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Amanda Berry
Smith
Methodist Evangelist, Missionary, Temperance Reformer
Born a slave on a farm in Long Green, Maryland, about twenty miles north
of Baltimore, Amanda Berry Smith (1837–1915), rose
from slavery and poverty to become a world famous
Methodist evangelist. A black washerwoman, she
witnessed the Spirit like Christian women
throughout the centuries who have been used by God.
She became a
legend in her own time, as a result partially by her
correspondence published in Wesleyan/Holiness, Methodist
Episcopal, and African-American Methodist periodicals
from the 1870s until her death and the publication of
her book An Autobiography:
The Story of the Lord's Dealings with Mrs. Amanda Smith, the
Colored Evangelist: Containing an Account of Her Life Work of
Faith, and Her Travels in America, England, Ireland, Scotland,
India, and Africa as an Independent Missionary. Chicago:
Meyer & Brother Publishers, 1893 -- which sold
widely and has been republished several times.
Sources: Adrienne
M. Israel, "Amanda Jane Berry Smith," in Rima
Lunin Schultz and Adele Hast, eds., Women Building Chicago,
1790-1990 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), pp.
808-10.
The
Academic Affairs Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill published Smith's Autobiography online as part of its
Documenting
the American South Project
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Amanda
Smith Washerwoman to Evangelist
"I was born at Long Green, Md., Jan. 23rd, 1837. My
father's name was Samuel Berry. My mother's name, Mariam.
Matthews was her maiden name. My father's master's name was
Darby Insor. My mother's master's name, Shadrach Green."
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"As the distance to Baltimore was
only about twenty miles, more or less, my father went
there with the farm produce once or twice a week, and
would sell or buy, and bring the money home to his
mistress. She was very kind, and was proud of him for
his faithfulness, so she gave him a chance to buy
himself. She allowed him so much for his work and a
chance to what extra he could for himself. So he used to
make brooms and husk mats and take them to market with
the produce. This work he would do nights after his
day's work was done for his mistress.
Left: Amanda's mother
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"He was a great lime burner. Then in harvest time, after
working for his mistress all day, he would walk three and four
miles, and work in the harvest field till one and two o'clock in
the morning, then go home and lie down and sleep for an hour or
two, then up and at it again. He had an important and definite
object before him, and was willing to sacrifice sleep and rest
in order to accomplish it. It was not his own liberty alone, but
the freedom of his wife and five children. For this he toiled
day and night. He was a strong man, with an excellent
constitution, and God wonderfully helped him in his struggle.
After he had finished paying for himself, the next was to buy my
mother and us children.
"There were thirteen children in all, of whom only three
girls are now living. Five were born in slavery. I was the
oldest girl, and my brother, William Talbart, the oldest boy. He
was named after a gentleman named Talbart Gossage, who was well
known all through that part of the country. I think he was some
relation of Mr. Ned Gossage, who lost his life at Carlisle, Pa.,
some time before the war, in trying to capture two of his black
boys who had run away for their freedom."
* * *
* *
"My father and mother both could read. But I never
remember hearing them tell how they were taught. Father was the
better reader of the two. Always on Sunday morning after
breakfast he would call us children around and read the Bible to
us. never knew him to sit down to a meal, no matter how scant,
but what he would ask God's blessing before eating. Mother was
very thoughtful and scrupulously economical. She could get up
the best dinner out of almost nothing of anybody I ever saw in
my life."
* * *
* *
"I first taught myself to read by cutting out large
letters from the newspapers my father would bring home. Then I
would lay them on the window and ask mother to put them
together for me to make words, so that I could read. I shall
never forget how delighted I was when I first read: "The
house, the tree, the dog, the cow." I thought I knew it
all. I would call the other children about me and show them
how I could read. I did not get to go to school any more till
I was about thirteen years old."
* * *
* *
"One night as she was speaking to persons in the
congregation, she came to me, a poor colored girl sitting away
back by the door, and with entreaties and tears, which I really
felt, she asked me to go forward. I was the only colored girl
there, but I went. She knelt beside me with her arm around me
and prayed for me. O, how she prayed! I was ignorant, but prayed
as best I could. The meeting closed. I went to get up, but found
I could not stand. They took hold of me and stood me on my feet.
My strength seemed to come to me, but I was frightened. I was
afraid to step. I seemed to be so light.
In my heart was peace, but I did not know how to exercise
faith as I should. I went home and resolved I would be the
Lord's and live for him. All the days were happy and bright. I
sang and worked and thought that was all I needed to do. Then I
joined the Church."
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* *
"My aunt was very religiously inclined, naturally. She
was much like my mother in spirit. So as we walked along,
crossing the long bridge, at that time a mile and a quarter
long, we stopped, and were looking off in the water. Aunt said,
"How wonderfully God has created everything, the sky, and
the great waters, etc."
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* *
Then I let out with my biggest gun; I said, "How do you
know there is a God?" and went on with just such an air as
a poor, blind, ignorant infidel is capable of putting on. My
aunt turned and looked at me with a look that went through me
like an arrow; then stamping her foot, she said:
"Don't you ever speak to me again. Anybody that had as
good a Christian mother as you had, and was raised as you have
been, to speak so to me. I don't want to talk to you." And
God broke the snare. I felt it. I felt deliverance from that
hour. How many times I have thanked God for my aunt's help. If
she had argued with me I don't believe I should ever have got
out of that snare of the devil. And I would say to my readers,
"Beware how you read books tainted with error." There
are enough of the orthodox kind that will help you if you will
be content with them, and the Book of books. Amen."
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| "My father took the "Baltimore
Weekly Sun" newspaper; that always had
advertisements of runaway slaves. After giving the cut
of the poor fugitive, with a little bundle on his back,
going with his face northward, the advertisement would
read something like this: Three thousand dollars reward!
Ran away from Anerandell County, Maryland, such a date,
so many feet high, scar on the right side of the
forehead or some other part of the body,--belonging to
Mr. A. or B. So sometimes the excitement was so high we
had to be very discreet in order not to attract
suspicion. My father was watched closely.
"I have known him to lead in the harvest field
from fifteen to twenty men--he was a great cradler and
mower in those days --and after working all day in the
harvest field, he would come home at night, sleep about
two hours, then start at midnight and walk fifteen or
twenty miles and carry a poor slave to a place of
security; sometimes a mother and child, sometimes a man
and wife, other times a man or more, then get home just
before day.
Right: Amanda's
father |
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"Perhaps he could sleep an hour then go to work, and so
many times baffled suspicion. Never but once was there a poor
slave taken that my father ever got his hand on, and if that man
had told the truth he would have been saved, but he was
afraid."
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* *
"How well I remember Dr. and Mrs. Turner. They were very
fond of Maryland biscuit, and though I was young, I had the
reputation of making the best Maryland biscuit and frying the
nicest chicken of anyone around there, and the doctor used to
say "Amanda can beat them all making Maryland biscuit and
frying chicken." My! how it did please me! Somehow it is
very encouraging to servants to tell them once in a while that
they do things nicely; it did me good.
"I would almost kill myself to please them, and Doctor
Turner's mother, dear Mrs. Flynn, what a good woman she was! She
gave me the first Testament I ever had and used to come into the
kitchen and read to me sometimes. She came several times on a
visit to see Dr. and Mrs. Turner. After a time Dr. Turner moved
back to Baltimore again, I went with them. It was my first time
in Baltimore.
"We got in at night and I remember how I had never seen
fine lights glittering in drug stores before, and as we drove
along I thought I never saw such pretty houses in my life. O, I
was thoroughly captivated. We had a long way to drive from the
station then. Col. Berry lived at Poplar Grove, just a little
out of Baltimore. Dear old Mrs. Berry, Mrs. Turner and the
Doctor, and the old Colonel met us at the station. How well I
remember the old home in the grove; it was the fall of the year;
it was not late, but the fires were lighted and all was so
cheery. I remember Mr. and Mrs. Hurst, the three children, Miss
Petty and Missie, and little Berry and Mr. Somerfield, Miss
Emily and Miss Eliza. Dr. Turner took a house in town on the
corner of Franklin and Pearl streets, Baltimore. I remained till
Christmas, then my mother came to see me and I went home with
her."
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* *
"In September, 1854, I was married to my first husband,
C. Devine, by the Rev. Nicholas Pleasant, a Baptist minister in
Columbia. My father did not object to my marrying, only on the
ground that I was rather young, and I thought so, too, but
still, like so many young people, I said, "But well, I know
I can get on." Then there was the fellow saying all the
nice things he would do for me, and I believed it all, of
course.
"But it was not long before I wished I had not believed
half he said, though in many things he was good. He believed in
religion for his mother's sake. She was a good woman, he said,
though I never saw her. He had two sisters who lived in
Columbia. He could talk on the subject of religion very sensibly
at times; but when strong drink would get the better of him,
which I am very sorry to say was quite often, then be was very
profane and unreasonable. We had two children. The first died;
the other, my daughter Maze, is now married and living in
Baltimore.
"In 1855 I was very ill. Everything was done for me that
could be done. My father lived in Wrightsville, Pa., and was
very anxious about my soul. But I did not feel a bit concerned.
"I wanted to be let alone. How I wished that no one
would speak to me. One day my father said to me, 'Amanda, my
child, you know the doctors say you must die; they can do no
more for you, and now my child you must pray'."
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"It was in September, 1862. The Union soldiers were
stationed all along the line, from Havre de Gras and Monkton,
Md. My aunt, my mother's sister, lived about a mile and a half
from Hereford, on the old homestead, where my grandmother lived
and died. After the death of my mother there were six of us
children at home with father. My aunt, who had been married
about two years, wanted my father to let one of my sisters go
with her to Maryland. She had but one child of her own at that
time, and she wanted my sister to be company for her little
child, and to look after him, as she worked out by the day very
often.
"So my father gave her my sister Frances, who was then
about ten years old. It was not very safe for colored people to
pass up and down, but sometimes they could do it without being
molested at all."
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* *
"After my conversion I continued to live in Columbia,
Pa., a year or two; then went to live at Colonel McGraw's in
Lancaster, about ten miles from Columbia, where I remained some
four or five years. In the meantime the civil war had broken
out, and my husband, in common with so many others, enlisted and
went South with the army, from which he never returned. From
Lancaster I went to Philadelphia, where I remained at service
with different families for several years. There I became
acquainted with James Smith, a local preacher, to whom I was
subsequently married."
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* *
"When the first few months after my marriage to James
Smith had passed, things began to get very unsatisfactory. My
husband had one grown daughter, eighteen years of age, by a
former marriage, and I had one daughter, about nine years old,
by my first marriage. At times, things in the house were very
unpleasant. I was greatly disappointed, perhaps I had expected
too much of my husband. He was a local preacher and an ordained
deacon in the A. M. E. Church.
"My first husband was not a professing Christian at all,
neither was I when I married him. During the years of my
widowhood I boarded my little girl, here a while and then there.
Sometimes she was well taken care of and at other times was not;
for I found that often people do things just for the little
money they get out of it; and when I would go and see the
condition of my poor child, and then had to turn away and leave
her and go to my work I often cried and prayed; but what could I
do more? I had not yet learned to trust God fully for all
things.
"One reason for my marrying a second time was that I
might have a Christian home and serve God more perfectly. I
thought to marry a preacher would be the very thing, though
notwithstanding, I prayed earnestly for light and guidance from
the Lord, and I believe, now, he gave it me, but I did not walk
in it. How sorry I have been many times since. I told my husband
how, since my conversion, I felt it my duty to be an Evangelist.
He quite agreed to it all, and told me he was preparing himself
to join the Conference and so go into the itinerant work.
"He explained and reasoned it all so well, and, of
course, I had learned to love him, and that went a good ways
towards making everything look very plausible, notwithstanding
the light the Lord had given me. I said the Lord knows the deep
desire of my heart is to work for Him, and I could help my
husband so much in his work. I had seen and known the influence
of a minister's wife, and how much she could help her husband or
hinder him to a great extent in his work. Mr. Smith said that
was just the kind of a wife he wanted."
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"After a year Mrs. Colonel McGraw, with whom I had lived
in Lancaster for some four years, came for me to go a few months
to Wheatland, Md., where they had moved. They found it difficult
to get a cook, and they thought I might go for a few months to
get the house settled.
"After getting the consent of my husband, I took my
baby, little Nell, six months old, and my daughter Mazie, and we
went for the summer. O, what I went through during those three
months! I had to do all the cooking for the house, and eight
farm hands, beside helping with the washing and doing up all the
shirts and fine clothes and looking after my children. How I did
it I don't know. There were but two other servants in the house,
chambermaid and waiter, so I had no help only as they were kind
enough, at times, to lend a hand.
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My baby seemed to get along
nicely for the first three weeks, then she was taken sick with
summer complaint, and in six weeks I had to lay her away in the
grave to a wait the morning of the Resurrection."
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"In the fall I returned home to Philadelphia, and went
out to days' work and took washing, in every way to help my
husband. In the course of time the Lord gave me another dear
little boy, and I named him after Thomas Henry, whom I loved for
his Christian, manly bravery in the dark days of slavery. He was
a member of the M. E. Church, and was a licensed preacher for a
number of years at Hagerstown, Md., and left that church and
joined the A. M. E. Church in 1834.
"The stewards and sometimes the preachers, in those days
owned slaves, and as one of the stewards of the church he
belonged to, sold a poor colored girl away from her child, he
was sad about it, knowing them all as he did; so he went to the
Presiding Elder and asked him about the clause in the discipline
about buying and selling slaves. He told him that he had nothing
to do with the Steward's property; and after still further
inquiry the same answer was given. Then with Tom Henry
forbearance ceased to be a virtue and he said no man whose hand
is red with innocent blood shall ever put, the Sacrament in my
mouth.
"He remained a worthy member of the A. M. E. Church,
which he served nobly till he fell asleep in Jesus, about ten
years ago. I speak of him because he was a father to me, and so
often comforted my heart when I would be almost overwhelmed. The
story of his life ought to be read by every Methodist preacher
of to-day, for many of them have forgotten what the fathers had
to go through in preparing a church for them to carry
forward." Source: An Autobiography: The
Story of the Lord's Dealing with Mrs. Amanda Smith the
Colored Evangelist (1893)
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updated 18 October 2007 |
