Jordan Anderson

Jordan Anderson

UPDATE: After I posted this, I discovered more articles about the history of Jordan Anderson, the author of this amazing letter.

The Smithsonian wrote an article  and I enjoyed this article in the UK’s Daily Mail, which provides extensive background research on Jordan. In terms of genealogy, this author satisfies family historians.

Historical Background

Jordan Anderson was indeed a real person as was the owner to whom the letter below was addressed. Tennessee-born Jordan Anderson is enumerated in the 1870, 1880, and 1900 censuses in Dayton, Ohio with wife Amanda (Mandy in the letter). A published obituary noted his death in 1905 at the age of 79.

His owner Patrick Henry Anderson is enumerated in the Wilson County, TN censuses of 1850 and 1860. In 1860, he owned 32 slaves, including one of age to be Jordan.

This letter was included in historian Leon Litwick’s famous slave anthology “Been in the Storm Too Long,” and the letter was published in several newspapers at the time.

Jordan indicates that the letter was transcribed by his good friend, a banker with abolitionist leanings named Valentine Winters.

I feel somehow connected to Jordan, since my mother grew up in Dayton, and he is buried at the same cemetery as many of my relatives.

This slave’s letter to his former master is something that everyone researching enslaved people should read. The letter was written by Jordan Anderson in response to his former owner’s request for him to come back to Tennessee from Ohio to work for him.

The letter is simply amazing. Through his sarcasm, we can feel the pain that his family suffered while enslaved.

Jordan’s Letter

Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson
Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jordan, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you.

I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable.

Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee.

Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well.

The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated.

Sometimes we overhear others saying, “Them colored people were slaves” down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson.

Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the
Department of Nashville.

Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you.

This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future.

I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars.

Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to.

Please send the money by Adams’s Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio.

If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense.

Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows.

Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine.

I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters.

You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant, Jourdon Anderson

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