University Archives and Special Collections at Xavier

Xavier's Historical Connections to Slavery

Since 2017, Xavier University has actively investigated its historical connections to slavery. While Professor Walker Gollar conducted research on the University's founder Bishop Edward Fenwick and his ties to slavery, researchers from the Jesuits’ Slavery, History, Memory, and Reconciliation Project have focused on understanding the lives of people held in bondage by the Society of Jesus, including by presidents of Jesuit educational institutions such as Xavier.

This summary shares research conducted in collaboration with Kelly L. Schmidt, Ayan Ali, the Slavery, History, Memory, and Reconciliation Project, and Xavier University Library. It accompanies a portrait gallery of the Xavier University Presidents displayed on the 3rd floor of McDonald Library. Biographical information on each Xavier president can be found in the Xavier University Presidents Photographs digital collection.

Summary

The Society of Jesus participated in the institution of slavery in North America from the colonial era until the passage of the 13th Amendment. The involuntary labor of the people the Jesuits owned, rented, and borrowed helped establish, expand, and sustain Jesuit missionary efforts and educational institutions in colonial North America and, over time, across the United States. The Jesuits’ use of enslaved labor is a legacy shared by all Jesuits and Jesuit institutions.

Xavier University was founded as the Athenaeum in 1831 by Bishop Edward Fenwick, a former slaveholder and Dominican priest. In 1840, the Society of Jesus took over administration of the college and renamed it St. Xavier College.

In this early period of Xavier’s history, the regional Jesuit headquarters was in Missouri, a slave state. The Missouri Jesuits relied on the forced labor of enslaved people to establish their farm and seminary in Florissant and run Saint Louis College (now Saint Louis University). The majority of Xavier’s early presidents received their religious training at this seminary and many served as faculty members or administrators of Saint Louis University before coming to Xavier. Records show that Xavier presidents were intimately involved in the purchasing, selling, and supervision of enslaved people, controlling everything from where they could travel to whom they could marry.

Because St. Xavier College was located in Ohio, a non-slaveholding state, the Jesuits were unable to enslave people in Cincinnati. However, Xavier’s Jesuit administrators and faculty continued to benefit financially from slaveholding. For instance, the account ledger shown on the left documents the repayment of funds borrowed from Saint Louis University. St. Xavier College relied on resources and profits gained from the involuntary labor of people held in bondage by the Jesuits in Missouri, Kentucky, and Louisiana. The Jesuits frequently exchanged finances and goods, and visited with one another between these sites. Additionally, Xavier’s administrators relied on Jesuit connections in southern states to recruit tuition-paying students from slaveholding families.

The Society of Jesus frequently rotated faculty and administrators among its early institutions and almost all of the early Jesuits at Xavier were involved in slaveholding. Felix Verreydt, who spent his final years at Xavier as the confessor of the religious community, and Xavier’s first Jesuit president John Anthony Elet were among the contingent of Jesuits who forced six enslaved people from Maryland to establish the Missouri Mission in 1823. Verreydt, along with presidents Elet and Thomas O’Neil, labored alongside enslaved people in Missouri, practiced theological training upon them, and as priests and administrators, made decisions about their lives. President Walter Hill was born to a slaveholding family in Kentucky, labored alongside enslaved people when he attended school at St. Mary’s College, and supervised enslaved people in his roles at Jesuit institutions in Missouri and Kentucky.

Augustine Queen is one of the people known to have been enslaved by the Society of Jesus and to have been directly impacted by Fr. Elet, SJ, Xavier’s first Jesuit president. Augustine (also known as Augustus, or by the nickname “Gustin” or “Gustine”) Queen was born around the year 1826 to Jack and Sally Queen, a couple enslaved to the Jesuits at their White Marsh plantation in Maryland. In 1829, when Augustine was about three years old, he, his parents, and his siblings, along with the family of Proteus and Anny Hawkins, were forced away from their extended family network in Maryland to labor at the Jesuit mission in Missouri. They traveled by steamboat down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers before landing in Missouri and arriving at the Jesuits’ St. Stanislaus seminary in Florissant. He grew up in Florissant and St. Louis, laboring both at the farm and in the city.

In 1849, Augustine married Mary Hoppins Hawkins, widow of Augustine’s kinsman Gabriel Hawkins, but several obstacles hindered them: they were not permitted to marry without the permission of their respective owners, and as long as they remained enslaved to different owners, they faced the possibility of having to live apart, or even possibly being separated, should one of their owners relocate or sell them.

Augustine Queen appealed to the Jesuits’ regard for the sacrament of marriage, and their prohibitions against separating enslaved families, to secure permission from the Jesuits to marry Mary and persuade them to purchase her. Fr. Elet, SJ, signed the note approving of this marriage. In adherence to Jesuit regulations and the couple’s own appeals, he consented to their marriage, as enslaved people were not permitted to marry without their owner’s permission.

After emancipation, Augustine remained in St. Louis primarily working as a carpenter. Mary likely died sometime before 1865. Augustine worshipped at St. Elizabeth Church, the first Black Catholic parish in St. Louis and remarried in 1881. Augustine Queen died of typhoid pneumonia on January 9, 1886, around the age of 60. His funeral was held at St. Elizabeth Parish and he was buried in the St. Elizabeth plot at Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis.

The adults and children held in slavery by the Society of Jesus in Missouri were subjected to abysmal living conditions, family separation, forced migration, and physical abuse by their Jesuit owners. Though they were greatly mistreated, the Jesuits’ bondspeople were resilient and determined. Enslaved people resisted their bondage and built faith and kinship networks  that outlasted the institution of slavery. In freedom, many of these families sustained these community bonds, and made significant cultural contributions, shaping their own churches and parishes and succeeding in education, the military, athletics, politics, and the arts.

Research conducted and essay created in collaboration with Kelly L. Schmidt, Ayan Ali, and the Slavery, History, Memory, and Reconciliation Project of the Society of Jesus and Xavier University Library.