Edmonson Sisters

Mary and Emily Edmonson were among the 77 enslaved African Americans who boarded the schooner, Pearl, in 1848 intending to sail down the Potomac, then north to freedom. Captured when the Pearl becalmed, the Edmonson sisters were jailed. They awaited sale as slaves in New Orleans while their father, a freeman, worked to raise money to buy their freedom. Abolitionists, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, heard of their plight and launched a fundraising effort that lead to the sisters' emancipation. The Edmonsons later studied at Oberlin College in Ohio, and became active anti-slavery crusaders.

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. View original image.

Emily and Mary

Edmonson

Mary, 1832
Emily, 1835

Maryland

Mary, 1853
Emily, 1895

Although their father was a free man, the Edmonson sisters, Mary and Emilia, were born into slavery under common law practice that children followed the status of their mother. In Washington, DC, the girls were leased out to work in private homes. In 1848, the Edmonson sisters and four of their brothers joined an attempted escape from slavery via the Potomac and Chesapeake Rivers to freedom in the north.

Slaves from the unsuccessful escape effort were sold immediately into plantation labor in the south. While his daughters were transported to slave markets in New Orleans, the Edmonsons' father worked desperately to raise money for their freedom. Yellow fever broke out in New Orleans and the sisters were returned north to Alexandria,VA, where they were hired out as domestic slaves. Edmonson continued the campaign to free his daughters.

Abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher championed Mr. Edmonson's cause, raising funds to purchase the sisters and to free them. Upon their emancipation in 1848, the sisters began formal education in Ohio, working as free domestic servants to support themselves.

A statue to the Edmonson sisters stands on Duke Street in Alexandria, near the former site of one of the largest slave markets in the south. Erik Bome sculpted the 10-foot-tall bronze.