The College hires enslaved worker Aaron Edmonson, 1859-1862

The College hires enslaved worker Aaron Edmonson, 1859-1862

Slaves; Slave labor; Slave hire system; Master and Servant
Jesuits--History--19th century; United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865

In November 1859, Georgetown College hired an enslaved man named Aaron Edmonson to work in the dormitories as a domestic servant. Edmonson belonged to a local Catholic woman named Ann Forrest Green, who had inherited him from her mother, Rebecca Plater Forrest, in 1843 when Edmonson was around ten years old.

Rebecca Forrest's will stipulated that Aaron Edmonson was to remain enslaved until he turned thirty-five. This condition meant that Ann Green would have had a legal property claim in Edmonson until around 1867 had Congress not abolished slavery in the District in 1862.

Edmonson labored at Georgetown for more than two years while the country fell apart around him. Ann Green's son, Osceola, collected his wages. In Spring 1861, Edmonson would have tended to Union Army soldiers who boarded at the College on their way south. He was, for those weeks, a hidden cost to the federal government.

Edmonson remained at Georgetown until March 1862, one month before Congress's compensated emancipation scheme liberated the capital. In June 1862, Ann Green petitioned the government for $500, which she suggested was the value of eight years of Edmonson's unrealized labor.

In September 1862, five months after emancipation, Georgetown College paid Ann Green nearly $40 in back wages for the work that Aaron Edmonson had performed earlier that year when Green still held him in bondage.

The young man was likely the last enslaved man to work at the school. He greeted freedom at the age of thirty.

Georgetown University Archive

Georgetown Slavery Archive

November 3, 1859 through September 26, 1862

Cory Young

Georgetown University Library

PDF, XLSX

English

Accounts

GSA99

Manuscript