This portrait, dated 1819, hangs in the Atwater Kent Museum in Philadelphia. A second portrait depicted a somewhat older ordinary elderly African American man hangs in the Peabody Room of the Georgetown Public Library. It is dated 1822.
Why would the portraits of a seemingly ordinary looking elderly Africa American man exist much less be displayed at two well known locations? The answer to that is that the man depicted, Yarrow Mamout is far from ordinary.
HIStory...
The story of Yarrow Mamout begins in Guinea, West
Africa in 1736, long before he became famous for sitting for portraits in the
early 19th century or well-known for his skills as a brick maker,
basket weaver, ship loading, or even
before he gained extensive knowledge of real estate, finance, law, and
investments in bank stock (Johnston 2012:51). . Though much is not known about
his life before he was sold into slavery at sixteen, Johnston’s (2012:7)
research has suggested that Yarrow was a member of the Fulani tribe, a nomadic
people originally from what is now Mali, who converted to Islam. Fulani
tradition typically mandates that families consult with an Islamic holy man for
guidance in choosing a newborn’s name. Following these naming traditions
Yarrow, spelled Yero in Islam, was a name given to a woman’s fourth child,
while Mamout, spelled Mamadou in Islam, was typically given to a boy born on a
Monday ( Johnston 2012:8). Yarrow had a
sister, known in America as Hannah, free Hannah, or Hannah Peale, who was
enslaved around the same time he was in 1752.
Although
the circumstances surrounding Yarrow’s subsequent capture and enslavement are
unknown, Johnston (2012) suggests that they could have been similar to those of
two other Muslim boys who were captured in Futa Jallon. One of these boys was
Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, who was educated in the Quran and able to read and write
in Arabic. His father gave him two slaves to sell to Captain Stephan Pike
aboard the slave ship Arabella that
was anchored in the Gambia River (Johnston 2012:9). Unfortunately, Captain Pike
did not offer Diallo enough money and he broke negotiations and exchanged the
slaves for cattle in a nearby village. Sending the servants who accompanied him
home, Diallo was captured while visiting a friend by the Mandingo people and
sold to Captain Pike. Although Captain Pike allowed Diallo to write his father
for help, he set sail for Annapolis, Maryland before he received a response.
Diallo would later return to Africa before being captured by the French for
helping the British and dying in a French prison somewhere in West Africa
(Johnston 2012: 11). Despite these missing pieces, Yarrow arrived in Annapolis,
Maryland on board the Elijah on June
4, 1752. Yarrow was purchased by Samuel Beall, a wealthy planter from
Montgomery County, Maryland, and eventually became his body servant,
accompanying him throughout the day (Johnston 2012:48). Beall was active in his
community and served in a variety of capacities including, being a member of
the Captain George Beall Troop of Horse, a militia group who fought Native
Americans and armed men; inspector of the Bladensburg Tobacco Inspection
Warehouse; as sheriff, justice of the peace, and part owner in the Frederick
Forge, a major iron-making facility in Washington County, Maryland (Johnston
2012:36). Most of Yarrow’s early years with
Beall were spent on one of Beall’s properties near Takoma Park Maryland, called
the Charles and William tract, which contained 1,100 acres in the slave
quarters or at Beall’s water mill on The Gift property in Rock Creek (Johnston 2012:48).
During this period he was estranged from relatives, friends, his sister, and
others who spoke his language and understood his faith. After becoming Beall’s
body servant, Yarrow was put in a position where he could be in the know and be
known by some of Washington’s most important men. In 1770, Beall sold the
Charles and Williams tract and moved his family and slaves to a 264- acre tract
called Kelly’s Purchase a few miles north of Sharpsburg, Maryland. Following
Beall’s death in 1777, Yarrow was bequeathed to his son Isaac, but eventually
became the property of Beall’s other son Brooke (Johnston 2012:59). Around 1788
or 1789, a year or two after Yarrow’s son Aquilla was born to a slave woman on
a neighboring farm, Brooke Beall moved his family and slaves to Georgetown,
where Yarrow was loaned out several times.
Yarrow’s
freedom came in 1796 with the condition that if Yarrow made bricks for Beall’s
new house in Upper Georgetown that he would be freed. Unfortunately, Beall died
before he could free Yarrow, but Beall’s widow, Margaret, kept his promise.
According to Yarrow and Margaret, Yarrow’s freedom was made for the purest of
reasons- a reward for a good and faithful servant (Johnston 2013:73). Before Beall
died, Yarrow purchased his son, Aquilla’s, freedom for £20 or £37 from Ann
Chambers on February 4, 1796 (Johnston 2012: 73 & 123). Yarrow officially
received his manumission papers several months later on August 22nd.
Four years later Yarrow purchased the property at 3324 Dent Place in
Georgetown, Washington, D.C. from Francis Deakins on February 8, 1800. That same
year the 1800 census listed Yarrow and another person (most likely Aquilla) as
living on the Dent Place property, which was valued at $30 according to the
1800-1830 Tax Assessments (Johnston 2012: 73). In 1803, Yarrow transferred the
property deed to Aquilla, who at that time was 15, so that it could not be
seized by creditors (Johnston 2012: 127). By 1815, the property was assessed at
$200 and noted a small frame structure. Though the original deed has been
either lost or destroyed, a deed book kept by the Recorder of Deeds exists and
is housed at the National Archives. It
was believed that Yarrow was literate in Arabic because he signed in name in
Arabic on the deed (Johnston 2012:74).
Apart
from Johnston’s book, the earliest narrative mention of Yarrow appears in David
Warden’s A Chorographical and Statistical
Description of the District of Columbia, which was published in 1816 and was
intended to describe the capital to Europeans (Johnston 2006). In this
narrative, Warden recounts what General John Mason of Analostan Island, George
Mason’s son, told him about Yarrow on a visit to Georgetown in 1811. According
to Mason, Yarrow had acquired a savings of $100, which he gave to a merchant
for safe keeping. Yarrow’s savings were lost for the first time when the
merchant died insolvent. Despite being
in this mid-seventies, Yarrow returned to work, laboring for fixed wages by day
and weaving nets and baskets to sell by night. After saving another $100,
Yarrow gave the money to another merchant with the same result after the
merchant went bankrupt (Johnston 2012: 75). Returning to work a third time and
saving $200, Yarrow took the advice of a friend and purchased shares at the
Columbia (Bank of Georgetown) in his name. The interest from savings allowed
him to live out the remainder of his life comfortably (Johnston 2012: 76).
Yarrow
met Charles Wilson Peale in 1819 during Peale’s visit to the city to paint
President James Monroe for the collection of presidential portraits at Peale’s Museum
in Philadelphia. During his time with Yarrow, Peale recorded his interaction
with Yarrow in his diary (Johnston 2012: 92). Johnston speculates that Peale
was interested in Yarrow for two reasons. The first is that Yarrow was rumored
to be 140 years old and Peale, who had studied longevity and at one time
believed that humans could live to be 200, decided that he needed to meet this person who could prove
his theory was true (Johnston 2006). Though Peale later revised his estimation
of Yarrow’s age, it was still 53 years too old for Yarrow, who was 83 at the
time of Peale’s painting. The second
reason Johnston speculates that Peale was interested in Yarrow is that, Peale
who had once owned slaves and had come to oppose slavery, may have been hoping
for an opportunity to paint a prosperous African American to make a point about
racial equality (Johnston 2006). Three years after sitting for Peale’s
painting, Yarrow sat once again for a portrait, this time for local artist James
Alexander Simpson. This is the portrait that hangs in the Peabody Room of the
Georgetown Public Library. Peale’s painting hangs in Atwater Kent Museum in
Philadelphia and depicts a somewhat younger, livelier Yarrow (Johnston 2006).
Yarrow
Mamout died on January 19th, 1823. Hearing of Yarrow’s death, Peale
wrote Yarrow’s obituary and sent it to newspapers, including the Gettysburg
Complier. The obituary reads:
Died—at Georgetown on the 19th ultimo, Negro Yarrow,
aged (according to [Peale’s] account 136 years. He was interred in the corner
of his garden, the spot where he usually resorted to pray...it is known to all
that knew him, that he was industrious, honest, and moral—in the early part of
his life he met with several losses by loaning money, which he never got, but
he preserved in industry and economy, and accumulated some Bank stock and a
house and lot, on which he lived comfortably in his old age—Yarrow was never
known to eat of swine, nor drunk ardent spirits.” (Johnston 2006).
Following Yarrow’s death, tax records indicate
that the property at 3324 Dent Place passed to his heirs. Aquilla or another
heir continued paying taxes on the property until 1832, the same year that
Aquilla died (Johnston 2012:130). The
property stayed in Aquilla’s name until 1838, when the city of Georgetown
auctioned it off to recovered unpaid taxes of $100 (Johnston 2006). In 1843,
Nancy Hillman of Frederick, Maryland, filed a lawsuit in the District to
collect an unpaid loan that Yarrow made to a merchant in 1821 to help buy a two
story brick dwelling and store house with extensive back buildings on what is
now Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown (Johnston 2006). Hillman claimed to be
Yarrow’s niece and his only surviving heir and in 1850 she was awarded $451 in
unpaid principal and interest on the loan. A year later she died with no
heirs—a copy of her will which was filed with the Frederick County probate
court indicates that her entire estate was left to two lawyers (Johnston 2006).
A Possible Burial?
In 2012, Dr. Ruth Trocolli, the City Archaeologist for the District of Columbia, was notified by James Johnston, a lawyer from Bethesda, Maryland who authored From Slave Ship to Harvard, that Yarrow's body was buried in his back yard. Since then she, the Historic Preservation Office and Howard University have decided to establish a partnership to conduct archaeological investigations on the property despite a lack of resources and a clear legal mandate to conduct investigations on private property. As of yet, archaeological investigations have not begun, though there is hope that they will begin before the property is sold and development begins.
References:
References:
Johnston, James
2012 From Slave Ship to Harvard: Yarrow Mamout
and the History of an African American Family. New York: Fordham University
Press.
2006 Mamout
Yarrow: The Man in the Knit Cap. Washington
Post 5 February: W16. Washington, D.C.
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