By Joel Thurtell
A weird thing happened in 2007 while I was covering Downriver for the Detroit Free Press. It was a time when the newspaper was courting suburban readers, and my job was to put my little journalist’s microscope on small towns to see what the local media might be missing.
Because I was trained as a historian, I liked nothing better than to dig up fascinating facts about local history. One such little-discussed fact was that there were slaves on Grosse Ile during colonial and early national times, as there were in Detroit and the territory and later state of Michigan.
The astonishing thing that happened in 2007? Historians at the Grosse Ile Historical Society first agreed with me that the existence of slavery on the Big Island was a story they should include in the picture history book of Grosse Ile they were producing. But when it came time time to publish the book, they reneged.
They became slavery deniers.
Nothing to it. No slaves on Grosse Ile. After I panned their book for its neglect of the “peculiar institution” in their history, some members of the historical society promised that next time I visited their museum they would greet me “with tomatoes and rotten eggs.”
Shortly after this threat, I retired from the Free Press. I haven’t returned to Grosse Ile to test whether the guardians of historical knowledge in their insular township keep a supply of over-ripe tomatoes and eggs handy in case I darken their door.
Now I’m going to issue my own threat: Watch your door, oh historians of the Fat Isle. I could show up any time. And when I do, I will ask how well your little society has done at suppressing the facts — plural — of slavery in your community.
First, there was the 1796 inventory of property owned by the late William Macomb, whose house on Grosse Ile was managed by a slave woman named Charlotte, valued at 100 New York pounds. Charlotte’s husband was Jerry, valued at 100 New York Pounds. Bel was valued at 135 pounds, though the price included her three kids. See “Estimation of the Slaves of the late William Macomb” in the Detroit Public Library’s Burton Historical Collection and Isabella Swan’s “The Deep Roots: Grosse Ile 1796-1896,” p. 26.
Before I get ahead of the story, I’ll post my February 18, 2007 article about the slave who returned to Grosse Ile with the body of a onetime Detroit Free Press editor and Union general.
With permission of the Detroit Free Press, here is another part of the history of Grosse Ile that has been censored by the history police on Grosse Ile:
Headline: ON THE TRAIL IN GROSSE ILE . . .
Sub-Head: BUT NO TRACE OF SLAVES WHO DISAPPEARED IN MISTS OF HISTORY
Byline: BY JOEL THURTELL
Pub-Date: 2/18/2007
Memo: DOWNRIVER
Correction:
Text: Last month, at the end of my article about the history of
slavery on Grosse Ile, I asked readers: “Can somebody tell me the
story of those fugitive slaves, Ben and Dan?”
The index of a book on island history hinted of a dramatic story
about two slaves.
“Ben and Dan escape,” the note said at the back of Isabella Swan’s
book, “The Deep Roots.” Turn to pages 37 and 38. But I went to those
pages and couldn’t find any mention of slaves. Nothing on Ben or Dan.
Zilch on any escape.
Marc Lafayette read my kicker and reached for his great aunt Isabella
Swan’s personal, annotated copy of “The Deep Roots.” It had her list
of errors to be corrected if the 1976 book were to be republished.
Lafayette dialed my number. The next day, I received his voice-mail
message: Go to pages 137 and 138 for the story about Ben and Dan.
I talked to his mother, Pat Lafayette, Isabella Swan’s niece. Swan
died in 1993 at age 93. She and the Lafayettes have really deep roots
into Grosse Ile history. Their common ancestor was Louis Groh, an
early settler who owned 650 acres on Grosse Ile.
Speaking of “The Deep Roots,” Pat Lafayette said that Swan indexed the
book herself. “I call it the most wonderful index. She was not one to
make errors. I was astounded to see that there actually was an error,”
Pat said.
My Jan. 21 story focused on a list of 26 slaves whose names appeared
in a 1796 “Estimation of the Slaves of the Late William Macomb.”
William Macomb and his brother, Alexander Macomb, bought Grosse Ile
from American Indians on July 6, 1776. William Macomb probably owned
more slaves than anyone else in Michigan.
It was in my research that I came across Ben and Dan.
They were slaves who were brought to Grosse Ile in 1828 by a deputy
Wayne County sheriff, J.M. Wilson, whose assignment was to guard the
slaves for a Kentucky man, E. K. Hudnell, who planned to take Ben and
Dan to Sandusky, Ohio, over Lake Erie. Apparently they were being
taken back to slave country. They were brought to Grosse Ile to elude
“free and armed Negroes on the Canadian side (who) planned to board
the vessel and rescue them,” according to Swan.
Deputy Wilson left the slaves with Hudnell.
According to Territorial Papers quoted by Swan, Hudnell unwittingly
gave Ben and Dan a golden chance to escape.
They disappeared “while Hudnell & others were preparing for gaming.”
Pat Lafayette aimed me at another section of her great-aunt’s book
that deals with slavery. It’s about Col. Thornton Fleming Brodhead, a
former editor of the Detroit Free Press from Grosse Ile who fought and
died in the Union army.
According to Swan’s book, “Joseph Lockman, a young colored boy who had
attended upon Colonel Brodhead, accompanied the body home and stayed
on with the Brodheads for many years. He was probably ‘contraband,’ a
term designating slaves who escaped to and were retained by the Union
forces.”
The book has a photo of Lockman, who for years gave people rides to
Catholic worship services at the Brodhead house.
Contact JOEL THURTELL at 248-351-3296 or joelthurtell(at)gmail.com.
Caption:
Illustration:
Edition: METRO FINAL
Section: CFP; COMMUNITY FREE PRESS
Page: 3CV
Keywords:
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