The Gregory family represents six generations ofachievement in the African-American community. I was surprised to learn, as Idid the research, that besides the "man from Madagascar" whom they claim astheir common ancestor, they were also the descendents of some white person'ssecret black child. A Supreme Court Judge, a U.S. Congressman, and a Texas statesenator had, during the mid-1800s, each harbored a black mistress and child,afforded them shelter, clothing, and education and thus helped this family onits way to prominence. Learning their history, I could not help but wonderwhere the totality of the African-American community would be if all of us hadbeen given access to education prior to 1865, instead of 1954.The branch of the Gregory family I was closest to lived in Atlantic City from1924-1960. T.Montgomery Gregory was superintendent of black schools duringthat time; the woman who raised me, Peggy Bush, had gotten her job as a secondgrade teacher at the local elementary school through him. Mr. Gregory's wife,Hugh Ella Hanco*ck, was Peggy's best friend in Atlantic City. Their nephew,Frederick Gregory, was the first black pilot of a space shuttle.Their grandson, Ernest J. Wilson III, served on the National Security Councilunder President Clinton. His sister Wendy Wilson works for USAID in Senegal;his brother Sule Greg Wilson lives in Arizona and is the author of the book,"The Drummer's Path." To read "Cousin Chico's" chapter on the family's historyat Harvard, click here.
T. Montgomery Gregory graduated from Harvard class of 1910. His father, JamesMonroe, received his masters' degree from Harvard in 1885 - the same year asW.E.B. DuBois. After graduating from Harvard, where he was president of thedebating team, T.M. reported did a three-part series on segregation in thenation's passenger rail system ( the "Jim Crow cars") for the NAACP's Crisismagazine.
Before moving to Atlantic City, T.M. had been a professor of drama andliterature at Howard University and had helped found the Howard Players there.(An extensive collection of his personal papers and correspondence can be foundat Howard's Moorland-Spingarn Library).
The Gregorys had five children: Yvonne, T.M., Jr., Eugene, Hugh, Mignon, andSheila. I called them my aunts and uncles. Each of them contributed somethingto the country, their race, and to me. Hugh was one of the Tuskegee Airmen.T.M. Jr. and Eugene were both research scientists. Aunt Yvonne, a gifted poet,co-wrote "We Charge Genocide" - the petition which Paul Robeson presented tothe United Nations on behalf of black Americans in l959. Her poems arepublished in several anthologies, including "The Negro Poet" by Arna Bontemps.Here's one of her poems that always spoke to me:
I forgot to laugh.Yvonne's father, T.M. Gregory, Sr., compiled a family history, excerpts fromwhich follow. I especially like the preamble bit:
And all the things I wanted to say,
Sounded so sorrowfully sad and gray
That I started to cry
Heartbrokenly.Tears flowed in streams
of silver dreams
That tinkled by,
Most soothingly.See AlsoMultiple Recognized at May Board MeetingNews to Know for the week of June 3 - Battle Ground Public SchoolsAnd then I laughed.
With the souls of a hundred haunting things
Floating about on wonderful wings
All in bright lines
Triumphantly!
I had learned to laugh
On a stony path.
A true laugh climbs
from tragedy."A family is built, like a tree, by generations of growth, expansion,flowering, hibernation, and renewal. As we should know and understand thehistory of our country and of civilization, so too, each generation of familyshould know and understand the history of its antecedents. Such Family historyshould be objective, recording its favorable and unfavorable aspects, leavingno skeletons in the closet for future revelations and embarassments. 'Truthcrushed to earth will rise again!' "
Therefore, as a supplement to my previous report to you, I am enclosingherewith: a brief summary of the life of my father, James Monroe Gregory,in-so-far as I have been able to determine it from various sources:newspapers, correspondence, official papers, and my own recollections. I haveall this data in my files. Unfortunately, my father, and other of hisgeneration left no personal memoirs, nor did he pass on orally to his childrenan account of his life. I am attempting to correct this oversight with thesecommunications to you. I hope I shall be able to do likewise for the historyof your mother's family later.
My father was born in Lexington, Virginia, January 23, 1849. His father wasHenry L. Gregory, an industrious freedman and local minister, and his motherwas Marie A. Gladman, a member of the well-known Gladman family of Lynchburg,Virginia. His Gladman ancester, through four generations, were natives of theOld Dominion. The Gladman-Price cousins were prominent persons through fourgenerations in Virginia. Family moved to Lynchburg the year of his birth. In1859 his family, including his brother Claiborne, migrated North, passingthrough Harpers Ferry the morning after John Brown's raid, in order to findbetter educational advantages for the children. He attended the commonschools of La Porte, Indiana, Chicago, and Niles, Michigan. Rev. WilliamWaring (later of Washington, DC) remembers Jimmy Gregory as "the bright younglad attending school at Niles, the favorite of all the people for milesaround."
The family settled in Cleveland, Ohio. James was one of the first colored boysto enter the public schools of Cleveland and to pass through them successfully.He finished the grades at the Brownell Street school. One of his teachers wasMiss Laura Spellman, who was to become Mrs. John D. Rockefeller. He wasadmitted to the high school where Dr. Sterling was principal. Records of theschool show he obtained high standing. In 1865 he entered the Preparatory Schoolof Oberlin College, and though he was the only Negro in his class, was electedby his classmates as one of the speakers in the Senior Exhibition.
Oberlin was the center for Negro families who left the south to educate theirchildren. Many children were sent there by their white fathers. One was HughBerry Hanco*ck (my wife's father"), whose father, John Hanco*ck, of Austin, Texas,moved his common-law wife and child from Austin at the beginning of the CivilWar, and established a home for them in Oberlin. He completed his elementaryand high school, and possibly college, education. My father told me heremembered "little Hugh Hanco*ck" in Oberlin. He returned to Austin around1878, marrying Susan James O'Connor in 1879. She had been sent to a CatholicConvent in Baltimore at age 14 by his white father, Major O'Connor, a confederate.The is the same convent where my grandmother, Margaret Hagan, attended as agirl.
Later Susan James was also sent to Oberlin, where she met her future husband,Hugh Hanco*ck.
John Hanco*ck returned to Austin after the Civil War and was elected to the U.S.Congress, serving many years. Previously, he had been a member of the Texaslegislature. The Hanco*cks were a prominent family in Austin. The Hanco*ckOpera House was named after a cousin, Louis Hanco*ck, and stood perhaps afterWWII. While we were in San Juan, Puerto Rico, we met Professor and Mrs.Stevenson (he was on the faculty of the University of Puerto Rico), who hadbeen formerly on faculty of the University of Texas in Austin. We met themthrough Yvonne Gregory who had been a friend of Hallie Stevenson years ago inNew York. They informed us that apparently the last of the Hanco*cks was a MissHanco*ck, an elderly spinster living in Austin, whose poems Hallie had set tomusic.
Hugh Hanco*ck taught school after his marriage, and later, sponsored by a whitefriend of his father's, opened a saloon, and then entered politics in Austin.He refused his father's offer to send him to the University of Michigan LawSchool. When my wife was a teenager, he left the family and moved toPocatello, Idaho, where he died around the turn of the century.
James Monroe Gregory wrote "Frederick Douglass, The Orator" in 1893. Thefollowing is a citation from my father's book: "I first met Mr. Douglass atthe home of my father in New Bedford, Mass., in l862; since when I have knownhim well." This date would make my father thirteen years of age, three yearsout of Virginia, and presumably in school in Cleveland. Since his father'shome at that time was in New Bedford, there must have been a separation betweenhis parents.
My father entered the freshman class at Oberlin in 1868. General BenjaminButler of Massachusetts asked Oberlin, through General Shurtloff, a formerColonel of a Negro regiment in the war and then a professor at Oberlin, torecommend a Negro student for appointment to West Point. James Monroe Gregorythus became the first Negro to be so recommended. The necessary papers werecompleted by General Butler, but the appointment was disapproved by PresidentAndrew Johnson due to his political troubles with Congress duringReconstruction.
While a student at Oberlin, my father worked for the Freedman's Bureau byteaching school in Lynchburg. While passing through Washington to inquire abouthis West Point appointment, he was introduced to General Oliver Otis Howard,who was impressed by the young man and took his address. Howard University hadbeen established a year earlier by an act of Congress for the education ofFreedmen; General Howard was made President. Shortly thereafter, my fatherreceived a letter inviting him to transfer from Oberlin and become the firststudent of the College department, with the promise of being at once a teacherand a Ph.D. candidate.
The catalog of Howard University for 1968 has only one name in the CollegeDepartment, that of James Monroe Gregory. Later, Arthur C. O'Hare and JoshuaT. Settle joined the class, which was graduated in 1872. My father wasvaledictorian.
He was immediately appointed instructor in Latin and mathematics at a salary of$1000. After four years he was appointed professor of Latin in the College andbecame Dean for two years.
Fannie Emma Hagan of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, was a student in one of myfather's classes. She told me that her teacher wrote personal notes in hernotebook. She was 16 years old when she entered Howard; she married my fathera year later. They were married in Williamsport on December 29, 1873 by the Rev.William Parot, pastor of the local Episcopalian church. She was born inFrederick, Maryland (in Jerusalem, a section of the town) July 4, 1856. It isremarkable that less than ten years after the end of the Civil War, at a timewhen the higher education of women in this country had been scarcely seriouslyconsidered, her mother, Margaret Hagan, sent her away from home to this newlyestablished institution for her education.
It is appropriate here to give a brief sketch of the life of my mother'sMother, Mrs. Margaret A. Hagan, as far as I have the facts: "she was born andreared in one of Maryland's first and notable families, Judge R.B. Taney, not asa slave, as her mother was purchased by her father previous to her marriage,for the exorbitant price of $1400, her father being a free man." This excerptis taken from a special commemorative edition of the Williamsport Daily Gazetteand Bulletin, June 30, 1890; an entire column being given to the life andcareer of Mrs. Hagan(we have a copy of the paper). Her mother was Jane, adaughter of Judge Taney. Her father, according to the family lore, was namedPo Mahammit, the son of a ruling family in Madagascar who was sent on aneducational tour to the United States.
While driving through Maryland he passed through Frederick, and saw a young,comely girl and was so attracted by her that he went to the Taney household,finally paying the price of her release - $1400. He married her, but because ofhis marriage to an ex-slave, his family refused permission for his return toMadagascar. He settled in Frederick and raised a large family, devoting histime to the breeding of race horses.
Margaret Hagan left Frederick and went to Philadelphia when she was quiteyoung. We know that in Williamsport she first operated a laundry employing 40girls; later she entered the Philadelphia College of Medical Electricity,finding prejudice there, she went to Dr. Hosford's Sanitarium in Washington,DC. She then opened her own sanitarium in Williamsport where she became one ofits leading citizens. In the summer she carried on her treatments in a largecottage at Engles Mere, mountain resort, Pennsylvania. She owned property onEast Third St., and West Fourth St. late in life. When she was close to 90,she came to Bordentown, NJ and opened a sanitarium on Farnsworth Ave., andsoon had the bankers and other prominent citizens as patients. Always of anindependent and domineering character, she embarrassed my parents by attemptingto interfere with the administration of their school at Bordentown, and iteventually became necessary to place her in the county Institution for mentalpatients, where she died.
Back to the life of my father. The family lived in Washington, DC, near HowardUniversity. J.M. Gregory was instrumental in securing the first appropriationfor the University($10,000). For years, he was considered the leading exponentof higher education for the Negro. When the Congregational Society of New Yorkdesired to have the various phases of the education of the Negro presented atit* annual meeting in 1886, it invited Booker T. Washington to speak onIndustrial Education; Miss Fannie Jackson on the education of women; andProfessor Gregory on Higher Education. He was an intimate and trusted friendof Frederick Douglass - he even wrote his biography, "Frederick Douglass: theOrator". Professor Gregory always stood for the fullest participation of hispeople in the government of this nation. In 1897, he became Principal of theIndustrial Training school in Bordentown, N.J. He served in that positionuntil 1914; he died the following year.
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