Polly Berry - Lives in Freedom

Lives in Freedom

Polly Berry lived with her daughter Lucy Ann for the rest of her life. At first they worked together as seamstresses. Polly Berry managed to visit her daughter Nancy and grandchildren in Toronto in 1845, and the younger woman offered to settle her there. Berry chose to return to Lucy Ann and her familiar St. Louis roots. She died without seeing her husband again.

More than 45 years later, after a life of civic activism, in 1891 Lucy Ann Berry Delaney (then married) published her memoir From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom. The only first-person account of a freedom suit, the slave narrative was devoted mostly to recounting her mother's struggle for their freedom from slavery. Delaney dedicated the book to the Grand Army of the Republic, which had secured the freedom of slaves throughout the South in its victory in the American Civil War. She described her adult life and full participation in religious and civic organizations.

It was not until the 1990s that the Wash and Berry case files were discovered. Although some -- such as the Dred and Harriet Scott files -- had been set aside, most freedom suits were filed by case number together with all the other circuit court case files; surviving indices generally listed them under the broad rubric of "trespass." Some suits had been filed against the leading families of St. Louis, such as Chouteau, Cabanné, Sarpy and Papin, who were slaveholders before and after the Louisiana Purchase. Under the St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project, the case files are available to scholars for research, and a searchable database with digitized images of each case file is online.