Emily Grey showed writing flair in Minnesota Territory's educated black enclave

One. That was how many "free colored" people lived in St. Anthony, a growing village of 657 at the navigational head of the Mississippi River, according to the 1850 Minnesota Territorial Census.

All told, there were 40 black people in the territory that year. The number swelled sixfold to 259 by 1860 after several black families left Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Missouri to settle in St. Anthony in 1857 — the year before Minnesota became a state.

More than 94 percent of those new black residents were listed as literate on census rolls. And one of those newcomers — a barber's wife named Emily Grey — was a fine writer. In 1893, Grey wrote and read from her memoir to a group called the Query Club just before she turned 60.

Her essay — believed to be the first written by a black pioneer from the territorial days — touched on everything from her arrival via train, riverboat and stagecoach to her anti-slavery work to cooking tips gleaned from neighbors.

First, a little background. Emily Goodridge was born in 1834 in York, Pa. — one of six children. Her father, William Goodridge, was a former slave, barber, newspaperman, railroad worker and leading abolitionist.

Emily married another York resident, Ralph Grey, who moved to Minnesota Territory in 1855 after their first child was born. Emily and little William headed west to be reunited with Ralph two years later.

No known photographs of Emily Grey exist, but friends remembered her as a tall, big-boned woman with blue-gray eyes and freckles on her nose. She was described as kind, dynamic and determined. As community leaders, the Greys entertained renowned abolitionist Frederick Douglass when he visited Minnesota in 1873.

Twenty years later, she remembered her springtime arrival in Minnesota in her 1893 essay and speech:

"Our train was brought to a sudden stop in the town of Boscobel, Wisconsin, and could proceed no farther on account of the flooded condition of that part of the country between us and where we were to take the steamboat upriver [at Prairie du Chien, Wis.]. …

"The prospect of starvation presented to us was anything but agreeable to entertain. Men, women, and children were thrown unexpectedly together with very scant — in fact, next to what we could not under any pretext call — accommodations … It was ham and eggs for breakfast, eggs and ham for dinner, and by way of variety, for supper we were given the same old dish — ham and eggs."

After four days mired in Wisconsin, Emily, her toddler son and a pair of newly married relatives boarded a steamboat — "This was the first time in my life to make acquaintance with the grand old 'Father of Waters.' "

If racism hindered their travels, she didn't mention it.

"I wish to state of the unexceptionable treatment we were the recipients of, in common with all others. We did not notice any difference in the service to any person."

A stagecoach, costing $1 apiece, delivered them from St. Paul to St. Anthony. Telegraph service to Minnesota was still three years away. She had written a letter to Ralph with their itinerary, but that was before the flood delay in Wisconsin.

"Our whereabouts could not be guessed by him. When we arrived, he was taken by surprise. After happy greetings, ending a separation of a year and a half we were nicely installed in two good rooms in the Jarrett House, a hotel where my husband had established a barbering business."

They promptly moved into a renovated barn next to the hotel.

"It was humble and unpretentious in appearance; [it] had been a barn but the frame was used and changed into a dwelling, floors put in, partitions and chimney built, plastered, fences and a chicken coop erected. I papered it with my own hands alone one day, as a surprise to my husband when he came home that night."

Next up: furniture. "In those days there were not the establishments gotten up on the 'installment plan' we have today [1893]. One could not indulge her or his aesthetic taste so readily or cheaply as can be done now. An ordinary high-back rocking chair cost from eight to ten dollars; common basswood chairs painted black and varnished cost one dollar apiece."

After growing up with fresh vegetables harvested from Pennsylvania kitchen gardens, early Minnesota was different when it came to "procuring of provisions."

"This was my first experience in being brought face to face with can[ned] goods, vegetables, and fruits," she wrote. Neighbors were friendly and helpful.

"Fashionable and formal visits were not much in vogue, but the good, old-time neighborly calls were more generally indulged in. A grateful remembrance of the kind deeds done for us by our new-made friends placed us in lifelong indebtedness."

Those new friends taught her bread-making techniques and "the art of baking that toothsome New England dish of 'pork and beans' in the same way they were cooked in the lumber camps."

Then she learned how to boil a dinner "composed of sauerkraut, part of the pickled backbone of a pig, and Irish potatoes. There was always some woman friend who would gladly be to me a guiding star to lead me out of the many little difficulties met with in all households."

She went on to detail her role in the court case that freed a slave named Eliza Winston and discuss the other black families from the early days.

By 1880, the black population topped 1,500 in Minnesota. "So many faces of colored men, women, and children in my travels throughout the city, it seems so marvelous, so like a dream."

Emily Goodridge Grey died in Minneapolis 100 years ago, at 82. She's buried in Lakewood Cemetery. She was "convinced" her second of four children, Toussaint, "was the first colored child born" in St. Anthony.

She concluded her speech, given 23 years before her death, with an apology.

"This 'paper' has grown longer than intended, yet I feel constrained to record the fact that there has not been a moment in my life when I regretted that my feet had touched the soil of Minnesota."



Curt Brown's tales about Minnesota's history appear each Sunday. Readers can send him ideas and suggestions at mnhistory@startribune.com. A collection of his columns is available as the e-book "Frozen in History" at startribune.com/ebooks.