Lucy Delaney
Lucy Ann Delaney, born
Lucy Berry (c. 1830 – after 1891), was an
African American author, former
slave, and
activist, notable for her 1891
narrative From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom. This is the only first-person account of a "
freedom suit" and one of the few post-Emancipation published
slave narratives.
The memoir recounts her mother
Polly Berry's legal battles in
St. Louis,
Missouri for her own and her daughter's freedom from slavery. For her daughter's case, Berry attracted the support of
Edward Bates, a prominent
Whig politician and judge, and the future
US Attorney General under President
Abraham Lincoln.
He argued the case of Lucy Ann Berry in court and won in February 1844.
Their cases were two of 301 freedom suits filed in St. Louis from
1814-1860. Discovered in the late 20th century, the case files are held
by the Missouri Historical Society and searchable in an online database.
Early life
For decades little was known of Lucy Ann Delaney beyond her
memoir, but in the late 20th century, both her and her mother's suits were discovered among case files for 301
freedom suits
in St. Louis from 1814-1860. Related material is available online in a
searchable database created by the St. Louis Circuit Court Historical
Project, in collaboration with
Washington University.
[1]
In addition, scholars have done research into censuses and other
historic material related to Delaney's memoir to document the facts.
Born into slavery in
St. Louis, Missouri in 1830, Lucy Ann Berry was the daughter of slaves
Polly Berry and a
mulatto father {whose name she did not note}. She said that Polly Berry had been born free in
Illinois, where she was known as Polly Crockett, but was kidnapped when a child by slave catchers and sold into slavery in Missouri.
[2] (In her freedom suit, Polly Berry deposed that she was held as a slave in
Wayne County, Kentucky
by Joseph Crockett, and was brought by him to Illinois. There they
stayed for several weeks while he hired her out for domestic work. As
Illinois was a free state, he was supposed to lose his right to hold
slave property by staying there, and Polly could have been freed. It was
on this basis that she was later awarded freedom, as witnesses were
found to testify as to her having been held illegally as a slave in
Illinois.,
[3] )
Polly was sold to Major Taylor Berry of St. Louis, from whom she took
the surname she used. Polly married another of the Berry slaves, and
they had two daughters, Nancy and Lucy Ann.
When Delaney wrote her memoir late in life, she remembered the Major
and his wife Fanny Berry as kind slaveholders. After the major died in a
duel, Fanny Berry married Robert Wash, a lawyer later appointed as a
Missouri State Supreme Court judge. When Fanny Wash died, the Berry
slave family’s fortunes changed. Although Major Berry's will had called
for freeing his slaves after his and his wife's deaths, Judge Wash sold
Lucy Ann's father to a
plantation down the
Mississippi River in the
Deep South.
[2]
Polly Berry became concerned for the safety of her daughters, and
determined they should escape. Lucy Ann's older sister Nancy slipped
away while traveling with a daughter of the family, Mary Berry Coxe, and
her new husband on their honeymoon in the North. Nancy left them at
Niagara Falls, took the ferry across the river, and safely reached
Canada and a friend of her mother's.
[2]
After having conflict with Mary Coxe in 1839, Polly Berry was sold to Joseph A. Magehan, but escaped about three weeks later.
[4] She made it to
Chicago, but was captured by slave catchers. They returned her to Magehan and slavery in St. Louis.
[2]
On returning, Polly Berry (also known as Polly Wash after her
previous master) sued for her freedom in the Circuit Court in the case
known as
Polly Wash v. Joseph A. Magehan in October 1839.
[4]
When her suit was finally heard in 1843, her attorney Harris Sproat was
able to convince a jury of her free birth and kidnapping as a child.
Wash was freed. She remained in St. Louis to continue her separate
effort to secure her daughter Lucy Ann Berry's freedom, for which she
had filed suit in 1842, shortly after Berry fled her master.
[4]
Trial and freedom
By 1842, Lucy Ann was working for Martha Berry Mitchell, another of
the Berry daughters. They had conflict in part because of the slave
girl's inexperience at heavy domestic tasks, including laundry. Martha
decided to sell her, and her husband David D. Mitchell arranged the
sale.
[4] The day before she was to leave, Lucy Ann escaped and hid at the house of a friend of her mother’s.
That week, Polly Wash filed suit in Circuit Court in St. Louis for
Lucy Ann Berry's freedom, as a "next friend" to the minor girl.
[4]
Since her own case had not been settled, Wash was still considered a
slave with no legal standing, but under the slave law, she could bring
suit on behalf of a minor. The law provided a slave with the status of a
"poor person", with court-appointed counsel when the court determined
the case had grounds. Delaney's memoir suggests that her mother's
attorneys suggested her strategy of filing separate suits for her and
her daughter, to prevent a jury's worrying about taking too much
property from one slaveholder.
[5]
The case was prepared primarily by
Francis Butter Murdoch, who litigated nearly one third of the freedom suits filed in St. Louis from 1840-1847.
[4] Francis B. Murdoch had served as the
Alton, Illinois district attorney, and prosecuted the murder of the printer
Elijah Lovejoy by anti-abolitionists.
[6] Wash also attracted the support of
Edward Bates; a prominent
Whig politician and judge, he argued Lucy Ann's case in court. Bates later served as the
US Attorney General under President
Abraham Lincoln.
While waiting for trial, Lucy Ann Berry was remanded to the jail,
where she was held for more than 17 months without being hired out,
which was customary to offset expenses and earn money for slaves'
masters. In February 1844 the case went to trial.
[4]
By then her mother's case had been settled, and Polly Wash was declared
free. In addition, Wash had affidavits from people who knew her and her
daughter. Judge Robert Wash (Fanny Berry Wash's widower and Polly's
previous master) testified that Lucy Ann was definitely Polly Berry
Wash's child. The jury believed the case for freedom had been proved,
and the judge announced Lucy Ann Berry was free.
[4] She was approximately 14 years old.
[2]
Lucy Ann and Polly Berry lived in St. Louis after gaining her
freedom. They had to get certificates as free blacks and deal with other
restrictions of the time. They worked together as seamstresses.
Marriage and family
In 1845, Lucy Ann met and married
steamboat worker Frederick Turner, with whom she settled in
Quincy, Illinois, and her mother lived with them. Turner died soon after in a boiler explosion on the
steamboat The Edward Bates. (It was named for the lawyer who had helped secure Lucy Ann's freedom two years before.)
[2]
Polly Wash and Lucy Ann moved back to St. Louis. In 1849 Lucy Ann met
and married Zachariah Delaney. They were married for the rest of their
lives, and her mother lived with them. Though the couple had four
children, two did not survive infancy; the remaining children, a son and
a daughter, both died in their early twenties.
[2]
Later life
As Delaney recounted in her memoir, she became active in civic and
religious associations. Such organizations grew rapidly in both the
African-American and white communities nationally in the years following
the Civil War. She joined the
African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1855, founded in 1816 in
Philadelphia
as the first independent black denomination in the US. In addition,
Delaney was elected president of the Female Union, an organization of
African-American women. She also served as president of the Daughters of
Zion, as well as a women's group affiliated with the
Freemasons, to which her husband belonged.
[2] They often supported community education and health projects.
Delaney belonged to the Col. Shaw Woman's Relief Corps, No. 34, a women's auxiliary to the Col. Shaw Post, 343,
Grand Army of the Republic (GAR). The veterans' group was named after the white commanding officer of the
54th Massachusetts Infantry, the first of the
United States Colored Troops
and a unit that achieved renown for courage in the Civil War. Delaney
dedicated her memoir to the GAR, which had fought for the freedom of
slaves.
[2]
In the late 19th century, many blacks migrated to St. Louis from the
Deep South for its industrial jobs. Delaney met with new arrivals to try
to track down her father. Learning that he was living on a plantation
15 miles south of
Vicksburg, Mississippi,
she wrote and asked him to visit her. Her sister Nancy from Canada
joined their reunion in St. Louis. Their father was glad to see them,
but, with his wife Polly dead by then, he returned to Mississippi and
his friends of 45 years.
[2]
Nothing was recorded about the year or circumstances of Lucy Delaney's death.
Memoir
In 1891, Delaney published her
From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom, the only first-person account of a freedom suit.
[4] The text is also a
slave narrative, most of which were published prior to the Civil War and Emancipation.
[3]
Delaney devoted most of her account to her mother Polly Berry’s
struggles to free her family from slavery. Though the story is
Delaney’s, she features her mother as the lead
protagonist.
The narrative is steeped in
spirituality. It celebrated what Delaney saw as
God’s benevolent role in her own life and she attacked the
hypocrisy of
Christian slave owners.
From the Darkness
shows the strength of the African Americans who suffered under slavery,
rather than recount the horrors of the institution. By continuing her
memoir after her gaining freedom at age 14, Delaney showed her fortitude
following the death of her first husband, and later the deaths of each
of her four children. She portrayed her mother Polly Berry as serving as
an adviser and
role model. By celebrating her own political and civic activities, Delaney argued for the place of African Americans in US
democracy.[
