Last updated: August 3, 2022
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Monimia Travers: A Story of Slavery and Freedom at Fort Vancouver
National Archives and Records Administration
Fort Vancouver, May 5, 1851
Mommia Travers, a black woman, aged about forty-five, bought by me from Isaac Burbayge, in April, 1849, I have this day given her freedom unconditionally, and she is in all respects free to go and do as may seem to her most to her advantage, without let or hindrance from me, my agents, heirs or assigns. Witness my hand and seal, at Vancouver, May 5th, 1851. Llewellyn Jones, Captain U.S.A.
The above named woman, Mommia, is an honest and perfectly conscientious woman and deserves kind and good treatment at the hands of every one. Llewellyn Jones, Captain, U.S.A. Recorded, July 29th, 1857 [sic?]
This manumission (release from slavery) document, filed from Fort Vancouver in 1851 by US Army Captain Llewellyn Jones, is one of the few surviving sources documenting Monimia (spelled “Mommia” by Jones) Travers’ life. In many ways, the document is rich. It reveals Travers’ estimated age during her time at Fort Vancouver, her status as an enslaved woman, the fact she was held in bondage by at least two men during her lifetime, how she came West, how her final enslaver deemed her “conscientious” and deserving of kind treatment, and most importantly, her freedom from bondage.
What the manumission document and the 1850 census she appears on cannot provide are the details that would give us a fuller understanding of Travers’ humanity: Did people in Oregon Territory treat her kindly after she was freed? Did Travers ever marry? Did she have children that she was separated from when Jones took her west? Did she make friends or enemies at Fort Vancouver? Jones claimed she was an “honest and perfectly conscientious woman” but what made her laugh and cry? What were her likes and dislikes? What did she do after gaining her freedom and how did she make sense of it?
These are all questions that the historical record remains silent on, and we can only turn to comparative experiences and our own empathy to imagine answers to those questions. But by piecing together the larger historical context with the few startling facts we do have, we can begin to make meaning out of Travers’ life and time at Fort Vancouver.
Slavery in the Pacific Northwest
To many, chattel slavery conjures up thoughts of cotton fields in the Deep South or plantations sprawling amongst East Coast tidewater communities. However, one need not travel to our nation's southern or eastern states to walk in the footsteps of enslaved people; although obscured by time, African Americans were held in bondage in pre-Civil War Oregon and Washington - and what is today's Fort Vancouver National Historic Site.
While Monimia Travers is the only documented Black woman at Fort Vancouver until the World War II era and census records suggest that only thirty-five enslaved African Americans set foot in Oregon Territory between 1843-1855, Oregon had a diverse multiracial population. It was home to Native Americans, Chinese and Hawaiian migrants, and Métis in addition to white settlers. This on-the-ground reality influenced a politics of white supremacy that took root in Oregon’s prestate period.
Many white settlers to Oregon were “free soilers” who believed the West should be preserved for white farming families free from competition from plantation agriculture and the system of slavery that fueled it. Oregon’s territorial governments passed laws prohibiting slavery throughout the 1840s and 50s but a vocal pro-slavery minority were able to soften these laws in 1844 by giving enslavers three years to remove enslaved people from the territory.
While slavery was officially banned, the same “free soil” mentality shaped Black exclusion laws passed in 1844 and 1849, which demanded Black migrants leave Oregon Territory or face physical punishment, incarceration, or forced labor. Rather than being a symbolic or philosophical gesture, evidence suggests that these laws were enforced. A September 2, 1851 issue of the Oregon Spectator related how:
There is a statute prohibiting the introduction of negroes in Oregon. A misdemeanor committed by one Vanderpool was the cause of bringing this individual before his Honor Judge Nelson, and a decision called for respecting the enforcement of that law; who decided that the statute should be immediately enforced and that the negro shall be banished forthwith from the Territory…There is no use of enacting laws if they are to remain a dead letter on our statute book…Thirty days are allowed them [African Americans] to clear the Territory.
While these laws targeted Black Americans, both enslaved and free, they were part of a larger legal framework that sought to favor white Oregonians. In 1850, Congress passed the Oregon Donation Land Act, which allowed only white male citizens and those with half or less “Indian blood” to claim up to 640 acres of public domain land. Later, during Oregon’s 1857 state constitutional convention, voters decided to restrict voting rights to white male citizens and white men of foreign birth who declared their intention to naturalize. This same convention explicitly barred any “Negro, Chinaman, or mulatto” from voting. Lawmakers also sought to restrict immigration to only those who could naturalize: “free white persons” as stated in the federal Naturalization Act of 1790.
The Mounted Riflemen and Fort Vancouver
It was within this constructed racial order that Travers found herself in the autumn of 1849 when the march of the US Army's Regiment of Mounted Riflemen along the Oregon Trail terminated at Fort Vancouver and Oregon City. The trek brought several hundred soldiers and officers - and a few families - to the Pacific Northwest.
Among these soldiers was recent West Point graduate from New York State Captain Llewellyn Jones. As we know from the manumission document, Jones had only months before purchased Travers from Isaac Burbayge, and he brought her, along with his wife and two daughters, on the journey. Traveling with the expedition in a large, mule-driven spring wagon, Jones' daughter Frederica would later recall that the wagon's seats could be folded into beds for the family's use.
The expedition of the Mounted Riflemen and their trek from Fort Leavenworth to Fort Vancouver has reached mythic proportions over the past centuries. However, the significant scholarship dedicated to their march - which includes a mile-by-mile accounting of the trek and the names of many of the participating soldiers - provides little understanding of any of the accompanying women and fails to mention Monimia Travers.
When Travers arrived at Fort Vancouver, which would later become known as Vancouver Barracks, she would have found a rugged Army outpost along the north bank of the Columbia River, in view of Mount Hood. Soldiers and their families lived and worked in tents and simple log buildings. Nearby, the British Hudson's Bay Company was still operating Fort Vancouver with a diverse workforce, including Hawaiians, Scots, French-Canadians, Iroquois, Orkney Islanders, and Métis. The Army rented several unused buildings from these new neighbors. With no other accommodations available, the Mounted Riflemen and their families temporarily lived in Oregon City until more suitable living quarters could be built. From 1849 to 1852, the period of Travers’ enslavement at Vancouver Barracks, she might have witnessed or been aware of the sometimes-tense relationships between the Army, the Hudson's Bay Company, and incoming American settlers.
We can infer from other slave narratives that Travers’ most likely felt lonely and conflicted in her new surroundings, especially as the only Black and enslaved woman in a place that was antagonistic to non-white persons. Only a year and half after arriving at Fort Vancouver, Travers found her life once again drastically altered when Jones decided to free her from bondage.
Manumission & Exclusion
Why Jones chose to give Travers her freedom has been lost to history, but several clues exist. According to Army records, Jones departed the Oregon Territory with his unit in early May of 1851, within days of giving Travers her freedom. This transfer seems to have been a surprise to some soldiers. On May 1, Major John S. Hatheway, an artillery officer stationed at the fort, noted his astonishment in a letter.
"After marching several thousand miles and laboring for eighteen months building their own quarters, which were very handsome & comfortable and beginning to enjoy this wild life," Hatheway exclaimed, "they are suddenly ordered to fight the Indians in New Mexico… Such unexpected incidents. Here today, gone yesterday."
Faced with transfer to the American Southwest, Jones may have found Army life impractical for his family. "It is no place for a family, the Army," observed Hatheway in the same letter - a sentiment perhaps shared by Jones. If his wife and daughters returned to the East Coast, Travers’ enslaved status would have made the family’s journey complicated.
Other practical concerns may have led to Jones' decision, including Oregon Territory’s slavery prohibitions and Black exclusion laws. Jones seemed to be aware that he was freeing Travers in a territory in which she was legally not allowed to exist. His plea for his “agents, heirs or assigns” to leave her alone and for people to treat her kindly may have been an acknowledgment that freedom in Oregon territory was not a particularly generous act.
Whatever the motivation, Jones' imminent departure resulted in Travers' freedom. It also resulted in the last mention of Travers in the historical record, as she has yet to be located in subsequent censuses for Oregon or Washington. It is unlikely that she chose to stay in such a hostile climate and so far from whatever family or friends she was forced to separate from when Jones took her west.
The Civil War and Reconstruction threatened the “white man’s republic” settlers had built in the 1840s and 50s. In response, in the decades after emancipation, Oregon citizens passed poll taxes aimed at keeping non-white residents out of Oregon, banned interracial marriage, and played a leading role in pushing for national Chinese exclusion laws. While we may not know much about Monimia Travers’ time at Fort Vancouver, the small portion that we do know provides a window into Oregon’s complicated history of slavery and freedom.
Bibliography & Further Reading
Allmendinger, Blake: Imagining the African American West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005.
Arata, Laura J. Race and the Wild West: Sarah Bickford, the Montana Vigilantes, and the Tourism of Decline, 1870-1930. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 2020.
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Boston: Published by the Author, 1861: https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/jacobs/jacobs.html.
Ravage, John W. Black Pioneers: Images of the Black Experience on the North American Frontier. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1997.
Settle, Raymond W., ed. The March of the Mounted Riflemen: From Fort Leavenworth to Fort Vancouver, May to October, 1849. Lincoln: Nebraska, 1968.
Sinclair, Donna. An Historical Overview of Vancouver Barracks, 1846-1898. Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, National Park Service, 2004. https://www.nps.gov/fova/learn/historyculture/upload/VNHRHistoryPartOne1846_1898-Accessible-PDF.pdf.
Smith, Stacey L. “Oregon’s Civil War: The Troubled Legacy of Emancipation in the Pacific Northwest” Oregon Historical Quarterly 115, no. 2 (2014).
Smith, Stacey L. Freedom’s Frontier: California and the Struggle over Unfree Labor, Emancipation, and Reconstruction. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013.
Van Arsdol, Ted, ed. Frontier Soldier: The Letters of Major John S. Hatheway, 1833-1853. Vancouver, Wash., Vancouver National Historic Reserve Trust, 1999.
Veney, Bethany. The Narrative of Bethany Veney, A Slave Woman. Worcester, Mass., 1889: https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/veney/veney.html.