Maria Syphax Case Table

Books by Sterling Brown

Southern Road / The Negro Caravan / The Collected Poems of Sterling Brown /

The Negro in American Fiction; Negro Poetry and Drama / Last Ride of Wild Bill and Eleven Narrative Poems

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Books about Sterling Brown

Joanne,Gabbin. Sterling A. Brown: Building the Black Aesthetic Tradition (1994)

John Edgar Tidwell, Sterling A. Brown's A Negro Looks at the South (2007)

Charles Rowell. Callaloo's Sterling A. Brown: Special Issue (1998)

Mark A. Sanders. Afro-Modernist Aesthetics & the Poetry of Sterling Brown (1999)

Mark A. Sanders. A Son's Return: Selected Essays of Sterling Brown (1996)

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Overview

I knew nothing of Maria Syphax (1803-1886) of Arlington, Virginia, nor anything of her story or the stories that politicians or literary theorists, or historians may have made of her life. I stumbled onto pieces of her story about seven years ago in the unprocessed papers of Sterling Brown at Howard University. I copied ten to fifteen documents that tied together Sterling Brown's literary relationship to the story of Maria Syphax and Wisconsin Congressman Frank B. Keefe's accusation of a communist plot directing activities in the Federal Writer's Project.

Maria Syphax was the colored great-granddaughter of Martha Washington, Sterling Brown wrote rather matter-of-factly as if the facts of the assertion were self-evident. An Archival Search for Sterling Brown

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Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. That the title to a piece of land being part of the Arlington estate, in the county of Alexandria, in the State of Virginia, upon which Maria Syphax has resided since about the year eighteen hundred and twenty-six, bounded and described as follows, to wit: An Act for the Relief of Maria Syphax

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Charles Syphax [1791-1869], the only son of William, was a slave and he belonged to George Washington Parke Custis [1781-1857], who owned Arlington, Virginia, and its environs. When about ten years of age [1801] he accompanied George Washington Parke Custis to Arlington, where he grew up with Custus' daughter Mary, who later married Genereal R.E. Lee.

Syphax became enamored of one Maria Carter [1803-1886] while working as one of the "White House" servants whose duties were confined to the serving of meals in the Arlington Mansion, and they were married at Arlington by an Episcopal minister, about 1821. By this marriage Elinor was born 1823, and William 1825. William Syphax A Pioneer

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Table

An Archival Search for Sterling Brown

(Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3 and Part 4 )

Documents of the Syphax-Custis Case

An Act for the Relief of Maria Syphax

Charles & William Syphax: Pioneering Spirits

Colonel Custis Daughter

The Family Life of George Washington

Florence Kerr to Walter Chandler

GWP Custis' Will A Memo

Notes from the Congressional Globe

Sterling Brown Bio

Sterling Brown Requests Historical Material on New Orleans

Sterling Brown Gives Christian an Assignment

Sterling Brown Seeks Negro Advisers

Sterling Brown Thanks Christian for History Material

Sterling Brown to Henry Alsbery (Memo 1)

Sterling Brown to Henry Alsbery (Memo 2)

Sterling Brown to Walter White

Syphax and Custis Case (Interviews)

Walter White to Franklin D. Roosevelt

Will of George Washington Parke Custis

"W.P.A. Guidebook Arouses Fuss"

Related Files

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Crytsal on Janet & Michael

Dunbar and Traditional Dialect

Fifty Influential Figures

The Honeymoon Is Over

Loneliness

MBC Letter Table

Marcus Bruce Christian

Missing You

Mosquitoes Fly Out My Head

Sterling Brown Bio

Temporary Lovers

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The young negro [William Syphax] found in the archives at Alexandria the paper which Col. Custis had signed giving his mother her freedom and that of "her daughter Bertha, six years old, and one male infant." An octogenarian Quaker affirmed that the male child was the young negro and he received his credentials.

But the most interesting fact in the family history is that this old lady, who by act of Congress, is to be allowed to end her days on her own bit of earth, was doubly descended from the Custises. Her mother was Martha Washington's maid. The family of Robert E. Lee inherited the respect for the blood of the former slave woman, and they confirmed the legacy of Col. Custis by saying that the bit of land was hers, as though there was no deed to show in fact. Colonel Custis Daughter

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Prof. Charles S. Syphax and Mrs. Syphax, 315 T. St., City. They have summer home on tract given by W.P.A. Custis to Maria Syphax. Original tract, approximately 17 1/2 acres. They claim that the Lee family have always been friendly toward the Syphax relatives. Prof. Syphax remembers his grandmother, Maria S[yphax], but does not recall having heard her mention her father, G.W.P.C. [George Washington Parke Custis] He has heard his father (her son) mention frequently the relationship. Prof. S[yphax] was at Hoard for 46 years -- retired two years ago. Mrs. S[yphax] was the third woman to graduate from Howard, and later was instructor there. Syphax and Custis Case

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New hot water for the W.P.A.'s Federal writers' project was being stored up on Capitol Hill today because of what that agency views as an "incidental reference" in its guidebook of Washington to George Washington Parke Custis.

The reference, apparently unnoticed outside the project until recently, was to the effect that the stepgrandson of George Washington--who later became his adopted son--and father-in-law of Gen. Robert E. Lee, was the father of Maria Syphax, a Negro.

First to blast this assertion as "a libel" and "an attempt to stimulate a feeling of class hatred" was Representative Keefe (Republican, Wisconsin), who, after conducting his own investigation, took the issue to the floor of the House yesterday.

Today his speech in the Congressional Record caused a rumbling on the Senate side to supplement the fighting going on there over the W.P.A.'s supplemental appropriation. Several Senators threatened to take the matter to the Senate floor before the debate is ended.

Tucked away in the middle of a chapter captioned "the Negro in Washington," and telling of the disposition of a large body of freed slaves, the guidebook relates: WPA Guidebook Arouses Fuss

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posted 29 June 2008