The first Black AMS Members: John W. Cromwell

John W. Cromwell
Jet Jan 6, 1972

John W. Cromwell
The Crisis May-Jun 2002

September 8, 1914 is a significant date for the American Mathematical Society. On this date, twenty-six years after the society's founding, it elected the first Black mathematician,  John W. Cromwell, Jr, to membership. This was no trivial matter. At the time, joining the AMS involved more than filling out form and paying a membership fee. Membership required securing the endorsement of two members and then a positive vote by the society's governing body. In this blogpost, we will take a look at who Cromwell was.

Notice that Cromwell was elected to AMS membership
AMS Bulletin, November 1914

John W. Cromwell, Jr. was born in Washington, D.C. on September 2, 1883. The family had risen to prominence during the years after the Civil War. His father, John W. Cromwell, Sr., was born enslaved in 1846 in Virginia, but his parents had been able to purchase the family's freedom while John, Sr. was a child, and he grew up free in Philadelphia. A young man at the end of the Civil War, the defeat of the Confederacy and the emancipation of slaves created unparalleled opportunities for him. He attended law school at the newly opened Howard University and then worked as a lawyer, government clerk, and journalist. By the time John, Jr. was born, the Cromwell family was part of D.C.'s elite Black society, and John, Sr. was a nationally recognized Black leader. He was even featured in a 1942 beer advertisement.

A beer advertisement featuring John W. Cromwell, Sr.
The Detroit tribune., June 27, 1942, p. 14

For school, John W. Cromwell, Jr. attended Howard University's college preparatory program. This was essentially a high school run by the university. John graduated in spring 1901. He then enrolled at Dartmouth College.

I haven't been able to find much information about Cromwell's experience on campus. Black students had attended Dartmouth since the early 1800s, although in small numbers. He lived on campus in a single suite in Elm House.

Whatever his experience was like, John was able to succeed academically. He won a campus prize, the Thayer Prize, for mathematical excellence. (At the time, the award was given for "excellence in analytic geometry and calculus." It's unclear whether this was based on class performance or an examination.) He graduated with an A.B. degree in 1906 and then remained at the college for another year to complete an M.A. degree.

After graduating from Dartmouth, Cromwell worked at General Electric. However, he only stayed there a year. He left to return to Washington D.C. and teach high school. He first taught at the M Street High School, but most of his time was spent at the Dunbar High School. Dunbar was an elite school that ranked among the best Black high schools in the nation. 

In the earlier 1920s, Cromwell became interested in accounting. He taught himself the subject and then passed the CPA examination. He was the first Black Certified Public Accountant. However, he did not immediately begin working as an accountant. Instead, he continued to teach at Dunbar. 

Cromwell's teaching career came to an end in October 1930. That month, he resigned his position. His reasons are unclear, although those were clearly contentious. Several years later, Cromwell tried to get himself reinstated as a public school teacher and went so far as to file a lawsuit, but he was unsuccessful.

After leaving the teaching profession, Cromwell worked for a year as controller for Howard University and then, finally, used his CPA license and began working as an accountant. He remained in Washington D.C., working as an accountant, until he retired. Cromwell died of a heart attack in 1981 at age 88. 

Cromwell is best known as the first Black CPA, and he does not appear to have been particularly involved in the AMS or in mathematics more generally. Yet his election to the American Mathematical Society is certainly notable event. Especially during the 1950s and 1960s when conflict over racial segregation became intense, structural barriers limited Black mathematicians participation in the society. Cromwell's early membership is testament to the fact that Black mathematicians have long been part of the society. 

Further exploring Cromwell election to AMS membership may shed further light on the experiences of early twentieth century Black mathematicians. Something interesting appears to have happened regarding Cromwell. He remained the only Black AMS member for seven years, until a number professors at HCBUs were elected. Why there such a long gap in time? Addressing this question will require someone to dig deeper into the AMS archives.

John W. Cromwell at Dartmouth
Black at Dartmouth

John W. Cromwell, Jr. and two sisters as children
Credit: Adelaide M. Cromwell

Sources

1. "Teacher seeking to be reinstated." Evening star, October 31, 1935, Page B-1.

2. Evening star, October 31, 1935, Page B-1.

T. E. Hart: From Germany to South Carolina

A depiction of Heidelberg in the 19th century
From A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain

Heidelberg, which was to be the home of T. E. Hart for the next five years, was a college town nestled in a river valley in the Odenwald mountains. While the city was German, Germany, at the time, was a patchwork of small predominately German-speaking states. Heidelberg was part of the Grand Duchy of Baden which was approximately the location of the modern federal state of Baden.

Beyond a name, Heidelberg University had little in common with American universities. While American universities largely focused on imparting to young men a basic knowledge of academic subjects, Heidelberg, like most German universities, was place where people not only disseminated but also created knowledge. Heidelberg University was one of the oldest in Germany, and it had long been a major center for for scholarship in subjects like political science, law, and German studies. The 1850s saw major growth in math and scientific. The chemist Robert Bunsen (the man the Bunsen burner is named after) was employed in 1852, and his colleague, the physicist Gustav Kirchhoff, was brought in two years later. In 1856, they were joined by Kirchoff's former supervisor, the mathematician Otto Hesse.

The university was a much more ambitious institution than the universities T. E. was familiar with. Like American schools such as Furman, the university was run by its faculty, but the Heidelberg faculty were much more accomplished. The typical professor had been elected to his chair after completing a dissertation and spending years, if not decades, holding in low-level educational and research positions. Except for the title, American professors had little in common with their German counterparts. 

Student life was also quite different in Germany. While American college students typically lived on campus under close supervision by the faculty and studied a narrow, manditory curriculum, German students enjoyed a great degree of freedom. At Heidelberg, students had to pay a small fee to enroll and were then allowed to attend whatever lectures they found interesting. Most students had completed the German gymnasium, so they arrived at the university with a strong educational background that had prepared them to attend advanced lectures on topics of personal interest. Students lived off-campus in private dwellings and were free to enjoy a boat ride down the Neckar river or to coffee and beer in the gardens of the Heidelberg Palace. In contrast, simply visiting a bar-room or other place where "spirituous or intoxicating liquor"was sold was grounds for suspension at Furman University. 

A German professor socializing with his students
From A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain

At Heidelberg, Hart's studies focused on the mathematics and the natural science. Heidelberg students did not receive grades for coursework completed. Instead, they received by passing comprehensive exams, and Hart passed exams in mathematics, chemistry, and physics. 

The late 1860s were an exciting time to study mathematics at Heidelberg. Hart's classmates included a number of accomplished mathematicians. Paul De Bois-Reymond, Heinrich Weber, and Jakob Lüroth all completed dissertations under Hesse's supervision during this time. Weber later recalled what it was like attending Hesse's lectures: 

Hesse lectured freely and without written notes, but he was exceptionally clear and easy to understand. He taught two semesters of differential calculus and integral calculus during which he also covered the foundations of the theory of differential equations and the analytic geometry of the plane and space. He conveyed to everyone the spirit of symmetry and elegance which he so loved. He also taught Mechanics, Calculus of Variations, and a course titled "Encyclopedia of Mathematics" in which we learned the foundations of the so-called "algebraic analysis," combinatorics, series, higher equations. Of particular interest were the weekly exercise sections where Hesse primarily dealt with geometric questions.

A depiction of a classroom in Heidelberg
From A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain

Only a few months after Hart arrived at Heidelberg, his world was turned upside-down by events in America. In October 1860, Abraham Lincoln was declared president, and the state of South Carolina responded by declaring that it was leaving the Union. On January 9, 1861, political leaders in South Carolina demonstrated that they were willing to support their decision by military force if necessary. An unarmed civilian merchant ship, the Star of the West, was sent to Charleston Harbor to resupply a federal army base. This was seen as challenge to secession, and cadets from the Citadel Academy responded by opening fire on the ship. The ship was struck several times, and although the damage was not serious, the captain abandoned his plans to resupply the army base and departed. 

The shots fired on the Star of the West were the first shots of the Civil War. The moment that cadets had been trained for was upon them. Academy graduates turned out in large numbers for Confederate military service. Of the twelve students T. E. Hart graduated with, only one did not serve in the army: a student (J. J. Jenkins) who had died seven years earlier. Some southerners in Germany even returned home to serve in the army. John Julius Pringle, a Heidelberg law student from a Georgetown county rice planation, ran a blockade in order to return to South Carolina and help defend the state.

Hart remained in Germany for the duration of the war. This was no small matter. The Hart family had everything to lose. A Union victory meant the loss of the workforce they enslaved and, with it, the fortunes they had accumulated. Hart's brothers, John Lide and Jesse Hartwell, served as officers in the Confederate army. Both paid dearly for their support of the Confederacy. Both died in 1864 of wounds sustained in battle. 

I haven't been able to any information about T. E. Hart's decision to remain in Germany. It may be that there is not much there. Traveling from Germany to South Carolina during a civil war war no small matter, and Hart was already quite busy. His wife gave birth to his first child, Sophie L, during the second year of the war. A second child, Louise S., was born in 1865. 

Whatever his reasons, Hart flourished as a student. In March 1866, after passing oral examinations and submitted his dissertation Elemente Der Geometry und der Gerade Linie, he was awarded the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy. This was a high honor. His dissertation compared favorable with the best mathematical research being done in America. 

Any enjoyment Hart took over his academic achievements was tempered. When he returned to the United State in 1866, he found his world turned upside down. The state of South Carolina was in ruins, two of his brothers and many of his former classmates had been killed, and his family's financial were ruined. To add to this, his wife died on August 1. 

Hart did his best carry on despite these catastrophic events. Furman University has closed during the Civil War, and when it reopened in 1866, Hart was hired as the professor of chemistry and natural philosophy. He was reunited with his former classmate and brother-in-law J. F. Lanneau, who was now professor of mathematics and astronomy. Hart began his position at a difficult time. Not only had Furman's finances been devastated by the war, but the state government was undergoing earthshaking changes. In 1868, the state was required to ratify a new constitution which enfranchise Black men. The first election held under that constitution resulting in a legislature that included substantial numbers of former slaves and largely excluded the planters who had dominated politics in the antebellum. Perhaps in an effort to escape the resulting turmoil, Hart spent the 1867-68 academic year teaching at college in Kentucky. (The name of the college has gone unrecorded.)

Hart returned to South Carolina in 1869 to serve as a professor at South Carolina College, or rather the University of South Carolina as it had been renamed. Hart must have had mixed feelings about his new position. A professorship at the university had long been the pinnacle of academic success for South Carolinians. This was still the case, but the university had been greatly diminished by the war. The student body was largely former Confederate soldiers. Their studies had been completely disrupted by the war, and many bore physical and mental scars from their military service. Hart and the students were surrounded by reminders that they were living in a state that had been defeated in war. A garrison of Union soldiers was stationed next door to campus, and only a short walk the university was the statehouse where former slaves and ex-Union soldiers served as legislators. 

In many ways, Hart embodied the pinnacle of antebellum South Carolina. A planter's son and the product of the Citadel Academy, he had gone on to complete advanced studies at a center for scientific research and shown that he could hold his own among men who had been educated in Germany's excellent gymnasium system. None of these appears to matter to the public in Reconstruction-era South Carolina. 

Although the press closely followed developments at the university, it paid little attention to Hart. Shortly after he was hired, The Charleston daily news published an article on developments at the university. The bulk of the article was spent deploring how political developments were dragging down what had been an institution with  "an enviable reputation for its high standard of character and scholarship." While Hart's election was mentioned, nothing was said of his qualifications except that "we hope to say more anon." In constant, four full paragraphs were developed to Hart's predecessor. 

The university was allowed carry on with little political interference for a few years. However, in 1872, state politicians began efforts to reorganize the university and put in alignment with their broader political goals. These included curbing the power of ex-planters and former Confederate and empowering freedmen. Most controversially, they began planning the racial integration of the university.

The board of trustees, dominated by politicians hostile to former Confederates, began hiring professors who were more politically reliable. Professors like Hart who had been supportive of the Confederacy became worried about their professorship, and many feared that it was only a matter of time before there was a wholesale replacement of the faculty. 

Once again, personal tragedy struck Hart while he was struggling with heavy professional and political challenges. He began experiencing mobility issues. Around the time he returned from Europe, he began walking with a slight limp. The limp worsened, and he began experiencing serious health problems and was often bedridden. His health was so bad that often had to hold his class at his home.

In June 1872, Hart left the university. Some histories of the university state that he was removed by the trustees for political reasons, but contemporaneous records do not show any political concerns surrounding his departure, and certainly, Hart's health problems were rendering him unable to teach. Regardless of why he left, the circumstances surrounding it were ignominious. Hart was one of the best educated men in the state, and one of the few who had made an original research contribution, yet when it announced the hiring of Hart's replacement, the Anderson intelligencer erroneously called him "John Heart" and simply reported that he had left.

Hart's departure was the end of academic career. His health problems worsened and became partially paralyzed. He spent the remained of his life a bedridden invalid. He and his two daughters moved to Hartsville to live with his sister, Mary, and her husband, Thomas C. Law. On December 3, 1891, while living in Charleston with one of his wife's relatives (Charles B. Lanneau), Hart died of a heart attack. He is buried in First Baptist Churchyard in the town of Darlington. 

Sources

1. "Hotel Arrivals." The daily phoenix. [volume], August 11, 1869, Image 2

2. "Hotel Arrivals." The daily phoenix. [volume], September 01, 1869, Image 2

3. "The South Carolina University." The Charleston daily news. [volume], September 20, 1869, Image 2

4. "The South Carolina University." Abbeville press. [volume], September 24, 1869, Image 2

5. "The South Carolina University." The daily phoenix. [volume], October 01, 1869, Image 2

6. "Recipes for the Working Christian." The working Christian. [volume], May 19, 1870, Image 3

7. "Our Correspondent and the South Carolina University." The daily phoenix. [volume], January 17, 1872, Image 2

8. "The University of South Carolina." The Anderson intelligencer. [volume], June 27, 1872, Image 2

Spartanburg under Presidential Reconstruction

The arrival of Union soldiers in Spartanburg in April 1865 marked the end of the Civil War for the region. Spartanburg County had undoubtably suffered a devastating military loss. Civil government had collapsed, and the entire state had been placed under military rule. The economy was in shambles as the emancipation of slaves – the main source wealth for white men – had wiped out the finances of the wealthiest men in the area and disrupted labor. Although Spartanburg was not the site of any battles, a majority of white men had served in Confederate army, and many had been killed or permanently injured. 

One of the few sources of hope was the nature of the economy. While Spartanburg County unquestionably had been a slave society, its economy was less dependent on slavery than many other parts of the south. A large number of residents were small farmers who owned no slaves, and the economy was relatively diverse. The region was home to ironworks and cotton mills, 

Despite all the ink that was later spilt complaining about "bayonet rule," military rule was mild. The garrison stationed in Spartanburg village was small (twenty-five soldiers in May 1866), and there appear to have been few tensions. The only incident documented by the town council was one in November 1865. Two white men (William Spencer and James Ally) tried to provoke a "general riot" and "raise a difficulty" with some Union soldiers, but the incident does not appear to have any great political significance. The men pled "guilty but drunk" and were fined fifteen dollars plus court costs. In May 1866, the garrison was temporarily removed, and Carolina Spartan newspaper that it "would have preferred that [they] should have remained" as they had been well-behaved. 

For many residents, the divisive politics surrounding the war and secession were an unaffordable luxury. Much more important was restoring civil order and the economy. The prominent Spartanburg politician James Farrow expressed the views of many in a speech he delivered in October 1865. Farrow was running for US senate in the first election held since the war, and he was using the occasion to present himself as a candidate. He argued that there were no differences between the candidates on policy: everyone was running on a platform on restoring civil government and "rebuilding our shattered fortunes." The candidates differed in how palatable their political records were to northern politicians. Like all other candidates, Farrow had served the Confederacy. His strength, he argued, was that he had been pardoned by the president and had advocated for accepting the results of the war as a "settlement of the great issue."

Farrow did not explain what he meant by "the great issue." He likely meant the right of states to secede and perhaps also the right of the federal government to outlaw slavery. What he almost certainly did not mean was extending equal rights to formerly enslaved people. That remained an anathema to white elites. The Carolina Spartan newspaper expressed the opinions of many by publishing the poem "Harry Hopeful Sees the Spartan." The newspaper had closed at the end of the war and recently reopened under a new editor. Most of the poem described how the paper had changed, but it also described the political changes that had recently taken place:

Other changes here [in the newspaper] I find,
But of a very different kind,
Not in the "style of publication."
But in the way they work the nation
So that any moment you may choose,
The Legislative Acts peruse;
Our folks (I fear 'twas by compulsion)
Have made somewhat of a revulsion
Like some folks North (who think it right)
Tha've made the Black, as good as white, 
And as a good old [expletive deleted] said
"It puts the Devil in their head,"
Stealing is common thro' the land,
I guess, the bottom rail was rotten,
So they want the top one on bottom,

A close look at the county's political leaders sheds light into regional political developments. Efforts to restore civil government began in fall 1865 when voters elected delegates to a state-wide constitutional convention and then legislators under the new state constitution.

Freedmen were excluded from voting, so predictably all elected officials were white southerners. However, a close examination of the individuals shows some surprises. Only one of the men elected was a planter. That man was John Winsmith (not to be confused with his son, John C. Winsmith, who also was active in politics). Winsmith worked as a physician, but he also ran one of the largest plantations in the county. He had a deep personal investment in labor relations between planters and freedpeople. Prior to emancipation, he enslaved almost one-hundred people. His election also demonstrated the continued political influence of the county's traditional political leaders: before the war, Winsmith had served two terms in the state legislature.

Other antebellum politicians who were reelected were Gabriel Cannon, James Farrow, and John W. Carlisle. These men were not planters. Farrow and Carlisle were lawyers, while Cannon had ran a cotton manufacturing business. In particular, Cannon's economic interests were different from those of planter's like Winsmith. Cannon was less dependent on the labor of freedmen and more interested in state-supported economic developments like railroad construction.

Other elected officials were new to politics. Two of the men, Andrew Copeland and A. B. Woodruff, had run successful family farms, while M. C. Barnett and D. R. Duncan were professionals (a mechanic and a lawyer, respectively). All of them had served as officers in the Confederate army, and their military service likely had been their entry points into politics.

The hostility of white elites to the rights and interests of freedpeople ultimately doomed early efforts at Reconstruction in South Carolina, and the former Confederacy more generally. In national politics, there was widespread anger and frustration at the continued resistance to political changes in the former Confederate states. Congress refused to seat many ex-Confederates, including Spartanburg resident James Farrow, who won the election for US Congress. After Republicans swept the 1866 election, they imposed harsher conditions for the restoration of civil government. Martial law was restored to South Carolina, and Congress required the state to make further changes to the state constitution – including the enfranchisement of Black men – before civil government was restored.

In the long-term, white elites in Spartanburg County would realize their vision for the region. While freedpeople would ostensibly enjoy full political rights, they remained an economically disadvantaged group that was almost wholly excluded from political decision-making. Former planters would enjoy the cheap labor provided by a political and social system that forced former slaves to labor as sharecropper, while budding industrialists would benefit from development efforts that ultimately make the region a center for cotton manufacturing. 

The short-term impact was very different. Conflict over the enfranchisement of Black men would plunge the county into chaos and violence. Spartanburg would see some of the worst Ku Klux violence in the nation as well as the most punitive efforts by the federal government to curb racial and political violence. 

In his October 1865 speech, James Farrow spoke about his attitude towards the defeat of the Confederacy. He insisted that South Carolinians must accept that the dispute over states' rights and slavery had been settled by the Confederacy's military defeat, but at the same time, they must reject "the craven surrender of all thoughts, feelings and recollections of a Southerner." Voters, he advised, should behave like the King of India, Porus, when he was captured by Alexander the Great: voters should insist that they continued to be treated "like a king!" White elites in Spartanburg County would force the nation to continue treating them like kings but at terrible cost.

1. "Garrison Removed." The Carolina Spartan. [volume], May 03, 1866, Image 2

2. "A New Garrison" The Carolina Spartan. [volume], May 10, 1866, Image 2

4. The Carolina Spartan. [volume], June 28, 1866, Image 2

5. "Hopeful Harry See the Spartan." The Carolina Spartan. [volume], February 15, 1866, Image 2

6. "The War of Races" The Carolina Spartan. [volume], April 19, 1866, Image 2

7. "Speech of Hon. James Farrow." The Carolina Spartan. [volume], September 06, 1866, Image 2

8. "To the Voters of the Fourth Congressional District." The daily phoenix. [volume], October 29, 1865, Image 3

The Civil War at a Pine Bluff plantation

Map of Pine Bluff in 1869. The Taylor plantation was along the road circled in red
From Arkansas Digital Archive

In this post, we'll take another look at Pine Bluff, Arkansas during and after the Civil War. The freedman Robert Williams provided detailed testimony about his experience to the federal government as part of a request for financial restitution for provisions taken by the Union army.

The records of testimony that Robert and others gave need to be read critically. In order to receive compensation, Robert needed to not only convince federal officials that he was accurately describing provisions taken, but he also needed to show that he had remained loyal to the Union throughout the war. The federal officials he was speaking to were largely white men from the north who had served as army officers during the war. While they were hostile to the Confederacy and secession, their attitude towards freedpeople was mixed. Former Union soldiers generally hated the institution of slavery, but they also displayed racist attitudes towards freedpeople, viewing them as a "primitive" and often untrustworthy people who had been debased by enslavement. One interviewer described Robert in his records as a "darky witness." Nevertheless, the claim records provide unique insight into the life of freedpeople living around Pine Bluff.

Life at the outbreak of the Civil War

When the war broke out, Robert was in his late twenties and living on the plantation of John Taylor, one of the many plantations surrounding the town of Pine Bluff. He had been "purchased" by Taylor five years earlier. On the Taylor plantation, Robert was a "mechanic," meaning he performed skilled labor that included blacksmithing and sawing timber. He was able to start his own family. He married an enslaved woman named Charlotte, and together they were raising at least two children, their daughters Mary and Alice. 

The Taylor plantation was located about three miles southeast of the town of Pine Bluff, on the lower Monticello road and about two miles from the Arkansas River. The plantation was a large operation. Approximately one-hundred enslaved workers lived there, and they were supervised by John Taylor's family and a hired (white) overseer. Unfortunately, detailed records of the plantation are unavailable, but farming in the region generally focused on cotton and food provisions (potatoes, corn, and hogs).

Robert's enslaver, John Taylor, was an interesting figure. He and his wife had moved to Arkansas from Kentucky, likely to take advantage of the farm land that became cheaply available after the removal of local native peoples. He experienced considerable financial success. Between the land he owned and the hundred-some people he enslaved, he was one of the wealthiest men in the state. Yet he carried himself quietly and with grace. Residents who knew John described him as "quiet" and a "plain unassuming man" who "did not stand on his riches."

Most remarkably, Taylor opposed secession and was a staunch Unionist throughout the war even though a Union victory meant devastating personal financial loss. In general, political sentiments around Pine Bluff were mixed. The region was home to a number of plantations, and many of the planters supported secession and the Confederacy. But also living in the area were a number of committed Unionists.

The most prominent Unionists living in Pine Bluff included Anthony A. R. Rogers, an acquaintance of Taylor's. Rogers was a merchant who had moved to Arkansas from Tennessee in 1854. He was a delegate to the 1861 state secession convention, where he opposed leaving the Union. During the second year of the war (in fall 1862), he was arrested by Confederate officials on a charge of treason and imprisoned in Little Rock. Taylor traveled to the city to support Rogers and even offered to cover Rogers's bond. 

In general, Unionists like Rogers and Taylor were hated by many residents. John Taylor was called "Yankee John" by Confederates. Tensions became particularly bad in fall 1862 when the Union army began threatening Pine Bluff. Confederate forces were stationed near the town, and Taylor refused to provide them with food provisions, going so far as to bury meat that he had in storage in order to hide it from Confederate authorities. When the Confederate government began pressing enslaved workers into service for the war effort, Taylor warned the enslaved people on his plantation and ultimately sent them temporarily twenty miles away to Bayou Bartholomew so they could avoid Confederate officials. Robert Williams managed to avoid Confederate service, but others on the plantation were not as lucky. Lewis Byers was captured by "rebels" and forced to labor in support of the Confederate war effort until he escaped by running away.

John Taylor, himself, was once captured by bushwhackers (irregular Confederate troops). The bushwhackers were concerned that Taylor would report a raid that they were planning to Union forces. They took Taylor twenty miles away from his plantation, but then released him.

Union army forces began nearing Pine Bluff in the fall of 1863. That September, the Union army occupied the state capital of Little Rock after defeating defending Confederate forces. At the request of Pine Bluff residents, Union forces were sent to the town to protect it from the Confederate soldiers and bandits.  Union control of Pine Bluff meant the emancipation of all slaves in the area. To avoid this, most planters fled to Texas with their enslaved workers. Taylor was one of the few who stayed. He not only was aware that he stood to lose his enslaved workforce, but he was candid about this. He told Robert Williams that, "when Federal forces came [Robert] would be as free as [Taylor] was." True to his word, once the Union army took control of Pine Bluff, he told the people he enslaved that they were free, and he offered to employ them for pay if they remained on the plantation. Many of the newly freed workers continued to work for the Taylor family.

A few months after emancipation (in February 1864), Robert Williams reached a labor agreement with Taylor. In exchange for his services as a sawyer and blacksmith, Robert was given the right to farm a forty-acre plot of land known as the "gin field" (because it contained the plantation's cotton gin). On the land, Robert raised hogs and planted corn and cotton, a typical arrangement for a small farmer in Arkansas. 

Confederates were angry with Taylor for supporting the Union. Before they left Pine Bluff, Confederate soldiers burned seventy bales of cotton which they found on Taylor's farm, a major financial loss. Many white residents of Pine Bluff shunned the Taylor family, and they largely socialized with occupying Union army officers for the remainder of the war. John Taylor's wife, Mary, once heard rumors that Confederate soldiers serving under Major-General John S. Marmaduke were threatening to damage their plantation in retaliation for their Unionism, although nothing came of that. 

The Taylor plantation was protected from Confederate soldiers and bandits by Union soldiers living there. A picket of approximately thirty soldiers were stationed during the last years of the war. The soldiers lived in the former home of the overseer, near Robert Williams' farm. 

The Union soldiers were a mixed blessing. While they protected freedpeople and the Taylor family, they also were a considerable burden on households as they requisitioned food provisions. To supplement their rations, the Union soldiers regularly took potatoes, corn, hay, and hogs from the farms on the Taylor plantation. 

In August 1864, the corn Robert was growing became ready for harvesting, and the soldiers took it for food and fodder. Robert filed a complaint with the commanding officer. The officer was sympathetic. He explained that the soldiers needed the corn to supplement their provisions but offered to provide Robert with a receipt. However, before he did so, he and his troops were called away because of a rumored upcoming attack on Pine Bluff. While he was away, the commanding officer fell ill, and Robert never got the requested receipt.

Life after the war

Unfortunately, the information about Robert becomes thin after the Civil War ended. However, we can extract some information about conditions in Pine Bluff in the years after the war. John Taylor died the year after the war, but his wife Mary and children remained in the area. In 1870, Mary was living on the plantation with her mother-in-law and children as well as four Black women, likely woman who had been enslaved as domestic servants by the Taylor family. Robert and the Taylor family appeared to have remained on good terms. Robert remained farming on the Taylor plantation throughout the 1870s, and he testified in support of financial claims made by Mary. Mary and her son, Forman, returned the favor and testified for Robert. 

Robert also remained in contact with a number of the Union soldiers who had been stationed in Pine Bluff. Quite a few stayed in town after the war as civilians. The soldiers were mostly from out-of-state and were trying to start a new life for themselves. The ex-Union soldiers who testified in favor of Robert's claim were James F. Vaughn, James M. Mahar, and Samuel W. Mallory. The three men were originally from Ireland, Tennessee, and New York respectively. In Pine Bluff, Mahar found work as a carpenter. The other two obtained appointed to state and federal government. Mallory served as a superintendent of the Freedmen's Bureau and then worked as a lawyer, while Vaughn was county sheriff. Not only did these men confirm that Union soldiers had taken Robert's provisions, but they also attested to his character. Vaughn said that Robert was an "industrious and honest man."

Robert's efforts to obtain restitution were successful, and he was paid approximately three-hundred dollars by the federal government. Beyond farming near Pine Bluff during the 1870s, it is unclear what became of him. In all likelihood, his life likely became quite difficult in 1874. That year much of Arkansas, including Pine Bluff, descended into chaos and political violence. State politician Joseph Brooks had run for governor in 1872, and after losing the election, he challenged the results. His efforts came to a climax in the summer of 1874 when Brooks and a large group of armed supporters took control of the State Capital and declared Brooks the governor. The elected governor, Elisha Baxter, refused to acknowledge this, and his own supporters armed themselves and challenged Brooks. 

In April, Baxter's supporters imposed martial law in Pine Bluff and the surrounding county. They then arrested Sheriff Vaughn and other influential citizens who supported Brooks' claim. The men spent a number of days in jail, but they were ultimately released, and Baxter, under pressure from the president, ultimately withdrew his claim to the governorship in May. The long-term result of his efforts was the destruction of the Republican Party of Arkansas. Conservative democrats took advantage of the disorder to call a constitutional convention. They then proceeded to revise the constitution and then swept the subsequent election. 

The rise of conservative democrats meant a sharp decline in the fortunes of Robert Williams and many of his friends. Ex-planters and Confederate dominated the political party, and their main political goal was to undo the political changes that had taken in the years after the Civil War. Seeing no place for themselves, many of the pro-Union residents and the ex-Union soldiers left the state. Anthony Rogers left for northern California. Options for freedpeople like Robert were more limited. Many lacked the means to move and continued to live and work in Arkansas within an environment that was increasing hostile to freedpeople.

Sources

1. Year: 1870; Census Place: Vaugine, Jefferson, Arkansas; Roll: M593_56; Page: 502A

2. INDEX TO REPORTS OF COMMITTEES OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES FOR THE SECOND SESSION OF THE FORTY-THIRD CONGRESS. 1874-'75

3. Year: 1870; Census Place: Pine Bluff, Jefferson, Arkansas; Roll: M593_56; Page: 539B

4. Southern Claims Commission

History of Mathematics and the native people of Santa Cruz, Part 2: A formalism for numerical systems

In this blogpost, I will discuss a formalism for discussing how a given language treats numerics. Let me begin with a warning. This post is a slapdash, amateur attempt to summarize some essential material from linguistics. 

The goal of this post is to develop some language for discussing how numbers are treated the language spoken by the native people of Santa Cruz, California in the early 1800s. Recall that in the previous blogpost concluded with a brief look at the information available about the language spoken by native people living in Santa Cruz, California. The record was a short list of vocabulary words, eleven of which were words for numbers, that was recorded in 1878 (approximately three generations after contact with Europeans). 

A second source is an April 1860 article published in the California Farmer and Journal of Useful Science. The relevant portion is the vocabulary list displayed below.

Vocabulary list from the California Farmer and Journal of Useful Science
From the California Digital Newspaper Collection

How can we analyze a list like this? We could directly compare this list to other lists of numbers, but this ignores some important structure. Many of the numbers appear to be built out of others. The word for "thirteen" is "capan-üsh" which appears to be formed by appending "üsh" to the word for "three," which is "capan." The words for all of the teens appear to be formed in a similar manner.

This structure is similar to the structure of words for numerals in English. The English word for 21, "twenty-one" is given by concatenating the words "twenty" (for 20) and "one" (for 1). Furthermore, "twenty" is built by modifying "two" to "twen-" and then concatenating this with "-ty."

This type of recursive can be conveniently described using formal language theory. The idea is best introduced with an example. Consider the palindromes in the letters "x" and "y." We can generate all palindromes by starting with the symbol "S" (for "Start") and repeatedly applying the following rules under the "S" has been replaced by a and b:

S --> x

S --> y

S --> xSx

S --> ySy

The idea is formalized as follows. A formal language L is a subset of the set of words in a finite set ∑, called the alphabet. In example of palindromes, ∑={ x, y } and L = { x, y, xx, yy, xxx, xyx, yxy, yyy,...}.

We are interested in languages generated by repeatedly applying simple rules like "S --> x." Thus we define a formal grammar G for the alphabet to be a tuple consisting of (1) a finite set N called the non-terminal symbols that is disjoint from words in the alphabet ∑, (2) a finite set M called the terminal symbols that are elements of the alphabet ∑, (3) a distinguished non-terminal symbol S (for start), and a finite collect of production rules. A production rule is a function 

(words in N union ∑) (N)  (words in N union ∑)  -->  (words in N union ∑).

The language generated by G is the set of all words constructed by starting with the start symbol S and then repeatedly applying production rules until all non-terminal symbols have been removed.

A slightly more complicated example is the following: 

N = { SENTENCE, NOUN-PHRASE, VERB-PHRASE, VERB, DETERMINER, NOUN }

and  

∑  = { all valid English words }.

The distinguished non-terminal symbol is SENTENCE, and the production rules are:

SENTENCE --> NOUN-PHRASE VERB PHRASE

NOUN-PHRASE --> DETERMINER NOUN

VERB-PHRASE --> VERB

VERB-PHRASE --> VERB NOUN-PHRASE

as well as production rules involving terminal symbols

NOUN --> people

NOUN --> world

NOUN --> artwork

VERB --> earns

VERB --> gone

VERB --> came

DETERMINER  --> the

DETERMINER  --> a

 By repeatedly applying the production rules, we get:

SENTENCE

NOUN-PHRASE VERB-PHRASE

DETERMINER NOUN VERB-PHRASE

the NOUN VERB-PHRASE

the people VERB NOUN-PHRASE

the people had NOUN-PHRASE

the people had DETERMINER NOUN

the people had the NOUN

the people had the artwork

The idea is that a formal grammar can help  us understand how speaker create well-formed sentences. The formal grammar just handles the manner in which sentences are subdivided into phrases. The meaning of sentences are ignored. In the last example, we could also form then sentence "a world had the people" which seems nonsensical. The grammar that we have exhibited also produces sentences in which we do the subject and verb do not agree. An example of such a sentence is "the people earns artwork" (instead of the correct "the people earn artwork"). 

In general, it is difficult to construct a formal grammar that fully captures the sentences of a spoken language. Formal grammars work well for describing just the numerical system of a spoken language because the numerical system is much simpler and often strongly exhibits the type of recursive structure that formal grammar capture.

The two examples of formal grammars that we have looked at context-free grammar. These are grammar where each production rule has the form "Terminal Symbol --> word." The two formal grammars we displayed earlier were examples context-free grammar. An example of a grammar that is not contact free is:

A formal grammer
From Wikipedia

An example of a word in this language is "aabbcc" which can be produced as

S 

a S B C

a a B C B C

a a B C Z C 

a a B W Z C 

a a B W C C

a a B B C C 

a a b B C C

a a b b C C 

a a b b c C

a a b b c c 

This grammar generates the language L of words like "aaabbcc" which consist of the same number of the letters "a," "b," and "c," arranged in lexicographical order. The grammar fails to be content-free because the production rules involve more than one terminal symbol on the right-hand side. Consider the non-terminal symbol "C." The rules show that this can be replaced by "c" if it is preceded by a "b;" by "c" if it is preceded by a "c." Thus the production rules involving "C" depend on the context in which "C" appears. A now standard result in formal language theory (the pumping lemma) shows that the language generated by this grammar cannot be generated by any context-free grammar.

What about the languages of interest: the well-formed words for numbers in a spoken language such as English. We need to take some care in how we formulate this question. In all spoken languages that have been studied, only finitely many numbers can be described. In the list of Ohlone words that we studied at the beginning of this post, the largest number is 100. The website dictionary.com has words for all numbers smaller than 10^36 (a "Decillion" is  10^33") but no word for "10^36." 

We can describe the numbers in the Ohone language by writing down one production rule for each of the twenty-five words: 

S --> impeach

S --> uthin

S --> caphan

etc.

We can do the same thing in English only now we need to write down 10^36-1 rules. This method of describing  This is just an overly complicated way of writing down all the numbers. 

A more interesting context-free grammar for the numbers in English is given by production rules that are listed below as I.6 through I.17. 

The first part of a context-free grammar for numbers in English
From "Grammars for Number Names"

The first part of a context-free grammar for numbers in English
From "Grammars for Number Names"

This context-free grammar produces the words for numbers up to about 10^34. However, the grammar reflect some important features of the language. For example, the words "twenty," "thirty," ..., "ninety" all appear to be produced by combining the words "two," "three," ..., "nine" with the suffix "-ty." The words "thirteen," "fourteen," ..., "nineteen" are producing in a similar way using the suffix "-teen." This structure is not reflected in the formal grammar.

The linguist James R. Hurford proposed a more sophisticated model of how numbers are expressed in a language. He splits the process of forming a word for a number into two pieces: the formation of the semantic component (the value being expressed) and the phonological component (the word you say). Both are constructed from a formal grammar that Hurford calls the "phrase structure rules." The formal grammar is displayed below. (The symbol "/" represents the abstract number "1." A sequence of the symbols "/" represents the abstract number obtained by counting how often "/" appears. For example, "///" represents the abstract number "3.")

Hurford's phrase structure rules for English
From The Linguistic Theory of Numerals

(The brackets "{" and "}" indicated that one of the bracketed symbols must be chosen. A pair of parentheses indicates that the symbol can optionally be included.)

The language produced by this formal grammar is not very interesting. It is just all non-empty strings in the terminal symbol "/." However, we get interesting information by keeping track of how a word in the language is generated. This is usually encoded by a binary tree in a natural way. Consider the derivation:

NUMBER 

/ NUMBER

/ PHRASE 

/ NUMBER M

/ / NUMBER M

/ / / M

/ / / / / / / / / / / / /

Here's a crudely drawn picture of the phrase structure tree:

A phrase structure tree

The tree should be interpreted as follows. The value of each node is determined recursively as follows. The value of a leaf is just the number of "/" marks. Thus, reading from left to right, the leaves in the above example have values "1," "1," "1," and "10." Each node labeled "NUMBER" has value equal to the sum of the values of the nodes directly below it (its "immediate constituents"). The value of a node labeled "Phrase" is the product of the values of the nodes directly below it. Finally, the value of a node labeled "M" is equal to value of the second immediate constituent raised to the power of the first immediate constituent. (If there is only one immediate constituent, the node has value equal to "10."

In the above example, the only node labeled "M" has value "10," and the only node labeled "Phrase" has value "20." Working our way up to the root, we see that the root has value "21." This is the semantic component. 

Hurford then has a separate (and more complicated) set of rules for using the phrase structure tree to produce the phonological component (i.e. the word that you say). These are more complicated, so I will omit them for now. One important fact is that there are, in general, many phrase structure trees for the same number. For example, both the example we just looked at and the example below have semantic component equal to "21." The rules produce for the first tree the word "one and twenty" and "twenty-one" for the second tree. Most English speakers would say that the second word is correct while the first phrase is incorrect (or at least old-fashioned).

Another example of a phrase structure tree

One issue that I am completely glossing over is why Hurford's formalism for describing the linguistic theory of numerals is correct or reasonable. In fact, in his book, Hurford recognizes that other linguists have proposed alternative theories, and the evidence for/against any particular theory was limited at the time he was writing. 

For my purposes, what's most useful is that his formalism will help us understand how numbers are expressed in languages, especially how to compare and contrast different languages.

History of Mathematics and the native people of Santa Cruz, Part 1: An orientation

A painting of the Santa Cruz church mission
From Wikipedia

In commemoration of National American Indian Heritage Month, this blogpost will explore how to study study American Indians in the history of mathematics. I will focus on the native peoples of California, since I teach at at UC school. Much of the following post is cobbled together from my reading of Stephen Chrisomalis's article "Th cognitive and cultural foundations of numbers" in the book The Oxford Handbook of the History of Mathematics. 

Doing a history of mathematics for American Indians is a major challenge as traditional methods of historical inquiry are of limited use. In its most familiar form, the history of mathematics focuses on the narrative history of how intellectual ideas were developed by individuals working within a western intellectual environment. Consider the titles of two award-winning books: Euler: The Master of Us All and Leonhard Euler: Mathematical Genius in the Enlightenment. As the titles suggest, they are biographies of the eighteenth century mathematician Leonard Euler, and they focus on presenting Euler's mathematical work to a modern audience with the goal of impressing upon readers the transformative impact of Euler's scholarly work (he was a genius who "mastered us all"). While Euler lived more than two hundred years ago, he lived a life that was not that different from the life of a typical modern-day math professor. Following an education in Switzerland that culminated in a dissertation accepted at the University of Basel, Euler worked at European scientific academies. He published prolifically in academic journals, so a modern researcher has a wealth of writings to draw on. Important personal papers were also preserved, so the authors are able to humanize Euler's mathematical work by placing it within a broader narrative of his life (the best known story is perhaps that Euler lost his eyesight yet continued to remain remarkably prolific, publishing an average of one mathematical paper each week.)

The type of history represented by Euler: The Master of Us All and Leonhard Euler: Mathematical Genius in the Enlightenment is basically impossible for the indigenous peoples of California. The type of written records needed to produce a detailed historical biography of any individual, mathematician or otherwise, simply do not exist. Indigenous people were also largely excluded from academia until relatively recently, so we can't trace their mathematical activities in scholarly journals.

We can, however, make progress in answering important questions if we change our focus. In this post, I will focus on how to extract historical information from linguistic data. While we can't use this to craft narratives of individuals, much less make a case for their "mathematical genius," we can answer important and interesting questions. 

Perhaps the most interesting question is, "Could native peoples count?" That is, was the practice a European introduction or did native people develop their own counting methods? This question has been debated for over a century. Influential early ideas were set out in a 1863 paper, "On the Numerals as Evidence of the Progress of Civilization," by John Crawfurd. Crawfurd, a British colonial administrator and a member of the Ethnological Society of London, argued in that linguistic information about numbers could be used to assess how "civilized" a given people were. 

Crawfurd asserts that the ability to express and calculate with numbers is a difficult, abstract skill. Following ideas surrounding Darwinism, Crawford takes for granted that the "different races of the human family" are progressing towards "civilization" A measure of how far a given "race" has "progressed," he argues, is how their language can be used to express numbers. More "civilized" people speak languages that allow for the expression of larger numbers. Explaining their languages, Crawfurd finds that the languages spoken by aboriginal Australians only include words for numbers up to four, while the Chinese language allows for the expression of numbers up to the range of a thousand million. Consequently, he concludes that the Chinese are more civilized than aboriginal Australians. This belief was widely by European scholars, so it would have been seen at the time as validation of Crawfurd's argument.

Anyone who has taken an introductory class in anthropology in the last one hundred years should be able to dismantle Crawfurd's paper. The theory that all cultures are progressing towards the same way of organizing society, towards "civilization," is regarded as a misapplication of the ideas of Darwin. The rejection has been so complete that I almost feel like I am arguing with a straw man in discussing it. Around the late nineteenth century, scholars largely associated with Franz Boas collected evidence to support the idea that a more useful (and less racist) conceptual framework is to replace the biologically based notion of different "races" with a concept of "culture" that is socially determined. The Boas school agreed that a culture changes by an evolutionary process, but this process consisted of responses to circumstances specific to the culture rather than a unified "progression" towards "civilization."

Nevertheless, Crawfurd's idea of deriving information about mathematical practices through a comparative study is an attractive one. Crawfurd's paper includes an appendix of number words for over fifty different languages, and a study of it clearly demonstrates intriguing and suggestive similarities and differences. (Many languages appear to express numbers using "base 10" as in English, but others appear to use a different base, and some seem to use a whole different way of reckoning.)

One can modify Crawfurd's underlying theoretical ideas so that they work within the modern framework of cultural evolution. For many cultures where the number system is well-document, the system appears to originate in the bureaucratic needs of the governing class of an agricultural society: the king wants to collect a portion of each farmer's crops as a tax, so his administrators need a methods to record things he wants to collect. In response, the administrators develop words for expressing the large numbers they need to record, and these words disseminate broadly through the society over time as different people interact with the administrators.

Despite the passage of over one hundred years, the validity of this idea continues to be debated. Is counting an abstract skill that had to be invented? Or is it a hardwired skill, similar to or even a part of Chomsky's universal grammar in linguistics? Chomsky himself is in the first camp. He argues that numerical facility is an invented/developed skill: it is separate from linguistic facility and could not have developed by natural selection. An obvious challenge to this school of thought is the empirical fact that people of all cultures seem to not only possess some facility with numbers but there are also striking commonalities in how numbers are expressed. The word for "ten" plays often plays a distinguished role, for example. Those who argue that counting is an invented skill explain this as a by-product of how things like human physiology impact the manner in which people count. The number "ten" is significant because people commonly count using their ten fingers.

Work in neurology and psychology provides a stronger challenge to the idea that counting is not a hardwired skill. Other animals have been shown to have some facility with numbers. A study of lionesses showed that they can distinguish between small numbers such as five and three. Other studies have shown that human infants can similarly distinguish between small quantities. 

A productive framing of the issue is, what aspects of numerical facility are hardwired? Nobody would argue that humans are hardwired to understand complex numbers. Many of my calculus students, even very mathematically talented ones, are unable to grasp the concept. Much less clear is whether humans are hardwired to understand that the successor principle, that an infinite sequence of numbers can be generated by starting with small numbers like one, two, and three and then repeatedly "adding one." 

The social processes driving the development of number systems has also been questioned. While, in cultures like ancient Mesopotamia, the early development was driven by the needs of a bureaucratic state is also challenged, but one can debate whether this is a widespread phenomenon. We can only document the early development of numbers for a handful of cultures, so perhaps the apparent significance of the bureaucratic state is an illusion created by the nature of the evidence that's available to us. One can point to other cultural practices that create a need to develop a number system. Large numbers hold a special significance in some religions (think about calculating the age of the Earth using information from the Bible) and are a natural object of intellectual interest (many young children get excited about naming "the biggest number").

Certainly, I am not going to resolve these issues, but they held direct attention to important aspects when trying to use linguistic evidence to say something about the history of mathematics. In any case, the first matter is the bread-and-butter issue of simply documenting in a careful way how a given language expresses numbers. For many native languages, this is no simple matter.

Consider the native people who lived in the area around the modern city of Santa Cruz. There are no records of their languages until the late 1700s when they encountered the Spanish. The first Spanish the native people interacted with were Catholic priests who had come to convert people to Catholicism. Many Indians were moved to church missions, sometimes forcibly, and were encouraged to learn Spanish and adopt other European cultural practices. Moreover, relations were often tense as some native people were forcibly moved to the mission, and many lived under harsh conditions that included performing difficult manual labor for the mission. In the mid-1800s, the Catholic missions were secularized, and most of the native people began living and working on large sheep and cattle ranches ("Ranchos") owned by Spanish immigrants. 

Over the course of the 1800s, many native languages went "extinct" (although there are important ongoing language revitalization efforts). The information that we have about these languages is often information recorded by people with no linguistic training and little sensitivity to native culture (the Catholic priests who ran the missions, for example). Moreover, they were collecting information from speakers who had been in contact with Spanish and English speakers for decades.

One valuable source I have found for information about the language spoken by Indians living on the Santa Cruz mission is vocabularies that were collected by the French scholar Alphonse Pinart in 1878. The available records are lists of words collected from four different people: a woman who grew up on the mission in Soledad, a woman living on the Santa Cruz mission, a man living in the town of Aptos, and a man living in Carmel. 

Location of the interviews with speakers of Ohlone speakers
From Google Maps

The numerals recorded by Pinart are displayed below. The first column is an English word, and the second is the corresponding word in Spanish. The remaining four columns record the words used by the people Pinart interviewed. ("Costanoan" is the term the Spanish used to referred to the people living around modern Santa Cruz. The modern term is "Ohlone.") You'll see that no information from second speaker was recorded, and there are significant differences in the words the other speaker used. Taking into account differences in pronunciations, the numbers for 1, 2, 3, and 4 appear to be similar, but others words seem largely unrelated. This could reflect differences in regional dialect. While speakers are separated by less than seventy miles, at least two of the speakers grew up on different church missions. In a number of accounts, residents remarked on the diversity of native languages, with people on each ranch and mission speaking their own dialect. 

Despite the limitations of the data, we can make some significant deductions. The first speaker appears to count using a base ten system. The word for twenty, "utcihk matumn" is formed by modifying the word for ten, "matussu," to "matumn" and then prepending the word "utchihk" which appears to be a modification of the word for two, "utci."

The words used by the fourth speaker are even more intriguing. The word for "six" is created by joining the word "xali" to "sakken," and then the next two numbers are created by replacing "xali" with ucumai (perhaps a modification of the word for two, "uthis"?)  and then with kapxami (a modification of "kappes" or "three"?) This suggests that the fourth speaker is counting numbers using base 5.

The use of base 5 is more than a curiosity. In both Spanish and English, speakers count in base 10, so the fourth speaker's manner of counting can't be an adoption from Europe. Rather, it suggests that the native people had developed ways of counting prior to contact with Europeans. 

The fourth speaker also told his interviewer how to count small quantities of coins (reales or Spanish silver coins and pesos) in his language. It appears that the words for numbers undergo slight modifications when used in references to coins. For example, the word for two, "uthis," is modified to "utis" when used in references to reales. Of course, in reaching this conclusion, we're dependent on accuracy of the speaker's pronunciation and the researcher's transcription. The differences could, perhaps, be simple transcription errors.

We could try to investigate the language in greater depth by looking for additional records of the language or by using comparative methods. Before we get carried away, we should try to develop a more robust framework for describing and analyzing the manner in which a given language expresses numericals. I will do that in a subsequent blogpost. 

John McCulla: A name better forgotten?

The approximate location of McCulla's farm is shown in red
From Library of Congress

John McCulla (or McCullough) was a central figure in efforts to reconstruct Chesterfield County during the years after the Civil War. He was a particular figure of hatred for regional conservatives, but he is largely absent from historical accounts of Reconstruction in South Carolina. In this post, we will take a look at who he was and what he did.

McCulla was born in Ireland around 1840. He moved to the United States around the end of the Civil War, when he was in his twenties. (Accounts differ as to whether he arrived in 1864 or in 1866.) I have been unable to find any records about McCulla prior to 1868, so it is unclear why he left Ireland, although there was nothing unusual about it. Ireland saw a huge level of emigration as people tried to flee the famine and poverty that had been devastating the country for decades.

McCulla had moved to South Carolina by 1868, and he quickly found a place within the state's newly empowered Republican Party. Following the ratification of a new state constitution that enfranchised freed slaves, McCulla was appointed treasurer for Chesterfield County by Republican governor Robert K. Scott. This position granted him considerable powers as it made him responsible for collecting taxes and disbursing state funds. 

McCulla likely secured his gubernatorial appointment through connections with Chesterfield's state senator, R. J. Donaldson. Both were incorporators for a Chesterfield land development company, the South Carolina Improvement and Trust Company, and they worked closely together after Donaldson was elected to office.

McCulla purchased land for himself in fall 1868. He bought a two-hundred and twenty-nine acre plot from William K. Edgeworth, a member of a local planter family. The plot was located near the Hornsboro post office, where Thompson's Creek meets Store House Creek. A little over a year later (on January 6, 1870), he bought an adjacent two hundred and three acre plot in a sheriff's sale following the death of the owner (Alexander McMillan). These purchases provide further evidence of McCulla's relation with Donaldson and his supporters. The lands bounded land owned by the Challenge Mining Company which was run by Donaldson's supporters. 

McCulla used the land he purchased for farming. He did not have a family, so he was reliant on sharecropper and hired labor. Most of the people he employed were former slaves. As a farmer, McCulla practiced a mixture of cotton growing and subsistence farming that was typical for the region. 

The fact that McCulla was able to purchase so much land raises suspicions. He spent over $3,500 only a few years after he had immigrated from a poverty-stricken Ireland. He soon fell under suspicion for corruption and dishonesty. The biggest cause for anger was the allegation that he was "shaving" funds for himself when fulfilling money orders as treasurer.

The way in which McCulla was alleged to have enriched himself is demonstrated by an incident involving the state-funded Poor House. A women, Mrs. Williams, maintained a state-supported Poor House for paupers, and she was to receive five dollars per month for each pauper who was boarding with her. In the summer of 1870, the County Commissioners issued a money order to her. McCulla was present when this was done, and he explained that he did not have the funds to fulfill the order. When one of the commissioners, G. W. Duvall, said this was unacceptable, McCulla told Mrs. Williams that she should go to Cheraw and present the order to Mr. Donaldson. This was unusual because Donaldson was then Chesterfield's state senator and had no responsibility for distributing state funds.

Mrs. Williams did as McCulla suggested. However, upon arriving at Donaldson's office, she met with his clerk who only offered to provide her with half of the funds she was suppose to receive. This presented her with a dilemma as the money offered was not enough to provide for the paupers under her care. While debating what to do, she happened to encounter G. W. Duvall on the street. He advised her to see if a merchant would take the money order for payment, but none would. Finally, having exhausted other options, Mrs. Williams accepted the funding that Donaldson's clerk was willing to offer. She was given less than half of the money she was due. The week after, Duvall became upset when he examined McCulla's records and found that it was falsely recorded that Mrs. Williams  falsely had received the full amount she was due.

Conservative leaders charged that the treatment of Mrs. Williams was representative of how McCulla performed the duties of his office. Milly Chapman, W. L. Mangum, and Ellenor Horn all reported similar experiences. 

Efforts to hold McCulla accountable for misuse of office began to gain momentum in September 1870. Each quarter, the county grand jury issued a presentment which provided them with a forum in which to criticize public officials. That term, the grand jury criticized McCulla and two other public officials. McCulla was criticized for not exhibiting his books to the grand jury, and the circuit judge (James M. Rutland) responded by ordering that his office be searched and he be required to show cause at the next term of court why they should not be primally prosecuted for dereliction of duty.

The criticism McCulla received suggests that the criticism was not purely political. The circuit judge was a moderate Republican, and the grand jury included several Black men (including Oliver Hanna, Lisbon Timmons, Load Miller, and Malcolm McFarlan). 

The month after the presentment was issued was the month that the election was held. This was an important event. It was the second election for legislative offices that was held under the new state constitution, and it presented conservatives with their first opportunities to remove the Republicans from county government. 

Much was at stake for McCulla. With his personal ties to state senator Donaldson, he had a powerful defender, but Donaldson was up for reelection in October. If Donaldson was defeated by a conservative candidate, then both he and McCulla would not only lose political power, but they would also be facing the wraith of newly empowered conservatives. In fact, Donaldson was running against G. W. Duvall, the very man who had been been frustrated in his efforts to get McCulla to fulfill a money order for the county poor house.

McCulla and other supporters of Donaldson went to extreme efforts to see that Donaldson and other Republicans in the county were reelected. Conservatives alleged that McCulla and others engaged in election fraud. Election managers had given the ballot boxes to McCulla (who had no formal role in managing the election) to bring to Chesterfield Courthouse for counting. However, before he did so, he met with Senator Donaldson's brother-in-law (Alfred T. Peete) who replaced valid ballots for conservative candidates with fraudulent ones. 

A little over a week after the election (on October 31), the son of G. W. Duvall (Henry P.) swore a complaint against McCulla, Donaldson, and two others. McCulla was charged with conspiracy to alter the ballots and polls list for the precincts of Oro and Old Store. Based on the complaint, the trial justice Frank H. Eaton ordered their arrests. The fact that Eaton issued orders for arrests is a sign that the charges was serious. Eaton was a Union veteran from Maine and no friend of South Carolina conservatives like G. W. Duvall. 

McCulla was released on bond on a few days after his arrest was ordered. However, his fortunes continued to decline. A few weeks after his arrest (on November 22), the conservatives candidates arrived at the statehouse and were sworn in as the elected legislative representatives for Chesterfield County. McCulla's patron, R. J. Donaldson, had been removed from power, and his office was now held by the father of the man who had requested McCulla's arrest, G. W. Duvall.

Unlike Donaldson, McCulla did not lose his position as county treasurer in the October election because his position was appointed, not elected. Nevertheless, his position was in danger. Governor Scott, the man who had originally appointed McCulla, had been reelected, but he could be expected to remake his political appointments in response to the political changes demonstrated by the election.

Removing McCulla from office seems to have been a priority in Chesterfield. In February 1871, Duvall, now Chesterfield's state senator, wrote the governor a long letter asking that McCulla be removed from office and detailing at length his reasons for the request. Not only did Duvall repeat the complaints that McCulla was engaging in financial misconduct, but he also complained that he was "frequently drunk and unfit to attend to business." The governor finally removed McCulla from office in March.

McCulla's legal problems were becoming even more serious during this time. He was subject to a second bench warrant in January. The solicitor had issued a warrant after the grand jury issued a presentment reporting that McCulla had been overcharging for services. (He reportedly was charging five per cent on all monies received and on all funds passing through his office.)

When the court next met (in May), the grand jury indicted McCulla on the charge of failing to turn over his treasurer's books, and he was accused of "outrageously oppressing the people" by charging tax penalties beyond what was allowed by law. The last accusation led to yet another bench warrant was issued. 

McCulla finally faced a jury trial in January 1872, a full year after legal proceedings had begun. The trial had been delayed because the judge had not appeared for the previous term of court (held in September). The jury found him guilty on two counts: one for failing to turn over the treasurer's books and one for exercising the office of treasurer after his removal. McCulla was also indicted on official misconduct. There is no record of that third charge being dropped, but this was likely the case as the court journal show that he later repaid the government for the excessive charges he made.

I have not been able to find any record of the sentence that McCulla received, and whatever it was, it seems that he did not serve it. McCulla appealed to the state Supreme Court, and in May 1874, the court struck off the charge.

While McCulla was facing charges for his conduct as treasurer, he was also facing charges for election fraud. The records of what happened with these second set of charges aew unclear. The court journal records that the grand jury returned no bill again him and the other men charged during the September 1872 term of court. The indictment paper, signed by the jury foreman, also states that the jury returned no bill. However, indictment records also include a handwritten document, signed by the solicitor, stating that the jury swore on their oath that McCulla and the others had committed the crimes they were accused of. Yet a third outcome was reported by the press: they reported in October that the solicitor had decided not to pursue matters further (i.e. he entered a "nol. pos." against Donaldson and his supporter John McCulla). 

The dates on the legal documents raise further questions about what exactly took place. The dates on both the indictment paper and handwritten document have been changed. On the handwritten document, the months "May" and "January" were written and then stricken out and the word January written a second time. Similarly, the year was changed from 1871 to 1872. None of these dates are the dates recorded in the court journal. The dates on the indictment paper are similar. The document is dated to January 1871, but the months "January" and May" were written and then stricken out.

Ultimately, the long-term legal consequences for McCulla seem to have been minimal. Not only does it seem that he avoided jail time, but he was even appointed to serve as an election manager in 1874, only a few years after he was indicted for election misconduct. One possible explanation is that all involved parties felt it was best to avoid further deliberation on the matter and simply move on. The need to prosecute McCulla and others in Donaldson's circle was diminished as county Republicans had largely been removed from power in the 1870 election. Moreover, close scrutiny of the election was likely to raise awkward questions for conservative politicians. In the months following the election, conservatives were accused of having engaged in voter suppression and of being involved in the murder of the Republican, Robert Melton, one of the witnesses set to testify in defense of McCulla and others. 

In his correspondence with the governor over the treasury appointment, G. W. Duvall explicitly spoke to the need to reduce political tensions. He wrote that he had made a recommendation regarding the appointment in the belief that it would "end the war between the two factions." He also appears to hint at the potential for further violence. After expressing anger at efforts by a Republican to secure the appointment, Duvall wrote that "[a]ll [is] quiet in this county," with the implication that the state of affairs would change if a poor appointment was made.

After Donaldson was voted out of office, most of Donaldson's supporters left Chesterfield. Donaldson's brother-in-law, who had also been indicted for election misconduct, moved to Spartanburg and found work as a music teacher and later as a dentist. Donaldson himself moved to Columbia for a few years and then ran a rice plantation near Georgetown that he purchased. McCulla, however, remained in Chesterfield County.

McCulla seems to have left political life by the mid-1870s, and certainly his political prospects were minimal by this time as the county government was firmly in the hands of his conservative enemies. He seems to have focused on his farm in Mount Croghan township. In 1880, a census taker recorded that he employed over one hundred Black farmers, making his farm one of the largest operations in the region. .  

McCulla appears to have financially supported himself for the remainder of the nineteenth century by renting land to Black sharecroppers. He never had a family, and he certainly could not have performed all the labor that was needed on a farm by himself. I can't find a record of his death, but he was still living in Mount Croghan in 1910, when he was in his seventy years old. By this time, it appears he had largely retired. He sold most of his land in the 1900s. Some of the land was purchased by Archibald Wade Hursey who built a mill, Hursey's mill, on the land. 

Approximate location of Hursey's Mill indicated in red
Image from Google Maps

Despite the anger that had been directed at him during Reconstruction, McCulla seems to have quickly faded from public memory. In a 1949 newspaper article, an older resident, Tom Turner, was interviewed about the history of the area. Turner recalled Reconstruction as some of the "darkest days," and mentions McCulla by name (although it was printed as "McCullough"). However, he only says that McCulla was a "Yankee" who was involved with a New York-based land development company and oversaw a 2,800 acre plot of land that was rented to Black tenant farmers. No mention is made of election fraud or the misuse of the treasurer's office. In the interview, Turner remarked that many names associated with Reconstruction, "that luckless era," are "better forgotten," and the same attitude appears to apply to McCulla's actions.

The area around McCulla's farm
From South Caroliniana Library

Sources

1. The daily phoenix. [volume], November 05, 1868, Image 2

2. The Charleston daily news. [volume], March 24, 1871, Image 3

3. The daily phoenix. [volume], May 05, 1874, Image 2

4. The daily phoenix. [volume], April 06, 1871, Image 2

September Grand Jury

1. W. A. Mulloy (b. 1815). White farmer and merchant in Chesterfield C. H. 

2. Lewis Ganey (b. 1846). White farmer in Chesterfield township.

3. Thomas Britt

4. J. H. Williams (b. 1810). A white miller in Alligator township

5. D. B. Douglas (b. 1848) A white farmer in Cole Hill township.

6. O[ilver] Hanna (b. 1832) A Black farmer in Chesterfield township.

7. T[homas] D. Spencer (b. 1840). A white farmer in Chesterfield township.

8. T[homas] M. Kirkley (b. 1835). White constable in Jefferson township. Born in North Carolina. 

9. J. W. Watson (b. 1838). A white farmer in Cole Hill township. 

10. S[amuel] Wilkinson (b. 1844) A white farmer in Cole Hill township.

11. Lisbon Timmons (b. 1827). A Black farmer in Mt. Croghan township. 

12. S. Hegmen?

13. L[oad] Miller (b. 1839). A Black farmer in Jefferson township.

14. D. McLean

15. M[alcolm] McFarlan (b. abt. 1846). A Black farmer in Cole Hill township. 23

16. E. Lowry. 

17. J[ohn] H. Lowry (b. abt. 1831): White man living in Mt. Croghan township.

18. W. Miller