Mary Peake was a teacher, best known for starting a school for the children of former slaves in the summer of 1861, under the shade of a tree that would become known as the Emancipation Oak in present-day Hampton, Virginia. This makeshift outdoor classroom provided the foundation of what would become Hampton University.
In 1823, Mary Smith Kelsey was born free in Norfolk, Virginia. Her father was an Englishman "of rank and culture" and her mother was a free woman of color, described as light-skinned. When Mary was six, her mother sent her to the town of Alexandria (then part of the District of Columbia) to attend school while living with her aunt Mary Paine, in a house owned by abolitionist sympathizer Rollins Fowle. Mary Peake studied there for about ten years, attending a select colored school where she studied dressmaking, reading, writing and arithmetic. In addition to this, Mary acquired a knowledge of dressmaking and various kinds of needlework. Though fond of general reading and study, there was no book Mary loved more than the Bible, and she committed large portions of it to memory.
Growing sectional tensions and fear of slave unrest prompted local lawmakers to close all schools for free blacks in Alexandria in 1839. The US Congress also enacted a law prohibiting free people of color in the District of Columbia from being educated.
Peake was deeply religious, and upon her return to Norfolk at the age of sixteen she joined the First Baptist Church, then under the direction of antislavery pastor Rev. James A. Mitchell. In 1847 at the age of twenty-four, Peake moved to Hampton, Virginia, supporting herself by making clothes and she secretly began teaching from her home, instructing African Americans of all ages. She also founded the Daughters of Zion to provide aid to the poor and the sick. In 1851 she married Thomas Peake, a freed slave who worked in the merchant marine. He was intelligent, pious, and in every respect a congenial companion, with whom she lived happily until her death. They had a daughter named Hattie, whom they nicknamed Daisy. and they lived together until Confederate troops burned the black section of town while retreating from a Union army attack in 1861.
When three slaves fled to Union lines at Fortress Monroe in May 1861, General Benjamin Butler, Union commander at the fort, decided that Virginia's secession from the Union nullified his obligation to return the slaves to their owners under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. He was also aware that these three slaves had been employed building Confederate fortifications, and therefore were being used to wage war against the Union.
Butler declared the three fugitives contraband of war, and decreed that any escaping slaves reaching Union lines would not be returned to bondage. This resulted in a steady stream of enslaved people from neighboring plantations who flocked to Union lines hoping for liberation. Fortress Monroe became a place of refuge.
Butler's decision to classify the slaves who gathered there as contraband of war changed the fate of many African Americans, enabling hundreds to reach freedom behind Union lines. Butler received the approval of Congress with the passage of the First Confiscation Act on August 6, 1861, which announced that any enslaved person used for a military purpose against the United States could be confiscated.
As the number of former slaves grew too large to be housed inside the fort, they began to build housing from the ruins of Hampton, outside the fort. They called their new settlement the Grand Contraband Camp. The contraband slaves of the Virginia Peninsula are credited with establishing the first self-contained African American community, where they quickly created schools, churches, businesses and social organizations.
Many contraband slaves and free blacks volunteered to serve in the Union Army, forming the U.S. Colored Troops (USCT). Some also became scouts, guides, spies, cooks, hospital workers, blacksmiths and mule-drivers, contributing immensely to the Union war effort for the balance of the Civil War. Numerous Union officers became more aware of the plight of the contrabands and made contributions to their continued education.
Many of the displaced African American families from Hampton , forced to seek refuge at nearby Fort Monroe. In September 1861, Peake started a school near the fortress, within the present grounds of Hampton University. Her enrollment grew from six to more than fifty students in a matter of days.
Peake continued as the primary teacher at Fortress Monroe until she became too ill to continue. Her strong will to educate the freedmen and their children was no match for the hold tuberculosis had on her frail body. Shortly after Christmas 1861, she was forced to give up teaching and was confined to her bed. Mary Peake died February 22, 1862 of tuberculosis.
Although her personal role in freedmen's education was cut short, the very ground upon which she taught would later become home to the renowned Hampton Institute, and her own commitment to the education of her people would be emulated by other African Americans. The self-sacrifice and commitment of Mary Peake and others helped dispel the racist assumptions that many white Americans shared about black inferiority.
Emancipation Oak
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