Lucy Delaney - Early Life

Early Life

For decades little was known of Lucy Ann Delaney beyond her memoir, but in the late 20th century, both her and her mother's suits were discovered among case files for 301 freedom suits in St. Louis from 1814-1860. Related material is available online in a searchable database created by the St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Project, in collaboration with Washington University. In addition, scholars have done research into censuses and other historic material related to Delaney's memoir to document the facts.

Born into slavery in St. Louis, Missouri in 1830, Lucy Ann Berry was the daughter of slaves Polly Berry and a mulatto father {whose name she did not note}. She said that Polly Berry had been born free in Illinois, where she was known as Polly Crockett, but was kidnapped when a child by slave catchers and sold into slavery in Missouri. (In her freedom suit, Polly Berry deposed that she was held as a slave in Wayne County, Kentucky by Joseph Crockett, and was brought by him to Illinois. There they stayed for several weeks while he hired her out for domestic work. As Illinois was a free state, he was supposed to lose his right to hold slave property by staying there, and Polly could have been freed. It was on this basis that she was later awarded freedom, as witnesses were found to testify as to her having been held illegally as a slave in Illinois., )

Polly was sold to Major Taylor Berry of St. Louis, from whom she took the surname she used. Polly married another of the Berry slaves, and they had two daughters, Nancy and Lucy Ann.

When Delaney wrote her memoir late in life, she remembered the Major and his wife Fanny Berry as kind slaveholders. After the major died in a duel, Fanny Berry married Robert Wash, a lawyer later appointed as a Missouri State Supreme Court judge. When Fanny Wash died, the Berry slave family’s fortunes changed. Although Major Berry's will had called for freeing his slaves after his and his wife's deaths, Judge Wash sold Lucy Ann's father to a plantation down the Mississippi River in the Deep South.

Polly Berry became concerned for the safety of her daughters, and determined they should escape. Lucy Ann's older sister Nancy slipped away while traveling with a daughter of the family, Mary Berry Coxe, and her new husband on their honeymoon in the North. Nancy left them at Niagara Falls, took the ferry across the river, and safely reached Canada and a friend of her mother's.

After having conflict with Mary Coxe in 1839, Polly Berry was sold to Joseph A. Magehan, but escaped about three weeks later. She made it to Chicago, but was captured by slave catchers. They returned her to Magehan and slavery in St. Louis.

On returning, Polly Berry (also known as Polly Wash after her previous master) sued for her freedom in the Circuit Court in the case known as Polly Wash v. Joseph A. Magehan in October 1839. When her suit was finally heard in 1843, her attorney Harris Sproat was able to convince a jury of her free birth and kidnapping as a child. Wash was freed. She remained in St. Louis to continue her separate effort to secure her daughter Lucy Ann Berry's freedom, for which she had filed suit in 1842, shortly after Berry fled her master.