Amelia Green (born circa 1740-death around 1823)

Renowned for her ceaseless work ethic and dedication to her family’s emancipation, spinner and weaver Amelia Green purchased her freedom in 1875 from Robert Schaw.

She later moved from New Hanover County to New Bern and immediately set to work freeing her three children still in bondage.

She saved what she earned from spinning and purchased her daughters Nancy in 1794, Princess in 1795, and Harriet in 1806. But emancipation wasn’t simple — North Carolina was the only state in the South that required individuals’ emancipation to come from court ruling.

In addition to paying slaveholders for her daughters’ liberty, Green successfully petitioned the courts in Craven and New Hanover counties and paid the legal fees for the manumission of all three.

Over the course of her life, Green witnessed — and was instrumental in — the emancipation of her five children and most of her grandchildren.

Her network in New Bern grew prestigious when her granddaughter Kitty Green married John C. Stanly, the successful barber who helped with Montford’s emancipation.

Stanly supported and likely advised Green’s efforts to free her children. He additionally gave her a life estate, which included her one-story house on George Street, just half a block from Tryon Palace.

Source: Crafting Lives: Stories of African American Artisans in New Bern, North Carolina, 1770-1900, writer and researcher Catherine Bishir explores the impact of artisans of color and the unique social environment in Craven County that made such success more obtainable than in other towns and cities throughout the South.
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Words on image: Top left: The home of Amelia Green, still standing at 310 George Street. The house was built for her by her son-in-law John Carruthers Stanly who was a formerly enslaved person and the son of an Ebo slave and f John Wright Stanly, a White man.

She was a weaver and spinner who saved her earnings from being hired out to free herself and then her daughters Nancy Handy, Harriet Green, and Princess Green, whom she subsequently emancipated.
Green’s granddaughter, Kitty, married John Caruthers Stanly. Her great-granddaughter, Catherine, was a leading member of the free Black community and of First Presbyterian Church of New Bern.

Her great-great-granddaughter, Sarah Griffith Stanly Woodward (1836-1918) was educated at Oberlin College and taught with the American Missionary Association after the Civil War.

Photograph source: Tryon Palace, New Bern, NC

Bottom left: The “freedom suit” filed by Amelia Green against her slaver. One of the points on which a slave could sue for freedom was any snippet of a White female’s blood.

“If your mother, grandmother or great-grandmother was white, you could sue for your freedom even if you were dark,” he said. The courts recognized this matriarchal lineage. Though Schweninger couldn’t find an official explanation of why, he found that the legal system for these suits mirrored Roman civil law: partus sequitur ventrem (“that which is brought forth follows the womb.”)

Remarkably, 79 percent of the suits filed in the South were granted either by jury trial or by a sole judge.
In no other slave societies could a slave get ahold of a lawyer and make a petition for freedom.

Narrative source: Dr. Loren Schweninger