SOJOURN TO THE FUTURE

GARDINER, N.Y. - Sometimes, Sojourner Truth just makes Carleton Mabee laugh.

Reading peppery quotes from the 19th century black leader, her biographer chuckles - in awe, all the while, of her valor. And her contradictions. Born and raised in Ulster County to be a blindly obedient, docile slave, Truth (c. 1797-1883) rose to national prominence as an evangelist and spokeswoman for women's and blacks' rights. Poor, illiterate, black and female, she came to command widespread media and scholarly attention and visited two presidents, Lincoln and Grant, in the White House. The slave Isabella, beaten and made to sleep on floors, chose her own new name in 1843 and headed east alone from New York City as an evangelist, never to let trials, past or present, banish her Christian beliefs.

Hers was religion applied through her advocacy of fairness, justice and equal rights for all, says Mabee, professor emeritus of history at the State University of New York at New Paltz and author of "Sojourner Truth: Slave, Prophet, Legend" (New York University Press, $35). Co-written with Mabee's daughter, Susan Mabee Newhouse of Baltimore, the work provides what Ulster historians and reviewers say may be the most extensive and best documented account yet of a figure oft recalled during Black History Month. "He's done a beautiful job," says Town of Esopus historian Dorothy DuMond. "I think he's going to be the absolute ultimate reference for her. He spent so many years digging out the facts. He made her come alive to me."

Mabee, who won a 1944 Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Samuel F.B. Morse, hopes his new book deflates myths about Truth - that she was a great friend of Lincoln's, for example, when records document only one meeting. But even trimmed down to size, he says, hers is a story that may inspire modern readers. "I think the appeal about her is as an example of hope despite all the discouragement she had in life," says Mabee, reflecting in the second-floor study of his spacious white frame house in Gardiner. Isabella was born north of Rifton, and by the time she was 29 she had belonged to five different owners in Ulster County - some cruel, some kind, according to Mabee's book. The beatings and indignities she suffered paint a painful portrait of slavery in New York State. Despite those hardships, Isabella exhibited dedication that seems misplaced in one destined to become such a fervent opponent of slavery. "She had energy to put into her work that others didn't have," Mabee says. "She responded to praise from slave masters by working even harder. ... You've got an unusual person here. It's hard to explain."

Mutual respect and admiration between Isabella and her last owner, John Dumont of West Park, may have helped generate the confidence that fueled her later life, Mabee says. Nevertheless, after Dumont reneged on a promise to free Isabella and her husband, Tom, on July 4, 1826 - a year earlier than all slaves in New York were to be freed by law - Isabella walked away. Carrying her infant, Sophia, she left Tom and three other children whom the owner, by law, was allowed to keep through adulthood. Isabella found work with the Van Wagenens of Saint Remy¹, who didn't believe in slavery. Soon afterward, she took legal action to recover her son, Peter, whom Dumont had illegally sold into slavery in Alabama. With the help of local lawyers who apparently took her case for free, Isabella persisted until Peter was brought to her in the county courthouse in Kingston in 1828. "It was astonishing that a poor black woman just out of slavery, and especially one who, as she herself later said, had been brought up `as ignorant as a horse,' would take any case to court," Mabee writes. "But she pushed it forward with the same ferocious energy with which she had worked in the fields for her slave master Dumont." In 1827 or 1828, Truth became a Christian and joined what is now St. James United Methodist Church in Kingston. In 1829, Truth left Ulster for good, depositing Sophia, ironically, with the Dumonts. She moved to New York City, where she worked as a domestic and preached as a Methodist leader. Mabee's book profiles her involvement with a controversial religious community near Ossining - and her decision to leave New York in 1843 as traveling evangelist Sojourner Truth. Settling the next year in Northampton, Mass., Truth became acquainted with abolitionists. Her profile grew steadily as she traveled from her base there and later, in Battle Creek, Mich., from 1857 until her death in 1883. Mabee considers why Truth never became educated despite repeated opportunities to learn, uncovering evidence of a possible learning disability.

He contrasts her illiteracy with her mesmerizing command of the spoken word. Accented with the Dutch she learned as a child, her blend of farm and Biblical terms carried her sometimes startling ideas. "Just to say those odd expressions, I guess it made an impact on people," Mabee says. "And she was so smart that she knew what to play up." Truth's faith may have generated confidence to address large audiences, Mabee says. "She felt she was speaking for God, not just for herself."

TOLER, LAURA J., SOJOURN TO THE FUTURE., Gannett News Service, 01-16

ON THE TRAIL OF TRUTH

Before Carleton Mabee soldiered through six years of basic research on Sojourner Truth, authors copied the same Overblown myths and mistakes from one book to the next, historians and reviewers say. "You could take a number of them, nail them up on the wall and shoot a rifle through them and hit the same period" in Truth's life, says Town of Esopus, N.Y., historian Dorothy DuMond. By contrast, she says, Mabee became perhaps the first to dig into original records of Truth's life.

Mabee scoured old newspapers, manuscripts and local histories. "I spent enormous amounts of time reading through newspapers of the towns where she was, just hoping to find some mention of her," Mabee says. "Sometimes you look all day and don't find anything." The illiterate Truth left a far shorter paper trail than would normally be available to a biographer. An 1850 narrative of her life and letters she dictated to others were among limited sources of information directly from her.

The most disappointing gap concerns her time in or near New York City, 1829-43. Wondering if she were involved with abolitionists there, Mabee probed records of their meetings and black newspapers of the period but found no mention of Truth. Corinne Nyquist of the Sojourner Truth Library at the State University College at New Paltz who, along with DuMond, is among those credited by Mabee for help with the book believes more local research should be done. But probing ancestors' roles as slave holders "is not comfortable to a lot of people," she says. She credits Mabee with uncovering the Truth behind the legends: "You're talking about really painstaking research. Nobody had done that before on her." Mabee was spurred by discoveries of local librarians and historians researching aspects of Truth's life in Ulster, whom Nyquist gathered annually the last five years in March, during women's history month. Lore also has been fed by SUNY's naming its library for Truth in 1971 a move Associate Library Director Chui-Chun Lee says was attributed to Truth's early years in New Paltz and her "outstanding speaking ability and militancy on behalf of freedom during the Civil War period." Mabee finds the choice "marvelously ironic. ... You don't usually name a library after somebody who couldn't read or write. ... She wasn't a scholar, but she certainly was a major contributor to the cause of human rights. And what a wonderful name for a library."

Mabee was "pleased and proud" to work with his daughter, Susan Mabee Newhouse, a psychologist in Baltimore, who critiqued rough drafts of "Truth." "She could say things to me as her Daddy that maybe a colleague wouldn't," Mabee says. "It's through that kind of give-and-take that the best writing is done."

TOLER, LAURA J., ON THE TRAIL OF TRUTH., Gannett News Service, 04-05-1994.

FOOTNOTES:

1) Article said Bloomington, but this is incorrect. The Isaac VanWagenen family of Saint Remy is the family who took in Sojourner. The VanWagenens were a rather large old family which owned land both in Saint Remy and Bloomingdale, as it was then known. Their combined holdings straddled the Rondout Kill or Creek. - K. Wick and Dorothy Dumond from original research.

This page created and maintained by and Karl Wick.
Created on Sat Jun 28, 1997