What’s in a Name?

On April 28, 1841, Ann Arbor welcomed its first anti-slavery newspaper, the Signal of Liberty. The Signal’s first issue recapped the sixth annual meeting of the Michigan State Anti-Slavery Society and welcomed new subscribers and advertisers. The paper’s predecessors, the Jackson-based American Freeman (1839) and Michigan Freeman (1839-1841), had folded due to financial difficulties. Theodore Foster and Rev. Guy Beckley took on the challenge of printing the society’s newspaper. 

They chose a new name, Signal of Liberty, to remind readers of the cause of freedom that united them. Antislavery societies were forming across the United States and its territories in the 1830s and ‘40s, encouraging others to join in their mission to end slavery. Many newspapers took up the abolitionist cause, and some (including the Signal) promoted the affiliated Liberty Party. The Signal of Liberty (1841-1848) became Michigan’s flagship anti-slavery newspaper. 

An anonymous poem printed in January 1842 likened the Signal of Liberty to a lighthouse beacon that would save “countless souls” from “tempestuous winds and raging waves.” The lighthouse acted as a metaphor for the newspaper’s mission to free enslaved people from the “greedy grasp” of slaveholders: “Built on the eternal rocks… With light as radiant as the polar star… So shines our ‘Signal.’” Another “signal” with potent symbolism referenced in the poem is the “polar star,” also known as the North Star. The North Star helped former slaves navigate their escape to freedom in the northern U.S. and Canada. 

Ann Arbor’s First Presbyterian Church was the site of the founding of the Michigan State Anti-Slavery Society in 1836. When the Society’s executive committee took over publication of the newspaper several years later, Ann Arbor was a logical choice for a home base. Theodore Foster had editorial experience and Rev. Beckley was a Methodist preacher from a successful Ann Arbor business family. At the Signal of Liberty’s peak, they drew over 1,200 subscribers from Michigan, including 300 from Washtenaw County.

Foster and Beckley set up their printing equipment on the second floor of Beckley’s brother’s mercantile shop on the Huron block of Broadway in Ann Arbor. They established strong relationships with local residents and businessmen, including Caleb Ormsby of the Ann Arbor Paper Mill and William R. Perry, owner of a bookstore in Lower Town. To learn more about how they printed the newspaper on an iron handpress, check out AADL’s 2019 blog series “Paper, Ink, and Pi: Printing the Signal of Liberty.” To learn more about how they decided what to print in their paper on any given week, read on!

The Editor’s Dilemma

On May 27, 1844, the Signal of Liberty reprinted a fictional account of one man’s visit to a country newspaper office. The visitor encounters an editor “surrounded by a heap of crabbed manuscript” from correspondents and aspiring contributors. He is struggling to decide what to print in his weekly paper:

Indeed, he has but four pages in his paper; a part of those four pages must be taken up with advertisements and notices; indeed, he must have a modicum of editorial for his readers; indeed, they must needs read of what is going on in Congress, off there in Europe and in Asia, and down here in the legislature...indeed, the poet hath quite a corner, all his own; indeed, I must extract good pieces from other papers...and, indeed, I have a host of other kind correspondents besides thyself.

From breaking news to advertisements, poetry, and gossip columns, newspaper editors chose content that best represented the interests of the paper and its readers. Signal of Liberty editors Theodore Foster and Guy Beckley probably hoped this story would educate their subscribers on the labor involved in editing a paper, remind them to pay their dues, and make them laugh, too. Even an antislavery paper needed lighter material to balance out the standard political fare. The story’s narrator signs off with a hasty retreat from the printer’s office, which is overflowing with badly written correspondence from ungrateful subscribers: “Printer,” he says, “I bid thee, and thy sorrows, farewell.”

The story about the printer’s woes is borrowed from the Ohio Observer, a Presbyterian weekly, but could just as well have described the Signal of Liberty’s editorial process. An interesting aspect of 19th-century newspaper printing is the large amount of content that editors borrowed from other newspapers. They called these sources “exchange papers” or “exchanges.”

Clip! Clip! Clip!

The Signal of Liberty traded material with many other like-minded newspapers, especially abolitionist and Liberty party papers. The Signal’s first issue instructed fellow editors to send their exchanges to Ann Arbor rather than the Michigan Freeman’s prior location, Jackson. It was important to receive them in order to get the current national news and more content for the Signal’s next issues. Poems, short fiction, humorous anecdotes, and other “evergreen” or non-trending content could be reprinted weeks or even months later. 

One such poem traveled to Ann Arbor following a circuitous route from St. Louis, Missouri. The “Song of the Editor” ran in the Signal of Liberty on April 14, 1845. First published in January 1845 by a Missouri-based weekly paper called the St. Louis Reveille, it traveled via regular exchange routes to Virginia and then up the eastern seaboard to Boston’s The Liberator. Edited by abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, The Liberator was one of the Signal of Liberty’s regular exchange papers. Six weeks after the Boston paper published the poem, the Signal reprinted it.

The poem follows the morning tasks of an editor who is hastily “clipping” and “pasting” content from exchange papers:

Clip! Clip! Clip!—
No ‘cabbaging’ shears his hands doth hold,
But those with which the current gold
By lawful right he’ll clip,—
The ‘Devil’ is gone, but he will not fail
Of a prompt return with the ‘morning mail’—
A basket full of ‘exchanges’—
And then the editor opens and skims—
Accidents—deaths—discoveries—whims—
As over the world he ranges!
 

When the editor’s assistant, also known as a “Devil,” brings him a basket of exchanges, the editor eagerly skims their pages for material to reprint in this week’s issue. He pastes them into “copy” for his compositors, who are ready to begin setting type:

Paste! Paste! Paste!
With camel’s hair brush and a broken cup,
He gathers the scatter’d paragraphs up,
And sticks them on in haste:
The ‘Devil’ appears with a grin and a bow—
‘Please, sir, they’re waitin’ for ‘copy’ now...’
 

The “Song of the Editor” was a parody of Thomas Hood’s 1843 labor protest poem “The Song of the Shirt.” Hood’s poem called attention to the poor working conditions of female laborers in the garment industry: “Stitch! Stitch! Stitch! / In poverty, hunger, and dirt…” The parody picked up Hood’s catchy repetitions and applied them to the editor’s business: “Clip! Clip! Clip!... Paste! Paste! Paste!”

As literary historian Ellen Gruber Garvey explains, reprinting was not stealing, but a lawful practice that helped spread news across the country. The United States Postal Service even waived the postage on newspapers exchanged between editors. For abolitionist or Liberty Party papers such as the Signal of Liberty, reprinting helped present readers across the nation with a unified message. The low-cost practice was a core aspect of a 19th-century editor’s job.

The Poet’s Corner

Poetry was a popular medium for 19th-century writers. Poems clipped from newspapers were shared in letters and scrapbooks and read aloud by families, schoolchildren, and members of social and political clubs. As the frazzled newspaper editor in the story above noted, “the poet hath quite a corner, all his own.” But how did the Signal of Liberty’s editors choose which poems to print?

The majority of the Signal’s non-advertising content was political in nature, and its poetry column was no exception. Usually printed on the first or fourth page, the poem of the week provided another way for readers to relate to the antislavery cause.

Typically, Foster and Beckley chose popular poems that appeared in their exchange papers, like “Song of the Editor.” Many of these were abolitionist poems describing the plight of the slave, the cruelty of slaveholders, and the ideals of freedom and liberty. Well-known authors included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, and John Pierpont. But the Signal also featured verses contributed by local authors.

A poem published on February 24, 1845 in the correspondents’ section pressures the editors for more original poems by local writers rather than reprintings by more famous poets:

'Tis true, that you may cull with care,
And gather much that's good and rare;
But, if from other sheets you borrow,
What’s theirs to-day, is yours to-morrow;
So you, behind must slowly tread,
While they are flying on ahead.
 

As this poet notes, borrowed verses will always be old news. Why not publish original content from the Signal’s own subscribers? In fact, dozens of poems that were published in the Signal were by local authors–including this one:

So modest are we, in most cases
Your readers know us, but by guesses–
The initials of our name we give,
The town, or village where we live;
These signs you know, but few can tell,
And none, but those, who know us well.
 

The author signs off with only a town name and date: “Salem, Feb. 10th, 1845.” Close attention to similar signatures throughout the Signal’s print run give clues to the identity of this poet. Those who “knew her well” might have identified the verses of Elizabeth Ross Spence of Salem Township, just eight miles north of Ann Arbor.

Several poems appearing in the poetry column follow the same pattern: before the title appears an authentication of originality–“For the Signal of Liberty”–and the signature reads “Salem, [Date].” An elegy written for a deceased infant on September 19, 1842, “Rest, Sweet Babe, in Softest Slumber” provides the telling clue. As the note above the poem explains, “The following lines were composed by Mrs. Spence, and sung at the burial of a child of Enoch and Emma Hamilton, at Salem, Aug 1842.”

“Mrs. Spence” is Elizabeth Ross Spence, the wife of Adam Spence. She was born in Scotland around 1797 and she moved from Rhynie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland to Salem, Michigan in 1831 with her husband and young son. They established a farmstead and were founding members of the Congregational Church of Salem in 1839. Elizabeth Ross Spence, a poet and singer, was likely one of the women of the Salem Choir who “organized a Ladies Antislavery and Benevolent Association for the town of Salem” during an antislavery meeting held in a barn in Salem on May 19, 1846. 

The elegies she wrote for members of her church demonstrate the care that she showed for her friends and neighbors as well as the antislavery cause. Her son Adam Spence, perhaps inspired by his parents’ abolitionist ideals, became a principal at Fisk University. The 1870 Census lists Elizabeth Ross Spence as living in Ann Arbor, age 73. Although the full extent of Elizabeth Ross Spence’s writing has not been documented, the Fisk University Archives has much of her correspondence and two books of her poems: Hymns and Songs, 1858-1878 and Poems 1876-1880. More investigation is needed, but perhaps some of her contributions to the Signal of Liberty appear in these pages. 

Spence’s tongue-in-cheek rebuke to Foster and Beckley for borrowing “from other sheets” suggest that the Signal overlooked her talent, but in fact they published at least seven of her poems between 1841 and 1845.

• “The Oppressed,” Aug. 25, 1841
• “Hope for the Slave,” June 6, 1842
• “Rest, Sweet Babe, in Softest Slumber,” Sept. 19, 1842
• “Our Country,” October 17, 1842
• “Lines,” Feb. 20, 1843
• “Reply To ‘Chapter For Correspondents,’” February 24, 1845
• “Liberty Song,” April 21, 1845

Whether or not the editors themselves knew her true identity remains unclear. Nevertheless, of the hundreds of poems they chose to “clip” and “paste” into the pages of the Signal of Liberty, Spence’s verses emerge as a striking example of local talent.

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Browse Signal of Liberty issues and articles.

Read  “Paper, Ink, and Pi: Printing the Signal of Liberty.” 

Turn of the century newspaper accounts paint a vibrant portrait of Charles Henry Shoeman: "utopian high class entertainer", "colored poet of Ann Arbor", "barber", "the youngest Afro-American writer in Michigan", "photographer", "the excellency of his verses", "student", "humorist", "assisted by his colored boys quartette", "author of an interesting books of poems", "lecturer", "elocutionary entertainment".

His anthology A Dream And Other Poems was published in Ann Arbor in 1899. The following year, a second edition was published. His writing made national news and he toured the United States and Europe, entertaining crowds with his words. By 1910, he had disappeared.

Charles Henry Shoeman appears in various lists of African American authors, anthologies of Black American writers, and collections of African American poetry, but biographical information is always missing. In February 1970, Ann Arbor News writer/photographer Doug Fulton highlighted the obscure poet with his article "Negro History Week Query: Who Was Charles Shoeman?". Frustrated with few answers, Fulton closed his article by declaring "The mystery cries out for solution, but we can only ask the question."

Revisiting the mystery in February 2024 has unearthed more of this unique young man's story. Assisted by the digitization of countless old newspapers and primary documents, a narrative of great talent and tragedy has emerged. 

FAMILY HISTORY

Charles James (C. J.) Shoeman, his father, was born around 1849 near Palmyra, Missouri. C. J.'s mother was an enslaved person but his father a free man. C. J.'s sister, Lydia, was sold and taken to New Orleans. C. J.'s father connected himself with the Underground Railroad and led many enslaved people to freedom in Canada, including his own family. C. J., his mother, and remaining siblings were ferried across the Mississippi River by rowboat. C. J.'s father carried him all the way to Canada on his back.  After the end of the Civil War, C. J. moved to Goshen, Indiana where he opened a barber shop.

Epsie Lewis, his mother, was born July 1851 in Kentucky. By 1870 she had relocated to Porter Township, Van Buren County, Michigan, with her parents and several of her siblings.

In November 1875, C. J. Shoeman married Epsie Lewis in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

EARLY LIFE - INDIANA

Charles Henry Shoeman's story began in Goshen, Indiana. He was born May 29, 1876 to C. J. & Epsie Shoeman. His middle name honored his maternal grandfather, Henry Lewis.

When Charles Henry Shoeman was less than a year old, his father, C. J. Shoeman, moved his barber shop into a space on the Kindig Block of Main Street in Goshen.

Lewis H., a second son, was born to Epsie & C. J. Shoeman in Goshen, April 1879. In the early 1880s, C. J. began studying the practice of law. He moved his family north to New Carlisle, St. Joseph County, Indiana, where he worked as both an attorney and a barber. In November 1889, C. J. owned a building in New Carlisle, and had a barber business in the basement.

STUDENT, BARBER, POET - ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN

Around 1894 the Shoeman family relocated to Washtenaw County, Michigan. C. J. worked in the barber shop of Homer Fish in Saline until 1897. In 1896, Epsie opened a business of her own, which was the first beauty parlor for women and children in Saline.

In 1898, the Shoeman family surfaced in the Ann Arbor City Directory. They lived in a home on Main Street, between Felch Street & Summit Street. C. J. had a barber shop listed on East Huron, between Main Street and 4th Avenue.

Charles Henry Shoeman stepped into the limelight when he was 23 years old. In 1899, local bookstore owner & publisher George Wahr published Shoeman's A Dream And Other Poems. The following year a second edition was published, with an additional 22 poems included.

An April 1900 review in the Detroit News-Tribune shed light on the young author: "Young Shoeman was born in Goshen, Ind., and has lived in Ann Arbor about six years. Here he attends high school and supports himself by working in a barber shop during his spare hours. In appearance he is of medium height, with a frank, pleasant face and easy bearing. He says that the reason he began to write rhymes was because he couldn't help it, and adds that his aim is to do something for his own race by means of his verse."

Inside the first pages of his anthology, a photo of Charles Henry Shoeman greets the reader. A sharply dressed young black man sports a crisp white high collar, his signature below with an elegant flourish. This image, along with his poetry, quickly spread across the United States. Reviews were positive, and the Detroit Informer went as far to offer a copy of Shoeman's book to new subscribers of their newspaper:  "Do not fail to get a copy of this book, which is from the pen of the youngest Afro-American writer in Michigan."

A DREAM AND OTHER POEMS

The poems in this anthology are traditional narratives written in Standard American English, along with looser, more lyrical verses, written in African-American Vernacular English. One piece, simply titled 'Lydia', is the true story of his aunt, taken by an enslaver to New Orleans. Shoeman vividly describes the grief felt by his family, and their lifelong, fruitless search for Lydia.

I am hunting with this poem

Hoping that she may still read,

That she's not forgotten, Lydia,

May it to her loved ones lead.

One of the most popular poems in Shoeman's book was an ode to American orator Robert Green Ingersoll. Nicknamed 'The Great Agnostic,' Ingersoll was, among other things, friends with Frederick Douglass and an outspoken abolitionist. Scathing criticism of slavery could be found in many of his speeches, and Shoeman's own works echoed the sentiments of Ingersoll.

AN ODE TO INGERSOLL

O'er a life we could not fathom

O'er a soul far more obscure,

Dropped life's curtain, vaguely leaving

All behind still dark, secure.

Though a skeptic in his teaching,

With beliefs not like our own,

Let us judge not, lest a failure -

All shall reap as they have sown.

Though expounders grave with wisdom

Judge and think they know the heart,

We are mortals, often skeptic,

With beliefs too far apart.

And our lives in world; in secret,

Tell two tales to each unknown,

But our Judge, with mighty wisdom,

Holds them safely, all His own.

Mortal man is weak and wayward,

No one knows all truths within,

And in thinking, speak not harshly,

Lest with you there be the sin.

Far behind death's gloomy shadow,

Down that way we all must go.

Speak not harshly, speak not harshly,

We do not know, we do not know.

Included in both editions of his book was 'Keeps A-Sawin' Wood', written in African American Vernacular English.

KEEPS A SAWIN' WOOD

Ef day calls yo' cracked and crazy,

Keep right on a-sawin' wood,

Kos day nebber does git je'lous,

When yo' haint no good.

Ef day says yo' is big headed,

Kos yo' acts a gentleman,

Show dem dat yo' would befrien' 'um,

But keep sawin' all yo' can.

Some will try to take your woodpile,

When yo's sawed a lot ob wood.

Try toe lie an' get position

In de berry place yo's stood.

Some will try to 'buse a neighbor,

Kos he's sawed mo' wood dan day,

An' day allus git de hoo do,

An' despisin' fo' dar pay.

When day sees dat yo' is sawin',

An' how folks respect yo' name,

Day will quit dar pesty jawin',

An' will turn an' do de same.

Fo' dis worl' am full ob sawyers,

Men dey nebber can keep down;

Do day smote dem day will rise up,

Mid dar curses an dar frown.

Set a 'zample do yo's crazy,

Keep right on a sawin' wood,

Kos day nebber does git je'lous,

When yo' haint no good.

RISE AND FALL

Charles Henry Shoeman copyrighted a dramatic composition in April 1901, Elixir of Life. 1901 was a high point in Shoeman's career, and he was actively touring, lecturing, and entertaining. He spoke at universities, political events, high schools, Black American organizations, major city events, etc. across several states. He was very active in Ann Arbor's newly formed Colored Republican Club, where he served as vice president. On December 5, 1901, an article in The Chelsea Standard reported:  "Charles H. Shoeman, Ann Arbor's colored poet, has found an 'angel' who will back him for a tour in England and already eleven engagements have been secured. Mr. Shoeman expects to leave about the first of February." Charles Henry Shoeman gave a final lecture at the University of Michigan's Newberry Hall, and left for England soon after. The identity of Shoeman's "angel" remains unknown.

From 1902 to 1906, he was overseas. It is assumed that he toured, giving performances and readings of his work. During his time away, in October 1905, his mother died of kidney disease. In October 1906, local newspapers reported the return of Charles Henry Shoeman to Ann Arbor. Soon after, Shoeman's life took an unexpected turn when the Ann Arbor Daily Argus published an article titled "A Poet's Finish".

It was reported that Charles "talks and laughs to himself, threatens to kill anyone who offers him meat and takes great delight in burning papers and books. He also says he can talk with his mother, who is dead." Based on this article, and similar accounts, Charles Henry Shoeman was experiencing a mental health crisis. His father filed paperwork to have him declared insane and sent to Pontiac.

Being 'sent to Pontiac' at this time in Michigan's history referred to the Eastern Michigan Asylum for the Insane, later known as Pontiac State Hospital. Details of Charles Henry Shoeman's stay at this facility are unknown, although it must have been brief as he never went missing from the Ann Arbor City Directory.

FROM POETRY TO PHOTOGRAPHY

1908 was a year of change for the Shoeman family. The Ann Arbor city directory shows Charles Henry as 'photographer', living with his father and brother on Main Street.

It was during 1908 that C. J. Shoeman shuttered his barber shop and moved to Canada. Drawn by the offer of free land, he applied for a homestead in Saskatchewan. Doing so included a commitment to become a British citizen, and he never lived in the United States again.

Charles Henry Shoeman moved north and appeared in the 1910 federal census as Charles H. Shuman, living on Main Street in Frankfort, Michigan. He is listed as a photographer employed in a gallery. How he found himself in northern Michigan is unknown. The only other person of color listed in Frankfort in the 1910 census was Lim Bach, a Chinese laundry owner, who happened to live in the same building as Charles Henry.

C. J. Shoeman died in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, Canada on May 2, 1917. His will refers to his children, Lewis living in Detroit, and Charles Henry, living in Traverse City, Michigan.

Efforts to locate Charles Henry Shoeman in the 1920 federal census have not been successful. He reappeared in the 1930 federal census as Charles Schuman, a patient at the State Hospital For The Insane in Traverse City, Michigan.

Charles Henry Shoeman died from pulmonary tuberculosis on November 17, 1939 in the Traverse City State Hospital, Traverse City, Michigan. He was 63 years old. His death certificate, under the name Charles Schuman, notes his 1876 birth in Goshen, Indiana. It shows his home residence as South Frankfort, Michigan, for the past 27 years, 9 months, and 8 days. He is noted as a "single", "colored", "photographer", and that his remains will be sent to Ann Arbor.

Three days later he was buried in the Shoeman family plot in Ann Arbor's Fairview Cemetery with his mother. Lewis, his brother, died in Kalamazoo, Michigan on May 21, 1942. He was also buried in the Shoeman family plot. Neither Charles Henry nor Lewis have individual grave markers. C. J. Shoeman, their father, has an individual grave marker in the family plot with no date of death, a hint to the fact that his body actually rests in Saskatchewan, Canada.

If you find yourself in Ann Arbor's Fairview Cemetery, keep an eye out for the reddish-orange granite Shoeman stone, shaped like a piece of toast. Here, in the city's first racially integrated cemetery, rests Charles Henry Shoeman, with his mother, brother, and many other beloved Black American community members.

FINAL THOUGHTS - THE MICHIGAN DUNBAR?

Examining the life and work of Charles Henry Shoeman, it's difficult to overlook the similarities to the life and work of Paul Laurence Dunbar. Both were Black American men born in the 1870s to formerly enslaved parents. Both were raised in the midwest with natural gifts for writing. Both published work, gained fame as poets, and toured the country to share their thoughts on the hopes and burdens of the Black community. Both had careers that were tragically cut short. Both even died of tuberculosis. A 1901 article in the Grand Rapids Press, titled "The Michigan Dunbar", went so far as to declare Shoeman the Paul Laurence Dunbar of Michigan.

Dunbar's legacy inspired many Black American literary giants - Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, & Zora Neale Hurston, to name a few - and it's hard not to wonder if Charles Henry Shoeman could have reached similar success. The Dunbar Center, a prominent Black community organization in Ann Arbor's history, was named for Paul Laurence Dunbar. Savonia Lewis Carson, Charles Henry Shoeman's aunt, served as the first executive secretary of the Dunbar Center. Did she see the similarities between her nephew and Paul Laurence Dunbar? We can only speculate.

I am happy to share with you some wonderful reminisces on Ann Arbor in the 1960s back in the day by my friend Paul Bernstein.