Nashoba

Nashoba

Nashoba
Above: Nashoba 1825

Nashoba (the name in the Chickasaw language meaning wolf) was an institution established by Miss Frances Wright in the year 1826 upon lands purchased in 1825, for the purposes of benevolence and the emancipation of the slave. The lands of Nashoba, amounting in the aggregate to 1,940 acres, lay on both sides of Wolf River, in Shelby County, in the vicinity of Germantown and Ridegway, and are described as follows:

1st. A tract of 640 acres, granted by the State of, Tennessee to William Lawrence
and William A. Davis by Grant No. 21,815, and conveyed by them to Miss Wright. 2d. A tract of 240 acres, granted to her as assignee of William Fewkes. 3d. A tract of 240 acres, granted to her as assignee of James Richardson. 4th. A tract of 200 acres, granted to her as assignee of Andrew Jones.
5th. A tract of 200 acres, granted to her as assignee of John Gilliam.
6th. A tract of 200 acres, granted to her as assignee of Powel Busby.
7th. A tract of 200 acres, conveyed to her by the grantee, Richard Hensband.
8th. A tract of 20 acres, entered in the name of T. H. Persons, by entry No. 907 under date of August 5, 1824, and conveyed by Mr. Persons to Miss Wright.

In order to accomplish the purpose she had in view, Miss Wright appointed certain trustees to manage the institution, giving the lands described above in trust to them. Their names were the following: Gen. Lafayette, William McClure, Robert Owen, Cadwallader D. Colden, Richardson Whitby, Robert Jennings, Robert Dale Owen, George Flowery, Camilla Wright and James Richardson.* The lands, according to the deed of trust, were to be held by them, their associates and successors in perpetual trust for the benefit of the negro race. The object of the trust was confided to the discretion of the trustees, with the limitation that a school for colored children should always be a principal part of the plan, and with the further limitation that all negroes emancipated by the trustees should on quitting the limits of Nashoba be sent outside of the limits of the United States. The trustees were not at any time to permit their own number to be reduced below five, and the trustees on the lands of Nashoba, provided their number should not be less than three, should be a quorum for the transaction of business. Besides the trustees, coadjutors were provided for, and the trustees were permitted to admit other coadjutors, with the unanimous consent of the trustees, and provided the proposed coadjutors had lived six months on the lands of Nashoba; but the coadjutors were not to have anything to do, with the management of the affairs of the institution. In order to secure the independence of every one connected with the institution it was provided that no one admitted as either trustee or coadjutor should be liable to expulsion for any reason, but from the moment of admission each person was to have an indefeasible right to the enjoyment of the comforts afforded by the institution, i. e., to food, to clothing, to lodging, to attention during sickness and protection in old age.

*The supposition that Andrew Jackson was one of the trustees is not sustained by the deed of trust.
(page 803)

Fanny Wright - 1835.jpg
Above: Frances Wright

No member, whether trustee or coadjutor, who might quit the institution was to be entitled to any compensation for past services in addition to the participation he might have had in the comforts of the institution while residing therein. Every admission to the institution was to be strictly individual, except in cases of children under fourteen years of age, who were to be admitted with one or both parents, and reared and educated by the institution until they should be twenty years of age, when they should either be admitted into the institution or assisted in forming themselves into a community elsewhere. Among other provisions was the following:

That on the Fourth of July, 1876, the trust should devolve on the then existing trustees and coadjutors jointly, and thenceforward every member was to be a trustee; and Miss Wright said: " Notwithstanding the legal inconsistency such a reservation may seem to involve, Reserved to myself all the privileges of a trustee."

Miss Wright proposed a system of education for the young black people which should fit them for self-support, and a system for the young white people having the same end in view, and her institution at Nashoba was founded on the principle of community of property and labor. Following is a bit of philosophy by Miss Wright : " Were a system of prevention adopted instead of punishment, laws would be unnecessary.

In all the transactions of life the only effective precautions seem to be those which provide against the occurrence of evil, not those which attempt to remedy the evil after it has occurred." She made an appeal "to all the friends of men and of their counlry, to those who respect the institutions of the Republic and to all endowed with favorable principles, to all who believe in the possibility of the improvement of nian, to all who sympathize in the sentiments expressed in this paper," to aid in the prospective work of the institution of Nashoba. This paper was dated December 17, 1826.

On January 6, 1827, Miss Wright gave to the trustees of the lands of Nashoba above mentioned, and to their associates and successors in office, the following named slaves: Willis, Jacob, Grandison, Frederick, Henry, Nellie, Peggy and Kitty and the male infant of Kitty, on the condition that when their labor—together with the labor of another family consisting of female slaves entrusted to her by Robert Wilson of South Carolina—should have paid to the institution of Nashoba a clear capital of $6,000, with six per cent interest on that capital from the 1st of January, 1827. and in addition a sum sufficient to defray the expenses of colonizing them, they should all be emancipated and colonized by the trustees.

The institution of Nashoba did not, however, by far come up to the expectation of its founder, and in about four years it failed. During three years she was from ill health compelled to be in Europe, and the institution's failure she attributed, not to any defect in the scheme or plan nor to the intractability of the negro, but wholly to the base conduct of those she left in charge. But to the negroes named above, whom she had placed in the institution, she was true, at her own expense sending them to Hayti and establishing them there in independence. Then, on the 1st of November, 1831, "on account of its being impracticable for them to conduct the school or to be of service as trustees of the lands of Nashoba, Gen. Lafayette, William McClure, Robert Owen, C. Colden, Richardson Whitby, Robert Jennings, Robert Dale Owen, George Flowery and James Richardson resigned their trusteeship," and also for the further reason " that Miss Wright had emancipated the slaves and colonized them on the island of Hayti." After this failure of her cherished schemes Miss Wright continued for a number of years to manage her estate in her own way, and at length it became involved in litigation, which is sufficiently traced in the history of the courts of Shelby County.

History of Shelby County, Tennessee

(Goodspeed, 1887)