Anna Y. Bickenbach

Feb 23^rd 2006

EURO 344

 

The narrative A Black Woman’s Odyssey through Russia and Jamaica is based on the adventures of Nancy Prince; an African-American woman before the civil war.  Her accounts are chronicles leading the reader through her family and childhood struggles, trips to foreign Russia, Jamaica, and the U.S. within an 18-year time span.  The autobiography allows us to explore how the locations Nancy Prince visited shaped her identity, character, and views on life.  The struggles she endured in America make her trip to Russia a unique and interesting one.  Her experience in Russia depicts the difference between the American and Russian approach of stratifying society during the 19^th century.  Prince’s encounter with a homogeneous society, in which race, religion and class are intermingled, spurs her self-discovery process and thus; the Russian practice of society is what ultimately creates Prince’s desire to create social change when returning back to America.

Nancy Prince was born in Newburyport on September 15^th 1799.  Her father Thomas Gardner, a sailor, died three months after her birth, and her mother the daughter of slave sailor in the British Navy.  Her stepfather was the first to spark the breeding ground of freedom in her spirit.  She writes of him speaking often of his brave escape from the slave ship, “I have heard my father describe the beautiful moonlight night when they two launched their bodies into the deep, for liberty.” (2)  Sadly and ironically, her stepfather passed away while, “He was sick with dropsy a long while, and died oppressed, in the English dominions.” (3)  The loss of her step-father altered her mother forever stating “Her grief, poverty, and responsibilities, were too much for her; she never again was the mother that she had been before.” (3)  Besides being a young black girl in the pre-civil war era, she was faced with taking care of her family, which was her first hurdle to overcome.

            In 1814, after all resources had been exhausted, Prince, her sister Silvia, and younger brother George, departed Newburyport to find work outside.  During this time, it was religion that gives her comfort and lead to an eventual baptism in 1819 by Reverend Thomas Paul.  In 1822 Prince secured the future of her other siblings, by placing them in homes and with caretakers. 

Soon after she had taken care of her family she meets her future husband Nero Prince and comes to a decision which would change her life forever.  Unfortunately, she makes only a few comment of him serving the Princess of Purtossof, a noble lady of the Russian court, his arrival in Salem on September 1^st, 1823 and getting married to him February 15^th, 1824. The short time she knew Nero Prince would reflect the idea that she did not  know him very long before getting married.  One wonders if true love was involved, but under the circumstances in her life of hardship and struggle it could have been the only way for her to escape the burdens of a black woman in American society.  Hastily she declares in the book “I left my place after three months, and went to learn a trade; and after seven years of anxiety and toil, I made up my mind to leave my country.” (13)

Prince’s escape to Russia on April 14^th, 1824, would signify a turning point in her life.  It reveals a period of reflection in her life, confronting the question of her identity and the perception of race in a foreign society.  She is forced to compare her known life to that of another society.  Having been a struggling black servant girl, her marriage allows an immediate shift in status to that of a European traveler.  Although not much was said of Nero Prince in Nancy Prince’s autobiography, a recent study by Charles Wesley describes Prince as a skilled black cook who sailed to Russia and remained there acquiring a position as a butler for, as Nancy Prince states it, a noble family.  Nero Prince had, also, been one of the founders of the African lodge of the Masons in 1791 and was elected the second grand master in 1808.[1]

Arriving by ship in Denmark on May 24^th Nancy Prince describes visiting the King’s palace and several other beautiful landmarks.  She observes that the Danes and English, who were present during entertainments, were also religious.  She notes that their mannerism and customs were very similar while being very attentive to strangers. 

According to Allison Blakely’s Russia and the Negro there was not a significant practice of Negro slavery in Russia, which would indicate the positive reaction and treatment Nancy Prince received on her arrival.  Blakely’s conclusion notes that “The collective experience of Negroes in tsarist Russia suggests this was for them a land of opportunity where they could not only survive, but could attain high social positions.  Slaves, servants, other immigrants, and visitors all were received rather well.” (163)  her quote supports why Nero Prince was able to attain such a high position as a black American in Russia. [2]   

As a girl who had been nothing less than a black American maid, Nancy Prince continues her encounter by being greeted by Emperor Alexander and Empress Elizabeth of Russia on their arrival to St. Petersburg.  “As I entered, the Emperor stepped forward with great politeness and condescension, and welcomed me, and asked several questions; he then accompanied us to the Empress Elizabeth; she stood in her dignity, and received me in the same manner the Emperor had.  They presented me with a watch, &c.” (17)  There is no doubt that this encounter must have created turmoil of feelings and questions; how could a country she had once called home, treat people with such indignity because of their race? Here in Russia, she was respected as a person of higher class, not because of the color of her skin, rather because of the social rank her husband received through hard work and merit.  The attitude toward Negro slavery in Russia is further emphasized by the writing of Alexander Pushkin, grandson to General Abraham Hannibal, a favorite Negro servant of Peter the Great, by condemning Negro slavery in a letter to a friend in 1824.[3]  The slave trade served mostly the colonies of America.  Although European states were among the powers of slave trade, it is clear that none used slaves on a large scale at home.  Russia and other European nations did not have a great demand for outside supply of labor, where as the U.S. depended on slavery work in the hot cotton fields and beyond.  The Russian attitude in culture toward Negro’s during the early 19^th century is what allowed Nancy Prince to roam freely in her interest and observations.

During the nine years of her stay, Prince took great interest in observing many cultural activities in dance, religion, death rituals, ceremonies, and fairs.  More importantly her stay in Russia had marked Prince as a figure who had achieved a new status.  She went into the business as an infant clothing manufacturer and served the Empress who became a patron and customer.  To do this successfully she learned some simple Greek, French and English, within a 6 month period, to appeal and be able to speak to the nobility.

Also, during her stay it worthy to note that two tragically historic events had also taken place.  First, was the Great Flood of St. Petersburg in 1824 nearly costing her life.  The flood is considered one of the greatest devastating floods of St. Petersburg’s history.  The second was the passing of the Emperor Alexander and the following succession to the throne.  Although Prince might have not understood the issue and looming complexities of power transfer, her depiction of uncertainty was done quite well.  From what is known better today, it was not widely known that the brother of Constantine had renounced his own claim to the throne and therefore the youngest sibling Nicholas had taken charge.  Since there was a doubt of truth after the death of Alexander and lack of public relations to the people, a militant group saw the opportunity to seize power; this would be known as the Decembrist Revolt.  The revolt did not hold long and Nicholas finally came to power subjecting most of his people and serfs to repressive power.  It was after this conflict that Nancy Prince’s health began deteriorating and having had a powerful and emancipating experience in Russia she was ready to return home with a different attitude and agenda.  This time she would use her successful transformation to re-engage with her homeland on different terms.  She would leave Russia, determined to make a social change and use her newly encountered experience and knowledge to further her paths of soul-searching.  She left for the United States in 1833. 

On her arrival back to Boston Nancy had discovered that her mother and sister had died in 1827.  Even a greater shock was the death of her husband Nero Prince who planned on following her back after she had settled in the United States.  Not knowing where her brother George was, she had lost all connection to family and also commemorated in the loss of her Pastor T. Paul. With no family members or immediate family to comfort her from her journey and the loss of her own husband, Nancy Prince developed her own thoughts and sentiments to help those in need.  After nursing herself back to health, she declares “I am indebted to God for his great goodness in guiding my youthful steps; my mind was directed to my fellow brethren whose circumstances were similar to my own.  I found many a poor little orphan destitute and afflicted, and on accounts of color shut out from all asylums for poor children.” (46)  Having had formal experience in assisting with an asylum in St. Petersburg, Nancy dedicated three months of her time to create a committee and receiving funds from the community. 

Through out her life Prince always sought support from religion; this instance would not be different.  She met Reverent J. W. Holman, who was a Free Will Baptist, whom she befriended and stayed with.  It was during the stay with him that she took a keen interest in an Anti-Slavery Society established for the amelioration of the nominally free colored people of the West Indies.  This would ignite her trip to help those in need in Jamaica.

With her arrival in Jamaica she writes of her first inclination of action she was striving to achieve. “I hoped that I might aid, in some small degree, to raise up and encourage the emancipated inhabitants, and teach the young children to read and work to fear God, and put their trust in the Savior.” (60)  While her trip to Jamaica was supposed to engage in another self-transforming journey, this would rather be a disappointing one.  Prince probably expected to encounter a form of interracial bridge she had experience in Russia merely because slaves had been freed and were now under the care of American and European missionaries.  Rather, in contrast to her Russian experience, Prince’s narrative doesn’t portray the customs and manners of Jamaica and its foreign aliens, but rather focuses on her attacks on the corrupt system of the British Baptist Missionaries.  She observes the selling of bibles at an inflated price, issuing membership to churches by collecting the cash of ex-slaves and the establishment of churches that resembled more “a play house rather than a place of worship” (51).  Realizing she had been placed in a vulnerable position of having her services taken advantage of by a corrupt system, Nancy Prince becomes and describes herself as a free-agent.  On July 20^th 1841 Nancy returned to the United States to raise funds to finance her goal of creating a Jamaican school.  Obtaining enough donations she travels back to Jamaica the following April, but unfortunately her plans were put to rest by civil unrest on the island. 

            Nancy Prince’s self-published book of her journey to Russia and Jamaica ends in 1849.  Although her struggles to change the life of unfortunate ones in Jamaica fails because of corruption and civil unrest, it can be said that her efforts and keen urge to create change would have not been as intense and deep if it had not been for her travels abroad to Russia.  In a letter to the Liberator in 1843 she writes of her experience on a boat going from New York to Providence.  Prince describes her maltreatment on board the steamboat not only by the white captain, but also by two black female chambermaids.  If it hadn’t been for her liberating experience in St. Petersburg she would not have evaluated the situation as critically but brushed it off as another experience in the world of an oppressed black woman in America.[4]