Picking hops near Healdsburg | Sarah, Amanda, Ellen, Taylor, Edmond Tombs |
Photographer unknown, c. 1875 | Courtesy Healdsburg Museum and Sonoma County Museum
On Juneteenth in 2023, the Santa Rosa-Sonoma County NAACP announced the official launch of the first, comprehensive historical research project on slavery in Sonoma County. Created in partnership with Sonoma State University with support from the Sonoma County History and Genealogy Library, the project focuses on the Sonoma County Archives to explore and illustrate the history of enslavement in Sonoma County from 1849 forward.
Slavery was common in California despite its 1850 entrance to the Union as a “free state.” This was made possible through entrapment via “loitering” charges, “in-transit” slavery laws within the California Fugitive Slave Act and legislation denying non-white people the right to challenge their bondage or treatment in a court of law.
SSU History Professor Amy Kittelstrom, Ph.D. continues to lead the project, assisted by 2023-2024 research students Jason Herrera and Cole Rubert, with assistance from the Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library. Summer 2023 findings were conducted with research students Jeremy Medrano and Juliana Chand.
From Prof. Amy Kittelstrom, Ph.D.:
“I am so glad that D’mitra Smith of the Santa Rosa-Sonoma County NAACP figured out there was a story about slavery to be uncovered right here. She communicated her preliminary findings to Merith Weisman, then the director of the Center for Community Engagement at Sonoma State University, in fall 2022, and Weisman connected with the History Department Chair Stephen Bittner, who extended the call for research to the Americanists in the department. I leapt at the opportunity to investigate a topic so important and so undiscovered. It is disappointing that Weisman was let go amid our institution’s disastrous budget cuts and reorganization–all commandeered from the top–as she was a full-throated supporter of this project and essential to the founding of the partnership.
There are a few existing works of historical research into slavery in California–most recently, Pfaelzer, CALIFORNIA, A SLAVE STATE (2023)–but no one has investigated these Sonoma County archives before our academic-activist project. We have discovered so many names and places as to raise serious questions about the very nature of enslavement in the history of this nation and particularly this allegedly free, allegedly liberal state.
The history we continue to uncover includes Americans of African descent purchased in Missouri and brought overland to Sonoma County as well as twelve-year-old Native girls “married” to day laborers categorized as “White” on the census and in their mid-twenties and from the South. The history of Sonoma County is stolen-by-Taylor Mountain and stolen-by-Fitch Mountain as well as free Black Californians allying with those in bondage.
This project connects not only the academic and activist through the partnership of the History Department, School of Social Sciences, and Sonoma State University with the Santa Rosa-Sonoma County NAACP, but also many more important connections. Zayda Delgado and Simone Kremkau of the Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library and their staff have facilitated this project’s research, and so has Holly Hoods of the Healdsburg Museum, whose important exhibit on Black Sonoma County History in Summer-Fall 2023 helped our team identify research pathways. Our County registrar, Deva Proto, has also contributed research to the project as have community members including Tonya Singer, whose research into her own ancestors helped our team figure out the history of a Black man who went by John Wright in the 1870s and may have inherited his former owner’s property–and may have served in the Union Army.”
From 2nd Vice President D’mitra Smith:
As the archives bring forward the names and stories of so many people who lived in bondage during the formative years of Sonoma County, more questions begin to emerge. Within the context of forced labor, census household designations like “day laborer”, “servant”, “farming”, “washer” and “domestic” obscure the fact that much of this work was provided by individuals in bondage, despite California being a “free” state. In other cases like that of Samuel Shattuck, the archives contain a record of emancipation from bondage to Superior Court of California Judge David Shattuck of Sonoma, which we can read in detail. Or the Tombs family, whose records allow us to trace their path from a Missouri plantation to a Healdsburg farm, in bondage to William Holloway Tombs, a man who held the offices of Justice of the Peace and Notary Public for many years and was a member of the Masonic lodge and the Healdsburg Grange.
Another area of mystery is the Sonoma County Coroner’s Inquests, in which we find many obscure references to deaths of BIPOC individuals that beg the question of further investigation, such as “died from a blow to the head”. Much resistance to these horrific conditions is prominently found in the struggle for freedom through the actions of the Colored Convention, which included Sonoma County delegates George W. Miller and Peter Killingworth; and by courageous individuals and families challenging their bondage, despite enormous obstacles and personal danger in a county with deep roots to the Confederacy. It must also be stated that the impact of slavery on Indigenous populations was significant and widespread, having evolved from the brutality of the Mission and ranchero systems that existed before 1850.
While we may not find definitive answers to every story, slavery is an undeniable foundation of the construction and development of Sonoma County, with direct connections to many of the founding families, judges, landowners and politicians within the county, generational links to the inequities we see today, and the continued reliance on exploited labor by agricultural systems. We can also see the historical position of Sonoma County Sheriff deputies as the enforcers of exploited bodies, property and stolen land held by powerful agricultural barons, which is an American story not limited to southern states.”
This project is invaluable as it takes a deeper dive and exploration of the stories of those who inhabited the land long before and into the formation of Sonoma County. While it is a traditional practice to document names and dates, our sole focus is to understand the stories. Storytelling is a long standing practice in Black and Indigenous cultures and that is the key element we seek to illuminate.
Santa Rosa-Sonoma County NAACP will continue to inform the community as the project moves forward, and are honored to work with Sonoma State University and the Sonoma County History and Genealogy Library at the intersection of academics and human rights.
Sincerely.
Kirstyne Lange, President