January 14, 2019 • 30 mins
Sojourner Truth was an abolitionist and women’s rights activist in the 19th century. But because a speech most famously associated with Truth is a version rewritten by someone else, she’s commonly imagined as a different person from who she actually was.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Polly Frying. Before we
start today's actual episode, Holly, do you want to talk
about our extremely exciting news? I really do. Uh. We
(00:24):
are going to Paris. We are. I know I said
that in a way that sounds very chill, but inside
my heart is screaming with delight. I also sounded a
little like I was asking a question, But we are.
And the cool thing is that listeners can come with us,
which I'm very excited for. Yes, So if you would
like to join us, it is a six night trips
(00:47):
in Paris that's June two through the ninth. It is
run by a company called Defined Destinations and they put
together everything, they handle all of the logistics. Uh. And
it's all themed around the French Revolution. But there's a
good battle, lints of planned activities and free time. Yeah.
Do you want to let people know where they can
go if they want to get more info? Yeah, if
you come to our website, which is missed in history
(01:09):
dot com up in the top menu, which if you're
on mobile, you've got to click the little set of
bars that does the menu. There's a there's a link
that says Paris trip exclamation point. So yes, get your
passport in order, brush up on your French if you wish,
and come along with us, because it's going to be
super fun. But I will say, you do not have
(01:30):
to speak French. We have been assured. We have a
lot of local guides that are handling things, and the
company has has done trips like this many many times.
They assured us you don't have to speak French. Just
come along for the ride. We'll all have fun. I
was gonna say, I know, it's kind of a comical
idea that we're going to France because my French is
so bad, even though that's the only language I have
(01:50):
ever formally studied to with real extent. We will have
people who will help us, yes, navigate the language. I
am doing a fresher course. But if history, my personal history,
is any indicator, I will freeze up in the face
of a native speaker because I'm so scared that they
will just be like, you idiot, just shut up and
speak English. Oh yeah, there was There was one time
(02:14):
early in my career that I needed to call for
our CEO to approve something, and he was in Quebec.
And when I called the number I was given, the
person who answered answered in French. And at that point
I was much closer to my study of French than
I am now. And when this person spoke to me
in French, the only thing I could remember how to
(02:34):
say was where is the train station? So do not
let your uncertainty of French discourage you from checking out
this trip. Again, that's missing history dot Com. Up at
the top, there is a link that says Paris trip,
but in a much more excited way than I just
said it. Yeah, I'm super excited. It's going to be amazing.
(02:56):
I can't wait. I'm gonna eat all the things and
go to all the fabric stores, and I'm gonna probably
cry a lot, but in a good way, in a
happy way. Yeah uh. And now we will get into
today's actual podcast. Today's subject is probably a familiar name
to a lot of our listeners because it is Sojourner Truth.
She was a very well known abolitionist and women's rights
(03:18):
activist in the nineteenth century. In twenties sixteen, it was
announced that she was one of the five women's rights
activists who would be on the back of the redesigned
ten dollar bill because Alexander Hamilton is going to stay
on the front. Her most famous speech is commonly titled
Ain't I a Woman? And you can find videos on
(03:38):
YouTube of women like Carrie Washington and Alice Walker and
Cecily Tyson performing the speech. Cecily Tyson's portrayal is from
the unveiling of a bust of Sojourner Truth at the
US Capital, and that made her the first Black woman
to be represented in a sculpture at the Capital, So
she is not an obscure person who we are talking
(04:00):
about today, and we're going to be talking about this
part of the speech later. It is a very evocative speech,
but the version that is the most well known today
was written down much later by a woman named Francis Gauge,
and Gauge was inspired by an article in The Atlantic
written by Harriet Beecher Stowe. And both of these two
women represented Sojourner Truth way of speaking in a really
(04:25):
stereotypical way based on what was expected of enslaved people
from the South. But so journal Truth was not from
the South. And because ain't ile woman is like literally
the one thing that a lot of people know about
Sojourner Truth. She is commonly imagined as an incredibly different
person from who she actually was, and there is so
(04:46):
much to talk about about her that even though we're
doing two parts on her, it still feels like we
are scratching the surface. So today we are going to
talk about her early life and the first years of
her religious work, during which time she was known as Isabella,
and then part two we will get into her life
as Sojourner Truth. And I also wanted to note that
(05:06):
we have had several listener requests to talk about her,
including from Alexis Kimberly and Megan. Sojourner Truth was born
around sevent seven in Ulster County, New York, in the
Hudson River Valley, and her parents did not name her
sojournal As Tracy said, her name was Isabella and she
was nicknamed Belle. Isabella's mother, Elizabeth, was known as Betsy
(05:28):
to the adults on the estate where they were enslaved,
and the children called her mau mau bet. I just
wanted to clarify that the children called Elizabeth mau mao beet.
They didn't call Isabella that Isabella's father, James, was nicknamed
bom Free, which was from a low Dutch word for tree.
That was his nickname because he was very tall and
he stood very straight. So you will often see so
(05:50):
Journer Truth's name from birth listed as Isabella bom Free,
but at the time, her last name was really considered
to be the surname of who ever owned her. Isabella
was the second youngest of between ten and twelve children,
and we don't know the exact number because records were
not always thorough and because most of her older siblings
were sold away from the family before she was old
(06:13):
enough to remember or even meet them. Isabella and her
family were enslaved by Colonel Johannes Hardenburg, and he and
the other people around them in Ulster County were all Dutch.
Isabella grew up speaking only Dutch. The Dutch community in
the Hudson River Valley was very heavily slave owning. There
were farms in estates that had very larged enslaved workforces,
(06:35):
and Colonel Hardenburg was one of the largest slave owners
in the area. When Colonel Hardenberg died in sevent his son,
Charles inherited part of the property and all of the
enslaved workforce. He started operating one of the residences on
the estate as an inn, so the enslaved women and
girls who had been working in the Hardenburg household went
(06:57):
from being a family's domestic staff to essentially working in
a hotel. Isabella was only about two when all of
this happened, but as soon as she was able to work,
she was expected to alongside her mother. Elizabeth taught her
daughter about what was expected of her, and told her
about her older siblings, and taught her about God and
(07:17):
about prayer. Elizabeth described God as a powerful being who
lived in the sky and that if Isabella ever needed help,
she should ask him for it. This whole idea of
having a direct relationship with God and seeking his guidance
and help would just be an ongoing part of Isabella's
religious life for as long as she lived. In eighteen
o six, Charles Hardenburgh died. Isabella was about nine years
(07:42):
old at that time, and after his death, Isabella's remaining
family were broken up and sold away from one another.
And by this point her father was elderly and he
was considered to be a burden, so her mother was
freed in order to care for him, even though she
was also still considered able to work. Zabella, though, was
sold to the Neely family along with a flock of sheep,
(08:04):
for a total of one hundred dollars. John Neely Jr.
Understood a little bit of Dutch, but his wife did
not speak Dutch at all, so, in addition to not
speaking the same language, Isabella had only ever lived in
a Dutch household. She just didn't have any experience at
all with English culture or English customs, and this led
to a lot of problems. Isabella didn't understand what was
(08:27):
expected of her, and she didn't understand what she was
being asked to do when she was given instructions, and
the Kneelies would beat her when she didn't understand. Among
other reasons that they would beat her. On top of
the beatings, there was just the day to day cruelty.
As one example, she wasn't given shoes to wear and
she got severe frostbite on her feet during the winter.
(08:48):
Isabella was occasionally able to see her father while she
was enslaved by the Kneelies, and she told him what
was going on, and one of the customs in the
New York Dutch community was that enslaved people could try
to seek out new owners if they wanted a different
situation than the one that they currently had, So her
father asked around, focusing on Dutch slave owners who had
(09:09):
a reputation for being kind. Not long after, Isabella was
sold again, this time to a man named Martimus Shriver
who ran a tavern. This was kind of a low
class establishment, so the work could definitely be dirty and difficult,
but it was better than being abused by the Kneelies.
In eighteen ten, at the age of about thirteen, Isabella
(09:30):
was sold again, this time to a man named John Dumont.
And while John considered Isabella to be very hard working
and very intelligent, his wife Elizabeth, who you'll sometimes see
referred to as Sally. I think that might be some
name confusion within the household, uh, But Elizabeth didn't like her.
The same was true of the household's white servants, who
(09:51):
intentionally tried to get Isabella in trouble. One of her
jobs was cleaning and peeling and boiling the family's potatoes,
and one of those serve it's, kept dropping ash into
the pot while she wasn't looking specifically to get her
in trouble. In her narrative, Isabella mostly attributes this hostility
from Elizabeth Dumont as being because she wasn't raised in
(10:12):
a slave owning family, and she thought her paid servants
were harder working and more trustworthy. But jealousy almost certainly
played a role as well. All the photographs that we
have of Sojourner Truth were taken in the later years
of her life, but the young Isabella was described as attractive, willowy,
and very tall. Her narrative talks about this time in
(10:34):
her life in this way. Quote from this source arose
a long series of trials in the life of our
heroine which we must pass over in silence, some from
motives of delicacy, and others because the relation of them
might inflict undeserved pain on some now living who Isabel
remembers only with esteem and love, and as one of
(10:54):
those sentences that says a whole lot without saying anything specific. Yes,
but it's it's people point back to it when talking
about like the parentage of her children and and what
her life was like um with this particular family. In
eighteen fifteen, Isabella started a relationship with a man named
(11:16):
Robert who was enslaved at another farm in the area.
She became pregnant and she had a son named James
who died as a baby, followed by a daughter named Diana,
but Robert's owner refused to allow the two of them
to get married because any children that Isabella had by
him would become John Dumont's property rather than his. Basically,
(11:37):
Robert's owner didn't want his property to add to the
property of someone else. Dumont selected a man from his
own enslaved workforce for Isabella to marry, a man named Thomas,
and he was significantly older than she was and had
been married twice before, and they don't seem to have
been particularly close. Isabella and Robert continued to see one
(11:59):
another until they were caught and he was severely punished.
After marrying Thomas, Isabella had three more children, named Peter, Elizabeth,
and Sophia which might have been pronounced Sophia. All of
them were named after her parents and siblings. Isabella was
enslaved by the Dumont family from eighteen ten until her emancipation,
(12:19):
which we will get to after a quick sponsor break.
While she was enslaved by the Dumont family. Isabella worked
both in the home and in the fields, and also
acted as a wet nurse for Elizabeth Dumont's children, and
(12:39):
this gave Isabella thirteen children to look after. There were
her five and Elizabeth's eight, but she had to put
Elizabeth's children ahead of her own, and that might have
been a factor in her son, James's death when he
was still a baby. Isabella's mother had also died suddenly
the same year that Isabella was sold to the Dumont's.
Her father had been one of the Hardenburg family favorites,
(13:01):
and they had built a cabin for him and made
some provisions for his care in his later years, but
he outlived everyone who was expected to look after him,
and he froze to death sometime after eighteen seventeen. Yeah,
the expectation was that her mother would just take care
of him until the end of his life, but then
she died uh much earlier than than he did, along
(13:24):
with two other people that had been sort of tasked
with trying to look after him. That same year, eighteen seventeen,
the state of New York passed a gradual emancipation law
that would free people born before seventeen ninety nine after
a period of ten years. There was a previous law
that had been passed in seventeen ninety nine that had
(13:45):
done the same for people who were born after July fourth, seventeen,
but both Isabella and her father had been born well
before that, so that law did not apply to either
of them. Isabella's father lived long and off to know
that emancipation was coming, but he was also in his
eighties when the law was passed. He died before his
(14:07):
own emancipation would come into effect. When the eighteen seventeen
Gradual Emancipation Law was passed, John Dumont told Isabella that
if she worked hard, he would free her a year early.
And for the whole time she had been enslaved on
the Dumont property, she had worked incredibly hard. Dumont liked
to say that she could do the work of half
a dozen other people, and she had also been very
(14:29):
loyal and very dedicated to him, for example, refusing to
take food without permission even when she or her children
desperately needed it, because she wanted to behave always in
a trustworthy way. Later on in her life, she would
look back on this attitude with astonishment, but at the
time she seemed to honestly believe that slavery was the
natural order of things and that the Dumont's treatment of
(14:51):
her had earned her loyalty. After he made this promise
to her, she started working even harder than she had before,
to the point that she cut off part of a
finger while trying to work, just to go faster until
she could get it all done. She kept working in
spite of that injury, but it did slower down, and
in eighteen six, as the date of her emancipation her
(15:14):
year early emancipation became closer, Dumont told her that because
of the time she had lost to that injured hand,
she would have to work that last year after all.
Isabella tried to convince him to keep his promise, pointing
out that she had kept working the whole time she
was injured, even though sometimes she'd had to do different
types of work from before, but Dumont refused to let
(15:37):
her go. She ultimately decided that she would stay on
long enough to finish spinning that year's wool, and that
then she would leave, But she wasn't sure how she
should make her escape, so she asked God for guidance
about what to do. It occurred to her that she
should leave just before dawn, when there would be enough
light for her to see, but when the household and
(15:59):
the abers wouldn't really be out of bed yet. When
she left, she took her youngest child, Sophia with her.
She went to the home of a man that she
knew named Levi Row, and he directed her to a
Quaker family, Isaac and Maria van Wagener. We don't know
if they pronounced that in the European way of von Wagner,
who we're going with van Wagener. Uh. They sheltered her
until Dumont came after her and accused her of running away,
(16:23):
and she answered, no, I did not run away. I
walked away by daylight and all because you had promised
me a year of my time. He kept insisting that
she returned with him, and she kept refusing to do
it until Isaac von Wagener offered to buy her freedom
for twenty dollars plus five dollars for her baby. Dumont agreed,
(16:43):
and Isabella started going by the name Isabella von Wagener.
The von Wageners considered her to be free although she
was working off the debt that had been incurred by
buying that freedom, and not long after she began living
with the von Wageners, Isabella learned that her son, Peter,
who John Dumont had sold earlier in the year, had
been taken out of state. It was illegal in New
(17:05):
York to sell enslaved people out of state, but Peter
had changed hands a couple of times after being sold
and was taken to Alabama with the Van Wagener's financial help.
Isabella took the matter to court, which is widely cited
as making her the first black woman to win a
lawsuit in the United States. She was successful, but Peter's
return was traumatizing. By the time she got her son back,
(17:29):
they had been separated for more than a year and
he didn't recognize her anymore. In all likelihood, he had
also been coached to think that she was evil and
that he was better off where he was in Alabama.
He also had scars on his forehead and his cheek
from injuries, and when he first saw his mother again,
he said that these injuries had come from being kicked
by a horse and from colliding with a carriage, But
(17:51):
then he later on revealed that they had come from
being beaten. Once she got her son back, Isabella's life
had a period of relative safety instability. Her conversations with
God had been a daily occurrence for most of her
life before this point, but once she and her children
were safe and either free or about to become so,
that became less of a focus. But that changed in
(18:14):
eighteen seven during the holiday of Pinkster. Pinkster is a
holiday that developed among enslaved Africans in Dutch New York
in the seventeen hundreds, and it happened around the observance
of Pentecost, which is also known as with Sunday in
the Christian tradition. After Jesus crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension into heaven,
(18:34):
the Holy Spirit came to the disciples during the harvest
festival of Pentecost, and it's described in the Book of Acts.
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together
in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of
a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole
house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to
be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest
(18:56):
on each of them, All of them were filled with
the Holy Spirit and again to speak in other tongues
as the Spirit enabled them. Today, Pentecost is observed as
a Christian holiday fifty days after Easter Sunday and Dutch
New York. This Pentecost observance of Pinkster became a distinctly
African American holiday that was a multi day festival in
(19:18):
which enslaved people from neighboring farms and communities got together
to take a break from work, gather, eat, dance, play games,
and celebrate. For sim enslaved Africans, Pinkster had the religious
aspects of Pentecost, but for others it was more of
a secular holiday. Leading up to Pinkster seven, Isabella had
a premonition that John Dumont was going to come to
(19:41):
the van wagoners and take her back with him, and
she felt that she should go, and she got herself
and Sophia ready, But as she was approaching his wagon,
she had a sudden burst of insight that she described
as a flash of lightning. She immediately knew that quote
there was no place where God was not. She felt
a aimed that she had lapsed in her daily talks
(20:01):
with God and awe struck by the immensity of everything.
By the time this vision passed, Dumont had left and
she returned to her work. It was not long after
this that her religious visions would lead her to leave
rural New York and go to New York City, and
we'll talk about that after a sponsor break. After this
(20:28):
experience around Pinkster eighteen seven, Isabella's religious life took a
more outward turn. Her relationship with God had always been
this really individual thing that was focused on her own
prayers and her own experience, but afterwards she joined a
Methodist church and then an African Methodist Episcopal church. When
Isabella moved to New York City in eighty eight, she
(20:49):
attended the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. She was also
a preacher in her own right. Her preaching was heavily
influenced by the idea of perfectionism, which was described by
Oneida Community founder John Humphrey Noise. Perfectionism is the idea
that a person can become free from sin through religion
and willpower. She also really devoted herself to mission work
(21:13):
within the city, including ministering to sex workers and encouraging
them to join an asylum that was known as the
Magdalene Society. As far as I know, this was not
similar to the Magdalen Laundries that we talked about, which
was sort of like a punishment place for fallen women.
This was more like a shelter and halfway house for
(21:34):
women who had been doing sex work. And we're leaving
that life. Uh. And just because that name is so evocative,
I wanted to make that clear. Um. While she was
doing this work, she met a Presbyterian man named Elijah Pearson,
and the Magdalene Society had grown out of an asylum
for women that he had been running from his home,
but which had faltered after the death of his wife.
(21:56):
Isabella and Elijah became spiritual colleagues, with is Bella joining
his religious circle and the two of them working together
in charitable and religious missions. When he asked her if
she had been baptized, her answer was that she had
by the Holy Spirit. This religious network eventually led Isabella
to a man named Robert Matthews, who had taken the
name father Matthias just spelled Matthias, some people might pronounce
(22:19):
it that way. Most Germanic languages say Mattius. So we're
going with that. And that's named after the disciple who
replaced Judas after he betrayed Jesus, and he had been
raised as a Presbyterian, but after his adoption of the
name Matthias, he had begun describing himself as Jewish, because
Jesus and his disciples were all Jewish. When Isabella met Matthias,
(22:40):
she said she quote felt as if God had sent
him to set up the Kingdom. He seemed to have
this really deep and profound understanding of scripture, and he
looked to her like one of Jesus's disciples, like he
physically looked like a picture of one of the disciples.
She clearly thought he was genuine, although she did so
introduce him to Elijah to get his opinion as well. Ultimately,
(23:04):
Matthias established a religious commune known as the Kingdom, but
it was controversial from the start. They had to move
out of New York City and into sing Sing, New
York in eighteen thirty three after a dispute with the
family of one of Matthias's followers led to a police
raid and Matthias's arrest. Isabella supported Matthias through all of this,
(23:25):
including convincing Elijah to help Matthias get released. Her support
continued after the kingdom moved to Sing Sing, which is
now known as Ozzin Ing Yeah. They changed their name
to distance themselves from the prison. Isabella's support of Father
Matthias was really in spite of teachings that went directly
(23:45):
against her and her own religious work. She was the
kingdom's only black member, but she did the overwhelming share
of all of the work, including all the dirtiest and
hardest tasks, with no compensation for any of this work
at all. Matthias demanded that she and Elijah give up
the Sabbath school that they had established outside of the kingdom.
(24:06):
Matthias also preached that women's only role was to be
completely obedient to men, and men who taught women were wicked,
and women weren't allowed to preach while they were in
sing Sing. He also started encouraging the kingdom's men to
share their wives with him. Isabella did not approve of
all of this wife sharing, but she did continue to
(24:27):
think that Matthias's religious work was genuine and important and
that she was there to help him. The Kingdom fell
apart in eighteen thirty five, Elijah Pearson had died under
mysterious circumstances the year before. He had been ill for
quite some time, but he died suddenly after eating two
helpings of blueberries at dinner. Isabella was accused of poisoning him.
(24:50):
The Folder family, who were living at the Kingdom, accused
her of poisoning them as well. All of these charges
were baseless, though, and Isabella took the Folders to court
for slander and she was awarded a one dollar settlement.
And it became clear in all of this that Matthias
was not the holy man that he claimed to be.
(25:11):
This could be a whole other episode that is just
full of weirdness and scandal, and like it has a
lot of the hallmarks of religious communes where practices get
very strange and unsettling to people. And this whole thing
just caused a giant scandal that got a lot of
(25:34):
sensationalized news coverage at the time, and Isabella was really
mortified by all of it. She realized she had been
wrong in her assessment of Father Matthias, and that really
broke her trust and organized churches and in charismatic religious leaders.
Isabella returned to New York city and tried to resume
her religious work. She often had trouble making ends meet,
(25:55):
especially after the Panic of eight thirty seven. She was
trying to make her way as a preacher and charitable
worker in a world in which many churches didn't allow
women to preach at all. Her life made a major
change once again on June one of eighteen forty three,
and that's when she finally took the name Sojourner Truth.
And that is what we will talk about in our
(26:16):
next episode. Do you have a listener mail for us?
Sure knew so. Uh. This listener mail is about a
Saturday classic, which a lot of times our Saturday classics
are from back in the archive, and you know they're
They're not things that we necessarily get into again because
often we've already talked about them and other listener mails
in the past. But this is a question that I
(26:37):
thought other people might have. This is an email from Lisa.
Lisa says I was looking forward to the additional Dickens
podcast Sarah and Debilina twice mentioned would be coming, once
at the beginning of their podcast at about two minutes
and four seconds into the rebroadcast, and again at twenty
three minutes thirty three seconds. I just would like to
(26:59):
say that telling us when specifically a thing happened in
an episode is enormously helpful, So thank you for doing that.
So what they said was that Dickens had multiple households
to support say what, I definitely missed that in history
and English Lit class. However, when I put Charles Dickens
in the search bar at Stuffy miss in history website,
I didn't find anything other than Charles Dickens slams Madonna
(27:23):
a century and a half ago, which pre dates Sarah
and Bublina's Dickens podcast and as a blog post. So
I went back to their original day of the podcast
on my Apple podcast app and scrolled through the rest
of the episodes. There was not a single additional one
about Dickens. What happened to their promised additional episodes? And
would you please add Charles Dickens's multiple households to your
(27:45):
subject list? Thank you, Lisa. So this required a little
bit of research because Sarah and Bablina have gone on
to other jobs and I don't like to pestor people
who work somewhere else now about things from years ago.
But according to a thread on Twitter from back in twelve.
They had planned to do this other episode, which they
(28:08):
obviously were intending to do and the one that we
rebroadcast as a classic, but it turned out when they
tried to get into it that there just wasn't enough
information to make it work. I think what they're referring
to is that later on in his life, Charles Dickens
fell in love with a young woman named Ellen Turning,
who was acting in a play that he was working on,
and then he went on to legally separate from his wife,
(28:30):
but he didn't divorce her or get married to Ellen
because it would have been way, way, way too scandalous
at the time for somebody of his level of fame
to do that. I found an article about it, and
there is a biography on her. But at the time
that Sarah and Bablina recorded this episode, I think it
was out of print, so they might not have been
able to get access to it or even known that
(28:51):
it existed. Possibly, and I think that is what they
were talking about. This may or may not become an
episode in the future. Our list is extremely long, but
if you were listening to that Saturday Classic and we're like, wait,
I can't find this other episode that they're talking about.
That is what happened. So thank you so much Lisa
(29:12):
for sending us that email, UM, and thanks to everybody
who listens to our Saturday Classics UM, even though we
don't always know the answers to questions about past episodes
from the archive. If you would like to write to
us about this or any other podcast where History podcast
at how stuff works dot com. And then we're all
over social media as Missed in History. That is our
(29:34):
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You can come to our website that Missed in History
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(29:55):
Radio app and anywhere else you get podcasts. For more
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works dot com. M
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Polly Frying. Before we
start today's actual episode, Holly, do you want to talk
about our extremely exciting news? I really do. Uh. We
(00:24):
are going to Paris. We are. I know I said
that in a way that sounds very chill, but inside
my heart is screaming with delight. I also sounded a
little like I was asking a question, But we are.
And the cool thing is that listeners can come with us,
which I'm very excited for. Yes, So if you would
like to join us, it is a six night trips
(00:47):
in Paris that's June two through the ninth. It is
run by a company called Defined Destinations and they put
together everything, they handle all of the logistics. Uh. And
it's all themed around the French Revolution. But there's a
good battle, lints of planned activities and free time. Yeah.
Do you want to let people know where they can
go if they want to get more info? Yeah, if
you come to our website, which is missed in history
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dot com up in the top menu, which if you're
on mobile, you've got to click the little set of
bars that does the menu. There's a there's a link
that says Paris trip exclamation point. So yes, get your
passport in order, brush up on your French if you wish,
and come along with us, because it's going to be
super fun. But I will say, you do not have
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to speak French. We have been assured. We have a
lot of local guides that are handling things, and the
company has has done trips like this many many times.
They assured us you don't have to speak French. Just
come along for the ride. We'll all have fun. I
was gonna say, I know, it's kind of a comical
idea that we're going to France because my French is
so bad, even though that's the only language I have
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ever formally studied to with real extent. We will have
people who will help us, yes, navigate the language. I
am doing a fresher course. But if history, my personal history,
is any indicator, I will freeze up in the face
of a native speaker because I'm so scared that they
will just be like, you idiot, just shut up and
speak English. Oh yeah, there was There was one time
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early in my career that I needed to call for
our CEO to approve something, and he was in Quebec.
And when I called the number I was given, the
person who answered answered in French. And at that point
I was much closer to my study of French than
I am now. And when this person spoke to me
in French, the only thing I could remember how to
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say was where is the train station? So do not
let your uncertainty of French discourage you from checking out
this trip. Again, that's missing history dot Com. Up at
the top, there is a link that says Paris trip,
but in a much more excited way than I just
said it. Yeah, I'm super excited. It's going to be amazing.
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I can't wait. I'm gonna eat all the things and
go to all the fabric stores, and I'm gonna probably
cry a lot, but in a good way, in a
happy way. Yeah uh. And now we will get into
today's actual podcast. Today's subject is probably a familiar name
to a lot of our listeners because it is Sojourner Truth.
She was a very well known abolitionist and women's rights
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activist in the nineteenth century. In twenties sixteen, it was
announced that she was one of the five women's rights
activists who would be on the back of the redesigned
ten dollar bill because Alexander Hamilton is going to stay
on the front. Her most famous speech is commonly titled
Ain't I a Woman? And you can find videos on
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YouTube of women like Carrie Washington and Alice Walker and
Cecily Tyson performing the speech. Cecily Tyson's portrayal is from
the unveiling of a bust of Sojourner Truth at the
US Capital, and that made her the first Black woman
to be represented in a sculpture at the Capital, So
she is not an obscure person who we are talking
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about today, and we're going to be talking about this
part of the speech later. It is a very evocative speech,
but the version that is the most well known today
was written down much later by a woman named Francis Gauge,
and Gauge was inspired by an article in The Atlantic
written by Harriet Beecher Stowe. And both of these two
women represented Sojourner Truth way of speaking in a really
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stereotypical way based on what was expected of enslaved people
from the South. But so journal Truth was not from
the South. And because ain't ile woman is like literally
the one thing that a lot of people know about
Sojourner Truth. She is commonly imagined as an incredibly different
person from who she actually was, and there is so
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much to talk about about her that even though we're
doing two parts on her, it still feels like we
are scratching the surface. So today we are going to
talk about her early life and the first years of
her religious work, during which time she was known as Isabella,
and then part two we will get into her life
as Sojourner Truth. And I also wanted to note that
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we have had several listener requests to talk about her,
including from Alexis Kimberly and Megan. Sojourner Truth was born
around sevent seven in Ulster County, New York, in the
Hudson River Valley, and her parents did not name her
sojournal As Tracy said, her name was Isabella and she
was nicknamed Belle. Isabella's mother, Elizabeth, was known as Betsy
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to the adults on the estate where they were enslaved,
and the children called her mau mau bet. I just
wanted to clarify that the children called Elizabeth mau mao beet.
They didn't call Isabella that Isabella's father, James, was nicknamed
bom Free, which was from a low Dutch word for tree.
That was his nickname because he was very tall and
he stood very straight. So you will often see so
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Journer Truth's name from birth listed as Isabella bom Free,
but at the time, her last name was really considered
to be the surname of who ever owned her. Isabella
was the second youngest of between ten and twelve children,
and we don't know the exact number because records were
not always thorough and because most of her older siblings
were sold away from the family before she was old
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enough to remember or even meet them. Isabella and her
family were enslaved by Colonel Johannes Hardenburg, and he and
the other people around them in Ulster County were all Dutch.
Isabella grew up speaking only Dutch. The Dutch community in
the Hudson River Valley was very heavily slave owning. There
were farms in estates that had very larged enslaved workforces,
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and Colonel Hardenburg was one of the largest slave owners
in the area. When Colonel Hardenberg died in sevent his son,
Charles inherited part of the property and all of the
enslaved workforce. He started operating one of the residences on
the estate as an inn, so the enslaved women and
girls who had been working in the Hardenburg household went
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from being a family's domestic staff to essentially working in
a hotel. Isabella was only about two when all of
this happened, but as soon as she was able to work,
she was expected to alongside her mother. Elizabeth taught her
daughter about what was expected of her, and told her
about her older siblings, and taught her about God and
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about prayer. Elizabeth described God as a powerful being who
lived in the sky and that if Isabella ever needed help,
she should ask him for it. This whole idea of
having a direct relationship with God and seeking his guidance
and help would just be an ongoing part of Isabella's
religious life for as long as she lived. In eighteen
o six, Charles Hardenburgh died. Isabella was about nine years
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old at that time, and after his death, Isabella's remaining
family were broken up and sold away from one another.
And by this point her father was elderly and he
was considered to be a burden, so her mother was
freed in order to care for him, even though she
was also still considered able to work. Zabella, though, was
sold to the Neely family along with a flock of sheep,
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for a total of one hundred dollars. John Neely Jr.
Understood a little bit of Dutch, but his wife did
not speak Dutch at all, so, in addition to not
speaking the same language, Isabella had only ever lived in
a Dutch household. She just didn't have any experience at
all with English culture or English customs, and this led
to a lot of problems. Isabella didn't understand what was
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expected of her, and she didn't understand what she was
being asked to do when she was given instructions, and
the Kneelies would beat her when she didn't understand. Among
other reasons that they would beat her. On top of
the beatings, there was just the day to day cruelty.
As one example, she wasn't given shoes to wear and
she got severe frostbite on her feet during the winter.
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Isabella was occasionally able to see her father while she
was enslaved by the Kneelies, and she told him what
was going on, and one of the customs in the
New York Dutch community was that enslaved people could try
to seek out new owners if they wanted a different
situation than the one that they currently had, So her
father asked around, focusing on Dutch slave owners who had
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a reputation for being kind. Not long after, Isabella was
sold again, this time to a man named Martimus Shriver
who ran a tavern. This was kind of a low
class establishment, so the work could definitely be dirty and difficult,
but it was better than being abused by the Kneelies.
In eighteen ten, at the age of about thirteen, Isabella
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was sold again, this time to a man named John Dumont.
And while John considered Isabella to be very hard working
and very intelligent, his wife Elizabeth, who you'll sometimes see
referred to as Sally. I think that might be some
name confusion within the household, uh, But Elizabeth didn't like her.
The same was true of the household's white servants, who
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intentionally tried to get Isabella in trouble. One of her
jobs was cleaning and peeling and boiling the family's potatoes,
and one of those serve it's, kept dropping ash into
the pot while she wasn't looking specifically to get her
in trouble. In her narrative, Isabella mostly attributes this hostility
from Elizabeth Dumont as being because she wasn't raised in
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a slave owning family, and she thought her paid servants
were harder working and more trustworthy. But jealousy almost certainly
played a role as well. All the photographs that we
have of Sojourner Truth were taken in the later years
of her life, but the young Isabella was described as attractive, willowy,
and very tall. Her narrative talks about this time in
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her life in this way. Quote from this source arose
a long series of trials in the life of our
heroine which we must pass over in silence, some from
motives of delicacy, and others because the relation of them
might inflict undeserved pain on some now living who Isabel
remembers only with esteem and love, and as one of
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those sentences that says a whole lot without saying anything specific. Yes,
but it's it's people point back to it when talking
about like the parentage of her children and and what
her life was like um with this particular family. In
eighteen fifteen, Isabella started a relationship with a man named
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Robert who was enslaved at another farm in the area.
She became pregnant and she had a son named James
who died as a baby, followed by a daughter named Diana,
but Robert's owner refused to allow the two of them
to get married because any children that Isabella had by
him would become John Dumont's property rather than his. Basically,
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Robert's owner didn't want his property to add to the
property of someone else. Dumont selected a man from his
own enslaved workforce for Isabella to marry, a man named Thomas,
and he was significantly older than she was and had
been married twice before, and they don't seem to have
been particularly close. Isabella and Robert continued to see one
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another until they were caught and he was severely punished.
After marrying Thomas, Isabella had three more children, named Peter, Elizabeth,
and Sophia which might have been pronounced Sophia. All of
them were named after her parents and siblings. Isabella was
enslaved by the Dumont family from eighteen ten until her emancipation,
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which we will get to after a quick sponsor break.
While she was enslaved by the Dumont family. Isabella worked
both in the home and in the fields, and also
acted as a wet nurse for Elizabeth Dumont's children, and
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this gave Isabella thirteen children to look after. There were
her five and Elizabeth's eight, but she had to put
Elizabeth's children ahead of her own, and that might have
been a factor in her son, James's death when he
was still a baby. Isabella's mother had also died suddenly
the same year that Isabella was sold to the Dumont's.
Her father had been one of the Hardenburg family favorites,
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and they had built a cabin for him and made
some provisions for his care in his later years, but
he outlived everyone who was expected to look after him,
and he froze to death sometime after eighteen seventeen. Yeah,
the expectation was that her mother would just take care
of him until the end of his life, but then
she died uh much earlier than than he did, along
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with two other people that had been sort of tasked
with trying to look after him. That same year, eighteen seventeen,
the state of New York passed a gradual emancipation law
that would free people born before seventeen ninety nine after
a period of ten years. There was a previous law
that had been passed in seventeen ninety nine that had
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done the same for people who were born after July fourth, seventeen,
but both Isabella and her father had been born well
before that, so that law did not apply to either
of them. Isabella's father lived long and off to know
that emancipation was coming, but he was also in his
eighties when the law was passed. He died before his
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own emancipation would come into effect. When the eighteen seventeen
Gradual Emancipation Law was passed, John Dumont told Isabella that
if she worked hard, he would free her a year early.
And for the whole time she had been enslaved on
the Dumont property, she had worked incredibly hard. Dumont liked
to say that she could do the work of half
a dozen other people, and she had also been very
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loyal and very dedicated to him, for example, refusing to
take food without permission even when she or her children
desperately needed it, because she wanted to behave always in
a trustworthy way. Later on in her life, she would
look back on this attitude with astonishment, but at the
time she seemed to honestly believe that slavery was the
natural order of things and that the Dumont's treatment of
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her had earned her loyalty. After he made this promise
to her, she started working even harder than she had before,
to the point that she cut off part of a
finger while trying to work, just to go faster until
she could get it all done. She kept working in
spite of that injury, but it did slower down, and
in eighteen six, as the date of her emancipation her
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year early emancipation became closer, Dumont told her that because
of the time she had lost to that injured hand,
she would have to work that last year after all.
Isabella tried to convince him to keep his promise, pointing
out that she had kept working the whole time she
was injured, even though sometimes she'd had to do different
types of work from before, but Dumont refused to let
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her go. She ultimately decided that she would stay on
long enough to finish spinning that year's wool, and that
then she would leave, But she wasn't sure how she
should make her escape, so she asked God for guidance
about what to do. It occurred to her that she
should leave just before dawn, when there would be enough
light for her to see, but when the household and
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the abers wouldn't really be out of bed yet. When
she left, she took her youngest child, Sophia with her.
She went to the home of a man that she
knew named Levi Row, and he directed her to a
Quaker family, Isaac and Maria van Wagener. We don't know
if they pronounced that in the European way of von Wagner,
who we're going with van Wagener. Uh. They sheltered her
until Dumont came after her and accused her of running away,
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and she answered, no, I did not run away. I
walked away by daylight and all because you had promised
me a year of my time. He kept insisting that
she returned with him, and she kept refusing to do
it until Isaac von Wagener offered to buy her freedom
for twenty dollars plus five dollars for her baby. Dumont agreed,
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and Isabella started going by the name Isabella von Wagener.
The von Wageners considered her to be free although she
was working off the debt that had been incurred by
buying that freedom, and not long after she began living
with the von Wageners, Isabella learned that her son, Peter,
who John Dumont had sold earlier in the year, had
been taken out of state. It was illegal in New
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York to sell enslaved people out of state, but Peter
had changed hands a couple of times after being sold
and was taken to Alabama with the Van Wagener's financial help.
Isabella took the matter to court, which is widely cited
as making her the first black woman to win a
lawsuit in the United States. She was successful, but Peter's
return was traumatizing. By the time she got her son back,
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they had been separated for more than a year and
he didn't recognize her anymore. In all likelihood, he had
also been coached to think that she was evil and
that he was better off where he was in Alabama.
He also had scars on his forehead and his cheek
from injuries, and when he first saw his mother again,
he said that these injuries had come from being kicked
by a horse and from colliding with a carriage, But
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then he later on revealed that they had come from
being beaten. Once she got her son back, Isabella's life
had a period of relative safety instability. Her conversations with
God had been a daily occurrence for most of her
life before this point, but once she and her children
were safe and either free or about to become so,
that became less of a focus. But that changed in
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eighteen seven during the holiday of Pinkster. Pinkster is a
holiday that developed among enslaved Africans in Dutch New York
in the seventeen hundreds, and it happened around the observance
of Pentecost, which is also known as with Sunday in
the Christian tradition. After Jesus crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension into heaven,
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the Holy Spirit came to the disciples during the harvest
festival of Pentecost, and it's described in the Book of Acts.
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together
in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of
a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole
house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to
be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest
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on each of them, All of them were filled with
the Holy Spirit and again to speak in other tongues
as the Spirit enabled them. Today, Pentecost is observed as
a Christian holiday fifty days after Easter Sunday and Dutch
New York. This Pentecost observance of Pinkster became a distinctly
African American holiday that was a multi day festival in
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which enslaved people from neighboring farms and communities got together
to take a break from work, gather, eat, dance, play games,
and celebrate. For sim enslaved Africans, Pinkster had the religious
aspects of Pentecost, but for others it was more of
a secular holiday. Leading up to Pinkster seven, Isabella had
a premonition that John Dumont was going to come to
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the van wagoners and take her back with him, and
she felt that she should go, and she got herself
and Sophia ready, But as she was approaching his wagon,
she had a sudden burst of insight that she described
as a flash of lightning. She immediately knew that quote
there was no place where God was not. She felt
a aimed that she had lapsed in her daily talks
(20:01):
with God and awe struck by the immensity of everything.
By the time this vision passed, Dumont had left and
she returned to her work. It was not long after
this that her religious visions would lead her to leave
rural New York and go to New York City, and
we'll talk about that after a sponsor break. After this
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experience around Pinkster eighteen seven, Isabella's religious life took a
more outward turn. Her relationship with God had always been
this really individual thing that was focused on her own
prayers and her own experience, but afterwards she joined a
Methodist church and then an African Methodist Episcopal church. When
Isabella moved to New York City in eighty eight, she
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attended the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. She was also
a preacher in her own right. Her preaching was heavily
influenced by the idea of perfectionism, which was described by
Oneida Community founder John Humphrey Noise. Perfectionism is the idea
that a person can become free from sin through religion
and willpower. She also really devoted herself to mission work
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within the city, including ministering to sex workers and encouraging
them to join an asylum that was known as the
Magdalene Society. As far as I know, this was not
similar to the Magdalen Laundries that we talked about, which
was sort of like a punishment place for fallen women.
This was more like a shelter and halfway house for
(21:34):
women who had been doing sex work. And we're leaving
that life. Uh. And just because that name is so evocative,
I wanted to make that clear. Um. While she was
doing this work, she met a Presbyterian man named Elijah Pearson,
and the Magdalene Society had grown out of an asylum
for women that he had been running from his home,
but which had faltered after the death of his wife.
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Isabella and Elijah became spiritual colleagues, with is Bella joining
his religious circle and the two of them working together
in charitable and religious missions. When he asked her if
she had been baptized, her answer was that she had
by the Holy Spirit. This religious network eventually led Isabella
to a man named Robert Matthews, who had taken the
name father Matthias just spelled Matthias, some people might pronounce
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it that way. Most Germanic languages say Mattius. So we're
going with that. And that's named after the disciple who
replaced Judas after he betrayed Jesus, and he had been
raised as a Presbyterian, but after his adoption of the
name Matthias, he had begun describing himself as Jewish, because
Jesus and his disciples were all Jewish. When Isabella met Matthias,
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she said she quote felt as if God had sent
him to set up the Kingdom. He seemed to have
this really deep and profound understanding of scripture, and he
looked to her like one of Jesus's disciples, like he
physically looked like a picture of one of the disciples.
She clearly thought he was genuine, although she did so
introduce him to Elijah to get his opinion as well. Ultimately,
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Matthias established a religious commune known as the Kingdom, but
it was controversial from the start. They had to move
out of New York City and into sing Sing, New
York in eighteen thirty three after a dispute with the
family of one of Matthias's followers led to a police
raid and Matthias's arrest. Isabella supported Matthias through all of this,
(23:25):
including convincing Elijah to help Matthias get released. Her support
continued after the kingdom moved to Sing Sing, which is
now known as Ozzin Ing Yeah. They changed their name
to distance themselves from the prison. Isabella's support of Father
Matthias was really in spite of teachings that went directly
(23:45):
against her and her own religious work. She was the
kingdom's only black member, but she did the overwhelming share
of all of the work, including all the dirtiest and
hardest tasks, with no compensation for any of this work
at all. Matthias demanded that she and Elijah give up
the Sabbath school that they had established outside of the kingdom.
(24:06):
Matthias also preached that women's only role was to be
completely obedient to men, and men who taught women were wicked,
and women weren't allowed to preach while they were in
sing Sing. He also started encouraging the kingdom's men to
share their wives with him. Isabella did not approve of
all of this wife sharing, but she did continue to
(24:27):
think that Matthias's religious work was genuine and important and
that she was there to help him. The Kingdom fell
apart in eighteen thirty five, Elijah Pearson had died under
mysterious circumstances the year before. He had been ill for
quite some time, but he died suddenly after eating two
helpings of blueberries at dinner. Isabella was accused of poisoning him.
(24:50):
The Folder family, who were living at the Kingdom, accused
her of poisoning them as well. All of these charges
were baseless, though, and Isabella took the Folders to court
for slander and she was awarded a one dollar settlement.
And it became clear in all of this that Matthias
was not the holy man that he claimed to be.
(25:11):
This could be a whole other episode that is just
full of weirdness and scandal, and like it has a
lot of the hallmarks of religious communes where practices get
very strange and unsettling to people. And this whole thing
just caused a giant scandal that got a lot of
(25:34):
sensationalized news coverage at the time, and Isabella was really
mortified by all of it. She realized she had been
wrong in her assessment of Father Matthias, and that really
broke her trust and organized churches and in charismatic religious leaders.
Isabella returned to New York city and tried to resume
her religious work. She often had trouble making ends meet,
(25:55):
especially after the Panic of eight thirty seven. She was
trying to make her way as a preacher and charitable
worker in a world in which many churches didn't allow
women to preach at all. Her life made a major
change once again on June one of eighteen forty three,
and that's when she finally took the name Sojourner Truth.
And that is what we will talk about in our
(26:16):
next episode. Do you have a listener mail for us?
Sure knew so. Uh. This listener mail is about a
Saturday classic, which a lot of times our Saturday classics
are from back in the archive, and you know they're
They're not things that we necessarily get into again because
often we've already talked about them and other listener mails
in the past. But this is a question that I
(26:37):
thought other people might have. This is an email from Lisa.
Lisa says I was looking forward to the additional Dickens
podcast Sarah and Debilina twice mentioned would be coming, once
at the beginning of their podcast at about two minutes
and four seconds into the rebroadcast, and again at twenty
three minutes thirty three seconds. I just would like to
(26:59):
say that telling us when specifically a thing happened in
an episode is enormously helpful, So thank you for doing that.
So what they said was that Dickens had multiple households
to support say what, I definitely missed that in history
and English Lit class. However, when I put Charles Dickens
in the search bar at Stuffy miss in history website,
I didn't find anything other than Charles Dickens slams Madonna
(27:23):
a century and a half ago, which pre dates Sarah
and Bublina's Dickens podcast and as a blog post. So
I went back to their original day of the podcast
on my Apple podcast app and scrolled through the rest
of the episodes. There was not a single additional one
about Dickens. What happened to their promised additional episodes? And
would you please add Charles Dickens's multiple households to your
(27:45):
subject list? Thank you, Lisa. So this required a little
bit of research because Sarah and Bablina have gone on
to other jobs and I don't like to pestor people
who work somewhere else now about things from years ago.
But according to a thread on Twitter from back in twelve.
They had planned to do this other episode, which they
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obviously were intending to do and the one that we
rebroadcast as a classic, but it turned out when they
tried to get into it that there just wasn't enough
information to make it work. I think what they're referring
to is that later on in his life, Charles Dickens
fell in love with a young woman named Ellen Turning,
who was acting in a play that he was working on,
and then he went on to legally separate from his wife,
(28:30):
but he didn't divorce her or get married to Ellen
because it would have been way, way, way too scandalous
at the time for somebody of his level of fame
to do that. I found an article about it, and
there is a biography on her. But at the time
that Sarah and Bablina recorded this episode, I think it
was out of print, so they might not have been
able to get access to it or even known that
(28:51):
it existed. Possibly, and I think that is what they
were talking about. This may or may not become an
episode in the future. Our list is extremely long, but
if you were listening to that Saturday Classic and we're like, wait,
I can't find this other episode that they're talking about.
That is what happened. So thank you so much Lisa
(29:12):
for sending us that email, UM, and thanks to everybody
who listens to our Saturday Classics UM, even though we
don't always know the answers to questions about past episodes
from the archive. If you would like to write to
us about this or any other podcast where History podcast
at how stuff works dot com. And then we're all
over social media as Missed in History. That is our
(29:34):
Facebook and our Pinterest, in our Instagram and our Twitter.
You can come to our website that Missed in History
dot com, where you will find show notes for all
the episodes Holly and I have worked on together, a
searchable archive of every episode ever, and that link in
the menu that says Paris Trip exclamation point. You can
also subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, I Heart
(29:55):
Radio app and anywhere else you get podcasts. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how staff
works dot com. M
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