Famous Footsteps
HAMPTO N IS D I S T I N G UI S H E D B Y A N UMB ER O F A FRICA N A M ERICA N LEA DERS WHO HAVE LI VE D, VI S ITED , W OR K E D O R S T UD I E D HE RE . T HEIR CO NT RIB UT IO NS CLEA RED PAT HS FO R M AN Y TH AT FO L L O WE D A N D FO R T HO SE WHO CO NT INUE T O FO RGE A HEA D. W IL LIA M TU C K E R
Two of the first Africans to come to Virginia, Anthony and Isabell, became servants of Captain William Tucker commander of the fort at Point Comfort. Their child William became the first recorded baby of African descent to be baptized in English North America. The service was held on January 3, 1624.
C E S A R TA R R A N T
B. 1740, D. 1797
During the Revolutionary War, this Hampton slave successfully piloted an American schooner, the Patriot, into a Royal Navy vessel, rendering the British ship unnavigable. Tarrant, who was owned by Carter Tarrant, was freed from slavery on November 14, 1789, when the Virginia legislature passed an act that gave him freedom for his heroic efforts during the war. Hampton’s Cesar Tarrant Middle School is named in his honor.
M ARY PE A K E
B. 1823, D. 1862
In 1861, Mary Peake began in Hampton what is believed to be the first organized effort to teach African Americans to read and write. Born free, Peake rejected the laws that prohibited such teaching. Her role as a prominent educator was publicly recognized on the 100th anniversary of her death, when a Hampton elementary school was named in her honor. Her grave can be found at Elmerton Cemetery on Wine Street, north of Pembroke Avenue.
24
Washington helped integrate Native Americans into the Hampton Normal and Agriculture Institute program in 1878. He later founded Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute.
B. 1624, D. UNKNOWN
Booker T. Washington
Shepard Mallory, Frank Baker and James Townsend
S H E PA RD MAL L ORY, FRANK BAKER A N D J AMES T OWNSEND Shortly after the onset of the Civil War, three enslaved men escaped and sought refuge at Fort Monroe, setting in motion a series of events that would have far-reaching consequences for African Americans. Arriving in May 1861, the three men purported to have been Shepard Mallory, Frank Baker and James Townsend, were given refuge by Major General Benjamin F. Butler under the declaration that they were “contraband of war.” Soon thousands of runaways journeyed to the Union post that had earned the nickname “Freedom’s Fortress.”
B O O K E R TAL IAFERRO WASHING T ON B. APRIL 5, 1856, D. NOV. 14, 1915
One of Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute’s most famous graduates and a formerly enslaved man, Booker T. Washington traveled to the Hampton school from southwest Virginia on foot and then worked as a janitor to pay for his education. He graduated in 1875.
HARRIET T UBMAN
B. 1820-25, D. MARCH 10, 1913
Harriet Tubman’s efforts as one of the daring “conductors” of the Underground Railroad resulted in her guiding more than 300 enslaved men and women to safety, including her own parents, and earned her the nickname “Black Moses.” Following the war, she arrived in Hampton in 1865 to serve as a nurse to the formerly enslaved who had made their way to Fort Monroe. Soon after, she was appointed to the position “Matron,” or nurse, of Hampton’s Colored Hospital by the Surgeon of the United States Army.
WIL L IAM ROSCOE DAVI S B. 1814, D. NOV. 19, 1904
Born in the 1830s, Davis was raised in Norfolk and taught by his owner