Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Freedomas Gardener: James F. Brown, Horticulture, and the Hudson Valley in Antebellum America

Freedomas Gardener: James F. Brown, Horticulture, and the Hudson Valley in Antebellum America

Armstead, Myra B. Young

Hardcover

Biographies GeneralBlack American StudiesRegional: Middle Atlantic

ISBN10: 0814705103
ISBN13: 9780814705100
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: Feb 1 2012
Pages: 219
Weight: 0.97
Height: 0.56 Width: 6.35 Depth: 9.17
Language: English

A fascinating study of freedom and slavery, told through the life of an escaped slave who built a life in the Hudson Valley

In 1793 James F. Brown was born a slave, and in 1868 he died a free man. At age 34 he ran away from his native Maryland to pass the remainder of his life as a gardener to a wealthy family in the Hudson Valley. Two years after his escape and manumission, he began a diary which he kept until his death. In Freedom's Gardener, Myra B. Young Armstead uses the apparently small and domestic details of Brown's diaries to construct a bigger story about the transition from slavery to freedom.

In this first detailed historical study of Brown's diaries, Armstead utilizes Brown's life to illuminate the concept of freedom as it developed in the United States in the early national and antebellum years. That Brown, an African American and former slave, serves as such a case study underscores the potential of American citizenship during his lifetime.

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