A Year Before Juneteenth and Bath History

In early tours, there was one story participants always wanted more of - that of Clara Battease, later called Mary Heuston. She was enslaved in South Carolina, and in 1850, on a trip to Bath, she emancipated herself. That same year, the federal Fugitive Slave Law was enacted. It was a concession to southern states in the compromise which brought California into the union as a free state. So, though in the North, she was considered a fugitive, and indeed, her enslavers sent agents to find her. They didn’t find her.

She remained in the Bath-Brunswick area, married a prominent free African American landowner, and they had children together. She was still, however, in danger, until the Fugitive Slave Law was repealed in June of 1864. So, for Mary Heuston , “Juneteenth” (to evoke the holiday commemorating the end of slavery in 1865) came a year early, though it’s possible (probable?) her legal status remained precarious until the end of the war.

I am grateful she told her story to the Lewiston Journal and hopeful of the possibility of finding and sharing more about her. The image shows the location in the tour, the corner of Front and Center, where we talk about this and other events in Bath leading up to the Civil War.