Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn Mount Auburn as a Mosaic of American Culture | Page 7

with the white Lesley family in Boston, and later, with Anne
Jean Lyman in Northampton, in western Massachusetts. After
the Civil War, she learned that two of her children, Agnes
and Bryant, were alive and enlisted the help of Frederick
Douglass, Lewis Hayden, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry
Ward Beecher, and others to bring them north to settle
near her.
In 1870, Walker and her now-married children moved
together into the Dexter Pratt house at 54 Brattle Street in
Cambridge. Ironically, this was the very house celebrated
by the abolitionist and poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
in “The Village Blacksmith.” During her years in Cambridge,
she was also friends and neighbors with a woman who
shared a story similar to her own, author and abolitionist,
Harriet Jacobs (Lot #4389, Clethra Path). Walker’s monument
at Mount Auburn, not far from Jacobs’, is adorned with a
bird in flight, evocative of her long and lengthy journey to
escape to freedom. African Americans should pursue vocational training rather
than college. In 1909, Morgan joined with Du Bois and
others to form the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP). He was one of the few black
members on the Boston branch’s executive committee of
the NAACP. He was the first African American elected to
the Cambridge Board of Aldermen.
Clement Morgan did not have a monument marking his
grave until 2005 when the Cambridge African American
Heritage Trail Committee dedicated one to him.
African American Activist: Clement G. Morgan
(1859-1929), A Founder of the NAACP Lot #1643, Hibiscus Path
Lot #7503, Mound Ave
Clement Garnett Morgan was born in Virginia to slave
parents. After the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, he
moved with his family to Washington, D.C., and attended
Preparatory High School for Colored Youth. Able only to
find work as a barber, he relocated to Boston, where he
graduated from Boston Latin School and Harvard College.
At Harvard, Morgan
formed a lasting friend-
ship with classmate,
W.E.B. Du Bois.
When he received
his L.L.B. from Harvard
Law School in 1893, he
became the first African
American to obtain de-
grees from both Harvard
College and Harvard Law
School. Four years later,
he married Gertrude
Wright.
Morgan vociferously
maintained that every
person, regardless of
The Niagara Movement Founders, 1905
race, should have the
(Clement G. Morgan is second from the
opportunity develop
left in the first row), Courtesy of W.E.B.
Du Bois Papers, Special Collections and
to his or her fullest
potential. Through the University Archives, University of
Massachusetts Amherst
Niagara Movement,
founded by Du Bois
and William Monroe Trotter in 1905, he contested Booker
T. Washington’s acceptance of segregation and stance that
The unique stories of Phoebe Jackson and the Sigourney
family are examples of how our staff is constantly
discovering new stories behind the stones.
A Servant’s Devotion, a Family’s Gratitude:
Phoebe Jackson (1798-1858) Household
Servant
Phoebe Jackson was an African American servant in the
Boston household of Reverend Frederick Turell Gray and
his family. Gray was minister-at-large to the poor and Min-
ister of the Bulfinch Street Church. Unusual for the time,
Jackson was interred with the Grays in their lot at Mount
Auburn.
In 1925, nearly 70 years after Jackson’s death, a letter
arrived at the Cemetery from a Mrs. P.T. Jackson, one of
the Gray daughters. She was writi ng to ensure that the
inscription “Our Faithful Phoebe” was still visible on
Jackson’s flat, marble marker.
That Jackson was so beloved and thoughtfully remembered
in the hearts of the Grays, more than half a century after
her death, is a touching example of a family’s devotion to
an employee.
A Tragedy at Sea: The Sigourney Family (1873)
Lot #1729, Fir Ave
A cenotaph at Mount
Auburn honors Boston
manufacturer Henry
Sigourney, his wife, Amelie
Louise Rives, and their
children, Alfred, William,
and Amelie—all lost in
the sinking of the Ville
The sinking of the Steamship Ville du
du Havre in the Atlantic
Havre, circa 1873
Ocean on November 22,
1873. One son, young Henry, a Harvard freshman, was the
sole survivor of the family. He married, had several children,
and has descendants living in Massachusetts today. The fact that
the family decided to erect a cenotaph, a monument com-
memorating the family even though their remains are not
Spring 2010 | 5