William Grimes (abt. 1784 - 1865)

Born about 1784 in King George County, Virginia, United States

Ancestors

Husband of Clarissa (Caesar) Grimes — married 18 Aug 1817 in New Haven, Connecticut, United States

Descendants

Died 21 Aug 1865 at about age 81 in New Haven, Connecticut, United States

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Biography

William Grimes is Notable.

William Grimes published a memoir in 1825 that is considered the first of the American slave narratives.

William was born in 1784. He was the son of Benjamin Grymes and an enslaved Black woman owned by Dr. William Gibbons Stuart. Her name is unknown.

He was sold at age ten by his master, Dr. William Gibbons Stuart, to William Thornton of Montpelier Plantation in Culpepper County, Virginia. Separated from his mother by this sale, Grimes saw her but once more before her death. By 1811, when he was about twenty-seven years old, he had been acquired and sold by three more masters: Mr. Thornton's sons George Thornton and Philip Thornton, and a man Grimes remembered only as Mr. A—, who took him to Savannah.

Georgia outlawed the importation of slaves in 1798, but slavery remained integral to Savannah's economy. Between 1811 and 1815, Grimes served six consecutive masters there. He was hired out or leased from one man, Oliver Sturges, a cotton trader and steamship entrepreneur, to another, Philip David Woolhopter, who cofounded and edited the Columbian Museum & Savannah Advertiser. This exposure to nineteenth-century Georgia newspapers during his late twenties and early thirties may have served Grimes decades later when he published his memoir. Other Savannah residents owned Grimes as well—including the physician Dr. Lemuel Kollock , Archibald Bulloch, and Mr. White—until his final sale to Francis Harvey Welman, a merchant.

In 1815 in Savannah, Grimes stowed away among cotton bales in the hold of the brig Casket, based in Boston, Massachusetts. Successfully escaping to New York on the Casket, Grimes eventually settled in Connecticut and gradually opened a more pleasant chapter of his life. He was employed successively as a stableman, caretaker, farmhand, and barber, and he demonstrated a formidable work ethic. He purchased property, earned a reputation as a respectable businessman, and settled with his family in New Haven, where he developed a thriving trade as a barber and furniture merchant on Main Street.

Grimes's success in Connecticut was overshadowed by the omnipresent fear of detection and restitution to bondage by southern slaveholders, and he actually did encounter two former masters. Francis Harvey Welman, his final owner, sent Grimes an ultimatum from Savannah: Either pay for your freedom or return in chains to Georgia. In 1824, to avoid reenslavement, Grimes purchased his liberty for $500 with everything he owned, plunging himself; his wife, Clarissa; and their children into destitution and homelessness.

The year 1825 marked the New York City publication of the Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave.

Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave

As the first slave narrative published after the United States became a nation, the memoir is celebrated today as the first of the American slave narratives. By 1855, when Grimes republished Life in New Haven, he had lived there for more than thirty years. An additional conclusion in this second edition chronicles his travels throughout Connecticut in towns such as Bridgeport, Stratford, Norwalk, and Fairfield, where he unsuccessfully attempted to rebuild his wealth.

Never to regain the social prominence and economic security he once had achieved in freedom, Grimes sold lottery tickets in the final years of his life. The cause of his death in 1865 is unknown. He is buried next to his wife in New Haven.

Sources

• Grimes, William. Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave. Edited by William L Andrews and Regina E Mason. Revised edition. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008. Image copy. Google Books. http://books.google.com: 2020.

• National Park Service. "Underground Railroad in Massachusetts." 25 May 2011. National Park Service Network to Freedom. https://www.nps.gov/subjects/ugrr/discover_history/upload/MassUGRR.pdf: 2020.

• Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com : accessed 25 March 2020), memorial page for William Grimes (1775–21 Aug 1865), Find A Grave: Memorial #127978736, citing Grove Street Cemetery, New Haven, New Haven County, Connecticut, USA ; Maintained by The Onion Maiden (contributor 48383201) .

• McCaskill, Barbara, and Sidonia Serafini. "William Grimes (1784-1865)." New Georgia Encyclopedia. 20 February 2017. Web. 25 March 2020.