HARPER AT 200

HARPER’S ACTIVIST BEGINNINGS AND EARLY LIFE

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper lived in Baltimore in her youth. By the time Harper came of age in the 1840s, around 89,300 (approximately 20 percent) of Maryland’s population was enslaved. Baltimore, a port city, was not just a hub of trading goods but also of human trafficking. As the map below highlights, Harper and the Watkins family lived in proximity of slave pens and auction buildings (marked with red placemarks). To the young Harper, they were constant reminders of the horrors of slavery and Maryland’s firm status as a slave state. Baltimore and its institutions that supported human bondage shaped Harper’s worldview.

Harper and the Watkins family lived among Black Baltimoreans who contributed to their community. For the most part, Black householders in Baltimore worked as laborers, caulkers, draymen, mariners, sawyers, and brickmakers. Others made a living with their crafts, such as barbery, shoemaking, and carpentry. These lines of work, considered skilled trades, often rendered them better off than common laborers. On the other hand, Black women were often relegated to domestic work and were thus listed as washerwomen and cooks. Others worked as midwives, and a small number ran boarding houses, eating rooms, and cake shops. Black women with small businesses were far and few in between, and they kept spaces where Black people could congregate and socialize in peace. Antebellum Black spaces thus served as informal political spaces as well as places of refuge for freedom seekers. This map showcases Black Baltimoreans’ places of business by locating their approximate locations (marked with yellow placemarks). Although we have yet to verify whether or not they were involved with the Underground Railroad, it is important to note that these persons and places were part of Frances Harper’s and the Watkins’ world. One can also view what places looked like in Harper’s time with illustrations including rendering of the building and the block where the Watkins family lived from E. Sachse, & Co.’s bird’s eye view of the city of Baltimore.

Map Legend

Lastly, embedded on this map is Maryland’s county demographics from 1840, giving viewers an idea of the social make-up of Baltimore and the diverse status of the persons therein. To use this map, zoom out to get a bird’s eye view of the county outlines. Hover over a county and click to view its information.  “NW” stands for non-white, i.e. “NWFREE” means free persons who are not white and “NWSLAVE” refers to enslaved persons who are not white.

In 1850, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper moved to Ohio, where she began her teaching career independently. She taught at Union Seminary at Columbus, the first school established by the African Methodist  Episcopal Church. A few years later, she moved to Pennsylvania for another teaching job. In the same year, she published her collection of poems, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects. One of Harper’s most famous poems, “The Slave Mother: A Tale of the Ohio,” is set in Ohio, a free state. The poem expresses the anguish of an enslaved mother who tries to spare her children a life of enslavement. In 1860 she married Fenton Harper and settled in a farm at Hamilton County, Ohio, with Fenton’s three children from previous marriages. Fenton Harper died four years later, leaving Frances Harper widowed with four children, one—Mary–being her only biological child.

Explore the following pages to learn more about Harper’s life in Maryland and Ohio.