For Aunt Susan; A Black History Month Tribute February 2018

Notes on Mary Susan Barnett Garrett (1849-1963 age 114?)

"Slavery In the Shadow of the Cradle of Emancipation"

By Gary Dean Gardner, Independent Scholar

Mrs. Garrett with Carl Howell Sr. laying a wreath at Lincoln's statue Feb. 1959

“Aunt” Susan Garrett was never any man’s slave & never claimed to be, though most white people of 20^th century Hodgenville assumed she had been, and forever linked her to an institution she herself was never a part of.  Susan was instead, as few black women of antebellum Kentucky were, born free but, like all blacks who lived through slavery and Jim Crow, she acquiesced and remained silent, smiling. Susan accepted the mantle of an unrequested symbolic role, one that served as a vestigial link to a time, an economy, and an inhumane attitude toward life we can hardly fathom today.

Born but a scant few miles from the birthplace of the great Emancipator, in the shadow of the “Cradle of Emancipation,” the mythic Lincoln, his proclamation of freedom and ultimate Constitutional elimination of slavery had no direct impact upon her, yet she’d be associated with these events for much of her late adult life merely because of her race and longevity. She became, as if an unwilling contestant in a pageant, “Miss Slavery” in the eyes of her neighbors, and a nation.

By the middle of the 20^th century, when a Centennial of a great and bloody war and the Sesquicentennial of the birth of a president were looming, few still lived who remembered the century before, those events, and a time when Kentucky was graced with refinement, culture, and sophistication, all at the expense of human bondage.  Still, we sought a living reminder of those times and people, and found a gracious representation in the form of Aunt Susan Garrett.

Despite her celebrity status accompanied by a variety of interviews beginning in the 1940s, little is truly known today of Susan’s life.  She, I think intentionally, left few details of her origins, and many clues, seeming to understand her role and the need to perpetuate an image of an almost “Gone with the Wind” stereotype in those years still anticipating Civil Rights.   Some things she told us with clarity, but most facts of her early life must be carefully gleaned and reconstructed. 

Without doubt, Susan was the wife of James Robert Garrett (1821/38/41-1904) whom she married 6 April 1873 in Green County, Kentucky (at J. A. Garrett’s) at the age tender age of 15, still a child herself, and for whom she bore thirteen children, commenting with a laugh that “the children…came sorta like chickens.”

James & Susan had moved to LaRue County before 1900, when they were enumerated in the Census for that year in District 1 West Hodgenville.  We find James born April 1841, a day laborer, and Susan born May 1855 with children John (Feb. 1886), Ernest (June 1888), Lesley (Feb. 1891), Addie (March 1894), and Irvin (Oct. 1895).  The entry for Ernest says he had been employed for 6 years, indicating they’d been in LaRue County since 1894.  By the time of the 1910 Census, Susan is found widowed, working as a laundress and head of her own household (#235) and the mother of 13 children that included still single children Irvin and Lizzie as well as married daughter Mittie (Araminta?), now a Handley, with her children Myrtle, Tina P. Ora, Marion, and Mary E.  When the 1920 Census rolls around for LaRue County, Susan is found residing in the home (Household #91) of her son Irvin & his wife Jessie Harris (of Glendale) and their children Elizabeth and Virgie M. as well as Irvin’s spinster sister Elizabeth.  Little had changed in the immediate family’s composition by 1930 except for the addition of Irvin & Jessie’s sons Irvin K. & Paul A.

Susan never lived far from the land, from birth on her grandfather’s farm to married life in Summersville, Tonnieville or Hodgenville, Susan Garrett remained at heart a country girl.  She quipped once, "I worked on a farm.  I never was a house worker.  Oh, I might wash a dish or two or a window, but I never did like to piddle around the house.  I'm a farm worker, always farmed. Farm just like a man. The only thing I couldn't do was plow, and that's because I couldn't tell gee from haw. On nice days I go fishing in the pond near here.  Only can catch little old things there, though.  I wanted to fishing license, but they said I was too old."  Surely it was instilled in Susan from girlhood that land held special meaning, especially to an African-American.  If anything represented bounty, nurture, and yes, freedom, it had to be land.  And while Susan herself was never held in bondage to master and his land, her mother and all her ancestors in America certainly had been.  (The Courier-Journal, Louisville, KY 16 April 1949)

Mary Susan as well appreciated the fruits of the land in their most simplistic sustenance.  Speaking about her diet and food preferences, Susan surely held on to the culinary traditions of the South’s African-American community when she was quoted by the same interviewer in saying, “I like corn bread, sweet potatoes, and gravy.  I don’t like no dressed-up cakes and pies.  I like rough eatin’.  I’ll be happy with anything people want to bring me even if it’s an old biscuit!”

Surely Susan knew the identity of her slave-born parents, but their story was less important to remember & pass on than the basic lessons of survival in the Jim Crow South of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  Her mother, the identify of which still remains elusive, and her maternal grandfather, were per Susan herself the former slaves of one Andy Barnett.  Susan explained that, “Grandpappy and Mama worked for Andy Barnett and he freed half of his slaves before the war and his wife freed the rest later.  He gave them each some money, two acres of land, a hoe and a plow and a horse.  It was theirs to keep, too.”

Susan’s lineage is provided a couple of theories by the 1850 & 1860 Green County, Kentucky Federal Census listings.  In one intriguing family unit we find a man who might be Susan's grandfather shown as head of household of an extended family of “free people of color.”   While we don’t have the exact date, Robert Barnett, if Aunt Susan’s grandfather, was born about 1797, and was certainly freed, as Susan said, prior to 1850, along with her mother.  That year he was enumerated as head of family #73. Robert was listed as a laborer married to Elizabeth (born ca. 1820) with the following children:

1)       “Mint” aka Araminta (1834)*,

2)       Charles (1835),

3)       Mary (1841),

4)       DeCalb (1843),

5)       Robert (1844),

6)       Joshua (1846),

7)       Edward (1848),

8)       Frances (1850), &

9)       John (1839)** (Whether or not John is even related to Robert Barnett, we cannot say, but seemingly is not a son. All in the home were listed as “black.”)

Interestingly, household #243 as well consisted of free persons of color, they being brothers Robert & George Barnett, blacksmiths aged 25 & 22.  Other free blacks, clearly either collateral family members, or all simply former slaves of the Andy Barnett family, included household #78 with Green Barnett, a laborer born ca. 1824 with Nancy, perhaps his mother, born about 1785.

In 1860, more of the first theory Aunt Susan’s story is unfolded.  We now find her potential grandfather Robert as a farmer with $150 in land and another $150 in personal property, just as Susan had told in her oral history of her mother’s and grandfather’s manumission.  It would appear that his wife Elizabeth (Susan’s grandmother?) had died and Robert has remarried, for he is now listed with Hannah, born about 1820.

Also in the household were:

1)      Jenney (1830),

2)       Araminta (1836)*,

3)       Sarah J. (1837),

4)       William (1844),

5)       Elizabeth (1846),

6)       Sarah (1850),

7)       Lewis (1852),

8)       Mary Jane (1853),

9)       Andy (1855),

10)    Susan (1856),

11)    Ben T. (1858),

12)    Thomas G. (1858),

13)    and John (1839)**.                                                                                                                                                                                     

The composition of this large household in 1860 warrants study.  Racial designations and ages imply that some of Robert’s relations, including one grandchild, are now mixed-race, they being “mulattos” Sarah Jane (born ca. 1837) and Thomas G. (born ca. 1858).  Previously, in 1850, all household members were designated as being “black.”  As well, some individuals who were clearly the children of Robert & Elizabeth in 1850 have left home, but others of the same generation have appeared during the 10-year span.  Only two people, other than Robert himself, remain, Arminta* and John**.

It is difficult to say with surety just who Susan’s mother was.  Her own son Leslie, at the time of Susan’s death, had no knowledge of either of his mother’s parents’ names.  Assuming that her mother was found in this particular Barnett household for both 1850 & 1860, a logical expectation even for this unusual family of free blacks that was anything but ordinary or static, is Susan’s mother might have been Araminta Barnett.  And, though free and allowed to marry, it is plausible that John Barnett was an unrelated free black, also taking the surname of his former master, who fathered Susan and stayed in the home to assist his common-law wife, daughter, and father-in-law.  From Aunt Susan’s narrative, her father enlisted with the United States Colored Troops and was killed in action, fighting for the freedom of other African-Americans in Kentucky.  Miss “Mint” Barnett, by 1880, was a single housekeeper for household #120, born about 1835.  No further record of her life, or death, have surfaced.  (Commonwealth of Kentucky Department of Health Division of Vital Statistics Certificate of Death #63-22265, File 116, 1^st Sept 1963; Federal Census, Green County, KY 1850, 1860 & 1880)

As well, and more likely, Susan's lineage may have an altogether different source.  For 1850, two black female infants are found in the Federal Census for Green County.  One is listed with her mother, Lucinda Barnett, and the other with her father, Prince Barnett.  Oddly, however, by 1860 no 10-year-old girl by the name of Susan Barnett is to be found with either household.  The only Susan enumerated is in the Robert Barnett household, aged 4, not 10.  This creates a dilemma for the historian.  Were there actually even three African-American girls of close age named Susan Barnett in Green County from 1850-1860?  

And who exactly was Andy Barnett, the former slave master of this fascinating collective of free blacks by that same name?  This becomes confusing, for there were two men of prominence from 19^th century Green County who bore this name.  It appears two Revolutionary veterans, brothers William and Andrew Barnett, settled in Green County, Kentucky, the first from whom descended the well-known attorney & 5^th District’s Commonwealth’s Attorney, Judge Andy Barnett (1828-1910), and the other, Judge Barnett’s great uncle, was Robert and Araminta Barnett’s former master.  

Andrew Barnett, per his own deposition for Revolutionary War pension, was born in 1761 in South Carolina, and was “called into service of the United States during the American Revolution in the district of Camden, State of South Carolina in the Waxhaw Settlement” and since the end of the American Revolution “resided in the State of Kentucky where he now resides in the County of Green.”  Barnett went on to clarify that “according to his father's family register, kept in a family Bible, he was born on the 23rd day of November in the year 1761 in the State of South Carolina -- that he had no record of his age, except the record which he had made from his father's family register.”  Barnett then testified that he “was acquainted with many other officers of the regular Army, who were in service, when and where (he) served to it, General Smallwood, General Marion, General Sumter, General Greene, the colonels he had heretofore stated; he was stationed with regular troops at Camden & New Providence.”  “I am known,” said Barnett, “to many persons in this County & in my neighborhood where I now live, who can testify as to my veracity and general character for truth, and their belief of my services as a soldier of the Revolution… I omitted to state in my former declaration that I marched from New Providence in North Carolina under General Morgan to the taking of Rugeley's Mills in South Carolina and assisted in that service.”   Pension records go on to tell us that Andrew Barnett served his country as a Private, and was allocated a monthly stipend of $40. The final governmental entry for Barnett states that he “Died 28^th Feby. 1847.” (21 JAN 1833 Pension Application of Andrew Barnett S1165; Southern Campaign American Revolution Pension Statements & Rosters: Green County, KY; US Revolutionary War Pension Payment Ledgers, Kentucky, p. 226)

Early on after arriving in Kentucky, Barnett aligned himself with some of the most influential families of central Kentucky through his 21 Feb 1801 marriage to Mary “Polly” Hardin in Springfield, Washington County, KY.  Mary was the daughter of Ben & Sarah Hardin of Springfield, and a sister to the younger Ben Hardin, famed attorney, Congressman, and Kentucky Secretary of State.  Through Polly, Barnett also became the uncle to Kentucky Governor John LaRue Helm, and as well gained two Caldwell nieces, allying him with another powerful and early Bluegrass family with whom he’d do business. Barnett as well gained a familial link to the Wickliffe family, including Governor Wickliffe, via Polly’s aunts, creating a vast genealogical web at the center of which was the Kentucky slave trade.  And once again corroborating the oral history of Aunt Susan Garrett, Mary Hardin Burnett died in 1848, one year after Andrew’s demise, freeing any remaining slaves left to her as her dower. 

Andrew Barnett became a friend, as well as brother-in-law, to Ben Hardin, with whom he shared a passion for Thoroughbred horse racing.  Hardin’s biography contains the following sketch of the two men, “Mr. Hardin's brother-in-law, Andrew Barnett, resided in Green county. Barnett had been a soldier in the Revolutionary war, and was a man of considerable estate. He was childless, and this, perhaps, influenced his partiality for the youthful Benjamin. At any rate, the latter spent a considerable part of his leisure in youth with his kinsman, and there had an experience somewhat rare for those days. Barnett was a pioneer in the sport of horseracing. He kept a stable of fast horses and ran them when occasion offered. Hardin accompanied him and assisted in this business, for which he developed a keen taste. He at the same time learned, as a sort of concomitant, the art and mystery of “old sledge." (Old Sledge is also known as All Fours or 7 Up, an English tavern card game popular for gambling in the 19^th century.) So expert in this did he become that his brother-in-law freely staked his money on his playing. Mr. Hardin bet but little himself, although exceedingly skillful and successful. In after life he claimed credit for resisting a temptation. In September 1839, when he rode on horseback from his home at Bardstown to Louisville to witness the celebrated race between Grey Eagle and Waggoner, few realized how much the passion of his youth was aroused when, on that occasion, he declined an invitation of Charles M. Thruston to the grand stand, and was criticized for it. It was little imagined how much he felt at home among the jockeys, trainers, and groundlings, with whom he preferred to consort.” While Barnett’s name is seldom remembered, he can be considered amongst the founders of the Thoroughbred race industry as we know it today, having been one of the first incorporators of the “Kentucky Association.  “The present noted Kentucky Association was organized at Mrs. Keene’s Inn, Lexington, 29 July 1826 by about fifty of the prominent turf men of central Kentucky…The object of the association to use the words of the original agreement, was “to improve the breed of horses by encouraging the sports of the turf.”  The first racing meeting held under the arrangement commenced 19 October 1826, on the old Williams’ track, which was on what is now known as the Lee property, near the Lexington Cemetery.  The first race was for a purse of $300; four started; was won by Andrew Barnett’s Diomed gelding, Sheriffe, in two straight heats.” (Little, Lucius P., Ben Hardin:  His Times and Contemporaries; 1784-1852. 1887; Ranck, George W., History of Lexington, KY:  Its Early Annals & Recent Progress)

Never a large land owner, his meager plantation of 81 acres near Summersville was supported by some 62 slaves, 40 of them working the land, making him one of the larger slave masters in south central Kentucky at this time. The limited acreage coupled with such a large holding of slaves seems curious in Green County whose greater economic prosperity had been hampered by the financial “Panic of 1819” from which the bucolic, agrarian county never quite recovered.  In fact, as Kentucky became more involved in the regional Southern slave trade, the institution of slavery was seeing an overall stabilization or even a decrease overall in south central Kentucky throughout the later antebellum years.  Rural isolation from major Kentucky markets and shifts in economic dominance to Lexington, Louisville & Bowling Green, coupled with those lingering effects of the Panic, caused Green County’s plantation-based economy to begin to shrink by mid-century*.  Green County in 1850 had 2,609 slaves owned by 420 masters and a sizeable community, thanks to the Barnett’s testate generosity, of 98 free persons of color. By ,1860 the slave population had slightly decreased to 2,369 persons in bondage to 361 masters, matched by a free black count rising to 112.

Slave shackles from Kentucky, John Winston Coleman collection, University of Kentucky

As it turns out, despite his seemingly “backwoods” location**, Barnett was a rather successful intrastate slave trader and breeder, as well as a reputable interstate dealer for the lower Mississippi Valley slave market, primarily selling slaves in New Orleans.  His prosperous career was due in part to the established commercial roads to Nashville and his local Green River link to the Mississippi in addition to social and family ties to business, banking, politics, and the burgeoning industry of slavery within the inner Bluegrass region.

Slaves en route to the Deep South markets, a scene common along the Lincoln "Boyhood Home" farm at Knob Creek in LaRue County, Kentucky

 Run-aways were a problematic but common occurrence for the Upper South dealers in slave labor to the Deep South.  Those escaping the pens of Andy Barnett would have made their way north directly through LaRue County & Hodgenville, passing right by the “Sinking Spring Farm” birthplace of a future President.  One notice by Barnett, run in the Louisville papers, read, “$100 REWARD.  On the 14^th September last, a negro man named Frank ran away from me.  He is a black negro, weights about 147 pounds, and reads very well; is about five feet five or six inches high, has a scar above his left eyebrow, and several wrinkles in his forehead.  His transgressions impelled me, some years since to take him to New Orleans and sell him, where he became the property of a Spaniard, who branded him on each cheek, thus (illustrated with a “B” lying on its side) which is plain to be seen when said negro is newly shaved.  I went to New Orleans again last May, where, having my feelings excited by the tale Frank told me, I purchased him again.  One hundred dollars reward will be paid by the jailer for the delivery of said negro in the jail at Louisville, Kentucky; or, if the person who may apprehend and deliver him in Louisville should prefer it, he shall be sold at public sale, and the money received be equally divided between the person who may deliver him an myself.  Frank is about thirty years of age, and probably aimed to get on board a steamboat, as he endeavored to do so about the first of October Last.  N. B.  Any information of said negro will be thankfully received.  Address, A. Burnett, Greensburg, Ky.  ANDREW BARNETT." (US Census 1840 Green County, KY; Kentucky African American Heritage Commission Study, escape slave notices in Louisville, KY newspapers, 1801-1861, Bogert, Pen.; Brown, Stephen A., “A conversation with Abraham Lincoln”, Kentucky Humanities Fall 2013)

Andy Barnett purchased and sold many enslaved men, women & children during his tenure in Kentucky, making deals with many other prominent slave traders of the state, including William Herndon, whose nephew & namesake would become Abraham Lincoln’s law partner.  Yet we have no record of intentional cruelty toward them beyond their plight as chattel in the eyes of the law and society in Kentucky, the South, and the United States as a whole. In fact, if the previously cited runaway advertisement offers any hint, Barnett retained a vast degree of compassion for the plight of the lives he bought & sold.  Despite the growth of trade between Kentucky and New Orleans in human flesh since the War of 1812, Barnett reminds us that Kentucky could be rather sympathetic at times, more so than other Southern states, in recognizing a degree of humanity regarding the “peculiar institution.”  One case in particular that found justice for the enslaved involved Andy Barnett and business associate and fellow Rev. War veteran William Caldwell.  The appellant court of Kentucky heard in 1857 the case of Martin etc., v. Letty, etc. (of color) in which the slave Letty and her daughter Paulina had been sold by William & James Caldwell (father & son) to Andy Barnett.  When Barnett died in 1847, his will freed all his slaves “without specifying any previous agreement between him and Caldwell, nor did it specifically make mention of Letty or any of her children.  Based on this ambiguity and probably their association of Barnett and his wife as their master and mistress for 28 years, when the will was administered Letty and her family assumed they, lake Barnett’s other slaves, were free.  This seemed to be important as Letty and her kin began to act themselves as freepersons would and remained in Green County, Kentucky.”   In the years that had passed since the sale to Barnett, Letty’s immediate family grew to 16 children & grandchildren living on the Barnett plantation in Summersville.  James Caldwell had died soon after the sale of Letty and her daughter, but when his minor daughters grew of age, they petitioned the Courts for ownership of this family of 17, claiming that Andy Barnett had never purchased the two women, but rather was keeping them in trust for Lucinda and Sarah Jane Caldwell.  The Appellant Court of Kentucky upheld the manumission of Letty and her progeny. (Warren, Louis A., The Slavery Atmosphere of Lincoln’s Youth. 1933; Martin, etc. v. Letty (of color), 18 B. Mon. 573, Winter Term 1857.; Barber, Marlin Christopher, CITIZENS UNDER THE LAW:  AFRICAN AMERICANS CONFRONT THE JUSTICE SYSTEM IN KENTUCKY, MISSOURI, AND TEXAS, 1790-1877, A Dissertation presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School University of Missouri, December 2011) 

We are not sure if Letty took the surname of Caldwell or Barnett, but she became a Barnett at least by marriage, being wed (perhaps common law) to former Andy Barnett slave Edmond (b. 1810) per the 1850 Green County Census.  It lists Letty as age 50, born then ca. 1800, with children Julia (18), Harriet (16), Sarah (11), and Emily (3).  Paulina as well took as a spouse a slave freed by Andy Barnett who had taken the Barnett surname.  Paulina (b. 1820) is found in the same 1850 Green County Census in household #92 headed by her (common law?) husband Prince Barnett (b. 1810) and children Frederick (18), Radd (14), Amanda (12), Lucy (7), Daniel (5), November (4), and Susan (10/12).  Like Robert Barnett, by 1860 Prince had been deeded land worth $150 and given money/personal property of an equal value.  Paulina apparently died sometime in the decade preceding the 1860 Census.  

Was Paulina the mother of Aunt Susan?  Per the 1850 Census, there is that indication, implying that Prince Barnett is her father.  But what about the other Susan's, the one born at virtually the same time and residing with Lucinda, and then the slightly younger girl in the home of Robert in 1860?  Very likely the 1850 listings for Susan were duplicated in error due to household shifts and there was in reality only one Susan Barnett to be counted, but this leaves the question of her mother's identity unanswered.  There is certainly no daughter Susan in Prince's household in 1860, and there is no Lucinda to be found that year at all.  It would appear, despite the problematic given ages, that the Susan Barnett found listed by the Census as 4-years-old in 1860 is the same girl not yet quite 1 year old in 1850 found in dual households of the same family.  Sadly, none of these theories answer the question of Aunt Susan's exact parentage.

If Aunt Susan knew, or remembered, Letty, Pauline, Prince, or any of the other freed slaves of Andy Barnett, she remained silent about, as she did many facts about her people, and herself.  Then again, we must ponder whether she was ever completely free to say in a Jim Crow society just what she personally thought or remembered about a predominately white history.  No, “Aunt” Susan knew her place, and knew better than to say too much that might alter preconceived notions about the past.  Labeled a slave, she became for the white world a slave freed by Lincoln, denouncing, and denying to even her own children and grandchildren a legacy by far richer and more profound.  Her only remark on the matter spoke volumes, though.  “How do they know?  They weren’t around when I was born.”  And they weren’t.  No one was.  “Auntie”, “Mammy”, “Prissy”, whatever the world chose to see in her, they failed to see the spirit of freedom that was a gift not from Lincoln, but from a legacy of slavery that passed her by, only to become the fiction written around a spritely old lady who sought no attention yet received it in abundance, and in the process made the best of a strange situation and found honor in it.

**Summersville, along with the county seat of Greensburg, were the only planned, platted town in Green County.  John Emerson laid out a plan for the village on 75 acres he set aside in 1816.  Per the National Register Historic Places Inventory-Nomination Form entered 24 August 1984 for the Green County Multiple Resource Area, “While Greensburg was laid out in 180 lots, Summersville, the only other formal plan, had 140 lots laid in the same grid fashion of Greensburg. Recorded in 1816, the Summersville town plan shows the similar one-half acre lot size laid regularly along streets and alleys, and the identical one-acre public square. Although lots were sold, Summersville never assumed its designed arrangement leaving Greensburg as the county's only planned community.” (see also Rennick, Robert M., Kentucky Place Names.)

*Basic Slave Population Statistics for Green and Her Surrounding Counties in 1850 & 1860

Green Co. slaves 1850	LaRue Co. slaves 1850	Taylor Co. slaves 1850	Adair Co. slaves 1850	Metcalf Co. slaves 1850	Hart Co. slaves 1850
2,609	665	1,620	2,125		1,300
Slave owners	Slave owners	Slave owners	Slave owners	Slave owners	Slave owners
430	186	303	486		333
Green Co. slaves 1860	LaRue Co. slaves 1860	Taylor Co. slaves 1860	Adair Co. slaves 1860	Metcalf Co. slaves 1860	Hart Co. slaves 1860
2,369	901	1,593	1,602	782	1,397
Slave owners	Slave owners	Slave owners	Slave owners	Slave owners	Slave owners
361	221	287	341	181	339
Decrease 9%	Increase 35%	Decrease 2%	Decrease 25%		Increase 7%