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How do we know that Tudor E. Grant
was involved with the underground railroad?
1. Minutes of the Oswego County Anti-Slavery Society on
April 24, 1838, noted that Mr. Grant had been a "chattel,
although he spoke as though he felt himself to be a man, and
as having always belonged to the race [of men]." Friend
of Man, May 16, 1838.
2. At a meeting of the Oswego County Anti-Slavery Society
on June 21, 1838, Grant volunteered (along with John Gridley
and Sidney Clark) to be part of a Vigilance Committee for the
City of Oswego, to organize local efforts to help fugitives from
slavery. Friend of Man, July 4, 1838.
In Oswego, Tudor E. Grant was a leader of the African American
community, a committed abolitionist, and an outspoken opponent
of discrimination in all forms. He was himself a fugitive slave
from Maryland. As a barber, he was in a good position to hear
news from both
blacks and whites, and he very likely helped other self-emancipated
slaves, either to find work in Oswego or to escape to Canada.
Born about 1800 as an enslaved person in Maryland, Tudor E. Grant
came to Oswego in 1832. Grant did well in Oswego. As one of several
African American barbers, he was part of a black elite, well-known
both to black and white citizens in the community, active in
church activities (including leading the singing) and a leading
abolitionist. From the very beginning of anti-slavery organization
in Oswego County, Tudor E. Grant took an active part. He gave
a talk at one of Oswego County's earliest anti-slavery
meetings, held in Mexico in July 1836. In August, 1837, he became
an agent for The Colored American, selling subscriptions to this
abolitionist newspaper. In 1838, he presented a resolution to
the Oswego County Anti-Slavery Society meeting in Oswego. "Resolved,"
he argued, "That we ought to be ready to sacrifice everything,
rather than in such an hour as this to shrink from duty. Life
without liberty is little worth--and if we cannot enjoy the privilege
of speaking freely, and of writing freely, we ought, like Lovejoy
[Elijah Lovejoy, the Illinois abolitionist editor who had just
been killed], freely to die if necessary." Mr. Grant had
been a "chattel" himself, reported the minutes of the
meeting, "although he spoke as though he felt himself
to be a man, and as having always belonged to the race [of men]."
At a meeting of the Oswego County Anti-Slavery Society on June
21, 1838, Grant volunteered (along with John Gridley and Sidney
Clark) to be part of a Vigilance Committee for the City of Oswego,
to organizelocal efforts to help fugitives from slavery. As a
well-known abolitionist, Tudor E. Grant also signed anti-slavery
petitions. In 1838, he and more than fifty other male citizens
of Oswego (both black and white) asked Congress not to admit
any new slave states to the Union. In 1840, he signed another
opposing the admission ofTexas as a slave state. He also protested
discrimination in Oswego's schools. In 1839, hepointed out that
"I have not, in common with others, the right of choice
in schools for my children." Two different schools requested
that he withdraw his children because of their color. In one
case, the teacher explained that if she kept the Grant children,
she would lose her white pupils. In the other, the teacher agreed
to admit Grant's children only on two conditions: 1) that parents
of her white students all agreed, and 2)
that the Grant children "had first learned to read and spell
in class."Where, asked Grant, will they learn to read and
spell if they could not goto school?When the Fugitive Slave Law
was introduced into Congress, African Americans in Oswego met
on May 6, 1850, to protest. Tudor E. Grant took an active part
in the discussions. Among the resolutions he promoted were the
following three:"1st, Resolved, That all laws established
for human government, and all systems of whatever kind, founded
upon the spirit of complexional cast,are in violation of the
fundamental principles of the divine law, and are evil in their
nature and tendencies, and should therefore be effectuallydestroyed.
"2d, Resolved, That as the long lost rights and privileges
of an oppressed people are regained only in propotion as they
act in their own case, it is therefore the duty of a people who
are alive to their own interest and
have awoke from the death-like sleep of a long night of ignorance
and oppression to shake off the defiled garments of their shame
and degradation, and to strain every nerve for a giant effort
to regain their natural and inalienable rights. 3d, Resolved,
That this meeting, declare it to be a violation of the Declaration
of Independence and the Constitution of these United States,
and contrary to the spirt of a Republican form of Government,
and of the
first article of our State Constitution, and injustice of the
most aggravated character to deprive us of a just and legitimate
participation in the rightsand privileges of the State, or make
us bear the burden an submit to its enactments, all when
its arrangements, plans and purposes are framedand put into operation,
utterly regardless of our rights as citizens, and
which in their practical operation set upon us with destructive
tendency." Passage of the Fugitive Slave Act brought insecurity
for Tudor E. Grant, as it did for every African American in the
country. Although he bought a house and continued to carry on
his business, he became more careful inhis dealings with government
officials. In 1850, for example, he had listed his birthplace
in the federal census as Maryland. By 1855, when the New York
State census taker came to call, he listed his birthplace asWestchester
County, New York.
Tudor E. Grant had several children with his first wife. In 1850,
four of them still lived a home. Daughters Louisa, Sophie M.,
and O.C. were born about 1837, 1838, and 1844, while son George
F. was born about 1847. Sometime before 1850, Grant's first wife
died. By 1855, Tudor Grant had a new wife. Marie Grant was born
in Maryland about 1805. She came to Oswego in 1853, when she
was 48 years old. Perhaps she was herself a fugitive from slavery.
They lived in a substantial house on West Bridge Street near
the corner of
Lathrop Street. Tudor Grant had purchased this property in 1854
and owned it until the family moved to West Seneca Street in
1858. Perhaps Marie Grant operated a boarding house here, since
at least four single African American males lived with the Grant
family,
including eighteen-year-old W.H. Watson from Chenango County,who
also worked as a barber. At various times, Tudor Grant
had barbershops in the Welland Hotel at the corner of West Second
and Cayuga Streets, on Water Street just at the southwest end
of the Bridge Street bridge, and in the Doolittle House, forerunner
of the Pontiac Hotel. He also had a
business doing "fancy dying" for silk fabrics. Tudor
E. Grant left Oswego sometime in the 1860s.
Sources:
Carolyn Bailey, "Blacks in Oswego in the 1850s,"
Student paper on file in Special Collections, Penfield Library.
Census, 1850.
Census, 1855.
Deeds, Oswego County Clerk's Office.
The Colored American, August 26, 1837.
Friend of Man, May 16, 1838; July 4, 1838; August 4, 1838.
Anti-slavery petitions, May 12, 1838, and 1840.
Oswego Palladium, January 27, 1846, June 1, 1850.
Oswego City Directories, 1854-1863.
These will go under "Newspapers"
Friend of Man
This will go under "Petitions."
This page from the census (or perhaps just the information
on Tudor
Grant and family--#550--although this makes it hard to interpret
without
the headings at the top of the page) can go under Tudor E. Grant,
along
with a picture of his house (not yet available) and a piece of
the 1880
atlas (not yet available).
Grant
Wellman
10/98
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