The history of a remarkable African-American family in Pennsylvania begins, in a sense, with a two-story frame house at 43 Baltimore Street in Carlisle. The builders of the house, Jonas and Mary Kee, came into Pennsylvania in the mid-nineteenth century from Maryland and Virginia respectively. Their daughter, Margaret, married William James Andrews, whose forebears were in Shippensburg as early as 1790. The Andrews were the second generation to inhabit the house. The family's story passed into the public domain in 1987, when their daughter, Anna Andrews, who had married Richard Johnson, became too frail to live in the house alone. Then her daughters, Anna Wilson and Louise Austin, offered the Cumberland County Historical Society the artifacts and papers from the house. Hence the origin of the "Johnson Family Collection," named for their parents, Anna and Richard Johnson.
The collection offers an opportunity to tell the story of the three generations who built and inhabited the house, as well as to speculate upon the stories that preceded that building. Through these lives, we gain insight into the struggles of African-Americans in southeastern Pennsylvania as they wove their stories into those of their fellow citizens.
The history of 43 Baltimore Street, Carlisle, begins with the lives of its builders, Jonas Kee and Mary Foulk Kee. Neither was born in Pennsylvania, and their separate journeys to Cumberland County are part of a larger story of African-American migrations out of the South in the mid-nineteenth century. Some of Mary Foulk's family came into Pennsylvania before she did. Her parents, Julia and George Foulk, were both born in Virginia in the 1820s. They came to Carlisle some time between 1850 and 1857. We can estimate the time of their arrival because their daughter Margaret was born in Virginia in 1850 and their son George was born in Pennsylvania in 1857. The two older children, Mary and her brother Reuben Washington, who were born in 1843 and 1845 respectively, appear to have come later. Mary Foulk is first listed on the Pennsylvania census in 1870 as the wife of Jonas Kee.
The Foulks' trek is significant because it illustrates the northward migration of many African-Americans who made Pennsylvania their destination in the mid-century. Pennsylvania was the hub of a nationwide escape network, the Underground railroad, primarily because of its geographical location. It lay immediately north of the Mason-Dixon Line, and the mountains in the southeastern part of the state provided refuge for escaped slaves. Its rivers, especially the Susquehanna and the Monongahela, provided natural routes of escape to the north, and the international port in Philadelphia was a destination point for boats traveling north from Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware.1
There were cultural reasons as well that made Pennsylvania a haven for escaped slaves. Many of the Quaker tradition opposed slavery. By the early decades of the nineteenth century there were significant free black populations throughout the state. The nation's oldest and most prestigious anti-slavery organization was the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. In Carlisle the black community supported the anti-slavery cause. Men like John Peck, a local barber, and Michael Buck, a well known conductor on the railroad, were active in Carlisle. Further, there is evidence that some, although certainly not all, of the white population of the town was abolitionist in sentiment. The most famous anti-slavery incident in Carlisle, the McClintock Riot, occurred here in June of 1847, when two Maryland slave holders came in pursuit of three fugitives. Dr. John McClintock of Dickinson College not only assisted the fugitives but also tried to prevent their recapture. He was arrested, along with a number of free blacks, for participating in an attack on the slave holders which led to the beating of one who died three weeks later. McClintock and several of the blacks were acquitted and several other blacks fined. When the Daily Richmond Enquirer reported the incident, it warned its readers editorially to "be careful that none of their sons shall be sent to that place [Dickinson] for their education."2
History is, on the one hand, individual stories and, on the other, stories of groups, nations and cultures. In my recollection of classes I took when I was in college, the starting point was the latter, but in my recent experience of trying to write history, I began with individual stories I found in the Johnson Collection in the Cumberland County Historical Society - a collection of letters and papers of an African-American family in Carlisle.
The two oldest church buildings still standing in their original locations in Carlisle are the First Presbyterian Church on the Square and the Associate Presbyterian “Seceder” Church on South West Street, currently the West Street A.M.E. Zion Church.
Interview of Wanda Hunter for the Elizabeth V. and George F. Gardner Digital Library. Hunter discusses growing up as a Black Woman in Carlisle including the history of the Carlisle School District's segregation and integration policies, and Lincoln Cemetery.