timeline of martin r. delany's life (original) (raw)
Time Line of Martin R. Delany's Life
1812-1885
INTRODUCTION
More than one noted historian has said Martin Delany lived several lifetimes rolled into one. His fertile mind and the principled conscience to which he felt absolutely beholden led him across three continents and countless experiences and challenges. This timeline captures the scope of his vast and important odyssey. (NOTE: Capitalized words denote names of major new residences of MRD. Entries within parentheses are "indirect influences" on MRD's life path.)
The Early Years
(1768: Martin Delany's mother, Pati, was born)
(1770: Martin Delany's father, Samuel, was born)
May 6, 1812
Martin Robison Delany was born in CHARLES TOWN, VIRGINIA, now WEST VIRGINIA.
(6/1812: The war between the United States and Great Britain declared)
in mid 1810s
Pati Delany walks the twenty miles from Charles Town to a Winchester courthouse carrying her two youngest children to successfully defend her family against an attempt to enslave them.
(1814: Andrew Jackson praises bravery of African Americans at victories in Plattsburg and on Lake Champlain, while defending New Orleans.
(1816: The American Colonization Society was founded and advocated for the next 45 years to send blacks back to Africa).
1818
The five Delany children learn to read and write using "The New York Primer and Spelling Book" given to them by a peddler, using their knowledge to write passes to enslaved blacks. They break a Virginia law against teaching enslaved people of color literacy.
(1819: Charles Town, Va.'s local auxiliary of the American Colonization Society convenes, presided over by Justice Bushrod Washington, also the ACS national president and local landholder/ slaveowner and executor of George Washington's estate).
(1822: Liberia is founded by blacks of the American Colonization Society).
September 1822
His mother, Pati, takes her five children to CHAMBERSBURG, PA. after their literacy and teaching activities are discovered.
1823
Enslaved father, Samuel Delany "buys" his freedom and joins family in Pa. after refusing to be whipped by his overseer, named Edward or Thomas Violett.
(1823: U.S. Circuit Court rules that removal of enslaved persons to a "free state" bestows freedom and that malicious, cruel or inhuman treatment of a slave is an indictable offense of a common law).
(1825: Josiah Henson, called the prototype of "Uncle Tom" in Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous book, led enslaved persons to freedom in border state, Kentucky; he later lives in Ontario, leading a community of formerly enslaved persons).
(1827: "Freedom's Journal," the first black published newspaper starts its presses in New York City)
1828
MRD lives and works briefly in Cumberland County after his family couldn't support his education, then returns to Chambersburg.
(9/1830: Hezekiah Grice initiates first meeting of black leaders, including AME Bishop Richard Allen, to fight slavery; it is called the first National Negro Convention)
1823+1831
MRD lives in tightknit black community of Kernstown, outside Chambersburg, Pa. going to school and worshipping at the black Methodist Episcopal Church.
(January 1, 1831: William Lloyd Garrisonbegins publishing "The Liberator" focussing on the abolition of slavery).
(1831: Charismatic leader Nat Turnerterrorizes Southampton County, Virginia leading enslaved persons to kill some sixty white persons. He is captured October 30 and hanged twelve days later).
(1831: Virginia legislator Thomas Dewcalls his state a "Negro raising state" as enslaved persons are sold for ever higher prices as frontier states open up and need clearing, construction and cultivation).
7/29/1831
19 year old MRD set out on foot to PITTSBURGH, PA. to become a barber and laborer, later a physician's assistant (cupper and leecher), and a physician himself. In 1831, he resolved to someday visit Africa, his spiritual homeland.