Birmingham Photo of the Day [84]: Gus Brown

Recently I've been roaming through Alabama Mosaic again, a place of infinite distraction, and here's the result this time. 

The document below can be found here and here at the Library of Congress' digital collection, "Federal Writers Project: Slave Narratives." The Federal Writers Project was a New Deal agency, and one of its efforts during the Great Depression of the 1930s involved interviewing former slaves. The Slave Narrative Collection contains over 2000 such interviews conducted in eleven states. Gus Brown was an interview subject in May 1937. 

He was interviewed in Birmingham by Alexander B. Johnson under the auspices of the Alabama Writers Project, a state component of the federal effort. The state archives has an extensive collection of this material. On the two state archives pages linked below Brown's photos, the photographer is identified as "Lollar's Birmingham, Alabama." That was presumably Frank Lollar, who opened a photography and camera shop in the city as early as 1910. The firm eventually operated at least six stores; one opened in Eastwood Mall in December 1965.

Because of his common name, I was unable to find anything on Johnson. At Ancestry.com, I did find an Alexander B. Johnson living in Birmingham who was counted in the 1920 census, age 7. He would have been 24 in 1937, so perhaps...

Like the slave narratives generally, Brown's life story is fascinating and poignant. He  grew up and thus enslaved on a plantation near Richmond, Virginia. Being his master's "body servant", Brown accompanied him into battle during the Civil War and remembered seeing Stonewall Jackson. After the war, Brown remained on William Brown's plantation until his former master died. Then he began work for the Seaboard Air Line Railroad and ended up in Birmingham, where he decided to stay.  Between 1900 and 1967 the Seaboard was a major railroad in the southern U.S. 

I have so far been unable to trace Brown any further. Be sure to read this entire interview, and especially he finally two paragraphs. 

A photo of Brown taken May 8, 1937

Source: Alabama Dept of Archives & History

Gus Brown, age 90

Source: Alabama Genealogy Trails

As my son Amos pointed out, the building behind Brown in the first photograph looks like the Jefferson County Courthouse.

Zina: The Slave Girl by Dr. Augustin Thompson

Sometimes in this business--pursuing Alabama-related stuff--you can tumble pretty far down a rabbit hole. This post is an example.

Recently Project Gutenberg loaded a copy of a play called "Zina: The Slave Girl, or, Which the Traitor?" by Dr. Augustin Thompson and published in 1882. Glancing at the first scene, I noticed an Alabama connection. Let's investigate. First, who was Augustin Thompson, anyway?

He was born in Union, Maine, in 1835. When the Civil War started, he enlisted in the Union Army and received a commission as Captain of Company G, 28th Maine Volunteer Infantry. His unit saw action at the Siege of Port Hudson in Louisiana and also at Fort Pickens in Pensacola. Thompson suffered a wound and developed tuberculosis; he was discharged in August 1863. He rejoined in October 1864 and served the remainder of the war as commander of a unit protecting the shipbuilding port of Bath, Maine. After the war Congress awarded him the honorary rank of lieutenant colonel for his service.

Thompson attended medical school at Hahnemann Homeopathia College in Philadelphia and set up his office in Lowell, Massachusetts, after graduation. By 1885 he had developed a very successful practice. But during those years he did not just see patients. Around 1876 he developed a "nerve food" patent medicine and began distribution as a syrup in 1884. The following year he invested $15,000 in the marketing and sale of a carbonated beverage he trademarked as "Moxie". 

The product was successful, and four years later Thompson and one of his sales agents created the Moxie Nerve Food Company. Thompson received a nice salary as general manager and was able to spend his time promoting Moxie and pursuing his other interests, such as writing. 

Moxie was one of the rare patent medicines to make the transition to another type of consumer product, the soft drink. The change became necessary after passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, a law that forced patent medicine makers to put active ingredients on their labels. Once the public became aware of just how many such products included alcohol, cocaine, and opium, companies had to change their formulas or go out of business.  

Ironically, the Moxie company is owned today by Coca Cola, another patent medicine turned soft drink, and remains popular especially in New England. I've never tried one, but it supposedly has a sweet flavor and a bitter aftertaste due to the gentian root extract in its formula. 

Thompson's play "Zina" was published in 1882 before he began serious work on marketing his patent medicine. As note above, I stumbled across this item on Project Gutenberg. Their copy came from the digital version at the Library of Congress; the print copy there is in the African American Pamphlet Collection. 

Printed copies seem to be quite rare. The WorldCat database of library holdings from around the world only lists three copies, the Library of Congress one and others in Kansas and New York libraries. The work did not show up on Google Books, the Internet Archive or Hathi Trust. Zina may have been self-published by Thompson; the "Courier Press" is probably his hometown newspaper, the Lowell Courier. 

Zina seems to be an anti-slavery play written 25 or more years too late. The first scene is a dialog between Zina, "Property of Keele Brightly" who is a "Slavetrader, gambler, and guerilla chief" and Martelle d’Arneaux. "A true type of the old Southern chivalry." The two, who know each other, meet in a street; D'Arneaux sees she has been weeping. She tells him she is waiting for her master to finish gambling, and then she'll go back with him. As they converse, D'Arneaux learns she is mistreated by Brightly, and she begs him to purchase her. 

D'Arneaux observes, "Zina, you were not born to be a slave. God has not put the stamp of that race in your angel face. Your brain is sharper than your master’s. Think! at fourteen you read as well as the best at the plantation. In music you are a prodigy." By the end of the scene Zina, afraid she will be sold to a slave trader the next day, is on her knees begging. D'Arneaux promises, "I will try."

The next scene is set in the club at a hotel. Brightly and Merald Myers, "A gambler, duellist, and slave trader," are playing the card game faro, which was extremely popular in the U.S. in the 19th century. Before this scene ends, future Confederate general John Bell Hood has joined the others, word of the bombardment of Fort Sumter has arrived, and D'Arneaux and Myers have had a lethal altercation.

The remainder of the play takes place near various battlefields; General William T. Sherman and other Northern and Southern characters appear. Read the play for yourself if you want to learn Zina's fate. 

Now for the payoff. Those first two scenes that make up Act I contain five references to the city of Mobile. The first scene is set in a street in the city. The second scene takes place in the cafe of the "Hotel Leon." During that scene this dialog takes place:

Myers. Come, Brightly, as you and I have not quarreled, let us have a whack at the national game. (Deals cards—they play.)

Brightly. Myers, you are the sauciest devil in Mobile.

Myers. Why?

Brightly. Because you are the best shot, I suppose.

Myers. Then Mobile tolerates me, does it?

Hood. It does.

Myers. Then suppose it should choose to do otherwise?

Hood. Some citizen would wring your nose and kick you out.

So why did Thompson set the first act in Mobile? Who knows? He had no apparently connection with the city that I could find. Perhaps when his unit was active in the Pensacola area he heard stories about the slave trade in Mobile. 

Thompson published at least two other works before his death. A Waif in the Conflict of Two Civilizations: Tale of the Great Civil War and the Last Days of Slavery in America was published in 1892. The Origin and Continuance of Life, Together with the Development of a System for Medical Administration on the Law of Similars, From a Discovery of its Principles in the Law of Natural Affinities appeared in 1902.

You can read more about Thompson here and about Moxie here 

Frontispiece from Thompson's 1902 book The Origin and Continuance of Life

Source: Internet Archive

Augustin Thompson [1835-1903]

Source: Find-A-Grave

ZINA: THE SLAVE GIRL
OR
WHICH THE TRAITOR?

A DRAMA IN FOUR ACTS.

By Dr. A. THOMPSON, of Lowell, Mass.

[Entered according to an Act of Congress, in the year 1882, by Augustin Thompson, of Lowell, Mass., in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.]

LOWELL, MASS.:

COURIER PRESS: MARDEN AND ROWELL.

1882.

Source: Internet Archive

Alabama Photo of the Day: Monument to a Slave

Another expedition to the digital material at the Alabama Department of Archives and History uncovered the photograph below. The description there noted, "Monument to Harry, a slave who saved several Howard College students from a fire in Marion, Perry County, Alabama; photo taken in the 1930's". Let's investigate.

To find out more, I turned to James F. Sulzby, Jr.'s two volume work, Toward a History of Samford University (1988). He discusses the fire on pages 28-33.

Samford was originally known as Howard College and incorporated by an act of the state legislature in 1841. Baptists founded the school, which opened in Marion on January 3, 1842, with nine students. 

The first official college building, a four-story brick structure opened on January 1, 1846. The first commencement was held on July 27, 1848, when seven men graduated. 

For the fall 1854 session 112 students were enrolled. Many of them lived in town, but others lived in the college building. On October 15, 1854, a fire began around midnight. The building and all property, valued at almost $20,000, was destroyed. 

A committee appointed to study the fire issued a statement on October 18. They noted that a professor, the tutor and 23 students had various injuries but all survived. One student died a few days later. The committee determined the fire started in a stairwell but could not establish a cause. 

The only immediate fatality was Henry, the college janitor and a slave owned by President Henry Talbird. He apparently awoke soon after the fire started and went through all the floors waking students. The fire prevented his return by the stairs, and Harry was forced to jump from a fourth story window. He was killed by the fall.  

Harry Talbird's funeral was held at Siloam Church. He was buried in Marion Cemetery. The marker seen in this photograph was paid for by officers and students of the college and members of the Baptist State Convention. 

The monument has a different inscription on each of its four sides; you can read them below. Also below are contemporary photographs of the monument. 

Source: Alabama Dept of Archives & History

Inscription

Harry

Servant of

H. Talbird, D.D.

President of Howard College

Who lost his life from injuries received while rousing the students at the burning of the college building on the night of Oct. 15th 1854.

Aged 23 years.

He was employed as waiter in the college, and when alarmed by the flames at midnight and warned to escape for his life replied "I must wake the boys first," and thus saved their lives at the cost of his own.

As a grateful tribute to his fidelity and to commemorate a noble act, this monument has been erected by the students of Howard College and the Alabama Baptist Convention.

A consistent member of the Baptist Church he illustrated the character of a Christian servant "Faithful even unto death."

(source: Library of Southern Literature, By Edwin Anderson Alderman, Joel Chandler Harris, Charles William Kent, pub. 1910, pg. 6463-6464, in a section of "Epitaphs and Inscriptions" in volume 14.)

Source: Find-A-Grave

Source: Find-A-Grave