Putnam: Rare slavery document on display in Lansing
“To have one that has survived this long and in this condition and one that connects to Michigan … I get goosebumps.”
LANSING - A rare document belonging to a Mason man who bought his freedom from slavery will go on display Monday at the Archives of Michigan, located inside the Michigan Historical Center.
Just in time for Black History Month, the 170-year-old freedom paper known as a “manumission” was donated by Benjamin Hall of Eaton Rapids. He’s the great-great-great-grandson of Frank Demas, also known as Thomas Willis.
Willis bought his freedom in Kentucky in 1846 and eventually moved to Mason around the time of the Civil War.
The 12-by-20 inch legal document is blue ink on vellum, a parchment like material made from animal skin. It lists four men from Kentucky, Indiana and Pennsylvania who, through their attorney “discharge from all further servitude, one Negro man, Frank (alias Frank Demas) of a dark complexion, aged about twenty-eight years and upwards of six feet high.”
“It is an extraordinarily rare document to have survived,” said Sandra Clark, director of the Michigan Historical Center. “To have one that has survived this long and in this condition and one that connects to Michigan … I get goosebumps.”
Clark said it’s possible that in Kentucky, Willis was able to hold an outside job in order to pay for his freedom. The document does not list an amount paid for that or explain the relationship of the four men listed.
Willis was married to Merry Willis, who escaped slavery via the Underground Railroad.
Hall, the Summer Solstice Jazz Festival Coordinator in East Lansing, said his ancestors were believed to be among the first black families in the area.
His great-great-great-grandfather changed his name to protect his wife from being recaptured. She ran away from a Louisiana plantation around 1850, following the path used by the character Eliza in in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” according to a 1907 article in the Ingham County News.
She died in 1907 at the age of 97, though her age was not clear, according to the article, which spells her name as “Mary.” Hall said the family believes it was spelled “Merry.” One of her sons, James Willis, died at the age of 105 in 1953, according to a Lansing State Journal article.
The paper was in a safe belonging to Hall’s father, Lavada Hall. The freedom paper was rolled up and inside a metal canister.
“I knew it didn’t belong in a canister in a safe. It needed to be preserved, and I wanted it to be useful,” Hall said.
Hall and his wife, Laura, visited the archives to see the preserved paper Friday. They also donated an 1872 Bible belonging to Merry Willis, her ceramic pipe, and a small study book about arithmetic.
State Archivist Mark Harvey said Rivers Conservation of Detroit cleaned, preserved, flattened and mounted the document at a cost of $1,500. It was paid with funds from the Michigan History Foundation. He said the items will eventually become part of the Michigan Historical Museum's Civil War exhibit.
Hall, 40, a blues singer who was raised by a white mother in a white farming community, said he became interested in the African American side of his family as a teen. He moved to Lansing to attend high school and live with his father. He graduated from Lansing’s Everett High School and Michigan State University.
The document is important to his own history.
“If it didn’t exist, I wouldn’t exist,” he said. “It’s a symbol of how far we’ve come, and also a symbol of how far we have left to go."
If you go
The manumission and other Hall family artifacts will be displayed in the reception area of the Archives of Michigan, on the second floor of the east wing of Michigan Historical Center, 702 W. Kalamazoo St. Lansing, MI 48915. Hours are 1-5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.
Judy Putnam is a columnist with the Lansing State Journal. Contact her at (517) 267-1304 or at jputnam@lsj.com. Write to her at 120 E. Lenawee St., Lansing, MI, 48919. Follow her on Twitter @JudyPutnam.