There is some dispute as to whether or not William Wells Brown was born in Lexington. This dispute was the topic of the series of presentations sponsored by CKCPJ featuring Brown's latest biographer, Dr. Ezra Greenspan, the author of a forthcoming book: William Wells Brown: An American Life. Professor Greenspan is the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor of English at Southern Methodist University and the editor of William Wells Brown: A Reader (2008) and also edited William Wells Brown: Clotel and Other Works (2014). More on Professor Greenspan's talks here in Lexington this past week will be described in another post.
According to Brown's memoirs, his mother told him he was born in 1814 in Lexington and his father was white.
This is how Brown described his birthplace - from two different books:
"... was born a slave in Lexington Ky not far from the residence of the late Hon. Henry Clay. His mother was the slave of Dr. John Young. His father was a slaveholder, and, besides being a near relation of his master, was connected with the Wickliffe family, one of the oldest, wealthiest, and most aristocratic of the Kentucky planters. Dr. Young was the owner of forty or fifty slaves, whose chief employment was in cultivating tobacco, hemp, corn, and flax. The doctor removed from Lexington, when William was five or six years old, to the State of Missouri, and commenced farming in a veautiful and fertile valley, within a mile of the Missouri river.” (p. 1)
Transcribed from William Wells Brown, The American Fugitive in Europe; Sketches of Places and People Abroad (Boston: John P. Jewett and Company, 1855).
“I was born in Lexington, Ky. The man who stole me as soon as I was born, recorded the births of all the infants which he claimed to be born his property, in a book which he kept for that purpose. My mother’s name was Elizabeth. She had seven children, viz: Solomon, Leander, Benjamin, Joseph, Millford, Elizabeth, and myself. No two of us were children of the same father. My father’s name, as I learned from my mother, was George Higgins. He was a white man, a relative of my master, and connected with some of the first families in Kentucky. My master owned about forty slaves, twenty-five of whom were field hands. He removed from Kentucky to Missouri, when I was quite young, and settled thirty or forty miles above St. Charles, on the Missouri, where, in addition to his practice as a physician, he carried on milling, merchandizing and farming. (pp. 1-2) ... Mr. Walker had offered a high price for me, as I afterwards learned, but I suppose my master was restrained from selling me by the fact that I was a near relative of his.” (p. 39)
Transcribed from Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave. Written by Himself. (Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1847).
Professor Greenspan has researched Brown's background and believes that instead of Lexington, the Kentuckian (known originally as "Sandy") was born in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. Brown was taken to Missouri, still enslaved, and as a young adult lived in New Orleans where he was supposed to prepare slaves for sale -- forcing them to dance, sing, jump or play cards to make them appear cheerful and happy. As a city slave, Brown wrote, he was not prepared for the tough field work when he was eventually sold. He escaped in 1834 to Ohio where he became active in the anti-slavery movement there and in the east.
In 1849, Brown was sent as an American representative to a Peace Congress in Paris. He remained abroad in England and France for the next five years. To tell others of his life as a slave, he wrote the Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave in 1847 (see more about this in Documenting the American South). In 1851 Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, featuring Kentucky slaveowners was published and becomes a best-seller very quickly. In 1852 Stephen Foster wrote the blockbuster minstrel song "My Old Kentucky Home: Good Night"; the song was titled originally "Poor Uncle Tom, Good Night" and each verse ended with the line "Den poor Uncle Tom, good night." The next year, the first novel by an African-American was published. William Wells Brown's Clotel; or, the President's Daughter: a Narrative of Slave Life in the United States published in 1853 was a politically charged narrative of slave life in the southern states. By putting at the center of this novel the Black offspring of President Thomas Jefferson, Brown put in print what the Hemmings family alleged for so many years. Although Brown wrote many plays, only one was published: The Escape; or, a Leap for Freedom (Boston, 1858). The five-act drama is generally acknowledged to be the first play published by an African-American author.
The foremost black author of his day, Brown was the first African-American published novelist and playwright; but, his most important books were histories such as The Negro in the American Rebellion, His Heroism and His Fidelity, published in 1867. We are glad to have the opportunity for Lexingtonians to hear about Brown and get the chance to talk with this important educator about one of our most prominent historical figures.
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