Benjamin Montgomery
In the nineteenth century, philanthropist Robert Owen envisioned a community of families living on about 1,000 acres of land, all working together for a common purpose. They would grow their own fruits and vegetables as well as maintain their homes and learn what was necessary to sustain life. No one would be discriminated against based on race, creed or color. Owen began his project in 1826 in Indiana at New Harmony. Unfortunately, it fell apart after two years, mostly because some of the participants were lazy misfits and irresponsible.
Joseph Emory Davis was aware of the New Harmony failure but felt with a few changes, he could make it work. Davis was a retired lawyer who became a very successful planter. By 1850, Davis created a plantation in Mississippi at Hurricane, just south of Vicksburg near the New Orleans border. The place was called Davis Bend and it couldn’t compare to the other cotton farms in the South as it treated the workers with dignity. They were fed, educated, properly housed and more accurately called servants, even though employer and employees made up a community of equals.
One of the people there was the slave Benjamin Thornton Montgomery, who was born in 1819 and hailed from Virginia. Davis encouraged Ben to be the best and Montgomery appreciated the concern and soon was a leader, mastering writing as well as reading. Years before, Montgomery was sold to a trader from a plantation in Mississippi, with Ben winding up at Joseph’s farm. Not pleased with this life, the slave escaped, but Davis found him and convinced him to return, based on mutual confidence and understanding. Ben took advantage of the books in the Davis library and studied architecture and became a mechanic, which greatly benefited the plantation. He invented a boat propeller and tried to patent it, but was denied because he was black. When Davis applied for the patent, he too was denied it since the office realized who had originated the invention.
Montgomery married Mary Lewis in December 1840 and by 1851, the couple had five children, though Benjamin Osmond, the second son, died before reaching the age of three. Besides being a leather tanner, Ben also ran a dry goods store. He was a jack-of-all-trades who mastered them all. He was Davis’s agent and business manager of nearby Brierfield as well as Hurricane. Isaiah was the youngest son, with brother Thornton and daughters, Virginia and Rebecca. The children were educated through the instruction of their parents. At times, a few white children were also students. This school integration ended when the practice became known in the area. Because of Joseph’s concern for the Montgomerys, they had few ideas of what a slave truly was. Further proof was established because apparently neither Brierfield nor Hurricane witnessed any runaways. Both places displayed no clues that there was discontent among the workers, who had great respect for Davis and his family. Joseph saw the slaves as equals and addressed them not by nicknames, but by their full names.
Joseph despised the peculiar institution but realized that he couldn’t free the African Americans on the plantation because of what might happen to them. The color of one’s skin shouldn’t matter. As the following decades proved, his belief was confirmed. Davis’s brother was Jefferson, who felt completely different about blacks. He accepted the program that Joseph instituted but felt whites were superior to the Negro. He would eventually become the president of the Confederacy. Sadly, in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Davis servants could never be considered truly free. They had many fears, including their fate after Joseph died. They dreaded being sent to another plantation under any circumstance.
Joseph’s plantation suffered a great setback with the outset of the Civil War in 1961. Ben and his family moved to Cincinnati to escape the conflict. Davis moved east to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, with his family and a few of his workers. Confederates looted the farm and burned the residence of Joseph and his family. Only the library, which was separate from the main building, wasn’t destroyed. In February 1865, Thornton was back at Hurricane, reopening the Montgomery store. Before long, Ben, Mary and the others returned home to Mississippi. Ben managed the store and plantation. In July, he originated the idea of leasing and operating a cotton gin. The rates that E. S. Bedford charged for ginning bordered on thievery, much to Ben’s disapproval. Samuel Thomas, Assistant commissioner of the Freedman’s Bureau denied Ben’s request. He came up with excuses and lies so that Bedford could keep his position. There may have been some payola involved in Thomas’s decision, probably racism, too. Thomas also thought that Montgomery was a cunning opportunist who would benefit but not share the profits with others.
He didn’t realize that Ben, who had experience and was a successful businessman, was not one to give up easily. He had the best ally when Davis returned to Hurricane in the fall of 1865 and joined in the gin struggle. It was soon discovered that much of what Thomas said about the gin was an exaggeration, including the cost of its maintenance over the past few months. Joseph wrote to President Andrew Johnson and the Vicksburg Journal about the matter. One reply from Thomas offered that Ben didn’t have the credentials to succeed in the ginning process. The fighting went back and forth with Davis defending Ben. More surprising than the way Thomas treated Montgomery was how Ben responded. Any other black doing the same would have wound up as a strange fruit growing on a Southern tree, which Billie Holiday would sing about more than a half-century later. In April 1866, Commissioner O. O. Howard relieved Thomas of his duties.
That same year, Joseph sold the farm and its property to Montgomery for $300,000. It was a ten-year loan with payments of interest due every year, even if no amount was credited toward the payment of the principal. At the time, this transaction was illegal because blacks were prohibited from property ownership, but Davis made it appear to be nothing more than a rental, which in a way it was. Through the years, Davis Bend had been quite successful. With Thomas banished, Captain A. W. Preston reported that the plantation at Davis Bend had better crops and more suitable housing. The workers were energetic, inspired, productive and contented. Nonetheless, in the first year of the new lease, challenges abounded. The land being so near the Mississippi River meant levee protection was imperative. Ben’s embankments may have been fine, but levees of the neighbors needed much work. Montgomery even assisted in flood protection efforts of the others, but the mighty river didn’t cooperate. Water on the farms harmed all the crops and then came the armyworms, only making matters worse, destroying most of the crop. Fortunately, Davis was lenient regarding payments on the loan.
The first years were tough but eventually, matters improved and the interest was paid. Schools were self-supporting and they educated the children in the area even though a session was only four months. This was because of the need for workers in the cotton season. The enterprise succeeded and Montgomery bought more land and expanded. He did so not because he was a heartless capitalist – he did have to pay back the loan, though – but because he wanted to give more opportunities to those in need. All of Ben’s family contributed to the effort, even Mary’s brother, William Lewis, and Benjamin Green, his nephew. Virginia and Rebecca had duties in the store and other relatives were on duty during the busy holiday season.
Both Virginia and Rebecca made their own clothes and played the piano. They had gardens, picked cotton, did some fishing together and returned with a few fish. In 1872, they entered Oberlin College in Ohio, which was only eight percent black. They were there for two years. Like their brothers, the daughters were ambitious, industrious and contributed immensely to the farm. Indeed Rebecca and Virginia were women ahead of their time.
Just as the Davis enterprise was disrupted by the Civil War,
hard times beseeched Montgomery and his workers. The necessary expansion and huge loan were problems, but so was the ever-present political and social atmosphere. There were small disputes at Davis Bend, but most were settled amiably. Many payments on the debt were forgiven, but nowhere near enough. Ben had amassed an overwhelming amount of credit and it contributed as well. At the end of 1874, a wall collapsed on him. He suffered a broken rib as well as an injury to his hip and spinal chord. A bit over a year later, the loan was due, all of it, as not a single dollar had been paid on the principal. Ben’s health improved somewhat but all these troubles resulted in his death on May 12, 1877. He was only 57. Montgomery never lived to see his dream fulfilled.
In less than a decade, very few traces of the Montgomery project were left. Thornton tried a venture in Fargo in the Dakotas. Having some success, in 1884 the Fargo Daily Argo reported that Thornton was a most worthy man. He was asked to be a representative of the area in New Orleans at the World’s Exposition. A few years later, a black newspaper in Minneapolis-St. Paul described him as the largest colored farmer in the Northwest. Despite the adulation, he wasn’t crazy about the brutal winters there. Eventually he returned to Mississippi. Isaiah had another idea. The mighty Mississippi may have had commercial advantages, but floods would always be a threat. Using railroads was a better idea. Mound Bayou was along the Louisville, New Orleans and Texas Railroad. Isaiah with his cousin, Ben Green, used all that his father taught him along with his own ideas to make this community succeed. It’s possible that those who came to the new community called Montgomery the black Moses who had led them through the wilderness to this place. His inspirational speech may have contributed to this feeling.
Now, the workers had an advantage that would also benefit the plantation. They began as owners of about 40 acres of land. Soon all the plots would cover 700 acres. Besides clearing the land for farming, other needs created more work as well as great opportunity. A sawmill was established and some of the workers created railroad ties. This then became a business with a new cash flow. Other similar jobs boosted the community. The nearby forest provided deer and other game for black hunters. The inhabitants survived the initial three years earning almost $9,000 from the sale of timber besides producing corn and cotton. A post office was set up in the Montgomery home. Another room of the abode was created as a school, in which Virginia taught.
By 1907, two decades after Mound Bayou began, the community consisted of 4,000 blacks in 800 families on 30,000 acres. Each year 3,000 bales of cotton were produced resulting in an annual income of $600,000 for all the businesses. The sawmill and gin were still functioning. Thornton was a part of Mound Bayou and died in 1909. Isaiah and his wife, Martha Robb, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on May 11, 1921. Known to people in town as Miss Mat, she died in late summer of 1923. Montgomery only survived a few months after that, dying in March 1924, a few days before he was to turn 77. He left without a supervisor for Mound Bayou as none of the male children survived.
All three efforts – by Joseph, Ben and Thornton – may not have been perfect, but they illustrated what a community could accomplish. Problems were solved, people worked together and shared in the profits. Whites and blacks coexisted despite the peculiar institution and all its injustice. Education was provided along with work ethics and opportunities. This was a great instance of black achievement, inspiring others to rise up and succeed. Ben, Thornton and Isaiah had really accomplished their goal of community by the time they died. By 1940, Mound Bayou was a reflection of what Davis Bend had turned into in the late nineteenth century. You can read about them in The Pursuit Of A Dream, the 1981 book by Janet Sharp Hermann.