Alfred Francis Russell - Early Life

Early Life

Russell was born in Lexington, Kentucky, the son of Amelie "Milly" Crawford. Russell was born a slave to his then-master Jane Hawkins Todd Irvine. He and his mother were sold to Robert Wickliffe and Mary Owen Todd Russell Wickliffe or Mrs. Polly as he and his mother called her, a wealthy heiress of the frontiersman, Colonel John Todd and the daughter of Irvine. John Todd was the brother of Levi Todd, the grandfather of Mary Todd Lincoln. It was publicly exposed by Robert Breckinridge that John Russell (Mary Owen Todd Russell's son from her previous marriage with James Russell) engaged in a relationship with Crawford during a summer visit with his grandmother and thereby fathered Alfred. Alfred's father being white and his mother being an octoroon gave him his obvious mixed-race appearance. After Wickliffe emancipated Alfred, his mother, Lucy, and her four children they left for Liberia. Alfred was fifteen years old when he and his family left on the brig Ajax to go to Liberia, West Africa with many of the first frontiersman of the country. They arrived in Liberia on July 11, 1833.