Mattie Jane Jackson’s Revenge
1864
Just as Mattie Jane Jackson was walking up the plank to the ferry that would lead her to freedom, she felt the cord around her waist loosen. The bundle of clothes hidden beneath her hoop skirt had begun to slide slowly to the ground. Mattie tripped slightly over the tangle at her ankles, but tried to act as if nothing was wrong.
Mattie J. Jackson was born into slavery in 1846 in Saint Louis, Missouri. Mattie’s mother and siblings had tried to escape numerous times over the years on their own, but had always failed. Over time Mattie realized she would probably need assistance from others to be successful.
By age eighteen, Mattie was determined to have her freedom at last. Mattie’s current master and mistress, Captain and Mrs. Ephraim Frisbee, were much improved over any earlier owners, and fortunately she was given certain privileges.
Mattie knew her best opportunity to escape would be during one of those occasions twice a month when she was allowed away for two hours to go to church. These excursions became fact-finding missions, and after several inquiries Mattie had learned of some black folks who helped fugitive slaves. A plan was concocted, and Mattie was told that she had to adhere strictly to the schedule. Things had to run like clockwork if they were to succeed.
The escape plan was six months in the making. When the day finally came in September 1864, however, everything seemed to go wrong. On a Sunday evening Mattie asked permission to attend church service, to which her mistress reluctantly agreed. It seemed Mistress Frisbee sensed Mattie’s eagerness and deliberately found additional tasks for Mattie to complete to her satisfaction before leaving. Master Frisbee then joined in with his own requests, purposely delaying her departure.
At long last Mattie retired to her quarters and set the plan into action. She had to take her clothes with her, as it would be impossible to replace her meager wardrobe. She tied nine articles of clothing, which was all she owned, into tidy bundles and attached them to a thin cord tied around her waist. Mattie made sure the cumbersome bundle hidden underneath her dress did not distort the evenness of the circular hoops of her skirt. She practiced walking around the small room thus attired. The weighted bundle intensified the pain her side gave her at the least exertion.
Just as Mattie was finally ready to leave, she was called upon to dress the Frisbees’ young son for a family carriage ride. As she attended to the boy under the watchful eyes of Mistress Frisbee, Mattie backed into a corner, putting the boy between her and the woman. When exiting the room, Mattie was acutely aware of the clothes dangling under her dress, and of the thin cord that supported them biting into her waist. She attempted to maneuver out of the room without an affected gait.
Later, as Mattie was walking on the road to church, the Frisbee family’s carriage sped past her in a cloud of dust. Mattie picked up her pace. She had taken $25 of her master’s money, which she needed to cover travel expenses. Mattie wanted to be long gone before the theft was discovered.
Coming into town, Mattie saw a man on the opposite side of the street who appeared to be waiting for no one in particular. As she drew near, the gentleman turned and walked ahead. As planned, Mattie followed him at a safe distance. As they approached the church, the man dropped off to the side. Mattie stayed and waited for her next connection. Twilight began to spread over the small Missouri town. She soon noticed two young ladies chatting quietly. When Mattie walked up to them, one discreetly slipped a pass into Mattie’s hand and told her to follow along behind, leaving a block’s distance between them.
The ladies led her to the river, where a ferry awaited. Mattie fell in line behind a group of Union soldiers about to board the ferry, trying to look as if she was accustomed to traveling on a boat. She presented her pass with an air of confidence, though she could not hear a thing above the beating of her heart. The ticket agent simply nodded her on. The plan seemed to be progressing without a hitch.
It was then that Mattie felt the rope cutting into her waist give way. Feeling the clothes slip from position, Mattie tried not to panic. The last thing she wanted was to draw attention to herself. Some soldiers nearby noticed her slight stumble but then turned away again, lost in conversation. With the bundle of clothes now at her feet, Mattie stooped slightly, maneuvering her hoop skirt in such a way as to allow her to push the bundle along concealing it with her feet, first one foot then the other, in slow, steady movements. If the bundle revealed itself, she would be exposed as a fugitive slave. Finally she found a seat out of the way, and calmly sat down as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. When no one else was near, she reattached the cord holding the bundle.
Mattie floated away on her ferry, leaving behind eighteen years of bondage. She later boarded the railcars waiting in Jefferson City that would take her to freedom in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Along the journey Mattie remembered how her father had escaped to Chicago when she was three years old. And how two years later her mother, Ellen Turner, followed with Mattie and her sister, but they were gone just two days before being apprehended in Illinois. Then came a week in prison and four weeks in Linch’s slave trader’s yard until they were all sold to the cruel William Lewis. During her enslavement Mattie’s mother had married twice. Both husbands, Westley Jackson and George Brown, had managed to escape, but neither was able to secure freedom for her or the children they had fathered.
Mattie Jane Jackson thought about all her masters and mistresses while enslaved. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis had proven to be the worst owners Mattie and her family had ever had. They were impossible to please, and their irrational anger resulted in beatings with both fists and whips. Mattie recalled how the Lewises sold Mattie and her mother, sister, and half brother to Captain Tirrell, who attempted to smuggle them out of the state before President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 rendered them valueless. Over the years they had been sold, kidnapped, and resold many times. They had endured hateful masters and vindictive mistresses.
Mattie was understandably overjoyed when she arrived in Indianapolis, Indiana. She soon began work as a servant, finding it surreal to be actually paid for working. It would be three months until her mother dared run away.
In May 1864 Mattie’s younger sister, Esther, escaped to free soil, but they were never reunited. Later that summer Mattie’s mother’s seventh escape attempt succeeded. She and Mattie’s younger half brother, George, found their way to Mattie in Indianapolis for a heartfelt reunion.
The three immediately returned to their native city of Saint Louis, Missouri. After the war Mattie’s mother married her third husband, Sam Adams. Her first husband, Westley Jackson, lived as a free man in Chicago, but died before the war. Her second husband, George Brown, had changed his name to John G. Thompson when he took refuge in Canada. He remarried after hearing that his family had died in an escape attempt.
In 1866 George Brown (John G. Thompson) learned that his son, George, and stepdaughter, Mattie, were still alive. He and his wife, Dr. L. S. Thompson, made arrangements for them to come to Lawrence, Massachusetts, for a reunion. Mattie’s stepmother, Dr. Thompson, was a botanical physician, an abolitionist, and a worker on the Underground Railroad. She helped Mattie publish her life story in 1866 in an attempt to secure funds for Mattie’s education.
In 1869 twenty-three-year-old Mattie Jane Jackson married a Mississippi steamboat porter, William Reed Dyer. They had eight children, four of whom lived to adulthood. Mattie lived to the age of sixty-three in and around her birthplace of Saint Louis as a free woman. She recalled how she once found a moment of sweet revenge for her years of enslavement.
Upon her return to Saint Louis, she experienced a strange twist of fate after the Civil War ended slavery. Mattie and her mother came across their former master and mistress, the cruel Lewises, on the streets of Saint Louis. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis had been so severe and abusive that they had often beaten them both at the slightest provocation. Mattie’s mother recognized Mrs. Lewis at the market; Mrs. Lewis and her children were in a much-reduced and humbled station, being now forced to “wait upon themselves.” Mr. Lewis was quite astonished to see Mattie as a free woman and inadvertently dropped her a bow before realizing he had just shown respect to his former slave. The only thing Mattie then had to conceal was a smile.