Rare and important: a vernacular record of the teachers and missionaries of the Freed People’s schools in Natchez and Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Victory at the Siege of Vicksburg, 18 May - 4 July, 1863, was critical. It gave Union forces control of the length of the Mississippi, which proved a lifeline for supplies and communication travelling both north and south, and effectively split the Confederacy in half.
Vicksburg’s liberation allowed for teachers and missionaries from the north to establish schools for the recently emancipated Black population. Natchez had surrendered to Union troops after the fall of New Orleans in May, 1862, and in 1863 was the temporary headquarters of Ulysses S. Grant. In the wake of the Siege of Vicksburg, Natchez and the nearby area were flooded with refugees and newly emancipated Freed People. However, Confederate troops were never far and, as demonstrated here, raids on the city were common.
Compiled by Mary Hyde Brown (1798-1882), the album includes portraits of 18 teachers, two missionaries, two delegates of the Christian Commission in Natchez, two school superintendents, and an orphanage director in Louisiana: essentially all the main players in a Freedmen’s school. Brown herself was one of the teachers as were a number of her relatives. All but one of the teachers are women, all are white, and apparently from the Midwest. Captions on the verso plus census records indicate that many are from Chicago, Illinois, and Indiana.
The teachers and missionaries here were affiliated with a range of Freedmen’s aid associations, including the American Missionary Association, the Northwest Freedmen’s Aid Commission, the Methodist Episcopal Freedmen’s Aid Society, the National Freedmen’s Aid Association (New York), the Western Freedmen’s Aid Commission, the United Presbyterian Church, and other smaller organizations.
As far as teachers went “northern white women outnumbered northern white men by more than two to one, and taught, on average, a few more months than men … The northern white teachers who traveled into the South to work in the freed people’s schools were not usually wealthy, but their families’ reported wealth put most of them solidly in the comfortable northern middle class” (Butchart, 23).
Many were evangelical Protestants, and most were abolitionists. Interestingly, they were not always considered universally good. Contemporaries of W.E.B. DuBois “suggested that these New England schoolmarms were naive, foolish, or despicable … Edgar W. Knight described the teachers as part of a ‘messianic invasion of the South’ whose blind zealotry resulted in ‘much insane intolerance’ in the region” (ibid, x). These criticisms, of course, are a reflection of the critic as much as an indictment on the teachers and missionaries.
The teachers, missionaries, and school superintendents are as follows:
1. Rev. Arza Brown (1793-1869); 2. Mary H[yde] Brown (1798-1882); 3. Mary H[yde]. B[rown]. Hitt (1831-1909) – daughter of Arza and Mary H. Brown, wife of Isaac R. Hitt; 4. I[saac]. R[eynolds]. Hitt (1828-1909); 5. Joel Peck (1801-1869); 6. Eliza Hyde Peck (1800-1866) – sister of Mary Hyde Brown; 7. Rev. D.W. Jones – “Delegate of Christian Com[mission] Natchez 1865”; 8. Rev. J. C. Wilson – “Delegate of Christian Com. Natchez 1865”; 9. Jennie Holliday – “Teacher of Freedmen in Natchez 1865”; 10. Lucretia M. Dowling[?] – “Teacher of Freedmen in Vicksburg 1867”; 11. Mr. D[aniel]. W. Knowles – “Sup. of Freedmen’s Schools in Natchez 1866”; 12. Fannie M. Neal – “Teacher of Freedmen in Natchez 1866”; 13. Hattie Daggett – “Teacher of Freedmen in Natchez 1866”; 14. Hellen Josephine Wolf[e] – “Teacher of Freedmen in Natchez 1866”; 15. Cora R. Sisson – “Teacher of Freedmen in Natchez 1866”; 16. Sarah Dart – “Teacher of Freedmen in Natchez 1866”; 17. Rev. W. N. Darnell – “Missionary to Freedmen in Mississippi 1867”; 18. Rev. J. P. Bardwell – “Missionary to Freedmen in Mississippi 1867”; 19. Rev. J[ames]. I. Fraz[i]er - “Superintendent of Freedmen’s Schools in Vicksburg 1867”; 20. Mattie Lindsay – “Teacher of Freedmen in Vicksburg 1867”; 21. Eliza P. Paul – “Teacher of Freedmen in Vicksburg 1867”; 22. Lu Smith – “Teacher of Freedmen in Vicksburg 1867”; 23. Mary Scott – “Teacher of Freedmen in Vicksburg 1867”; 24. Sarah J. Gibson – “Teacher of Freedmen in Vicksburg 1867”; 25. Miss Homes – “Teacher of Freedmen in Vicksburg”; 26. Dr. Gray – “Superintendent of Orphan’s Home, Franklin St. Mary’s Parish La. 1869.”
Importantly, this album’s compiler, Brown taught in the South from 1861-1864, meaning she took great risks practising in the Confederacy where the education of enslaved workers was almost entirely forbidden. (Let’s not overlook that Brown was 63 when she left for the South.) The Freedmen’s Teacher’s Project places her in Vicksburg during that period but she also taught in Natchez. Indeed, the album concludes with an extraordinary group portrait of Mary Hyde Brown with a group of young Black women students holding books. The caption reads, “Mary Hyde Brown with her school in Natchez 1864, when the war was raging. At two different times the alarm came the enemy was approaching, Terror prevailed.”
Brown married Reverend Arza Brown, an itinerant preacher whose image is included in the album, and worked for the Christian Commission. After her husband’s death, she moved to Evanston, in 1870. She became involved with the Women’s Temperance Alliance and the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society. Her daughter, Mary Hyde Brown Hitt, also included in the album, was the first graduate of Wesleyan Female College in Cincinnati. She was also involved in the Women’s Temperance movement, and was a friend of Frances Willard.
We should note that the education of Freed People wasn’t conducted solely by white northerners and that Black teachers played a vital role in education during Reconstruction.
A full list of the photos and their captions, plus additional details about each teacher, is available upon request.
Butchart, R.E., Schooling the Freed People … (UNC, 2010); “Vicksburg Battle Facts and Summary” in American Battlefield Trust accessed 22 May 2025; “Mary Hyde Brown” in Evanston’s Women’s History Project accessed 22 May 2025; Freedmen’s Teacher’s Project: Teachers among the Freed People in the U.S. South, 1861-1877
