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February 6th
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Eastern Jamaica.
John Russwurm born 1799 died 1851
John Brown Russwurm was born in Port Antonio on October 1, 1799; his father was an American, of German descent, who was doing business as a merchant in that town, and probably owned property in the parish. His Jamaican mother, however, appears in different guises, according to the inclinations of the writer. To one, she
was 'an African prisoner-of-war who was raped by a white man', to another she was a 'Negro Jamaican servant girl named Brown', one of those 'local girls who drifted around seeking affairs with transient foreigners'. Another writer saw her as 'a slave-woman who worked on his father's Jamaican plantation' and yet another as Russwurm senior's ' Black mistress or housekeeper'. Since we clearly know nothing of John Russwurm's mother we can take our pick of the various scenarios.
There is also disagreement as to whether the younger Russwurm was born a slave, or was born free.
John Brown Russwurm lived in Jamaica until around 1807, presumably receiving some elementary education, and then was sent to school in Quebec, Canada. Opinion seems divided as to whether his father also went to Canada, or stayed in Jamaica; be that as it may, by 1812 they were both located in Portland, Maine, with Russwurm senior's new wife, Susan Blanchard.
The Russwurm House
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John's stepmother insisted that her husband give him his family name of Russwurm; until then he was apparently known as John Brown. Susan Russwurm treated John as a son, along with her children by her first marriage, and after his father died in 1815 and she married her third husband, William Hawes. John was always considered a part of the family, long after he had left home. He was sent to school at Hebron Academy, in Hebron, Maine, a school which, unusually for its time, educated girls alongside boys, though, of course, they did not go on to college! At Hebron he worked hard to get a good education, never missing classes or getting into any trouble; his fellow students gave him the nickname "Honest John". When he left Hebron he taught for some time at what was later named the Abiel Smith School, for African-American children in Boston. In 1824, with help from his step-mother and William Hawes, he was able to enter Bowdoin College. There he had as fellow students Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and was admitted to the Athenaeans, the first college fraternity to admit an African-American.He graduated with his Bachelor of Arts degree in September 1826, and delivered a class oration at the commencement exercises. However, as a book of recollections of Bowdoin at the time shows, social acceptance had very decided limits - 'Russwurm - the first and only colored graduate of Bowdoin, [by 1893] except in the medical department - was a diligent student, but of no marked ability. He lived at a carpenter's house, just beyond the village limits, where Hawthorne and the writer [Horatio Bridge] called upon him several times, but his sensitiveness on account of his color prevented him from returning the calls.'
Russwurm was the second (or third, depending on the source) man of African ancestry to recieve a BA in the United States; three years later he returned to Bowdoin and received his Master's degree.
the worthy frog
Joy Lumsden 2007
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