An ex-slave in Cohasset

Town largely unaware of late resident's memoir

A family photo taken between 1913 and 1918, in Cohasset. From left: Annie Washington, John Washington, their son James (standing), and his wife, Catherine. (Courtesy of The Alice Jackson Stuart Family Trust)

COHASSET - John Washington may be one of the most illustrious residents of this swank seaside town, albeit one few people have heard of.

At the Cohasset Farmers Market last week, Charlie Field had his own guess as to Washington's claim to fame.

"Is he George's brother?" he asked as he pushed his granddaughter in a stroller.

No. John Washington lived in Cohasset as a retired sign painter, a life far removed from his younger years as a Virginia slave. Washington fled Virginia in the chaos of the Civil War, helped the Union Army, and later migrated to Washington, D.C., and ultimately Cohasset, where he died and was buried 90 years ago this year. But what makes Washington's emancipation story unique is that - unlike the millions who endured slavery - he wrote it down.

The manuscript, one of only 120 that have surfaced since the Civil War, was the subject of the 2007 book "A Slave No More" by Yale University professor David Blight. The original manuscript, extremely rare and penned on loose-leaf paper, sits in a locked vault at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston alongside the papers of Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

Yet in Cohasset, once a rich haven for the Yankee elite, where a replica water spigot in the town center gets special historic recognition, Washington's story is a historical footnote, if that. The Cohasset Historical Society does not keep a copy of Blight's book, which examines narratives by Washington and another former slave.

"I don't think the town knows anything about John Washington," said Cohasset Historical Society curator David H. Wadsworth, 78. "There isn't much when it comes to black history in Cohasset."

For decades, the craggy, majestic shoreline of Cohasset drew Boston's wealthy leather barons, who built mansions overlooking the water. And the Bancroft family, former owners of the Wall Street Journal and Barron's Weekly, has deep roots in the community.

Historically, the South Shore town has been so exclusive that it shunned the likes of Joseph P. Kennedy, who unsuccessfully sought membership at Cohasset Golf Club before his son became president. Today, the community remains nearly exclusively white. In the 2000 census, 13 of the town's 7,200 residents were African-American. All of which makes Washington's life there that much more remarkable.

Born into a slave family in Virginia in the early 1800s, he was separated from his mother and four siblings when he was 12 and became the personal servant to his master's widow. He lived a town life, running errands and enduring hours of forced idleness. He was hired out to other slave owners, at one point working at a tobacco processing factory.

Working in Fredericksburg, Va., as a hotel steward and barkeep, he decided to make his escape during the chaos of the Union army's advance. Washington said he poured his fellow slaves a drink, toasted the "Yankees' health" and exhorted his peers to "go just where you please."

He stood on the banks of the Rappahannock River to meet Union troops. And when a Union soldier asked him if he wanted to be free, according to his memoir, he said, "by all means."

"I told them I was most happy to see them all," he wrote, "that I had been looking for them for a long time."

Washington worked for Union forces as a scout and eventually made his way to Washington, D.C., where he made his living as a painter. He and his wife had five sons and in 1893, 30 years after the Emancipation Proclamation and when he had reached middle-class prosperity, he wrote his story. Writing - forbidden for most slaves - was a skill his mother had taught him before they were separated, one that he secretly cultivated in his mistress's house. Blight said he probably wrote his story as a way to let his sons know he was more than a housepainter.

In 1908, Washington and his wife moved to Cohasset to live with their son James, who worked for Old Colony Railroad and owned a "stunning three-story house" at 312 North Main St., Blight wrote. In 1918, Washington died of a cerebral hemorrhage and chronic nephritis and was buried at Woodside Cemetery, a middle-class graveyard, with a granite headstone now undistinguished from hundreds of others.

In 2006, when the Massachusetts Historical Commission examined the cemetery for possible inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, Blight wrote, the panel's report noted that the "most notable Cohasset resident buried in Woodside Cemetery is John Washington . . . an escaped slave who served in the Union army."

For decades, the manuscript, written on loose notebook paper, remained in the Washington family, until it was given to a close family friend, Alice Jackson Stuart, a college professor in New Jersey who planned to use the material for a book. She died before the work was published, leaving the manuscript to her son, retired Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Julian T. Houston. Houston, who is also an author, contacted his literary agent, who contacted Blight about its publication. Blight had already written the book "Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory" to much acclaim.

Houston said in a recent interview that he lent the manuscript to the archives and may sell or donate it; it has been appraised with a value in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Noting that his own maternal great-grandparents were slaves and that he has portraits of them hanging in his Brookline condo, he said he hoped people would read the book.

"The manuscript is such a powerful document," Houston said. "Anyone who reads it or the book is going to be deeply moved by what John Washington had to say, deeply moved by his experience."

Blight said he was stunned at the narrative's eloquence and began researching Washington's life, later learning that Washington died in Cohasset.

"The idea of this former slave ending up in this hoity-toity town on the coast of Massachusetts at a house with a giant screened-in porch," Blight said. "Well, I could just imagine John Washington living and dying on that front porch."

Washington's relatives in Cohasset have died. His granddaughter, Ruth Washington, lives in Tampa. She did not know that her grandfather had been a slave until Blight tracked her down.

The house where Washington lived in Cohasset still stands. Kay and Jack Hogan, who live there, said they learned about the building's historical significance when they saw a small story about Washington in a local newspaper.

"We had no idea," Jack Hogan said.

Local officials considered selecting Blight's book for the town's community-wide reading and discussion program, but chose "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson and "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau instead.

Sarah Pease, who works at Buttonwood Books in the center of town, said the shop has sold about 10 copies of "A Slave No More." She and her husband, a Yale alum, recently heard Blight speak about the book in New Haven and now give copies to their friends. She said she hopes the town hosts Blight as a guest speaker one day soon.

"It's a bit of a push to get people to buy it," Pease said of the book. "But people here need to know."