Characters in "Three Fifths of a Man" by Dr. David Jorns

Currently the following characters are in the play:

Women: The three female roles are interlocutors or narrators who move the play along.

• Mary Corbin, the future wife of Robert Matson, his housekeeper/mistress and mother of one of his children was between 26 and 32 born in Kentucky or Virginia, possibly divorced and her temper caused the Bryants, the slave family, to flee.
• Mary Chestnut, age 24, South Carolinian aristocracy, her father was governor and a US Senator, her husband was a lawyer and later also a US Senator, married 7 years at time of trial in 1847, witty, active in husbands political life, and one of the most important diarists of the Confederacy during the Civil War.

Men:

• Dr. Hiram Rutherford, age 32, born in Pennsylvania and educated at a medical college in Philadelphia, widow of 2 years and father of one boy, lived in Illinois for seven years in 1847, abolitionist.
• William Lloyd Garrison, age 42 Massachusetts resident, newspaper editor, founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society, very articulate and radical abolitionists. Famous nationally.
• Matt Ashmore, age 37, born in Tennessee, but had lived in this part of Illinois since he was 4 years old, tavern owner, school teacher, town founder.
• Orlando B. Ficklin, age 39, attorney, born in Kentucky, served in Illinois General Assembly, owned $4,000 in real estate, educated at Transylvania University, elected to Congress in 1843-1849.
• Abraham Lincoln, age 38, beardless, attorney, married for 5 years with 2 children, he was well-known and respected in his career, had been elected to Congress and would leave for there in two weeks after the trial, practicing law with Herndon for last six years.
• Robert Matson, age 51, Kentuckian, fairly wealthy, owned slaves, kind of a scoundrel, bachelor, served in Kentucky Legislature many years earlier.
• Usher Linder, age 38, Kentuckian, former Illinois Attorney General, member of the Illinois General Assembly, liked his drink, was a recognized orator.
• William Gilman, age 46, Kentuckian, tavern owner, lived in Illinois 7 years, not very well educated though served as Justice of the Peace.
• Joe Dean, age 52, Kentuckian, at one time owned two slaves, but owned no land in Illinois, but lived here, kind of "white trash."
  

Auditions in Oakland for Historical Drama about Lincoln

The play may be titled “Three Fifths of a Man,” but only whole men and women should apply.

Open auditions for this original play, about the 1847 Matson Slave Trial when Abraham Lincoln represented a slave owner for the only time in his law career, will be held on July 30 and 31 at 7:00 p.m. in the Columbian Building in Oakland Illinois. The building is located at the corner of Pike and Main Streets on the picturesque town square.

All adults over the age of 18 are welcome and no prior experience is needed to audition. One minute prepared auditions are welcome, but not necessary. Tryouts will involve reading from the script written and directed by Dr. David Jorns.

The performance is part of an innovate historical program, Trial & Tribulations, on September 18 and 19 where audience members will informally meet seven of the characters from the trial at two historic sites in Oakland, enjoy an 1847 meal, and attend the performance of this play.

The mostly male cast will portray real people from 1847 highlighting their inner motivations as well as the historical events. Jorns explains, “It’s so unlike the Lincoln we know from school. He is human, a man of his times who struggled with this important moral issue for many years. This Lincoln is more complicated than the myth.”

The program is made possible in part by a grant from the Ruth and Vaughn Jaenike Access to the Arts Outreach Program of the College of Arts & Humanities, Eastern Illinois University.

For more information visit the project’s website http://matson1847.blogspot.com, email at trial.tribulations1847@gmail.com, or call 217-508-9113.

Brushy Fork Descendant Returns to Her Roots

They say you can never go back to the way things were, but sometimes, its enough just to go back. Marlyn Mounger Peridon came back to visit the area her ancestors settled on Tuesday, June 2 in the company of local researchers and residents. This isn't unusual, as many people visit family in Douglas County, but the family Peridon found was special - they were some of the first free people of color to live in east central Illinois, at a settlement called Brushy Fork.

"I am 80% certain this is where your great great grandmother, Emily Bass Minnis, is buried," confirmed local researcher, Melinda Buchanan, as she and Peridon shared a moment in front of the commemorative marker labeled, "Negro Cemetery" at the center of Sargent Township. Peridon laid white roses on the memorial and expressed her gratitude for this meeting of the generations. "I was visiting my son in Chicago and came here as a favor to my daughter, Angie, who is really into this research, but I find myself deeply moved," noted Peridon.

Like many other families, Peridon's search for her ancestors began with a family tradition which said they were part Cherokee and Blackfoot. Back in the 1970s she and her sisters decided to see if they could track down their origins. They traveled all over the state of Kansas, looking in telephone directories and courthouses for relatives. "One lady that we called, said she had a family paper," explained Peridon, "that gave all the facts about the family back several generations but it was for my father's side of the family." The Native American connections were proven through her father, and her mother's paternal side.

Her grandmother's maternal side, the Minnis' from Illinois, has been more difficult to track down. Everything the sisters knew came from a couple of newspaper clippings about their great Uncle Alonzo Minnis. One article from a Topeka Kansas paper recognized him in the early 1960s as being 102 years old. In it he remembered being in a wagon train as the family moved from Illinois to Kansas when he was 12 years old. "My Daddy fetched a colony out from(Douglas County) Illinois, he recalled. There were about eight or ten wagons. And I walked almost all the way, killing game for the wagon train." Another article celebrated Alonzo and his brother, Edward, as some of the first Western cowboys in Kansas. They picked up cows at Dodge City, Kansas and drove them to Hutchinson, which was the closest stockyards. The article pointed out that Ed Minnis trained horses for Vanderbilt andoperated the first race track at Kinsley, Kansas. Ed was also the only black member of the prestigious Bird Dog Club because of his expertise in raising setters. The boys' parents were Edward (Ned) and Duphena Emily Bass Minnis. Emily descended from a family well-known in the Nansemond tribe of Virginia.

Angie Peridon Sandro remembers her mother and her Aunt Charlotte traveling from Pratt to St. John digging through library archives researching the families migration from Illinois to Kansas, and how both frustrating and elated they were when they found a clue as to the origins of our family. She recalls, "As I watched my mother and grandmother and the older generation start forgetting or passing away without ever sharing their memories it became ever more important to me to carry over the knowledge that my mother had found and build upon it for my children." A couple of years ago I did a search over the Internet for "Edward Minnis" and found an article written Sunday, January 16, 1967 by Frettia Lewis "Negro Cemetery's History In Douglas County Comes to Light" that had my ancestor listed and a location to start my search. Next I bought a membership with Ancestry.com and began searching. It was hard but so very exciting. I contacted my family and begged them for stories and pictures to add to my tree. Sandro went as far as she could then hit a wall. "It was so frustrating to have all these questions but no way to answer them. Then one day I received an email from Melinda Buchanan asking about my family and I was reinvigorated," she enthused, "Finally, there was someone out there who shared my passion for this story who had more information than I did."

Buchanan started her search in 1990 after a dear friend and cousin, Bill Overturf took her out to the cemetery and talked about his heavy heart. "He was worried that these people had lived and farmed here, were buried here, and we didn't know why they left or where they went," she recalled. From that point on, she was determined to try and ease his mind with some information about these families, a task that has proven to be a real challenge and labor of love. The research took longer than she initially thought and Bill has passed away, but his niece, Marylee McGee, was there to witness Peridon's visit. Little did she expect these families to intersect in any way with her ancestors, but it turned out that one member of the community, Isom Bryant, came to the area with her great great grandfather, David Yarnall.

It's been hard to find out anything about Peridon's great great grandfather, Ned Minnis, and his ancestors. After many years of research, Buchanan agreed that she still hasn't discovered definitively how Ned and his sister, Lucy, ended up in Douglas County. "But I am more and more convinced that these early settlers of Brushy Fork were tri-racial: white, African-American, and Native American," Buchanan confirms. Their marriage patterns paralleled those of mixed racial groups in the Appalachians. Peridon notes that family tradition maintains that their ancestors were never slaves and remembers Ned as a red-headed man whose father was Irish. His descendants have skin in varying shades from light beige to dark brown. Some branches of the family are listed as white in the early 1900 census'. Ned had ten children and outlived two wives. Eight of his children survived into old age and had families of their own with six to fifteen children each. "There were 3-500 people attending Minnis family reunions when I was a little girl," Peridon noted.

One of those relations at the early Minnis reunions may have been a Bowen. Sandro reconnected with a previously unknown fourth cousin, Tim Bowen, after they found the others information on Ancestry.com. Ned's daughter Jerusha, a sister to Peridon's great grandmother Permelia, wed Thompson Bowen in the early 1870s in Douglas County. Tim was told by his dad, Eugene Bowen Jr., that Thompson Bowen and the Minnis' as well as another family left Illinois to go to Kansas. Bowen, who is currently serving in Iraq, notes "Kansas was a free state and John Brown had been from there so it was a popular location for people of color in that time," though the Bowen/Minnis move predates the famous Exodusters who formed their own communities like Nicodemus. The 1862 Homestead Act also provided incentives to move west by making 160 acres available for $1.25 per acre if you filed the proper paperwork, improved the land, and lived on it for at least six months; if you lived on it for five years you got it free. Tim was also told that Illinois was just a stop over to drop off Thompson Bowen's brother while Thompson intended to move on west. However, Buchanan and Sandro have discovered that Thompson stayed long enough to own land here.

Bowen started his research in 2000 after his great grandfather on his dad's side died. He explains, my family started showing me pictures of his past and I took interest. I never knew my Dad's father well and I wanted to know more especially after finding out that Thompson Bowen came to Kansas on a covered wagon with 13 children, one dying by falling off. Thompson also built one of the first churches in Stafford County in the town of St. Johns. Tim has followed the research and Marlyn's trip to Illinois via e-mail, "its great that we are all reconnecting, I just wish I wasn't in Iraq and could experience it first hand." As does everyone else involved in this adventure to the past who look forward to his eventual visit to this "home place."

Lincoln's Motivation to Participate

Historians and the public are curious about Lincoln’s participation on behalf of the enslaver and the contrast between that and his later role as the Great Emancipator. While we will never know his motivations for sure, the interpretations of his actions often reflect the prevailing attitudes toward our country’s heroes and raise questions about historical myth versus truth. In brief, there are four reasons ascribed to his actions:

1) He supported slavery and, therefore, was committed to seeing Matson secure his property. Or with a slight variation may have believed that every man deserves representation in court, no matter what his crime or position;

2) Lincoln may have participated in the trial because it was just another job, not venturing a moral opinion;

3) Lincoln or other participants may have been interested in manipulating the outcome of the trial. One branch on this tangent maintains that Lincoln argued the case poorly with the purposeful intent of losing as a way of supporting freedom for the slaves. The other, newer theory is that the trial was arranged to become a precedent for future slavery related trials; and

4) Lincoln’s own personal and political ambitions may have been his motivation. Perhaps he took the case as a personal favor to his close associate, Linder, or he may have considered it politically expedient to be involved.

No matter his motivation Lincoln’s acceptance and prosecution of this case complicates him as a person and politician more than prior historians have credited him. The tale risks falling into obscurity – buried or trivialized by well-meaning mythologies about the Great Emancipator.

The irregularities and the illustrious cast of characters have led current scholars to believe that the proceedings were arranged by the justices to be beyond reproach and was an attempt to set precedence for future slavery cases. We know of no time when the ruling was referred to in other trials, but then precedent was not used then as it is today. Lincoln would have been a preferred participant in this arrangement as he was one of the leading trial lawyers in Illinois at the time. He may have been approached by Wilson to be an attorney in the trial, and it would of Wilson he might have approached to be released from the Matson side of the event. It may not have mattered to Wilson which side Lincoln was on, just that the best attorneys available were involved, hence his ability to change sides. Lincoln could have agreed to be involved in the trial because it would be politically helpful to have his name linked to a trial with strong public appeal and because it would bring in income.

Click Here to take survey on Lincoln's Motivation