“Chief Washer Woman” from my Janitor’s Closet blog

On a November evening in 1867, a prayer meeting was held in northwest Washington, D. C., not far from the Capitol, mostly by folks of the Baptist persuasion.  At the time, there was no church of any denomination in that quarter of Washington.  The prayer meeting led, some 11 years later, to the founding of a permanent institution, the Metropolitan Baptist Church.

In an article in the 5/2/16 journal First Things, the organizer of the meeting was identified as one Celestia Ferris, “chief washer-woman” at the U. S. Bureau of Engraving.  Given terminology of the time, a “chief washer-woman” would most likely be the head of the janitorial crew.  And, given the time and city, I’ll go out on a limb and suggest the Celestia was likely an African American.

Republican administrations were highly integrated, up through Taft (Democrat Woodrow Wilson famously segregated the White House staff and, for the first time in its history, the U. S. Navy).  Blacks were generally given positions, some pretty significant, during Republican administrations and lost them when Democrats took office.  Speaking of the Bureau of Engraving, onetime U. S. Senator Blanch Bruce was, under both the Garfield and McKinley administrations, Register of the Treasury, and thus the first Black to have his name on U. S. currency.  (The first three Black U. S. senators were Republicans.)

Part of what caught my attention about “chief washer-woman” Celestia Ferris was that I also run a cleaning service, providing commercial cleaning Phoenix metro area.  So I was encouraged to see that, even in the mid nineteenth century, office cleaning folks had a certain influence.

Then the connections hit me.  Mid nineteenth century Black gals, the U. S. Treasury’s Bureau of Engraving, where the new $20.00 bill will be crafted: we’re replacing slave driving Democrat Andrew Jackson with a gun totin’, female, ex-slave, Black Republican – Harriet Tubman!  My only qualm with the change is with the pictures that I’ve seen suggested, all of them of Harriet in later life, heavy set (might I say dumpy?), dull, with not a spark of live to her.  It’s almost insulting.

Better a drawing of her in her prime as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, young, athletic, a hint of danger about her, encouraging a slave to his freedom, and well able to defend herself.  Harriet deserves something like the attached design.

In passing, that look like a Navy model Colt?