Problematic obscurity

Above: Rev. Jacob Cummings

(Author's note: This is a lot of information about a subject that seems to be getting swept under the rug. Yeah, I'm a little OG in that regard. Plus, this is one Hell of an interesting life, and one Hell of an interesting connection to share. Peace.)

                     

Boy, I can already feel the heat on my neck for this one.

In this new golden age of forget-it-alls, some folks would prefer we quietly file away the uncomfortable truths. Well, I’m not here to whitewash history, and I’m certainly not here to make anyone feel better about themselves. Frankly, I don't care about passing judgment, either. I just want to tell a story—a real one with meat on its bones. I want the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. I sure as Hell don't want to put gold leaf on pretty much anything. If someone's history smells like shit and looks like shit, it needs to be told like the shit it is. Mine included. I fully expect to get in trouble for that.

Okay, here’s my internal conflict. I'm one of those "Ye Old White Guys," and outside of a tenuous connection to Harriet Tubman's place of birth, I don't have a family story about "a slave." And why the hell would I even want one? To feel bad? To confess to a history I never lived? Am I not better off having no slave stories in my family tree? 

That’s what part of me—the weak part—wants to believe.

But the truth is, most "slave stories" (and I don't use that term without gravity) that do exist in White family histories are hollow. They amount to a census record, a line in a will, or a problematic schedule—data points that are silent on the human experience. White Americans rarely bother to tell, or have long forgotten, the stories of the people they once bought and sold. It’s just another shitty tale of people mistreating people. I’ve been struggling with that silence. It’s too easy to hide behind it.

However, if you're going to have a dang slave story attached to your past, I guess you might as well have a frickin' incredible one. Then, the silence is broken.

I’m talking about Jacob Cummings.

Jacob Cummings belonged to my friend Paige's family. 

It goes like this in the chart below:      

I know, I know, right? I mean, how many of us have ever had the chance to actually look directly into the eyes of an enslaved person that our direct ancestor once "owned?" (I use the term "owned" with great trepidation.) 

Call me weird (Whatever....), but I think that's pretty damn amazing. BUT as usual, I digress.

You may recall my post about The Tribe of Munch from September 19th. The post largely dealt with Melungeon ancestral connections, but also dealt with friend Paige's ancestors through her Simmerman/Bolton side of her Haley/Page family tree branches. For you slackers who didn't check it out, the post was a wild tale of a forbidden love affair between Paige's ancestors, Jerome C. Simmerman and Jemima Bolton. The tale revolves around their daughter proving herself as "white" in an 1850s inheritance battle and grave robbers looking for a buried fortune in Jerome's grave in the 1950s. Good stuff in my book.

Jerome was, of course, alleged to be a lunatic. Yeah, largely because he was in love with Jemima - rumored to be of mixed race. Jerome's evil half-sisters wanted to control the Simmerman fortunes by denying his true love for Jemima, causing him to be somewhat cra-cra.  (I don't deny that Jerome appears to have had some other health issues...)  

   

See what I mean?

The thing is, this story has another twist. It's a twist that goes back one or two generations before, to Jerome's mother, Sarah (Smith) Simmerman. Sarah was the daughter of a man named James Smith of Hamilton County, Tennessee, and elsewhere. And while much of what we know about Sarah and her father, James Smith, is anecdotal, we do know that he owned several slaves. We also know that James Smith left a couple of his slaves to his grandson, Jerome C. Simmerman, you know, the guy who went cra-cra over the lovely Jemima.      

While not listed in this particular record, one of those slaves was Jacob Cummings, the gentleman in the picture above.

Below is the first page of a thirteen-page interview/recollection of Re. Jacob Cummings, then known as "Jacob Smith." It is a compelling take on his life as one of James Smith's enslaved people, but an even more compelling story of how Jacob managed to escape.

If you have any more interest in the complete interview, it can be found here: 

                            https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/siebert/id/10994

I'm really only putting forth the link to the interview because it's really good and very interesting. It's an almost Hollywood tale of Roots, if you will. I should mention that the story of Jacob Cummings doesn't really stop here. There is quite a bit of information about Jacob's involvement with the Underground Railroad after he escaped from James Smith.

   

      

Above: Wilbur Henry Seifert, The Underground Railroad from slavery to freedom, (New York, New NY: Macmillan Press, 1898), 154

Above: Angela M. Quinn, The Underground Railroad and the Antislavery Movement in Fort Wayne and Allen County, Indiana, (Fort Wayne, IN: Arch Publication, 2001), 24.

But here, a little bit more about Paige's ancestor James Smith:    

Above: As taken from https://www.chattanoogan.com/2007/11/30/117856/Hamilton-County-Pioneers---the-Smiths.aspx

      

        

Above: 1830 Census for the household of James Smith

           

I guess this probably says it all best:   

Okay, it's probably just me, but "somebody" has taken Jacob's story down from this site affiliated with the National Parks. I'm not casting aspirtions, but...WTF?

https://spring-detail.squarespace.com/blog/blackhistorymonthfeb2024      

But hey, I'm not gonna go there. If people don't want to learn Jacob's incredible story, well, they have a word for that, don't they?

In case you're wondering if this is the "correct James Smith" connecting to the "correct Jacob Cummings," check this out: 

If you're feeling lazy, you can even listen to the audio of Jacob's tale taken from the above right here:

https://www.local3news.com/local-news/local-3-in-your-town/chattanoogas-first-railroad-the-underground-railroad/article_2e3a5d8e-dd3d-5515-b6b2-13be0e86d9a2.html

or even watch a YouTube video about it all:

https://www.nps.gov/media/video/view.htm?id=7E629E71-0332-4EB6-9CF7-0406818A7EA9

YES! It's that frickn' current. Incredible, right? I mean, I don't know about you, but my family doesn't come with its own video produced by the National Park Service about an enslaved man my six times great-grandfather used to own. Dang! 

Honestly, I wish I could tell you more. There are boxes and boxes of interviews and paperwork related to this sitting in a dusty basement in Ohio. However, oddly enough, I can't tell you where Jacob Cummings lived at the end of his life or where he died. I'm unable to disclose who he married or the names of his children. I can't find the information anywhere. 

Sadly, the enslaved man, however relevant and fascinating his story is, and despite all his YouTube videos and edification in the National Park System, his life simply seems to have faded into obscurity.

But I'm not gonna go there.

I think I am going to simply allow myself to marvel at his life and allow myself to remember. 

What an incredible connection for Paige to share.

☮