The first recorded Black resident of Evanston, Maria Murray Robinson (c. 1838-1900) was born enslaved in Maryland. She lived in Evanston for forty-five years.
There are no known photographs of Maria Murray Robinson. Her biography has been pieced together from official records (census records, directories, an obituary) that record components of her life.
For generations, enslaved and formerly enslaved people were not granted the same rights to be “recorded” on the historical record as white people were. To that end, they generally did not have birth certificates, marriage certificates, photographic portraits of themselves or their family members, and other records and mementos that documented their lives.
We offer this portrait of a woman whose life was significant and whose biography must be recovered. This is a start (part) of her story.
Dorchester County, Maryland, 1877. Dorchester County was the location of a major port used in the slave trade; it was also the birthplace of Harriet Tubman.
Robinson was born enslaved in Dorchester County, Maryland. As a child, she was brought to Chicago and later to Evanston by the Vane family. The Vanes were a wealthy white family from Cambridge, Maryland, an area heavily populated by enslavers. Allen Vane (1803-1913) and his wife Mary Scott Vane (1817-1882) came from a long line of enslavers.
According to her obituary, when Robinson was a child she was enslaved by Mary Scott Vane’s uncle. During a visit to her uncle’s home in 1847, Mary Scott Vane asked her uncle if she might “have” one of the children he enslaved there. He said she could take Maria.
The “uncle” might have been one of Mary Scott Vane’s step-uncles, William or Samuel LeCompte Rawleigh, well-known enslavers in Cambridge, Maryland.
In 1849, the Vanes moved to Chicago. They are recorded on the 1850 Census as living in Chicago with 12-year-old Maria (no last name given).
Once the Vanes came to Chicago, they found themselves in a city with an active abolitionist movement, and some people were reportedly “suspicious” of the fact that Maria lived with the Vanes, perhaps assuming that she was not entirely free.
Around the time that the Vanes and Maria moved to Illinois, in 1848, the state approved a new constitution that outlawed slavery. However, a few years later, in 1853, the state legislature passed an Exclusion Law which banned all free Black people from entering Illinois.
Just two years after that law passed, the Vanes and Maria Murray moved to Evanston. They purchased a property on the northeast corner of Davis and Forest Ave.
Although some accounts of Maria Murray Robinson state that she was either an “indentured servant” or that the Vanes had purchased her “freedom,” local history accounts refer to her as a “servant.” (See, for example, Clyde D. Foster, Evanston’s Yesterdays (Evanston, IL: 1956), 14.) A search in the Maryland State Archives for records related to enslaved females turns up 1,080 people in Maryland named Maria (or slight variations, e.g. Mariah), none of whom had manumission (or release from enslavement) records. It is therefore inferred that Maria Murray Robinson was never manumitted.
In the 1860 U.S. Census, 20-year-old Maria is recorded as a “domestic” in the Vane household, which included five children and Mary Vane’s half-brother, William Rawleigh, a student at Northwestern University. That same year, 1860, William Rawleigh’s mother, Eliza Rawleigh, was recorded as enslaving five Black people at her home in Cambridge, Maryland.
In 1861, after graduating from Northwestern, Rawleigh left Evanston and joined the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. After the war, in July 1865, he would apply for an official pardon from President Andrew Johnson.
In 1868, after roughly two decades of working for the Vanes, Maria married George Robinson, a man who had been enslaved man in Virginia. The Rev. Minor Raymond, pastor at Evanston’s First Methodist Church, performed the ceremony at the Vane home.
George Robinson came to Evanston in 1865 or 1866, just after the end of the American Civil War. He arrived with James Ludlam (1833-1908), a white Evanston resident who had served as a Union Army officer in the 8th Illinois Cavalry during the war. His unit helped an estimated 3,000 enslaved people gain freedom during the war. George Robinson likely worked for Ludlam during the war.
After George arrived in Evanston, he worked for Ludlam for a time. Later, he worked for other wealthy white Evanston residents, including Illinois Lt. Governor Andrew Shuman (1830 – 1890).
On the 1900 U.S. Census, it is noted that George Robinson did not know how to read or write.
After Maria and George married, they lived at 124 Dempster Street (now 325 Dempster Street).
Over the years, George Robinson worked as a milkman, gardener, coachman, and laborer. Maria Murray Robinson was listed on the 1870 census as “keeping house.” For some years in the 1880s, they employed Emma Johnson, a young Black woman from Tennessee who worked as a servant in their home.
In the 1880s, Henry and Mary Butler lived next door to the Robinsons on Dempster Street. Henry Butler was owner of the Butler Livery Stable, one of Evanston’s first and most successful Black-owned businesses.
When Maria was living with the Vanes, she attended the First Methodist Episcopal Church with the family. But after her wedding and departure from the Vane household, she appeared to have truly gained her freedom. According to Rhonda K. Craven, historian for Second Baptist Church in Evanston, George and Maria Robinson joined the First Baptist Church (now known as Lake Street Church) in 1870. Years later, in 1882, Maria and George Robinson were among the founders of Evanston’s Second Baptist Church.
Unfortunately, the record of Maria Murray Robinson’s larger experiences in Evanston is sparse. We do know that according to the 1900 U.S. Census, she gave birth to two children; but neither survived. It also appears that she was ill for much of her later life. The 1880 U.S. census notes that she was suffering from “tumors inside.”
Maria Murray Robinson died in May 1900. Her obituary was carried in the local paper.
Her funeral was held at the Second Baptist Church in Evanston. She was buried at Rose Hill Cemetery in Chicago, next to the grave of Mary Scott Vane. After Allen Vane died in 1903, he was also buried in the same plot.
George Robinson married again in 1901. His second wife, a Black woman named Jennie McDonnell, was born c. 1872 in Illinois. The couple had one child who did not survive. She worked as a housekeeper.
George Robinson died in 1911. His funeral was held at the Second Baptist Church. Among his pallbearers were other prominent Black Evanston residents, including Henry Butler, who moved to Evanston c. 1882, and Civil War veteran, Andrew Scott, (1840-1924) who arrived in Evanston in 1867.
George Robinson was also buried at Rose Hill Cemetery. But his grave lies far away from Maria’s gravesite in a burial plot known as “military style,” one grave close to another, the least expensive burial.
Maria Murray Robinson may have been the first recorded Black Evanston resident, but she soon became part of a growing group of Black residents that planted deep roots in the city in the 19th century. Many of these early Black residents had been enslaved; others came to Evanston seeking opportunities and wider freedoms. In raising their families, working, engaging with their church and their communities, and in a host of other undertakings, they built a vibrant community.
Evanston would become increasingly segregated over time; but the city’s first generation of Black Evanstonians remains a significant chapter of Evanston’s history that will continue to be researched and shared.
As we continue to research Maria Murray Robinson and other early Evanston residents, we will update this essay and continue to share our findings.
Post Script:
In the summer of 2020, the Robinson’s former home was designated one of Evanston’s African American heritage sites.
The Evanston African American Heritage sites program is a Shorefront project made possible with funding from the Mellon
Foundation and in partnership with the City of Evanston. You can learn more about the program here.
Written by Jenny Thompson, Phd
Shorefront Legacy Center’s work to uncover, document, and share the stories of Black history from Chicago’s North Shore is ongoing. Our work to document the histories of Black domestic workers continues. You can read more about that project here.
Many thanks to Rhonda K. Craven, historian, Second Baptist Church of Evanston, for her help with this essay.
The main sources used to write this essay include: Evanston City Directories, Evanston Reivew, Evanston News-Index, U.S. Census records, records of Cook County, Illinois, Records of Rosehill Cemetery Chicago, Illinois, and the records of the Maryland State Archives. Books include, T.M. Eddy, The Patriotism of Illinois: a Record of the Civil and Military History of the State in the War for the Union,” Vol 2, Chicago: Clarke and Co, 1866; Dwight Harris, The History of Servitude in Illinois and of the Slavery Agitation in that State, 1719 to 1864. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1904; Elias Jones, History of Dorchester County, Maryland. (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins), 1902.
