Independent Underground Railroad scholar on quest to differentiate Canadian Robert Browns
Feb. 22—PLATTSBURGH — Sussing out Robert Browns in Canada West and Quebec is Plattsburgh resident Don Papson's quest of the moment.
He is speaking on the Black History Month topic, "The Untold Story of the Reverend Robert Brown: A Life After the Underground Railroad," from noon to 1 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 28, in the Cardinal Lounge, Angell College Center, SUNY Plattsburgh.
An appetizer reception follows the presentation sponsored by the Division of Diversity Equity and Inclusion and the Plattsburgh College Foundation. Admission is free. Parking passes are required and can be obtained the day of event from University Police.
A QUESTION
Sheri Jackson, Southeast Regional Manager of the National Park Service's National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program, asked Papson, founder of the North Country Underground Railroad Historical Association, did he have any stories of what happened to Black people after they fled across the border away from U.S. enslavement.
"I said Sheri, I have been doing this research for 20 years, and I still haven't found one," he said.
"So for the last three years, I have been searching really, really hard. I'm looking for people in this area. I've been digging, and I found some things that were people who went to Canada West."
In 2015 with author/editor Tom Calarco, Papson wrote "Secret Lives of the Underground Railroad in New York City: Sydney Howard Gay, Louis Napoleon and the Record of Fugitives," which was published by McFarland.
During one of his 4 a.m. morning research sessions, Papson expanded the time period parameters.
"Instead of just going up until the end of the Civil War, how about going to 1900?," he said.
"So, I put 1900 in as the end date for my search, and I typed in fugitive slaves in Canada. An article from 1888 came up, and it promised to tell some stories about several men in Montreal. So, I started reading it, and oh my God. Guess what story one of the men had? A story that's in Secret Lives of the Underground Railroad. A very famous story. You probably know the image of the man who is on a horse, and he is crossing the Potomac River. That was Robert Brown. Then I thought, oh my gosh, this was right under my nose all this time. I started digging, and I found out four years before Tom and I published our book, Frank Mackey in Montreal had written an article for the Montreal Gazette about Robert Brown. It was a short article, and it provided some information. But I started really. really digging. He didn't have an image. He also didn't have a story of his escape in the Montreal newspaper."
Mackey is the author of "Done With Slavery: The Black Fact in Montreal 1760-1840" and "Black Then: Blacks and Montreal 1780s-1880s."
Papson cast a wide net for contacts that could weigh in on the topic. This included Bryan and Shannon Prince, founders of the Buxton National Historic Site and Museum in Southwestern Ontario, Canada.
Shannon is a descendant of early fugitive families, who went to Canada for freedom and opportunity.
"They are now retired," Papson said.
"He's written several books. This was a refugee community. Vivian and I went there years ago. Their niece (Michelle Robbins) is now operating their museum. She found a very wonderful photograph of British Methodist Episcopal ministers. A woman who works at the McCord Museum in Montreal found an article that had an image of Rev. Brown. Frank had a photograph of the church where he (Brown) was the pastor for over 30 years in Montreal."
MONTREAL BROWN
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Rev. Nicoline Guerrier found a report of Brown giving a presentation about his enslavement and escape.
"It's not really certain if he really is the Robert Brown that's in William Still's book," Papson said.
"But I was able to correct William Still because William Still didn't look at his journal notes when he wrote his book. He wrote some misinformation. He had the wrong year that he escaped, and he also had the wrong name of the man who had owned him. In Secret Lives, we identified the man who owned them. and I found out some other names that are associated with the story. Still and Gay wrote down the names as best they could, but it really wasn't the correct spelling. So that was pretty exciting to collect that information."
Brown only spoke twice about his past in bondage.
"Only one time was there something in the newspaper, and the story doesn't match William Still's story," he said.
"He may or may not have been the man that Still and Gay helped. He may be another Robert Brown. Why the story was associated with him, we don't know. The thing is that both men were cooks. That's what they share in common. He went to Canada West. Robert Brown alias Thomas Jones from Still and Gay, he escaped in 1855. But Robert Brown of Montreal arrived in Canada in 1859. So if it was the same person, what happened? On Christmas night, he escaped. He arrived in Philadelphia on New Year's Day."
VIRGINIA BROWN
Robert Brown alias Thomas Jones was enslaved in the part of Virginia that is now West Virginia.
"Very near to the area where Harpers Ferry is," Papson said.
"His wife was owned by somebody else. Her owner wanted to cohabit with her. That was the terminology they used in those days. She refused. So, he sold her and their children. He was desperate, so that's why he escaped. After Sidney Howard Gay forwarded Robert Brown alias Thomas Jones to Syracuse, we don't have anything on a person of the name Thomas Jones. One question that Frank had was did he use his own name?
"Apparently, he did because the Robert Brown of Montreal knew who his parents were. He said he was born in Cecil County, Maryland."
If Robert Brown alias Thomas Jones was enslaved in Virginia (West Virginia), how did that happened?
"There are a lot of questions that are still out there," Papson said.
"But the man that I have the most information on is the Robert Brown of Montreal. He said he had been enslaved in Georgia, even though he was born in Maryland. That's where he escaped from. He arrived in Canada in 1859. He married a woman whose parents may have escaped from slavery. We don't know for sure."
UNION ARMY
Brown returned to the United States and enlisted into two U.S. Colored Troops Regiments, the 6th and the 26th.
"He never was assigned to a company because he had epilepsy," Papson said.
"I have requested his files, but they haven't arrived. Hopefully, they'll answer some questions. He was in Alexandria, Virginia at the L'Ouverture Hospital."
There were two cemeteries there, one for the soldiers who died and one for contraband, enslaved Blacks who escaped to the Union lines during the Civil War. At Fort Monroe, Virginia, Union Army Major Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, a Massachusetts lawyer and Waterville College graduate, first designated African-American refugees "contraband of war" to subvert the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act.
"Well there was this White man down there who started the contraband cemetery, and he was burying Black soldiers in the contraband cemetery, and the men rebelled," Papson said.
"They said, this is not right. They petitioned to be buried in the soldiers' cemetery, and they were. He signed the petition. At least a man named Robert Brown signed the petition. He was the only Robert Brown that I found who was there at that time."
OCCUPATION: COOK
Brown was admitted to the hospital in October 1864.
"What I want to find out from the records is he might have very well been a cook," Papson said.
"That's what he knew how to do. I don't think he was the kind of man who would just sit around and not do anything. I think he was helping out in some way. Even on his enlistment records, there are two dates. One page says he was 22, and the other one said he was 32. We may not know when we get the military records."
In the early 1880s, Brown and his wife, Harriet Graves, and their six living children moved to Montreal. He became the British Methodist Episcopal minister of the Derrirviere Street Mission
"He was a minister at that church for over 30 years," Papson said.
"What is interesting is that another railroad came into focus and that was Black men working on the railroads. So, he was a cook for the railroads. A number of people in his family were railroad porters, and the railroads connected Black people all over the place between Canada and the United States. The Freeman in Indianapolis, a very prominent Black newspaper, they had people sending reports from Montreal about what was going on in the Black community in Montreal."
BLACK MONTREAL
Papson has not been able to locate any descendants of Brown. After the demise of his first wife, Brown married Josephine Madison, who had been Mrs. Clay.
"He was 70, and she was 35," Papson said.
"She had children, and he children, but they did not have any children together. It's really exciting to research a story that is just right across the border and to learn so much about Montreal at that time. The Black community was very small. There were only about 25 families when he first started ministering there. There were only like 300 Black people in Montreal. What changed things was the first World War. Then, a lot of Black people started migrating. A lot of West Indians came, so the population grew. But when he was there, the community was very small, so everybody knew one another."
NC LINKS
An exciting North Country connection is Brown's family had friends, who were servants for wealthy White families in Saranac Lake.
"Several servants from Saranac Lake visited the Browns in Montreal," Papson said.
"Three of the people who went to visit the Browns worked in the same house."
Brown's church doesn't exist in Montreal nor does the street where it was located. He died on Jan. 1, 1917, and he is buried on Mount Royal.
"His name is not on headstone," Papson said.
"He is buried where a daughter and her husband are buried, but only her name is on the headstone. Her name was Annie Durette. She married a Durette. He was a White railroad worker."
One of Brown's sons married a white woman, and their son married an Italian immigrant.
"So the family did become more mixed as time went on," Papson said.
"But initially, it was just Black folks married one another. But then, times changed."
Email: rcaudell@pressrepublican.com
Twitter@RobinCaudell
