Posted on 02/23/2003 5:03:31 PM PST by Lady In Blue
Where does one start the story of a man's life? People interested in genealogy trace their personal life-stories back many generations, even many centuries, but this is not possible in the story of Augustine Tolton.
We might start his story with his mother, Martha Jane Chisley. She steps into our history in Mead County, Kentucky, on the John Manning plantation. The Mannings were Catholic and had their slaves instructed and baptized when they were purchased. The babies of their slaves were baptized in infancy. Martha Jane's parents, Augustine Chisley and Matilda Hurd, were baptized and entered a Christian marriage shortly after they had been purchased by the Mannings. Their daughter, Martha Jane, was baptized shortly after her birth. Their parish church was at Flint Island, Kentucky.
When the wealthy John Manning died, his widow married Stephen Burch. Manning's youngest daughter, Susan, married Stephen Elliott in 1849. Susan's step-father, of course, wanted to give a fine wedding present to Susan. He decided to give her some slaves. From his Negroes, he selected a half a dozen of varying ages and abilities.
Susan and her new husband must have received the usual array of wedding gifts, personal items and things for the house. Stephen Elliott and his new bride would be moving from Kentucky. He had acquired a farm in Ralls County, Missouri. It was near Brush Creek, close to the Salt River, and only a short distance from Hannibal.
Among the slaves in Susan's dowry was the sixteen-year-old Martha Jane Chisley. Not included, however, were Martha Jane's parents and brother whom she loved dearly. A short time later, the newlyweds loaded their possessions in carts and took their slaves and headed westward. The teenage slave girl, Martha Jane, would never see her parents again. When the party arrived at the mighty Mississippi River for the trip upstream, there is no way that the teenaged Martha Jane would know what a fateful role this great river would play in her life a dozen years later!
The farm of Mr. & Mrs. Stephen Elliott adjoined the property of another Catholic family. That family name was Hagar. One of the Hagar slaves had been given the name Peter Paul when he was baptized by the missionary priest, Father Peter Paul Lefebre. Father Lefebre tended to the sacramental needs of the Catholics in northeastern Missouri, western Illinois and southern Iowa. The black man, Peter Paul Tolton was always proud to have the same Christian names as the priest who baptized him.
From the time he was just a lad, he worked in the Hagar grain fields and in his master's brewery. For him and his fellow slaves, old and young, male and female, life was a constant drudgery. His world consisted of the fields, the distillery buildings and the row of slave cabins. It was an endless cycle of plowing, planting, hoeing, cutting ripe grain with scythes, threshing the grain by means of flaying it, then scooping it up and throwing it into the wind where the chaff would blow away and the precious grain would fall back onto the threshing floor.
Peter Paul Tolton received basic religious instructions from his master. Even though he was illiterate, he must have had an active mind as he listened to the gossip about the unrest in the country brought about by the slavery question. He must have heard talk of secession by the slave states, insurrection by slaves, and possibly war. The main source of news would be from new slaves in the area who came from other parts of the country. Perhaps he heard of the scaffold-words of John Brown: "I am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but by blood."
Perhaps, too, Peter Paul thought of trying to escape. He surely knew of the Underground Railway system, one route of which had its first station in nearby Quincy. There, at Twenty-fifth and Maine Street, runaway slaves were hidden from bounty-hunters until they could be moved to the next station, and then the next, and so on, until they reached the safety of Canada.
The day Peter Paul Tolton met his future spouse, Martha Jane Chisley, she was calling for help. She was trying to help a slave boy who collapsed. The boy died, but Peter Paul could not forget Martha Jane and her tender compassion.
When he made his interests in her known, an agreement was reached between the slave owners, the Elliotts and the Hagars. They would allow Martha Jane and Peter Paul to enter into a Catholic marriage, with the agreement that Peter and Martha would live in a slave cabin on the Elliott farm, with Peter remaining a slave and worker of the Hagars, and Martha and all children born of the union would be the property of the Elliott family.
In the Spring of 1851, Peter Paul Tolton and Martha Jane Chisley, now eighteen years of age, were married in St. Peter Catholic Church, Brush Creek, Missouri, Father John O'Sullivan officiated at the ceremony.
There is no reason to believe that life was easier for Martha Jane and Peter Paul after the marriage. Within a few years, besides the endless work imposed on them, they had to care for their children. Their first child was a sickly boy named Charles. He was born in 1853. Augustine was born in 1854, and a daughter, Anne, was born in 1859.
The baptismal record of St. Peter Church at Brush Creek does not even mention Augustine's name. It simply states: "A colored child born April 1, 1854, son of Peter Tolton and Martha Chisley, property of Stephen Elliott; Mrs. Stephen Elliott, sponsor; May 29, 1854, (signed) Father John 0 Sullivan."
In later life, Augustine Tolton said that he was given the name of Augustine, the great African theologian, because that was his maternal grandfather's name, and he was given the name of John because that was the patron saint of the priest who baptized him.
As the years progressed, tensions over the slavery question grew in the country. There were political upheavals and rumblings of a possible war to free the slaves.
Several crucial cases concerning slavery were heard by the United States Supreme Court in the 1850's. The case of Dr. Richard Eells of Quincy, Illinois, was decided by the court in 1853; The Dred Scott Decision from Missouri was decided in 1857. Violence against abolitionists and those assisting runaway slaves had been part of the country for years.
Abolitionist, Elijah Lovejoy of Alton, Illinois, was shot to death in 1837 as he tried to prevent a pro-slavery mob from stealing his printing press; not long before, an earlier press of his had been thrown into the Mississippi River.
People from Quincy, Illinois, were known to go into Missouri near where the Toltons lived, and encourage slaves to run away. A notice was posted at the Canton, Missouri ferry landing warning, "Anyone caught stealing slaves will be hung by the neck till he is Dead! Dead! Dead!!!" Many citizens of Palmyra, Missouri boycotted businesses in Quincy because of the abolitionist activity in the Illinois city. The chapel at the Mission Institute at Twenty-fifth and Prentiss in Quincy was burned in retaliation for the institution's assistance given to runaway slaves.
Dr. Richard Eells in Quincy assisted many runaways, but one day he met his match. A runaway by the name of Charley, from the Chauncey Durkee plantation at Monticello, Missouri showed up at his door, his clothes still wet from swimming the Mississippi. Slave catchers were close behind. Eells took Charley by a circuitous route towards the Mission Institute. When he was about to be overtaken by the pursuers, Charley jumped out of the carriage and ran into a cemetery, but was caught. Later Dr. Eells was charged with "harboring, secreting and assisting a fleeing slave." He was fined half the price of the slave he was assisting, but the abolitionists raised the funds to appeal the case, thinking maybe the courts would rule that since it was in a free state, the court would rule in favor of Dr. Eells. The case reached the Supreme Court which decided that harboring a runaway would be the same as being in possession of stolen property. Dr. Eells had died, unbeknownst to the court, before the unfortunate decision was handed down.
Four years later, in 1857, the United States Supreme Court reached a decision in the case from Missouri called The Dred Scott Decision. Dred Scott was a slave in Missouri. His owner went to Illinois, which was a free state, and to the Wisconsin Territory, which was free, and Scott went along as an employee. Then his owner moved back to Missouri. The question was, since Scott had lived in a non-slave state, was he a free man? The Supreme Court decided that Negroes, whether free or slave, could not be citizens and so had no civil rights. Therefore, they could not bring a case into court.
This was the milieu in which the Toltons lived in eastern Missouri. The ominous events of the time must have made the field slaves in Ralls County wonder if they would ever be free persons.
(Excerpt) Read more at shamino.quincy.edu ...
| Click on a Chapter to go directly to that chapter: |
|---|
Sure would be nice to have a movie or tv mini series made on his life. >>>
There was a documentary on EWTN, "Past the Boundary: The Journey of Augustine Tolton", that's what prompted me to look it up here on the FR.
What a wonderful article! Thank you for posting this thread!
Bumpus!
Father Patrick Francis Healy, president of Georgetown University in the 1870s, openly acknowledged that he was an Irish-Americans of partial African descent. Father Healy (and two of his brothers) served as a priest prior to Father Augustine Tolton, but the author considers Father Tolton as the "first black priest" in the U.S. because the Healys had an Irish father and a light-skinned mulatto mother and were accepted as "white" by society. I think the Healys should be considered the first "black" priests in the U.S., but that Father Tolton, as the first former slave to serve as a priest in the U.S., is more important when looking at black history. (Of course, Father Patrick Healy's work as President of Georgetown makes him a seminal figure in Catholic education in the U.S.)
He preaches like an angel (he looks like a defensive lineman.)
Fascinating story. It just goes to show that saints move among sinners, and that the Church must do with a very motley mixture of priests and leaders.
I especially liked what the Cardinal of the Propaganda said when he made the decision to send Fr. Tolton to America instead of Africa. A good decision.
Wow. Thanks for that article.
Just finished reading the article, what a saintly priest!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.