The Barber on Fifth and Prune
A tale of a 19th-century Philadelphian and his extraordinary family.
From Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, home of the Liberty Bell, walk a block towards the harbor, turn right, and walk two or three blocks more (accounts vary). In the years in between independence and emancipation, you’d see what appeared to be a barbershop, run out of a residential home. Like almost all barbershops in Philadelphia, back then, it was run by Black people and catered exclusively to Whites. Even in the free state of Pennsylvania, White people preferred segregated businesses, and they were the only ones who could afford to pay.
This particular barbershop held many secrets. Some were in the building itself— strange noises in the attic at night, a secret tunnel in the basement, a dugout in the back yard hidden under a stone slab. Other secrets concerned the owner of the business, and resident of the building, Jean-Pierre. His mother, Eugénie Beauharnais, was an immigrant from Haiti. His father was the vice president of the United States.
Prologue: The Continuing Adventures of Adolphus Arnot
All warfare is based on deception, and Aaron Burr’s life was all war. He traveled in Europe using a fake passport with the name Adolphus Arnot, and in America under his mother’s maiden name, Edwards. We’ll never know half of what this true Renaissance Scoundrel was up to. Until well into the twentieth century, people thought that the rumors that he had tried to steal the presidency from his running mate, Thomas Jefferson, were just that. Rumors. Then the incriminating letters started surfacing.
Burr kept a detailed journal, one that in many ways was pretty frank. But he definitely censored it. His journal focuses on his misadventures and mistakes, often leaving his successes out entirely. He records his failures to invent an industrial acid that doesn’t smell bad— “My suggestion for getting rid of the smell has completely succeeded, with one little inconvenience however; at the same time that it takes away the smell, it completely takes away the acid and comes forth fair water; so that won’t do.” But to find out that he eventually succeeded, you need to consult letters between third parties about possible patents. (The secret ingredient is vinegar.)
Historians were also dubious of certain claims made by a clan of Haitian-Americans, until DNA testing and some old documents confirmed them. Aaron Burr had a secret wife1: his first wife’s servant, Eugénie Beauharnais, aka Mary Emmons. Beauharnais, we think, was born in Calcutta, India, the child or descendant of enslaved Africans brought there by the Portuguese. She moved to Haiti in search of work, and found it as the servant of the French-speaking British officer Jacques-Marc Prevost, originally of Geneva, and his wife Theodosia. When Jacques-Marc was deployed to North America for the French and Indian War, Eugénie came with them. After Jacques-Marc died, she stayed with his widow, who then married another officer, Colonel Aaron Burr.
And…look. She was Aaron and Theodosia’s “servant.” Was that a euphemism for slave? Lover? Friend? Any of those would’ve been a scandal. It’s very tricky detecting any kind of non-normative relationship in this time period. Their letters are all written like love letters. It was just how they wrote.
And, conversely, until very recently historians were deeply committed to interpreting everybody as straight and monogamous. I recently read a 1950’s biography of Mary Shelley that goes through absurd contortions trying to argue that she wasn’t in a polyamorous relationship with her husband and the improbably-named Thomas Jefferson Hogg, despite letters among the three openly discussing the arrangement. Mary also sent T.J. a lock of her hair, in a letter signed “Yours affectionately.” Her relationships with women are more ambiguous, but certainly suggestive.
Aaron and Theodosia were both devotees of Mary Shelley’s mother, free love proponent Mary Wollstonecraft. It seems probable to me that they were in an open or polyamorous marriage. At any rate, Theodosia and Eugénie were, at one point, both pregnant at the same time, with Aaron the father. Theodosia was smart. She probably knew.
After Theodosia died, according to the family history, Aaron secretly married Eugénie. While he never publicly acknowledged her or their two children, he does seem to have considered it a real marriage—he remained publicly a bachelor until the year (we think) she died, and remarried the same year.
Jean-Pierre Burr
Jean-Pierre had his father’s affinity for deception, but bent towards better causes. His home, with the Whites-only barbershop in front, was a meeting-place for abolitionists and a busy stop on the Underground Railroad. The Fugitive Slave Act made Philadelphia a dangerous place for fugitives, whom the police actively hunted. It was also dangerous for free men with dark skin, who could be enslaved by someone who lied and claimed they were a fugitive. And it was dangerous for the people who helped fugitives, which was a serious felony. Specifically, the crime of theft.
Jean-Pierre survived by being cunning and bold. He’d invite cops with bloodhounds to search his house, confident that the people hidden in the attic, basement, and backyard spider hole had their scents masked. At night, he’d use concealing outfits and his light skin to pass as White, and accompany the fugitives to the next stop. If anyone challenged them, he claimed to be their master.
He was also, openly, a civil rights activist and community leader for African Americans. He helped many of them emigrate to Haiti after its own revolution. (This did not work out well.) He started the Demosthenian Institute of Philadelphia, a literary society that doubled as a kind of Black Toastmasters. Jean-Pierre was, out of necessity, probably a better chameleon than his father, able to seem innocuous to White customers and cops, trustworthy to escapees, radical to abolitionists, and respectable to those people who he needed to impress with his intellect.
Americans
Jean-Pierre, and his older sister Louisa, founded a large and successful dynasty, one with lasting ties to Haiti, African Americans, and the disgraced Founding Father whose last name they kept. Frank Webb, Louisa’s son, was the second African American to publish a novel. The Garies and Their Friends was the first book to depict the experiences of free Black people in the North, including frank depictions of passing, benevolent racism, lynch mobs, and mixed-race marriages. His wife, the daughter of a woman who’d escaped from slavery in Virginia while eight months pregnant, toured New England and Europe performing dramatic readings, mostly from Harriet Beecher Stowe.
One of many contemporary scions is Sherri Burr, a law professor and historian at the University of New Mexico. She didn’t believe the family legend, at first, about why they had that particular last name. But, after years of research, she found proof. Aaron Burr had quietly bought land in Jean-Pierre’s name. He kept a letter from Louisa that referred to him and his daughter Theodosia as “family.” And her own DNA showed she was related to Aaron Burr’s known living descendants.
I’ve picked this story to tell today because everybody is talking about the new Haitian-American presence in Springfield, Ohio. They’re in Springfield for the traditional reason—the city, whose economy had been struggling for decades, opened new factories and created new jobs, and word of mouth spread among Haitian refugees. Ohio welcomed them, and has not, despite what you may have heard, had cause to regret it. As Republican Governor Mike DeWine said last week, taking in and supporting immigrants is part of “a long history in this country.” Agreeing with local officials in Springfield, and apparently most residents, he says that while they need more funding to help support the newcomers, overall he’s happy they’re here.
“There was a time, not too long ago, when we were a dying city, hemorrhaging people and jobs to other places. And the good Lord heard our prayers, and brought us the gift of the Haitian immigrant community,” said one resident. The hate comes from local racists and national opportunists, not their neighbors and coworkers.
Haitian-Americans are Americans. They’ve been a part of our history, culture, and economy since the beginning. Part of our vast and messy story. Aside from the Burrs, they include Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, revolutionary patriot and founder of the city of Chicago. They include the modern-day prolific inventor Gerard A. Alphonse. They’ve been heroes, villains, activists, and congressional Republicans. But mostly, like everyone, they’ve been workers. Factories that would’ve been closed without them are making the stuff that lets people make the stuff that lets people make the stuff that makes us the most prosperous country in the world. Most stories never get told, and we’re the richer for them all the same.
John Greenleaf Whittier, a Quaker poet who attended abolitionist meetings in Jean-Pierre Burr’s home, wrote an elegy for probably the most famous Haitian, revolutionary Toussaint L'Ouverture. But I’d rather close with a different poem of his, one written in honor of the rest of us.
The Trailing Arbutus
I wandered lonely where the pine-trees made
Against the bitter East their barricade,
And, guided by its sweet
Perfume, I found, within a narrow dell,
The trailing spring flower tinted like a shell
Amid dry leaves and mosses at my feet.From under dead boughs, for whose loss the pines
Moaned ceaseless overhead, the blossoming vines
Lifted their glad surprise,
While yet the bluebird smoothed in leafless trees
His feathers ruffled by the chill sea-breeze,
And snow-drifts lingered under April skies.As, pausing, o'er the lonely flower I bent,
I thought of lives thus lowly, clogged and pent,
Which yet find room,
Through care and cumber, coldness and decay,
To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day
And make the sad earth happier for their bloom.
I haven’t read it yet, but there’s a historical fiction novel about her, The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr. It is possible that the “secret marriage” part of the story was a lie by children or grandchildren concerned about legitimacy. But, as I argue here, when DNA evidence corroborates part of a story, and there’s good reason for there not to be documentary evidence, it’s reasonable to believe the rest.
This is a gorgeous gorgeous post, Aaron. Thank you for writing it. I'm verklempt.