Collections : [University of Michigan William L. Clements Library]

The Louise Gilman papers consist of letters written by Louise Gilman while serving as a teacher at the Hampton Institute in Hampton, Viriginia, a school set up to educate freed slaves. The letters describe Gilman's activities as a teacher and her thoughts about the black students.

The Louise Gilman papers consist of 21 letters written by Louise Gilman to her elder sisters Molly and Emily, one to her brother, Edward, and four letters to Lizzie (probably Elizabeth Dwight Woolsey Gilman, ca. 1839-1910) or Hattie, who may either be friends or relatives. The collection also includes five letters from Molly Gilman to Lizzie, and a copy of one letter from Samuel C. Armstrong to one of the Miss Woolseys (probably Georgeanna).

Gilman's letters to her sisters include several fine descriptions of the still unfinished grounds of the Hampton Institute and portray an interesting, though not highly detailed picture of the life of a freedmen's teacher. The eagerness of many of the students to learn to read and the enthusiasm for education, at least among some of them, comes through strongly in these letters. One letter in particular provides an outstanding description of the Institute, the teachers' rooms and the daily routine, along with a long description of a visit to a Freedman's Church and Sunday School (1869 February 21). Gilman's final lines in her description of the Sunday School capture some of the complexity of her feelings about her experience: "I have spun out a long story of all this - but how else can I give you an idea of the mixture of free-ness & pomposity, of rudeness & simple decorum in all the exercises - I wish I could give you a picture of the whole scene! Such bonnets! Such hoops!!"

A running tension in the Gilman correspondence is the mixture of admiration and respect that Gilman musters for her pupils, leavened with an air of condescension and occasional scorn. At times, it can be difficult to discern her true feelings, as when she implies that books found in the Slabtown Sunday School might have been stolen, or when she suggests that she might bring home an 18 year old African-American girl whose health and well-being might improve at the north. Gilman adds, revealingly, "'Nothing offensive or niggery about her' says Rebecca [Bacon] -- 'She don't smell bad.' She has never received wages -- & I have not doubt would be satisfied with very small wages at least till the expenses of her journey are paid" (1869 April 27).

The Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society papers consist of documents generated by the society as well as correspondence to and from various members of the society about slavery, the conditions of freemen, and other progressive issues.

The Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society papers contain only a small portion of what must at one time have been a much larger collection. As a society devoted to the immediate abolition of slavery, the antislavery movement forms the context of most of the correspondence in the collection, but the members of the society were individually and collectively involved in the education of freedmen and in other movements, including women's rights. As a result, the collection offers a broad perspective on the mentality and activity of a small group of progressive northern women involved in the reform of what they saw as the worst inequities in American society.

The Society maintained contact with several national-level leaders of the antislavery movements, and provided important financial support to Frederick Douglass, in particular. The nine letters from Douglass in the collection all relate to the assistance provided for publication of his newspaper or are requests from him for direct aid to fugitive slaves en route to Canada. A particularly affecting letter is one that he wrote from England in 1860, while on an antislavery tour. Harriet Tubman, Beriah Green, Lewis Tappan, George B. Cheever, and Gerrit Smith also appear in the collection, either as correspondents or subjects of letters. Among the more interesting of these letters is one from John Stewart, probably a free black man, addressed to Harriet Tubman; a letter from Moses Anderson, also African-American, writing about the importance of Uncle Tom's Cabin in shaping his political consciousness; Jacob Gibb's letter of introduction for a fugitive slave; and William Watkins' report on the number of fugitive slaves that have passed through Rochester into Canada in the year 1857.

British support for the Society was crucial in keeping it viable in the late 1850s, and is documented through the letters of Julia Griffiths Crofts (Leeds, England); Sarah Plummer (Dalkeith, Scotland), and Maria Webb (Dublin, Ireland). The fund-raising efforts of the society can be tracked partly through the list of goods donated for a Festival (1:77), a small collection of ephemera relating to British antislavery societies (1:82), and a list of donations from those British societies (1:28). The most significant item for tracking finances, however, is the account book for the Society (2:20), which covers its entire history. The secretaries of the Society recorded the complete finances of the organization, and provided lists of speakers at their annual events, and carefully delineated money remitted to individual fugitive slaves. Included at the end of the collection are a set of photocopies of the manuscripts (2:21) and supplemental information about the Society and its members, provided by the University of Rochester (2:22).

Freedmen's education was a major concern of the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society, and is discussed extensively by several correspondents. The single most frequent correspondent in the collection is Julia A. Wilbur, writing while working with freedmen in Alexandria, Va., 1862-1865. Wilbur writes long and vivid letters describing the miserable living conditions found among the freedmen, their want of clothing and shelter, and she describes several individual cases. Wilbur also met and became familiar with the renowned ex-slave and author, Harriet Jacobs. The situation that Wilbur describes in Virginia verges on the chaotic, with corruption at the highest levels, dissension among those in charge of contraband matters, and many in the military reluctant or unwilling to take any responsibility. She was a perceptive observer of the progress of the war, Southern citizenry, and of the destruction that the war had inflicted upon Virginia. Her official reports to the Society, which are more general and less pointed than her private correspondence, were published in the Society's published annual reports (2:1-13).

In addition to Wilbur's letters, there are six other items pertaining to freedmen's education. Three letters from G. W. Gardiner and one document signed by Lewis Overton, 1862-63, relate to the work of the Colored School, founded for freedmen at Leavenworth, Kansas, and both letters from Daniel Breed, 1863-64, include discussions of the Rochester School for Freedmen in Washington, D.C., named for the Society whose money founded it.

The printed items in the collection include fourteen of the seventeen known annual reports of the Society, a report from the Toronto Ladies' Association for the Relief of Destitute Colored fugitives (2:14), and circulars from two British societies (2:15-16). Three issues of Frederick Douglass' Paper (October 2, 1851, February 19 1858, and July 1, 1859) and one issue of The North Star (April 14, 1848) are included in Oversize Manuscripts. An issue of the Christian Inquirer (New York, July 24, 1858), having no direct relation to the Rochester Society, was transferred to the Newspapers Division. Finally, in two letters written in 1859 and 1861, Rebecca Bailey discusses her father William Bailey's newspaper, The Free South.