Introduction
In the span of five generations, the Macculloch/Miller/Post family members went from owning enslaved men, women, and children to donating land for one of Morristown’s first Black churches, to speaking out on the national stage against the expansion of slavery, to commanding Civil War African American soldiers, and to raising money to support an African American industrial school in Georgia—all while the family lived at Macculloch Hall.
The Macculloch/Miller/Post family left a rich documentary history. It allows us to trace one prominent Morristown family’s changing attitudes, generation to generation, toward the enslavement of African Americans. Because the family participated in civic life at both the local and national levels, their letters, speeches, and documented acts of philanthropy enable us to also see how the acceptance of slavery changed in the eyes of society over the course of the nineteenth century.
1810 through the 1830s: George and Louisa Macculloch
George and Louisa Macculloch arrived in Morristown in 1810 with their daughter Mary Louisa and son Francis. They also brought with them three enslaved adults: Cato, Susan, and Betty, as well as a toddler, Emma. Since no legal requirements existed to record slave sales, it is not known when or where George purchased them. The Morris County manumission records have not survived, so there is no record of their being freed.
We know from the family Bible the names of the children born into slavery at Macculloch Hall: William (1811), Henry (1814), and Helen (1817). Their Bible does not name the parents. However, there is some additional information in birth certificates filed with the county clerk. This registration was required by the 1804 Gradual Emancipation Act. On January 8, 1812, George Macculloch registered the births of Emma “on or about September 1809, mother Susan”, and William “April 18, 1811, mother Susan”. No record is noted about the father. It also seems that Henry and Helen’s birth were not registered.
Very little is known about the enslaved men, women, and children at Macculloch Hall. With one exception, they are not mentioned in the surviving archive of family letters and documents. Although not mentioned, we know that their forced servitude, together with the paid labor of men and women in the area, enabled the Maccullochs to run their house and farm.
The best source of record for them is George Macculloch’s Account Book. Various entries were made concerning these people. George would frequently “loan out” Cato to do work for other people in Morristown.
- November 6, 1810 “Cato and horses drawing 2 loads of stone from Sansay to the well diggers" $2.00.
- September 3, 1811 “Cato drawing 4 loads of rubbish on whole day with oxen [for Michael Edwards]" $2.50.
- April 14,1812 “Cato and team ploughed his garden [Michael Edwards] 4 hrs.” $1.75.
George also paid local shoemakers.
- “Isaac Walker August 1811 shoes mended Betty and shoes made Cato”
- “Stephen Chidester March 1812 1 pair Susan thin, 1 pair Cato thick”
George employed Mary Connat a local seamstress.
- “June 1812 1 shirt Cato”
- “December 1812 making 2 pair trousers Cato and finishing surtout Cato.” This may indicate Cato’s status, as a surtout is a close-fitting overcoat typically worn by a groomsman.
There is no written record of when the Maccullochs freed or sold the enslaved men, women, and children who they owned, but according to the Census of 1830, Cato, Susan, Betty, Emma, Henry, William, and Helen were no longer present in the household. The Census lists “one free colored under 24”. That was most likely Henry. In a letter from George to his son Francis, dated December 25, 1832, George notes that Henry, one of the children born into slavery at Macculloch Hall, is no longer in the house.
“Our own boy Henry, after receiving our ample provision of winter clothes, a set of new shirts, hat and coat, went off 3 weeks ago and is supposed to be now in New York. Peace and prosperity be with him – we are well rid of him, and did not move a single step to recover him.”
George’s use of the word “recover” indicates that regardless of Henry’s manumission status in 1832, George continued to think of Henry as property. "Runaway ads," public advertisements that slave owners had published in order to find enslaved people who had fled, used the word “recover”.
1840 through the 1850s: Mary Louisa Macculloch and Jacob Miller
Mary Louisa Macculloch Miller (1804-1888), George and Louisa’s daughter, spent her entire life at Macculloch Hall. She and her husband Senator Jacob Miller raised their nine children there. The fact that her family had owned enslaved men, women, and children and that Mary Louisa grew up in a house with enslaved servants, did not preclude her from supporting the African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the first independent Black churches in Morristown.
Incorporated in 1843, the African Methodist Episcopal Church purchased land on Spring Street in Morristown where it built a small church. The building was dedicated in 1849 and a pastor was chosen. The congregation was in need of a new building on the site to serve as a parsonage. Mary Louisa donated a building on the Macculloch property for this purpose. It was hauled to Spring Street by numerous teams of oxen. The church is still located on Spring Street and is now known as the Bethel A.M.E. Church of Morristown.
Jacob W. Miller (1800-1862), a lawyer from Long Valley, N.J., married Mary Louisa Macculloch in 1825. In 1838 he was sent to the New Jersey Legislature and was elected to the U.S Senate in 1840 where he served two terms as a member of the Whig party. After his defeat in 1852, he joined the newly formed Republican party. Although never a full-fledged abolitionist, he remained a staunch supporter of the Union and was opposed to the extension of slavery into the territories. Views he shared in common with Abraham Lincoln in the 1850s. His feelings on the burning issues of the day were expressed in speeches he delivered on the annexation of Texas, the Mexican War, the Wilmont Proviso, and the Compromise of 1850.
On May 23, 1844, Miller delivered a speech in the Senate opposing the annexation of Texas because it would give an advantage to the slave states. He also saw a danger in the Mexican War arguing that President Polk’s…”conquered peace in Mexico will become the fierce spirit of discord at home.” Following the end of the war in 1846, he supported the Wilmont Proviso that would have prohibited slavery in the territory acquired from Mexico. This proposal never passed into law.
In 1850, Henry Clay attempted to seek a compromise and avert a crisis between North and South on the issue of slavery. Senator Miller opposed the combination of Clay’s recommendations into a single Omnibus bill, but he did support several of these measures when split into separate bills. His speeches on these matters reveals the complex nature of his views on slavery and emancipation reflecting the fact that many anti-slavery advocates opposed the western expansion of slavery, but had little interest in the fate of enslaved people in the South. Miller voted to admit California as a free state, abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and prohibit slavery in Utah and New Mexico. The results were mixed. California was admitted, Utah and New Mexico could be organized with no restrictions on slavery, and in the District of Columbia slavery was permitted, but the slave trade was outlawed.
In the vote on the Fugitive Slave Act, Miller abstained. However, in the debates he revealed what many of his fellow New Jerseyans thought about the plight of the runaways by stating:
”I am not aware that the people of the State of New Jersey have thrown any obstacles in the way of reclaiming fugitive slaves. On the contrary, New Jersey has been not about surrendering fugitive slaves to their legal masters, but rather how to get rid of those worthless slaves which you suffer to escape into our territory and to remain there to the annoyance of our people.”
He was concerned with the rule of law and the protection of property rights, including slavery in the states, under the Constitution.
When Miller left the Senate after being defeated in 1852, he returned to Macculloch Hall. With the demise of the Whig Party, he attached himself to the Republican Party although not as an abolitionist. All his political life he had acted in opposition to the Democrats and deplored the extension of slavery, if not slavery in the South. He saw the Republican Party as the instrument to preserve the Union. In an oration given in Morristown on July 4, 1851, he spoke of secession as rebellion.
“Let us not be moved by the cry of fanatics, nor alarmed at the threat of secessionists…In undisturbed majesty stands the American People in support of the Union.”
The 1860s: Henry Miller and Lindley Hoffman Miller
Henry William Miller (1836-1909), grandson of George Perrot Macculloch and Henry Davis Todd (1838-1907), uncle of W. Parsons Todd (1877-1976), the founder of Macculloch Hall Historical Museum graduated from the Naval Academy at Annapolis on June 10, 1857. After graduation, they were both assigned to the USS Mohican on anti-slavery patrol off of the west coast of Africa. In August 1860, the ship sighted and boarded the American ship Erie where its cargo of 897 enslaved men, women, and children was discovered. The enslaved men, women, and children were freed and the ship’s captain, Nathaniel Gordon, was arrested and returned to New York for trial. For his activities that day, Miller was promoted. At the trial, Lt. Todd gave evidence on the capture. On February 21, 1862, Gordon was hanged in New York City, the only person to be executed in the United States for the crime of slave trading.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, the Mohican, with Lt. Miller aboard, served with Admiral DuPont heading to Port Royal, South Carolina when a storm erupted. The Union transport Peerless was reported sinking. Lt. Miller volunteered to man a boat to save the crew of the Peerless. In his report, Admiral DuPont noted that all twenty-six crew members:
”were saved under very perilous circumstances in which service Lt. H.W. Miller was very favorably noticed by his commander."
Miller served in many Civil War naval battles, and Commander Goden of the Mohican presented him with the ship’s battle flag for “duty well performed.”
Lindley Hoffman Miller (1834-1864) was the son of Jacob W. and Mary Miller. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he was a practicing lawyer in New York City. His Civil War career, it could be said, started back in 1850 when his grandfather, George Macculloch, sent his grandson, then only a young college student at Burlington College, a letter regarding the importance of the Union. George wrote:
"In theory, our Union may be dissolved, [but] in practice, long may it contain a chain of patriotism and love to which each succeeding year shall add a fresh link."
Lindley became one of the first Jerseymen to join the army when the Civil War broke out, becoming a part of the 7th New York Volunteers in April 1861. In July 1863, Lindley was stationed in New York City when the Draft Riots broke out. The riots soon became aimed towards the Black population of New York. In his letters, Lindley expressed great alarm towards these events as well as fear for the welfare of his African-American servants as well for his wife Annie. In a letter to his mother, he wrote:
“The only real danger to our home was the servants. Annie wouldn’t leave until she knew they were to be protected I disguised them as far as it is possible to disguise a negro-bearded man into the carriage with all the consideration imaginable. I went down Broadway in style with them. But I wouldn’t have taken Annie in that carriage for half the universe. Now dear, that Annie has gone, and the Africans are in a friendly county, you need have no fear for me.”
Grief stricken after the death of his wife and son in August 1863, Miller sought a commission to lead Black troops, who had only recently been allowed to fight. In November of that year, he was appointed a Captain in the First Regiment of Arkansas Volunteers of African Descent, a unit composed largely of former enslaved men who had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. In a letter detailing his fitness for the job, Miller wrote that:
“I have entire faith in the capacity of the colored races not only for fighting but also for the duties and responsibilities of civil life, if they have only a fair chance for elevation.”
Shortly after arriving in Goodrich’s Landing, Louisiana, Lindley began writing home to his mother to tell of taking up his duties as Captain of a regiment of newly empowered “colored” troops. In his letter of January 20, 1864, he says:
“I wrote a song for them to the tune of “John Brown” the other day, which the whole regiment sings.”
Soon it was printed and widely disseminated as the “Song of the First of Arkansas” and was used as a recruiting tool.
In a letter written to his mother on March 1864 from Haines’ Bluff, Mississippi, Lindley wrote regarding the morale of camp which seemed relatively high and happy. He discussed the companionship between the soldiers and the love he felt from his men. He tried to reassure her about the danger from battle injuries when he wrote that:
“disease seemed to be ravaging the armies more than battles are."
This would later become a self-fulfilling prophecy as Lindley would contract typhoid before dying in New York City on June 30, 1864.
Read Lindley Hoffman Miller's Civil War Letters: https://maccullochhall.org/historic-archives/lindley-miller-letters/
The 20th Century: Dolly Miller Post
Dorothea Miller Post (1878-1947), granddaughter of George and Louisa Macculloch, followed her family’s tradition of civic service most notably her involvement with the Congressional Union for Women Suffrage, the League for Patriotic Service, and the Woman’s Land Army during World War I as well as organizing charity events to raise money for various causes.
After a fire in 1925 at the Statesboro Industrial High School, one of the first schools in Georgia established for African American students by William James in 1907, she organized a charity musical benefit to raise money to help the school. Mr. James wrote a personal letter to her to thank her for raising $500 for the school’s rebuilding program.
Additional Resources for the Study of Slavery in New Jersey:
https://nj.gov/state/historical/assets/pdf/topical/afro-americans-in-nj-short-history.pdf
https://slavery.princeton.edu/stories/legislating-slavery-in-new-jersey
https://www.morven.org/slavery-at-morven
Perez, Adiana, Macculloch Hall: Case Study on Decolonizing a Historic House Museum, M.A. Dissertation, Rutgers University, 2020
https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/64150/PDF/1/play/
Ragged Road to Abolition: Slavery and Freedom in New Jersey 1775-1865 by James Gigantino, University of Pennsylvania, 2015
Slave Records of Morris County, New Jersey, Morris County Heritage Commission, 1991
Setting Up Our Own City: The Black Community in Morristown by Cheryl Turkington, Joint Free Public Library of Morristown & Morris Township, 1992
Black Bondage in the North by Edgar J. McManus, Syracuse University Press, 1973
Stories of Slavery in New Jersey by Rick Geffken, American Heritage, 2021