Remembering Ellen Garrison Jackson

Caption: A likeliness of Ellen Garrison Jackson. No known photograph exists of her. Photo Credit: Robbins House Museum, Concord, Massachusetts.

When driving through the town of Port Deposit, Maryland, one sees a community that has not changed much over 100 years. Many of its buildings were constructed with granite that was mined from the hills surrounding it. Some of them have seen better days. If you are curious about history, you probably wonder what some of these buildings would say if they could talk. In the town's 200+ years of existence, it has certainly seen a lot. Many people have come and gone through the ages -- one such figure was a school teacher and civil rights activist of her time who has long been forgotten. Her name? Ellen Garrison Jackson.

Caption: Black and white photo of a house in Port Deposit, Maryland. Photo taken: April 2020.

Ellen Garrison was originally from New England. According to the Robbins House Museum in Concord, Massachusetts, Ellen was born in 1823. She was born a free woman but her grandparents were born into bondage. She attended integrated local public schools in Concord. In the first half of the 19th Century, Concord was the home to many transcendentalist thinkers such as the Alcotts, the Thoreaus, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is not unlikely during this time that she knew of them, or even interacted with them on the streets of the town. People such as Frederick Douglass and John Brown were also frequent visitors to Concord. In an incident described in a pamphlet published by the Robbins House Museum, Ellen's activism started at an early age:

As Concord prepared for its bicentennial celebration in 1835, 12-year-old Ellen told her teacher that her mother had forbidden her to walk in the procession. As the only black child in her school, Ellen had been ill-treated and “crowded out” of a previous parade. Eventually, Ellen and her mother relented and Ellen walked hand in hand with her classmate Abba Prescott “through the day, beneath the gaze of curiosity, surprise, ridicule and admire, on.”

Caption: The Robbins House Museum in Concord, Massachusetts. Ellen Garrison Jackson was born and grew up in this house which was built in 1823. Photo taken: August 9, 2019.

As a young woman, Ellen became a teacher and eventually ended up in Newport, Rhode Island where she taught for many years. Towards the end of the American Civil War, the federal government made its first legitimate efforts to extend civil rights to African Americans by founding the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, more commonly known as The Freedmen's Bureau. One of its many missions included the establishment of schools throughout the southern states, including Maryland and Delaware. In Cecil County alone, known Freedmen's Bureau schools were established in Elkton, Chesapeake City, Rowlandsville, Cecilton, and Port Deposit.

In a dissertation written by University of Georgia Ph.D. candidate, Christina Lenore Davis, titled The Collective Identities of Women Teachers in Black Schools in the Post-bellum South a thorough analysis is done of Ellen's papers which are curated by The Robbins House Museum. In her research, Davis found that Ellen applied to the American Missionary Association as early as 1863 to serve as a teacher in schools for African American children in the south. When Ellen's application was approved, she was eventually assigned to teach in Port Deposit, Maryland. Davis states that Ellen taught two sessions of school daily along with running a night school for adults. It is also noted that she gave public speeches advocating for the rights of African Americans to an education and to raise money to pay rent for the school location, furniture, and supplies for her students. Davis also cites two incidents of resistance by members of the community including harassment by white children and the burning down of her boarding house in the middle of the night.

During her tenure teaching in Port Deposit, Ellen became one of the first to openly challenge laws that were meant to protect the rights of African Americans. One of the first pieces of civil rights legislation included the Civil Rights Act of 1866. According to the United States House of Representatives History, Art, and Archives website, the legislation guaranteed citizenship to all citizens born in the United States and that they were guaranteed the right to the "security of person and property."

In the spring of 1866, Ellen took a train from Port Deposit to Baltimore on personal business. She was accompanied by Mary Anderson, a fellow Freedmen's Bureau teacher at the Anderson Institute in Havre de Grace. When the two women were waiting to board a train home from Baltimore at the Train Depot for the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad, they were asked to leave the waiting room by the station master, who claimed the area was for white passengers only. When they refused to leave, the station master physically removed Ellen and Mary.

Caption: The former train depot of the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad, where Ellen Jackson and Mary Anderson were forcibly removed from the waiting area, located on present-day President Street, Baltimore, Maryland. Photo taken: February 2, 2022.

Mary was upset by the situation and wrote a letter to George J. Stannard, the commissioner in charge of the Freedmen's Bureau in Maryland. Davis' research states that Stannard encouraged Ellen to challenge this case in court to see “whether respectable people have rights which are to be respected.” This resulted in a hearing that was scheduled in front of the criminal court of Baltimore in May 1866. Unfortunately, the judge postponed the hearing by requesting a trial by jury. Davis states that the trial was never scheduled, but argues that even though this case held no legal ramifications, it was the first time that an African American citizen challenged the validity of federal government attempts at civil rights legislation.

Ellen continued to teach in Port Deposit until 1868. She eventually moved on to teach in Freedmen's Bureau schools in Virginia and North Carolina. Ultimately, she ended up moving to and teaching in Kansas where she died in 1892 at the age of 69.

As the title of this blog states, history surrounds you. This is just one example of the many stories that can be found by digging a little bit beneath the surface that can be tied into history. These stories such as Mary Ellen Garrison deserve to be told.

Caption: An art installation at The Robbins House Museum dedicated to Ellen Garrison Jackson. Concord, Massachusetts. Photo taken: August 9, 2019.

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