I was privileged to be invited to attend this year’s fourth annual Jane Gates Day over the past weekend and, as always, it was a revelation and a reminder to me.
Sukh and John Gates have made a life’s work out of keeping alive the memory of their astonishing ancestor, and though I have known her basic story for years, each new bit of information is a source of wonder and inspiration to me.
For those who are not familiar with Jane Gates, she is one of the many stories of an enslaved person overcoming unimaginable barriers to lead a post-emancipation life of achievement, and to gain the respect of her community, Black and white. From having been passed from “owner” to “owner” in the typical despicable pre-Civil War American fashion, she rose to become a landowner and a respected contributor to her community — one of the few Black people (especially women) of the time whose death merited an obituary in several newspapers.
It is hard in 2025 to claim that we have any slight inkling of what enslaved persons in America suffered, especially the women. The treatment of enslaved women was so appalling that it took the efforts of Dr. Henry Louis Gates, her descendant and a Harvard professor, to even manage to ferret out who was the father of her children, and the progenitor of the line of descendants who have worked so tirelessly to keep her memory alive. Tracing the roots of Americans who lived through enslavement is a tremendously difficult task.
Records dismissive of the lives of the humans who were considered “property.” Some census information is available, but it is sketchy at best, and tells us very little about these people and the lives they led. It required DNA evidence to track down the father of Miss Jane’s children — and then, the information contradicted the family’s oral traditions, which required an adjustment of several generations’ worth of assumptions. (If you want to learn more about this issue, watch the full Jane Gates episode of “Finding Your Roots” on PBS.) Jane Gates and her children were finally tracked down in the “property” listing of one Christian Stotler — including their “value” in monetary terms.
What a shock it is to see it printed baldly like that. Yet we would be naive to try to persuade ourselves that this part of American history never occurred. As a retired history teacher, I have taught about slavery many times over the years — but it still sends a chill down my spine to think that human life can be so reduced to financial gain or loss, to a mere careless transaction.
In Stotler’s will, he mandated that Jane be freed — but only after three more years. He tore her family apart, dictating that she and two of her sons be sold to one Samuel Brady, and that two of her daughters be “bequeathed” to members of Stotler’s family.
I sat listening to the recounting of these facts at Jane Gates Day last weekend, and thinking about my own ancestors. They came from Scotland and Germany, and though they struggled to build a life here, their struggles seem like tiddlywinks compared to the mountains Jane Gates and her like had to climb.
My two most notable ancestors were not admirable. One of them arrived on the Mayflower, but was later hanged as a horse thief. (I admit, I find this rather amusing.) The other, William “Old Billy” McDaniel, was a slave master and plantation owner in King George County, Virginia. He is believed to have been an ancestor of Hattie McDaniel, the first black actress to win an Oscar (for her role as Mammy in “Gone With The Wind.”) He was also implicated in the Lincoln assassination, in that one of his slaves gave John Wilkes Booth a drink of water on his flight south from Washington after the occurrence at Ford’s Theatre. I’m tremendously proud of Hattie, not so much of the Booth connection.
But Jane Gates? Her descendants need have nothing but pride in her. I’m afraid we can be pretty certain that Jane’s repeated pregnancies were not of her choice — but what she did with the life that was forced upon her is nothing short of extraordinary. She bought considerable property — three lots on Greene Street in Cumberland — and built a world for her children and their children which was a remarkable achievement in a society which did everything it could to hold Blacks back.
Wandering through the small first floor rooms of her home, one can only imagine what a palace it must have seemed after the quarters she had resided in all her life — her pride and satisfaction in actually owning her own house, her own property, in her name — though the deed bears only her “X” with her name written below it in another hand. What a triumph! What a celebration must have been going on in her heart! What a leap from existing in hell to creating her own heaven! The house was nothing compared to the mansions just a block away on Washington Street, where resided the wealthy whose laundry might have provided the wherewithal for her to purchase this small nest. But it was all hers.
But Jane Gates? Her descendants need have nothing but pride in her. I’m afraid we can be pretty certain that Jane’s repeated pregnancies were not of her choice — but what she did with the life that was forced upon her is nothing short of extraordinary. She bought considerable property — three lots on Greene Street in Cumberland — and built a world for her children and their children which was a remarkable achievement in a society which did everything it could to hold Blacks back.
I thank Sukh and John Gates, Skip Gates and the entire Gates family, including their broader circle of helpers and supporters. Because of them, the story of Jane, which so richly deserves to be remembered and shared, is being kept alive for all of us. We can take inspiration, in our darkest moments, from seeing that even lives seemingly devoid of hope can turn around, either by chance, good fortune or ceaseless labor; and that, like Jane Gates, we can climb unclimbable mountains and revel in breathtaking views from the top — even if that mountain is just the gentle slope of Greene Street in the little town of Cumberland, Maryland.