_Gouldtown_. By William Steward, A.M., and REV. Theophilus G. Steward, D.D.
J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia, 1913. 237 pages. $2.50.
There are hundreds of thousands of mulattoes in the United States. Anyone
interested in this group of the American people will find many illuminating
and suggestive facts in Gouldtown. It is the history of the descendants of
Lord Fenwick, who was a major in Oliver Cromwell's army, and of Gould a
Negro man. Fenwick's will of 1683 contains the following: "I do except
against Elizabeth Adams of having any ye leaste part of my estate, unless
the Lord open her eyes to see her abdominable transgression against him, me
and her good father, by giving her true repentance, and forsaking yt
_Black_ yt hath been ye ruin of her, and becoming penitent for her sins;
upon yt condition only I do will and require my executors to settle five
hundred acres of land upon her." Elizabeth did not forsake this Negro by
the name of Gould and the remarkable mulatto group of Gouldtown is the
result of this marriage. Gouldtown is a small settlement in southwest New
Jersey.
In 1910 there were 225 living descendants from this union scattered
throughout the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific; many in
Canada, others in London, Liverpool, Paris, Berlin and Antwerp. For over
200 years these descendants have married and inter-married with Indian,
Negro and White with no serious detriment except the introduction of
tuberculosis into one branch of the family by an infusion of white blood.
It is interesting to note that crime, drunkenness, pauperism or sterility
has not resulted from these two hundred years of miscegenation. Thrift and
intelligence, longevity and fertility have been evident. In every war
except the Mexican, the community has been represented; one member of the
group became a bishop in the A.M.E. Church; one, chaplain in the United
States army, and many, now white, are prominent in other walks of life.
Several golden weddings have been celebrated. Several have reached the age
of a hundred years while many seem not to have begun to grow old until
three score years have been reached.
If one enters into the spirit of Gouldtown, and reads hastily the dry,
Isaac-begat-Jacob passages, the study moves like the story of a river that
loses itself in the sands. "Samuel 3rd. when a young man went to Pittsburgh
then counted to be in the far west and all trace of him was lost." "Daniel
Gould ... in early manhood went to Massachusetts, losing his identity as
colored." Such expressions are typical of the whole study. A constant
fading away, a losing identity occurs. The book is clearly the story of the
mulatto in the United States.
Aside from an occasional lapse in diction, it is a careful study with 35
illustrations and many documents such as copies of deeds, wills,
family-bible and death records.