The State of Virginia has been the home of distinguished persons of both
sexes of the white and colored races. A dissertation on the noted
colored women of Virginia would find a small circle of readers but
would, nevertheless, contain interesting accounts of some of the most
important achievements of the people of that State. The story of Maria
Louise Moore-Richards would be a large chapter of such a narrative. She
was born of white and Negro parentage in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in
1800. Her father was Edwin Moore, a Scotchman of Edinburgh. Her mother
was a free woman of color, born in Toronto when it was called York.
Exactly how they came to Fredericksburg is not known. It seems, however,
that they had been well established in that city when Maria Louise Moore
was born.
This woman was fortunate in coming into the world at that time. So
general had been the efforts for the elevation of the colored people
that free Negroes had many of the privileges later given only to white
people. Virginia then and for a long time thereafter ranked among the
commonwealths most liberal toward the Negro. The dissemination of
information among them was not then restricted, private teaching of
slaves was common, and progressive communities maintained colored
schools.[1a] In Fredericksburg such opportunities were not rare. The
parents of Maria Louise Moore fortunately associated with the free
Negroes who constituted an industrial class with adequate means to
provide for the thorough training of their children. Miss Moore,
therefore, easily acquired the rudiments of education and attained some
distinction as a student of history.
In 1820 Miss Moore was married to Adolphe Richards, a native of the
Island of Guadaloupe. He was a Latin of some Negro blood, had noble
ancestry, and had led an honorable career. Educated in London and
resident in Guadaloupe, he spoke both English and French fluently.
Because of poor health in later years he was directed by his friends to
the salubrious climate of Virginia. He settled at Fredericksburg, where
he soon became captivated by the charms of the talented Maria Louise
Moore. On learning of his marriage, his people and friends marveled that
a man of his standing had married a colored woman or a Southern woman at
all.
Adjusting himself to this new environment, Mr. Richards opened a shop
for wood-turning, painting and glazing. It is highly probable that he
learned these trades in the West Indies, but having adequate means to
maintain himself, he had not depended on his mechanical skill. In
Fredericksburg he had the respect and support of the best white people,
passing as one of such well-to-do free Negroes as the Lees, the Cooks,
the De Baptistes, who were contractors, and the Williamses, who were
contractors and brickmakers. His success was in a large measure due to
the good standing of the family of Mrs. Richards and to the wisdom with
which she directed this West Indian in his new environment.
They had in all fourteen children, the training of whom was largely the
work of the mother. All of them were well grounded in the rudiments of
education and given a taste for higher things. In the course of time
when the family grew larger the task of educating them grew more
arduous. Some of them probably attended the school conducted by a
Scotch-Irishman in the home of Richard De Baptiste. When the reaction
against the teaching of Negroes effected the closing of the colored
schools in Virginia, this one continued clandestinely for many years.
Determined to have her children better educated, Mrs. Richards sent one
of her sons to a school conducted by Mrs. Beecham, a remarkable English
woman, assisted by her daughter. These women were bent on doing what
they could to evade the law interpreted as prohibiting any one from
either sitting or standing to teach a black to read. They, therefore,
gathered the colored children around them while they lay prostrate on
the couch to teach them. For further evasion they kept on hand splinters
of wood which they had the children dip into a match preparation and use
with a flint for ignition to make it appear that they were showing them
how to make matches. When this scheme seemed impracticable, one of the
boys was sent to Washington in the District of Columbia to attend the
school maintained by John F. Cook, a successful educator and founder of
the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church. This young man was then
running the risk of expatriation, for Virginia had in 1838 passed a law,
prohibiting the return to that State of those Negroes, who after the
prohibition of their education had begun to attend schools in other
parts.[2]
It was because of these conditions that in 1851 when her husband died
Mrs. Richards sold out her property and set out to find a better home in
Detroit, Michigan. Some of the best white people of Fredericksburg
commended her for this step, saying that she was too respectable a woman
to suffer such humiliation as the reaction had entailed upon persons of
her race.[3] She was followed by practically all of the best free
Negroes of Fredericksburg. Among these were the Lees, the Cooks, the
Williamses and the De Baptistes. A few years later this group attracted
the Pelham family from Petersburg. They too had tired of seeing their
rights gradually taken away and, therefore, transplanted themselves to
Detroit.
The attitude of the people of Detroit toward immigrating Negroes had
been reflected by the position the people of that section had taken from
the time of the earliest settlements. Slavery was prohibited by the
Ordinance of 1787. In 1807 there arose a case in which a woman was
required to answer for the possession of two slaves. Her contention was
that they were slaves on British territory at the time of the surrender
of the post in 1796 and that Jay's Treaty assured them to her. Her
contention was sustained.[4] A few days later a resident of Canada
attempted under this ruling to secure the arrest and return of some
mulatto and Indian slaves who had escaped from Canada. The court held
that slavery did not exist in Michigan except in the case of slaves in
the possession of the British settlers within the Northwest Territory
July 11, 1796, and that there was no obligation to give up fugitives
from a foreign jurisdiction. An effort was made to take the slaves by
force but the agent of the owner was tarred and feathered.[4]
Generally speaking, Detroit adhered to this position.[4a] In 1827 there
was passed an act providing for the registry of the names of all colored
persons, requiring the possession of a certificate showing that they
were free and a bond in the sum of $500 for their good behavior.[5] This
law was obnoxious to the growing sentiment of freedom in Detroit and was
not enforced until the Riot of 1833. This uprising was an attack on the
Negroes because a courageous group of them had effected the rescue and
escape of one Thornton Blackburn and his wife, who had been arrested by
the sheriff as alleged fugitives from Kentucky.[6] The anti-slavery
feeling considerably increased thereafter. The Detroit Anti-Slavery
Society was formed in 1837, other societies to secure the relief and
escape of slaves quickly followed and still another was organized to
find employment and purchase homes for refugees.[7] This change of
sentiment is further evidenced by the fact that in 1850 it was necessary
to call out the three companies of volunteers to quell an incipient riot
occasioned by the arrest and attempt to return a runaway slave in
accordance with the Fugitive Slave Law. Save the general troubles
incident to the draft riots of the Northern cities of 1863,[8] Detroit
maintained this benevolent attitude toward Negroes seeking refuge.
In this favorable community the Richards colony easily prospered. The
Lees well established themselves in their Northern homes and soon won
the respect of the community. Most of the members of the Williams family
confined themselves to their trade of bricklaying and amassed
considerable wealth. One of Mr. Williams's daughters married a
well-to-do Waring living then at Wauseon, Ohio; another became the wife
of one Chappée, who is now a stenographer in Detroit; and the third
united in matrimony with James H. Cole, who became the head of a
well-to-do family of Detroit. Then there were the Cooks descending from
Lomax B. Cook, a broker of no little business ability. Will Marion Cook,
the musician, belongs to this family. The De Baptistes, too, were among
the first to get a foothold in this new environment and prospered
materially from their experience and knowledge acquired in
Fredericksburg as contractors.[8a] From this group came Richard De
Baptiste, who in his day was the most noted colored Baptist preacher in
the Northwest. The Pelhams were no less successful in establishing
themselves in the economic world. They enjoyed a high reputation in the
community and had the sympathy and cooperation of the influential white
people in the city. Out of this family came Robert A. Pelham, for years
editor of a weekly in Detroit, and from 1901 to the present time an
employee of the Federal Government in Washington.[9]
The children of Mrs. Richards were in no sense inferior to the
descendants of the other families. She lived to see her work bear fruit
in the distinguished services they rendered and the desirable
connections which they made after the Civil War. Her daughter Julia
married Thomas F. Carey who, after conducting a business for some years
in New York, moved to Toronto, where he died. From this union came the
wife of D. Augustus Straker. Her daughter Evalina married Dr. Joseph
Ferguson who, prior to 1861, lived in Richmond, Virginia, uniting the
three occupations of leecher, cupper and barber. This led to his coming
to Detroit to study medicine. He was graduated there and practiced for
many years in that city. Before the Civil War her son John D. Richards
was sent to Richmond to learn a trade. There he met and became the
lifelong friend of Judge George L. Ruffin, who was then living in that
city.[10]
The most prominent and the most useful person to emerge from this group
of pioneering Negroes was her daughter Fannie M. Richards. She was born
in Fredericksburg, Virginia, October 1, 1841. As her people left that
State when she was quite young she did not see so much of the
intolerable conditions as did the older members of the family. Miss
Richards was successful in getting an early start in education. Desiring
to have better training than what was then given to persons of color in
Detroit, she went to Toronto. There she studied English, history,
drawing and needlework. In later years she attended the Teachers
Training School in Detroit. Her first thought was to take up teaching
that she might do something to elevate her people. She, therefore,
opened a private school in 1863, doing a higher grade of work than that
then undertaken in the public schools. About 1862, however, a colored
public school had been opened by a white man named Whitbeck. Miss
Richards began to think that she should have such a school herself.
Her story as to how she realized her ambition is very interesting. Going
to her private school one morning, she saw a carpenter repairing a
building. Upon inquiry she learned that it was to be opened as Colored
School Number 2. She went immediately to William D. Wilkins, a member of
the board of education, who, impressed with the personality of the young
woman, escorted her to the office of superintendent of schools, Duane
Dotty. After some discussion of the matter Miss Richards filed an
application, assured that she would be notified to take the next
examination. At the appointed time she presented herself along with
several other applicants who hoped to obtain the position. Miss Richards
ranked highest and was notified to report for duty the following
September. Early one morning she proceeded to her private school in time
to inform her forty pupils of the desirable change and conducted them in
a body to their new home.
Miss Richards taught in this building until 1871, when by a liberal
interpretation of the courts, the schools were mixed by ignoring race
distinction wherever it occurred in the school laws of Michigan. She was
then transferred to the Everett School where she remained until last
June when she was retired on a pension after having served that system
half a century. Although she taught very few colored children she said
to a reporter several years ago:
"I have never been made to feel in any way that my race has been a
handicap to me. Neither my pupils nor the teachers have ever shown
prejudice; I do not doubt that it exists; I shall be in Heaven long
before it has all disappeared, but I say it is with a colored
teacher as it is with a white one. Her work is the only thing that
counts. I have never been called before the board for a reprimand in
all my years of teaching. The methods have changed a good deal since
the time that I started in and it would be easy to lag behind, but I
try not to. It means continual reading and study to keep up with the
modern way of doing things, but I manage to do it, and when the time
comes that I cannot do my work in a satisfactory manner I want the
Board of Education to discharge me and get some one else."
In testimony to these facts one of the daily papers of Detroit wrote her
up in 1910, saying that she had kept her interest in modern pedagogic
methods, maintained a high standard of scholarship in her school, and
retained her sympathy with little children, who had rewarded her
devotion to her work with their appreciation and love. To show how well
she is loved by her pupils the writer was careful to state that these
children as a gay group often surrounded her on her way to school,
clinging to her hands, crowding about her as best they may, all
chattering and pouring out accounts of their little doings.
"Frequently," says this writer, "she is stopped on the street by grown
men and women who long ago were her pupils and who have remembered her,
though with the passing of the years, and the new classes of little ones
who come to her every term, she has forgotten them."[11] Many have been
accustomed to bring their children to the Everett School and speak of
how glad they will be when these little ones will be under the care of
their parents' former teacher.
Miss Richards estimates that in the years of school work, she has had in
her room an average of fifty pupils a term, although sometimes the
attendance overflowed to a much greater number. With eighty-eight terms
of teaching to her credit, the number of pupils who owe part of their
education to "this gentle and cultured woman" amounts well up into the
tens of thousands, enough to populate a fair-sized city.
We can not close this article with a better testimonial than the
following letter from one of her former pupils, the Honorable Charles T.
Wilkins, a lawyer and an influential white citizen, who addressed her on
the occasion of her retirement last June.
"_My dear Miss Richards_: The friendship of so long standing between
your family and mine, and the high esteem in which, as an educator, a
woman, and a Christian, you were always held by my father the late
Colonel William D. Wilkins, lead me to take the liberty of writing to
_congratulate_ you upon the well-earned retirement from active work,
which I have just learned from the press that you contemplate after so
many years well spent in faithful service to our community. As a citizen
and one who has always been most interested in the education of our
youth, I wish to add my thanks to those which are felt, if not expressed
by the many who know of your devotion to and success in leading the
young in the way in which they should go.
"Though your active participation in this work is about to cease, may
you long be spared as an example to those who follow you is the earnest
hope of
"Yours very sincerely and respectfully,
(Signed) "Charles T. Wilkins"