George Teamoh (c. 1818 – after 1887) was an American author, politician, and community leader who rose to prominence in Virginia during the Reconstruction era. Born into slavery in Norfolk, Virginia, he worked at the Fort Monroe, the Norfolk Naval Yard and other military installations before the American Civil War, then escaped to freedom in New York and moved to Massachusetts circa 1853. After the war he returned to Virginia, working first as a caulker in a shipyard and becoming a leader in Portsmouth's Black community, then going on to serve in the Constitutional Convention of 1868 and Virginia's state senate, and finally writing an autobiography in his final years.Gottlieb, M. S., & The Dictionary of Virginia Biography. George Teamoh (1818–after 1887). (2015, November 30). In Encyclopedia Virginia.
Teamoh's autobiographyTeamoh, George God Made Man Man Made the Slave: The Autobiography of George Teamoh, edited by F.N. Boney, Richard L. Hume and Rafia Zafar (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1990) is remarkable for his clear rebuke of the military's use of slave labor and the federal government's role both in perpetuating slavery and failing to protect newly emancipated blacks.
I have worked in every Department in the Navy Yard and Dry-Dock, as a laborer, and this during very long years of unrequited toil, and the same might be said of the vast numbers, reaching to thousands of slaves who have been worked, lashed and bruised by the United States government ...Teamoh, p. 81.
His narrative also contains important information on Reconstruction era Virginia, as he had first hand knowledge of the Constitutional Convention and the senate, discussing with candour the role played by African American delegates in the state convention, his efforts as a state senator to promote equitable work policies at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, and the factionalism within the Republican party that led to his defeat.
Early life George Teamoh was born enslaved in 1818 in Norfolk, Virginia. His legal owners at birth were Josiah and Jane Thomas, and when he was about ten years of age he was moved with the Thomases to Portsmouth, Virginia.Teamoh, p.63. He fondly recalled Jane Thomas, his owner, saying she "harbored" and "gave comfort to a fugitive for the space of fifteen months" and assisted free Black people; she was known as "good old Miss Jane".Teamoh, p. 69.
His autobiography contains only limited information regarding his parents, though he states his mother "bore the common name "Winnie"... [and] died when [he] was quite small."Teamoh, pp. 67–68. In another passage, he states that he was orphaned prior to adolescence.Teamoh, p. 33. In the 1863 record of his second marriage, Teamoh gave the names of his parents as David James Teamoh and Lavinia Henrietta Evans.Marriage George Teamoh to Elizabeth Smith 6 May 1863, New England Historic Genealogical Society; Boston, Massachusetts; Massachusetts Vital Records, 1911-1915Teamoh, p. 173n8. He had two younger half brothers: Thomas Teamoh, born circa 1835 and John William Teamoh, born circa 1832.Teamoh, p. 187. n78.
In 1832, while working in a brickyard, Teamoh taught himself to read and write by listening to white children. He would sing the alphabet and identify words on handbills and posters.Teamoh, pp. 69–73. In later years, he found a copy of John T. Walker's A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language, which helped him gain an extensive vocabulary.Teamoh, pp. 72–73.Walker, John T. A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language Charles Ewer: Boston, 1828 accessed 25 November 2017 https://archive.org/details/walkerspronounc00unkngoog He was an admirer of William Shakespeare's plays, quoted dramatist Ben Jonson and Lord Byron and enjoyed going to the theater.Teamoh, p.97. He also came to love the writing of the Church of England and learned much of The Book of Common Prayer.Teamoh, p. 73.
Later in life, Teamoh may have read "The Ship's career and other poems", an 1860 volume by mid-Victorian evangelist, abolitionist and poet George Joseph Williamson. This is supported by the fact that a line from Williamson's poem Missionary Enterprise, "God made man, man made the slave", appears also in Teamoh's own poetic effort, which he included in his manuscript.Teamoh, pp. 46 and 100. Both Teamoh and Williamson were former sailors, devout Methodists and temperance advocates, who sought to avoid conflict, build alliances and improve the lot of others.Williamson, George Joseph The Ship's career and other poems Judd & Glass: London,1860, Introduction XX and p. 95
In the late 1830s, Teamoh began to keep a journal to record "what transpired in this City and the Vicinity. In 1839 that whole year, I carried to record every hour of sun-shine, rain, cloud and thunder storm, marriages, births and deaths; distinguished visitors; ministers of the Gospel and where they hailed from; ... In indeed I put every thing that ear could hear an eye could see or hand might reach, under contribution to serve my ends." Unfortunately, these early journals have not survived.Teamoh, p. 74. Teamoh was justly proud of his hard-won literacy and on the front cover of six of eighteenth school exercise books that he penned his autobiographical manuscript, he carefully wrote: "written by himself."Teamoh, p. 45. His literacy quickly marked him out as other blacks, requested he write or read for them, but he quickly found his literacy made many whites uneasy or suspicious.Teamoh, pp. 75–77. Literacy among African Americans was a prized and treasured possession. Thomas Smallwood, a former slave who worked at the Washington Navy Yard in the 1840s, remembered how amazed whites were to learn that he could read: "What little I know of the letter was obtained in the following manner, for I never had a days schooling. The gentleman before mentioned, as my master, and his wife, learned me the English alphabet, and to spell in two syllables. When that became known to his neighbors they were amazed at the fact that a black or coloured person could learn the Alphabet, yea, learn to spell in two syllables. I appeared to be a walking curiosity in the village where I then lived, and when passing about the village I would be called into houses, and the neighbors collected around to hear me say the Alphabet and to spell baker and cider, to their great surprise ..."Smallwood, Thomas. A Narrative of Thomas Smallwood, Colored Man) Giving and Account of His Birth – The Period He was Held in Slavery – His Release - and Removal To Canada, Etc.: Together with An Account of the Underground Railroad. James Stephens: Toronto, 1851. p. 14.
Slaveholder Jane Thomas hired out George Teamoh in the 1830s to the 1840's as laborer, caulker and ship-carpenter at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Fort Monroe and to private businesses in the greater Norfolk area. By the 1830s, Norfolk Navy Yard (then known as Gosport Navy Yard) and other naval shipyards began to experience difficulties securing qualified ship caulkers. In the letter below, Captain Louis Warrington writing to the Board of Navy Commissioners, acknowledged qualified ship caulkers were essential and in short supply at Norfolk and requested to hire caulker apprentices. While not stated in Captain Warrington's message, ship caulking had become a trade predominately associated with African Americans.Encyclopedia of African American History 1619-1895 from the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass, Oxford University: New York, 2006, "The Caulker Trade" Delano Greenridge -Copprce, pp. 245-246. By the 1840s the shipyard had fifteen black caulkers and five white caulkers. "By the time I was of age – 21 – and had learned a branch of mechanics known as ( caulking- ship work) ... when I took a "job" of caulking at the same place on one of the government flats." Caulking was hard and dirty work, consequently often one by enslaved or free blacks. Typically caulkers worked done with a special hammer or wedge, then hot pitch was poured on the oakum and a hot caulking iron applied tar to seal the seam. Some slaveholders (including Jane Thomas), allowed their bondsmen to seek work on their own and to negotiate with potential employers. Frederick Douglass, who as a slave worked as a caulker in a Baltimore Maryland shipyard, described how the system worked:
I was to be allowed all my time; to make all bargains for work; to find my own employment, and to collect my own wages, and, in return for this liberty, I was required, or obliged, to pay ... three dollars at the end of each week, and to board and clothe myself, and buy my own calking tools. A failure in any of these particulars would put an end to my privilege. This was a hard bargain. The wear and tear of clothing, the losing and breaking of tools, and the expense of board, made it necessary for me to earn at least six dollars per week to keep even with the world. All who are acquainted with caulking know how uncertain and irregular that employment is. It can be done to advantage only in dry weather, for it is useless to put wet oakum into a seam. Rain or shine, however work or no work, at the end of each week the money must be forthcoming.Douglass Frederick, Autobiographies, ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Library of America: New York 1994. pp. 342–342.
When Teamoh first came into the shipyard, white shipyard workers were resentful of enslaved labor and fearful that free blacks might inspire the enslaved to revolt. Commodore Lewis Warrington in an 1831 letter to the Board of Navy Commissioners felt it necessary to respond to three petitions of Dry Dock workers and local residents, regarding their fears of enslaved labor. A large group of white stone masons had quit their positions and accused project chief engineer, Loammi Baldwin Jr. of the unfair hiring of enslaved labor in their stead. In their 6 January 1830 petition they wrote:"' On application severally by us for employment we were refused, in consequence of the subordinate officers hiring negroes by the year under the immediate cognizance of the chief Engineer, and placing them at stone cutting for which they are incompetent to the injury of we the undersigned who are men of families – and placed in the peculiar circumstance in which we stand, we view it as a most grievous imposition, detrimental to the laboring interests of the community and subversive to every principal of equality. We respectfully ask your interposition."