Hannah Jones Smalls

Quick Facts

Significance:

Freedom Seeker on the Planter

Place of Birth:

Likely Charleston

Date of Birth:

1825

Place of Death:

Beaufort, SC

Date of Death:

1883

Place of Burial:

Beaufort, SC

Cemetery Name:

Tabernacle Baptist Church

Hannah Jones Smalls was born in 1825, likely around Charleston, South Carolina. She was enslaved by a man named Samuel Kingsman and by the time she was in her twenties she had two daughters, Charlotte, and Clara Jones. Around 1855, when Clara and Charlotte were adolescents, Hannah met a young man named Robert Smalls. Robert was enslaved by the McKee family in Beaufort, South Carolina, but had recently been sent to Charleston to live and work. Although Hannah was 15 years Robert’s senior, the two struck up a relationship. With permission from both of their enslavers, Robert and Hannah were married on Christmas Eve in 1856 at McKees home at the intersection of Carteret and Bay Street in downtown Beaufort.  

For reasons that remain unclear, the McKees threw a lavish wedding celebration, which was uncommon for plantation owners to do for people they enslaved. The newly wedded couple returned to Charleston and moved upstairs above a stable, which Robert started working at in exchange for rent. He also began to work around the city’s docks and shipyards. Hannah worked keeping house and possibly worked at hotels. In 1858 the couple welcomed a daughter, Elizabeth Smalls. Robert began hiring himself out to work other jobs to save money to buy the freedom of both Hannah and his daughter Elizabeth. In 1861, Hannah gave birth to a son named Robert Smalls, Jr.   

Hannah likely witnessed the bombardment of Fort Sumter at the dawn of the Civil War. It must have been terrifying for her to hear the boom of canon rolling across the city for days on end and trying to comfort a terrified son, while either pregnant or nursing a newborn baby. It was not the last time she would have to comfort her children through the turbulence of war. 

In the Spring of 1862 her husband, along with the other crew members of a steamship the Planter, hatched a plan to capture the vessel and sail their way to freedom. Hannah was let in on the secret and was faced with a daunting choice. By that point she was a mother of four with children ranging in age from around 20 to a newborn baby. She was also recently a grandmother – her eldest daughter Charlotte had given birth as well. If she decided to get on the Planter with her husband and children, freedom was a possibility. When Charlotte elected to remain in Charleston with her newborn, Hannah’s decision was further complicated. Splitting up her family meant a real possibility that she would never see her daughter and granddaughter again. Furthermore, if the escape was unsuccessful Hannah, her husband, and three children faced death or imprisonment. Fortunately, the plan worked. By the morning of May 13, Hannah Smalls, along with three of her children and her husband, were safely aboard the USS Onward.  

Hannah spent most of the war in and around Beaufort. She may have traveled to New York with her husband on of his wartime trips where he was celebrated as a hero. But throughout the war – and really the rest of her life – she elected to stay behind in Beaufort and take care of the family and their home, which they purchased at a tax auction during the war. In 1863, she was forced to bury her infant son, Robert Jr, who died of Whooping Cough. Around the same time, she gave birth to another daughter, Sarah. When the Civil War ended, her eldest daughter Charlotte and her family moved to Beaufort. As her husband traveled across the state and the nation as a Reconstruction era political leader, Hannah often remained in Beaufort. One of the challenges that faced Hannah was that although she was home in Beaufort – it may not have always felt like home. She had lived and worked around Charleston. She spent more than half her life in Charleston and gave birth to most of her children in Charleston.  

Hannah died in 1883 and is often overlooked in the story of the Planter and Robert Smalls’s dash for freedom. Of the sixteen people on the boat that night, 1/3 of them were Hannah and her family. Her courage held the family together across the Charleston Harbor and beyond. She is buried at Tabernacle Baptist Church in downtown Beaufort alongside her daughter Sarah and her husband.