Sarah Jane Woodson Early
Encyclopedia
Sarah Jane Woodson Early, born Sarah Jane Woodson (November 15, 1825 - August 1907), was an American educator, black nationalist, temperance activist and author. A graduate of Oberlin College
Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...

, she was hired at Wilberforce College
Wilberforce College
Wilberforce College is a further education Sixth Form College in Hull, England.-External links:*...

 as the first African-American woman college instructor. She also taught for many years in community schools and was principal in four cities after moving to Tennessee with her minister husband. Early served as national superintendent (1888–1892) of the black division of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and gave more than 100 lectures across five states. She wrote a biography of her husband and his rise from slavery that is included among postwar slave narratives.

Early life and education

Sarah Jane Woodson, the fifth daughter and youngest child of eleven of Jemima (Riddle) and Thomas C. Woodson (1790–1879), was born in Chillicothe, Ohio
Chillicothe, Ohio
Chillicothe is a city in and the county seat of Ross County, Ohio, United States.Chillicothe was the first and third capital of Ohio and is located in southern Ohio along the Scioto River. The name comes from the Shawnee name Chalahgawtha, meaning "principal town", as it was a major settlement of...

 on November 15, 1825. Her parents had moved to Ohio about 1821 from Virginia. They founded the first black Methodist church west of the Alleghenies. In 1830 the Woodsons were among founders of a separate black farming community called Berlin Crossroads, since defunct. The nearly two dozen families by 1840 established their own school, stores and churches. Her father and some brothers became black nationalists, which influenced Sarah Woodson's activities as an adult.

Her father believed that he was the oldest son of Sally Hemings
Sally Hemings
Sarah "Sally" Hemings was a mixed-race slave owned by President Thomas Jefferson through inheritance from his wife. She was the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson by their father John Wayles...

 and President Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...

; this tradition became part of the family's oral history. Biographers of the president, such as Joseph Ellis
Joseph Ellis
Joseph John Ellis is a Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College who has written histories on the founding generation of American presidents. His book Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation received the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2001.-Background and teaching:He received his B.A...

, had traditionally discounted claims that he had fathered Hemings' children. In 1998 DNA
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...

 testing of descendants of the Jefferson, Hemings' and Woodson male lines showed conclusively that there was a match between the Jefferson and Hemings' lines, but no connection with descendants of Woodson. The Woodson male line did show western European paternal ancestry.

In 1839 Sarah Woodson joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church
African Methodist Episcopal Church
The African Methodist Episcopal Church, usually called the A.M.E. Church, is a predominantly African American Methodist denomination based in the United States. It was founded by the Rev. Richard Allen in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1816 from several black Methodist congregations in the...

 (AME), the first independent black denomination founded in the United States, in which her father and two older brothers Lewis and John P. had become ministers. The Woodson family emphasized education for all their children. Sarah Jane and her older sister Hannah both attended Oberlin College
Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...

; Sarah Jane completed the full program and graduated in 1856, among the first African-American women college graduates.

Career

In 1866 she became the first African-American woman college instructor when she was hired at Wilberforce University
Wilberforce University
Wilberforce University is a private, coed, liberal arts historically black university located in Wilberforce, Ohio. Affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church, it was the first college to be owned and operated by African Americans...

 in Xenia
Xenia, Ohio
Xenia is a city in and the county seat of Greene County, Ohio, United States. The municipality is located in southwestern Ohio 21 miles from Dayton and is part of the Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Area...

, where her brother Rev. Lewis Woodson
Lewis Woodson
Lewis Woodson was an educator, minister, writer, and abolitionist. He was an early leader in the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Ohio and Pennsylvania...

 was a trustee and founder.

The college had been established in 1855 to educate black youth; its founders were white leaders of the Cincinnati Methodist conference and black ministers of the AME Church in Ohio. Sarah's brother Lewis Woodson was among the original 24 founding trustees. Wilberforce closed for two years during the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

 because of finances. It lost most of its subscription students at the beginning of the war, as they were mostly mixed-race children of wealthy planter
Planter
Planter may refer to:*A flower pot or box for plants**Jardinière, one such type of pot*A person or object engaged in sowing seeds**Planter , implement towed behind a tractor, used for sowing crops through a field*A coloniser...

s from the South, who withdrew them.

The AME Church purchased and reopened the college to students; it was the first African-American owned and operated college. Sarah Jane Woodson taught English and Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

. She also served as Lady Principal and Matron. In 1863 she wrote and delivered a speech entitled "Address to The Youth" at a meeting held by the Ohio Colored Teachers Association. She encouraged her young audience to pursue education, and especially careers in the sciences.

After the Civil War in 1868, Woodson taught in a new school for black girls established by the Freedmen's Bureau in Hillsboro, North Carolina. Later that year at age 43, she married the widower Jordan W. Early. Woodson and her husband moved to Tennessee, where he served as a missionary and an AME minister, planting numerous churches in the state. Sarah W. Early continued to teach school for nearly four decades, as she believed education was critical for the advancement of the race. She served as principal of large schools in four cities as well.

Sarah W. Early also became increasingly active in the women's temperance movement, one of numerous reform activities of the nineteenth century. In 1888 she was elected for a four-year term as national superintendent of the Colored Division of the Women's Christian Temperance Union; during her tenure, Early traveled frequently and gave more than 100 speeches to groups throughout a five-state region.

Marriage and family

On September 24, 1868 Woodson married the Reverend Jordan Winston Early, an AME minister. He was a former slave of mixed-race ancestry born in 1814 in Franklin County, Virginia
Franklin County, Virginia
As of the census of 2000, there were 47,286 people, 18,963 households, and 13,918 families residing in the county. The population density was 68 people per square mile . There were 22,717 housing units at an average density of 33 per square mile...

. After his mother died when he was three, he and his siblings were cared for by a maternal aunt and an older woman on the plantation
Plantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...

, known as "Aunt Milly".

He and his family were taken by their masters to Missouri in 1826, where Early joined the Methodist Church. A Presbyterian minister taught him to read and write (although it was illegal for slaves). Early was hired out as a slave who worked on steamboats on the Mississippi River, traveling between St. Louis and New Orleans.

Joining the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, Early worked to build its local congregations. In 1836 he was licensed as an AME preacher and later ordained as a deacon and elder. He helped expand the church in St. Louis, New Orleans, Illinois, Indiana, and Tennessee. In 1840 he and supporters built the first AME Church in St. Louis. In 1843 he married Louisa Carter of that city, and they had eight children, four of whom survived to adulthood. The Earlys sent their children to Wilberforce University. Louisa died in 1862.

In the late 1850s Early went to work founding AME missions in Tennessee. By 1871 there were 71 AME ministers and numerous churches in the state. Sarah and Jordan Early had no children.

Jordan Early retired from active minister appointments in 1888. Until his death in 1903, Sarah Early had helped her husband with his ministries in numerous towns in Tennessee, where she also taught community schools. She died in 1907.

Works

  • 1866, Woodson's 1863 speech was collected and published by Bishop Daniel Payne
    Daniel Payne
    Daniel Alexander Payne was an American bishop, educator, college administrator and author. He became a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and was a major shaper of it in the 19th century. He was one of the founders of Wilberforce University in Ohio...

    , ed., The Semi-Centenary and the Retrospection of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Baltimore: Sherwood, pp.
  • Sarah J. W. Early, The Life and Labors of Rev. J. W. Early, One of the Pioneers of African Methodism in the West and South (1894), a biography about her husband. It has been classified by the University of North Carolina among the post-Civil War slave narratives, as she covered his rise from slavery through his decades of missionary activities for the AME church.

Legacy and honors

  • 1893, Woodson Early was named "Representative Woman of the Year" at the Chicago World's Fair
    Chicago World's Fair
    Chicago World's Fair may refer to:*World's Columbian Exposition of 1893*Century of Progress Exposition of 1933...

    (World's Columbian Exposition).

Further reading

  • Ellen N. Lawson, "Sarah Woodson Early: Nineteenth Century Black Nationalist 'Sister'," Umoja: A Scholarly Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 5 (Summer 1981), pp. 15–26
  • Ellen Lawson and Marlene Merrill, The Three Sarahs: Documents of Antebellum Black College Women, Edwin Mellen Press, 1984

External links

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