Mary Sampson Patterson Leary Langston

Mary Sampson Leary Langston
Bornc. 1835
Fayetteville, North Carolina, U.S.
Died1915 (aged 79–80)
Lawrence, Kansas, U.S.
Spouses
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​
(m. 1858⁠–⁠1859)​
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(m. 1869⁠–⁠1892)​
Children3, including Carolina Langston
RelativesLangston Hughes (grandson)

Mary Sampson Patterson Leary Langston (born Mary Sampson Patterson; c. 1835 – 1915) was an American abolitionist, the first African-American woman to attend Oberlin College, and wife of notable abolitionists Lewis Sheridan Leary and Charles Henry Langston. She was also the grandmother of Langston Hughes and raised him for part of his childhood, inspiring his future work.

Early life

Mary Sampson Patterson was born in North Carolina in about 1835. She claimed that her grandparents had been a French trader and a Cherokee woman.[1][2] She was born free, and was raised as the ward of a mason and his wife.[3] Her father, John E. Patterson,[4] would take in slaves as apprentices, in order to help them obtain freedom, and then helped them move to the North.[1]

In 1855, Patterson survived an attempted enslavement. Following this, she moved to Oberlin, Ohio in 1857,[5] where she was the first black woman to attend the preparatory department of Oberlin College.[6] Accounts vary as to whether she attended the college itself.[3][7]

Patterson married fellow Fayetteville-native Lewis Sheridan Leary,[8][9] a fugitive slave and abolitionist, on May 12, 1858.[7][10][5] While little is known of their courtship, they may have known each other as children.[5] Shortly after their marriage, she abandoned her studies.[7] Together, they operated a station on the Underground Railroad.[11] In 1859, Leary went on a trip, leaving behind an either new mother or pregnant Mary.[3][7] He participated in John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, and was killed in the aftermath.[12][13][14] According to Hughes, a friend returned Leary's shawl to Mary and was treasured throughout the rest of her life, though this story may be apocryphal.[7][15] The shawl, which some theorize Leary used to create a quilt,[16] accompanied Hughes throughout his life.[5] Leary advocated for the reburial of the victims of the raid.[17]

Shortly before or after the raid on Harper's Ferry, Leary gave birth to a daughter. Her name varies based on source, including Lois, Louise, Loise, and Louisa.[18] She temporarily lived with her parents,[4] and abolitionists Wendell Phillips and James Redpath aided Leary in raising her daughter. Over the next several years, Leary unsuccessfully attempted to obtain a job teaching freed slaves, and was offered and turned down the opportunity to emigrate to Haiti as an honored guest.[3] In the 1860 Census, she was listed as a milliner.[19]

On January 18, 1869, Mary married one of Lewis's friends and fellow abolitionist Charles Henry Langston.[20][21] In 1872, they moved to Lawrence, Kansas.[22] The couple bought a house near Kansas University, where they opened a grocery store and raised a foster son, Desalines Langston.[20]

In 1870, the Langstons had a son, Nathaniel Turner Langston, named after Nat Turner. In January 1873, they had another child, Carolina "Carrie" Mercer Langston.[7][3][23]

In 1892, Charles died, leaving Mary "nothing but a pair of gold earrings and a mortgaged house."[20] In 1897, their son Nat Turner was killed in an accident at the flour mill where he worked.[3]

Later life

Carrie Langston married James Hughes, but they quickly separated, though not before having a son, Langston. Carrie and Langston returned to Kansas to live with Mary, as Hughes moved to Mexico to work as confidential secretary for the general manager of the Pullman Company.[3][24] In 1906 Carrie left Langston with her mother so that she could pursue her own career.[20] Although Langston briefly lived with his mother at various points throughout his childhood, he was primarily raised by Mary and her friends, James and Mary Reed.

Mary raised Langston in poverty and relative isolation due to the segregation in Lawrence.[25] Hughes also recalled that, unlike other African American women in Lawrence, she would not work for others, and so did not take jobs like taking in washing or going out to cook for white families.[1] Often they would eat dandelion greens for dinner. In order to pay their mortgage, Mary would rent their home to college students, and she and Langston moved in with the Reeds.[20][26] However, her storytelling made a large impact on him. She read him stories from the Bible and Grimm's Fairy Tales, but also told him stories about slavery, the fight against slavery, and their family.

In 1915, Mary Leary Langston died, leaving Langston to be raised briefly by his mother and stepfather, and then by Mary's friends, the Reeds.[20] After her death, Hughes recalled[1]

Through my grandmother's stories always life moved, moved heroically toward an end. Nobody ever cried in my grandmother's stories. They worked, or schemed, or fought. But no crying. When my grandmother died, I didn't cry, either. Something about my grandmother's stories (without her ever having said so) taught me the uselessness of crying about anything.

Legacy

Aunt Sue has a head full of stories.
Aunt Sue has a whole heart full of stories.
Summer nights on the front porch
Aunt Sue cuddles a brown-faced child to her bosom
And tells him stories.
–Langston Hughes, from "Aunt Sue's Stories"

Langston Hughes was inspired by his grandmother in much of his poetry, most notably "Aunt Sue's Stories."[26][27] The character of the story-telling grandmother is also present in Not Without Laughter in the character of Aunt Hager.[28]

Mary Langston also served as inspiration for Erica Dawson's poem "Langston Hughes's Grandma Mary Writes a Love Letter to Lewis Leary Years after He Dies Fighting at Harper's Ferry."[29]

References

  1. ^ a b c d "The Big Sea by Langston Hughes, from Project Gutenberg Canada". gutenberg.ca. Retrieved March 16, 2023.
  2. ^ Kinshasa, Kwando Mbiassi (2006). Black Resistance to the Ku Klux Klan in the Wake of the Civil War. McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-2467-2.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Rampersad, Arnold (2002). The life of Langston Hughes. Volume I, 1902-1941. I, too, sing America (2nd ed.). Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-976086-2. OCLC 868068746.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  4. ^ a b Bishir, Catherine W. (November 1, 2013). Crafting Lives: African American Artisans in New Bern, North Carolina, 1770-1900. UNC Press Books. ISBN 978-1-4696-0876-1.
  5. ^ a b c d Zink, Adrian (2017). Hidden history of Kansas. Charleston, SC. ISBN 978-1-62585-889-4. OCLC 995308189.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  6. ^ Cheney, Anne. "The Talented Tenth and Long-Headed Jazzers." Lorraine Hansberry, Twayne, 1984, pp. 35-54. Twayne's United States Authors Series 430. Gale eBooks.
  7. ^ a b c d e f "This Shawl Belonged to Langston Hughes (True) and Was Worn by One of John B". The National Endowment for the Humanities. Retrieved March 16, 2023.
  8. ^ Copeland,John A.,,Jr. (1859). Letter from john A. copeland, jr., to woodson M. habbert Retrieved from Proquest
  9. ^ Kornblith, Gary J. (2018). Elusive utopia : the struggle for racial equality in Oberlin, Ohio. Carol Lasser. Baton Rouge. ISBN 978-0-8071-6956-8. OCLC 1023084688.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  10. ^ Meltzer, Milton (1997). Langston Hughes. Stephen Alcorn. Brookfield, Conn.: Millbrook Press. ISBN 9780761302056. OCLC 36315839.
  11. ^ Langston Hughes. Great Neck Publishing. ISBN 9781429806367. OCLC 939595828.
  12. ^ Ranney, D. (May 9, 2000). TOUR OF BROWN SITES DRAWS DOZENS OUT. Journal-World (Lawrence, KS), p. B3
  13. ^ Rampersad, Arnold. "Hughes, Langston." Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, edited by Colin A. Palmer, 2nd ed., vol. 3, Macmillan Reference USA, 2006, pp. 1077-1079. Gale eBooks.
  14. ^ Jr, Albert Fortney (January 15, 2016). The Fortney Encyclical Black History: The World's True Black History. Xlibris Corporation. ISBN 978-1-5144-3361-4.
  15. ^ Morris, J. Brent (September 2, 2014). Oberlin, Hotbed of Abolitionism: College, Community, and the Fight for Freedom and Equality in Antebellum America. UNC Press Books. ISBN 978-1-4696-1828-9.
  16. ^ Gruner, Mariah (June 1, 2021). "Enslavement and Its Legacies: "May the points of our needles prick": Antislavery Needlework and the Cultivation of the Abolitionist Self". Winterthur Portfolio. 55 (2–3): 85–120. doi:10.1086/718714. ISSN 0084-0416. S2CID 248325200.
  17. ^ Quarles, Benjamin (1974). Allies for Freedom: Blacks and John Brown. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-501770-0.
  18. ^ Lubet, Steven (August 27, 2015). The 'Colored Hero' of Harper's Ferry: John Anthony Copeland and the War against Slavery. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-316-35220-5.
  19. ^ "Mary Sampson Patterson Langston, Marker". luna.ku.edu. Retrieved March 30, 2023.
  20. ^ a b c d e f Rhynes, Martha E. (2002). I, too, sing America : the story of Langston Hughes. Greensboro, N.C.: Morgan Reynolds. ISBN 1-883846-89-7. OCLC 48473854.
  21. ^ Douglas, S. A. (June 9, 1863). Letter from sattira A. douglas to robert hamilton, June 9, 1863. Weekly Anglo-African Retrieved from Proquest.
  22. ^ Shannon, Ronald (June 2008). Profiles in Ohio History: A Legacy of African American Achievement. iUniverse. ISBN 978-0-595-47716-6.
  23. ^ Christensen, Lawrence O.; Foley, William E.; Kremer, Gary (October 1999). Dictionary of Missouri Biography. University of Missouri Press. ISBN 978-0-8262-6016-1.
  24. ^ Bloom, Harold, ed. (1998). Langston Hughes : comprehensive research and study guide. Broomall, PA: Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 9780585244662. OCLC 44963345.
  25. ^ Dean, Virgil W. (October 12, 2015). Lawrence. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4396-5358-6.
  26. ^ a b Miller, R. Baxter, ed. (2013). Langston Hughes. R. Baxter Miller. Ipswich, Mass.: Salem Press. ISBN 9781429837729. OCLC 816638054.
  27. ^ Poets, Academy of American. "Aunt Sue's Stories by Langston Hughes - Poems | Academy of American Poets". poets.org. Retrieved March 16, 2023.
  28. ^ Hill-Lubin, Mildred A. (October 1991). "The African-American Grandmother in Autobiographical Works by Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes, and Maya Angelou". The International Journal of Aging and Human Development. 33 (3): 173–185. doi:10.2190/4XJ4-42N4-LD4J-12ER. ISSN 0091-4150. PMID 1955211. S2CID 3158435.
  29. ^ "Langston Hughes's Grandma Mary Writes a Love Letter to Lewis Leary Years after He Dies Fighting at Harper's Ferry, Erica Dawson". blackbird.vcu.edu. Retrieved March 30, 2023.