Harriet Jacobs
- History Fix Podcast
- 2 days ago
- 21 min read
Episode 151: How the Unbelievable Fugitive Slave Story of Harriet Jacobs Went Unbelieved for Over a Century
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In 1861 a book was published. This book, titled “Incidents of the Life of a Slave Girl” told an unbelievable story, the story of an enslaved Black girl who went to great lengths to avoid sexual abuse by her enslaver. A girl who cunningly twisted this very system of abuse to work in her favor. A girl who, now a woman, spent seven years lying in a tiny crawl space above her grandmother’s porch, watching her own children play through a peephole she had whittled in the wood. A woman who escaped from slavery, reunited with her loved ones in the north, and worked tirelessly for decades to fight the evil institution that had stolen so much from her. The plot line of “Incidents of the Life of a Slave Girl” is so unbelievable, it was straight up not believed for one hundred and twenty years. The book was considered a work of fiction credited to abolitionist author Lydia Marie Child. But you should know that it wasn’t fiction and it wasn’t written by Child. It was an autobiography written by that very Black girl herself. Let’s fix that.
Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and this is History Fix where I tell surprising true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. And oh my goodness do I have a story for you today. This story is so bananas that people literally refused to believe it was true for well over a century. It wasn’t until the 1980s, with the help of recovered historical documents and letters written between Lydia Marie Child and the book’s actual author, Harriet Jacobs, that we finally realized this was a work of nonfiction, an autobiography, making Harriet the first woman to author a fugitive slave narrative in the United States. But what does the book say? What is Harriet Jacobs’ story? Well buckle up my friends because it is a wild ride.
Harriet was born in 1813 in Edenton, North Carolina which is quite close to where I live so little bit of local history here for my eastern NC listeners. Her mother, Delilah Horniblow, was enslaved by the Horniblow family which owned a local tavern there in Edenton. Harriet also had a brother named John. Both Harriet and her brother John were enslaved by the tavern keeper from birth, because their mother was and that’s how that worked. But, Harriet writes in her book that she had no knowledge of being enslaved until she was around six years old. She reports that she had a very happy childhood actually, writing quote “[We] lived together in a comfortable home. And, though we were all slaves, I was so fondly shielded that I never dreamed that I was a piece of merchandise," end quote. But of course she was enslaved and this fact will come back to haunt her soon. Here’s the real kicker though. Harriet should have never been enslaved. Nor should her brother, nor should her mother. Harriet’s grandmother, Molly Horniblow had been freed by her white father when she was a child. She was free. But, she was kidnapped and sold back into slavery because of her dark skin. So the grandmother, Molly, was once again enslaved which meant that the mother Delilah was enslaved at birth which meant that Harriet and John were enslaved at birth. That just kills me though, the injustice of it. I’m a Libra guys. I don’t handle injustice well.
But anyway, despite being unjustly enslaved, as if there is such a thing as just slavery, despite being unjustly enslaved, Harriet reports a relatively happy childhood. She was technically enslaved by this Horniblow tavern keeper man but he died pretty early on in her life and she and her brother John were transferred to his daughter Margaret Horniblow. Their mother, Delilah, died when Harriet was six so they were very much in the care of Margaret Horniblow at that point. Margaret seemed to treat them well though. She taught Harriet to sew and also to read. This was very rare in the early 1800s, for an enslaved person to learn to read. Although I do want to point out that it wasn’t actually illegal in North Carolina to teach an enslaved person to read and write until 1830. So when Margaret taught Harriet to read, that was not yet illegal.
So things were pretty okay with Margaret but then she died in 1825 when Harriet was 12 years old and this is when the trouble began. Margaret left Harriet in her will to her niece Mary Matilda Norcom. But this niece was only three years old at the time. Can you imagine leaving a three year old an entire human being? Like, if that doesn’t raise any red flags for you about how wrong this whole system is then I don’t know what will. Anyway, Mary Matilda Norcom was only 3 years old so 12 year old Harriet fell into the care and enslavement of her father, a physician named Dr. James Norcom. This guy.
Harriet’s brother John, her grandmother Molly, and her uncle Mark, who had all been enslaved by the Horniblows too, were not bequeathed to the Norcoms with Harriet. They were eventually sold at auction. Molly managed to acquire enough money and arrange for some friends to purchase her and her son Mark. So she became free but, get this, because of some weird rules, Mark had to remain her slave, his own mother’s slave for another 20 ish years before she could free him. How crazy is that? John was purchased at that auction by none other than Dr. James Norcom. And so he went to live with Harriet there at least.
But life with the Norcoms was not happy. As soon as the 12 year old Harriet entered his household, Norcom began sexually harassing her. By the time she was 15, his advances became more overt. Without being too explicit, this is the mid 1800s when she’s writing this and all of this is very taboo, without being too explicit Harriet writes that Norcom whispered quote “foul words” in her ear and that later, began making more physical advances, all much to the displeasure of Norcom’s wife. She ain’t havin’ it y’all. Around this time, Harriet falls in love with a free Black man who wants to marry her and purchase her freedom. But, of course, she needs permission from Norcom to do this and he refuses. So she devises a much more sinister plan.
Harriet had befriended a white man, a kind white man, an unmarried lawyer named Samuel Sawyer. They're sort of like friends but, make no mistake, Harriet intends to use this man to try to get her out of this situation she’s in. And you might be like, why this guy? Why not her grandmother Molly who is free? Why can’t Molly get her out. Well, first of all, Grandma Molly can’t get her own son free. Remember she’s forced to enslave her own son for like 20 years. Also, Harriet reports feeling too ashamed to tell her grandmother about Norcom’s sexual advances. She didn’t confide that in her because of how taboo and just unspoken of it was at the time, and honestly still is. So Grandma Molly has no idea how dire Harriet’s situation actually is. And meanwhile Harriet is completely repulsed by this Norcom guy, she is not giving in to his advances, she is holding out strong, but for how much longer? So, enter this white lawyer buddy Samuel Sawyer. Harriet essentially woos Sawyer and begins a sexual relationship with him. She hoped that if she got pregnant with Sawyer’s baby, this was her plan. If she got pregnant with Sawyer’s baby, Norcom would be so infuriated that he would sell her and her baby, hopefully to Sawyer who she believes will free them. Now I, you know, this is not a super solid plan. There are a lot of variables here, but this is what she goes with.
Harriet and the lawyer Samuel Sawyer have not one, but two children together, a son named Joseph and a daughter named Louisa. But the plan partially backfires. Norcom isn’t happy but he doesn’t sell them either. And because Harriet is enslaved by Norcom, so are her two children, despite their father being a free white man, and honestly a bit of a bigshot lawyer at that. Sawyer is part of the Edenton white elite. He goes on to be elected to the US House of Representatives for the state of North Carolina. So I mean, I guess that factored into her plan here but as of right now, she’s still enslaved by Norcom and so are her two children. By the way, when Harriet had her children baptized, she gave them the last name Jacobs. Technically it should have been Norcom, but she secretly gave them the name Jacobs and, after that, she and her brother John also start going by Jacobs. So that’s where that name comes in.
This plot does accomplish something though. Norcom’s wife is so disgusted by Harriet’s behavior, that she had this sexual relationship with a white man out of wedlock and got pregnant, I mean this is very scandalous. Norcom’s wife is so disgusted by it that she refuses to let Harriet live in their house. So, Harriet actually gets to go live with her grandmother, Molly. But, Norcom visits her there often and has the audacity to continue his sexual advances. Grandma Molly’s house was only about 600 feet from Norcom’s house so he’s over there all the time.
Harriet, determined to get away from this creepy dude once and for all, and after he threatens to put her children to work on his son’s plantation, Harriet hatches a new plan. She is going to pretend to run away. She’s not actually going to run away because she has two children now, that’s a bit complicated at this point. But she is going to pretend to run away with the hopes that, with her gone, Norcom will sell her children to their father, the white lawyer Samuel Sawyer and that Sawyer will of course, she hopes, free them. So Harriet air quotes “runs away” but in reality, she always stays nearby. First she hides in the home of a white woman, who is an enslaver herself. I’m a little confused by that, but that’s how the story goes. This woman lets her hide out in her home for a bit. After that she spends some time hiding in a swamp near town, yes a swamp. And then she makes her way back to her grandmother’s house and hides in what she refers to as the “garret.” She describes this garret as a crawl space essentially over her grandmother’s porch, and remember her grandmother’s house is only 600 feet from Norcom’s house. This garret is about 9 feet long, 7 feet wide, and only 3 feet tall at its highest point. So there’s definitely no standing up in this thing. This is like a lay down situation. PBS reports quote “Its sloping ceiling, only three feet high at one end, didn't allow her to turn while laying down without hitting her shoulder. Rats and mice crawled over her; there was no light and no ventilation,” end quote. Not a very comfortable place to hide out for sure but, you guys, Harriet lived in this garret for seven years. For seven years she laid in this crawl space above her grandmother’s porch. She came out sometimes at night to exercise but, you know, laying there all the time definitely caused health problems that she still felt decades later while writing her autobiography. She did manage to bore a few small holes in the wall creating about a one inch opening, a quote “little dismal hole” to let in light and fresh air. The light was barely enough to read by but she did manage to read her bible while in hiding. She also wrote several letters to Norcom, hoping to confuse him about her whereabouts. She could also look out of this opening and was often able to watch her children playing outside. Because, while this whole situation sucked royally, it did actually sort of work. Sawyer the lawyer, hey how bout that, Sawyer had managed to purchase their children and they were now living at her grandmother’s house. Yes, the very house where she was hiding in the crawl space above the porch. I don’t know who all knew that Harriet was there. I assume Grandma Molly knew as she was the one probably bringing her food and water and stuff. I don’t think the children knew she was there until much later. So that’s pretty, like, that gives me chills. To think about living in this house and wondering probably every single day where your mother is and the whole time she’s in the house. She’s laying on top of the porch. Just wild.
Now when I say Sawyer was able to purchase their children, I don’t mean from Norcom. Let me be more specific here. Norcom was so angry after Harriet ran away that he decided to sell her children and her brother John to a slave trader, demanding that they be sold in a different state in order to intentionally separate them from their mother and sister. Right, there would be no coming back for them, Harriet wouldn’t be able to find them. But, this slave trader had made a secret agreement with Sawyer already and instead of selling them in another state, he sells them to Sawyer. So Sawyer purchases his two children with Harriet and her brother John. So this sort of miraculously works out, but not all the way. Harriet assumed, hoped, that Sawyer would immediately free the children and John, because duh. But he doesn’t. He gets elected to the House of Representatives in 1837 and moves to Washington DC without ever freeing them. He takes brother John with him though on a trip he takes through the north after getting married in 1838. John leaves Sawyer in New York, becomes free, goes on a three year whaling adventure, and then ends up in Boston. So John, the brother, is finally out. But what about the kids? Well, Joseph, the son stays with grandma Molly in the house where Harriet is hiding but Sawyer sends their daughter Louisa to work as a house servant for his cousin in New York where she is treated quite badly and quote “not much better than a slave.”
By 1842, Harriet has had enough. Her son is safe for now with grandma Molly but she needs to go rescue her daughter. She manages to escape onto a boat heading for Philadelphia. From there she carries on to New York City in search of her daughter. While she tries to figure out how to rescue Louisa from this house, the house of Sawyer’s cousin, she gets a job working as a nanny for the family of Nathaniel Parker Willis, who was a very popular author at the time. His wife, Mary Stace Willis, hired Harriet to take care of her baby daughter Imogen.
The next year though, 1843, Harriet got word that Norcom was coming to New York to get her. Someone had betrayed her location. He knows where she is and he is going to come force her back into slavery which was completely legal. Even though New York was a free state, Harriet was from North Carolina, a slave state, and she was still the property of Norcom if he decided to go claim her. So Harriet goes to Boston, where her brother John is living, now free, to hide from Norcom. While there, she arranges for grandma Molly back in North Carolina to send her son Joseph up to Boston to live with his uncle. She also manages, after some time, to get Louisa out of that horrible house where she was working as a servant and to Boston as well.
So now, miraculously, Harriet, her brother John, and her two children, Joseph and Louisa, are all living in Boston. Technically, Harriet is still enslaved by Norcom, Joseph and Louisa are still enslaved by Sawyer, their father. But there’s no slavery in Boston so they are living as if they are free, Harriet working odd jobs here and there. In 1845, Mary Stace Willis, the mother of the family in New York she had been nannying for, dies. The father, this famous author, Nathaniel Parker Willis, wants to take their three year old daughter Imogen to England to visit her mother’s family there. His late wife’s sister lives in England and he wants to take Imogen there for a 10 month visit. But of course a man traveling the world alone with a 3 year old daughter in the 1840s is like unheard of so he asks Harriet to go with them as Imogen’s nanny and she agrees. Harriet goes to stay with Imogen at her aunt’s house in England for 10 months while her father galavants around London and Europe just doing whatever privileged 19th century white men do. Harriet would later note in her book that she experienced no racism in England like she often did in the United States. And that, during this time, her faith in Christianity was restored. Her religion, her faith, had taken a big hit back in the US because of the fact that Christian ministers there enslaved people and treated Black people badly. She couldn’t make sense of that. How she was supposed to listen to a minister who so openly mistreated people, who so openly went against everything Christianity tells us about how we should behave, how we should treat others. The situation in the US had made it hard for her to embrace Christianity. And this is a problem that persists unfortunately to this day in my opinion, Christians acting badly and sort of turning people away from the faith. But Harriet’s own faith was restored during those ten months she spent in England where she reportedly experienced no signs of racism.
When she returns to the US, her son Joseph goes off on a whaling voyage and Louisa goes to a boarding school. So Harriet, with both kids off doing their thing, Harriet follows her brother John from Boston to Rochester, New York. John has gotten really involved in the abolitionist movement and he ended up in charge of the Anti-Slavery Office and Reading Room in Rochester. Now this Reading Room was in the same building as the North Star Newspaper which was run by Frederick Douglass. So, John finds himself in the abolitionist circles of men like Douglass, and so does Harriet who comes to live with him there. While in Rochester, Harriet lived at the home of Amy and Isaac Post, a white couple who were very involved in the abolitionist and women's rights movement at the time. So she’s in these very progressive circles in Rochester.
In 1850, Harriet decided to go visit her girl Imogen, the little girl she nannied for in New York, except Imogen is 8 years old now. Harriet goes back to New York to pay her a visit. Nathaniel Parker Willis, Imogen’s father, is remarried now and his wife, Cornelia, is having a hard time. She’s just had her second baby and she’s not recovering well. She basically begs Harriet to stay on as nanny again for the Willis family. Now, there is considerable risk here. Harriet knows that Norcom knows she has nannied for the Willis family off and on. He knows where the Willis’ family lives. And now, thanks to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, it’s even easier for him to come and reclaim her. Yes, this Norcom dude is still haunting Harriet this many years later. Despite that, Harriet decides to stay on as nanny again for the Willis family and help out. A year later though, 1851, she gets word that she is in danger of being recaptured yet again. Not by Norcom who actually died the previous year but by his daughter, her actual enslaver, who is no longer a three year old but now a grown and married woman, coming to claim what she believes is hers. But you know, Cornelia Willis has promised that she will keep Harriet safe no matter what so this is what she does you guys. This is unbelievable but this is what Cornelia does to ensure Harriet’s safety as their nanny. She sends Harriet to Massachusetts to hide from Norcom with her one year old baby girl Lillian. She sends Harriet with her one year old baby into hiding. Why? What sort of protection could a one year old possibly provide? That seems like more of a burden than anything. Well Cornelia does this because, if Harriet is captured by slave catchers, they can’t very well capture a white baby from New York. They will have to return the baby to New York, to her, and when they do she will rescue Harriet from them. Chills. This is an incredible sacrifice for a mother to make. To literally use your own baby as collateral. And Harriet acknowledges this sacrifice in her book. She talks a lot about the constant threat of being separated from her own children and for other enslaved women this constant fear. And so for this well to do white woman in New York to willingly separate from her baby in order to help Harriet, it, Harriet recognized that sacrifice and it meant a lot to her.
Long story short, Cornelia Willis ends up purchasing Harriet’s freedom from Norcom’s daughter for $300. Harriet has mixed feelings about this in her book. She explains that on one hand, she was bitter that quote “a human being was sold in the free city of New York.” But she was also obviously very grateful to Cornelia and relieved to finally be a free woman after a life of enslavement.
But despite Cornelia’s kindness and sacrifice, Harriet felt that the only white people she had ever met in the United States who did not look down on her because of her race were the Posts, Isaac and Amy Post with whom she had lived in Rochester. And it’s to Amy Post that Harriet first confides in, telling her the story of her life and her escape from slavery. Amy later wrote about how difficult it was for Harriet to tell her story, saying quote “Though impelled by a natural craving for human sympathy, she passed through a baptism of suffering, even in recounting her trials to me. ... The burden of these memories lay heavily on her spirit,” end quote. It was Amy Post who first suggested that Harriet write down her story in the early 1850s and Harriet felt morally obligated to do so in order to help out the anti-slavery movement. This was a powerful testimony to what enslaved people had endured. She lived in a crawl space above a porch for 7 years to avoid being sexually abused by her enslaver. This was something that was super common, the sexual abuse of enslaved women by their enslavers, and yet, it was something no one was talking about, because it was a very taboo topic. Harriet didn’t even want to tell her own grandmother about it. But now she’s realized that she has an obligation to tell the world about it. Not just the stuff with Norcom but also what she intentionally did with Samuel Sawyer. Because that was very scandalous. She intentionally had two children out of wedlock with a white man. And now she has to admit that to the world, to a world, a society, a culture that harshly judges women in those types of situations. But, in her book, Harriet comes to terms with this. She says quote “I knew what I did and I did it with deliberate calculation.” She also says quote “there is something akin to freedom in having a lover who has no control over you, except that which he gains by kindness and attachment,” end quote. And she comes to realize that, while this sort of behavior may be considered morally wrong outside of slavery, those same standards do not apply to enslaved women. She writes quote “in looking back, calmly, on the events of my life, I feel that the slave woman ought not to be judged by the same standard as others,” end quote.
But let’s go back a little bit because, before Harriet writes this book, she actually has Amy Post write to Harriet Beecher Stowe, the famous abolitionist author who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Harriet wants Harriet Beecher Stowe to write her book for her. She’s going to tell her the story and Beecher Stowe is going to write it. But she refuses. She doesn’t want anything to do with it. Right around this time, Harriet’s grandmother, grandma Molly dies. And suddenly she feels like she can come out publicly with this story herself. She’s going to write the book. I find that really interesting that it was this shame she felt having to admit this to her grandmother that was holding her back. But now grandma’s dead, she’s writing the book. She actually writes the book while still working as a nanny for the Willis’ family. Get this, okay. Nathaniel Parker Willis who was once this great author himself, he had built this country house called Idlewild that was supposed to be like a writer's retreat. But Willis sort of faded as a writer and was mostly forgotten about. It was at Idlewild, though, that Harriet wrote her book. A Harriet Jacobs biographer Jean Fagan Yellin who is really the one who ultimately proved her book to be nonfiction says of this quote “Idlewild had been conceived as a famous writer's retreat, but its owner never imagined that it was his children's nurse who would create an American classic there,” end quote.
So Harriet writes the book, her daughter Louisa edits it lightly and then she sends it off to Lydia Marie Child for more editing. Lydia Marie Child was an abolitionist and women's rights activist just like Amy Post but she was also a novelist and journalist. Actually, fun fact, Lydia Marie Child wrote the poem over the river and through the woods to grandfather’s house we go. I always thought it was grandmother but apparently it’s grandfather. She wrote that. And, get this, her grandfather’s house, the one she refers to in that poem or song or whatever, is still standing. It’s in Medford, Massachusetts. It’s still there. But anyway, Lydia Marie Child edits the book and helps Harriet get it published. It takes a while to get a publisher but they eventually do get it published. It’s not a smash hit though. It gets published the same year the Civil War breaks out in the US so it gets completely overshadowed by that and is never reprinted during Harriet’s lifetime. It remains in obscurity until a century later, during the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights Movements in the 1960s and 1970s when it gets sort of rediscovered. Harriet wrote using a pen name though. She called herself Linda Brent and she called Dr. Norcom “Dr. Flint” and Samuel Sawyer “Mr. Sands.” And so, even when the book is rediscovered, there are a lot of questions as to who actually wrote it. Most people believe it was written by Lydia Marie Child and that it was a work of fiction. It was Jean Fagan Yellin, a historian and biographer specializing in women’s history and African American history who managed to find the evidence to prove that Harriet wrote it and that it was an autobiography.
So, we know her book didn’t really hit until the 1960s, a hundred and twenty years after it was published. But what happened to Harriet herself? Well right after the book was published, the Civil War broke out. During the war Harriet went to Washington D.C. to help out any way she could. She and her daughter Louisa founded a school in Alexandria, Virginia during the war, called the Jacobs School, with the purpose of teaching recently emancipated Black people how to read and write. This school was special because it was staffed by all Black teachers and Harriet fought hard to keep it that way. Not because she thought there was anything wrong with white teachers but because the people she was teaching, Black people, formerly enslaved people, had lived their whole lives being trained to, in Harriet’s words, quote “look upon the white race as their natural superiors and masters,” end quote and she wanted them to develop quote “respect for their race,” end quote.
After the war Harriet and Lousia made their way to Savannah, Georgia where they continued their relief efforts. By 1867, she had made her way back to her home town of Edenton, North Carolina working to promote the welfare of freedmen there. So she’s elbows deep here really working all throughout the Civil War and in the years that followed to help Black people through this transition, through emancipation and the end of slavery. But, in the end, the racism in the south was too much for her. She and Louisa returned to the north in 1870, opening a boarding house in Massachusetts. It gets a little fuzzy after that. We know she relocated to Washington D.C. in the mid 1880s still with Louisa and that she died in 1897 in D.C. at the ripe old age of 84 which is really rather remarkable considering. Louisa lived until 1917 and actually died at the house of Edith Willis Grinnel, the daughter of the author Nathaniel Parker Willis and his second wife Cornelia for whom Harriet had worked as a nanny. I love that detail. It really suggests a special bond with that family. Remember Cornelia was the one who sent Harriet into hiding with her one year old daughter, Lillian, her other daughter, and eventually purchased Harriet’s freedom. So I love that Harriet’s daughter was still in touch with Cornelia’s daughter and actually died at her house.
So, wow I know that was a lot. You read this book, “Incidents of the Life of a Slave Girl” and it’s a lot. It’s an unbelievable story. It’s a story that was very difficult for Harriet to tell. It was raw, it was real, it was laying her soul bare for the world to see. But she felt morally obligated to tell her story because it was something no one else was talking about, the sexual abuse of enslaved women by their enslavers and the lengths they had to go to to protect themselves and their children. No one was talking about that. It was an unspoken evil of slavery that people needed to know about. And Harriet was brave enough to get it out into the world.
I want to end with a short excerpt from her book “Incidents of the Life of a Slave Girl” in which she calls on the people to stand up and do something to stop this blight that is slavery, this gross injustice. She writes quote “I once saw two beautiful children playing together. One was a fair white child; the other was her slave, and also her sister. When I saw them embracing each other, and heard their joyous laughter, I turned sadly away from the lovely sight. I foresaw the inevitable blight that would follow on the little slave's heart. I knew how soon her laughter would be changed to sighs. The fair child grew up to be a still fairer woman. From childhood to womanhood her pathway was blooming with flowers, and overarched by a sunny sky. Scarcely one day of her life had been clouded when the sun rose on her happy bridal morning.
How had those years dealt with her slave sister, the little playmate of her childhood? She, also, was very beautiful; but the flowers and sunshine of love were not for her. She drank the cup of sin, and shame, and misery, whereof her persecuted race are compelled to drink.
In view of these things, why are ye silent, ye free men and women of the north? Why do your tongues falter in maintenance of the right? Would that I had more ability! But my heart is so full, and my pen is so weak! There are noble men and women who plead for us, striving to help those who cannot help themselves. God bless them! God give them strength and courage to go on! God bless those, every where, who are laboring to advance the cause of humanity!” end quote. I know slavery is not a thing anymore in this country at least but I think we can all relate to that last sentence. It applies to a lot of different issues that still plague us today. “God bless those, every where who are laboring to advance the cause of humanity.” Think for a moment, in what ways are we advancing the cause of humanity today? What does that mean to you? What work still needs to be done and how are you helping to advance it?
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