marriage.
Although Richardson began his career with R. and J. Bolton by attending to
menial, routine tasks as he observed how the firm functioned, he could hardly have
chosen a more fortuitous time to join the firm. Richardson's own rise paralleled the
growth in the demand for cotton from English mills. The firm prospered despite the
difficulties the Napoleonic Wars created for American shipping. In 1802 his signature on
a deed witnessing the purchase of a lighter by R. and J. Bolton marked his entry into the
mercantile world.17
From that moment until his financial ruin in the Panic of 1819,
Richardson continually expanded both the nature and scope of his business interests. He
not only mastered the skill set of the traditional merchant, but also contributed to business
innovations that signaled the growth of commercial and industrial capitalism. These
included interests in insurance, banking, and the use of steam-powered machinery. For
15
A supercargo was an officer on a merchant ship who was the representative of the ship owner and had
charge of the cargo. 16
C. Wright Mills, “The American Business Elite: A Collective Portrait,” Tasks of Economic History
(December, 1945), 29 quoted in George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860, 395. 17
A lighter is a flat bottom boat used for loading a ship. Chatham County Court Records, Deed Book X,
195.
163
almost twenty years Richardson's fortunes rose with the cotton market. He advanced in
the firm of R. and J. Bolton from apprentice to partner. In 1811 he married Frances
Lewis Bolton, the daughter of one of the firm's founders.
As his business stature increased Richardson purchased real estate in Savannah
and elsewhere in Georgia, acquired the schooner Nancy White, and bought a steam cotton
press.18
While he served as a factor and an importer and exporter of goods, he also
became the President of both the Bank of the State of Georgia and the Bank of the United
States Savannah Branch. He also belonged to the Board of Directors of the Marine and
Fire Insurance Company of Savannah. Richardson's far-reaching business interests
included the traditional activities of the merchant such as buying and selling ships, slaves,
and cotton. Yet he also was willing to take risks to enter the newer fields of banking and
marine and fire insurance as well as activities that incorporated new technologies such as
the operation of the steam cotton press.19
Richardson's energetic commitment to civic involvements matched his financial
ambitions. He served on the building committee of the Independent Presbyterian Church
and the Board of the Savannah Poor House and Hospital. And in 1807 in the climate of
increasing international tensions, he earned the right to American citizenship by holding
the rank of Orderly Sergeant in the Georgia Militia.20
From an obscure youth in the British colonial outpost of Bermuda, Richardson
achieved success in business and married into one of Savannah's pre-eminent mercantile
18
Chatham County Court Records, Deed Books 2C, 308-309; 2F, 169-171. 19
Richardson’s connections with the Boltons may have helped to stimulate his interest in the potential of
machines to increase profits. His partner John Bolton was one of the investors in “Bolton’s Mill,” an
enterprise chartered by the State of Georgia in 1809 to manufacture cotton and woolen goods. The mill
was located on Upton’s Creek about eight miles from Washington, Georgia. 20
There is also evidence that Richardson affiliated with the Chatham Troop Light Dragoons and the
Georgia Hussars.
164
families. With that accomplished he set about building a house that would embody the
status and reflect the gentility he had achieved. On one hand, his consumer choices of
architecture and household appointments showed Richardson's willingness to adopt
avant-garde British style as a mark of status in America. On the other, those choices also
underscored that his readiness to embrace innovation extended well beyond the realm of
business. The Savannah home of the Bermuda-born merchant and his American wife
would project a sure sense of English, middle-class respectability in the most up-to-date
style of the day. Because of his affiliation with the communitas, Richardson chose the
domestic style of the English middle class to express his identity.
The house that Richard and Frances Richardson occupied during the first five
years of their marriage stood on Lot 27 of Oglethorpe Ward in a section of Savannah
called the Village of St. Gall or Yamacraw.21
(1818 Savannah) It lay to the west of the
core of the city that Oglethorpe marked off in the original plan he laid out in the 1730s.
Although the neighborhood bordered rice fields and was home to many of Savannah's
free blacks, it had the advantage of being close to the Bolton's wharf and the steam cotton
press Richardson had purchased in 1813. But by 1816 Richardson clearly had changed
his mind about living on the fringes. In March of that year he purchased Trust Lot X in
Anson Ward facing Oglethorpe Square in the heart of Savannah's early settlement.22
(1818 Savannah)
In Oglethorpe's plan of Savannah, each ward contained a central square, four trust
21
Robert Bolton, Genealogical and Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England and America
(New York: John A. Gray, Printer, 1862), 140. 22
Chatham County Court Records, Deed Book 2F, 515-517.
165
lots with east-west orientations, and forty house lots with north-south orientations.23
Oglethorpe had designated the large, 60’ by 180' trust lots for public buildings and
assigned the smaller 60’ by 90' house lots for residential use. Despite Oglethorpe's
intentions to the contrary, authorities occasionally assigned trust lots to individuals when
house lots were not available.24
Perhaps that or his official role as Georgia's Surveyor
General explains why William Gerard De Brahm received a grant of Trust Lot X in 1756.
The lot passed through several hands after the grant to De Brahm and before Richardson
purchased the land from the Trustees of the Chatham Academy who operated a school for
children.25
A map made after the fire of 1796 places Trust Lot X within the zone that the
fire destroyed and no physical evidence survives from any structure built on Trust Lot X
before 1816.26
(1796, Savannah) Therefore it is possible that the lot lacked significant
improvements when Richardson purchased it.
Trust Lot X fronted the same square as his wife’s childhood home, the Bolton
House. Frances’s father Robert Bolton built the house after an earlier dwelling on the
same site burned down in the fire of 1796. Like the homes of other rich merchants that
dotted the East coast of the United States, Robert Bolton’s massive residence stood as a
measure of his status and prosperity. Vertically, the building rose to three full stories
under a gable roof with two dormers and end chimneys. Horizontally, rows of seven
windows each stretched across the façade. The front elevation exhibited minimal
23
John W. Reps, “C2 + L
2 = S
2? Another Look at the Origins of Savannah’s Town Plan,” in Harvey H.
Jackson and Phinizy Spalding, eds., Forty Years of Diversity: Essays on Colonial Georgia (Athens: The
University of Georgia Press, 1984), 101-102. 24
Charles J. Johnson, Jr. Mary Telfair: The Life and Legacy of a Nineteenth-century Woman (Savannah:
Frederic C. Beil, 2002), 52. 25 Page Talbott, <[email protected]> "Chapter 1: History of the House," 18 November 2002, personal e-
mail (November 18. 2002). 26
Manuscript map. Ink and watercolor on paper, ca. 1796. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
<http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/images/savan.jpg> (10 May 2005).
166
ornamentation except in the central bay. There a ground level porch, a second-story
Palladian window, and an attic-story pediment gave the building an understated focal
point. Despite the fact that the Bolton house and grounds occupied several house lots that
incorporated more acreage than a trust lot, Richardson must have felt that his new home
site outranked the Bolton location.27
Living on a trust lot suggested that the occupant had
achieved the status of a civic institution. What is more, the Bolton House marked its
owner as a member of the wealthy merchant class. The house Richard Richardson would
build across the square would introduce a new architectural style to Savannah and signal
the dawn of a new era of commercial and industrial capitalism as well as accelerating
consumerism. On the other hand, the old-fashioned form of the Bolton house associated
it with old, established mercantile elite.
Having secured a site for the new house, Richardson turned his attention to
building and furnishing the home. According to a letter written by the Savannah factor
John McNish, Richardson sailed from New York for Liverpool aboard the packet Ship
South Carolina on July 12, 1816.28
While McNish established that Richardson went to
England, public records indicate that his absence from Savannah extended over several
months. He undoubtedly attended to business in Liverpool with his principal agents who
were his brother James and brother-in-law Robert Bolton. There was also time to spend
on personal matters such as engaging the architect William Jay and ordering furnishings
for the house he commissioned Jay to design.29
27
Built for Richardson's father-in-law Robert Bolton (1757-1802), the Bolton house was demolished in
1892. 28 John McNish letter to William Page, July 24, 1816 (William Page Papers in the Southern Historical
Collection, Manuscript Department, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). 29
Richardson's name did not appear in the public record in Savannah from June through November of
1816.
167
Precisely when, why, and how Richardson retained Jay as his architect remains
obscure, but connections through family and communitas undoubtedly explain the
commission. Frances Bolton Richardson's brother Robert was married to Jay's sister
Anne.30
William Jay and his sister Anne had grown up in Bath, England, where their
father was a leading dissenting, that is a non-Anglican Protestant, preacher. Jay began
his architectural studies in London around 1806 and worked in the office of the architect
and surveyor David Riddal Roper from 1809 until 1815. Between 1809 and 1817 he
exhibited designs at the annual exhibitions of the Royal Academy. And the young
architect designed the prominently placed Albion Chapel that received a warm critical
reception. The architectural writer James Elmes included an engraving of the building in
his book about London architecture titled Metropolitan Improvements (1829).31
Jay's training and early career placed him well to absorb the latest London design
trends of the Regency style. Coinciding roughly with the rule of George IV, the English
Regency style prevailed from around 1790 until 1840. Described in the most
circumscribed terms, the Regency style was late classicism that drew inspiration from the
bold, simplified forms of the Greek Doric Order. A slightly broader view shows that
Regency design was also complex and eclectic. In addition to expanding on the classical
30
In addition to business and marriage, evangelical Protestantism connected the Bolton, Richardson, and
Jay families. All subscribed to dissenting, that is non-Anglican Protestantism. The Boltons were pointedly
pious. The first Boltons to settle in Savannah had left Philadelphia under the aegis of George Whitefield.
Subsequent generations of Boltons supported English clergy who came to Savannah to preach to slaves and
Robert Bolton abandoned his business career in the wake of the Panic of 1819 in order to take the cloth.
The Reverend William Jay (1769-1853), father of the architect of the same name, was both a preacher and
a widely read writer on religious subjects. His description of the pious merchant could have been the role
model for his son-in-law before the entered the ministry. See: George Redford and John Angell James,
eds., The Autobiography of William Jay; with Reminiscences of Some Distinguished Contemporaries,
Selections from His Correspondence, and Literary Remains (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1855);
William J. Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock”: Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs. Bolton
(London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1860); and Robert Bolton, Genealogical and Biographical Account of
the Family of Bolton in England and America (New York: John A. Gray, Printer, 1862). 31
For more on Jay see: Hanna Hryniewiecka Lerski, William Jay, Itinerant English Architect, 1792-1837
(Lanhan, MD, New York, London: University Press of America, 1983).
168
repertoire, Regency designers borrowed forms and romantic imagery from Gothic and
oriental architecture and design.32
Designers of the Regency period also responded to the
industrial revolution by choosing new technologies and materials. Publications catering
to England's growing middle class promoted Regency design in books of architectural
plans and periodicals brimming with decorating and fashion tips. One of the best known
of the genre was George Smith's A Collection of Designs for Household Furniture and
Interior Decoration... (1808). Another was Rudolph Ackermann's monthly periodical
published in London from 1809 to 1828 under the title The Repository of Arts, Literature,
Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions, and Politics (hereafter The Repository of Arts).
That these types of publications promoting a consumer culture turned up in Savannah's
bookstores and private libraries proves that they found audiences far beyond the
metropole on the fringes of the Atlantic economy.33
Consequently, both the architect
William Jay and his client Richard Richardson had access to visual resources of the
Regency style through direct observation in England and a variety of printed materials.
When Richardson returned to Savannah from England late in 1816, he must have
broken ground almost immediately because words scratched in a smear of mortar on an
interior basement wall of the house establish construction "Began Nov AD 1816/Finished
Jan AD 1819."34
The inscription also suggests that building had been under way for
some time when the architect William Jay disembarked from the Ship Dawn in Savannah
32 See John Morley, Regency Design, 1790-1840: Gardens, Buildings, Interiors, Furniture (New York:
Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1993). 33
Titles available for purchase in Savannah included La Belle Assemblee, Repertory of Arts, Manufactures,
etc., and Repository of Arts, Literature, etc. (Georgian and Evening Advertiser, April 10, 1821, 1. Listed
in the personal property of Dr. Lemuel Kollock were four volumes of Repertory of Arts and Manufactures
(Estate inventory, 1823). 34 [Olivia Alison], The Richardson-Owens-Thomas House, Savannah, Georgia (Savannah: Telfair
Academy of Arts and Sciences, Inc., 1992), 2. John Retan affixed his name to the inscription. Retan was a
builder who also worked on the Savannah Branch of Bank of the United States.
169
on December 29, 1817 and took over supervision of the project. Many of the city’s
inhabitants must have been watching with interest as the Richardson house went up
because three very prosperous Savannahians commissioned Jay to design houses for them
soon after his arrival.35
Comparing the exteriors of the Richardson house and the nearby Davenport house
explains why well-heeled Savannahians clamored for Jay's services. Both of the
buildings fronted on squares, served as homes, and were completed between 1819 and
1821.36
The similarities end there. While the master builder Isaiah Davenport located his
building on a modest house lot, the Richardson house stands on a trust lot. Erected with
red brick joined in a common bond and trimmed with brownstone lintels, the Davenport
House embodies a time-honored tradition in substantial building techniques. Conversely,
the Richardson house features a stucco exterior that was treated with transparent washes
and incised lines in imitation of Bath stone blocks. Although stucco had been in use
since antiquity, new formulas and techniques made it a favored material among Regency
designers. The Richardson house was the first but not the last residence in Savannah to
feature a stucco exterior.
On first glance, the facades of the Davenport and Richardson houses share some
similarities in composition. Both are two stories over a basement. One approaches the
symmetrical facade of each building via a curving stair that leads to a central doorway.
The bays flanking the doorways have two windows each on the first and second stories.
35
They were the merchant William Scarbrough who entertained President Monroe in the house Jay
designed for him, Alexander Telfair the heir to mercantile fortune, and Archibald Bulloch, a son of one of
Georgia's signers of the Declaration of Independence. 36
The threatened demolition of the Davenport House in the 1950s is credited with sparking the preservation
movement in Savannah. The Historic Savannah Foundation currently operates the Davenport House as
museum.
170
But the design of the Davenport house is grounded in much older architectural styles. In
fact, features of the Davenport house such as the brick masonry, roof treatment, and
minimal ornament refer back to buildings like the Bolton house rather than forward to
architectural innovation. The massive end chimneys and steep, pitched roof with dormers
date back to the early eighteenth century in America. Other elements such as the
elliptical window and side lights that frame the entry reflect American neoclassicism
known as the Federal style. First popularized around 1780, the Federal style was less
than fresh in 1820. Articulated within one plane that is only broken by the curving stair,
the facade of the Davenport house presents solid yet somewhat monotonous appearance.
Although Jay worked with the same basic design elements as Davenport
employed, he created a much more plastic composition for the facade of the Richardson
house. The approach to the Richardson house leads the visitor through three planes
demarcated sequentially by 1) the low exterior wall, 2) the curving stair and the
projecting porch, and 3) the doorway set back in an elliptical recess. The facade itself is
also divided into three horizontal and three vertical sections. Horizontally, the basement,
first, and second stories are arranged proportionately with the stylized rustication giving
weight to the base, quoins emphasizing first story, and thin pilasters making the top story
appear “lighter” than the two stories below it. In addition a projecting molding divides
each story from the others. Vertically, the facade at the first story level alternates flat and
projecting bays to set up an a, b rhythm that was meant to carry around the side of the
house. It does not because a second cast iron porch that was intended for the southwest
corner of the building never arrived. So much for depending on manufactured goods
from England. The continuation of the rhythm as intended in the original design would
171
have taken advantage of the trust lot site by placing emphasis on both the west and south
sides of the building.37
The parapet that partially conceals a low-pitched, hipped roof
crowns the exterior.
Jay’s visually arresting design for the Richardson house exterior was only part of
his embrace of innovation. He also employed several novelties of Regency building
technology. In addition to the previously cited exterior finishes that made the stucco look
like stone, Jay imported the balusters for the front wall from an English manufacturer of
synthetic stone named Bubb.38
The Bubb firm also supplied some of the monumental
figures for the Regency architect John Nash’s trend-setting Cumberland Terrace that
overlooked London’s Regent’s Park. And the veranda on the south side of the house is
an example of the structural use of cast iron that Rudolph Ackermann touted in an 1816
issue of The Repository of Arts.39
Designers like Charles Busby developed designs for
iron verandas as well.
Although they showed very different preferences when it came to building their
houses, Isaiah Davenport and Richard Richardson shared similar backgrounds. One was
a house builder and the other was a carpenter's son. Both men were solid, respected
citizens. For instance, Davenport served as an alderman and Richardson was active in
community service. Yet Richardson's choices embodied in his house telegraphed his leap
from his working class origins into the upper echelons of Savannah society. Richardson
created a self-representation through his house. A measure of how well it was accepted is
37
Although no early drawings for the Richardson house have survived, physical evidence in the structure
indicates that the builder framed passages for access from the parlor to the missing veranda. 38
The word "Bubb" that was stamped in the balusters as they were being cast identifies the maker. Bubb
also supplied some of the monumental pediment figures for John Nash's terraces bordering Regent's Park in
London. 39
The Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions, and Politics, Second Series, vol.
5, no. 30 (June 1, 1818), plate 36, 49-52.
172
that three other wealthy men immediately commissioned Jay to design new homes for
them.
Many more stucco mansions would be built in Savannah, but never again would
handsome brick exteriors like those of the Davenport and Bolton houses express the
status of prosperous merchants. The Savannahians who had followed the construction of
Richardson's house may not have analyzed the architectural nuances as precisely as I
have here, but, make no mistake, they appreciated the novel and harmonious appearance
of the building. Jay's new commissions were proof of that. Just as the exterior of the
Richardson House stimulated commissions for the architect and cemented the social
position of the owner, the interior also stood as a measure of Richardson's social
standing.
As the physical shell of the Richardson house approached completion, the focus
of the building project shifted to the interior. Here Jay equaled and possibly surpassed
the sophistication of his designs for the exterior of the building. The front parlor was one
of the most lavish spaces in the Richardson house both in architectural detailing and
furnishing.40
Because it was a public space that would convey the owner's status when it
was used for fashionable entertaining, the parlor received special attention.
In his design for the front parlor, Jay displayed a command of fashionable
Regency trends in the spatial arrangement, ornamental plasterwork, and decorative
painting. With elements of the design that have survived, comparing the architectural
detailing of the Richardson parlor to Regency design sources establishes just how closely
the Savannah house adhered to English precedent. With the decorative paint schemes
40
Because the Dining Room like the front parlor would have been used for entertaining, it too received rich
sumptuous decorative treatments and furnishings.
173
where the original appearance was lost when re-painting took place, comparison to period
sources not only mirrors English sources but is the key to visualizing the room as a
whole.
Some characteristics of the front parlor that have remained basically unchanged
over time embody a typically Regency approach to design. For instance, Jay placed
niches flanking the fireplace that is surrounded by the most elegant mantel in the house.
Jay's pared down treatment recalls similar niches illustrated in books by the English
architects C.A. Busby in A Collection of Designs for Modern Embellishments and W.F.
Pocock in Modern Finishings for Rooms. Reflecting the Regency attraction to daylight
and the out-of-doors, Jay and Pocock provided access to the exterior through windows
that could function as doors.41
Both architects also used fluted pendentive devices at the
corners of the room to gracefully transition from a square room to circular motifs on the
ceiling. Jay's placement of boldly scaled Greek key frets enclosing the center medallion
and the perimeter of the ceiling are yet another example of a favored Regency motif
employed in the design of the front parlor.
The scheme of decorative painting in the front parlor also underscores Jay's firm
grounding in the Regency aesthetic and Richardson's willingness to spare no expense to
realize it. Recent optical and chemical analyses of microscopic paint fragments have
confirmed the original paint colors and patterns.42
The room featured a panoply of
trompe l'oeil painting techniques. They extended from the basemolding marbleized in
gray tones to translucent rose simulated cloth walls to the ceiling painted light sky blue
41
It is thought that these windows were intended to open out to a cast iron veranda that would match the
one outside the Lower or Family Chamber. 42
See George T. Fore, "Parlour, ca. 1819 Finishes Investigation" (Unpublished report prepared for the
Owens-Thomas House, Savannah Georgia, December, 2001).
174
with scattered clouds and edges that fade to dark lavender. Although analysis of old paint
layers has not uncovered evidence of edge detail or the imitation of fabric tape in the
front parlor, the room may have been modeled on a prototype such as George Smith's
design for a "Boudoir with Ottomans." Smith's concept appeared in his popularly
circulated book A Collection of Designs for Household Furniture and Interior
Decoration (1808). In Smith's hypothethical design, antique drapery covered the walls
and the ceiling was a simulated sky similar to what was discovered in the Richardson
House parlor. In the commentary accompanying the plate, Smith identified classical
antiquity as the sources of the decoration of the Boudoir. Then Smith explained,
The mantles on the walls are meant to be real, and of satin, muslin, or superfine
cassimere; the borders worked in needlework or printed; the staffs supporting the
drapery are finished in matt gold. Ottomans occupy the four sides of the room;
the openings, as doors and windows, having Chimeras on each side, executed in
imitation of gold and bronze. The whole of the ornamental Design may be
executed in water-colour, on the walls, by a skilful artist, with good effect. The
floor should be covered with Wilton carpeting of a plain colour.43
To achieve the effect Smith recommended without going to the expense of obtaining
fabric, the Richardsons painted the walls to simulate fabric rather than actually draping
them with fabric. While the similarities of Richardson Front parlor to Smith's Boudoir
are striking, there were many Regency sources for ceilings that imitated sky. In 1816
Rudolph Ackermann published in his The Repository of Arts a room view that proposed a
cove cornice with the ceiling above painted to look like the sky.44
Part of the allure of complex and boldly colored ornamental schemes for
homeowners like Richardson was that decorative painting communicated their status in
43
Smith, A Collection of Designs..., (London: J. Taylor, 1808), 29-30. 44 For an example of a ceiling painted to simulate sky in a royal palace, see: W. H. Pyne, "The Green Closet
at Frogmore," A History of the Royal Residences (London: A. Dry, 1819).
175
several ways. First, the use of color alone showed that the patron could afford the
expensive pigments that were mixed with medium to make paints before manufacturers
began producing it commercially. The monetary outlay involved in the application of
colored paint helped to stimulate the popularity of bright, saturated colors because the
brighter the color, the greater the expense.45
Second, the taste and craftsmanship
necessary to develop a complex painting program illustrated the owner’s refinement.
By the end of 1818 construction on the Richardson house was almost finished, so
the Richardsons must have been expecting a shipment of furnishings any day. An "Entry
of Merchandise" dated November 9, 1818 shows that it arrived. R. Richardson and Co.
imported 74 cases of "household furniture, etc."46
We would have no idea what those
cases contained if the value of these goods had not been recorded as nearly £835 before a
30% duty. A comparison of the Customs Declaration with the Bill of Sale for the
Richardson house and its contents dated October 5, 1822 shows a close correlation
between the values listed in both documents. Further, the Bill of Sale specifically names
rooms, lists the individual items in each room, and gives values for particular items in
either pounds or dollars.47
The furniture values given in pounds adds up to about £880,
slightly more than the value of the 74 crates imported from England in 1818. Because
the 1822 Bill of Sale lists values for individual pieces in either pounds or dollars, it is
possible to differentiate English from American-made items. Nomenclature used in the
1822 Bill of Sale also confirms Richardson's preference for English furnishings in the
principal rooms of the house. Typically American items occupied secondary spaces like
45
Kelly Wright, presentation to “Space, Place, and Things: The Material Culture of American History”
Class of Professor Wayne Durrill, The University of Cincinnati, Wednesday, May 11, 2005. 46 Also included in this shipment were two cases of paintings and one case of statuary. Inward Shipping
Manifest, November 9, 1818 (National Archives, Record Group 36, Entry #1466). 47 Richard Richardson Sale (1822), Chatham County, Georgia, Court Records, Deed Book 2L, 1821-1823.
176
the "Family Dining Room." Terms used to describe parlor furniture such as "a large
chimney mirror," "a pier glass, ditto table and chimera stands," "six ottomans or couches"
are not typical entries for Savannah inventories of the period. Further, the modifiers and
uncertain spellings underscore again that these items are unusual for Savannah and
support the argument for English origin. Conversely, similar high style, Regency items
filled the pages of English pattern books and publications such as Smith's A Collection of
Designs for Household Furniture (1808) and Ackermann's The Repository of the Arts. A
case in point is that Smith's "Boudoir with Ottomans" and the Richardson Parlour shared
both decorative schemes and specific furnishings. Ottomans, chimera, a chimney mirror,
gilded features, and wall-to-wall carpet figured prominently in both rooms.
Even though not a single piece of furniture that Richardson purchased for his
house has been located, the combination of documentary and visual evidence provides
enough information to develop a model of how the Richardsons arranged and used the
Front parlor. Identifying and placing the furnishings in the Richardson Front parlor
draws on Regency design sources, physical evidence found in the house, and the 1822
Bill of Sale of the Richardson house. Other sources such as contemporaneous paintings
of room interiors also contribute important evidence. At the same time this kind of
evidence has limitations. One is that it is by nature static. Yet the best understanding of
the room is to see it as a flexible, multi-purpose space where many of the furnishings
could be rearranged at will.
A person entering the Richardson parlor shortly after its completion in 1820
would have encountered furnishings that fell into two categories: stationary or easily
moved about. The stationary, more or less permanent items listed in the 1822 Bill of Sale
177
were "a Brussels carpet & rug to match," "4 window curtains complete," "a large
chimney mirror," "a pier glass," "ditto table and chimera stands," and "a six light
chandelier."48
The combined values of these furnishings come to more than £375, almost
three times as much as the sum of the costs of all the other furnishings in the room.
These items were the key indicators of status in a fashionable room that the owner would
use for entertaining.
Although the designation "Brussels" suggests otherwise, English mills
manufactured these wool, loop-pile carpets and exported them to the United States.
Owning a Brussels carpet involved much more than a straightforward willingness to pay
for the product and import duties. Since the brightly colored carpets were woven in 24"
widths and shipped in rolls, they required specialized assembly and wall-to-wall
installation on site.49
Despite the additional labor involved, combining one pattern for the
field and another for a border or center medallion was a popular option. A drawing
preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London illustrates several carpet patterns
that the English interior design firm Gillow developed for a client.50
In contrast to the
main body of the carpet that was tacked down around the perimeter of the room, the
hearth rug was a small, removable piece of carpet. Placed over the main body of the
carpet adjacent to the hearth, the hearth rug protected the set carpet from sparks. Once
installed, an expensive Brussels carpet demanded constant care from domestic help to
48
Ibid. 49
Few carpets made in the early nineteenth century survive. However, “point papers” that designers
created to guide weavers are preserved in mill archives. They give an excellent indication the popularity of
bright, bold colors and patterns. Conversation with John Burrows, January 8, 2003. 50 Gillow was an English firm that supplied interior design and furnishings to clients throughout the
nineteenth century. Because the firm served middle class clients, its archives are particularly useful.
178
prolong its life and to keep it clean enough to meet the standards of an era lacking
vacuum cleaners and carpet shampoos.
Despite the high price and complicated care, Brussels carpeting was a "must
have" for the upscale household. It was ubiquitous in Savannah newspaper
advertisements and estate inventories.51
Young Mary Anne Mackay summed up the
cultural significance of carpeting when she wrote a letter from boarding school to her
mother in Savannah. She avowed
I should like much to see the parlor with its new carpet[.] I think there was also
one for the drawing room[.] [I]f the thirty guineas are not yet employed with
which you intended to get me [a] watch[,] I think you had better send it to
England for a carpet and I can wait as long as you please for the watch for I had
rather have the house well furnished than dress fine.52
That the schoolgirl Mary Anne Mackay chose to defer her own gratification because she
felt her mother needed a new carpet shows how important this particular English
manufacture was to conveying status and class among Savannah’s middle and upper
classes. For families like the Mackays who were not building new houses, acquiring
stylish interior furnishings provided the best opportunity for projecting their standing.
Carpets were indispensable, but they were not the most expensive appointments
necessary to fitting out a stylish interior. Whereas the Richardsons’ Brussels carpet cost
just over £26, "4 window curtains complete" carried the hefty valuation of £144.2. That
the window curtains were the most expensive furnishings in the Front parlor underscores
51 A typical advertisement for carpeting read, "J. Battelle: 120 packages containing Brussels carpeting and
bordering, elegant Wilton carpets" (Savannah Republican, January 31, 1818). Estate inventories listing
Brussels carpets: Thomas Mendenhall (1808), Joshua E. White (1821), Charlotte Ann Palmer (1821),
Lemuel Kollock (1823), Gardner Tufts (1824), Delia Bryan (1827), John Morel (1834). In other
documents similar floorcoverings are entered as "carpet," "Scotch Ingrain carpet," "Wilton carpet," and
"carpet and rug" (Chatham County Probate Court, 1800-1855). 52
Mary Anne Mackay, Letter to Eliza Mackay, [c. 1817] (Mackay-Stiles Papers in the Southern Historical
Collection, Manuscripts Department, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill).
179
the centrality of drapery as a means of communicating status in nineteenth-century
Savannah and Regency England. Reflecting this emphasis, Rudolph Ackermann devoted
thirty plates, nearly a sixth of the total in The Repository of Arts, to designs for window
treatments.53
In addition, Ackermann included swatches of fabrics, commentary on how
to use them, and where to buy them in many issues of The Repository of Arts. The
wealthiest homeowners preferred curtain fabrics such as silk velvets, superfine cloths,
merinos, silk damasks, and silk satins. Morine (moreen), Manchester (cotton) velvet,
printed chintz and other calicos were more reasonably priced alternatives.
Although references to fabrics were rare in Savannah inventories, they
occasionally specified dimity, chintz, and calico.54
A letter from one of Savannah's
leading merchants to his wife corroborates 1) the importance of textiles in decorative
schemes, 2) a preference for calicos, and 3) some of the practicalities of acquiring stylish
furnishings. In 1804 Robert Mackay wrote from London to his wife Eliza in Savannah.
After complaining about "extravagantly high prices," he went on to explain
I went to order the Curtains for the Drawing room, & after pitching upon a
tolerably neat pattern of Calico, & the mode of making them up, the price was
Twenty pounds p Curtain, which I thought so exorbitant I immediately
relinquished the idea of taking them-- I shall however get the Calico & one
Curtain, from which you must manage to make the others.55
53 Pauline Agius, Ackermann’s Regency Furniture and Interiors (Ramsbury, Marlborough, Wiltshire:
Crowood Press, 1984), p. 22. 54
Inventories of George Haig (1816): "3 chintz window curtains;" Joshua White (1821): "1 suit chintz
curtains for field bedsteads [ ] cornice and curtain for one window, 4 cornices and chintz window curtains
and 1 suit chintz bed curtains and drapery to match, 1 suit dark chintz curtain with cornice complete for
bedstead, 4 Cornice and dimity window curtains complete with drapery for 4 post bedsteads, 1 Suit chintz
bed curtains pink & black; Lemuel Kollock (1823): "4 dimity window curtains;" John W. Barnard (1827):
"1 Sett Dimity Curtains, 1 Sett Calico do;" (Chatham County, Georgia, Probate Court). Memorandum
Book of Peter Guerard (1823): "1 Set Chintz Curtains with Cornices & Curtain Pins, 5 Window and Bed
do, 2 Dimity Curtains with cornices for Drawing Room" (Collection 1349, Georgia Historical Society). 55 Walter Hartridge, ed., The Letters of Robert Mackay to his Wife Written from Ports in America and
England, 1795-1816 (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1949), 137.
180
What a pity that we do not have Eliza Mackay’s reaction to her husband’s suggestion that
she reproduce the work of a London specialist in making draperies. That well-to-do
Savannahians felt called upon to patronize London drapers shows that they aspired to
metropolitan standards in decorating their homes.
Coordinating the overall design of window treatments required selecting fabrics
and linings; opulent, molded fringe; tassels; decorative edges; cloak pins; and elaborate
rods. In addition, window treatments needed to harmonize with the other textiles in the
room. Consequently, carrying off the complicated task of procuring window treatments
called for taste and a willingness to spend. Once in place, draperies pointed to both the
owner’s aesthetic refinement and well-run home. Encompassing much more than
drapery, window treatments like Richardson’s "4 window curtains complete" integrated a
whole system of devices designed as much to control light and air as to please the eye.
To protect furniture and expensive textiles from bright light, each window frame was
fitted with either shades or blinds that hung close to the windowpanes.56
Next came
embroidered and fringed muslin sub-curtains. The main lengths of drapery and any
drapery or cornice at the top of the window were put into place last so that they faced into
the room. Far from being static status symbols acquired solely for show, window
treatments required constant manipulation. Someone, either the domestic help or the
householder, attended to opening and closing shades, sub-curtains, and draperies several
times daily according to the weather and time of day. The daily operation and
maintenance of this type of complex window treatment required a sophisticated level of
domestic management.
56
There were several types of shades and blinds. The most stylish were made of green horizontal or
vertical lathes. Fragments of this type of blind and several cornice boards were found in the attic of the
Richardson house.
181
Like the window treatments, the individual pieces of an ensemble comprising a
chimney glass (£95), a pier glass and table (£95), and a six-light chandelier (£18..16)
rated high valuations in the 1822 Bill of Sale. A large chimney glass was a mirror that
occupied the space over a fireplace and mantelpiece. It could be as broad as the
chimneybreast. The word “pier” referred to a section of wall between two windows
where a pier glass or mirror hung over a pier table made for the spot. By placing two
large mirrors, such as a large chimney glass and a pier glass, opposite one another with a
chandelier in between, the mirrors redoubled the light from the chandelier. On one hand,
Figure 1 summarizes the author’s analysis of how these items would have been arranged
in the Richardson Large Parlour; on the other, a Gillow drawing illustrates a similar
design that the firm proposed to an English client. Although costly, a grouping of
lighting devices and mirrors was critical to creating a glittering setting for evening
entertainments. At a time when artificial lighting was expensive and typically dim, a
brilliantly lit room was bound to impress guests and contribute to festive spirits. The
desire to augment light and space in the Regency period stimulated a rise in the use of
wall-mirrors.57
While Richardson’s purchase of the mirrors and chandelier confirm his
characteristically Regency appreciation of light and space, the actual form of the
ensemble underscored that his selections also represented the current London style.58
In
addition to “a large chimney mirror,” the scribe listing household furnishings in the 1822
Bill of Sale scribbled "a peir (sic) glass," and "ditto table and chiner[u] (sic) stands."
Even though the words are slightly garbled, what they reference readily correlates with
57
Clifford Musgrave, Regency Furniture, 1800-1830 (London: Faber and Faber, 1961), 123. 58
In a survey of over 70 Savannah inventories dating between 1796 and 1854, there is only one reference to
a pair of pier glasses. Inventory of Gardner Tufts (1824), Chatham County Probate Court.
182
illustrations in publications marketing Regency style. Perhaps the note taker wrote
"Chiner[u]" instead of "chimera" because he did not know that a chimera is a
mythological, winged beast with the head, body, and foreparts of lion or goat and the tail
of a snake. A standard ornament in Greek architecture, the chimera became a favored
motif for Regency designers. The English designer P. L. N. Cottingham gave seven
examples and some variations in his published guide for smiths and founders. George
Smith's plate entitled "Continued Drapery" shows a frontal view of chimera supports for
a pier table and glass.
In addition to the stationary fixtures, the Front parlor contained moveable
furniture. Like a stage set for a play, the room and its permanent fittings formed the
backdrop while the easily moved items functioned as vital props. The room was the set
where the Richardsons and their guests performed in a theater of manners where each
actor’s knowledge of etiquette was a mark of belonging to the middle class. Each object
that Richardson selected for the Front parlor held a specific place in the social ritual.
Both hosts and guests understood the furnishings as props associated with the social roles
they played at evening soirees called tea parties.59
The moveable furnishings Richardson
purchased for his Front parlor included two card tables, six ottomans, and ten chairs.
Valued on the Bill of Sale at just over £3, the two mahogany card tables were the
least expensive and less stylish than other items in the room. Card tables had been
staples of English and American drawing rooms for almost a century when Regency
designers began introducing many novel forms, most notably the sofa table and the center
table. By 1818 newer types of tables received more attention from purveyors of fashion,
59
For a list of refreshments suggested for a Savannah tea party see: Feay Shellman Coleman, Nostrums for
Fashionable Entertainments, Dining in Georgia, 1800-1850 (Savannah: Telfair Academy of Arts and
Sciences, 1992), 4.
183
but card tables remained most popular with Savannah buyers. Not a single sofa table
turned up in my survey of Savannah records. The 1833 inventory of Savannahian
Alexander Telfair listed the first center table.60
Only two others occurred in inventories
taken before 1854.61
English makers began favoring rosewood for card tables in the early
nineteenth century. In Savannah, however, mahogany card tables were the norm.
Between 1800 and 1850, mahogany remained the wood most frequently identified with
card tables listed in Savannah inventories.62
What accounts for Richardson’s mahogany
card tables? Perhaps it was a hint of provincialism, a preference for cards as
entertainment, or the practical consideration that card tables were more versatile than
specialized center or side tables. The square or circular playing surface consisted of
identical, hinged halves that were typically covered with baize or leather. When opened,
the table could serve as a gaming table or as a center table. When one half of the hinged
top was folded over onto the other half, the table could be stowed against a wall to save
space and reduce clutter.
If the card tables were routine furnishings for Savannah parlors, the “6 Ottomans
or couches” were extraordinary by equal measure. And rarity came at a price. Unlike the
reasonable card tables, the value of the ottomans listed on the Bill of Sale was £69..8.
Inspired by exotic notions of furnishing English parlors like fanciful Turkish tents, the
60
Inventory of Alexander Telfair (1833), Chatham County Probate Court. 61
Inventories of William Gaston (1837) and Joseph Stiles (1839). Chatham County Probate Court. 62
For the seven single and 35 pairs of card tables recorded between 1800 and 1854 the materials designated
are as follows: no wood listed for the seven singles and 24 pairs, mahogany for eight pairs, and rosewood
for one pair. The rosewood tables appeared in the inventory of John P. Williamson (1843). Chatham
County Probate Court.
184
Regency ottoman took many forms. Design sources show that they could be long and
low. They were curved or squared off; freestanding or built-in; with or without arms and
backs. Ottomans could also double as window seats or be glorified stools. While the
term "ottoman" was far from exact, it is certain that ottomans were used for seating and
featured upholstery that could include plush cushions, rich fringes, and elaborate trim.
Because they typically were discarded when the upholstery wore out, very few Regency
ottomans survive. Yet pattern books and design proposals attest to their popularity and
demonstrate that they were often found in decorative schemes like the Richardson front
parlor that also featured fabric-covered walls.63
As in the Gillow proposal, the Richardsons’ ottoman/couches would have
featured rich upholstery embellished with both decorative trim and tassels. Further, the
fabrics chosen for the ottoman/couches would have coordinated with the other textiles in
the room. In the caption accompanying his illustration "Ottoman for Gallery," George
Smith commented, “Where show is designed, the covering should be of superfine cloth,
or chintz-pattern calico; the fringe worked in fine worsteds.”64
Smith took it for granted
that textiles and upholstery conveyed opulence and that ottomans were a primary vehicle
for expressing status. For Richardson, too, ottomans were a key design element that
coordinated with the simulated textile wall treatments. Together they hinted at the allure
of the exotic Near East. And novel they were. There is only one other reference to
ottomans in my survey of Savannah inventories. That entry of two mahogany ottomans
63
George Smith, “Pl. 67 Ottoman for Gallery,” “Pl. 151 Boudoir with Ottomans,” A Collection of Designs
for Household Furniture… (1808); Rudolph Ackermann, “Pl. 5 Imperial Turkey Ottoman, or Circular
Sofa,” The Repository of Arts (1811); Ackermann, “Pl. 2 Design for Ottomane Couch,” Repository…
(1814); George Smith “Octangular Tent Room,” The Cabinetmaker and Upholsterer’s Guide (1826). 64
Smith, A Collection of Designs..., (London: J. Taylor, 1808), 12.
185
was in the household furniture sale of another of Jay’s clients, Archibald Bulloch.65
In addition to six ottomans, the Richardson 1822 Bill of Sale listed ten chairs at
£45. To the contemporary observer, the most striking characteristic of the chairs is that
there were so many of them. Ten seems like an impossibly high number of chairs for a
room that measured about 17’ x 20’ and also contained six ottomans. But, entertaining in
the 1820s required the placement of seats around the perimeter of the room so that some
guests could sit while others circulated. Consequently Savannahians who entertained
owned chairs by the dozen.66
As it turns out, the Richardsons may have even skimped on
chairs. They owned relatively few in comparison to Alexander Telfair. His 1833
inventory listed 54 chairs: 18 large maple, 12 smaller maple, and 24 common.67
Alas, the
inventory taker did not note the distribution of chairs within the Telfair house, so there is
no way to know how many stood around the perimeter of his parlor. However, the
person taking the inventory of Mrs. Arnold (1819) organized the furnishings by room.
Even though the entire contents of her modest, four-room house received an appraisal of
just $293, the inventory taker recorded 12 chairs in the "Front Room" and 12 more in the
"Dining Room."68
Both Mrs. Arnold and Richardson furnished their “front Room” and
“front parlor,” respectively, for parties where guests would enjoy light refreshments,
converse, and circulate. Clearly Rudolph Ackermann had the same type of party in mind
when he explicitly emphasized in the Repository of the Arts that “drawing-room chairs
65 Archibald Bulloch sale, 1822, Deed Book 2L, Chatham County Court Records. 66
Descriptions of chairs in household inventories cover a range of materials and colors. Some examples
are: 12 setting chairs mahogany; 12 stick chairs; 12 cane chairs; 2 doz rush bottom chairs; 1 doz bamboo
and rushed chairs; 2 doz strawbottom chairs; 12 black and yellow chairs; 12 green and yellow chairs; 12
bamboo gilt chairs; 2 doz red and green chairs. Inventories, 1796 to 1854. Chatham County Probate Court. 67
Inventory of Alexander Telfair (1833). Chatham County Probate Court. 68
Although Mrs. Arnold’s estate included relatively few household possessions, she owned six adult slaves
and four children valued at $4,750. Inventory of Mrs. Arnold (1819). Chatham County Probate Court.
186
are one of the most essential ornaments... .”69
Further, Ackermann’s remark confirms
that this style of entertaining reflected a common cultural currency shared between
England and America. To know the etiquette of furnishing a parlor and entertaining
appropriately was to hold social capital. To those wanting recognition as respectable
members of the middle and upper classes, knowing the rules and having the money to
participate in the city’s social life was a ticket to middle class status. Owning parlor
chairs was the outward sign of a bond of mutual understanding of social rules that
marked one as a member of the middle class.
Two paintings, The Tea Party by Henry Sargent of Boston and a Drawing from a
Sketchbook attributed to Robert Gilmor of Baltimore, show parties in progress and
demonstrate how people interacted in rooms like the Richardson front parlor. What
Sargent and Gilmor make clear is that as soon as people entered the room, the
arrangement of the furniture became fluid. Lightweight, versatile furniture was meant to
be moved and rearranged to accommodate conversation and entertainment. At parties the
company coalesced in pairs or small groups at the edges and in the center of the room,
leaving the interspaces open for circulation. While design sources and the arrangement
of the front parlor suggested in Figure 1 are useful, the best understanding of the room is
to see it as a flexible, multi-purpose space where furnishings were rearranged at will to
support social rituals.
Building and furnishing his home marked a high point in Richardson’s rise to
prominence in Savannah. From his beginnings as an apprentice, he rose to the position of
partner in the firm of R. and J. Bolton before expanding into other fields such as banking.
69
Quoted in Pauline Agius, Ackermann’s Regency Furniture and Interiors (Ramsbury, Marlborough,
Wiltshire: Crowood Press, 1984), 49.
187
He piled success upon success proving that even on the periphery of the Atlantic
economy, capitalism had penetrated the culture so extensively that a self-made immigrant
from Bermuda could take a clear path to middle class respectability in America by
demonstrating a mastery of cultural knowledge that drew on English sources.
Richardson’s participation in the communitas afforded him the opportunity take a
prominent role in Savannah society. Through his connections to a broader Atlantic
community, he developed the acumen he needed to lead in religious, civic, and economic
matters. And, as his parlor shows, Richardson knew how to acquire the material
possessions that would express his place in Savannah’s social order.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Education and the Enduring Culture of Communitas in Savannah, c. 1820-1840
Converting nonbelievers unquestionably took first place among the goals of the
non-conformist evangelical community. Ranking as a close second for generations of
pious Protestants was extending access to all levels of education from basic literacy to
classical erudition. Much of this narrative has followed the how Savannah merchants like
James Habersham and the several generations of Robert Boltons defined themselves and
their responsibilities to family and community in terms of education, class, and religion.
They eschewed relying on the Anglican priestly class to interpret the Bible for them.
Instead, they believed that one must study the Bible for oneself and experience directly
the word of God. For them, therefore, learning to read was an integral part of religious
training. So education was a key component for spiritual development. Similarly
education opened the door to achieving middle class economic stability. In England,
however, the universities at Oxford and Cambridge excluded non-Anglicans. After
Parliament passed the Act of Unanimity in 1662, non-Anglicans could neither study nor
teach at Oxford and Cambridge Universities. Education at the university level was
finally opened to non-conformists in 1836 when Parliament granted a charter to the
University of London. Oxford and Cambridge remained exclusive until the 1850s.
Wealth, no matter how vast, was unlikely to raise an English family to elite status
if the family was not Anglican. Preferring a non-Anglican religious affiliation was often
a badge of the middle class. As we have seen, men like Whitefield, Habersham, and
Winter proudly shared their stories of social uplift through religious conversion in order
to inspire others to join them. At the same time they could rise only so far in the English
189
social hierarchy. They also championed that reality as they promoted middle class
morality as being superior to what they saw as the irresponsibility and wanton behavior,
that is, the worldliness, of the upper classes. The interconnected themes of religion,
education, and class maintained much of the same character for over a century from the
beginning of this narrative with the founding of Georgia up until the times of Robert
Bolton (1788-1857). Robert Bolton’s relationship with education illustrates this, and, at
the same time, shows how dissenters pushed back against the English tradition to open
the way to greater opportunities. Through his circumvention of exclusion from the
university, his dedication to extending education to those of lower social status as a
means of salvation, and his role as an educator of his own children and others, Robert
Bolton exemplified the enduring goals and values of the communitas.
Robert Bolton (1788-1857), along with his sisters, Sarah and Frances, and their
spouses, John Bolton and Richard Richardson, shared in the life-shaping legacies of their
father Robert Bolton (1757-1802). Inheriting the right to a partnership in the firm of R.
and J. Bolton, on attaining the age of twenty-one, gave Robert Bolton (1788-1857) the
promise of financial security. Other legacies from his father presented Robert Bolton
with the same moral bind that each of his siblings had also inherited. The elder Bolton
had bequeathed to all of his children both slaves and the warning that mere human
custom, rather than God’s law, validated slavery. Earlier chapters have examined how
John Bolton and Richard Richardson reconciled their doubts about slavery with their
economic reliance on it. Like his brothers-in-law, Robert Bolton also pushed racial and
class boundaries. But Robert Bolton crafted his own, unique responses to similar
economic, social, and moral conflicts. He left Savannah and slavery behind when he
190
pursued a career as a minister and an educator. For his entire adult life he divided his
time between England and New York State. Although there is scarce evidence from
Robert himself, family memoirs reveal that he opposed slavery. In addition, Robert
furthered the cause that Whitefield and Habersham had championed in their mission to
Savannah. He worked hard to give people of all races and classes access to education so
that they would be able to read the Bible for themselves. When he opened schools in
Pelham, New York, his students were the daughters of Savannah slaveholders and the
children of free African Americans. At the time Bolton was running a boarding school
for young ladies in New York State, no one connected with the R. and J. Bolton firm
lived in Savannah. The era of their financial clout had passed, but Bolton continued to
teach the values of communitas to the daughters of slaveholders.
By the time Robert Bolton was eighteen, his parents had died, but their ambitions
for him were very much alive. The deferential son tried to live up to both parent’s
expectations. Robert Bolton respected his father’s desire for him to pursue the vocation
of a pious merchant. His mother had a different vision of her son’s future. She wanted
him to become a man of the cloth. After her death in 1806, Bolton was left with the
conflicting wishes of two revered parents. He upheld the visions of both, but he spent
only a decade as a merchant and more than thirty years as a minister of the Gospel.
When he chose the path his mother favored, Bolton also acknowledged a third, less
probable role model. In what amounted to a validation of his forebears’ commitments to
evangelizing slaves, Bolton credited the enslaved family coachman with advancing his
spiritual growth and encouraging him to dedicate his life to a full-time ministry.1
1 William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 35-37.
191
Looking at Robert Bolton’s occupational choices in response to these three presences in
his psyche provides a pathway to discovering how he reconciled slavery with his social,
economic, and religious values. In the end he not only turned his back on slavery, but he
also left Georgia to spend most of his adult life in England where he died in 1857.
Consequently, Bolton’s story brings the tale of Savannah’s religious communitas full
circle back to the East End of London where Whitefield and Habersham first conceived
their evangelical mission to Georgia.
After his mother’s death, Robert Bolton made his first Atlantic crossing to
England. On this year-long journey he met his father’s business associate Robert Spear
and the independent minister William Jay. Both would be exemplars for Bolton: Spear as
a pious merchant and Jay as a cleric and father-in-law. Between 1806 and 1812, Bolton
made a return trip to the United States, worked as a lay preacher, studied for the ministry,
and married Jay’s daughter Anne before settling on a career in commerce as his father
had presumed he would.2
Following his marriage in 1811, Robert Bolton joined his brothers-in-law, John
Bolton and Richard Richardson, in the business that his father had founded. He and
Richard Richardson’s brother James tended the firm’s interests in Liverpool. His
lifestyle in Liverpool secured Robert Bolton’s standing as a prosperous and devout
merchant. Settling into the routines of a Liverpool cotton merchant meant that daily life
for Bolton and his family followed a solidly middle class trajectory with emphasis on
business, family, and religion. Counting house, home, and chapel all stood within easy
2 “A Complete List of the Students Educated at Highbury College, from its Foundation in 1783 to the
present time,” American Quarterly Register IX (1837), 132; William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,”
Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs. Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869),
42-46, 49, 52-54;
192
walking distance of one another. Although it is logical to think of these institutions being
as separate and distinct as the structures that symbolize them, the affairs of business,
family, and religion were often deeply intertwined. Consequently my discussion of
Robert Bolton’s interface with the institutions of business, family, and religion will
necessarily overlap.
In contrast to the wealthiest Liverpool merchants who built villas on spacious
grounds in nearby villages such as Everton, the Boltons set up housekeeping close to the
city center. Like other dwellings in the neighborhood, the Bolton’s house at 8 Great
George Street stood at the front boundary of a long, narrow lot. The front façade spanned
the entire width of the property and was flush with the street. The length of the house
occupied only about one third of the lot leaving room for a garden in the rear. The Great
George Street residence accommodated a growing family. By the time the Boltons left
Liverpool in 1821, their family had increased to six children. Anne Jay Bolton
superintended the affairs of her large household with aplomb. Business associates,
visiting ministers, as well as friends and family found warm hospitality in the Bolton
home where people from different backgrounds who embraced dissimilar values
converged and mingled. William Jay visited his daughter and son-in-law annually as did
other extended family members. Cyrus, one of Anne’s brothers, made it clear that “Mr.
Bolton kept up a princely establishment and had an extensive library at his Liverpool
residence.”3 Another of Anne’s brothers, the architect William, probably stayed in the
Bolton home before he embarked for Savannah on the firm’s ship Dawn in the fall of
1817.
3 Cyrus Jay, The Law: What I Have Seen, What I Have Heard, and What I Have Known (London: Tinsley
Brothers, 1868), 339.
193
William’s friend, the artist William Etty (1787-1849), spent several weeks in the
Bolton household while he painted portraits of family members.4 In one painting he
portrayed Anne’s father, the eminent preacher. A second, monumental canvas depicts
Robert Bolton as a successful merchant standing on a classical loggia overlooking the sea
with a sailing ship in the background. On a third canvas, Etty crafted a masterful
rendering of Anne Jay Bolton and her young children Robert and Anne (Nanette). With a
fashionable Kashmir shawl spread across her lap and the children by her side, Anne looks
completely at ease in an elegant domestic setting. A half-drawn drapery reveals a
bouquet of flowers displayed on a gilded pedestal in the background. When juxtaposed,
the portraits convey the ideal of middle-class, companionate marriage. Robert strikes the
figure of an upstanding merchant who provides abundantly for his family, and Anne
epitomizes the paragon of domestic management and motherhood. As if confirming what
the paintings convey, Anne wrote in her journal on May 8, 1816, “I have, indeed, all I
could desire—the best and most affectionate of husbands, two dear children, and every
indulgence.”5
Some of Robert Bolton’s companions enjoyed conversing with him about his ever
increasing library and autograph collection. Over time Bolton expanded his holdings so
much that he enlarged the house to accommodate the collection.6 Two friends who
shared Bolton’s interest in connoisseurship were his pastor Thomas Raffles and his
colleague Washington Irving. Best remembered today for his contribution to American
4 William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 68. 5 William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 77. 6 The Literary Gazette: A Weekly Journal of Literature, Sciences, etc. 13:654 (August 1, 1829), 500;
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 58.
194
romantic literature, Irving had a “day job” in his brother’s Liverpool mercantile firm for a
few years. Initially, trade probably brought Bolton and Irving together, but the tie of
kindred spirits bonded them as friends for life. Irving became so close to the Boltons that
he accompanied them on a summer excursion to explore the Welsh countryside. Years
later when both families lived in New York’s Westchester County, the friendship
continued. Irving followed with interest and offered well-received suggestions as Bolton
designed and constructed his gothic revival estate, known as Pelham Priory.7
The best-documented guests in the Bolton household stand out as a testament of
Robert Bolton’s dedication to the role of a pious merchant who supported evangelical
causes. A steady succession of visiting preachers from both the United States and
England enjoyed Bolton’s hospitality. Family friend and pastor Thomas Raffles
remembered the Great George Street home as a place “where I could go myself at all
times and find a welcome, and where there was ever a home ready for any Christian
friend.”8 For a pious layman like Bolton it was both a duty and a privilege to forward the
cause of evangelism by housing visiting preachers.
In 1817 the Boltons received Reverend Henry Kollock as a houseguest. Kollock
was on leave from his duties as pastor of the Independent Presbyterian Church in
Savannah. While in England, he did some preaching, collected materials for writing a
biography of John Calvin, and called on eminent divines. In support Kollock’s
7 Literary Gazette: A Weekly Journal of Literature, Sciences, etc. 13:654 (August 1, 1829), 500; William
Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs. Bolton
(London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 58, 67-68, 182-183; John Thomas Scarf, ed., History of
Westchester County including Morrisania, King’s Bridge and West Farms which have been annexed to
New York City (Philadelphia: L. E. Preston and Co., 1886), i:707; Reginald Pelham Bolton, “Bolton Priory
at Pelham Manor,” The Quarterly Bulletin of the Westchester County Historical Society 6:3 (July, 1930),
81. 8 Thomas Stamford Raffles, Memoirs of the Life and Ministry of the Reverend Thomas Raffles (London:
Jackson, Walford, and Hodder, 1864), 19; William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the
Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs. Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 59.
195
endeavors, Bolton arranged for him to meet with the Methodist theologian Dr. Adam
Clarke (1760-1832). Bolton provided his carriage for transportation to Clarke’s residence
at Millbrook near the town of Preston and invited his own pastor Thomas Raffles to join
them for the outing. During the appointment Kollock presented to Clarke the manuscript
copy of Charles Wesley’s hymnal.9
Another Georgia clergyman, William Mc Whir, arrived in Liverpool on July 16,
1820. Mc Whir paid Bolton a call on the very next day. Bolton responded by persuading
Mc Whir to be a guest in his home for as long as he remained in Liverpool. During that
time Bolton’s pastor Thomas Raffles invited Mc Whir to address the Sunday school
scholars at the Great George Street Chapel. Mc Whir also noted in his journal that
Bolton showed him some of the jewels of Liverpool’s art and industry. The tour included
the Athenaeum that housed a subscription library of 10,000 volumes and the massive
“New Dock” that was 500 feet long and 40 to 50 feet deep. During the ten days he
passed with Bolton, Mc Whir recalled dining “with a company of the very first stamp
which he had invited on my account.”10
While they were waiting to sail onboard the ship Westmoreland, the missionary
John Philip (1775-1851), his wife, and four children resided with the Boltons during the
month of November, 1818. Philip and his family were relocating from England to South
Africa under the auspices of the London Missionary Society.11
Reflecting in her journal
on her guests’ mission to Africa, Anne Bolton prayed, “Lord, increase our zeal, who are
9 William Buell Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1858), iv:
269; William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 58. 10
William Harden and William Mc Whir, “William Mc Whir, Irish Friend of Washington,” The Georgia
Historical Quarterly, 1:3 (September, 1917), 206-207. 11
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 62-66, 81.
196
not in circumstances to offer ourselves personally. Make use of our substance; and may
we give it with the greatest willingness and cheerfulness, thinking it indeed an honor to
be allowed to help in thy work.”12
Once established in South Africa, Philip promoted the “devout evangelical claim
of the Sovereignty of God over all life.”13
In practice this meant that he championed
uniform civil rights for both free blacks and whites in areas where white colonists
dominated. Where Africans still occupied their native lands, he promoted self-
governance for indigenous people. Like generations of the Bolton family who had
supported black preachers for black congregations, Philip also encouraged African
preachers. In his later years, Philip’s advocacy for “native agency” increasingly alienated
him from white colonists, the London Missionary Society, and colonial policymakers in
London. Between Philip’s death in 1851 and the formation of the Union of South Africa
in 1910, new race theories and the advent of social Darwinism contributed to the reversal
of the policy of uniform civil rights for all British subjects. To the end Philip stood by
his belief in the equality of humans. He spent his last years in an African settlement and
was buried in a colored grave yard that remained segregated from 1910 until the end of
Apartheid in 1991.14
A belief in the equality of all human beings was so deeply imbedded in John
Philip’s call to ministry that it permeated his life’s work. At the other end of the
spectrum, many of Bolton’s guests were slaveholders just as he once was. Even though
12
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 81. 13
Andrew C. Ross, “The Legacy of John Philip,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 18:1
(January, 1994), 31. 14
Andrew C. Ross, “The Legacy of John Philip,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 18:1
(January, 1994), 29-31.
197
Bolton seems to have divested himself of slaves, his livelihood still emanated from slave-
produced cotton. Bolton must have navigated a perilous course to square the issue of
slavery with his commitment to the principles of the pious merchant in the evangelical
circles in which he traveled. Bolton’s father-in-law William Jay was one of the founding
members of the Missionary Society (later renamed the London Missionary Society). In a
sermon preached for the benefit of the society in 1796, Jay emphasized that it was the
glory of the gospel to set human beings above prejudices and to teach that God made all
the nations of the earth of one blood. Then he made his views on slavery explicit when
he proclaimed “that men are not our enemies because they live at the other side of a
channel, or a mountain—that they are not to be bought and sold as slaves because the sun
has jetted their complexions… .”15
Bolton’s friend and pastor Thomas Raffles also
opposed slavery and lived by the words of Jay’s sermon “that as ‘we have opportunity
without any exceptions we are to do good unto all men.’”16
When the American slave
Moses Roper escaped to England, Raffles gave him shelter and sponsored him as he
adjusted to life in a new culture.17
In what could be viewed as a compromise of his principles, Raffles enjoyed
spending time with Bolton and other people whose stand against slavery was not so clear.
Raffles did not hesitate to associate with Bolton’s guests from Georgia who, at the very
15
William Jay, “Prayer for the Success of the Gospel, Sermon III preached at the Tottenham Court Chapel,
before the Missionary Society, on Thursday evening, the 12th of May 1796,” quoted in The Works of
William Jay of Argyle Chapel, Bath (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1844), iii:163. 16
William Jay, “Prayer for the Success of the Gospel, Sermon III preached at the Tottenham Court Chapel,
before the Missionary Society, on Thursday evening, the 12th of May 1796,” quoted in The Works of
William Jay of Argyle Chapel, Bath (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1844), iii:163. 17
Moses Roper, A Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper from American Slavery
(Philadelphia: Merrihew, Gunn Printers, 1838), 83-84. One wonders if it is pure coincidence that Roper
made good his escape through the port of Savannah. Raffles took an active role in the crusade against
slavery. See: General Anti-Slavery Convention, Proceedings of the General Anti-Slavery Convention
called by the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery and Held in London… (London: J. Snow,
1843), 2; Thomas Stamford Raffles, Memoirs of the Life and Ministry of the Reverend Thomas Raffles
(London: Jackson, Walford, and Hodder, 1864), 219-220, 303-304, 306.
198
least, condoned slavery.18
For instance the Reverend Henry Kollock led the slaveholding
congregation at Savannah’s Independent Presbyterian Church. Like Bolton, Kollock
seems to have delicately counter balanced his dependence on a slave culture against his
sympathy for individual slaves. Harking back to when he was an enslaved coachman in
Savannah, William Grimes remembered the parson Kollock as “a very fine, candid, and
humane man, … a friend to the poor slave as well as to the richest planter, or
gentleman….” Grimes’s introduction to Kollock came when he drove his master’s
family to services at Independent Presbyterian Church. While Grimes waited to drive the
family home, he stood on the church porch so he could hear Kollock’s sermons. In time
Kollock’s persuasive preaching inspired Grimes to embrace Christianity and he began
attending evening prayer meetings that Kollock convened several times a week. Grimes
came to know Kollock well enough to stop in at his study on occasion to request prayers.
A pastoral visit that Kollock paid to Grimes when his owner punished him with a jail
term confirms Kollock’s place among in evangelicals who supported allowing slaves
access to Christian worship.19
The strongly held views of guests in the Bolton home probably ranged from pro-
slavery to anti-slavery and from abolition to indifference. Bolton’s brother-in-law Cyrus
Jay summarized apathy to slavery when he quoted the critique a consultant gave to an
ardently anti-slavery candidate campaigning for public office in the English countryside.
The politically astute advisor told his client, “’You are talking too much about the negro
wool. The electors care nothing about negroes; they are too interested about the wool of
18
Raffles found a considerable pro-slavery element among the people of Liverpool. Thomas Stamford
Raffles, Memoirs of the Life and Ministry of the Reverend Thomas Raffles (London: Jackson, Walford, and
Hodder, 1864), 220. 19
William Grimes, Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave (New York: [W. Grimes], 1825), 26, 34, 40-
41.
199
sheep.’”20
With slavery having the potential to be a sensitive subject at the intersections
of Bolton’s family, religious, and business existences, it’s easy to see why subtle actions
rather than loud declarations provide guidance in understanding where Robert Bolton
stood. Surrounding himself with family, business associates, and religious affiliates that
varied wildly in their engagement with the institution meant that Bolton probably felt that
thoughtful, sincere people could embrace different philosophies and actions on the
subject of slavery. Rather than having a clear statement of Bolton’s convictions, one
must search the circumstantial evidence of his friends and associations to understand his
actions and beliefs.
Liberal support of Christian institutions characterized the pious merchant. In that
regard, Robert Spear, the longtime business associate and friend of the Bolton family,
embodied the paradigm. He sustained many evangelical causes such as the Liverpool
Religious Tract Society to which he was a life subscriber. Thomas Raffles, Bolton’s
pastor, served as an officer of the organization and, on occasion, chaired the annual
meetings of the society at the Great George Street Chapel.21
As a contributing member
Robert Bolton also backed the society’s evangelical and social orientation which
countered the privilege of the upper class with the concept that all are equal before Christ.
Underscoring the idea that belonging to a high class did not give one higher standing
before God, the society proudly reported in their publications incidents such as what
occurred one evening when a “Lady of Rank” returned home “from a rout at a very
unseasonable hour” to find her waiting-maid dozing with a tract on her lap. The pious
20
Cyrus Jay, The Law: What I Have Seen, What I Have Heard, and What I Have Known (London: Tinsley
Brothers, 1868), 41. 21
Thomas Stamford Raffles, Memoirs of the Life and Ministry of the Reverend Thomas Raffles (London:
Jackson, Walford, and Hodder, 1864), 180.
200
servant shared the Tract with her employer and became the medium of her conversion.22
Similarly Bolton liked to credit the enslaved coachman, Andrew Marshall as a mentor in
his own spiritual development. Dissenters and independents rejected the class
distinctions that characterized the exclusivity of the Established Church and worldly
pursuits. Men like Bolton and his devout friends believed all were equal before God; that
social divisions reflected the failings of humanity. And, although they were well off,
middle class independents and dissenters knew the sting of exclusion from institutions
and positions reserved for members of the Established Church.
Nondenominational evangelical groups like the Liverpool Tract Society and
Lancashire Auxiliary of the London Missionary Society frequently shared overlapping
memberships. For instance, Robert Bolton belonged to both organizations and chaired
the annual business meeting of the Lancashire Auxiliary in 1819.23
Because many
evangelical and reform organizations had branches in cities and countries around the
English-speaking world, they served as an informal network of resources for members.
For evangelicals offering free education was an important tool in gaining
converts. Around the English-speaking world in prosperous protestant households like
Robert Bolton’s childhood home in Savannah, mothers often taught their children the
basics of reading and religion. Robert Bolton remembered leaving his mother’s
instruction to attend “the school-house near the church where I was sent almost as soon
22
Liverpool Tract Society, First Report of the Liverpool Tract Society, MDCCCXV with Extracts of
Correspondence and a List of Subscribers and Benefactors (Liverpool: Printed and Sold for the Society,
[1815]), 33, page not numbered; Liverpool Tract Society, Second Report of the Liverpool Tract Society,
MDCCCXVI with Extracts of Correspondence and a List of Subscribers and Benefactors (Liverpool:
Printed and Sold for the Society, [1816]), 23, 28-29, page not numbered. 23
The Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle (November 1, 1819), 39.
201
as I had learned my letters.”24
After mastering fundamental skills, many adolescent boys
continued their educations as their forebears had in the working world as apprentices.
Only elites destined for the clergy and other positions of authority studied the classical
subjects taught in universities. Secondary education for youths in the middling and
lower ranks of society who would earn their livings in commerce and trade was more
practical than intellectual.
Responding to an inquiry from the Saint Simons Island, Georgia planter William
Page (1764-1827), the Southern educator Moses Waddel (1770-1840) replied, "The
Latin, Greek, and French Languages I teach; together with Geography, Natural and Moral
Philosophy, Euclid, Logic, Rhetoric, English Grammar and Arithmetic, [Surveying
&c]."25
Even though Waddel did insert a parenthetical reference to teaching surveying,
Page took the meaning of the Presbyterian minister to be that he weighted his program
towards classical subjects. Page, who had made the inquiry on behalf of his ward,
Benjamin Caten, later established the boy at another school. Page wanted his ward to
master a range of practical skills, so he directed Caten "To immediately request of his
teacher to put him to Bookkeeping, Navigation, & Surveying-- Reading, Writing, and
Arithmetic Continued."26
There was no Latin, Greek, French, Moral or Natural
Philosophy, Euclid, Logic, or Rhetoric in his curriculum. At the age of eighteen, Caten
entered the employ of a New York mercantile house. Robert Bolton’s secondary
education probably followed a similar course. Like Caten he attended a boarding school
24
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 28. 25
Moses Waddell, Letter to William Page, February 22, 1814 (William Page Papers in the Southern
Historical Collection, Manuscript Department, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina, Chapel
Hill). 26
William Page, Letter to Benjamin Caten, May 17, 1814 (William Page Papers in the Southern Historical
Collection, Manuscript Department, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill).
202
in New Jersey before he sailed for England in 1806 at the age of eighteen.27
While in England Bolton oscillated towards his mother’s vision of him as a
minister. But deteriorating diplomatic relations and the prospect of war between the
United States and Britain stirred Bolton to defer his plans. In 1807 he returned to
Savannah and then relocated to Maryland. Bolton had inherited his father’s interest in a
Baltimore rope-walk the elder Bolton had held in joint co-partnership with his “worthy
friend James Piper.”28
Known for Methodist affiliations, Piper may have introduced
Bolton to his religious community because Bolton served as a lay preacher in the
Methodist Baltimore Conference around 1807.29
His birth into a wealthy Savannah
family notwithstanding, Bolton identified closely with men born in humble
circumstances. Like Cornelius Winter and William Jay, Robert Bolton started preaching
without university education or ordination. Bolton’s choices reflected the working and
middle class ethos of his role models whose modest beginnings had been in the ranks of
England’s urban and rural poor rather than with Georgia’s slaveholding elites.
Bolton returned to England in 1808 determined to pursue a career in the
ministry.30
Years earlier when Cornelius Winter and William Jay started down the same
path, their options had been very limited. Neither had the academic training or the
Anglican affiliation necessary to enter Oxford or Cambridge. Even if they had had
adequate preparation, educational institutions committed to training non-Anglicans were
27
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 42. 28
Robert Bolton, Genealogical and Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England and America
(New York: John Gray Printer, 1862), 131. 29
Methodist Episcopal Church, Minutes Taken at the Several Annual Conferences of the Methodist
Episcopal Church in America for the Year 1807 (New York: Ezekiel Cooper and John Wilson, 1807), 3. 30
“Reginald Pelham Bolton” in James Sullivan, ed., The History of New York State: Biographies, Part 18
(New York: Lewis Historical Printing Company, 1927), 99. Online edition
http://www.newyorkroots.org/bookarchive/historyofnewyorkstate/bio/pt18.html accessed 1/14/13.
203
few and far between.31
Winter skirted the problem by making himself indispensible in
Whitefield’s household where he learned by osmosis. Years later when Winter was
preaching in rural Tisbury, he ran across the adolescent William Jay. Immediately upon
recognizing Jay’s piety and latent potential as a preacher, Winter asked the youth’s
family to permit him to educate young William for the ministry. At his home in
Marlborough, Winter took three or four students at the time to live in his family and to
study with him. William Jay remembered Winter as a supportive and encouraging
teacher, more like a “father with his sons, rather than a tutor with his students.”32
Even
though Winter’s one-man show lacked the human and financial resources of a very
modest college, he intended for his small, informal seminary to offer nonconformists
access to something like the liberal educations well-to-do Anglicans acquired in
secondary schools and universities. Winter’s curriculum could not match the academic
breadth of an established institution, but it did provide students with an intimate learning
environment and opportunities to apply their knowledge. In tutorials Winter relied more
heavily on conversation than lecture. Outside the classroom Winter encouraged pupils to
learn by observation and practice. Students accompanied him on pastoral visits and
preached in nearby villages as they honed their oratorical skills. Winter’s emphasis on
combining the intellectual rigor of the liberal education with acquisition of practical
know-how through a type of apprenticeship drew on both the upper- and working-class
systems of education. In subsequent years, as nonconformists established more formal
academies for educating clergy, their programs of study continued to mix academic with
31
R.R. Turner, “Cavendish Theological College (1860-1863): Joseph Parker’s Experiment in Ministerial
Training” Transactions, The Congregational Historical Society 21:4 (October, 1972), 95. 32
William H. Dyer, A Sketch of the Life and Labours of the Late Reverend William Jay with a Sermon
Preached on the Sunday after the Funeral (London: Ward and Co., 1854), 4.
204
applied approaches to education. By the time Bolton was ready to pursue theological
studies, a handful of formal institutions existed to prepare non-Anglicans for Christian
ministries.33
In 1809 Bolton and six other aspirants to the ministry began their studies at
one of those schools, Hoxton Academy.34
Hoxton was the brainchild of the pious, London, silk merchant Thomas Wilson
(1731-1794) and a group of like-minded nonconformist merchants and ministers. In the
1770s this group launched Hoxton Academy to address a perceived need for more well-
trained nonconformist ministers. Existing institutions educated enough men to staff
established congregations, but Wilson and his companions wanted to reach out to
underserved populations. Consequently Hoxton grew out of a commitment to
evangelism. Further, the founders intended to facilitate access to training for religious
men drawn from the very same underserved populations they hoped to evangelize. In
other words, Hoxton, as the founders initially conceived it, would provide exactly the
kind of educational opportunity that Cornelius Winter would have preferred when he
joined George Whitefield’s household. Hoxton’s first students were Londoners who
supported themselves by their own occupations while they attended lectures on Mondays,
Wednesdays, and Fridays.35
After four years the trustees modified the program by
dropping the London residency requirement, making the program residential, more
heavily weighting liberal education, and appointing one full-time tutor.
As reformulated, the Hoxton program could accommodate students from the
33
Herbert McLachlan, English Education under the Test Acts: Being the History of the Nonconformist
Academies, 1662-1820 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1931), 236-240. 34
An Account of the Hoxton Academy Instituted for the Education of Young Men for the Christian Ministry
(London: Printed by J. Haddon, 1814), 13; “Highbury College England: A Complete List of the Students
Educated at Highbury College, from its Foundation in 1783, to the Present Time,” American Quarterly
Register IX (1837), 132.. 35
An Account of the Hoxton Academy, Instituted for the Education of Young Men for the Work of the
Ministry (London: Printed by W. Smith, 1804), 3.
205
country like William Jay whose only option had been to board with his tutor, Cornelius
Winter. Between 1782 and 1809, when Bolton enrolled, the college acquired permanent
facilities in the Northeast London neighborhood of Hoxton where working people lived
and worked. They also increased the number of tutors, and extended the course of study
up to a maximum of four years, but fundamental principles remained constant.36
To pass
the review of the admissions committee, applicants had to be unmarried males, have an
evangelical disposition, and manifest good natural abilities. And if a candidate
possessed these qualities, but lacked academic preparation, the college stood ready to
support the student in undertaking remedial work to compensate for lack of academic
preparation.37
To make the course available to men of modest means, the college
absorbed the costs of tuition and board. Students attended Biblical and Theological
lectures and received instruction in English grammar and composition; the Latin, Greek,
and Hebrew languages; Logic, Rhetoric, History, Geography, Chronology, and Jewish
Antiquities. On the practical side, students rotated the responsibility for leading family
worship every morning and evening. So that students could develop their preaching
skills and “impart religious instruction to the inhabitants of a populous and rapidly
increasing neighborhood,” Thomas Wilson (1764-1843), who succeeded his father as a
faithful patron of Hoxton, contributed generously in 1796 to constructing a campus
chapel.38
36
In 1826 Hoxton merged with Highbury College, another Wilson philanthropy, and relocated to the
Highbury campus. For this reason, Hoxton is sometimes referred to as Highbury. Later Highbury became
part of the University of London. 37
An Account of the Hoxton Academy, Instituted for the Education of Young Men for the Christian Ministry
(London: Printed by J. Haddon, 1815), xvi. 38
Joshua Wilson, A Memoir of the Life and Character of Thomas Wilson, Esq., Treasurer of Highbury
College (London: John Snow, 1846), 210; Plan of the Evangelical Academy, Hoxton (London, [1794]), np;
“A Complete List of the Students Educated at Highbury College, from its Foundation in 1783, to the
Present Time,” American Quarterly Register IX (1837), 130-132.
206
As conceived by and for the nonconformist community, Hoxton offered an
antidote to the exclusion of dissenters from educational opportunities reserved for the
upper classes and those willing to profess the Established religion. The curriculum
provided a facsimile of the liberal education associated with elites. Simultaneously, the
Hoxton program incorporated a solid component of the middle and working class
emphasis on acquiring skills through apprenticeship. Unlike the cloistered enclaves of
Oxford and Cambridge, Hoxton occupied an urban setting near the working world of the
City of London that reflected its orientation towards the lower and middle classes. In the
early nineteenth century Hoxton hovered on the northeastern edge of London with
Finsbury Fields to the West and open fields to the East.39
By 1822 London had absorbed
Hoxton, the village “in the parish of Shoreditch, formerly quite distinct from, but now
joined to the metropolis.”40
Nonconformists could not rely on church hierarchy or tax support, so they applied
their middle-class business sense to building places for worship as well as to financing
and administering schools and other evangelical projects. For instance, Thomas Wilson
“assisted chapel causes all over the country with big sums or small, by gift or loan, free
or conditional according to circumstances.” He became a model for others of means
through “his benevolence and the business-like discrimination by which it was exerted,
designed to both encourage self-help and regenerate resources….”41
People from all
walks of life joined wealthy, successful businessmen in funding evangelical causes.
39
William Carey, Strangers Guide through London, Westminster, and Southwark; or, A View of the
Metropolis in 1808 (London: Albion Press, [1807]), map insert. 40
The Picture of London 1822 (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1822), 383. 41
John Handby Thompson, “’An Important Work’: Building a Victorian Chapel” in Modern Christianity
and Cultural Aspirations, D. W. Bebbington and Timothy Larsen, eds. (London: Sheffield Academic Press,
2003), 91-92.
207
Ministers earmarked collections from congregations present at certain services to benefit
specific missionary causes. William Jay, for example, preached at the opening of the
Hoxton Chapel in 1796 and on many other occasions to support evangelical outreach.42
The no-nonsense directors of Hoxton solicited legacies from supporters and even
supplied the proper legal wording for bequests in their promotional material.43
Cornelius
Winter was one of the many who remembered Hoxton in his will.44
Robert Bolton’s
choice of Hoxton for seminary and his lifelong associations with its supporters and
graduates underscore that both his religious and his social dispositions aligned with the
middle-class evangelicals who numbered among the common folk of English society.
Identifying with those of humble birth such as Winter and Jay did not come
without social consequences. A large segment of the English population recognized only
one path to acquiring the erudition befitting a man of God. Traditionalists met with
skepticism the efforts of evangelicals to establish access to education from the primary
level up to, and including, training ministers who would compare favorably to classically-
schooled Anglican clergy. In his review of William Jay’s Memoirs of the Life and
Character of the Late Reverend Cornelius Winter, Ralph Griffiths fretted that Winter’s
story might delude “mechanics and other working class readers” into thinking that they
were entitled to aspire to the ministry. Griffiths’s way of thinking was that Winter had no
right to the title of “Reverend” because he lacked a classical education. Further, Griffiths
predicted, Winter’s presumption to educating young men for the ministry would excite
42
The Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle VIII (May, 1800), 222; Joshua Wilson, A Memoir
of the Life and Character of Thomas Wilson, Esq., Treasurer of Highbury College (London: John Snow,
1846), 210. 43
An Account of the Hoxton Academy, Instituted for the Education of Young Men for the Work of the
Ministry (London: Printed by W. Smith, 1804), 3. 44
An Account of the Hoxton Academy, Instituted for the Education of Young Men for the Christian Ministry
(London: Printed by J. Haddon, 1815), 15.
208
“the astonishment of the reader.”45
Even though persecution of nonconformists upheld
elite privilege, disdain and ridicule for evangelicals came from every stratum of English
society. The reader will remember that before he experienced his conversion, Winter
mocked Whitefield to entertain companions in a public house.
Regardless of the social disadvantages the decision would engender, Robert
Bolton chose to prepare for the ministry at Hoxton. On the completion of his studies,
Bolton married Anne Jay and began the next phase of his life as a lay preacher in rural,
southwestern England. In the vicinity of Bristol, not far from his bride’s childhood home
in Bath, Bolton launched his career in a manner that recalls James Habersham’s
missionary work. Habersham had sailed with George Whitefield from London to
Savannah intending to serve as a schoolmaster. Together, Whitefield and Habersham set
up Bethesda to house and educate orphans and children of the poor, including Bolton’s
great-aunt Mary who became Habersham’s bride. In the communities of Frenchay and
Glastonbury, Bolton preached and reached out to the poor as Habersham had done in
colonial Georgia. Bolton’s steady leadership of the Glastonbury nonconformist
community through a period of troubles left a lasting impression on the people there.
Several years later a grateful church member attributed Bolton’s spiritual and political
guidance with providing the congregation valuable models for addressing problems. He
continued, “In the management of a rising dissent interest, wisdom and prudence are as
necessary as eminent piety, for the enemy directs his attacks in every quarter;… . Our
school is in a flourishing condition, the number of scholars being one hundred and
fifty;… . We have not forgotten that you are the founder of this school; which gave rise
45
Ralph Griffiths, “Review: Memoirs of the Life and Character of the Late Reverend Cornelius Winter,”
The Monthly Review 59 (May-August, 1809), 195-199.
209
to one attached to the Established Church.”46
Anglicans may have been indifferent or
even opposed to educating the lower echelons, but the Established Church was more or
less shamed into following suite when dissenters attracted students to their highly visible
Sunday schools.
Despite their dedication to education and evangelism, neither Habersham nor
Bolton sustained lifelong employment with either calling. When circumstances favored
it, both Habersham and Bolton re-invented themselves as pious merchants. Whereas
Habersham then remained in trade for the remainder of his life, Bolton did not. Bolton
managed the family firm in Liverpool for a few years, but his vocation as a Liverpool
merchant ended with the loss of most of his fortune in the wake of the Panic of 1819.47
At that juncture friends stepped in to help Bolton determine his future. The prominent
London evangelist Rowland Hill suggested
If you and your family are the worse for these bad times, yet I trust the souls of
men shall be better for it. If, instead of being the rich American merchant, you
should be the poor humble preacher of “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who,
though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty
might be rich,” then the result will be a blessed one. One single soul called by
your instrumentality, will ultimately prove a greater treasure than the possession
of a thousand such poor worlds as this.
Bolton accepted Hill’s counsel. After settling his affairs in Liverpool and the United
States, Bolton resumed a full-time lay ministry, eventually accepted a call to lead a
congregation, and was ordained as an independent minister in 1824. A marriage
settlement had protected a portion of their assets from creditors, so the Boltons still had
46
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 55-56. 47
“Abstracts of Documents Relating to the State of Georgia between AD 1755 and 1824 and now in the
possession of Reginald Bolton,” (Robert Bolton Sr. and Jr. Collection, Georgia Historical Society).
210
an annual income of about £300, which amounts to approximately $26,000 in simple
purchasing power in today’s money. On her husband’s decision to live modestly and
preach the word of God, Anne Bolton opined, “Happy for us when we can view the
denials of Providence as blessings in disguise.”48
Bolton left the mercantile life with the encouragement of his family and remained
totally engaged in the ministry for over thirty years until his death in 1857. Perhaps their
greatest adjustment to Bolton’s calling was living in straitened circumstances. Most
other aspects of the Bolton family’s new life represented a consistent evolution of their
longstanding values and relationships. Enduring ties to the overlapping family,
mercantile, and evangelical networks meant that their lifestyle changed in terms of the
placement of emphasis, but not in its fundamental nature. Whether acting as layman or a
pastor, Bolton still worked to spread the word of God, especially to underserved
populations. Because nonconformist laymen enjoyed higher standing in chapel
leadership than their counterparts in the hierarchical Anglican church, crossing over from
the laity to the clergy was not so much an about face as an intensification of pace.
Bolton’s commitment to the related objectives of education and evangelism
remained constant throughout his life, but he pursued these ends in different ways at
different times according to his circumstances and the setting. In his first position after
leaving Liverpool Bolton’s role as a lay preacher in Weymouth, Dorsetshire, primarily
involved evangelism. He supplied pulpits for pastors in need of relief and sought out
converts among the poor. On Sunday evenings Bolton walked to the nearby villages of
48
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 85-86, 97; Lawrence H. Officer, "Dollar-Pound
Exchange Rate From 1791," MeasuringWorth, 2011 http://www.measuringworth.com/exchangepound/;
http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/relativevalue.php (last accessed April 5, 2012).
211
Ashfield and Sutton to preach in the open air. In 1824 an independent congregation at
Henley-on-Thames called Bolton to replace their retiring pastor. Bolton demurred but
agreed to supply the pulpit for a time. The congregation unanimously renewed the offer.
On this occasion Bolton accepted his call to the small, but pleasant, market-town nestled
in the valley of the meandering Thames River about thirty miles west of London.49
Robert Bolton took charge of the independent congregation at Henley-on-Thames
on July 4, 1824. That December some very familiar names within the evangelical
network came together at Henley to carry out his official ordination. According to the
hierarchical order of the established church, a higher ranking bishop ordains a new priest.
Rejecting the Anglican chain of command meant that nonconformist ministers ordained
their soon-to-be peers like Robert Bolton. William Jay, his father-in-law; Thomas
Raffles, his former pastor from Liverpool; the minister retiring from Henley-on-Thames;
and three other men of the cloth took part in the day-long celebration to initiate Bolton
into their ranks.50
Lacking the pomp of a bishop, nonconformists apparently
compensated with numbers. His twelve-year tenure at Henley-on-Thames validated
Bolton as a worthy cohort in the cause of evangelism.
Increasing the size of his flock was Bolton’s first evangelical accomplishment in
Henley-on-Thames. After just two years, rising attendance necessitated adding side
galleries to the chapel. By 1829 growth of the congregation inspired a second
enlargement of the facilities.51
Bolton’s bonds with the evangelical network provided
49
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 99, 105. 50
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 107. 51
http://www.christ-church-henley.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=44:history-of-
christ-church-henley-on-thames (last accessed April 10, 2012).
212
financial and moral support for these expansions. Bolton locally raised some money for
construction, but villagers of modest means who were taxed to support the established
church found it difficult to generate the entire sum necessary. Here is where Bolton
tapped into the evangelical network and looked to other congregations and pious
merchants for assistance. Connections in Liverpool helped to finance the building
projects.52
When Bolton contacted Thomas Wilson, the longtime treasurer of Hoxton
College and a renowned chapel builder, on the technical matter of gas lighting, Wilson
may also have contributed monetarily.53
Dedicating the completed additions not only
recognized the accomplishment within Bolton’s congregation, but also demonstrated to
the church establishment and other critics that the nonconformist community was thriving
despite the obstacles they faced. Two renowned independents held forth from Robert
Bolton’s pulpit on the dedication day of June 2, 1829. In the morning William Jay of
Argyle Chapel in Bath, Bolton’s father-in-law, preached to standing room in the morning.
The founder of London’s Surrey Chapel and Jay’s mentor, Rowland Hill entranced an
even larger gathering at the afternoon service.54
Bolton’s evangelism extended beyond tending his own flock to carrying the
gospel to smaller communities surrounding Henley-on-Thames. Here, again, networking
came into play. Bolton chaired a meeting to create a Village Preaching Fund to sustain
evangelical outreach to settlements within about five miles of Henley-on-Thames.55
To
52
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 107-8, 145. 53
Robert Bolton, Letter to Thomas Wilson, c. 1827-1830 (MS NCL/380/11), Dr. Williams’s Library, New
College London Collection. 54
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 108. 55
A few communities near Henley-on-Thames with distances in parentheses: Binfield Heath (3.7 miles),
Pheasant’s Hill (4.7 miles), Peppard (4 miles), Hurley (5 miles ), Crazer’s Hill (9 miles), Wargrave (4
miles).
213
establish a presence in a community, Bolton or in some cases a designated lay preacher,
spoke in open-air public spaces to anyone who would pay attention. Once the preacher
established some regular listeners, the group often gathered in a cottage or a shop. When
small, private meeting places became inadequate the Village Preaching Fund could
underwrite the rental of a larger space until the group unified and built a chapel.56
For
Bolton the nearby village of Wargrave presented the most determined resistance to
improvement and, in the end, the most gratifying results of his evangelical efforts in the
environs of Henley.
The social and spiritual deficiencies manifest in the hamlet of Wargrave
epitomized some of the evils middle class evangelicals hoped to ameliorate throughout
English society. Late in the eighteenth century Richard Barry (1769-1794), 7th
Earl of
Barrymore, gathered his circle of dissolute and profligate friends, including the
extravagant Prince of Wales, at Wargrave for revelries in his private theater and the
village at large.57
The high-born wastrels earned notoriety for drinking excessively and
teasing the simple local folk with sophomoric pranks and other amusements such as
quoits and cricket.58
When the Boltons settled at Henley about thirty years after Barry’s
death, the village of Wargrave still reflected the “baleful influence” of the aristocrats who
had formerly resided or visited in the neighborhood.59
Following a time-honored nonconformist pattern, Bolton set off to preach on the
Wargrave village green every Tuesday evening. As soon as he began drawing avid
56
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 125-6. 57
http://www.georgianindex.net/Prinny/prinnys_set.html (last accessed April 13, 2012). 58
Anthony Pasquin, The Life of the Late Earl of Barrymore (London: H. D. Symonds, 1793), 8. 59
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 127.
214
listeners, moneyed interests in Wargrave hired local thugs to disrupt the assemblies. The
rowdies hooted and howled to drown out the speaker. When Bolton and his listeners
relocated, the tormentors followed, hurling buckets of beer and rotten vegetables at
Bolton until he had no choice but to make a tactical withdrawal. Not one to be easily
discouraged, Bolton petitioned the local authorities for a license to preach, hired a room
for meetings, and returned, undaunted, to evangelizing in Wargrave. The perseverance of
the middle-class evangelist triumphed over the prejudices of upper and working class
skeptics. When Bolton preached at the dedication of a chapel in Wargrave, the men who
had persecuted Bolton had come to rather disagreeable ends. Two were tried and
condemned to transport for theft; one was hung; two more died miserable deaths in the
workhouse; and the last one suffered from a disfiguring disease of the face that he
considered God’s judgment on him for taking part in the ungodly act of harassing
Bolton.60
Striking out to preach beyond one’s own congregation did not always mean facing
disrespectful skeptics. From about 1829, Bolton regularly accepted invitations to supply
the pulpits at Whitefield’s London chapels, the Tabernacle and Tottenham Court Road
Chapel. As indicated by his son William, Bolton “esteemed this a great privilege as well
as a pleasing circumstance, that he who in his early days heard so much of George
Whitefield, should now be called upon to stand up in his pulpit.” His wife Anne, for her
part, felt deeply honored when Robert preached in London at Rowland Hill’s Surrey
Chapel. She found it nothing less than “remarkable that I should be visiting Surrey
Chapel as a Minister’s wife, where I have so often gone as the Minister’s daughter.”
60
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 128-133.
215
Bolton was ever faithful to the belief that God could speak through people from all ranks
of society, so perhaps the greatest mark of distinction in Bolton’s mind was his
opportunity to preach from the Savannah pulpit of the former slave and his early mentor,
Andrew Marshall.61
Ministers who accepted invitations to preach or participate in ceremonies such as
ordinations and building dedications reinforced the bonds within the evangelical network.
Similarly, taking an active interest in cause-specific groups like the London Missionary
Society strengthened connections to the network. William Jay, Rowland Hill, and
Thomas Raffles all held leadership roles in the organization, so it comes as no surprise
that Robert Bolton also served the Society as the “country representative” while he was
living in Henley in 1834 and 1835.62
Men like Bolton, together with other evangelicals,
formed a transnational, multigenerational community that at times dared to challenge the
boundaries of nationality, class, and race.
This informal network of evangelicals facilitated their mobility. As noted in the
section on Bolton’s life as a Liverpool merchant, ministers and other Christian friends
found a warm welcome in his princely establishment. John Codman, a pastor visiting
from America, remembered the Bolton home in Henley as a modest, but “delightfully
situated cottage in the same enclosure with his chapel; and the grounds around it,
embracing the cemetery of his congregation, are laid out with great beauty and taste by its
present worthy occupant.”63
Even though the residence was smaller and the family
61
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 37-39, 112, 153. 62
London Missionary Society, The Report of the Directors to the Fortieth General Meeting of the
Missionary Society (London: The Missionary Society, 1834), xii; The Report of the Directors to the Forty-
first General Meeting of the Missionary Society (London: The Missionary Society, 1835), xii. 63
John Codman, A Narrative of a Visit to England (Boston: Perkins and Marvin, 1836), 177.
216
larger, the Boltons still received Christian guests at Henley as enthusiastically as they had
in Liverpool.64
Bolton’s keen interest in education was another aspect of his commitment to
evangelism that never wavered. By the time that Bolton settled in Henley, the nature of
his involvement with education existed primarily on two levels, first as a philanthropic
cause, and second as a practical necessity. Between 1814 and 1831, Robert and Anne
Bolton increased their family to fourteen children.65
Robert Bolton is credited with
building an infant school at Henley, but his children are not likely to have attended it.
Robert Owen had established the first infant school at Lanark in 1816 for the protection
of poor children whose mothers worked outside the home.66
Just as Robert Bolton’s
mother taught him the fundamentals, the responsibility for the primary education of
middle-class children still rested principally on the shoulders of the mother. Anne Jay
Bolton took this assignment as a sacred trust. Her duty, as she saw it, was to oversee
both their intellectual and spiritual development. One bitterly cold February evening in
1823, Anne Bolton wrote in her journal,
The day has been wholly occupied with my children, and I sometimes endeavor
to console myself with the hope that, as it is a duty to attend to their religious
instruction, so God will not permit my own soul to be barren, but that in my
64
John Codman, A Narrative of a Visit to England (Boston: Perkins and Marvin, 1836), 176; William Jay
Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs. Bolton (London:
Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 118. In addition to Codman some visitors to the Bolton home were
Asahel Nettleton, Joseph Hughes, Professor Scholfield, Doctor Cox, Bishop McIlvaine, Richard Brill. See:
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 110, 117-8. 65
Children of Robert and Anne Jay Bolton: Robert (1814-1877); Anne, called Nanette (1815-1884);
William Jay (1816-1884); John Jay (1818-1898); Cornelius Winter (1819-1884); Mary Statira (b. 1820);
Arabella (1822-1860); James Jay (1824-1863); Rhoda (1825-1887); Abby (1827-1849); Meta (1828-1828);
Adelle (1830-1911) and Adelaide (b. 1830), twins; and Frances Georgiana (b. 1831). 66
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 110;
http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2086/Infant-Schools-in-England.html (last accessed April 21,
2012).
217
humble efforts to water their souls, He will condescend to water mine also. What
responsibility do I feel in my children! Seven souls committed to my care, to
train up for thee! Solemn charge! Lord, let not one be lost.67
In a contest of which took precedence, academic or spiritual instruction, Anne came
down solidly on the side of the latter. In her journal entry for January 13, 1828, she
wrote, “Our ten little ones are now under our roof. Lord, bless them spiritually. As to
temporal concerns, we would leave them. I treat these as secondary matters, if thou
wouldst only give them thy grace.”68
In her paraphrasing of Christ’s Sermon on the
Mount, Anne revealed her connection to evangelical linkages among people like
Whitefield, Habersham, and generations of the Bolton family.
When Anne Bolton ranked temporal concerns as subordinate to spiritual well-
being, it was not as if she was oblivious to the burdens of daily life. On New Year’s Eve
of 1833 she felt “pressed down with family cares, my thirteen children all at home, my
dear niece and nephew with us—now orphans—myself confined to my room with
indisposition, our remittances from abroad, we know not why, smaller than usual.”69
With fifteen children to look after, preparing them for adult life must have been a large
concern.
Consistent with earlier generations of parents and guardians affiliated with the
communitas, Robert and Anne Bolton faced options that carried with them the probability
of restricting their sons’ career and social possibilities to a fairly circumscribed range of
options. For most young people of the working and middle classes, it still held true that
67
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 95-96. 68
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 141. 69
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 151. The niece and nephew Anne Bolton spoke of
were probably the children of Richard and Frances Bolton Richardson.
218
post-primary education involved apprenticeship and/or some job-specific training rather
than a classical liberal education. Secondary education intended to prepare students for
university studies remained largely upper class turf.
However, as England’s middle class grew larger and wealthier, so did its ability to
create its own institutions to parallel the ones that excluded them. For instance, a group
of interested merchants and ministers had joined forces in the 1780s to found Hoxton
College as a seminary for nonconformists. In 1807 a similar group established the Mill
Hill School on the outskirts of London in the community of Hendon to provide a first-rate
liberal education to the sons of religious nonconformists who were debarred from Eton
and Harrow, the elite, Anglican secondary schools that were located nearby.70
The
Reverend Thomas Aveling described Mill Hill as being “Situated in one of the loveliest
neighborhoods of the metropolis, on a hill whence could be seen the spire and buildings
of the village of Harrow….”71
If pointing out the physical juxtaposition of Harrow and
Mill Hill was not enough to make the point, Aveling added “the establishment at Hendon
[Mill Hill] commenced its career in a noble rivalry with its more time-honoured and
renowned competitor [Harrow].”72
With this extra emphasis Aveling made it clear that,
despite the exclusions they endured, nonconformists had the wealth and power to
challenge Britain’s elites. He foresaw that “the mental athletes” of Mill Hill “…were
70
John Codman, A Narrative of a Visit to England (Boston: Perkins and Marvin, 1836), 165; Norman G.
Brett-James, Mill Hill (London and Glasgow: Blackie and Son Limited, 1938), 2-4, 17-25; 'Schools: Mill
Hill School', in J.S. Cockburn, H.P.F. King, and K.G.T. McDonnell, eds., A History of the County of
Middlesex: Volume 1: Physique, Archaeology, Domesday, Ecclesiastical Organization, The Jews, Religious
Houses, Education of Working Classes to 1870, Private Education from Sixteenth Century (London:
Victoria County History, 1969), 307-308. URL: http://www.british-
history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=22138 (last accessed 24 April 2012). 71
Thomas W. Aveling, Memorials of the Clayton Family (London: Jackson, Walford, and Hodder, 1867),
313. 72
Thomas W. Aveling, Memorials of the Clayton Family (London: Jackson, Walford, and Hodder, 1867),
313.
219
destined, in future life, to form no inconsiderable portion of the mercantile, scientific, and
religious portion of the kingdom….”73
With their decision to send their oldest son Robert (1814-1877) to Mill Hill, the
Boltons’ placed themselves within the nonconformist elite. This choice, however, meant
that if each child received similar treatment, tuition expenses would absorb an ever
increasing percentage of their diminishing income. Nevertheless, two more of their sons,
William Jay (1816-1884) and Cornelius Winter (1819-1884), joined young Robert at Mill
Hill as they came of age.74
Anne repeatedly recorded in her journal evidence of the mounting financial strain
on the family. Typically she did not complain of hardship, but expressed herself in terms
of gratitude for God’s personal interest as in 1828 when she wrote, “In a wonderful
manner has the Lord appeared for us this morning, in a time of need. A franked letter
came by post, enclosing a sum of money, with only this written ‘A cup of cold water.’ It
has indeed refreshed us, and led us to adore that Being who has put it into the heart of
some Christian friend.”75
In 1832 she confessed, “Again I have to record a most
unexpected instance of the love of our heavenly Father. A packet was handed me from
the ladies of the congregation, containing a purse of money, as ‘an expression of their
73
Thomas W. Aveling, Memorials of the Clayton Family (London: Jackson, Walford, and Hodder, 1867),
315. 74
Henry Carrington Bolton and Reginald Pelham Bolton, The Family of Bolton in England and America,
1100-1894, A Study in Genealogy (New Haven: Privately printed, 1895), 364, 370; “Reverend Cornelius
W. Bolton” in Biographical History of Westchester County, NY (Chicago, IL: The Lewis Publishing Co.,
1899), i:226-7; Willene B. Clark, The Stained Glass Art of William Jay Bolton (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse
University Press, 1992), 6. 75
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 142. The anonymous benefactor’s signature is a
quotation from the Gospel of Matthew 10:42.
220
respect and sympathy.’”76
In her view God had taken direct action again when she wrote
“In the most unexpected way and quarter, God has sent us £20. We had to meet that sum
to-day, and at the very moment, it is sent.”77
The discomfort for the Boltons was not
only financial, but also social as Anne acknowledged, “We have been kindly entertained
by former friends now moving above us in society.”78
Even though he had passed a very pleasant June day in 1835 with Robert Bolton
and “his large and very interesting family,” the American minister John Codman came
away with a sense of Bolton’s increasing concern about his family’s future. Codman
approved of Bolton’s delightful situation “in his cottage, chapel, and lovely family.”
Simultaneously he gave a sympathetic ear to Bolton’s “sighs to return to his native land,”
where he believed there would be better opportunities for educating and settling his
numerous family. Codman portrayed Bolton as being “sick at heart with the
exclusiveness and bigotry of the established church, and long[ing] to breathe the
atmosphere of religious liberty in the Western world.”79
Perhaps Codman overstated the
case. At the very least, the account of Bolton’s son is less outspoken. William Jay
Bolton believed of his father that “the largeness of his family, and the difficulty of
providing for his sons in England had induced him to remove to America.” By the late
summer of 1835 the Boltons had decided to quit England. On August 30, Anne wrote,
“We have been much occupied lately with the all-engrossing thought of our removal to
America. Lord, undertake for us. Thou wilt not suffer my dear Robert, who, I know, has
76
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 149. 77
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 152-153. 78
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 153. 79
John Codman, A Narrative of a Visit to England (Boston: Perkins and Marvin, 1836), 177.
221
sought thy will most earnestly, and trembled to move without thee, to take a step that was
not right.”80
Robert, Anne, and their thirteen children sailed from England early in the summer
of 1836, but not before they reinforced attachments within the evangelical network.
Friends in London entertained and housed the large family. The Reverend George
Clayton led a special prayer meeting for the Boltons at the Poultry Chapel where his
brother John Clayton, Jr., was the pastor.81
The ties between George Clayton and Robert
Bolton are a fair representation of the interconnectedness of the nonconformist
evangelical community. Bolton and Clayton both prepared for the ministry at Hoxton.82
Robert Bolton’s father-in-law, William Jay, and his Liverpool pastor, Thomas Raffles,
had joined the Reverend John Clayton, Sr. in preaching for the dedication of his son’s
Poultry Chapel.83
George Clayton’s brother William served as chaplain at Mill Hill
School while the Bolton boys were attending.84
Without institutional records to make
them stand out, the strong and resilient ties that linked evangelicals throughout the
English-speaking world are not always obvious, but they are, nonetheless, tremendously
significant.
After a safe Atlantic passage on the ship Toronto, the Boltons landed in New
York and set about the task of settling in the United States. The Boltons reunited with the
80
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 154-155. 81
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 156. 82
Thomas W. Aveling, Memorials of the Clayton Family (London: Jackson, Walford, and Hodder, 1867),
223. 83
“Religious Intelligence: Ordinations Chapels Opened,” The Evangelical Magazine and Missionary
Chronicle 27 (December, 1819), 519; Thomas Stamford Raffles, Memoirs of the Life and Ministry of the
Reverend Thomas Raffles (London: Jackson, Walford, and Hodder, 1864), 181-182; Thomas W. Aveling,
Memorials of the Clayton Family (London: Jackson, Walford, and Hodder, 1867), 195. 84
Thomas W. Aveling, Memorials of the Clayton Family (London: Jackson, Walford, and Hodder, 1867),
312-313.
222
evangelical community as well as friends and family from Robert’s youth in Savannah.85
He went to see Southern friends who passed their summers in Newport, Rhode Island,
and took a side trip to visit William Ellery Channing in Boston.86
Bolton does not seem
to have considered returning to live in the South even though he still owned property
there.
Following a suggestion that he might establish his ministry in “the interior,” all
fifteen Boltons booked passage on a steamer up the Hudson. At Albany the Reverend
Doctor William Sprague entertained the Boltons. Sprague was a mutual friend of
Thomas Raffles and all three men shared a common interest in collecting autographs.87
The family continued from Albany on the Erie Canal as far west as Skanaeateles. They
marveled at the number of churches that dotted the landscape, but decided not to continue
farther into the Burned-over District and returned to New York City. Bolton thought
about taking his ministry to the rapidly expanding northern end of New York City, but
decided instead to buy a farm and serve at St. Paul’s Church in nearby East Chester, New
York.88
Two years later Bolton left the farm in the hands of his sons, disposed of his
Southern holdings, and built an estate in Pelham. Robert and Anne Bolton lived at
Pelham Priory, as their home was known, until 1850 when they, and some of their
children, returned to England.
85
Betty Wood, ed., Mary Telfair to Mary Few: Selected Letters, 1802-1844 (Athens: University of Georgia
Press, 2007), 191. 86
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 157. 87
Thomas Stamford Raffles, Memoirs of the Life and Ministry of the Reverend Thomas Raffles (London:
Jackson, Walford, and Hodder, 1864), 258-259, 288-289, 338-339, 372-372, 505. 88
[James Bolton], Brook Farm: The Amusing and Memorable of American Country Life (London:
Wertheim, Macintosh, and Hunt, 1859), 1; William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the
Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs. Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 156-160.
223
Throughout their years in New York the Boltons continued to live by the values
that had they had espoused in England. Responding to the American context, however,
stimulated some ironic twists in the practical implementation of their ideals. St. Paul’s
Church belonged to the Episcopal denomination, the American counterpart to the
Anglican, or Established Church, in Britain. Even so, Bolton allowed an American
bishop to re-ordain him as an Episcopalian so that he could accept the pastorate. He
explained that his objection to Anglicanism was more political and social than religious.
In the United States where there was no state-sponsored church, he was comfortable as an
Episcopalian. In another turnaround of his English experience, Bolton took a role not
unlike that of an English pious merchant such as Robert Spear or the chapel builder
Thomas Wilson. Bolton called on the local gentry to subscribe to a building fund to erect
a church near his residence in Pelham. Their contributions amounted to one third of the
cost. Bolton made up the difference to erect Christ Church, Pelham. Later Bolton
donated land for a Dutch Reformed Church. In another effort that resembled the
charitable work of English nonconformists, Bolton, with the aid of friends, built a
schoolhouse to serve the local children. At a nominal cost, both black and white students
could attend the school at a time when free public education was in its infancy.89
Instead
of being the impecunious parson as he had been in England, Bolton acted as the lead
donor for projects on American soil.
Following the pattern from his English ministry, Bolton began reaching out to the
working people in the neighborhood of his New York parish. Near Pelham this
89
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 180.
224
population consisted “principally of fishermen, mechanics, and free blacks.”90
In the
United States, unlike in England, slavery and race as well as class loomed large in the
social calculus of everyday life. Remaining true to his conscience while maintaining
connections to associates and family who espoused strongly held, and, often
diametrically opposed, beliefs, meant that Bolton subscribed to a code of silence
concerning slavery and race that has left us without a written record of his principles.
However, some of the Bolton children and a few other people recorded a smattering of
references to family beliefs and behaviors.
Recollections from the childhood of Robert and Anne’s eighth-born James Jay
(1824-1863) leave little doubt as to what he was told about slavery as a child. James,
who was a young adolescent when the family moved to their New York farm, had the
sometimes lonely and terrifying job of shepherding the family’s flock of sheep as they
grazed in remote meadows. When the isolation got the better of him, his worst fear was
that he “might be kidnapped by menstealers, have my face sooted, and be sold for a slave
into South Carolina.”91
In a memoir addressed to an English audience, James Bolton
digressed from his description of a migratory bird when he wrote, “At the South where he
hibernates he is known as a rice-bird. … What stories he could tell you of Georgian
plantations—negroes sighs and negroes melodies!—What appendices he could write to
‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin!’ Mrs. Stowe did you bribe him to peep?”92
Because they were
published in 1859 when the debate over American slavery was reaching its climax,
90
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 172. 91
[James Bolton], Brook Farm: The Amusing and Memorable of American Country Life (London:
Wertheim, Macintosh, and Hunt, 1859), 20. 92
[James Bolton], Brook Farm: The Amusing and Memorable of American Country Life (London:
Wertheim, Macintosh, and Hunt, 1859), 35.
225
Bolton’s comments represent a greater willingness to express anti-slavery, if not
abolitionist, beliefs than his father or older brother would have made public.
Further examining the Bolton’s evangelical and educational pursuits, yields some
insights into the thinking on race in their household. Robert and Anne’s third child
William Jay Bolton (1816-1884) pointedly mentioned that the family’s Sunday school at
East Chester and the day school in Pelham welcomed both blacks and whites.93
Nanette,
the Bolton’s second child, organized the Sunday school of about fifty or sixty students at
St. Paul’s, East Chester. She recruited her brother James, the Bolton’s eighth child, as a
teacher. When the students assembled in the gallery of St. Paul’s after lunch on Sundays
to separate into classes, James found his
charge was a group of black boys. They were merry fellows,--merrier than wise.
They laughed at the driest question in the Catechism, and there were certain
Scripture stories as Balaam and his loquacious ass, and Jonah in the whale’s belly,
which gave rise to such rolling of the whites of their eyes, and to such rollicking
sounds, that I did not venture to narrate them twice. I tried to write lessons on
their memories, but it was very much like trying to write them on a whipt
syllabub94
James Bolton’s assessment of his listeners’ responses uncannily echoes the sentiments
Cornelius Winter expressed almost a century earlier after preaching to slaves on
plantations near Savannah. Both portrayed the unconverted black more or less as a
simpleton or buffoon.
In James Bolton’s estimation embracing Christianity empowered those of African
descent, as well as other subalterns, to attain social and spiritual uplift. The Bolton’s free
93
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 166-167, 180-181. 94
[James Bolton], Brook Farm: The Amusing and Memorable of American Country Life (London:
Wertheim, Macintosh, and Hunt, 1859), 27-29.
226
black neighbor, Fairfax, epitomized the ameliorating effects that Christianity could have
on the Negro race. Despite the disadvantages of his black skin and birth in bondage,
Fairfax embodied qualities that would dignify any man. To see Fairfax mow a meadow
or fell a tree was to see manual labor rise to a level of art. There was no better neighbor
as when the Boltons needed help to free an ox mired in a bog. As James Bolton told it,
“Sooty Fairfax was in his element—not mud, but energetic action.—He could not have
worked harder had the ox been his own good wife.”95
Masterful at the humble but honest
pursuits of day labor and cultivating a garden, Fairfax was as upstanding as a husband
and father as he was as a provider for his family. With the help of his well brought-up
children, Fairfax even accumulated enough capital to acquire a stand of timber. Strong
faith grounded this life lived well. In Bolton’s words, Fairfax was “bold to reprove sin
and speak a word in season for his Master.”96
Though “Sooty Fairfax” could have been
expected to have more in common with “mud” than with “energetic action,” his embrace
of Christianity had raised him above the norm. What’s more, Fairfax dedicated himself
to a lay ministry just as James’s esteemed father the Reverend Robert Bolton had done.
James’s implication that Fairfax and his father were comparable as godly men reprises a
deeply rooted theme the family history.
Robert Bolton attributed his spiritual development to Andrew Marshall who, like
Fairfax, had been born a slave. After purchasing his freedom Marshall earned his living
as a drayman and served as pastor of the First African Baptist Church in Savannah.
Fairfax and Marshall, by necessity, and Bolton by his own choosing had to support
95
[James Bolton], Brook Farm: The Amusing and Memorable of American Country Life (London:
Wertheim, Macintosh, and Hunt, 1859), 93. 96
[James Bolton], Brook Farm: The Amusing and Memorable of American Country Life (London:
Wertheim, Macintosh, and Hunt, 1859), 50.
227
themselves in order take the Christian message to the poor. That they humbly worked for
their Lord without the wealth and status an established church or an elite congregation to
sustain them demonstrated their true devotion to Christ.
Embracing the notion that blacks could occupy the moral high ground was not an
idea that the Bolton’s Southern friends and relatives would swallow easily. The Southern
response to Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a case in point. Yet Southerners not only stayed in
touch but also actively sought the Boltons to educate their daughters.
When they arrived in New York the oldest Bolton children, Robert and Nanette,
were already in their twenties. But in 1840 the Boltons still had five daughters under the
age of fifteen. Whereas some of the boys had attended boarding school in England, it
seems that the Boltons homeschooled all the girls. As William Jay Bolton put it, “no
sooner was Mr. Bolton established in his new abode, than he began to receive
applications from Southern friends to allow their daughters to be educated with his own.
One or two, and then others were admitted, but yet without interfering with the family
character of the household….”97
Clearly the Boltons handled their rejection of slavery in such a way that it did not
diminish their standing among slaveholding Savannahians like Mary Telfair. She
confided to a friend that her niece Berta would benefit from ten years in the Bolton’s
care.98
By 1841 Nanette had taken the primary role of educator, and the enrollment was
increasing. Robert Bolton wrote to friend in England that their household was “twenty-
five in number, as my daughter has a few young ladies under her care, their parents
97
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 172. 98
Betty Wood, ed., Mary Telfair to Mary Few: Selected Letters, 1802-1844 (Athens: University of Georgia
Press, 2007), 206.
228
requesting to put them into our family, and I am happy to say that some of them seem
piously inclined….”99
Although Robert and Anne Bolton returned to England in 1850,
the Pelham Priory, as the school was known, continued to flourish under Nanette’s
guidance until the 1880s. In dedicating a memorial to Nanette Bolton, Bishop Potter of
New York lauded her work for women’s equality and commented that the first woman
awarded a Ph.D. from Columbia University had attended the Priory.100
Despite their
differences on slavery and race, they held enough common values for Southern friends to
ask the Boltons to educate their daughters. Both parties well understood and subscribed
to the code of silence on subjects that divided them. Unfortunately, adhering to the code,
as did Robert and Anne Bolton, left no evidence. Sons William Jay and James Jay
touched on the subjects of slavery and race that their parents had so assiduously avoided.
Thanks to the faux pas of a newcomer on the scene, we have a glimpse of how an
unsuspecting immigrant aroused the hornet’s nest by violating the unspoken code. In
August 1843 Jean Leonhard Ver Mehr, his wife, and child arrived in New York from
Europe. A fruitless search for employment left Ver Mehr approaching desperation when
Robert Bolton hired him to teach French at the Priory. Ver Mehr found his new situation
most agreeable. His recollection was that “Nothing indeed could surpass the scenery
around the Priory. It was all new to me, and when, at last, I entered the dwelling, built in
the gothic style and furnished all through in perfect harmony, I forgot I was in a
‘school.’” The collegial atmosphere at the Priory equally impressed Ver Mehr. He
enthused “Reverend Mr. Bolton, with his wife, … and his amiable family, made me feel
99
William Jay Bolton, “Footsteps of the Flock,” Memorials of the Reverend Robert Bolton and of Mrs.
Bolton (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1869), 203. 100
Henry Carrington Bolton and Reginald Pelham Bolton, The Family of Bolton in England and America,
1100-1894, A Study in Genealogy (New Haven: Privately printed, 1895), 370; “Nanette Bolton Memorial,”
The Churchman (May 7, 1887), 527.
229
in Europe, only with a the freedom and pleasing “laissez aller” of American influence.
And I felt at home in another sense. For they were truly God-fearing people laboring
with earnest desire to glorify their Redeemer.” When, at noon, Ver Mehr took his place
“in the large dining hall next to the reverend Principal, and surveyed the bevy of thirty or
forty scholars from all parts of the Union, setting down as a large family, with evidence
of good breeding and liberal instruction, [his] heart was warmed and [he] felt Pelham
Priory a paradise.” Unfortunately for Ver Mehr, his occupation in the paradisiacal
surroundings was short-lived. He confessed to some young ladies from Charleston his
“astonishment that, in a Republic founded on ‘Liberty,’ such a thing as ‘slavery’ could
exist.” The flap that ensued led to his dismissal. Indicating that Bolton regretted the
decision he had taken, Ver Mehr wrote, “I perceived that good Mr. Bolton was perplexed,
and had a word to say. At last he said it. At the end of the month my services would be
dispensed with.” Looking back on the incident, Ver Mehr reflected, “my own lack of
experience deprived me of my most pleasing task, instructions at the Priory.”101
As for
Bolton, he probably supported Ver Mehr’s statement on slavery, but felt he could not
tolerate the violation of the code of silence. The discussion of slavery was too great a
threat to the economic, family, and religious ties that Bolton wanted to maintain.
Robert Bolton, like his contemporaries John Bolton and Richard Richardson,
received a legacy of slaves, began his working life in the firm of R. and J. Bolton, and
eventually developed an understated, but unmistakable, aversion to slavery. His coming
to terms with slavery represented an entirely different approach from either of the other
two men. He left Savannah as a young man and never returned there to live. Like John
101
Jean Leonhard Ver Mehr, A Checkered Life: in the Old and New World (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft
and Co., 1877), 287-289.
230
and Richard, he valued his ties with to Southern friends and family. In turn, Southerners
and slaveholders held him in high regard despite the fact that he did not support slavery.
His reputation as a preacher and a teacher was such that they entrusted their daughters’
education to him even as sectional divisions over slavery became more and more strident
during the 1830s and 1840s.
Conclusion
In 1848 an anonymous portrait of the seventeenth-century divine John Bunyan
ranked high among Bolton family heirlooms. Meaning did not reside in the painting’s
authorship, but in its subject and provenance. For the Bolton family, owning a portrait of
Bunyan “formerly in the possession of the Reverend George Whitefield” firmly identified
them as heirs to the same evangelical Protestant tradition.1 Although their shared
religious heritage did not fit within a single denominational boundary, its vitality in both
Great Britain and America contributed to the lasting ties that the extended Bolton family
and other Savannahians maintained with people and places in England well after the
United States gained political independence.2 In effect, mutual religious values created a
cultural glue or transnational communitas that tied Savannahians to counterparts in Great
Britain for the better part of a century. Evangelical Christian faith was a powerful,
continuous force within this group, as were middle class values.
The middle class, Anglo-American culture took root in Savannah during the
eighteenth century and came into full flower as the demand of English mills for Georgia
cotton grew exponentially in the years around 1800. Then several misfortunes struck the
city that also weakened the communitas. In Savannah two additional disasters
contributed to the economic impact of the nationwide financial panic of 1819. First, a
fire broke out in a livery stable on January 11, 1820. Whipped out of control by winter
winds, the fire consumed much of the city. Then the summer rains left standing water in
1 Robert Bolton, Jr., A History of the County of Westchester, from Its First Settlement to the Present Time
(New York: Alexander Gould, 1848), 555. Even as late as the 1890s, the portrait of Bunyan remained a
key to family identity because it had been passed from George Whitefield to Cornelius Winter and then to
William Jay of Bath who bequeathed it to his grandson Robert Bolton. “A Priory for the Bride” New York
Times July 31, 1892, 11; “Original Portrait of John Bunyan Owned by Adele Bolton and More than 200
Years Old” The New York Times, Wednesday, March 2, 1896, 9. 2 For context, see: Carla Gardina Pestana, Protestant Empire: Religion and the Making of the British
Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 187-217.
232
the ruins of burnt out buildings where mosquitoes carrying the yellow fever virus bred.
By early autumn an epidemic raged. Between August and December of 1820, one in five
Savannahians perished.3
Savannah emerged from the man-made and environmental disasters of 1819 and
1820 as a greatly altered place. Whereas the fire left physical scars on the built
environment that confirmed its destructive power, the profound cultural effects of
population loss due to financial distress and death from disease were less apparent to the
casual observer. Even before the debacles of 1819 and 1820, structural changes in the
Atlantic economy and discomfort with Georgia’s expanding investment in the institution
of slavery were taking a toll on the communitas in Savannah. New York was supplanting
London as a banking center for Southern merchants, so representatives of the Bolton firm
established a business presence and, eventually, permanent residences in the booming
northern city. Financial factors pulled some of the Boltons to New York, even as the
hardening boundaries around slaves and free people of color pushed them away from
Savannah. Richard Richardson, the last among the major players in the communitas to
remain in Savannah, had relocated to New Orleans by 1823.
After a combination of causes siphoned the communitas away from Savannnah,
only a handful of old families remembered their former roles and shared their values.
Eventually newcomers began to repopulate the city in the wake of the losses incurred
during the yellow fever epidemic. They had little or no direct experience with the
communitas affiliates and their values. The demographic shift that marked Savannah’s
resurgence all but guaranteed the old Anglo-American culture would not regain its former
3 Walter J. Fraser, Jr., Savannah in the Old South (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press,
2003), 197-203.
233
ascendancy. Without the members of communitas exhibiting their values from positions
of economic and civic leadership, their influence and the memory of their contributions
faded.
By the 1830s Savannah’s Anglo American culture had all but vanished. Although
the domestic villas that William Jay had designed for his Savannah clients remained, they
revealed nothing of the culture they represented to casual passersby like the English actor
Tyrone Power. After visiting Savannah in December 1834, Power described the
Richardson house as being one of “several very ambitious-looking dwellings, built by a
European architect for wealthy merchants during the palmy days of trade; these are of
stone or some composition, showily designed, and very large. ... They are mostly
deserted or let for boarding houses, and have that decayed look which is so melancholy,
and which nowhere arrives soon than in this climate.”4 Disaster, disease, and financial
ruin had so transformed Savannah that Power was just as unaware of the culture that had
thrived there only a few years earlier as he might have been if he were a foreign visitor
touring the silent ruins of an ancient civilization. The physical removal of major the
players in communitas and the arrival of newcomers who had no link to the old
evangelical Anglo-American culture gave rise to something like historical amnesia.
The fate of Richard Richardson and his house encapsulates the process of losing
cultural memory. Between 1800 and 1820 Richard Richardson learned what a capitalist
economy could give. Perhaps he can be forgiven if he initially overlooked the
implications of a blip in the demand for cotton from the Manchester mills that began in
1819. But by the 1820s Richardson surely understood that capitalism could appropriate
4 Tyrone Power, Impressions of America During the Years 1833, 1834, and 1835 (London: Bentley, 1836),
ii:70.
234
everything it had given in a fraction of the time it had taken to build a fortune. Wracked
by economic depression and vagaries of nature, Savannah floundered and Richardson’s
career collapsed. In June of 1822 Frances Bolton Richardson died while her husband was
in Louisiana arranging to move the family to a sugar plantation near New Orleans.
By October, 1822 the Richardson house had been sold. It changed hands several
times during the 1820s before George Welshman Owens purchased the house in 1830.
The 1951 death of his granddaughter Margaret Gray Thomas ended the family’s 120-year
occupancy of the house. Her will provided a bequest of $1,500, the family home, and
“all the furniture, silver, china, miniatures and pictures … [to be] used as a museum in
perpetuity for the benefit and use of the public as a memorial to my grandfather, George
W. Owens, and to my father, James G. Thomas, to be called the Owens-Thomas House
Museum.”5 Miss Thomas’s legacy mandated the preservation of one of Savannah’s
architectural landmarks and of her own family history. While Miss Thomas’s motives
cannot be impugned, the terms of her will all but guaranteed that the original owner of
the house would be largely overlooked. To this day the Richardson house is known as
the Owen-Thomas House Museum.
With Miss Thomas’s legacy of American furnishings as a starting point, the staff
began to organize the Owens-Thomas House Museum that opened to the public in 1954.
Where there were gaps in Miss Thomas’s legacy, the staff acquired American objects of
exceptional quality to fill out the exhibition. Whereas the interpretation of the house has
always included references to the architect and original owner, the objects and emphasis
privileged the Owens and Thomas part of the story. Meanwhile the Richardson history
has remained hidden in plain view. As in other cases of cultural dislocation, those who
5 Will, Margaret A. Thomas, signed March 13, 1941. The Owens-Thomas House Museum files.
235
came later did not recognize the meaning of the foundations that supported them.
While small histories of buildings, families, and towns are parochially interesting,
they have broader value as well. For instance, the scrutiny of how generations of
communitas affiliates resolved the economic and moral issues of slavery probe the
willingness and ability of individuals to make meaningful choices and undertake
meaningful actions in their own lives. Exploring the real and perceived limits of human
agency, acknowledges that living people occupy several contexts at once. It also
provides insight into how broad societal changes shape individual lives. Probing the
workings of communitas has expanded our understanding of who and what mattered in
Savannah’s early history.
.
236
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