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The Edmonson Sisters Sculpture

GPS Coordinates: 38.8045148, -77.0595754

The Edmonson Sisters Sculpture

Here follows an excerpt from the Clio Foundation website as written by Cole Burkhammer:

Introduction
This historic home was once the property of Joseph Bruin, a slave trader who held hundreds of human beings in the basement of this home as they awaited transportation and sale to slave plantations throughout the South. Bruin purchased this home in 1844 and acted as a middle man until his capture by Union troops during the Civil War. Harriet Beecher Stowe referenced this slave pen as a reference within her books "The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin" and the prequel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin." The jail was most famous for holding the Edmondson Sisters who almost escaped to freedom aboard the Pearl. These women were among 77 slaves who attempted to evade their owners by boarding the ship which was piloted by abolitionists. The building served as the Fairfax County Courthouse for a short time following Bruin's capture by Union troops and was later sold and used as a private home.

Backstory and Context
Joseph Bruin was a slave trader that bought the then slave jail as a way to hold pending slaves before the transaction. Bruin, however, made a life altering discovery when he jailed the Edmondson sisters who would be the focus of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel "the Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin".

The Edmondson sisters were the sisters of Samuel Edmondson, one of the orchestrators of the Pearl escape that sent 77 slaves to freedom in Washington. The Pearl escape was the largest slave escape in history in which Edmondson and his colleagues purchased the Pearl and then freed the 77 slaves in one night to escape down the Potomac River and to freedom. The escape is credited with keeping the abolitionist movement going and starting many of the events that would come thereafter. The slaves would, however, be caught at the end of the river and sold in New Orleans which is where Bruin bought the Edmondson's. Bruin had a fascination of sorts with the sisters which he envisaged they could be sold as prostitutes in New Orleans for a high price. The Edmondson girl's father tried to raise funds for his daughter which led him to contact with Stowe's father and thus Stowe. Stowe knew of the jail and it became the focus of her book. Edmondson purchased his daughters out of the trade but Bruin's name lived on because of Stowe's writings. Bruin's jail became known as a "monument to oppression" and he became a "model of the greedy slave trader".

After Bruin's capture the jail was converted into a courthouse and it is not open to the public today.


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Here follows the inscription written on a nearby roadside historical marker:

The Edmonson Sisters
Alexandria Heritage Trail
— City of Alexandria, est. 1749 —

The West End in the 19th century centered on Duke Street and Diagonal Road. Large undeveloped, the area was devoted to stockyards, agricultural shipment, and "a" notorious business: the slave trade. The house at 1707 Duke Street (left) was part of a two-acre complex owned by Joseph Bruin, partner in Bruin & Hill, a successful slave-trading enterprise. The property included this building used as a slave jail and office, a house where Bruin lived with his family, slave pens, and various outbuildings. From here, Bruin purchased, warehoused, and transported thousands of slaves for sale in the Deep South from 1844 to the beginning of the Civil War. In 1848, Mary Edmonson, 15, and Emily Edmonson, 13, who had joined four of their siblings and seventy-one other blacks in a failed attempt to escape slavery on the Pearl, were purchased by Bruin and destined for auction in New Orleans and a likely fate as "fancy girls" in that city's brothels. Their story and their father's efforts to free them became a call to action for the abolitionist movement.

The Business of Slavery
As children of a free black father, Paul, and slave mother, Amelia, the Edmonson children were legally slaves. Their lives were relatively stable on their father's farm near Sandy Spring, Maryland, until the poor health of their owner raised concern that the children would soon be sold. This frequently happened to settle estates, to pay debts, or to punish rebelliousness. According to some accounts, by the time of the Civil War, between 500,000 and 800,000 enslaved people had been forcibly moved by this interstate commerce.

Freedom
Paul Edmonson's efforts to free his daughters brought him to New York City in the fall of 1848 and eventually to the Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn, led by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. Rev. Beecher took up the Edmonson's cause, preaching about the fate of the Christian, light-skinned Edmonson sisters should they be sold down south, and quickly raised Bruin's asking price of $2,250. By November 1848, Mary and Emily were free.

[Captions and asides:]
While in captivity at Bruin's slave jail, the Edmonson sisters worked washing clothes. The remains of a cisterns (circle of bricks in the ground), left, is near the location of the wash house.

Fear of being sold was a constant in a slave's life. A changed agriculture economy reduced demand for slave labor; a thriving interstate business then developed selling slaves west and south.

Those bound for auction were transported by ship or rail, or walked over land in "coffles."

Paul Jennings, a butler belonging to Senator Daniel Webster and once owned by President James Madison; freeman Daniel Bell; and Samuel Edmonston, a "hired-out" slave and brother to Mary and Emily, organized the Pearl escape. Of the white crew, Daniel Drayton and Captain Edward Sayres, served four years in prison for the escape; most of the captured fugitives were sold in New Orleans.

The Pearl fugitives left Washington, D.C., for the trip north on April 15, 1846. The Pearl was captured near the mouth of the Potomac River and brought back to Washington.

Abolitionists encouraged the freed sisters to become teachers and, by 1853, Mary (left) and Emily (right) were studying at Oberlin College. Mary died of tuberculosis soon after; Emily returned to Washington, D.C., to help educate young black women. Emily married shortly before the Civil War and eventually moved to Anacostia with her husband. She remained a life-long friend of her neighbor, Frederick Douglass. Emily died in 1895.

The Edmonson sisters (standing on either side of abolitionist Gerrit Smith, center) joined Frederick Douglass (in dark jacket to right of table) and others in Cazenovia, New York, in 1850 to protest the Fugitive Slave Act, a federal law requiring officials and citizens in free states to help capture runaway slaves.

Rev. Henry Ward Beecher in 1860. His sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, published the anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, in 1852 and later wrote extensively about the Edmonson family and the efforts to free Mary and Emily. She also helped support the sisters during their time at Oberlin.

In front of you, above, is a bronze sculpture of the Edmonson sisters by Erik Blome, dedicated in 2010.

Erected by City of Alexandria, Virginia.

"I wish to purchase immediately, for the South, any number of NEGROES, from 10 to 30 years of age, for which I will pay the very highest cash price. All communications promptly attended to. JOSEPH BRUIN⁠ West End, Alexandria, Va., Oct. 26. —tf Alexandria Gazette, October 28, 1846." -- Quote From "Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin," 1853, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Page 144:

A Slave-Coffle passing the Capitol:
Fear of being sold was a constant in a slave's life. A changed agriculture economy reduced demand for slave labor; a thriving interstate business then developed selling slaves west and south. Those bound for auction were transported by ship or rail, or walked over land in “coffles.” -- Illustration from A Popular History of the United States, Scribner, Armstrong, and Company, 1876-1881.

Paul Jennings & Daniel Drayton
Paul Jennings, a butler belonging to Senator Daniel Webster and once owned by President James Madison; freeman Daniel Bell; and Samuel Edmonston, a "hired-out" slave and brother to Mary and Emily, organized the Pearl escape. Of the white crew, Daniel Drayton and Captain Edward Sayres, served four years in prison for the escape; most of the captured fugitives were sold in New Orleans. -- Daniel Drayton from Personal Memoir, 1855 (Internet Archive). Paul Jennings by E. C. Perry Photograph Company (Library of Congress)

Mary and Emily Edmonson
Abolitionists encouraged the freed sisters to become teachers and, by 1853, Mary (left) and Emily (right) were studying at Oberlin College. Mary died of tuberculosis soon after; Emily returned to Washington, D.C., to help educate young black women. Emily married shortly before the Civil War and eventually moved to Anacostia with her husband. She remained a life-long friend of her neighbor, Frederick Douglass. Emily died in 1895. -- From Fugitives of the Pearl, by John H. Paynter, c.1930, following Page 64.

Henry Ward Beecher & Harriet Beecher Stowe
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher in 1860. His sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, published the anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, in 1852 and later wrote extensively about the Edmonson family and the efforts to free Mary and Emily. She also helped support the sisters during their time at Oberlin.

The bronze sculpture of the Edmonson Sisters
On the back is an inscription reading:
PEARL

The Edmonson Sisters
Erik Blome Sculptor
©2010
Assisted by C. Blome

Located at
Bruin's Slave Jail
1707 Duke Street

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