Mansfield News Journal, Mansfield, Ohio 19 June 1941, page 1
Last Slave Dies – Burlington – The last of 37 freed slaves who settled in this Lawrence County community in 1848 is dead. She was Susan (Aunt Susie) Gordon, 99. The group was freed by the will of their owner, James Twyman, a Virginia planter.
The Exodus of the Burlington 37 from Virginia to Burlington, Ohio – SOURCE: Ironton Register, Thursday, March 05, 1896
In the fall of 1849, 37 slaves were set free and moved to just above our town of Burlington on the farm purchased from Isaac Frampton. They were owned by James Twyman and were manumitted by him in his will in the county of Madison, Virginia.
The farm purchased for them was about 640 acres, hill, and bottomland, with one large frame house and several small tenant houses on it. There were 20 males and 17 females. Some of them were old men and women who had given the best part of their lives in toil for their master in the accursed bond of slavery. Their bowed forms, hard callused hands told all too plainly what they had undergone.
The best part of their lives had been given to someone else. When the news was brought by the servants from the big house to the quarters, that “Ole Marse” had set them free and that they were to be taken to Ohio, where home and land were provided for them, a home, in reality, they could hardly believe it; the news was too good.
The mothers looked upon their children and thought, can it be that these sons and daughters of mine will be free and not have to toil as I have done without recompense, without hope? “Glory to our heavenly Master, it is too good to be true,” but true it was, and before long, they were on their way to the promised land, big and little, old and young, carrying with them, like the Israelites of old, their little belongings which they cherished as from their old “Virginny home.”
Their journey was made in fear and dread; fear that something might happen to prevent their reaching the haven of rest, dread that some shrewd lawyer might pick out some flaw in the papers and that they would be remanded back to await the tedious motions of the law’s delay. But nothing intervened to stop them, and by and by, they came to the banks of the Ohio River, the barrier to freedom that they had long known of but had never seen before.
One of them informed me that he thought it was the sea, and their wonderment was great as they looked upon the mighty river for the first time in their lives and thought about how it was possible for anyone who ran away to ever get across its swollen stream; and as the children of Israel, at the Red Sea, where and how they are to get across the mighty flood.
My informant also says that at this time, a steamboat came along, and the wonderment grew, and they could not see enough of it. It was something; they had never heard of in their inland home, a moving house propelled by some invisible power belching forth great clouds of smoke and steam and moving through the water like a thing of life.
And many days after they had reached their home on the banks of beautiful Ohio, did they clasp their children close as one of those monsters, breathing fire and smoke, went rushing by with the rapidity of the wind, and it was many days before they got accustomed to them.
I was about eleven years old when they came, and as my father was a friend to the poor black man, having left Virginia on account of slavery, they came to him for advice and counsel, which he freely gave them and employed them in various ways.
I used to go up to see them and hear them recount their tales of slave life and sing their weird songs and hymns, which had a touch of pathos that brought tears to my eyes, such as “Swing low, Sweet Chariot,” “The Resurrection Day,” “Behold Zion,” “When the Bridegroom Comes,” &c. They also had a hymn, of which I will give one verse, and the chorus, which for pathos and trust in the heavenly master, is hard to be expelled. We leave the reader to judge.
But Jesus sees me when I fall,
And Jesus hears me when I call,
But nobody knows the trouble I see,
The trouble I see, but God.
Chorus.
Nobody knows the trouble I see
The trouble I see, the trouble I see,
Nobody knows the trouble I see,
The trouble I see, but God.
It was this unwavering faith and trust in the Lord which enabled them to endure the horrors of slavery for so long, and these hymns lightened the burden.
References to James Twyman in the 1964 book The Promised Land by James Earl Pratt:
Old ‘Massa’ Twyman was dying…. Master Twyman had been a good, considerate, kind-hearted master….
There were thirty-seven slaves in all, they were Noah, Winney, Joe, Jenny, Amanda, Frances Ann, Simon, Violet, Abraham, Ambrose, Walker, Charlotte, Barbara, Horace, Susan, Short John, Maria, Nancy, Julia, Jane, Beck, Henry, Elizabeth, Mary Ann, Ellen, Lucy Ann, Persiller, Eleanor, Charles, James, William, Lewis, Bob, Washington, Lawrence, Albert, and Yellow John.
It was late in May before the James Twyman slaves got the news that they were certain to be free, but there was something else that they were not so sure about. They must all go away and leave their old home. The will did not even say where they were to go. It only said, ‘to some free state.’
It is believed to have been August or September 1849 that the freed slaves of James Twyman started on the long trip to Ohio. Since Jenny, Amanda, Frances Ann, Washington, and Joe were left behind, there were only thirty-two freed slaves in the convoy.
A part of James Twyman’s nine-hundred-acre plantation, which was located to the south of the Twyman Mansion, is referred to by James Twyman as ‘My Great Run Farm.’
The farmhouse and buildings still stand…. This ‘Great Run Farm’ is owned today by two brothers named Twyman, who are the descendants of a brother of James Twyman. A few yards to the south of the old mansion is the Twyman graveyard. About three hundred yards away, in the edge of the woods, is the slave graveyard.
About four miles from this plantation house, in the middle of a cornfield, is located another graveyard, which contains the tombstones of at least two brothers and one sister of James Twyman… Nowhere did we find a tombstone containing the name James Twyman.
Most all of the old men and women have passed away, with the exception of uncle Walker Fry, who is known almost to everyone in the county. Also, the mother of W. T. Smith, who has been bedridden for six years, but whose faith and trust in her Redeemer would put to blush the most hardened sinner in the land.
The younger ones born and reared in freedom are abreast with any and are becoming educated, fitted to fill any position to which they may be called. The teachers inform me that most of them are easily controlled and learn rapidly. The curse of caste is being eliminated from the whites, and before another century it will be entirely gone. G.
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