Jane Minor

The details of Minor's life are obscure. Even the dates of her birth and death are unknown. But an 1825 deed recorded by Benjamin Harrison May indiciates he freed a slave woman named Gensey Snow that year because of her willingness to help other slaves during an epidemic.

In freedom, the woman changed her name to Jane Minor.

In the manumission deed, May wrote that he freed the woman "for several acts of extraordinary merit in nursing at the imminent risk of her own health and safety, exercising the most unexampled patience and attention in watching over the sick beds of several individuals of this town, as well as on account of my belief that she will in the future continue ... to perform similar acts ... "

Over the next 33 years, Jane Minor earned a living by caring for the sick.

Suzanne Lebsock, the author of a book about the black women of Petersburg who gained their freedom during slavery, said Minor "was apparently skilled medically and a very gifted, nurturing healer, someone patients really responded to."

Medicine men and women were commonplace in both black and white communities in the mid-19th century, and when one was trusted, he or she was widely sought after.

There are records of receipts for medical services Minor rendered in the early and mid 1850s. One, for example, notes a $5.50 payment for leeching on Nov. 12, 1857. An 1855 receipt shows she was paid $4.50 for "leeching servant boy three times."

Minor is thought to have used much of her earnings to purchase the freedom of other enslaved women and children. It was a common desire among free women in Petersburg, who often saved their minimal wages to buy others out of slavery, Lebsock said. "But it was difficult to pull off, both because slaves were expensive and then the owners had to be willing to sell."

A healthy adult slave could cost several hundred dollars, Lebsock said. Documents of the time show that in one instance, Minor paid $1,500 to purchase a woman named Emily Smith and her five children.

Jane Minor may have had help in paying for the freedom of slaves.

Historian Luther Porter Jackson speculates that Minor was able to purchase freedom for so many because she served as a respectable front for white slaveowners who wanted to free women with whom they had had relationships.

He also suggested that some slaves may have given Minor money to help pay for their liberation. And Lebsock said some of the slaves may have worked for Minor after they were freed.

Lebsock said virtually no information exists about Minor's personal life, but according to Lebsock, it is believed she had a daughter who married Jospeh Jenkins Roberts, the first president of Liberia, a West African country founded by freed American slaves.

Even with such sketchy details, Lebsock said, one can see that Minor clearly was an important figure of her time, and a beacon of freedom's burning light.

"In a time when we assume that almost everybody of African descent was a slave," said Lebsock, "there were free people, some of whom became free by virtue of self-sacrificing, heroic behavior. And those people, in turn, did what they could to liberate other people from slavery."

Lebsock said it is not known when or where Minor died, but she was referred to in a newspaper in the 1850s as old, and that the last reference to her was in 1858.