Moody Moments

The past week at the Maryland State Archives is something of a blur of constant activity book-ended by dull moments while reading 200 year old court records concerning a slave named Robert Moody.

Oral Histories

Under the new terms of my fellowship’s placement at the Maryland State Archives I continue working on oral history interview processing. Although I’ve worked under these terms for four and a half months at Maryland compared to the three months at Chicago for the summer institute, the remote work for The HistoryMakers is a once weekly affair rather than a daily concern so it remains ever fresh in my mind. In order to meet a request from Dr. Ed Papenfuse this past December, an information-dense interview in November, and frequent distractions on my designated day to work on interviews, I fell behind schedule. So in addition to working over break and on weekends, I devoted Monday and Tuesday to polishing one interview and beginning another.

Leah Ward Sears

My (mostly) completed interview is Leah Ward Sears, a judge appointed to the Georgia Supreme Court at the ripe old age of 36. I could tell, simply by the way she talked about the upbringing of her parents and herself, that she placed great importance on family as an institution. This certainly rang true in two important court cases from the Superior Court where she exercised significant independent judgment; one involved parents who disagreed on whether to take their comatose daughter off life support and another case involved a couple who took a weekend to regret forfeiting their child. In the first case she essentially sided with the mother, who wanted to keep the daughter alive, by saying the family needed to agree; the daughter died of natural causes a few days later and the family unit survived. In the adoption case she decided that the father did not relinquish his rights to the child and returned it to the couple. Although proponents of family tend to be on the conservative side of most issues, Sears was quite obviously a liberal. She named her daughter “Brennan” after the US Supreme Court justice because, or so she claimed, “Thurgood” was not a proper name for a girl.

Leah Ward Sears Sears’ emphasis on the family without adopting related political baggage of the family values circle reminded me of my former American history professor, John Sharpless. A colorful man, Sharpless was prone to tangents and told often elaborate stories that always put his classes behind schedule. One such story was his unsuccessful run for Congress in 2000 against (now Senator) Tammy Baldwin. As smirking curmudgeons and astute observers often do, he ran as a moderate of with whatever party he was aligned. During candidate boot camp in Washington, one of the trainers cautioned candidates against using the Republican shibboleth “family values” to rally the faithful. He summarized her remark thusly: “Family is not a value, it’s an institution, and for some people it is sheer hell.” Sears believes in the importance of family as a sanctified and stabilizing force in society, which we must struggle to sustain, but she understands the difference between an institution and values.

Vel Philips

Throughout her interview she emphasized the patience and compassion necessary for the robes and warned viewers of her constant efforts to be worthy of her position. The second interview I’m working on is Vel Philps. She is a prominent judge and politician from Wisconsin and was approximately 83 during the interview. It is clear from the interview that an unexpected remodeling problem at their intended filming spot forced them into a building with heat only high enough to keep the pipe water from freezing. She wears a thick lady’s dress coat and hugs herself for at least three of the five tapes. By the second tape she is visibly drowsy but soldiers on, blaming the cold but admitting that warmth often does the same thing.

Maryland State Archives

On Wednesday the MSA was graced with the presence of a film crew for a genealogical show in the style of "Who Do You Think You Are?" with a celebrity primarily famous for a character in one of the Fox network's earliest and most successful shows. It would be out of place to say who this actor or actress was or describe the brief disruptions caused by their filming in the research room; shooting on location creates unavoidable headaches but I'm nevertheless glad the MSA will be represented on national television.

Wye Island

I resumed examining judicial records from the Scwhweninger Collection. This time I’m examining an 1812 judicial paper concerning a freedom petition by Robert Moody and submitted to the Court of Appeals for the Eastern Shore; Robert Moody’s name only appears in a few pages at the opening and closing of the 60+ page document because it contains literally a dozen exhibits and transcripts from cases dating back to 1793. Moody was using successful suits where no less than twenty slaves freed themselves because they were descended from an Indian native named Moll or Mary. The bulk of the writing could be summarized thusly: Can I have a continuance? Sure. Can I have a continuance? Sure. Can I have a continuance? Sure. No, I never heard of a girl named “Indian Margaret” on Wye Island.

The hope is to find the delicious tidbits. For example, it did not matter that the court heard from a dozen people who claimed to know nothing about a black and Indian mulatto slave--because the mistress of the house admitted that she was. Strangely, she kept this information between herself and the previous owner rather than free her—but whatever. With the exhibits and depositions continuing almost seamlessly into each other, and a complex genealogy unfolded before me, it was difficult to know where one case ended and another began. I constantly reminded myself that every scrap of paper was relevant to Robert Moody’s freedom petition.

Although the jury found that Moody was not a slave, the appeal successfully argued that Moody did not satisfactorily prove he was the son of one of these freed slaves. Strangely, the court allowed the testimony of a mulatto. In the delicate language of their day the clerk slyly described his degree of blackness and hence the credibility of the defense’s objection to him as a witness. According to Maryland law, slaves were not allowed to testify in cases where white people were affected. The judge—and I just LOVED this—stated it was incumbent upon the defense attorney to prove he was a slave.

At close of business on Friday I had not yet found supporting records for his fate. I checked the Queen Anne's County Court Judgment Record series for potential 1813 retrial information but there seems to be none available. Perhaps due to some absent minded book binding over a century ago 1813 may well be misplaced within three volumes spanning the first quarter century of judgments. The year 1812 for example is, bizarrely, placed at the center of a volume spanning 1818-1822; the volume for 1814-1818 is apparently complete but does not possess my needed 1813 judgments. I will need to check for the 1813 judgments in the volume ending in 1811 before I am certain enough to give up my search. The fear that this year may not exist--or that I am checking the record series in error due to the complex legal avenues and jurisdictions in the document--actually kept me awake on Saturday night.

Outreach
 

Kent Island

My first speaking engagements for the Maryland State Archives Legacy of Slavery in Maryland project are looming. I studied a taped presentation given by my colleagues David Armenti and Ryan Cox this summer and was impressed by their grasp of the subject matter and ease of public speaking. For the Progressive Ed Summit, I’ve decided to emphasize how students can use the LOSIM website and teachers can strategically use primary sources to stimulate critical thinking.

During this week I was on something of a creative hot streak. My colleague Tanner consented to the name for our February 5 presentation on Kent Island--“Pistols and Petitions: Queen Anne’s Slave Self-Emancipation in the 19^th Century” and my division colleagues accepted one of two names I proposed for our May 18 presentation—“Know Your Rights: Lost Slaves, Proving Freedom, and Earning Pensions in 19th Century Maryland”; the idea for the latter came to me at the close our LOSIM’s weekly meeting. It was difficult to determine a theme because the only thing our respective topics had in common were petitions; petitions by slaveholders to recover chattel, petitions by slaves for their freedom, and petitions by veterans and widows to earn government pensions for United States Colored Troops service. As the meeting broke up, almost out of nowhere, The Clash came to mind.

At the core of every petition, whether slave, former slave, or slaveholder, the petitioners were exercising their rights under the contemporary law. Although I would like to say my suggested titles were selected because of their quality, I suspect they were chosen simply because I was the first one to offer any. I’ll take what I can get…

Alex Champion--Maryland State Archives