6 minute read
NO ORDINARY WOMAN
Ordinary No omanW
Dear, is there something you need to tell me?
BY GWEN THOMPSONCue the Hollywood romantic pairing of a woman in her mid-twenties with a man twice her age. e previously widowed Susan Blanchard Russwurm is already caring for four children (three from her rst marriage and a newborn), only to nd her new husband is on his deathbed—and he has a bombshell to share. Now what? Bankruptcy? Bigamy? Syphilis? Did the mysterious Jamaican boy whose education in Quebec he’d been underwriting ash into her mind? All we know for certain is that when her husband acknowledged his paternity in extremis, she took young John Brown Russwurm straight into her heart. And it wasn’t just any teenager the 26-year-old welcomed into her Portland home, sight unseen. John Brown Russwurm, Class of 1826, was Bowdoin College’s rst African-American graduate and the third African-American graduate from any U.S. college, according to bowdoin.edu. He was the co-founder of Freedom’s Journal, the rst Black-owned newspaper in America. He later became the governor of Maryland in Liberia. And he was one of us— a Mainer. e white frame farmhouse on 75 acres in Back Cove where his mother’s act of courage transpired still stands (see “Across the Street from Cheverus...Portland’s AnteBellum Brady Bunch,” Summerguide 1997). According to his friend and colleague Dr. James Hall in “Monument to Governor Russwurm,” when Susan Waterman Goold Blanchard Russwurm learned of her husband’s child born out of wedlock, she “decided, at once, to adopt
the boy into her family, and he was immediately sent for.”
THERE’S ALWAYS ROOM FOR ONE MORE “From that time, I tried to act the part of a friend and mother,” she wrote to Hall. Her husband’s death a few months later le his son “entirely dependent on me, and for two years a er his father’s death he continued in my family, and went to school about half of the time. It was rather di cult at that time to get [him] into a good school where he would receive an equal share of attention...and this I was very particular should be the case.”
But in the nancial maelstrom a er her
husband died, Susan “had much di culty in settling the estate, and most of the legacy to him was lost.” More than a decade later, she would still be disputing her late husband’s estate with his Tennessee nephew, John S. Russwurm, objecting in 1826 to his seizing: “the last cent I ever expected to get out of your uncle’s estate...I have taken...pains to explain it to you...for I cannot think you mean to wrong me or mine. erefore I write in full con dence that you will restore to me my right.”
No doubt shaken and possibly disillusioned about his vanishing prospects, her stepson determined to return to the land of his birth. “ e sorrow he expressed at parting with my children, particularly his infant brother, showed how strongly he was attached to us all,” Susan wrote to Hall. If circumstances had been di erent, “He
said ‘...I would never leave your family, but I think it is best for me to go.’” However, “When he got to Jamaica, he was very unhappy, not nding any of his father’s friends alive whom he hoped would assist him in getting an education. He wrote me a sorrowful letter, which I answered immediately.”
The conduct of
Mrs. R. on this occasion evinced... true nobility of soul and high moral courage.
—Dr. James Hall
WHAT GOES AROUND
But their letters crossed, as was not uncommon in the age of sail, and John returned to as big a surprise from his stepmother as his existence had been to her. While he was away, Susan had remarried and relocated from Portland to North Yarmouth. “I received a note from a friend...saying that young Russwurm was in town; that he looked very much cast down, and seemed to feel a delicacy about returning without an invitation...We both felt very badly that he hesitated about returning to us, and a er passing a sleepless night, we arose very early and sent a man to P[ortland], with strict orders not to return without John, and before 9 o’clock he arrived. I was much relieved, and the children as much rejoiced.”
ALL IN THE FAMILY As Sarah Elizabeth Hawes, one of Russwurm’s eight stepsisters, recalls in Old Times in North Yarmouth, Maine (1881): “When William Hawes married Susan W. Russwurm he had two children and she had four,” plus a stepson only 11 years her junior. But this indomitable woman “had not forgotten my adopted son, I had so much reason to love, and part of my new marriage contract was that John should have a home when he needed one.” As well as taking him in, she and her third husband went on to have seven more children together, for a total of fourteen children from ve parents, with an age gap of 38 years between the eldest Artfully sculpted and custom designed, Radiant Impressions Artfully sculpted and custom designed, Radiant Impressions o ers beautiful prosthetic breast and nipple options after mastectomy, lumpectomy or reconstructive breast surgery. breast and nipple options after mastectomy, lumpectomy or reconstructive breast surgery.
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