Exeter's freed slave : in search of Delia Graham

                                     Exeter's freed slave : in search of Delia Graham

In 1854 a reporter under the pseudonym of "The White Slave" published a series of reports on the poorest classes of Exeter in the Western luminary of which a file is held in the Devon and Exeter Institution. In the "Exeter workhouse - its inmates their occupations and treatment", the fifth in the series, published 18 April, 1854, page 3, columns b-d, he briefly interviewed a woman he named as Dahlia Graham: 

"The Aged women's-ward [...] has 13 beds occupied now by 14 persons: at one end, separated by a partition, is the Day-ward for the same parties. At the moment we entered they had congregated round the fireplace, and their appearance was somewhat grotesque. We approached and observed one old lady seated in a cane-wrought chair with considerable ease and dignity. She saluted us blandly, and we soon observed that she was of African blood. A novel sight in our Union-house! Around her head was bound a many-coloured kerchief, in the fantastic style that obtains in tropical climes. She was somewhat eloquent; exceedingly happy, and very grateful. She told us that her name was Dahlia Graham, given her by an English family, to whom she was sold by a slave-dealer in the West Indies, of that name. She was the eldest of four children, and was very young when placed in the bonds of captivity. From the hands of Mr Graham she passed to those of Mr Wardrobe, who was, when she was sold to him, a large plantation holder, but the policy of our governments towards the West India planters having beggared many, the Wardrobe family have been sufferers, and Dahlia rejoices in her present happy position. Such are the mutations of sublunary things! Dahlia, kidnapped in Africa, endured the horrors of the middle passage, was sold into bondage in our colonies, and now at the patriarchal age of 93, she has a mansion to live in, gardens to live in, and the lieges of the Queen of England to minister to her wants!  Fortunate Dahlia! How different an end to that which would, probably, have awaited her in her own country!"

 There are several inconsistencies in this tantalisingly brief account which could be due to the faulty memory of Dahlia or the carelessness and haste of the reporter.

 By the time of the 1841 census (HO107/263/6 folio 6) Dahlia (or Delia as she is more often named) had certainly arrived in Exeter and is recorded in Premier Place, St Leonard:  

Name	Sex	Age	Status	Born (estimate)	Birthplace
Harriett Wardrobe	Female	65	Independent	1772-1776	Foreign
Harriett Bailey	Female	30	Independent	1807-1811	Foreign
Eliza Baily	Female	25	Independent	1812-1816	Foreign
Delia [no surname]	Female	75	Female servant	1762-1766	Foreign
Elizabeth Wilkey	Female	45	Female servant	1792-1796	Devon
Sarah Papprill [Head?]	Female	65	Independent	1772-1776
Sarah E Papprill	Female	40		1797-1801

The fact that no surname is given might indicate Mrs Wardrobe's perception of her status at that time when reporting to the enumerator.

She appears again in the census for 1851 (HO 107/1869/7 page 6) at Rose Cottage, Hills Court Road, now on or near no. 13 Pennsylvania Road, opposite the end of Hillsborough Avenue:

Rose Cottage on 1:2500 Ordnance Survey sheet 80.6, 1890

13 Pennsylvania Road, formerly Rose Cottage, Hills Court Road, 2021

 

Name	Rel.	Marital status	Age	Occupation	Birthplace	Born
Harriet L Wardrobe	Head	widow	76	fund holder	United States	1775
Harriet L Baillie	niece	unmarried	40	fund holder	United States	1811
Eliza H Baillie	niece	unmarried	38	fund holder	United States	1813
Delia Graham	servant	unmarried	86	general servant  upper	Senegal	1765
Hannah Short	servant	unmarried	18	general servant	Exeter	1833

By 1851 Delia is at least accorded a surname and is qualified as "general servant upper" as distinct from the younger servant. Less than two years later she was removed to Exeter workhouse. Delia Graham's death was registered in the March quarter, 1855 (Exeter, 5b, 79) and she was buried in St Sidwell, Exeter.

No Exeter workhouse records survive for this period and the above is the entire record that has been discovered about Delia Graham. Even her date of birth is uncertain. Her own account would suggest 1761 but 1764/5 is more likely from census and death records. More has been discovered about her mistress and her family, and this may serve to shed more light on the background against which she lived her long life.  

The statement in the 1851 census that she was born in Senegal may seem unlikely as Senegal, with that part of the slave coast including the notorious island of Gorée, was a French possession. However in 1758 during the Seven Year' War it had been captured by the British. From 1763 Gorée reverted to French control, returning to Britain in 1779 and it was was only finally ceded to France by the Treaty of Paris in 1783.   This falls within the period when Delia was a young girl, so she could well have been transported from Senegal to the West Indies on a British slave ship.  

There were several planters named Graham in the West Indies, but it has proved impossible to identify any that may have moved to Georgia or indeed any members of the Wardrobe family who were active as planters in the West Indies. The Graham, Baillie and Wardrobe families all had Scottish roots, as did many of the slave owners in the New World. If Delia was passed directly from the Graham family to the Wardrobe family, this would probably have happened after 1810 when Lieutenant-Colonel William Wardrobe arrived in Georgia after retiring from the British Army. It is perhaps more likely that she had been acquired by the Baillie family and passed to the Wardrobe family on the marriage of Harriet Louisa Baillie. 

Harriet Louisa Baillie was born about 1775 in British Colonial America. One source states her parents as being George Baillie (1738 – 1795, born in Lauder, Berwick, Scotland) and Jourdiana Cunningham Crooke (1730 – 1788, born in St Christopher West Indies, died in Edinburgh, Scotland). This has not been verified.

The Baillie family were well-connected in Georgia. Harriet Louisa was the god-daughter of John Houstoun (1744 – 1796) a lawyer and statesman from Savannah who was one of the original Sons of Liberty and a delegate for Georgia in the Second Continental Congress in 1775 and also Governor of Georgia in 1778 and 1784 – 1785. John Houston of Savannah transferred to the infant Harriet Louisa Baillie land in St. George Parish adjacent to Thomas Yarbrough on 29 July 1775 (Georgia Genealogical Magazine, 1963, page 567). In his will written on May 2, 1796, and proved 22 July 1796, John Houston left various legacies to his family. Ratifying and confirming the manumission of a “black woman named Doll,” he “made free” also his Negro woman Venus and devised that fifty dollars be paid to her within one year after his death. To all of Doll’s children he left six hundred dollars each to be paid to them within two years after his death. The rest and residue of his estate, real and personal, he bequeathed to his wife, his god-daughter, Harriet Louisa Baillie, [and] his “adopted daughter, (being my niece) who now lives with me Harriet Thomson Houstoun,” to be divided among them share and share alike.

The Georgia Historical Society's Phillip R. Yonge papers contain additional property records concerning Harriett: 

• Folder 8 Item 8: Harriet Louisa Baillie and Andrew Gray of Southfield, Scotland, indenture, December 25, 1800. Concerns property in Georgia. Recorded in Edinburgh, Scotland.
• Folder 26 Item 27: Harriet Louisa Baillie and Andrew Gray, Esq. deed of bargain and sale, December 25, 1800.

In 1812 Harriett married William Wardrobe, recorded in the Army list of 1799 as Captain-Lieutenant in the 52nd Regiment of Foot in 1799, becoming Major in the 52nd Foot on 23 September 1800 and Lieutenant-Colonel in 96th Foot on 1 February 1803. He was transferred to half-pay of York Hussars and became Lieutenant-Colonel in 47th Regiment of Foot on 8 May 1806. He retired in May 1810 and moved to Georgia. The Charleston Courier reports on Wednesday 28 October 1812 (page 3 column c): 

Died, on St. Simons Island, Georgia, on Sunday, the 11th inst. Lieutenant Colonel William Wardrobe, late of His Britannic Majesty’s 47th Regt. of Foot.

 Widowed soon after her marriage Harriett probably remained in St Simon's Island on the estates of her brother, but it was a period of hostilities with the British. In January 1815 the British landed on St Simon's Island. In a letter dated November 1815 George Baillie reported: 

I was made prisoner by the British on the day after their arrival on St Simons, being detained until their departure, [and] had an opportunity to witness their conduct when on that island. It is well known that they seduced & carried off with them the greater part of the Negroes on it.

 In the Savannah republican dated August 26, 1817 the following notice appears: 

At the expiration of nine months, an application will be made to the Justices of the Inferior Court of the county of Chatham, state of Georgia for leave to sell for the benefit of the heirs and creditors of the late colonel William Wardrobe, a tract of Land, situate on the Island of St. Simons, reputed to contain seven hundred and nineteen acres, belonging to his estate. [Signed] George Baillie [...] Adm'or of Wm. Wardrobe.

 This appears to have taken effect as the Darien Gazette Vol. 1 No. 11 for Monday 4 January 1819 records among a "list of acts passed during the Session of the Legislature for the year 1818": 

87. An act to transfer unto H.L.Wardrobe, widow of the late Colonel Wm. Wardrobe, a deceased alien, and her heirs and assigns, all the right and title of the estate to a certain tract of land on the island of St. Simons, in the county of Glynn.

 Saint Simon Island had several cotton plantations which were worked by slaves. There appears to have been problems in settling  the estate as there are case papers relating to a debt in the National Archives Atlanta (rg-21 district courts 803936 Plaintiff Harriet Wardrobe (late Harriet Baillie) Defendant George Baillie for debt in 1830 (box 79 file code C-10) and 1834 (box 78 file code C-10).

The social world of the Baillies in the 1820s is vividly described in The Golden Isles of Georgia by Caroline Couper Lovell (Boston:·Little, Brown & Co, 1932): 

In the first quarter of the nineteenth century we find on St. Simon's Island a society in which are numbered […] an Oxford graduate, Mr. George Baillie [not clearly identified in Foster's Alumni oxonienses…] and a number of officers of the British Army. Captain Alexander Wylly has already been spoken of. Lieutenant-Colonel Wardrobe had served with Napier and Wellington in India and the Peninsular, and now, broken in health, had retired on half-pay, to spend the closing years of a stirring life on quiet St. Simons. He had married Eliza Baillie, the first cousin of Captain Wylly. […] George Baillie, cynic and wit, was the nephew of Captain Wylly, and the most polished man in the four counties. Now a widower, he was living alone as a gentleman planter, his daughters being in England and looking upon that country as their home.

 In 1820 the St Clair Club was set up and one of the members was George Baillie. During an extended account of a dinner at the club in 1821 the author reports: 

George Baillie, who talks with spirit on almost every subject, has been discussing Sheridan and Moliere with his uncle Captain Wylly.

 The above extracts suggest that the two sisters had moved to England in the 1820s, before their aunt, who by 1830 had moved 80 miles north of St Simon's Island to Savannah. Harriet Louisa Wardrobe is recorded in the United States Census for 1830 in Warren Ward, Savannah, Georgia and in the Georgia Tax Assessments for 1832 and 1834.

 On 14 May 1835, still living in Savannah, she drew up her will, leaving eight named slaves and the rest of her effects to her brother George, on condition that on his death they reverted to "my nieces and adopted daughters Harriet Louisa Baillie and Eliza Houstoun Baillie". There is no mention of the name Delia or Dahlia among the slaves so, if she was with Harriet Louisa Wardrobe, she must by then have received her freedom. There is no mention that her nieces were at that time in England, or that she had any intention of joining them, and why Exeter was chosen as a destination remains a mystery, but it could be that she was putting her affairs in order prior to embarking on her journey across the Atlantic with Delia.

 By 1841 she had arrived in Exeter where she is recorded that year in the census at Premier Place, St Leonards with her nieces Harriett and Eliza and also Delia [see above].

 By 1849 she appears to have moved to Wonford. White's directory of Devon for 1850 records Mrs Wardrobe at South Wonford, Exeter and she is listed as a partner in the West of England and South Wales District Bank from February 1849 to February 1857. Her niece, Eliza Baillie is already recorded from February 1848. 

• Baillie, Eliza, Heavitree, Devon, spinster, Western Times, Saturday 12 February 1848. [not listed in 13 February, 1847].
• Baillie, Eliza, Heavitree, Devon, spinster, [and] Wardrobe, Harriet Louisa, Wonford, near Heavitree, Devon, widow, Western Times, Saturday 17 February 1849,, Saturday 14 February 1852, Saturday 19 February 1853.
• Baillie, Eliza, Exeter, spinster, Wardrobe Harriet Louisa, Exeter, widow, West of England and South Wales District Bank. Persons of whom Company or Partnership consists, Welshman 24 February 1854, Saturday 23 February 1856, 21 February 1857.

 In the census, for 1851 she is recorded as head of household in Rose Cottage, Hills Court Road (now 13 Pennsylvania Road). Her occupation and that of her nieces is recorded as fundholders, the nature of which is explained in part by the listings in the Western Times detailed above. The Exeter journal and almanack first lists her at Rose Cottage in 1851, and she is listed at that address in the Exeter pocket journal until 1856.

 During that period the three women were not forgotten in Georgia, and they received a legacy from Savannah in 1852: 

This is the last Will and Testament of Mary Anne Cowper of the City of Savannah in the County of Chatham and State of Georgia Spinster.[…] I give and bequeath to Mrs. Harriet L Wardrobe of Exeter, England and to the two Misses Bailie now living with Mrs Wardrobe the sum of two thousand dollars to be equally divided between them, share and share alike and in case of the death of either Mrs. Wardrobe or either the Misses Bailie, I give and bequeath the said sum of two thousand dollars, to the survivor or survivors.

In witness whereof I the said Mary Anna Cowper, have to this my Said last Will and Testament, contained in this and the six preceding pages set my hand and Seal this 23d day of April 1852. 

Mary Anne Cowper

The death of Harriett Louisa Wardrobe is recorded in the September 1856 quarter (RG Exeter 5b, 53) and her burial was in St David, Exeter.

A transcript of her will, made in 1835 when she was still living in Savannah, is in the National Archives (reference PROB 11/2243/82). Administration was completed on 5 December 1856:

State of Georgia, City of Savannah.

In the name of God. Amen. I Harriet Louisa Wardrobe of the city aforesaid being in good health of body and of sound and disposing mind and memory and being desirous of settling my worldly affairs whilst I have power to do so, do make public this my last will & testament hereby revoking and making void all former wills by me at any time heretofore made. I give and bequeath unto my brother George Baillie for and during the term of his natural life the [intire?] profits labour and time of & from my Negro slaves March Betty Charles Dorcas Annie Kate Kitta Srub[?], Old Srub, his daughter Kate, Reuben [?] Moses and the future issue and increase of the said female slaves without any power to sell or exchange the said Negroes or otherwise lessen their number. Thus[?] subject to the aforegoing charge & provisions I give devise & Bequeath the aforesaid Negro Slaves and their issue and all and singular other my property slaves, estate and effects of whatever nature or kind or wherever situate or being unto my nieces and adopted daughters Harriet Louisa Baillie and Eliza Houstoun Baillie their heirs executors and administrators and assigns for ever equally to be divided between them share and share alike and in case either of them should die without issue and unmarried then to the survivors of them her heirs executors administrators and assigns for ever and to such person and persons and in such manner as she shall by any last will and testament direct or appoint but in case both of them should die leaving no issue or husband them surviving and in default of such direction and appointment or so far as the same shall not extend then I give devise and bequeath the aforesaid property Negroes estate & effects unto my nieces Harriett Louisa Gray and her sister Jourdiana E. Gray and their heirs executors administrators and assigns for ever equally to be divided between them share and share alike but should either of them die without issue or a husband her surviving then to the survivor of than their heirs executors administrators & assigns for ever. And I do hereby nominate constitute and appoint my friends Patrick Houstoun Esq. senr Alexander William Wylly Esq and Anthony Barclay Esq of the City of Savannah or State of Georgia or wherever they may be the executors of this my last will and testament. In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand & seal this fourteenth day of May in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty five. H. L. Wardrobe – Signed sealed published and declared by the above named Harriet Louisa Wardrobe as and for her last will & testament in the presence of us who at her request and in her presence have subscribed our names as witnesses thereunto - Richard D. Arnold – John W. Stirk – James Elton Stirk.

On the 5^th day of Decr 1856 admon (with the will annexed) of the goods, chattels and debits [?] of Harriett Louisa Wardrobe formerly of the City of Savannah in the State of Georgia in the United States of America but late of the City of Exeter widow deceased was granted to Harriett Louisa Baillie and Eliza Houstoun Baillie spinsters nieces of the said deceased, the residuary legatees subject to the events in the said will mentioned having been first sworn by common duly to administer. Alexander William Wylly and Anthony Barclay the surviving exors having renounced the probate and execution of the said will (as by acts of court appears).

The will was also proved in Georgia as her name appears in the Chatham County wills testators' will book L 1850-1861. 

 The death of her niece Eliza Houston Baillie is recorded at Exeter in the December quarter of 1856, so the entire legacy would have reverted to Eliza's sister Harriet Louisa. In the 1861 census (RG 1387/6/92 schedule 25 pages 5) Harriet Louisa Baillie is recorded as a boarder aged 51, an unmarried fundholder, in Albert Terrace, Saint Leonard, in the house of Joseph Corfe, vicar at the Cathedral. In the 1871 census she is recorded in Holy Trinity and in 1881 in St Sidwell. Her death is registered in Exeter during the March quarter of 1883.

 Thus Delia, the oldest of the four, was the first to die, but two of the four died the following year and may well have been too ill to retain the services of an aged servant. But, having spent most of her life working for others, first as a slave and then as a servant, she may well have been relieved finally to be looked after for the last few years of her life, even in the less than ideal conditions of the Exeter workhouse. Perhaps the observations of "The White Slave" in 1854 on her "exceedingly happy, and very grateful" state of mind were not so wide of the mark.

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Written December 2021, last updated 23 June 2022