enslaved peoples Archives

Slavery in Early Austin: The Stringer’s Hotel and Urban Slavery

On the eve of the Civil War, an advertisement appeared in the Texas Almanac announcing the sale of five enslaved people at the Stringer’s Hotel.

“Negroes For Sale––I will offer for sale, in the city of Austin, before the Stringer’s Hotel, on the 1st day of January next, to the highest bidder, in Confederate or State Treasury Notes, the following lot of likely Negroes, to wit. Three Negro Girls and two Boys, ages ranging from 15 to 16 years. The title to said Negroes is indisputable” —The Texas Almanac, Austin December 27th, 1862

Image of the cover of The Texas Almanac for 1862 — via Portal for Texas History

This hotel was one of the many businesses in Austin using enslaved labor, a commonplace practice that extended to every part of Texas. However, urban slavery in Austin differed substantially from slavery on the vast plantations that stretched across Texas’ rural geography. Unlike rural planters, urban slaveholders were largely merchants, businessmen, tradesmen, artisans, and professionals. The urban status of these slaveholders in Austin meant that enslaved people performed a wide variety of tasks, making them highly mobile and multi-occupational. Austin property holders, proprietors, and city planners built enslaved labor not only into the city’s economy, but into its very physical space to meet local needs. This examination of the Stringer’s Hotel provides a brief window for looking into Austin’s history of slavery and perhaps the history of enslaved people in the urban context.

Close-up image of the 1885 Sanborn Maps of Austin showing the map's title and the eastern part of Austin — Sanborn Maps of Austin, 1885 (via Library of Congress)

Close-up image of the 1885 Sanborn Maps of Austin showing the blocks around the Avenue Hotel — Sanborn Maps of Austin, 1885 (via Library of Congress)

On September 3, 1850, Swante Magnus Swenson purchased a city lot in Austin. In 1854, he built the Swenson Building on Congress Avenue where the current Piedmont Hotel stands today. Inside the building, on the first floor, were a drug store, a general goods store, a hardware store, and a grocery store; a hotel, (named the Avenue Hotel but locally known as the Stringer’s Hotel) was located on the upper two levels of the building. The Travis County Deeds Records show that sometime later, Swenson leased the hotel to a John Stringer, giving the hotel its name “the Stringer’s Hotel.” An 1885 Austin city Sanborn map of the Swenson Building shows that Swenson had a room built for “servants” in the hotel portion of the building. There is no documentation detailing whether enslaved people stayed in that room since the Sanborn map is dated twenty years after the Civil War. However, an 1889 Sanborn map shows that Swenson had the Stringer’s Hotel remodeled to remove the room for “servants,” which suggests that enslaved people originally potentially stayed there, given that “servant” and “dependency” were variant terms used for “slave” in urban spaces. The National Register of Historic Places Inventory notes that businesses on Congress Avenue did not have the financial capacity to maintain, let alone remodel, their properties right after the Civil War. This explains the twenty-year delay to remove the said “servants” room, no longer utilized by enslaved people in the 1880s. Further evidence also shows that Swenson himself had strong ties to slavery in Texas.

S.M. Svensson (via Wikipedia)

S. M Swenson was born in Sweden and came to New York as an immigrant in 1836 at the age of twenty. A few years after his arrival, Swenson worked as a mercantile trader. Through his trade dealings in the south, he befriended a slaveholder by the name of George Long, who then hired Swenson to work at his newly relocated plantation in Texas. A year later, when Long died due to poor health, Swenson married his widow, who then too died of tuberculosis three years later. By 1843, Swenson became a full-scale slaveholder in Texas through inheriting his now-deceased wife’s plantation. In 1848, he enlarged his property holdings by purchasing the adjoining plantation and expanding his cotton crop. In 1850, along with purchasing 182 acres a few miles outside of Austin, he bought the lot on Congress Avenue and constructed the Swenson Building and inside, the Stringer’s Hotel.

There are no records that detail the lives of enslaved people at the Stringer’s Hotel but other sources show that slaveholders expected slaves to fill a variety of roles in running their establishments on Congress Avenue. In his book, a Journey Through Texas, Frederick Olmstead describes his encounter with an enslaved woman who was responsible for tending to the hotel’s patrons along with upkeep and building maintenance. These slaves were also responsible for running errands and transporting goods. Many slaves also lived and traveled to and from homes and communities that formed on the outskirts of town. Traveling to and from their labor obligations or social engagements in their free time illuminates the various networks of movement created by the enslaved. Hence, given their relative independence, expectations, and responsibilities, it is not impossible to imagine enslaved people taking on leading roles in running the Stringer’s Hotel and other establishments in Austin.

Black and white photograph of the Avenue Hotel — Avenue Hotel. Photograph, University of North Texas Libraries (via The Portal to Texas History)

The analysis of the Stringer’s Hotel through Sanborn maps and other qualitative sources illuminates the roles and occupations of enslaved people in Austin’s urban space. Unlike the enslaved people confined to the private domain of plantation estates, urban slaves worked in spaces with considerable mobility, meeting the needs of their owners and to fulfill their own social lives. Perhaps mapping the movement of enslaved people in this way, could allow for further interpretations of possible realities and lived experiences of enslaved people that archival texts obscure and make difficult to see.

Sources

“Negroes for Sale.” The Texas Almanac. December 27, 1862, 1 edition, sec. 34.
“Texas General Land Office Land Grant Database”, Digital Images, Texas General Land Office, Entry for Swenson, S M, Austin City Lots, Travis Co., TX, Patent no 429, vol.1
“Austin 1885 Sheet 5,” Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, Map Collection, Perry-Castañeda Library, Austin, Texas.
Olmsted, Frederick Law. A Journey through Texas: or, A Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989: 50;
Austin City Sanborn Map, 1885;
Bullock Hotel. Photograph, University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, accessed December 3, 2019

Additional Readings

“Bullock House.” The Handbook of Texas Online. Texas State Historical Association, June 12, 2010.
Gail Swenson. “S. M. Swenson and the Development of the SMS Ranches,” M.A. thesis, University of Texas, (1960).
Gage, Larry Jay. “The City of Austin on the Eve of the Civil War.” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 63, no. 3 (1960).
Kenneth Hafertepe. “Urban Sites of Slavery in Antebellum Texas” in Slavery in the City, Edited by Clifton Ellis and Rebecca Ginsburg, University of Virginia Press. (2017)
Jason A. Gillmer. Slavery and Freedom in Texas: Stories from the Courtroom, 1821-1871. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, (2017)

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The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Rage and Resistance at Ashbel Smith’s Evergreen Plantation

by Candice D. Lyons

In the spring of 1852, Benjamin Roper, overseer to Galveston area plantations Evergreen and Headquarters, wrote a short letter to his employer to inform him that “on the night of [April] 30 I cut Lewis [an enslaved man] with a knife…He is now and has been since his misfortune at Dr. Whiting’s and will remain there until he is able to bear punishment when I shall bring him home and give him a very severe whiping [sic].” Roper postponed describing the events leading up to this act of brutality, however, he insisted that “if any negro (whether I have the controll [sic] of him or not) should ever give me the like provocation, I will deliberately take his life. I am now armed and it is my intention never to go into your field without, and to use them if necessary.”

Photograph of part of a letter sent by Benjamin Roper, a plantation overseer, in 1852 to his employer — *Letter from May 3, 1852 (by author)*

The recipient of this missive was Ashbel Smith, noted Texas statesman often hailed as both “the father of Texas medicine” and “the father of the University of Texas.” Known for his pioneering work in the treatment of yellow fever as well as his diplomatic endeavors, Smith spent the latter part of his life acting as a vocal proponent for women’s and African American education, serving as one of three commissioners tasked with establishing an “Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, for the benefit of the Colored Youths”—the institution that would eventually become Prairie View A&M University. This avowed investment is difficult to reconcile, however, with Smith’s years-long, active participation in the institution of chattel slavery, including his seeming complicity in his steward’s violent attempts at plantation management.

Shortly after the April 30 incident, Smith returned to his Texas holdings for a brief visit, after which Roper penned a follow-up message noting, “Lewis is here for a week or two until we get more out of the grass. Perhaps it may be some satisfaction for you to know that he as well as all the other negroes have behaved very well indeed since you left.” This bit of self-congratulation would prove premature, however, as between the writing of this letter and one dated June 23, 1852, those enslaved by Ashbel Smith mounted a sustained resistance (undoubtedly, at least in part, to Lewis’ stabbing) that would compel Roper to draft yet another letter to his employer noting that “Your negroes have for a long time enjoyed the reputation of being hard to manage yet I believed until now that I could control them. I am now satisfied that I cannot and being so satisfied I wish to resign.” It is clear from this communication that, as they had done in years past, the individuals enslaved by Ashbel Smith were challenging the conditions of their enslavement. This is evident in Roper’s comment a week later that “whilst I have been at one place [that is, one of Smith’s plantations] the work has been neglected at the other. Your negroes all need continual watching or rather continual flogging to make them do their work.”

Printed map of Galveston County for 1879 — *Map of Galveston County, 1879 via Library of Congress*

Demoralized, Roper divulges that “there is not a single person [enslaved at Evergreen or Headquarters] in whom I can depend unless it be Abram, and I have not full confidence in him. Bob and Old Sam deceived me for a long time but I have found them out and in my opinion there are not two greater scoundrels on the place.” Roper’s plaintive airing of grievances highlights how those enslaved by Smith shifted the balance of power after a heinous act of violence, contesting the circumstances under which they were expected to labor in ways marking them, in Roper’s view, as “scoundrels.”

Black and white image of Ashbel Smith — Ashbel Smith via Wikimedia Commons

This situation was thrown into crisis once again in 1857, as Ashbel Smith began to receive extensive correspondence from Roper concerning the practices of his replacement, the newly hired overseer, Mr. Page. Roper still lived in the area and spoke regularly with Smith. In February 1857, he wrote to note that Page was rarely if ever seen in the fields and that, rather, “the negroes are called up and receive orders at the house and then they go off and do as they please.” While this lack of oversight may have been to the benefit of the enslaved on one hand, it signaled a type of neglect that would leave them especially vulnerable to medical calamity, on the other. On March 4, 1857, Roper writes, “Ann gave birth to a [daughter] since you left which died a few days after. I knew not of its birth or sickness until after its death, if I had I should have gone to have seen it.” He adds, “I have since told Albert and Abram that if anyone was sick hereafter before your return to let me know it”—a request that seems to imply that Roper attributes the death of Ann’s child to some failure to attend to the needs of those enslaved on Evergreen Plantation on Mr. Page’s part.

Such was the fate of these individuals: despite Smith’s reputation as an upstanding and altruistic Texas luminary, the people he enslaved spent their lives subject to the whims of a perpetually absent “master” and were routinely made to contend with insufficient resources, violent overseers, and inadequate health care.

Image of a statue of Ashbel Smith in Baytown, Texas — Ashbel Smith is memorialized in a statue in Baytown, Texas (via Wikimedia Commons)

Read the full letters from the Ashbel Smith Papers, 1823-1926 here:

Sources:
Ashbel Smith Papers, 1823-1926, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.
“Evergreen Plantation.” Handbook of Texas Online.
Elizabeth Silverthrone. “Smith, Ashbel.” Handbook of Texas Online.

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The Enslaved and the Blind: State Officials and Enslaved People in Austin, Texas

By Daniel Josiah Thomas III

Black and white image of the Neill-Cochran House — (Used with permission of the Neill-Cochran House)

On November 6, 1855, Washington Hill commissioned Abner H. Cook to build a southern plantation house in Austin, Texas. The Texas Historical Commission reported that “the property worth $900 in August 1855 was worth $8,000 when Hill paid his taxes for 1856.” When the two-story limestone home was completed, Hill had greatly overextended his financial resources. In an attempt to retain the property, Hill sought tenants to help with his costs. Fortunately for him, the Texas Legislature would approve funding for a program that would help. In 1856, the same year Hill’s home was completed, the legislature voted to found an Asylum for the Blind. Austin’s asylum would provide initial financial relief to Hill, but it also led to the use of enslaved people on his property.

1921 Sanborn Map of Austin featuring former compound of Texas School for the Blind (via Library of Congress)

From 1856 to 1919, the Texas State Asylum for the Blind took copious and painstakingly detailed notes of all business-related meetings. One of the earliest entries recorded the asylum entering into a contract with Washington Hill for the purpose of using his property. An entry made on October 26, 1856 states:

Washington L. Hill proposes to lease his residence in the city of Austin for the use of the school for the term of two years commencing on the 20 Nov[em]b[e]r next for the term of nine hundred dollars per year payable quantity in advance — which proposition was accepted by the Board and R. L Townes was appointed to enter into contract with L. Hill.^[1] (See below)

Image of a page of Texas State Asylum for the Blind's meeting notes — (Photo by Author)

The legal stipulation that he receive the entire year’s payment from the asylum in advance speaks to the urgency of Hill’s financial situation. Nonetheless, having extended control of his property to the School for the Blind allowed for the school to do what was necessary to conduct business.

Meeting files for 1860 illuminate how agents of the Texas State Legislature and their enslaved persons were vital to the school’s successful operation. Several entries that took place during a meeting on January 16, 1860 reveal both the enslaver’s name and the role their enslaved persons were to have at the School for the Blind. The meeting file states:

“The following proceedings were had. Ordered, that the Superintendent be authorized to employ Negro woman of W L Chalmers as cook $18.00 per month, subject to be discharged upon notice by trustee: Also, the negro woman of Ed Clark, at $15 per month, subject to his discharge upon notice of Trustees: Also, to retain in the employ of the institute the Negro man of Col Neal at $20 per month and clothing. . . . The salary for the negro girl belonging to Doch Maynire was filed at $10 dollars per month instead of $12 dollars as first agreed upon. . . . The meeting then adjourned.^[2] (See below)

The two women, one girl, and one man mentioned at this meeting reveal the presence of four enslaved people laboring at Austin’s School for the Blind in 1860. In all these instances, the school paid each enslaver a monthly rate to use their enslaved persons for the benefit of the school’s operation. While one enslaved woman was reported to have served as a cook, the role of the others was not mentioned. The identity of two of the men responsible for the renting of these enslaved people, however, is revealed by Texas’ ninth Governor, Francis Richard Lubbock in his memoirs. W. L. Chalmers and Edward Clark were key members of the Texas State Legislature. Lubbock identified Chalmers as an “assistant clerk” of the Seventh Legislature, in 1857 and “chief clerk” of the Ninth Legislature in 1861.^[3] Edward Clark was the “Secretary of State” to Governor Elisha M. Pease from 1853-1857.^[4] Clark would serve as the Lieutenant Governor of Texas from 1859-1861 and the Confederate Texas Governor in 1861. Thus, the property currently known as the Neill-Cochran house was once a place where both enslaved people and the highest-ranking state officials, converged to ensure the well-ordered functioning of the Texas School for the Blind.

Photograph of Historical Marker at the Neill-Cochran House Museum — Historical Marker at Neill-Cochran House Museum (via Flickr)

Sources for this article:
^[1] An Inventory of School for the Blind and Visually Impaired Meeting Files 1856-1919, 1979-2015, Volume 1989/073-28, Texas State Asylum for the Blind/Blind Institute/Texas School for the Blind, 1856-1919, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Austin, TX.
^[2] Ibid, 24-25
^[3] Frances Lubbock, Six Decades in Texas: Or Memoirs of Frances Richard Lubbock, Governor of Texas in War Time 1861-1863, Austin: B. C. Jones & co., printers, 1900), 223, 329.
^[4] Ibid., 195.

An Inventory of School for the Blind and Visually Impaired Meeting Files 1856-1919, 1979-2015, Volume 1989/073-28, Texas State Asylum for the Blind/Blind Institute/Texas School for the Blind, 1856-1919, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Austin, TX.

Evelyn M. Carrington. The Neill-Cochran Museum House, 1855-1976: A Century of Living from Texas History. Waco, TX: Texian Press for the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Texas, 1977.

Kenneth Hafertepe. Survey and Multiple Property Nomination of Abner Cook Structures in Austin. 1989.

Francis Richard Lubbock. Six Decades in Texas; or, Memoirs of Francis Richard Lubbock, Governor of Texas in War Time, 1861-63. Edited by Cadwell Walton Raines. Austin: B. C. Jones & Co.,1900.

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