Hamilton Waters and the Struggle for Freedom and Education

This chapter examines what shaped Harry T. Burleigh and from what surroundings he came. The story of Harry T. Burleigh begins on March 5, 1832, in Somerset County, Maryland, when his grandfather, Hamilton Elzie Waters, arranged to purchase his freedom for fifty dollars and that of his mother, Elizabeth Lovey Waters, for five dollars, from slaveholder James Tilghman. In 1835 Hamilton Waters and his mother migrated from Maryland to Ithaca, New York. Later in 1838 the Waters family moved to Erie, Pennsylvania. The history of the educational opportunities available to African Americans in nineteenth-century Erie reflects the progressive nature of the abolitionist movement as well as its ironies. Harry's mother, Lovey Waters, instilled in her son the belief that no dream of achievement was unattainable. And through his early relationship with his grandfather, young Harry absorbed Hamilton Waters's belief in his entitlement to full citizenship as well as a knowledge of the distinctive cultural heritage through which those who were enslaved transcended the pain and the limitations of their captivity.