“Work An’ Buy Yo’ Freedom”: The Story of Henry Washington’s Promise To His Mother
But my little Henry whisper an’ say, “I gwyne to run away, an’ den I work an’ buy yo’ freedom.” O, bless de chile
from manuscript of “A True Story, Repeated Word For Word As I Heard It” by Mark Twain
On this day, 150 years ago, the household of Quarry Farm gathered on the porch of the main house, as they often did during the Summer months, to listen to each other read aloud, to converse, to play with the children. These gatherings often included members of the extended Langdon family, many of whom resided at the Langdon mansion in downtown Elmira or elsewhere in the city, staff who worked for the families or on the farm, neighbors, visiting friends, and lots of pets. On this occasion, certainly, there was Susan Crane, full-time resident and owner of Quarry Farm, which was deeded to her by her adopted father, Jervis Langdon, upon his death a few years earlier. Crane’s younger sister, Olivia Langdon Clemens, whose family summered at Quarry Farm, sat inside the open pocket bay window, in a rocking chair, with her husband, Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, and presumably their second daughter, Clara, born just three weeks earlier. Finally, and most important to this anniversary, there was Mary Ann Cord, the live-in cook at Quarry Farm, who was about 75-years-old.
According to Twain in “A True Story, Repeated Word For Word As I Heard It” (1874), a recounting of the occasion which he would publish in The Atlantic Monthly five months later, Cord was “sitting respectfully below our level, on the steps – for she was our servant, and colored.” But, as Larry Howe has shown, Twain’s sparse descriptions of Cord’s movements while telling the story of her early life, conditions of enslavement, separation from her children, and eventual emancipation during the Civil War, are part of a “physical performance” which subtly indicates the effect the story had upon the author, addressed in it as “Misto C,” and which he might wish to replicate for readers.
It is clear that Clemens heard Cord tell her story in June of 1874 and also that the narrative of her life which appears in “A True Story” is accurate, at least as far as literary historians have been able to corroborate. But the “repeated word for word” part of Twain’s title may be more of a fib. Certainly, Cord did not always sit “respectfully below” the Cranes and Clemens. In photographs taken that same year, Cord is shown, alongside her daugther-in-law (Maria) and one of her granddaughters, seated with members of the Clemens and Crane families on an equal level.
Twain’s own discussion of his composition, including with the Atlantic‘s editor, William Dean Howells, shows that it was a months-long process, though the final product took up less than three pages of the magazine. Twain was only overtly fastidious about the verisimilitude of Cord’s speech. Listening to her almost daily, he would then retreat to his study, trying first to imitate her dialect with his own voice, then to transcribe it phonetically. He wanted to be absolutely sure that any failure to “get the dialect as nearly right as possible” would not be a result of “the writer’s carelessness.”
Olivia’s brief reflection on the occasion, written almost immediately afterwards, and recently published in Barbara Snedecor’s new collection Gravity (2024), captures the deep impression the story made on both her and her husband, who she remembers holding her hand, silently acknowledging that they were listening to something special. Livy’s account also highlights something often-overlooked in critical accounts of Twain’s retelling. She describes the event as “Aunty Cord telling us of her son.”
Largely because Twain was so fixated on the verisimilitude of the voice and character of Cord, who he thinly disguises as “Aunt Rachel,” the published version has been rightly treated as foremost about her, but Livy suggests that in Cord’s original telling, the focus might have been very different. To her, the protagonist is not herself, but her son, Henry Washington.
To mark this anniversary of not Twain’s telling, but Cord’s, I’d like to return the focus to him.
Henry Washington was only six or seven years old, according to the dates on his tombstone,1Like many people born into slavery, Washington’s age and birthdate is not firmly established, and I have chosen to go by the headstone years, though they conflict with some other records, including his enlistment (where he had reason to inflate his age). when he was separated from his his mother by slave-traders in Richmond, Virginia. I have found no record, even hearsay, of where he was taken before he emancipated himself in 1858, when he was an adolescent, and “followed the North Star to freedom,” as Shelley Fisher Fishkin puts it in Writing America (2015), choosing to reside, as many formerly-enslaved people did, in Elmira. It is quite possible that Washington availed himself of the customized stowaway spaces created by Jervis Langdon (a stationmaster on the Underground Railroad) in the baggage cars he owned, or was aided by John W. Jones, the legendary conductor who collaborated with Langdon and made Elmira his home from the 1845 onward.2For more about the Langdon patriarch, Jones, and radical abolitionism in Elmira, please consider our “Gospel of Revolt” podcast episode.
Upon arriving in Elmira, Washington was immediately employed by another local abolitionist, Silas Haight, a grocer, and soon thereafter as an apprentice barber to Charlie Hill, another Black citizen, in the shop owned by Charles Hoppe, situated in the basement of Brainard House, an upscale hotel located on the east side of downtown. Washington trained in what would become his lifelong trade for several years before he saw an opportunity to fulfill the promise he had made to his mother on the auction block: to find her and secure her freedom. That opportunity came with the Emancipation Proclamation, which authorized the enlistment of “Colored Troops” for the Union Army, beginning in 1863.
The records of Washington’s military service are sparse, in part because he enlisted when there was minimal bureaucracy, especially for Black regiments, but also probably because of the ulterior motive of his enlistment: “huntin’ for his ole mammy” as Aunt Rachel puts it in “A True Story.”
Like many soldiers on active duty during the American Civil War, Washington did not remain permanently tied to one regiment, but, either by choice or circumstance, moved from one unit to another until “he’d ransacked de whole Souf.” All that we know for certain is that he got from Elmira to New Bern, North Carolina, and specifically to the Charles Slover House and Dependency, where Cord, formerly enslaved by the Slovers, had become cook for Ambrose Burnside and other officers after they made Slover House their headquarters upon occupying New Bern.
According to “A True Story,” Washington’s service began when he “went to whah dey was recruitin’, an’ hired hisse’f out to de colonel for his servant.” This, of course, could mean a wide range of things, and could be wholly inaccurate. As Fishkin notes, by June of 1963, Henry Washington was listed on a roster of active military from the Elmira region. He was listed as “colored,” “married,” and 23 years old. Washington was likely still a minor when he enlisted and, as many Union recruits did, may have lied about his age and marital status to better satisfy army recruiters.
Given the time of his enlistment, Washington was almost certainly a member of the 54th or 55th Massachusetts Infantry, the first two official regiments of the “U.S. Colored Troops,” and the only to be deployed by June of 1863. While Washington’s presence has not been confirmed, these regiments, recruited from throughout the Northeast by Black abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany, are known to have included dozens of Black Elmirans, many of whom walked to Boston in the Spring of 1863 in order to join the regiment as soon as it was mustered.
Another possibility is that the “Colonel” to whom Cord refers is James C. Beecher, the younger brother of Park Church pastor, Thomas K. Beecher. James Beecher had been a Lt. Colonel of the 141st New York Infantry (which was mustered out of Elmira in 1862) before briefly decommissioning when his wife fell ill and eventually died in Elmira. He returned to service in May of 1863 and soon thereafter was assigned to organize and lead one of the new African American regiments, which would become the 35th U.S. Colored Troops. This decorated regiment was descended from a self-organized militia of emancipated men, initially known as the First North Carolina Colored Volunteers, who had been cooperating with Burnside’s army since New Bern was taken by the Union.
Washington may have traveled with Beecher from Elmira to join the First North Carolina Colored Volunteers in Florida, where their official training and first deployment took place in late 1863. Or Washington may have met the First North Carolina when they fought side by side with the 54th Massachusetts as “Montgomery’s Brigade,” in reference to radical abolitionist James Montgomery, who led the combined regiment to repel a confederate attack and secure Union victory at Olustee. Either way, members of the First North Carolina would certainly have known Mary Ann Cord from New Bern, and could have given Washington the crucial information he had been seeking.
Somehow, as part of the giant conflagration which would be remembered as “Sherman’s Bummers,” Washington made his way to the Union stronghold in New Bern, likely sometime early in 1864, where he was reunited with his mother. Soon thereafter the two of them returned together to Elmira. One cannot help but wonder whether, upon succeeding in what had been his primary mission all along, Washington saw no reason to remain a soldier, focusing instead on how to get his already aged mother back to Elmira. It was very easy for Black enlisted men to move amongst and potentially even join the many groups of laborers and migrants who were working amongst or passing by Sherman’s forces on the Eastern seaboard. By 1864, many members of the Black regiments were complaining of unequal pay, poorer supplies, and inglorious assignments, compared to their white counterparts. If Washington’s discharge was “unofficial,” it would further explain why the record of his service is so sparse.
Upon returning to Elmira, Washington resumed his position at the barber shop in the hotel on the corner of Baldwin and Water in downtown, which was renamed the Rathburn Hotel during the war. By the end of 1864, he had married Anna Marie Conway (who went by Maria) and they had the first of their six children (Charlotte). The newlyweds purchased a home on Dickinson St., where they would reside for the remainder of their lives, in the predominantly Black neighborhood that surrounded the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, later renamed Frederick Douglass AME Zion Church.3Douglass had a relationship with the church and the larger Elmira community which began in 1840s and continued at least until his participation in the Emancipation Day celebration of 1880. The Washingtons were not members of AME Zion, but rather Grace Episcopal Church.
Washington clearly excelled at his profession, becoming the preferred barber of many of the most wealthy men in Elmira, including Samuel Clemens. A reporter for the Elmira Morning Telegram accompanying Twain in 1886, wrote, “Mark’s hair is a great source of trouble to the artist who has its charge. By nature it resists all the rules of the barber shop.”
By the late 1880s, Washington had saved enough money to launch his own shop, originally located at 424 E. Water St. The only surviving photograph of Washington was taken in front of this location.
Washington would remain in the Church St. location for only a few years before taking up a more permanent lease across the river, at the corner of Main St. and West Hudson.
Like Sam Clemens, Henry Washington experienced more than his share of grief. His son, Harry, who had also been his apprentice, struggled with alcohol, was several times arrested and imprisoned before dying young. Four of the Washingtons six children preceded their parents in death.
Henry and Maria remained involved in their church and other community organizations and, like Mary Ann Cord, lived to very advanced ages for their time, both more than eighty when they died in the 1920s.
Twain’s “A True Story, Repeated Word For Word As I Heard It” is a pivotal work, not just for the development of its author, but of U.S. literature. Though it was not a work of humor, it was Twain’s first appearance in The Atlantic, the premier literary periodical of the era, and the magazine paid a record-breaking sum for rights to its publication.
As Fishkin puts it, “Unlike typical dialect tales of the time, which presented black dialect to be condescended to or ridiculed, here the dialect was presented respectfully, as a vehicle for communicating raw pain, strong emotion, and harsh truth.” Both Twain and his public would, hereafter, have an expanded notion of what types of stories he could tell, and who could be represented in prestige periodicals like The Atlantic.
The chain of events which made this story possible begins with Henry Washington’s decision, against tremendous odds and at great personal risk, to try to fulfill the promise he made to his mother as a small child.
Matt Seybold is Associate Professor of American Literature & Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, resident scholar at the Center For Mark Twain Studies, executive producer and host of The American Vandal Podcast, and founding editor of this site.