Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends: Letters from Rebecca Primus of Royal Oak, Maryland, and Addie Brown of Hartford, Connecticut, 1854-1868 by Farah Jasmine Griffin


Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends: Letters from Rebecca Primus of Royal Oak, Maryland, and Addie Brown of Hartford, Connecticut, 1854-1868
Title : Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends: Letters from Rebecca Primus of Royal Oak, Maryland, and Addie Brown of Hartford, Connecticut, 1854-1868
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 0345408543
ISBN-10 : 9780345408549
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 320
Publication : First published January 1, 199

Rebecca Primus was the daughter of a prominent black Connecticut family who was sent south during Reconstruction by the Hartford Freedmen's Aid Society to teach newly freed slaves. Addie Brown was a domestic servant in Connecticut and New York City--as well as Rebecca's best friend and romantic companion. These two spirited, intelligent women wrote letters in this astonishing, historically priceless volume. Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends breaks the long silence surrounding the lives of black women in America and reveals an amazing world until now unknown.

"I have today put my second class into the third Reader," wrote Rebecca from the school in Maryland's Eastern Shore that was later to bear her name. "I hear the President Johnson expect to be in Hartford the 26th," exclaimed Addie. "I wish some of them present him with a ball through his head."

Shared passion, ambitions, frustrations, politics, gossip, all the fascinating minutiae of daily life, give these unique letters extraordinary flavor and richness--and offer us an unprecedented piece of American history.

Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends: Letters from Rebecca Primus of Royal Oak, Maryland, and Addie Brown of Hartford, Connecticut, 1854-1868 Reviews

  • Aisha Manus<span class=

    Letters like these are an invaluable source for history. Average people and their thoughts fill in the gaps of what governments want us to remember. Also Rebecca had a cat name Jim. There is an entire letter to her cat! She had them send her a picture of her cat Jim in 1866!. And she often sends her regards to her cat in the letters telling him to behave. My inner cat lady LOVED this. Also I appreciated the authors occasional commentary that gave context to a few letters.

  • Clare

    Don’t let yourself think this is the collected correspondence of Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus—it’s Addie’s letters to Rebecca and Rebecca’s letters to her family, depriving us of any narrative thread. The framing is pretty poor, too. Pass.

  • Laura Van Wormer

    Everybody has an opinion on historical significance and the fact that Griffin unearthed this treasure trove of letters between two (free) American Black women in the mid 19th century earns 5 stars then and there for putting such a valuable historic resource on the research map.