Tennessee to Missouri #2: Maria Rodgers Martin

 

Maria Jane Rodgers Martin (1831-1922)

By the fringe of bangs and dress style we might

guess this photo was taken about 1870 when Maria

was in her late thirties.

We looked at the stuffed work quilts in the collection of Wayside Rest in Cass County, Missouri, at least one of which has been attributed to Maria Jane Rodgers Martin, a woman enslaved first in Tennessee, brought to Missouri and then to Lawrence, Kansas during the Civil War.

Family who passed on the quilts also passed on the

story that Maria stitched this one.

See the post here:

https://quilthistorysouth.blogspot.com/2020/11/tennessee-to-missouri-1-regional-style.html

Here is another snapshot of Maria in Lawrence from the 1900 census when she was 68 years old.

In June she is listed as widowed, renting a house, and apparently living alone in an integrated neighborhood. Like many former slaves she'd never learned to read or write. She had given birth to eight children but only three were living at the time. She was born in April, 1832 and knew her father was born in Tennessee and her mother in Virginia. 

The 1865 state census found two similar Maria Martins in Lawrence. One, listed as 38, is doing somewhat better than the other: A few months after the end of the Civil War, she is heading her own household with three children Minerva, Henry and Elmore. They are the only people of color in their immediate neighborhood. This Maria supports them with "Washing & Ironing" and she has assets worth $25.

The other Maria Martin at 35 also does Washing & Ironing, but she lives in a mostly Black neighborhood and is listed as a Pauper. Her three children are Elmira, Charles and Benjamin ages 14 to 4. 

The second, very poor Maria looks like the woman we are searching for. Her son Benjamin (1859-1886), born in Missouri, grew up to be a blacksmith back in Harrisonville where he and Maria are buried in the Brown family cemetery at Wayside Rest. Of course, these may be the same woman, living one place when the census taker called one day and in another later the same month. 

Maria Rodgers Martin lived to be 91, dying in 1922.

See her grave:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/maria-jane-martin

Maria was born in slavery in Tennessee in 1831 or 1832 to people owned by William Gillenwaters, a prosperous farmer in Rhea County. In 1842 Gillenwaters bought land in Missouri and moved his family and enslaved workers west. The family included wife Elizabeth Roddye Gillenwaters, their only (?) child Mary Roddye Gillenwaters Brown, her husband Robert Allison Brown and their three children. Family history recalled that "thirty-odd servants" came to Missouri.

Allison Fasching, a Gillenwaters descendant, cites Robert Brown III's family story of the trip by river ending at the Missouri River port of Lexington, Missouri, followed by an overland trip "over 'considerable' parts of western Missouri" in fall, 1842 when Maria was about 10 or 11.

 

Names were not listed.

Twelve years later the 1850 census counted 33 slaves on the Gillenwaters/Brown farm, most were young---only one woman was older than 40. Thirteen were old enough to have come from Tennessee. Most were men; only one female might have been Maria, a 19 year old "M" for mulatto, reflecting her fair color.

Cass County library photo of the house in the 1880s

In 1850 only three enslaved women 42, 35 and 19, lived at Wayside Rest. The young men probably worked the mills and the farms that grew hemp for rope.

Recent photo of Wayside Rest house by William Fischer, Jr.

The farm eventually encompassed 2,300 acres and a substantial brick house that still stands. A steam saw and grist mill supplied lumber and food for the farm and neighbors.

Forty years ago when the site was placed on the

National Register of Historic Places the remains

of some slave housing were photographed.

Restored today. 

Did Maria live out on the grounds or in the main

house where she is said to have been in charge of the

Brown children?

Although period documents refer to William Gillenwaters

as plantation head, slave holder, etc. he has been edited out of 

family stories. He died in Texas in 1865 just after the war was over.

Wife Elizabeth had died in 1851 at Wayside Rest.

Maria's Civil War story as generally told indicates she went to Lawrence, Kansas with her children in January or February, 1862 after being freed by Kansas soldiers under the command of Colonel Charles R. Jennison. 

Charles Jennison (1834-1884) was an official Union 

soldier for 7 months during the early years of the 

Civil War, mustered out in May, 1862

I found no stories of people leaving Missouri with Union troops in February but a few weeks earlier in January, 1862 newspapers all over the world printed accounts of  “Jennison’s Jayhawkers,” as the 7th Kansas Cavalry was known, freeing Missourians in the areas west of Kansas City.

"In Jackson and Cass counties...70 farm houses...have been destroyed," according to an article in a London, England newspapers. The flurry of January newsprint about Jennison can only be attributable to a skillful publicist (Jennison himself?) Jennison's erratic behavior was displeasing his superiors and one might wonder if he decided to fight disapproval with public opinion praising his raids.

In February, 1862 Jennison's troops had been in Humboldt, Kansas, for a month according to Lt. Colonel Daniel Anthony's letters to his family including sister Susan B. Anthony. Jennison wasn't well. In May, "We have had blustering times. Jennison resigned." He was reinstated, but not for long. The Seventh went east to Kentucky without him. Later in the war he led another Union regiment but was court-martialed for war crimes and dishonorably discharged. After the war he became a politician representing Leavenworth.

Lt. Snoddy, under Jennison, brought forty slaves into Lawrence in January, possibly the group that Maria traveled with.

A piece from an anonymous correspondent in a Brooklyn, New York paper in January, 1862 tells us Jennison was supposedly giving $25 to refugees while cotton prints were selling for 15 to 17 cents in Lawrence. One hundred thirty scholars were said to be attending a special school for freed people.

Lawrence, rebuilt after the Civil War. 

As usual, no parking spots on Mass St., too many cows.

Once in Lawrence, Maria is reported to have been employed as Jennison's laundry worker but the never-married Jennison lived in Leavenworth when he wasn't in the field. Another possible employer was General James Lane, who did live in Lawrence with wife Mary and his family.

Mary Baldridge Lane (1826-1883) by the Brady Studios

 Perhaps Maria and Mary Baldridge Lane were acquainted.

The Kansas "Jayhawkers" swept through Cass County several times. Harrisonville is only 20 miles or so from the state line.

Elizabeth Gillenwaters Brown, a 14-year-old living at Wayside Rest, recalled seeing smoke from a skirmish north of Harrisonville as she stood on the balcony in front of the house in July, 1861. The ease with which the Kansans rode into the area probably motivated the Gillenwaters and Brown to remove their greatest wealth, the African-American people, south to Texas. Apparently Lizzie's grandfather William Gillenwalters and her brother John took them to the Dallas, Texas area, where John was killed in an accident in 1864. William never returned either and died there soon after the war.

Was Maria's husband Fred Martin taken to Texas? She and her children remained.

Elizabeth Gillenwaters Brown married Henry Clay Daniel in 1868

Lizzie remembered another encounter with Jennison's troops in December, 1861, while Maria was still at Wayside Rest.

"Every day some of the [Kansas] men came to the house to take whatever they pleased from the outbuildings. On Christmas day, just about mealtime, three men rode up and father gave them, as usual, a cordial invite to dine. They raved over the dinner and wondered why there was so much silver. The Lieutenant said some of the boys were hard and might take it, but father said, 'No, the boys are in and out all the time and are well behaved.' They left late and headed toward town.

"At about midnight, there was a heavy knock on the door. Mother answered while father dressed and got his pistol, for he had begun to smell a mouse. The caller said through the door that he was a friend and asked to see Mr. Brown. Father turned to mother and said, 'Go ring the bell' and that frightened them so the men turned to go. Father watched through the sidelight then one of the men fired hitting the right side of the door." [Bullet hole remains today beside the front door.]

The elder Robert Allison Brown years after the war.

The family stories tell us the house was raided 11 times during the war.

Collection of Wayside Rest

Robert Allison Brown II (1844-1928) with wife Kentucky-born

Mary Agnes Stephens Brown (1850-1932)

 and five of their nine children, about 1897.

The youngest on her rocking horse is Agnes Nelson Brown

 Hamilton (1895-1982) who lived here all her life.

Collection of the Kansas State Historical Society

Living in Lawrence, Maria lived through a retaliatory raid in 1863 when Missourians under William Quantrill executed nearly 200 men. An 1891 list of survivors includes Maria Martin & Henry Martin (#8 & 37.) This Maria may have been the slightly older Maria---or maybe there was only one.

See Daniel Anthony's letters from Kansas to his family including Susan B.

https://kslib.info/DocumentCenter/View/6807/Kansas-Historical-Quarterly?bidId=

One other thing:

I had in my files of women's dress style this woman from an unknown source---Doesn't she look exactly like Maria? Maybe a few years younger.

One face laid atop the other.

I have no idea where I found the photo and a Google Image

search only finds me as a source.

Next Post: Did Maria make that quilt?

Allison Fasching's post on her family history:

http://www.allisonfasching.com/family-history.html