Description
Lecturer uses family tree to tell of slave's escape to freedom - - (excerpted from longer article) - - Here is the story of Jimmy Johnson’s great-grandfather: George Washington was born in 1840 on a Virginia plantation and given as a wedding present to the slave owner’s daughter (Margaret A. Jones, daughter of Daniel Jones, Sr., and widow of Lewis W. Waller), who took him to Platte County in 1841.
The daughter was soon widowed, but remarried (Jesse Miller in 1848) and moved her estate north to an area now occupied by Kansas City International Airport.
Washington planted, nurtured and harvested hemp until a January night in 1862, when he slipped away. Moving through the night and with the help of abolitionists along the way, he made his way to Parkville.
Again, he waited until nightfall, then walked across the frozen Missouri River. Caves at the foot of the river bluffs provided temporary shelter, and the thickly wooded ravines gave cover for the trek to the properly of a Kansas Underground Railroad “conductor," who marked a safe trail to Quindaro with bits of cloth tied to trees.
Shortly after reaching Quindaro, Washington heard that former slaves were being recruited in Leavenworth to fight for the Union in the Civil War. He became one of the first recruits to serve in the 1st Regiment Kansas Colored Volunteers, which later was designated the 79th U.S. Colored Troops.
After the war, Washington became a farmer in Douglas County. His daughter and Johnson's grandmother, Mary Georgia Washington, became a schoolteacher. She taught in several districts in northeast Kansas and northwest Missouri, including Parkville and Quindaro. And she passed on her father's stories to her children and grandchildren.
(Researcher's note: Other sources indicate that Jesse Miller was George Washington's enslaver.)Date(s) of Creation
2/24/1994
