Two fieldworkers deposited two separate texts, mostly from printed sources, about Tom Magruder in the WPA files. Allan Stranz’s material came from the following sources: William G. Sullivan’s writings on the Noble family, Genealogy Section, Indiana State Library; copy of the will of Noah Noble (1794–1844), fourth governor of Indiana (1831–37), Genealogy Section, Indiana State Library; and Jacob P. Dunn’s history of Greater Indianapolis (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1910), pp. 242–244. In addition to these sources, Hazel Nixon consulted Anton Scherer, “Our Town,” Indianapolis Times, May 26, 1936; William Wesley Woollen, Biographical and Historical Sketches of Early Indiana (Indianapolis: Hammond and Company, 1883), p. 61; John H. B. Nowland, Sketches of Prominent Citizens of 1876 (Indianapolis: Tilford and Carlon, 1877); Charles Edward Stowe, Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1889); Paxton Hibben, Henry Ward Beecher: An American Portrait (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1927); and Agnes M. Hanna’s work on old houses in Indianapolis, which I have not been able to locate. She also interviewed Mr. Myers, the office manager of Crown Hill Cemetery; Philip Clements, Union Title Company, 1515 E. Market Street, Indianapolis; and Mr. Davis, then working in the Historical Room of the Indiana State House.
Thomas Magruder, known locally as “Uncle Tom,” may have been the inspiration for the hero in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Magruder, his wife, Sarah, and their two children, Louisa and Moses, were slaves of Thomas Noble, father of Noah Noble, former governor of Indiana. Thomas Noble lived first in Virginia and later in Belleview, Boone County, Kentucky.
When Thomas Noble died on February 14, 1817, he willed all of his real estate to his sons and all of his personal property, including a number of slaves, to his daughter, who freed Thomas and Sarah Magruder in 1831 and sent them to Indianapolis to work for her brother, Noah Noble. Governor Noble built a cabin for Tom and Sarah at the northeast corner of Market and Noble streets. Later, Louisa was brought to Indianapolis from Lawrenceburg and Moses was brought from Kentucky to care for their aged parents. Peter Dunn, former slave of Judge Isaac Dunn of Lawrenceburg, came to Indianapolis to live with the Magruders, too. Louisa’s daughter, Martha, commonly called “Topsy,” also lived with the Magruders. Though free, as slavery was outlawed in Indiana in 1820, they worked as Noah Noble’s servants.
Tom, Sarah, Louisa, Moses, Peter, and Topsy were living in the Magruder cabin in 1844 when Harriet Beecher Stowe, who was then living in Cincinnati, visited her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, who lived at East Market and New Jersey streets, just two blocks from Uncle Tom’s cabin. The Beechers were friends of the Nobles, and it is said that they frequently visited the Magruders. Henry Ward Beecher especially enjoyed talking to Tom, who was around ninety-seven in 1844. During Tom’s final years, both Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe were visitors to the cabin.
Many residents of Indianapolis believed that Stowe received her inspiration for the characters in Uncle Tom’s Cabin while visiting Uncle Tom Magruder’s cabin, for six characters in the novel correspond to members of the Magruder household: Tom, Sarah, Louisa, Moses, Peter, and Topsy. Tom Magruder, pious and religious, it is said, closely resembled the Uncle Tom of the novel.
Another of Noah Noble’s black servants mentioned in Stowe’s novel is Cuffie, also a former slave of the governor’s father. Cuffie was brought to Indianapolis in 1841 to work for Governor Noble. Little is known about Cuffie, except that he was provided for in Noah Noble’s will. Governor Noble also provided for the Magruders—Tom, Sarah, Louisa, and Moses—in his will, leaving them an acre of land and the cabin at Noble and Market streets as well as the income from the “canal farm,” later known as Golden Hill.
Uncle Tom died in Indianapolis on February 22, 1857, and on February 24, 1857, the Indianapolis Indiana State Journal carried the following news item concerning him:
To those unacquainted with “old Tom” the most interesting circumstance connected with him is the probability that he gave the name and the leading features of the character to Mrs. Stowe’s celebrated hero. Of course no one knows that to be the case, but there are some circumstances which give it an air of probability. The coincidence of the character and the name are not much in themselves, but connected with the fact that Henry Ward Beecher, during his residence here, was a constant visitor of Uncle Tom’s, well acquainted with his history, and a sincere admirer of his virtues, the coincidence becomes more suggestive. We have been told that Mrs. Stowe herself sometimes called to see the old man. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” too, was the name of his house among all his acquaintances, and was a familiar phrase here long before Mrs. Stowe immortalized it. At all events, we know that it is the impression with all the friends of Mrs. Stowe and her brother, in this city, that “Old Uncle Tom” was the original or at least the suggestion of the hero of the cabin.
There is no record of the present burial place of Thomas Magruder, but his daughter Louisa, who last lived at North 424 Highland Avenue, is buried at the foot of Catherine Noble Davidson’s grave at Crown Hill Cemetery, Lot 13, Section 1. There is another mound near her grave, and the ground there has the appearance of two sunken graves. Perhaps when the body of Governor Noble was removed from Green Lawn, where Tom formerly was buried, Tom’s body was also was removed and interred in Lot 13, Section 1, at Crown Hill.
Although Harriet Beecher Stowe said that the Uncle Tom of her book was a composite character drawn largely from the experiences of Josiah Henson, none of Henry Ward Beecher’s friends denied that the fictional Uncle Tom was based on Uncle Tom Magruder. Fieldworker Nixon claims that “a perusal of Uncle Tom’s Cabin shows a strong influence of Indiana characters. Names used are Indianapolis families: Fletcher (whose wife was a Bullard, cousin to Mrs. H. W. Beecher), Merrill (Sam), St. Claire (Noah Noble’s mother was an Elizabeth Claire), and Sedgwick.” She also says that the Baker farm, a half-mile west of Malott Park, was a station on the Underground Railroad. Baker hid slaves in his wheat bin, and at night he took them to Westfield, a Quaker settlement in Hamilton County. Mrs. Baker is mentioned in Uncle Tom’s Cabin when Eliza is being helped by Quakers. Occasionally Henry Ward Beecher preached at Hammonds Park near the Baker farm.
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s first observation of cruelty to slaves was during a visit from Cincinnati to Kentucky. Her brother Edward, of Boston, told her many sad accounts resulting from the fugitive slave law and urged Stowe to write something to counteract it. She started Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Brunswick, Maine, and wrote a few chapters in Boston while visiting Edward. She told her children, however, that God wrote the book, that she saw Uncle Tom in a vision while at Communion at Bowdoin Chapel. She said her characters were universal types and that her work illustrated the fundamental principle of the Gospel as applied to the question of slavery. In her Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, she does not give Tom Magruder and his family as the prototypes for the characters in her novel.