by Mildred Europa Taylor, Face2FaceAfrica.com
While cleaning out his mom’s room during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 in Maryland, Aaron Haynes found a strange piece of paper.
“And I opened it up and looked at it and was very confused as to what this might be,” he said to WCVB. “And she said, ‘That’s your ancestor’s freedom papers.’ And I said, ‘Hold on!’”
The paper belonged to a man named Samuel Jones, who was forced to carry it around as evidence of his freedom. He probably never imagined that the piece of paper could last nearly two centuries or even be in the hands of his descendants in Boston.
After Haynes found the document, he decided to learn more about his ancestor’s life. Thus, in late January, he visited a library within American Ancestors, a genealogical society in Boston. There, with the help of Todd Pattison, Haynes realized the powerful history the piece of paper held.
“We hold about 25 million pieces of manuscript material here in our collections so I do get a chance to see a lot,” said Pattison.
However, his library, up until recently, had never seen a document like the one Haynes held. Pattison explained why.
“Generally, we don’t have as much material from more marginalized people, from people that didn’t have access to collections and weren’t collected by institutions,” said Pattison. “I think there has been a bias in institutional collecting that we collect, you know, Founding Fathers materials, and we collect wealthy people because we have historically tried to tell that story.”
Pattison, who identified the object as parchment, told Haynes, “The 1817 would be just the seal date, but the actual document would have been produced in 1834,” citing the text printed on the document.
The text is still legible, with the name Samuel Jones found in the corner of the paper. The document shows that Jones was 21 when it was signed, making him a man born free and raised in Anne Arundel County, Maryland.
“A lot of free Black people wanted, needed, to carry these documents so that they could avoid potential recapture, kidnapping, back into enslavement,” said Danielle Rose, a historian who works with the 10 Million Names Project, which seeks to recover the names of enslaved people across the United States.
Per the document, Jones also had a light complexion, standing 5-feet-7-inches with a small scar on his left hand.
“The more documents that you can find for African Americans, especially before the end of the Civil War, it’s a real treasure,” said Rose.
“Knowing that probably I’m here because he did this step,” said Haynes. “Just a feeling of being grateful of what I have and feeling grateful for what my family has been through and knowing that through these trials and tribulations we can just overcome any obstacle.”
“I haven’t realized just how much it just weighs in on just the history of not just my family but of this country itself,” Haynes continued. “And what it means to be just as an African American man, knowing that I have a relative’s freedom papers.”
American Ancestors is now working with Haynes to research the family tree and get a better understanding of the connection between Jones and Haynes’ great-grandmother Charlotte. It was Charlotte who gave the document to her daughter, Janet Kendrick, who then handed it to Haynes’ mother, Michelle Kendrick.
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