The Known World

In 1883, a Canadian, Anderson Frazier, published a 27-page pamphlet on black slaveowners—a pamphlet that became his most famous from his series on Americans, Curiosities and Oddities about Our Southern Neighbors—focusing on Henry Townsend, Caldonia Townsend, Louis Cartwright, and Fern Elston. In 1881 he interviews Fern Elston for research about his pamphlet. She tells him about the past, both hers and Henry’s. 

When Henry was still a slave, he worked not only as William Robbins’s groom but also as an apprentice to a shoemaker. He soon exceeded the shoemaker in his skills, and even after Henry became free, he would return to William’s home to make shoes for William’s guests, thus making money, “which, along with some real estate he would eventually get from Robbins, would be the foundation of what he was and what he had the evening he died” (113). Augustus wishes Henry would not associate with William, but Mildred sees the value of having connections to the wider world. “The bigger Henry could make the world he lived in, the freer he would be. ‘Them free papers he carry with him all over the place don’t carry anough freedom’” (113).