Broken Gloom: Sketches of the History, Character, and Dying Testimony…
“Broken Gloom”
[Philanthropy]. Thompson, Mary W. Sketches of the History, Character, and Dying Testimony of Beneficiaries of the Colored Home, in the City of New York. New York: John F. Trow, 1851.
8vo.; foxed; brown cloth; lightly soiled; stamped in gilt (upper cover reads, “Broken Gloom”) and blind; corners bumped. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition; “published for the benefit of the institution;” with two frontispiece lithographs; one titled, “Broken Gloom,” the other features a front view of “the colored home.” Jackson, Encyclopedia of New York City 256. Not in Sabin, Blockson, Work, Weinstein, Eberstadt, LCP.
In seven chapters; the first chapter is a series of biographical sketches of men and women who stayed in the Home, including Blind Sopha, Amy Jordan, Judy Richards, Abigail Dobson, Betsey Johnson, Phebe Spalding, Old Sarah Henry, Eliza Didymus, Catherine Queen, Katy Schenck, Margaret Simpson and Diana. Other chapters are “Minutes of Chaplain,” “Incidents,” “Sketches from Mrs. R’s Report,” “Concluding Remarks,” “Condensed Statement of the Colored Home,” and “Managers’ Names” which lists a “Mrs. Col. Thompson” as one of the managers, though it is unclear if this is the same Thompson that prepared this book for publication.
The short biographies of the people in the Home reflect not only their personal experience but also how they fit into a larger historical picture. Betsey Johnson, for example, was a woman who was brought from Africa to West India, was then sent on to Virginia “before the Revolution,” and then moved throughout the southern states and passed through the hands of various owners; her story begins,
This remarkable woman attained the patriarchal age of one hundred and fourteen years, and although her eye became dim and her physical force abated, yet the eye of her soul gazed with increasing clearness upon the realities of the eternal world, and her spiritual energies waxed stronger and stronger, as the number of her days diminished.
Although she was unable to read, yet so retentive was her memory, that she could repeat extensively from the Scriptures and from Dr. Watts’s Hymns. She appears to have lived until she was about ninety-four years old, before she was brought to a knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus, when she illustrated the sincerity of her profession by a consistent walk and conversation.
The Colored Home was founded in 1839, as a result of “the liberality of one Christian lady,” a Miss Jay – John Jay’s daughter – who ponied up one thousand dollars to begin an organization dedicated to the “relief of the sick and respectable Colored Aged” (p. 75); part of its goal was “not only to provide protection and a peaceful home for the respectable, worn-out colored servants of both sexes of our city, by sheltering and sustaining them during the lingering days of declining life, but furnishes them in their last moments the consolations of religion” (p. 5). It also acted as a shelter for beleaguered African-Americans – as Thompson explains in her Preface, it acted as a sort of annex to the local Alms House – allowing them to stay at the Home for a “season” while they recuperated from illness or tried to find employment; Thompson also mentions that there were plans for a chapel and a schoolhouse to further fulfill the Institution’s overall mission. After its inception, the Home steadily grew; in 1845, it was incorporated into the State Legislature, in 1847, records indicate nearly one thousand people had benefited from its care, and in 1848, a large building for it was erected between Avenue A and First Avenue in Manhattan.
Thompson’s Introductory Remarks are steeped in religiosity; she discusses sin and suffering, as well as Christ’s mercy, love and sympathy. Her intentions seem genuine – “we open our hearts and bid them welcome; we open our hands and relieve the suffering and wretched exile, and give him a home” (p. 13) – and her perspective
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