I have been haunted by Allen ever since I first learned about him many years ago.
One of the people known as a "slave of the corporation," Allen was just 14 when the city purchased him to build its waterworks in 1831. I think 14 is a kid. Like, there’s no denying that 14 is a kid. You don’t buy a 14-year-old in Virginia and head for Nashville without any of the people he knows, without anyone who cares for him, thinking that he’s not going to suffer for it. And there’s lots that I can understand, as a historian, about slavery and why our country was so committed to it for so long. But how one man can look one 14-year-old kid in the face and take him away from his life? I just don’t get that. I don’t understand how you arrange your heart to do that and not then throw yourself off a cliff.
Anyway, Allen. I always wondered about him. What happened to him? Did he live to see the end of slavery, or did he die someone’s property? Was there any way to find out?
What happened to Allen Beasley, a man enslaved at the city's waterworks department?
Recently I’ve gotten to examine and reexamine some of the handwritten documents generated when the city purchased Allen and the rest of the group who were intended to build the waterworks. And I realized — we know. We know a lot about Allen. It’s just not been pieced together into a narrative of the life of one person.
Back in 2014, I wrote that Allen “was owned by Stefen Brady of Campbell County, Va., and he was raised by Barton Robertson, of Rockbridge Country, Va., and he was born in 1817.” This is wrong. I was wrong. In my defense, I have 12 more years of experience reading old cursive handwriting than I did back then. It didn’t say “Brady.” It said “Beasley.”
And we know Allen Beasley. He’s one of the three men who had been slaves of the corporation who were still employed by the city in the 1870s.
Sonia Allman over at Metro Water shared a copy of the pages of Deed Book T that recorded the names of the people purchased in 1831. It clearly showed two Allens — Allen Beasley and Allen Dorsey. Then Metro archivist Kelley Sirko sent me pictures of pages from the Agreements, Loans, and Slaves, a book that contains descriptions of the human beings the city purchased. It does not, however, include the last names of the enslaved people. It does, however, include the names of their previous enslavers. One Allen was enslaved by a Dorsey, and the other — the man under discussion — had been enslaved by Stephen Beasley.
Here’s what it says about him in Agreements:
Allen—4 feet 10 ½ inches high—light yellow complexion—slender made—large scar on his left jaw—thick lips—his back much scared with the whip—purchased from Stepn Beasley Campbell County Va—Raised by Barton Robertson, Rockbridge Co. Va –14 years old – Cost of $350—
This tells us Allen resisted being enslaved. You don’t end up with a “back much scared with the whip” unless someone is trying to break your will. And frankly, I think we can safely guess that it didn’t work, so he was shipped off to Nashville. But he knew what was happening to him — what was being done to him by the likes of Stephen Beasley and Barton Robertson — was wrong, and he hated it so much that he risked severe injury to resist it. And he was mutilated for it.
On Saturday, the Nashville City Cemetery unveiled a bench honoring enslaved people buried there
In 1873, The Tennessean wrote a story about Salem Mason, and Allen is mentioned in it: “Mason, together with John Henderson and Allen Beasley, was reserved when the other negroes were sold upon the completion of the waterworks.” The last paragraph reads:
Henderson was employed at the city workhouse for a long time before his death, which occurred last year, at which time he was eighty years old. Beasley died about the same time, and was about the same age. At the time of his death he was also employed by the city, and drove a scavengery cart.
So according to this, Beasley died in the early 1870s when he was around 80 years old. If he was 14 in the early 1830s, he was not 80 in the early 1870s. And he was in the census in 1880, where he was listed as the 70-year-old father-in-law of Robert Horton. Beasley’s wife was Alice, and his daughter was Lucy. Lucy was 22, meaning she was born at the end of the 1850s. That means she was born while Allen was enslaved by the city.
This raises a bunch of questions I don’t know if we’ll get answers to, but how did that work? Was Alice also enslaved by Nashville, or did they live apart and only visit each other? Or did Allen have some private space where he and Alice could stay together? Allen was enslaved. Could he rent a room? With what money?
There is a whole other couple named Robert and Lucy Horton who went off to Texas and had a bunch of kids and thrived. Sadly, that’s not Allen’s daughter. She died at age 26 on Oct. 27, 1883, due to consumption. She’s buried at Mt. Ararat. The last mention I could find of Allen was in the 1900 census, when he was listed as a 96-year-old widower living at the Davidson County Asylum for the Poor.
A man once owned by our city has a small street named for him in North Nashville
But the next-to-last mention is what I want to leave you with. It's from Salem Mason in the big interview the Banner did with him at the end of 1894. He says: “They brought me to Nashville, and now all ’ceptin me an’ Allen Beasley are dead. Allen was a stripling den, and last time I seed him, more’n a year ago, he was sawing wood out in North Nashville.”
This is likely at the poor house, out along County Hospital Road. It’s not a place Salem Mason — or anybody, really — just happened by. It’s hard to end up there by accident now, let alone back then when it was really out of the way. If Salem saw Allen, it’s because Salem went to visit him.
Whatever bond they forged surviving slavery together for 35 years lasted another 30 years, until the end of their lives.
