A Biography of Isaiah Thornton Montgomery

By LaFlorya Gauthier

In all the annals of slavery in the United States of America, there is no other story like that of the Montgomerys, they were freed by taking refuge in Ohio during the Civil War. Then they returned to the place of their bondage, legally freed by the Thirteenth Amendment.

They bought and operated the plantations of their bondage, plus an adjacent plantation, and won numerous prizes for their cotton. And although this experiment failed, the idea of a permanent home for blacks did not.

For Isaiah carried out his father’s lifelong plan of a permanent homeland for blacks and founded Mound Bayou, Mississippi in 1887.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Nov 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781489738189

LaFlorya Gauthier

The author has been a newspaper and magazine journalist, and a radio producer/announcer. As a radio producer she hosted and produced a program at Radio Canada International, Montreal, for the African market in English and French. As well, she did extensive free-lance work in both official languages. She was the producer and announcer for a weekly program in French at Radio Nord Joli, as well as a board member in St. Gabriel de Brandon, Quebec for seven years. She is a published author: “Whispers in the Sand”, published by Genesis Press, in three editions and translated into Swahili and also published by Ballantine Books; “Charlotte’s Tree” and “The Romance Writer’s Handbook” published by IUniverse, plus numerous other books with a publisher that has ceased publishing. (Therefore, all rights to books published with them have reverted to her). She was in charge of the English Language Service at Radio Senegal in Dakar for ten years and was educated at universities in the United States and Montreal. She was the founding president of the first romance writers association in Montreal: Writers Association for Romance and Mainstream (WARM). She is a member of and literary judge for Quebec Writer’s Federation, Montreal. Her Internet media connections are: eBay, Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, Google (also one of her Internet search engines), Pinterest, Yahoo and Amazon. Her new Website is under construction.

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Copyright © 2021 Laflorya Gauthier.

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ISBN: 978-1-4897-3819-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-3818-9 (e)

LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 11/08/2021

CONTENTS

Introduction

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Bibliography

Images

INTRODUCTION

T his is the story of a man who was most unusual for his time to say the least. He was better educated than many prominent whites in Mississippi at the time and because of that education, learned first with his family, later in the huge international Davis library, he had a profound and extremely advanced understanding of his environment and time.

His father always had the idea of establishing a place where blacks could have control of their own lives. With his two sons, Isaiah and Thornton, they temporarily realized it. However, with the failure of that attempt, the idea didn’t die, although it had to be put aside temporarily.

It is also the story of a slave family like no other in all the annals of slavery in the United States. The Montgomerys were freed by taking refuge in Ohio during the Civil War. Afterwards, they returned to the place of their bondage, legally freed by the Thirteenth Amendment. They bought and operated the plantations where they had been slaves, plus an adjacent plantation, and won numerous prizes for their cotton.

Benjamin Montgomery, Isaiah’s father, was the persistent planner behind all of this. He, too, was better educated than most of his contemporary white acquaintances. He had his own library and total access to the Davis extensive library. He designed and built devices of all kinds, owned companies, and constantly out maneuvered white businessmen and bureaucrats. His success provided comfort and security for the community.

Not only did his son, Isaiah, duplicate his father’s accomplishments for the permanent benefit of his race, but he also carried out his father’s ultimate plan of a homeland for blacks and founded Mound Bayou, Mississippi.

The Montgomerys achieved remarkable success, against all odds, in the Nineteenth Century Mississippi! They were quintessential examples of self-made men!

It has been said that Isaiah’s historical significance derives from his role as an African American accommodationist and entrepreneur. Through his 1890 address and his activities on behalf of Mound Bayou, he displayed a consistent belief that educational and economic advancement, not political activity offered the best means for African Americans to improve their plight. He carefully monitored his own actions and those of his fellow Mound Bayou citizens to ensure the continual support of the white community. As a result, he earned nearly universal acclaim from white Mississippians, and upon his death, local whites purchased a lavish headstone. In contrast, the reaction among the African American community was mixed and increasingly hostile after his death. The African American Mississippi politician Sidney Redmond declared fifty years after Montgomery’s speech that Montgomery would always be remembered as the Judas of his people. Montgomery’s actions, however, highlight the horrofic conditions for African Americans in Mississippi at the turn of the Century and demonstrate the pragmatic philosophy that was necessary for survival and limited success.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A lthough a principal resource for this book has been my own collection of material for more than thirty years and my own education, (having been born and raised in Mound Bayou). I also owe a huge debt to those who shared their knowledge, written and oral.

The late Andrew Carroll Isaac, Second World War veteran, politician, past president and member of national, state and local educational associations, board member of the Mississippi Association of Federal Education, The Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, member of the Mississippi State Democratic Executive Committee, Vice President of the Bolivar County Democratic Executive Committee and many other civic and social organizations.

The late Pauline Thompson Holmes, daughter of early settlers, President of the Historic Mound Bayou Foundation, the first black woman president of the American Legion Auxiliary, State of Mississippi, the second in the U.S. National chairwoman of a committee American Legion Auxiliary. She taught school in Mound Bayou for twenty-three years and served as the nutrichionist at The Delta Health Center there. She was a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, serving many roles. She was a past president and founding member of the Mound Bayou Civic Club.

The late Milton Crowe, son of early settlers, historian, business owner, town comptroller, journalist, church leader, known as Mr. Mound Bayou for his dedication and devotion to everything having to do with Mound Bayou.

None of them, of course, are responsible for the finished contents of this book. I alone bear that responsibility.

Edited by Dr. David Beito, Professor Emeritus, University of Alabama

DEDICATION

T his book is dedicated to the memory of Mound Bayou’s early settlers and their descendants.

CHAPTER ONE

J oseph Emery Davis, the son of a revolutionary war hero, was born December 10,1784 and became a noted attorney and planter, mentor and older brother of Jefferson Davis. He was born in Wilkes County, Georgia, the first child of Samuel Emery Davis and Jane Cook Davis. His family migrated to Kentucky in 1793 where Joseph found work in a general store and read law.

The family moved to Wilkinson County, Mississippi Territory in 1811. Admitted to the bar the next year, Davis established a lucrative law practice at Natchez and Greenville in Jefferson County, co-owned a mercantile firm, where he acquired slaves and land, cementing relations with many very wealthy and well connected citizens through his professional, social, educational and cultural activities. He eventually owned thousands of acres in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas.

Although tall, he was small-boned and non-violent, but he nevertheless, served in the state militia during the war of 1812. He was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention that preceded statehood for Mississippi in 1817 and drafted the final document. He was also elected to the state legislature.

He was elected president of the state bar association. He was a member of Trinity Episcopal Church and was interested in horse racing. As well, Davis promoted an interest in libraries and free masonary.

In 1818 he moved his father’s slaves and his family from Vicksburg, thirty miles south, by road, to a peninsula in the Mississippi River. Then known as Palmyra Bend, it was formed by the river’s flow in a twenty-two mile arc.

He was known to be very generous to the point of extravagance. He was a family patriarch, maintaining strong family ties and many family members lived with him most of the time. He also had a strong love of money and influence.

He had gray eyes and brown hair before it turned gray. He also had a very elegant aristocratic bearing. He dressed conservatively, and was opinionated. But he had a talent for law. Although he did not have much formal education, he was a voracious reader, creative and imaginative. His favorite subjects were governmental law and politics. He subscribed to the London Times, various other British publications, Richmond, Charleston and New Orleans newspapers. Favorite volumes in his library included Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Elliot’s Debates.

Politically he was a Democrat and he believed in the system of slavery, that slaves needed the whites to help them attain certain levels before they could compete with whites. He was fair to everyone.

He became one of the richest men in the state of Mississippi, and was very much involved in the State’s affairs. He was a leader and most of his friendships included the most influential people of Mississippi. He was energetic, dignified, and friendly but not a gregarious person. He was highly motivated, an extravert and opinionated, with no real sense of humor.

He educated his younger brother, Jefferson and saw himself as a father figure to him: he was twenty-three years older. At the end of 1827, after his brother Isaac was injured in a hurricane, and in which whose son lost his life, Joseph took up residence at what became to be known as Hurricane Plantation. Just before doing so, he married Eliza Van Benthusen. He was forty-two, she was sixteen. He already had three out-of-wedlock daughters, aged four to fifteen at the time.

He eventually acquired a large portion of the land and by 1835 gave nearby acreage to Jefferson, as part of their late father’s estate. He helped him establish his own plantation: Brierfield. Davis Bend eventually became the site of six large plantations, the growth of the Davis holdings led to it being renamed Davis Bend. Hurricane Plantation had five miles of river frontage and its own landing in the Mississippi River.

Within a few years Joseph added other slaves to those he had inherited from his father, diminished his cattle holdings and bought up more land.

Joseph’s philosophy of life and life style was instrumental in creating the kind of person he became and he was instrumental in forming the kind of persons the Montgomerys turned out to be. He saw in them all the characteristics which makes great men and helped them attain their goals.

At a time when mistreatment of slaves was common he encouraged all of his slaves to develop their skills and helped them do so.

He believed completely in the utopian philosophy of the British industrialist and social reformer Robert Owens whom he met while traveling in a carriage between Pennsylvania and New York in 1824. He had read Owen’s A New View of Society, as well as the reviews of Owen’s successful tours in the U.S. before they met. Joseph was fascinated by Owen’s philosophy.

Therefore, for his slaves, he preferred persuasion rather than compulsion. With such a philosophy to guide him, he created a plantation based on what he thought to be a community of cooperation.

Joseph Davis was one of the few planters in the south, during that period, to experiment with the idea of self-government for his slaves. His slaves were permitted to operate a slave court that managed plantation discipline. His field hands enjoyed good working conditions, comfortable living quarters, adequate food and clothing and a level of medical care unknown to poor whites. Jefferson Davis carefully studied his brother’s method of slave management and agronomic techniques, although he didn’t always agree with him.

For example, once he went to Natchez with his slave James Pemberton, to advise him, and with Joseph where he bought ten carefully selected slaves. He put Pemberton in charge. Pemberton was known for his shrewd understanding of the black and white man’s psychology and was indispensable to Jefferson. By 1838 the two brothers owned about 188 slaves. Initially they owned many cattle but they gradually turned to clearing the land for cotton, which replaced the cattle and became the main plantation economy.

At Brierfield, Jefferson typically rose at dawn with James Pemberton, to direct the slaves Joseph had sold him. The brothers met at noon, at Hurricane, to discuss the mornings work. Joseph kept an eye on everything although he had overseers.

Jefferson soon married his first wife, Sarah Knox Taylor, daughter of Zachary Taylor. They built the first Brierfield in 1838 and it was she who named it. It was one story, built in a grove of oaks. The bedrooms opened onto a surrounding gallery of paved bricks encased in latticework. The doors were six feet wide. Sarah died three months after their marriage of malaria. She was twenty-one years old.

Jefferson later left Brierfield ill and bereaved. To help him recover, Joseph sent him and Pemberton to Havana, Cuba. Pemberton would bathe Jefferson on the deck of the sail boat which made the trip more soothing. They were away for six months. When Jefferson returned to Brierfield he was a changed man. Jefferson and James Pemberton’s relationship was one of devoted friends. They always observed the utmost ceremony and politeness between them.

For example, James never sat in Jefferson’s presence, without being asked and Jefferson always asked him and sometimes got him a chair.

James was dignified, quiet, of a fine manly appearance. At the end of a day’s work, Jefferson always gave him a cigar.

Before Jefferson married his second wife, Varina Howell in 1845, he took her to Brierfield to meet Pemberton and the other blacks. She returned as his eighteen year old wife where she apparently won over the loyalty of his slaves. Jefferson was thirty six at the time.

Jefferson became interested in politics first as a delegate to a state convention in 1840, then running for office in 1843. When he won the election as a United States Senator, he trained Pemberton to manage Brierfield during his absence in Washington, D. C.

Pemberton was a very silent man but always to the point when he spoke. He died of pneumonia in 1850.

The new house that Jefferson built for his second wife, Varina, at Brierfield, was completed in 1852. It was set in a natural park, almost in the center of Jefferson’s tract. It was one and three quarters of a mile southeast of Hurricane and faced the southwest. It was set back one quarter mile from the Mississippi River on a high undulation of sandy loam. But the river wasn’t visible from the house, which was painted white with spreading balancing wings; each with a separate veranda. There were twelve Doric columns which supported the roof of the façade.

The windows were designed for southern comfort; from the floor almost to the ceiling. There were numerous chimneys and open fireplaces in every room with white marble mantels in the parlors and dining room. While the house was being built Varina stayed nearby in an older cottage and personally supervised the work on the house.

Brierfield was never deeded to Jefferson by his brother