The day would come when Mrs. Kirby would refer to the years of trouble after the war as a “Monument of Sorrow”…Then came the storms of murder and death; and more insidious, but no less voracious, the debt that systematically ate up the plantations and farms. Freedom was to take away the capital labor of slaves….
Within my first week as an archival assistant working on the Digital PV Panther Project, I learned a great deal about the rich history of Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU). My first task was to sort out tape recordings from different events that took place on and around campus. Many of the events took place around the early 1960s to the late 1980s. Events included, summer and spring convocations, dance recitals, ministry conventions, homecoming parades, sports banquets, and athletic games just to name a few. Each tape recording contained the speeches of Former PVAMU President Dr. A.I. Thomas, PVAMU professors, and special guests and speakers, such as Jesse Jackson and Rosa Parks. If you’re wondering, yes the tapes are still in good condition and are playable.
My journey into the archival collections at PVAMU continued at Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery on the back side of campus. For those who may not know, PVAMU was built on top of Jared Ellison Kirby’s former enslaved labor camp, Alta Vista, and he set aside a small plot of land for a burial site for the enslaved. The cemetery behind dormitories “Phase 3 & 6.” The burial ground contains six headstones of the deceased, while the rest of the cemetery holds the unmarked graves of our ancestors. In the upcoming fall 2022 semester, PVAMU Assistant Professor of History Dr. DeWayne Moore and Special Collections Librarian Lisa Stafford will hire an archaeological firm to conduct a ground penetrating radar study of the cemetery. You can read more about the study HERE. The ground penetrating radar will scan the burial ground to determine the location of grave shafts. Using this technology, we will finally be able to determine the burial locations of our ancestors and other internments in the cemetery.
After exploring Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery, I visited the fourth floor of the library and learned more about the history of Wilhelmina R. Delco. Born in Chicago, Illinois on July 1, 1929, Ms. Delco was an active student. She served as student body president and member of the National Honor Society. She obtained her Bachelors of Art degree from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. She majored in Sociology and minored in Economics and Business Administration.
Moreover, Ms. Delco served in the Texas House of Representatives. She began her career in 1974, when she was elected the first black, female, African American official from Travis County. She was sworn into office January 1975 and she began serving her very first term during the 64th legislative session.
She worked with the community and state on numerous social, educational, and political issues. Her most notable work was done in the area of Education. In 1979, Ms. Delco was appointed Chair of the House Higher Education Committee, on which she served until her next appointment as Speaker Pro Tempore in 1991. In January 1995, she retired from her tenth term and twentieth year in the Texas House of Representatives.
Ms. Delco received many awards, honors, and recognitions throughout her career–two of them being here at PVAMU. The Wilhelmina R. Delco building is home to the Whitlowe R. Green College of Education. Along with an unprocessed manuscript collection of papers, which sits in the PVAMU Archives, the John B. Coleman Library curated an exhibit about her life and career on the 4th floor. It contains an enclosed display of personal pictures, letters, documents, and other media that Ms. Delco used during her time as a representative. These items are up for display, open to staff, students, and the public.
Between the work of Wilhelmina Delco and the acknowledgment of the Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery, I have became deeply involved in historic preservation at my HBCU. There is a lot of history that has yet to be uncovered. I cannot wait to see what the rest of the year has in store for the Digital PV Panther Project. And remember, PVAMU is the place to be!
Sincerely,
Lindsay Boknight
Over the course of my first few weeks of being an assistant in the archives and making my way through the various collections, I have learned a lot more about the history of my HBCU. My first job on campus in 2020 was in the Cooperative Agricultural Research Center (CARC), but it was not until last week while going through the manuscript collection of a female extension agent who worked at PVAMU and TAMU named Myrtle Garrett that I learned the history of the CARC. It began as the agriculture department and was segregated by gender, Home Economics for women and Farming/Agriculture for men. In the 1960s, Myrtle Garrett spent her time as a Home Demonstration Agent as well as serving as the Program Specialist for the Limited Income program of the Texas Agricultural Extension Service at A&M. She helped over four thousand families in Texas during her time as the Program Specialist.
Garrett spent her entire career being of service to the people around her while simultaneously spearheading a program that helped thousands more all across Texas. By the end of her archival collection, I learned how Myrtle had become an extremely well-respected and beloved figure in her community. Myrtle worked over 30 years as a federal employee for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. For 20 years, she was a charter member of the alumnae chapter of Delta Sigma Theta at PVAMU.
Her collection features a farewell binder filled with adoring letters from the women of all races whom she had taught or worked alongside throughout her career. Her collection not only inspired me to be a more involved member of my Prairie View community but to also learn more about the people that were crucial to the making of the Prairie View I have come to know and love.
Sincerely,
DeZhane Johnson
My experience working on the Digital PV Panther Project started off on a high note. In my first week, I uncovered some long-lost elements of university history that stretch back almost two centuries on a field trip to the Austin County Courthouse archives in the town of Bellville, TX. I also tried the chicken tenders at Dairy Queen for the first time! Most importantly, however, I sparked an intense curiosity within myself about the rich history and campus geography at Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU).1
I started the week conducting research on several professors who made marvelous strides in building the prestige of our university. I searched the Digital Commons using bepress, our digital content management system, for past issues of the student newspaper, The Prairie View Panther, and I compiled scores of article excerpts into a single document to help prepare biographies for the new finding aids being created with funding from the Texas State Library & Archives Commission.
One of the professors I researched was Raymond Carreathers, who served as a guidance counselor in the College of Arts and Sciences. In the 1970s, he also served as head of resident and student life in Alexander Hall, a male freshman dorm. He was also a member of the ETA GAMMA chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. Moreover, he served as an advising officer to the Pan-Hellenic Council as well as the Vice-President of the Southwest Region of Alpha chapters.
The second professor on my list was Carrie B. Coss, a professor of education who joined the faculty in 1946. Formerly at Langston University, she earned bachelor’s degrees from Howard University and Cincinnati University, and she received her master’s degree from Columbia University in New York. Coss also served as a committee chairperson for the Alpha Mu Gamma Honors Society. Not only was she a professor of education at PVAMU, but she was also local historian who uncovered hidden histories on campus. In 1989, Coss worked with the Waller County Historical Society to document African American cemeteries, and she also served on the historical marker committee for Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery, which sits RIGHT BEHIND campus, about a 3-minute walk from Phases 3 & 6. For more information on this committee, please see a previous blog post (Click HERE)
I also compiled lists of articles about Colquitt Dubois Yancy, Florida Yeldell, and Mrs. John C. Winfree–just to name a few, but you will have to wait until a later post or for us to finish the new finding aids in August 2022.
I also learned a great deal of new information about the history of PVAMU. Not only was the information new to me, but some of it is also a completely new discovery for everyone. The original name of the enslaved labor camp on which PVAMU now sits was called Alta Vista, and it was once owned by Colonel Jared Ellison Kirby. Born in Georgia in 1809, he moved to Texas and amassed a large estate, which he sought to protect through service to the Confederacy. He was shot and killed in October 1865 by a Union supporter in Galveston, Texas. His wife, Helen, acquired Alta Vista upon his death, and she sold it to the State of Texas in the mid-1870s to establish the Alta Vista Agricultural & Mechanical College for Colored Youths, which later became what we know today as PVAMU.
Everyone reading this blog post most likely knows that the state legislature decided to establish PVAMU in Waller county in 1876. You probably did not know, however, that the state legislature passed the act that established Waller County in 1873. Kirby’s enslaved labor camp at Alta Vista, therefore, was located in another county prior to 1873. If I wanted to know anything about Alta Vista prior to the Civil War, I had to visit the county seat of Austin County and find documents related to Kirby and his kin. I wanted to find out what happened on our campus before it was “our” campus. So my boss, Dr. DeWayne Moore, took me to the Bellville Texas Justice Center, which had records about Kirby and many other families.
I had never been to Bellville, but it was a very interesting little town, and I posted some pictures from our visit to the city.
Once we got to the justice center on North Chesley Street, we found our way to the records room–a massive archive full of deed, marriage, and probate records in heavy, leather-bound books that recorded the history of Austin County all the way back to the time of the Texas Revolution. In one of those books, we located the probate record of Jared Ellison Kirby, the planter who owned the enslaved labor camp, Alta Vista, at the time of the Civil War. As I mentioned earlier, Kirby died only a few months after emancipation in October 1865, and his probate contains information about all the property he owned at the time of his death. We hope his probate will contain information about his involvement in slavery, but it will take more time to transcribe its almost 200 pages.
The central purpose of our trip to Bellville was to discover our lineage. What existed on campus before it was PVAMU? Who lived on this ground before students? And what is the story of our campus before it was sold to the state to become a university? One tradition at PVAMU, which many students know before they ever set foot on campus, is never stepping on the grass. To pay respects to our enslaved ancestors who lie buried in unmarked graves, we do not step on the grass. We keep off the grass to honor our ancestors who might be buried in any plot of this hallowed ground.
We do not know the exact location of their graves, and we do not know the names of our ancestors, because slave owners did not bother to record the names of the enslaved in the US Census–only their age and gender.
Due to the fact that the probate is written in old 1800s English cursive handwriting, you may not be able to read this, but I can list a few names for you.
“Willis 17 years old worth 1000 dollars, Levi 15 years old worth 1000 dollars, Sarah 35 years old 800 dollars and Almedia 12 years old 600 dollars.”
While not in this picture, the youngest enslaved person that I’ve seen was a 2-year-old girl named Ellen, who was “worth” 300 dollars. This sight, honestly, was very surreal.
It is one thing to watch Hollywood movies about the Civil War, and it is one thing to learn about slavery in college history courses, but it is quite another to see the names of human property written down in a way that you would write a receipt or account balance sheet. It’s quite surreal to see the listed names of Black people–BLACK CHILDREN–and how old they were and their monetary value, like a material item, we might buy or sell today.
In 1860, 40-year old Jared Ellison Kirby owned 285,000 in real estate and $175,000 in his personal estate, and he lived at Alta Vista with his 23-year old wife, Helen, his two children, 12 year old Lucy and 7 year old Jared Jr. The 73-year-old mother of Jared Kirby was named Sarah, and she owned $32,000 in real estate and $32,000 in personal property. She also lived at Alta Vista.1
The 1860 Slaves Schedules reveal that Jared Kirby owned 30 slave cabins on his property. According to an article in the Prairie View Panther, the slave cabins at Alta Vista were located where the Hobart Taylor building now sits.2 His mother owned 10 slave cabins, in which lived the 19 slaves she owned in 1860.
Jared owned 5 forty-two year old male slaves, 30 thirty-year old male slaves, 21 fifteen year old male slaves, and 15 five year old male slaves. He also owned 4 forty two year old female slaves, 17 twenty five year old female slaves, 22 fifteen year old female slaves, and 25 six year old female slaves.3
71 men, and 68 women. Total of 139 listed under Jared’s name. If you add the 19 people listed under Sarah’s name, that means 158 enslaved men and women lived at Alta Vista in 1860.
In total, we managed to find almost 60 names of our enslaved ancestors in the probates of Jared Kirby’s family members. We were also able to find a map of the enslaved labor camp, Alta Vista, (see above image) which is only part of the campus we know today. We look forward to revealing more information from the probate records in future posts for the Digital PV Panther Project.’
Sincerely,
Kalayah Jammer
Abstract
Wyatt Chapel Cemetery is an abandoned cemetery located in Prairie View, Texas. Oral histories from local residents suggest that the cemetery originated as a slave burial ground in the mid-nineteenth century. The local community is interested in examining the cemetery in order to document the history of the area. In July 2007 and February 2008, participants in a graduate course at Rice University acquired global positioning system and ground-penetrating radar data at the cemetery. The soil at the field site is ideally suited for radar work and the subsurface image quality was excellent. Numerous anomalies were identified that are consistent with unmarked burials. Two of these anomalies were excavated and confirmed as burials. The stratigraphy consists of 3-6 feet of sand overlying a hard clay, and the boundary produces a very bright reflector. In the main clearing of the cemetery site, the sand-clay boundary deepens abruptly from 3 feet to approximately 5 feet. This anomaly was initially considered a possible man-made excavation, perhaps a mass burial site. While the stratigraphy does contain abrupt terminations, most depth changes occur gradually, suggesting formation by natural processes.
In December 2021, we searched Ancestry.com for information about Jared Ellison Kirby, and we located the name of another person who lived at Kirby’s enslaved labor camp, Alta Vista. According to the manifest of the ship Galveston, Kirby had a 15 year-old girl named Lucinda transported from New Orleans to Galveston in May 1858.
We believe that Lucinda shows up as either Lucinda Edwards or Williams in the 1870 Census.
Source: The National Archives in Washington, DC; Washington, DC; Slave Manifests of Coastwise Vessels Filed at New Orleans, Louisiana, 1807-1860; Microfilm Serial: M1895; Microfilm Roll: 30.
Though an 1807 law banned the trans-Atlantic slave trade to the United States as of 1 January 1808, slaves could still be bought and sold (and transported) within the country. The same law that banned the foreign slave trade also regulated the internal transportation of slaves, requiring masters of vessels carrying slaves in coastal waters to provide a manifest detailing their slave cargo when leaving (“outward”) or entering (“inward”) a port. Ports of departure or intended arrival stretched from Baltimore, Maryland, to Texas on the Gulf of Mexico. Those required slave manifests, provided by ships entering or leaving from the port at New Orleans, make up the records in this database.