Sarah Jane Woodson Early

Sarah Jane Woodson Early, born Sarah Jane Woodson (November 15, 1825 - August 1907), was an American educator, black nationalist, temperance activist and author. A graduate of Oberlin College, she was hired at Wilberforce College as the first African-American woman college instructor. She also taught for many years in community schools and was principal in four cities after moving to Tennessee with her minister husband. Early served as national superintendent (1888–1892) of the black division of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and gave more than 100 lectures across five states. She wrote a biography of her husband and his rise from slavery that is included among postwar slave narratives.

Early life and education

Sarah Jane Woodson, the fifth daughter and youngest child of eleven of Jemima (Riddle) and Thomas C. Woodson (1790–1879), was born in Chillicothe, Ohio on November 15, 1825. Her parents had moved to Ohio about 1821 from Virginia. They founded the first black Methodist church west of the Alleghenies.^[1] In 1830 the Woodsons were among founders of a separate black farming community called Berlin Crossroads, since defunct. The nearly two dozen families by 1840 established their own school, stores and churches. Her father and some brothers became black nationalists, which influenced Sarah Woodson's activities as an adult.^[1]

Her father believed that he was the oldest son of Sally Hemings and President Thomas Jefferson; this tradition became part of the family's oral history.^[2] Biographers of the president, such as Joseph Ellis, had traditionally discounted claims that he had fathered Hemings' children. In 1998 DNA testing of descendants of the Jefferson, Hemings' and Woodson male lines showed conclusively that there was a match between the Jefferson and Hemings' lines, but no connection with descendants of Woodson. The Woodson male line did show western European paternal ancestry.^[3][4]

In 1839 Sarah Woodson joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), the first independent black denomination founded in the United States, in which her father and two older brothers Lewis and John P. had become ministers.^[1] The Woodson family emphasized education for all their children. Sarah Jane and her older sister Hannah both attended Oberlin College; Sarah Jane completed the full program and graduated in 1856, among the first African-American women college graduates.

Career

In 1866 she became the first African-American woman college instructor when she was hired at Wilberforce University in Xenia, where her brother Rev. Lewis Woodson was a trustee and founder.^[1]

The college had been established in 1855 to educate black youth; its founders were white leaders of the Cincinnati Methodist conference and black ministers of the AME Church in Ohio. Sarah's brother Lewis Woodson was among the original 24 founding trustees. Wilberforce closed for two years during the Civil War because of finances. It lost most of its subscription students at the beginning of the war, as they were mostly mixed-race children of wealthy planters from the South, who withdrew them.^[5]

The AME Church purchased and reopened the college to students; it was the first African-American owned and operated college.^[6] Sarah Jane Woodson taught English and Latin. She also served as Lady Principal and Matron. In 1863 she wrote and delivered a speech entitled "Address to The Youth" at a meeting held by the Ohio Colored Teachers Association. She encouraged her young audience to pursue education, and especially careers in the sciences.^[1]

After the Civil War in 1868, Woodson taught in a new school for black girls established by the Freedmen's Bureau in Hillsboro, North Carolina.^[7] Later that year at age 43, she married the widower Jordan W. Early. Woodson and her husband moved to Tennessee, where he served as a missionary and an AME minister, planting numerous churches in the state. Sarah W. Early continued to teach school for nearly four decades, as she believed education was critical for the advancement of the race.^[1] She served as principal of large schools in four cities as well.^[7]

Sarah W. Early also became increasingly active in the women's temperance movement, one of numerous reform activities of the nineteenth century. In 1888 she was elected for a four-year term as national superintendent of the Colored Division of the Women's Christian Temperance Union; during her tenure, Early traveled frequently and gave more than 100 speeches to groups throughout a five-state region.^[1]

Marriage and family

On September 24, 1868 Woodson married the Reverend Jordan Winston Early, an AME minister. He was a former slave of mixed-race ancestry born in 1814 in Franklin County, Virginia. After his mother died when he was three, he and his siblings were cared for by a maternal aunt and an older woman on the plantation, known as "Aunt Milly".^[8]

He and his family were taken by their masters to Missouri in 1826, where Early joined the Methodist Church. A Presbyterian minister taught him to read and write (although it was illegal for slaves). Early was hired out as a slave who worked on steamboats on the Mississippi River, traveling between St. Louis and New Orleans.^[8]

Joining the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, Early worked to build its local congregations. In 1836 he was licensed as an AME preacher and later ordained as a deacon and elder. He helped expand the church in St. Louis, New Orleans, Illinois, Indiana, and Tennessee. In 1840 he and supporters built the first AME Church in St. Louis. In 1843 he married Louisa Carter of that city, and they had eight children, four of whom survived to adulthood. The Earlys sent their children to Wilberforce University. Louisa died in 1862.^[8]

In the late 1850s Early went to work founding AME missions in Tennessee. By 1871 there were 71 AME ministers and numerous churches in the state.^[8] Sarah and Jordan Early had no children.

Jordan Early retired from active minister appointments in 1888.^[8] Until his death in 1903, Sarah Early had helped her husband with his ministries in numerous towns in Tennessee, where she also taught community schools. She died in 1907.

Works

• 1866, Woodson's 1863 speech was collected and published by Bishop Daniel Payne, ed., The Semi-Centenary and the Retrospection of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Baltimore: Sherwood, pp.
• Sarah J. W. Early, The Life and Labors of Rev. J. W. Early, One of the Pioneers of African Methodism in the West and South (1894), a biography about her husband. It has been classified by the University of North Carolina among the post-Civil War slave narratives, as she covered his rise from slavery through his decades of missionary activities for the AME church.

Legacy and honors

• 1893, Woodson Early was named "Representative Woman of the Year" at the Chicago World's Fair (World's Columbian Exposition).

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} Foner, Phillip and Branham, Robert (eds.), Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787-1900 Univ. of Alabama Press, 1997, pp. 384-385
2. ^ Woodson, Byron W., A President in the Family, Praeger, 2001, p. 86
3. ^ Foster, EA, et al.; Jobling, MA; Taylor, PG; Donnelly, P; De Knijff, P; Mieremet, R; Zerjal, T; Tyler-Smith, C (1998). "Jefferson fathered slave's last child". Nature 396 (6706): 27–28. doi:10.1038/23835. PMID 9817200. http://www.familytreedna.com/pdf/Jeffersons.pdf. 
4. ^ "Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: A Brief Account", Plantation & Slvery, Monticello, Quote: "The DNA study found no link between the descendants of Field Jefferson [tested because Thomas Jefferson had no direct male descendants] and Thomas C. Woodson... But there is no indication in Jefferson's records of a child born to Hemings before 1795, and there are no known documents to support that Thomas Woodson was Hemings' first child.", accessed 6 March 2011
5. ^ James T. Campbell, Songs of Zion, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 259-260, accessed 13 Jan 2009
6. ^ Horace Talbert, The Sons of Allen: Together with a Sketch of the Rise and Progress of Wilberforce University, Wilberforce, Ohio, 1906, Documenting the South, 2000, University of North Carolina, accessed 25 Jul 2008
7. ^ ^{a b} Jessie Carney Smith, "Sarah Jane Woodson Early", Notable Black American Women, VNR AG, 1996, pp. 198-200, accessed 6 March 2011
8. ^ ^{a b c d e} Sarah J. W. Early, Life and Labors of Rev. Jordan W. Early, One of the Pioneers of African Methodism in the West and South, Nashville: Publishing House A.M.E. Church Sunday School Union, 1894, carried at Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina, accessed 6 March 2011

Further reading

• Ellen N. Lawson, "Sarah Woodson Early: Nineteenth Century Black Nationalist 'Sister'," Umoja: A Scholarly Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 5 (Summer 1981), pp. 15–26
• Ellen Lawson and Marlene Merrill, The Three Sarahs: Documents of Antebellum Black College Women, Edwin Mellen Press, 1984

External links

• Sarah J. W. Early, Life and Labors of Rev. Jordan W. Early, One of the Pioneers of African Methodism in the West and South, Nashville: Publishing House A.M.E. Church Sunday School Union, 1894, carried at Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina

Persondata
Name	Early, Sarah Jane Woodson
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	November 15, 1825
Place of birth
Date of death	1907
Place of death