Since our friend Susie knows how much I like history, she’s always on the lookout for new historical places to take us around Raleigh. She hit a homerun this trip by taking us to the Mordecai House. This family was connected through marriage in the 1800s to the Lane family that we learned about the last time we visited Susie. If you’re interested in that post and the importance of the Lane family, scroll down the right side of your screen to find the list of categories to the North Carolina posts that are part of the southeastern states.
When we first went to the visitors center to sign up for a tour, we found out that all the tours were all booked for the day! Since the tours have a limit of 5 people, Saturdays are always full since this house is one of the stops for a tour bus company. Instead we did our own walkaround the grounds that I’ll show you in a future post, but for now we’ll walk through the displays in the visitors center that took us from the last quarter of the 1700s to the 20th century.
Five generations of Lane and Mordecai descendants lived in this home between 1785 and 1964. In addition to their families, over 200 African American slaves lived on the property between the American Revolution in the 1770s and the Civil War in the 1860s.
During the time that the Mordecai family lived here from 1817 until 1964, powerful social and political changes were happening, including Raleigh becoming the capital of North Carolina in 1792 and the end of slavery in 1865. This historic park is a testament to all who once lived here. The exhibit in the visitors center shows us their lives in context with their place and time. We’re free to make our own conclusions based on today’s perspectives.
The Raleigh Historical Society gave this overview of the house on its website. “Joel Lane built the original dwelling, a frame house in the hall and parlor plan, for his son Henry. The house is named for Moses Mordecai, who married into the Lane family and provided in his will for the 1826 Greek Revival addition, designed by William Nichols. The center of a thriving plantation, Mordecai House remained in the Lane-Mordecai family until 1967 when the city of Raleigh purchased the property to establish an historic park. The house and dependencies provide a glimpse into the life of a single family spanning five generations.”
The Early Republic Era starts us with the beginnings of Raleigh in 1785 through 1820 when the Mordecai family came on the scene and married into the Lane family.
Around 1785, Joel Lane’s oldest son—Henry—inherited a sizeable portion of his father’s land. He and his new wife, Mary, were the first to live in the home that later became known as Mordecai House. The original structure probably consisted of 4 rooms, a comfortable home in its time. The land surrounding it was rural.
Henry (1764-1797) managed his property well so that it became an active farm. The couple had 4 daughters and no sons, so inheritance of the property would go to the eldest daughter, Margaret “Peggy” Lane, who married Moses Mordecai. By 1797 when Henry died, the Lanes owned 19 slaves who were considered to be property of the Lane estate. Next is the Antebellum Era.
The Antebellum Era takes us through the time when the Lane and Mordecai families both prospered.
Moses Mordecai (1785-1824) came from Warrenton, North Carolina, southeast of Raleigh, where his father, Jacob, operated the Mordecai Female Academy.
Jacob Mordecai’s school for young women
This tidbit of information about the school for young women that Moses’s father ran made me curious, so I looked up information about it from Wikipedia. Jacob’s standards for education and living gives us insight into his character and how he would have raised his son, Moses, that we’re looking at in this post.
Jacob Mordecai (1762-1838), was a pioneer in education in America’s early years by establishing the Warrenton NC Female Seminary, also known as Mordecai’s Female Academy.
Jacob was the son of Moses and Esther Mordecai, observant Jews who in 1760 emigrated from Germany to Philadelphia. While attending private schools, Jacob received a classical education. At age 13, he served as a rifleman when the Continental Congress was housed in Philadelphia. Later he helped supply the Continental Army as a clerk to David Franks, the Jewish quartermaster to General Washington.
After the war, Jacob Mordecai moved to New York City, and married Judith Myers. In 1792, the couple moved to Warrenton, North Carolina, a small town on the roads linking Richmond, Charleston, and Savannah. Sounds like a prime location.
In this small town and surrounding areas, the Mordecais were the only Jewish family; they remained observant Jews, keeping a strictly kosher home where Shabbat was observed. Judith passed away at the time of the birth of her 7th child, and Jacob eventually married Rebecca Myers, his wife’s younger half-sister.
Jacob became a successful tobacco merchant while at the same time obtaining an excellent knowledge of the Hebrew language and literature. He studiously devoted himself to literary pursuits, especially biblical research, and wrote many scholarly articles. Eventually a downturn in business left him with the dilemma of how to support his large family. In the summer of 1808, some of the locals met with Jacob and offered to help support the establishment of an “academy” for girls if he would become its headmaster. The influential town leaders regarded him highly for his learning and wisdom and were certain that he had the skills and temperament to be an effective teacher.
In 1809, the school opened with 30 students and quickly became a family project. In the beginning, Jacob and Rebecca taught all the classes. Soon their daughter Rachael joined them in the classroom; in later years two of their sons also became teachers. The younger Mordecai children helped with the cooking and care of the dormitories. The only instructor in the academy who was not a member of the family was the music teacher.
The school’s curriculum included academics, proper manners, and demeanor. Students were subject to considerable personal discipline and a highly structured day. High standards of behavior and performance were expected for both students and faculty. The goal was to properly mold both the character and intellectual development of the students.
The girls were required to wash their own utensils and maintain a high level of personal hygiene. Since the overwhelming majority of female students attending the academy came from well-to-do homes in which they were pampered, most of them probably had trouble adjusting to the school’s regimen.
Mordecai ensured that students attended the church of their choice and avoided all doctrinal and sectarian discussions in school activities. All of his students had the opportunity to discuss philosophical and ethical issues.
Mordecai stressed that piety in any religious tradition was an important part of character development. The Mordecais included the observance of Jewish holidays in the academy’s educational program. Since all of the Mordecai children, male and female, attended and/or worked in the school, as well as several cousins, a critical mass of Jewish students were available to observe holidays.
Mordecai encouraged the Christian students at the academy to observe their own religious holidays. To him it didn’t matter what religious practices his students observed as long as they were respectful of the religious preferences of others. The teachers led discussions of philosophical texts that raised moral and ethical issues that all students could deal with regardless of their religious differences.
Within a few years, the academy’s excellent reputation had spread so quickly that by 1814 Jacob Mordecai was forced to cap enrollment at 110 students.
In 1819, at age 56, ten years after opening his Female Academy, Jacob Mordecai chose to sell the highly successful enterprise and move his family to Richmond, Virginia. He purchased a farm and lived as an active member of Richmond’s Jewish community, serving as president of a local Jewish Congregation.
back to Moses Mordecai
Moses (1785-1824) was a successful young attorney who chose to set up his practice in Raleigh because it was an up and coming city. When Moses married Margaret “Peggy” Lane, Henry Lane’s oldest daughter, in 1817, he also acquired the Lane property.
After Peggy died in 1821, Moses married her youngest sister, Ann Willis “Nancy” Lane. Moses and Nancy had 1 daughter, Margaret. Moses died of illness, possibly malaria, in 1824 at the age of 39.
The Mordecai plantation reached its height between 1830 and 1860. When Moses died, his oldest son, Henry, was only 5, so Moses’s younger brother, George Washington Mordecai, purchased more land and slaves on behalf of the Moses Mordecai estate. In 1840, Moses Mordecai’s son, Henry, inherited the plantation when he turned 21.
By the time of the Civil War, the plantation included such structures as a mill, blacksmith shop, cotton gin, and cotton press. Slaves lived in a line of cabins that probably stood about 200 yards northwest of the Mordecai House.
From Ellen Mordecai’s book Gleanings from Long Ago: “The Johnston Plantation had a “nice log hose with two rooms and comfortably built . . . The house sat under a magnificent whiteoak [sic] tree. . . . There was a garden down there behind the house, in which there were always fine tomatoes in season and plenty of lavender. . . . The wagon used to go up every Saturday night and always had something good in it; pears, cherries, or apples; honey always, and beautiful butter.” (Ellen (1820-1926) was the daughter of Moses and his 1st wife Peggy. Ellen never married.)
Before we go on to the Civil War Era, let’s look at how Raleigh and North Carolina were dealing with slavery during this time.
slavery
A look back at slavery in America’s history is painful but necessary. Slavery has been part of the human condition for centuries whenever one nation fought another, but it reflects badly on those who continued its practice. One of the results of the Civil War that I’ve just learned about is that after the Civil War was over, Federal troops patrolled the waters around Africa so that no more Africans could be “exported” to anywhere in the world. We’re so grateful to the memory of those who fought against slavery and to those who helped runaway slaves using the Underground Railroad. Today slavery still exists in the world in nations where human life isn’t valued. The battle against it isn’t over yet in countries around the world.
But for now, let’s look at slavery in the mid-1800s.
By the end of the antebellum era, the Mordecai family was one of the largest slaveholding families in the state. Moses came into possession of 20 slaves and 950 acres in Raleigh when he married into the Lane family. (I wonder what his father thought of this since the Jewish people had been in slavery numerous times.) When Moses died in 1824, he owned around 30 slaves and land in several North Carolina counties.
Running away was a common form of slave resistance. Some escaped to freedom, but most remained local and only stayed away temporarily. The notice indicates that Moses assumed that Jim was trying to visit his wife who was on another plantation in Franklin County. Notices like this one were common in the local newspapers.
Domestic workers like Mittie Ann would have been the information link between the Mordecais and the slave community. This information gathered while on duty would initiate a “grapevine” that kept the slave community current on news and gossip.
Plantation owners were dependent on the work done by the slaves as shown in the following chart published in The Standard in 1859. Having to pay them for their work would have cut into the owners’ profits, but since the planters were already paying for the workers’ homes, food, and clothing, I wonder what the difference in profit would have been.
Southern women
Marriage in the 1800s was often a father’s decision. Fathers expected their daughters to marry men who could provide them with a comfortable home (perhaps so the fathers would no longer have to support their daughters). Many also expected their daughters to marry into families that shared similar religious and cultural backgrounds. Occasionally these expectations proved to be burdensome for Southern women, including some of the Mordecai daughters.
While his intention was noble because he wanted to observe Jewish law, this expectation put pressure on some of his daughters for a variety of reasons, one being that few Jewish men lived in their community. While his daughters wanted to honor their father and marry within the faith, they also wanted to marry men they chose.
Moses’s brother, George Washington Mordecai, talked about this pressure on women to his brother Samuel in a letter he wrote in 1834.
One happy marriage, though, was the 1842 union between Margaret Mordecai (Moses’s daughter with his 2nd wife “Nancy” Lane) and John Devereux, Jr. This marriage also combined family wealth, increased land holdings, and strengthened kin networks. Diaries and letters of the time suggest that women were occasionally trapped in unhappy marriages or they chose to never marry.
religious life through the years
Camp meetings were popular in the rural South. Revivals were held in Wake County and throughout the rest of North Carolina and the new nation.
Second Great Awakening
So what was this awakening, and why is it important? Back to Wikipedia.
This Protestant revival occurred during the early 1800s in the United States through revivals and emotional preaching, sparking a number of reform movements. Revivals were a key part of the movement and attracted hundreds of converts to new Protestant denominations. The Second Great Awakening also led to a period of social reform and an emphasis on salvation by institutions. The outpouring of religious fervor and revival began in Kentucky and Tennessee in the 1790s and early 1800s among the Presbyterians, Methodists and Baptists. The awakening brought comfort in the face of uncertainty as a result of the socio-political changes in America.
This movement led to the founding of several well known colleges, seminaries, and mission societies and significantly changed the religious climate in the American colonies. Ordinary people were encouraged to make a personal connection with God instead of relying on a minister. Newer denominations, such as Methodists and Baptists, grew quickly. While the movement unified the colonies and boosted church growth, some experts say it also caused division between those who supported it and those who rejected it.
Historians named the Second Great Awakening in the context of the First Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1750s and of the Third Great Awakening of the late 1850s to early 1900s. The Second and Third Awakenings were part of a much larger religious movement that was sweeping across England, Scotland, and Germany.
New religious movements emerged during the Second Great Awakening, such as Adventism (which resulted in Seventh Day Adventists), Dispensationalism, and the Latter Day Saint movement.
The Second Great Awakening occurred in several waves and in different denominations; however, the revivals were very similar. As the most effective form of evangelizing during this period, revival meetings cut across geographical boundaries. The movement quickly spread throughout Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, and southern Ohio, as well as other regions of the United States and Canada.
Each denomination had assets that allowed the denomination to thrive on the frontier. For example, the Methodists had an efficient organization that depended on itinerant ministers, known as “circuit riders,” who sought out people in remote frontier locations. The circuit riders came from among the common people, which helped them establish rapport with the frontier families they hoped to convert.
The converts during the Second Great Awakening were predominantly female. A 1932 source estimated at least 3 female converts to every 2 male converts between 1798 and 1826. Young people (those under 25) also converted in greater numbers, and were the first to convert.
It isn’t clear why women converted in larger numbers than men. Church membership and religious activity, however, gave women peer support and a place for meaningful activity outside the home, providing many women with a mew communal identity and shared experiences. The greatest change in women’s roles stemmed from participation in newly formalized missionary and reform societies. Women’s prayer groups were an early and socially acceptable form of women’s organization. In the 1830s, female moral reform societies rapidly spread across the North, making it the first predominantly female social movement. Through women’s positions in these organizations, women gained influence outside of the private sphere of their homes.
Baptists and Methodists in the South preached to slaveholders and slaves alike. Conversions and congregations started with the First Great Awakening, resulting in Baptist and Methodist preachers being authorized to be among slaves and free African Americans more than a decade before 1800.
Early Baptist congregations were formed by slaves and free African Americans in South Carolina and Virginia. Especially in the Baptist Church, African Americans were welcomed as members and as preachers. By the early 1800s, independent African-American congregations numbered in the several hundreds in cities of the South, such as Charleston, South Carolina, and Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia. With the growth in congregations and churches, Baptist associations formed in Virginia, Kentucky, and other states.
The revival also inspired slaves to demand freedom. In 1800, out of African-American revival meetings in Virginia, a plan for slave rebellion was devised by Gabriel Prosser (a literate enslaved blacksmith); however, the rebellion was discovered and crushed before it started. Despite white attempts to control independent African-American congregations, especially after the famous Nat Turner uprising of 1831, a number of African-American congregations managed to maintain their separation as independent congregations in Baptist associations. Some state legislatures passed laws requiring them always to have a white man present at their worship meetings.
My note: Interesting that in the years before the Civil War, God was orchestrating a spiritual and moral awakening in the United States. God also was creating an environment where African slaves were treated with dignity as human beings.
back to religious life in Raleigh
By the mid-1800s, Henry Mordecai and his family were leading members of Christ Episcopal Church in downtown Raleigh, a church still active today.
Jacob’s daughter Ellen struggled with her faith for years. After her father died in 1838, she converted to Christianity. In the 1840s, she wrote about her religious journey in the manuscript History of a Heart. (Note: The following sign states that Ellen’s father, Moses, died in 1838, but on other signs we’ve told that he died in 1824.)
Solomon Mordecai, the 5th child of Jacob and Judith Mordecai (Jacob’s 1st wife), ignored religious matters for most of his life. He moved to Mobile, Alabama in the 1820s and married a woman who was Methodist.
The book shown here, I am a Woman and a Jew by Leah Morton, belonged to Patty. It describes the decision of a young immigrant woman to accept Christianity while still appreciating her family’s Jewish faith and culture. Patty probably found common ground with the author.
In the 1790s, a generation later, Jacob moved his family to North Carolina. In the rural South, they were a ways away from a synagogue and fellow Jews. Jacob insisted his family observe the Sabbath and Jewish holidays within their home, but encouraged them to follow “virtue in whatever garb it appeared” in their daily lives.
Jacob recommitted himself to Judaism in the early 1800s, but most of his children eventually embraced Christianity.
This look at history continues in the next post.
