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Know more about William Johnson 

William Johnson was a footman who worked for the Earl of Strathmore, possibly at Gibside. The only record we know of his existence is held at Durham Archives - D/St/C1/10/47. Johnson, who played the French Horn in the British army, moved to Edinburgh where he ran a grocers. He later returned to the northeast of England where he applied for charity in 1810. Nothing else is known about Mr Johnson from this date.[1]

 

To bring me into this goes against what PNS set out to do. Hopefully, it will make sense though.

 

I was one of thousands of teachers who, locked down and facing the questions raised at home and in school in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and toppling of statues in this country and elsewhere, needed to do something. A lesson or an assembly was not enough. Even what PNS has grown to be is not enough. I realised I knew little about where I lived and next to nothing of the Black history of my adopted home region.

 

On 1st July 2000 I emailed Durham Archives asking for help. The reply was helpful. It mentioned work they had done, barriers that researchers face, but introduced me to Johnson.

 

The Earls of Strathmore had owned Gibside, a local National Trust property that we had visited about once a week with our children. So - in the early 1800’s Johnson had been there. As we will see later, Johnson had had such an interesting life that the spark of excitement I felt was real. His story also felt untouched.

 

And that was it. There was no more. No more traces. To this day I have emailed and spoken to historians - local, national, and international - about him and no other traces are there. Real historians, like Sean Creighton, researching Black history way before 2020 could offer no more on him. The National Trust did not reply to emails initially. Local historians could not help. All shared the belief that Johnson should be known more. No more was known.

 

With Black Lives Matter on the nightly news, I started internet searches on the northeast and transatlantic enslavement as this seemed to be the focus of the lessons to be ripped up. This was the thing that I had taught in the past. This was the thing I was aware of in Liverpool, where I grew up. Having done American Studies at University it was something I could have some understanding. So like many, my way into Black history as a white person was a colonial lens, a Liverpool lens, an American lens and one that needed widening. 

 

We started PNS in Summer 2021, a group of northeast teachers with the aim of making a northeast version of a book on Transatlantic enslavement that had been published in Bristol.[2] We reached out to as many historians as we could and found to our delight that Dr Beverly Prevatt Goldstein and her team were continuing their work on Black history in the Northeast.

 

Beverly and her team advised us first to widen the lens to look at all Black history. If we wanted to be part of telling the story, telling one part of the story was not acceptable.

 

As life and the challenges of PNS became apparent most of that initial team fell away. But there remained enough interest from everyone I spoke to keep going. And there, always in the background, always in the conversations was Johnson. ‘See! How can we not know about him? He must have had an interesting life and we know nothing.’

 

A new team formed of amazing minds and hearts and PNS kept going. Then in 2023 the stars seemed to align. We had joined forces with Success4All , who were involved in their own history projects and thought it weird that a white man would come along and ask if they wanted to be involved in PNS, but giving a little benefit of the doubt decided to join in.

 

On one of the regular Gibside visits, now with Indy the dog as well as kids, feeling bold I left my name and number with the reception staff, telling them that I was interested in Gibside’s history. Pearl Saddington, Gibside’s education officer, rang me to say she was interested and we should talk. This turned into the much rehearsed William Johnson line, which turned into a meeting with Busola Afolabi and Pearl which turned into a plan. Children from Success4All would go to Gibside (success4All go there a lot) this time Terry is going to tell them about William Johnson, as well as the yomps across fields, playgrounds etc. They would get a little something of the place’s history through Johnson. (It remains the best PNS meeting I have been in.)

 

My sessions were to be kept short, ‘No offence Terry, but we don’t want to bore them.’ That was fine, as we did not know anything about Johnson. I had been saying this to everyone who would listen for ages. With Pearl on board, a National Trust historian contacted me and we spoke about what we knew, and what did not know. With the help of the National Trust I built a picture in my mind about what it was like to be a footman, and the history of Gibside. We could tell Johnson’s story through the information we had: not about him, but from where it was relevant and trustworthy, we could be honest about the gaps.

 

I had not seen the one document we have that relates to Johnson. Durham Archives were helpful in allowing us digital access to it, including use for PNS. When it came through on 27th July I noted down in my journal what it said. We were closer to Johnson as we ever were.

 

Here is the transcript I made with excited fingers on the 27th July 2023. Errors are all mine.

 

 

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William Johnson a Negro aged 67 was born a slave to a Captain Young in the city of Philadelphia in North America. That at the age of 7 years his freedom was purchased by Captain (now general Campbell [written above - afterwards followed and] and embarked from there to Liverpool and was a servant to him about 9 years. During which time he learned to play upon the French Horn and played upon this instrument in his regiment commanded by the said Colonel Campbell. At the end of that time he went into the service of  the late Earl of Strathmore as footman to his lordship and continued  in his service about 14 years. Afterwards he was a footman to the late Gen. Mc Nairn [?] of Desainaie in North Britain about 8 years afterwards. He kept a small grocery shop and was in the habit of teaching young men to play upon the French Horn That he left Edinburgh about 3 weeks ago and now is an object of charity  and will be obliged to any gentleman and ladies who will bestow a little towards his support.


 

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Has William Johnson a negro was


 

[Written sideways a date possibly Oct 1810]

_______________________________ lived with the late Lord Strathmore[3]

 

 

I had the best time during the school holidays of 2023. Children aged between 8 and 14 learned about Johnson. About his role in the home, about his working day. How he would help in the stables too. He would be part of the security of the place. How his skills as a French Horn player would have been wanted by the earl. We wondered what he thought when he saw the Column to liberty with its cap and rod of freedom, when he had been born enslaved. But we focused on his life, what his footman’s uniform would have felt like, riding on the back of a carriage, working long hours.[4]

 

After these short sessions, we would have lunch and discuss the merits of tomato in a cheese sandwich, what schools we went to, football, how wasps were annoying and a little more about Johnson.

 

Two reenactors kindly came along to a session, which added value to the day. We had the same Johnson conversation in the morning, but now I could add that the children were ok with the unknown, could piece together and draw inference and conclusion from the environment around them. I was told that to be a musician in the British army at this time also carried the job of medic. I passed this onto the children.

 

In the last session, one child called Johnson a hero. I had tried hard not to condescend Johnson to the children, so I asked where that had come from. Medics are heroes. A child who no doubt a few years ago had banged pans for the NHS concluded that needed no more analysis.

 

The children that week worked in their Newcastle hub with Busola and her team and an English teacher and turned Johnson into poetry. Remembering, speaking, writing.

 

At this time I read All That She Carried by Tiya Miles.[5] This amazing work took an old cloth sack given from a mother to a daughter in 1850’s South Carolina at the point her daughter was sold away from her. The sack was later embroidered with a brief history by a descendant. Miles used techniques of historical investigative work to allow the sack to open the lives of the enslaved who had the sack and others. In the book, Miles uses the sack to lead her to a plethora of sources that then lead her back to as near to the owners as she can get. Where the gaps are, Miles uses ‘informed imaginings’ to tell us of the lives of her subjects. Miles uses techniques from Marissa Fuentez’s Dispossessed Lives that takes records about enslaved Barbadian women written by others to build their lives. Both are meticulous in their research and choice of source, honest about the gaps and limitations that remain. Mostly they bridge the gap that exists in the archive that may hold back researchers. Gaps created by racism that did not record the lives of millions of people, did not see the worth in retaining documents about them other than ones that sidelined them to the point of near obscurity by the writer and so many who have studied the documents since and come to the conclusion that the lives of these people were lost. Fuentez states,

 

Through the life of this project I worked within a historical disciplinary structure that required more sources to make the project ‘viable’ and within the logic of historical methodology, which purported that a history of silence could not be written when there was not enough material to fill an article, let alone a book. I resolutely thought about and challenged the process from which these disciplinary rules and desires emanated.[6]

 

It seems to me that the children I worked with in 2023 very naturally followed this path, building a picture of Johnson without the gaps and limitations holding them back.

 

This year my Year 8s have learned about the lives of enslaved people through All That She Carried. The lessons are here. They learnt about the reasons for the gaps in the archive and how Miles overcame them, following the path she had forged, making their own informed imaginings, and gaining an understanding of how Miles made hers. We were working in a very aware meta way. To guide this we used this rather blunt model for describing a historian’s process. However, it helped understanding of the process and that we were researching a way we had not done before in class.

 

There were some quizzical looks, some great conversations, and some insightful writing. Students were given a homework project. One that would allow them to use their own informed imaginings and learn some local history. There is one mention of William Johnson’s name, written while he was alive that exists to the best of our knowledge. His name was written in some short paragraphs by local historians. If you type his name into my email search it comes up a lot. And now, in about two hundred Gateshead student’s planners. 

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[1] The involvement of People of African Heritage in the North East An Introduction. Sean Creighton. History and Social Action Publications. P8.

[2] https://www.bristolmuseums.org.uk/blog/teaching-bristols-history-transatlantic-slavery-textbook/

[3] Durham Record Office. Available at: https://durhamrecordoffice.org.uk/search-options/search-the-catalogue/catalogue-search-results/catalogue-item/?Keyword=negro&Variations=N&ImagesOnly=N&ItemID=169924 (Accessed: March 5, 2023). Ref: D/St/C1/10/47

[4]

[5] All that she carried: The journey of Ashley's sack, a Black family keepsake (no date) Tiya Miles. Available at: https://tiyamiles.com/books/all-that-she-carried/ (Accessed: 01 April 2024).

 

[6] FUENTES, M.J. (2018) Dispossessed lives: Enslaved women, violence, and the archive. UNIV OF PENNSYLVANIA PR. P 146

The model used in class. 
You can use the PNS 'How to be a history explorer one below!

the circle.PNG
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