Someday in the course of the winter of 1815, a mixed-race boy named John Brown arrived at a stately farmhouse within the Again Cove neighborhood of Portland. It was the primary time the 15-year-old had had an opportunity to see his father, John R. Russwurm, in lots of months, as he’d been away at boarding college in Montreal. Sadly, his father wasn’t lengthy for this world, and the boy must wrestle to make his method in a racist society that provided few alternatives for folks of shade. Nonetheless, within the ensuing years, the boy would develop into a really achieved man, changing into the primary African American to graduate Bowdoin Faculty, co-founding the primary Black newspaper in america, and changing into a colonial chief within the nation of Liberia.

John Brown Russwurm was born in Port Antonio, within the British colony of Jamaica, on October 1, 1799, to a white father and Black mom. Little is thought about his mom besides that she was in all probability Creole — of blended African and European descent. She died when John Brown was very younger, presumably throughout childbirth. His father, John R. Russwurm, was the son of German immigrants and born to an upper-class household in Virginia, the place lots of his members of the family owned slaves. He was despatched to boarding college in England and spent a while there earlier than going to hunt his fortune in Jamaica. He labored there as a dealer, a justice of the peace, and an assistant choose of the japanese Jamaican parish of Portland.

Historian Winston James writes in his e-book, The Struggles of John Brown Russwurm: The Life and Writings of a Pan-Africanist Pioneer, that John Brown’s mom might have been enslaved or free, however his father apparently liked her and handled her as his spouse even when he couldn’t marry her attributable to legal guidelines that made interracial marriage unlawful. Historian Carl Patrick Burrowes notes that Portland parish was residence to 415 whites and 180 folks of shade and surrounded by hundreds of acres of espresso and sugar plantations labored by 7,600 enslaved folks of African descent. Given the dearth of European ladies within the colony, it was not unusual for white males to accomplice with Black ladies. 

“If John’s mom was free, his white slaveholding father may need lived brazenly along with her and the kid, as was the customized in Jamaica,” wrote James. “He possible shaped a deeper bond with them than would have been doable within the extra restrictive context of america, the place such unions had been both unlawful or closely frowned upon.”

By James’ account, John Brown’s father liked his son and sought to guard him from the vicious racism of the interval. When the boy was eight, his father despatched him to get his schooling in Montreal — a chance his mom would have been denied attributable to her race and gender. The love his father had for him, alongside along with his elite schooling, possible helped form the person John Brown would grow to be — a proud, extremely educated Black man who was by no means ashamed of his racial heritage.

In 1812, the elder Russwurm moved to Maine from Jamaica within the hope that the cooler New England local weather could be higher for his well being, which had been failing in recent times. It’s not clear why he selected to maneuver to the District of Maine, which was nonetheless a territory of Massachusetts, however Burrowes speculates that he in all probability had buying and selling companions right here, as Maine retailers generally imported sugar, espresso and molasses from the West Indies.

“The waterfront in Russwurm’s new residence was paying homage to Jamaica,” wrote Burrowes. “In line with one observer, Portland’s waterfront ‘resounded with the tune of Negro stevedores,’ at any time when ‘a cargo of espresso or molasses got here alongside a wharf or when lumber was being loaded aboard.’ Laboring alongside facet these dockworkers had been black sailors whom one historian has described as ‘politically astute and worldly,’ bearers of a black diasporic consciousness.”

John R. Russwurm was in a position to reestablish his enterprise in Portland. The next 12 months, on March 4, 1813, the 53-year-old Russwurm married a widow in her early 20s, named Susan Waterman, and moved her and her three younger youngsters to a 75-acre farm at 238 Ocean Ave., a property that’s now on the Nationwide Register of Historic Locations. A 12 months later she gave delivery to their first baby, Francis Edward Russwurm.

The elder Russwurm typically spoke of a mixed-race boy named John Brown who lived in Montreal, however he was possible fearful his spouse would reject his son attributable to his race, so he initially stored the true nature of their relationship a secret. However as his well being started to deteriorate, he lastly advised her the reality concerning the “mulatto” boy in Quebec.

An enlightened, type and beneficiant lady, Susan “determined without delay to undertake the boy into her household and he was instantly despatched for,” in accordance with a quote from her printed within the Maryland Colonialization Journal. She insisted he be given his father’s title, so the boy grew to become often known as John Brown Russwurm. Susan liked the youthful Russwurm as her personal baby and pledged to her husband that she would at all times have a house for his son if he wanted one. Susan and John Brown remained very shut till the top of his life, in 1851. And John R. Russwurm was at all times very pleased with his son’s “positive private look and manners,” and didn’t cover their relationship from his acquaintances in Maine, in accordance with an article within the Portland Day by day Press from the 1870s.

“He launched him into the most effective society in Portland, the place he was honored and revered,” the Press reporter wrote. “He attended the most effective faculties and had all of the privileges that different boys of the most effective households loved.” 

However John Brown had solely been on the farmhouse just a few months earlier than his father died. His stepmother later wrote that the boy, orphaned at 16, was left “fully in my care, with a small legacy, which I meant he ought to make use of to complete his schooling.” 

Russwurm lived with the household whereas attending college part-time, however racial discrimination in faculties was quite common in New England. Susan wrote that it was “relatively troublesome at the moment to get a coloured boy into an excellent college the place he would obtain an equal share of consideration with white boys, and this I used to be very specific must be the case.”

In line with James, Russwurm’s rich white kin in Virginia refused to help him after his father’s dying and barely even answered his letters. In a single offended letter to his older cousin, John Sumner Russwurm, despatched in July of 1819, he complained about not receiving a response. “After having waited a substantial time, I concluded to handle you as soon as extra, and that for the final, in the event you noticed match to not reply it,” wrote Russwurm. “Regarding myself, nothing extra shall ever escape me regarding my state of affairs in life.”

Seven years apparently handed earlier than his cousin wrote him again, however he did so solely to learn how a lot cash his uncle left him. In line with James, “a difficult Maine lawyer” was holding onto the cash ($2,000), and John Sumner finally “received his lower, however on the expense of others.” 

Grieving his father’s dying, rejected by his father’s kin and fighting racial discrimination, Russwurm might have felt like he was a burden to his new household and longed for his residence in Jamaica. Proper earlier than his 18th birthday, within the spring of 1817, he determined to set off for the colony of his delivery regardless of his stepmother’s reservations. 

“I shall always remember the day I carried him to Portland and parted firm with him — the sorrow he expressed with parting with my youngsters, significantly his toddler brother, confirmed how strongly he was connected to us all,” she wrote three many years later. “I provided to deliver him again, and try to get some good man for his guardian. He mentioned ‘no; that won’t higher my shade. If I used to be a white boy, I’d by no means depart your loved ones, however I believe it’s best for me to go.’”

Susan obtained a “sorrowful” letter from Jamaica just a few months later. Younger John had hoped his father’s previous pals would offer him help, however he discovered they’d died and he may discover no different connections or help on the island. Earlier than her letter instructing him to come back proper residence arrived, he was already on his method again to Maine. Realizing his stepmother had remarried, to a person named William Hawes, John Brown didn’t wish to impose, so he stayed on the town in Portland and didn’t exit to the farm. In spite of everything, the family there had since grown to incorporate not solely John’s half brother and his three stepbrothers, but additionally two of William’s youngsters from his earlier marriage. Susan and William subsequently had six extra youngsters collectively.

At some point Susan obtained phrase that John was seen round city wanting “solid down” and she or he spent a sleepless evening worrying about her adopted son. The subsequent morning she despatched a person to Portland “with strict orders to not return with out John, and earlier than 9 o’clock, he arrived,” Susan recalled. “I used to be a lot relieved, and the kids as a lot rejoiced.”

Susan quickly discovered John Brown his guardian — a person named Calvin Stockbridge who owned the paper mill that employed her husband. Stockbridge was a distinguished service provider and a “mainstay of Baptist church in North Yarmouth.” In 1819, Stockbridge funded Russwurm’s schooling at Hebron Academy, a strict faculty preparatory college based in 1804. 

That July, Russwurm wrote to a cousin in Tennessee that “Maine will likely be separated [from Massachusetts] although not with out some opposition.” Seven months in a while March 15, 1820, Maine was accepted into the union as a free state within the Missouri Compromise. 

But it surely was solely a brief compromise. Abolitionist rabblerousers, like Russwurm would later grow to be, helped construct the motion to tilt public opinion and pressure America’s reckoning with the dehumanizing establishment of slavery. 

Will Chapman is the Librarian and Archivist at Museums of the Bethel Historic Society. Andy O’Brien is the communications director for the Maine AFL-CIO. You possibly can attain them at will@maineworkingclasshistory.com and andy@maineworkingclasshistory.com.