Mary Howard Schoolcraft, (c1818 - 1878) : Southern Apologist

One of the lesser known authors who was born in Beaufort District is Mary Howard Schoolcraft. A blog post about her has been in my "to do" box for many years - and after a little fresh research, now I remember why the post has been languishing. 

Unfortunately, very little is know about her early life in Beaufort District. She was probably born between 1818 and 1820.  I cannot determine who her parents were though she mentions growing up in a Howard Mansion called "Orange Grove" in her Letters on the Condition of the African Race in the United States by a Southern Lady (1852). Mary Howard married geographer, geologist and ethnologist Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793-1864) in Washington, DC, becoming his second wife on January 13, 1847. She did not have any biological children, though they adopted a son and she was the stepmother of her husband's children. Her relationship with her stepchildren was rather fraught. 

There is a great deal more information about Henry than Mary. Indeed, they were married only a few years before he became paralyzed in 1849. It is believed that he had a series of mini-strokes thereafter. As a result of his poor health, Mary took over the publication negotiations for his six-volume Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Conditions, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States (1851-1857). The series was reissued a few years later as Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge (Lippincott, Grambo, 1860). Given that the volumes were so highly regarded in their time, the Beaufort College had a copy in its holdings. You can see it on the inventory of the confiscated Beaufort Library listed for the auction that was stopped by Secretary Chase in 1862. It is item 342 in the image below. The volumes were a product of their times, exhibiting biases and racial theories that have been discredited. 

(Facsimile of Catalogue of the Beaufort Library for sale, 1862, BDC Archives) 

By 1861 Schoolcraft was confined to his bed and died on 10 December 1864 in Washington, D.C. After her husband's death, Mary styled herself as "the Widow of the late Indian historian of the United States government" in her will and as she harassed congressmen, state senators, poets and publishers to create physical and literary monuments to her dead husband. No one stepped up. Embittered, she styled herself "an impoverished widow" after 1866, running a boardinghouse in the property she owned on F Street in Washington until her death. She was buried beside him in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington in mid-March 1878. Her will written in her hand is dated July 24, 1872 and posted on Ancestry Library Edition. It states in part: 

Our union constituted the greatest happiness either of us had ever experienced while on earth; and though our children caused us many sorrows, and agents defrauded us of our fortune -- still we managed to live clear of debt and when he died leaving me sole executrix, of his estate, I found little more than enough of his means left than to pay the expenses of his long illness and funeral.        

Source Information : Ancestry.com. Washington, District of Columbia, U.S., Wills and Probate Records 1801-1999 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2025. Note: The description of the record is incorrect as regards the name of the executor and the relationships ascribed between Mary Howard Schoolcraft and some of her beneficiaries. Another example of why it is so important to read the original document.

She ordered the sale of her house upon her death with proceeds mostly to be used for the support of the Schoolcraft's adopted son, Julius C. Lully. The will was proved on July 16, 1878. 

Her personal oeuvre is small. She wrote the Letters on the Condition of the African Race in the United States, addressing four letters to her brother General John Harrison Howard (1801 - 1876) between September and November 1851. Gen. Howard had recently represented St. Luke's Parish at the Beaufort District's Southern Rights Association meeting on 11 November 1850 and owned Whitehall Plantation near Grahamville. He was in lock step with his sister's anti-abolitionist and pro-slavery views.

She would expand on these themes in her novel, The Black Gauntlet: A Tale of Plantation Life in South Carolina that the Lippincott Company published only as a subsidized publication. The company saw little market for her book in 1859 - 1860 given that people were "weary of the subject, though the politicians continue to agitate it." She paid Lippincott $741.69 to publish 1500 copies spread over four small printings. Brian W. Dippie wrote that Schoolcraft's goal was not profit, but to publish a public panegyric to herself: "The Black Gauntlet was a shapeless, grotesquely self-indulgent exercise in conceit; it had no plot, no point, no characters. But it had a heroine, Mary Schoolcraft disguised as Musidora, and it had a cast of knaves and fools as counterpoint to her virtues." 

Richard Newman described the book on the McBlain Books catalog as "One of the most rabidly and proudly racist novels written by Southerners to counter the anti-slavery sentiments of novels such as Uncle Tom's Cabin." Schoolcraft clearly spells out her views in the eight-page "Dedication to Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, LL.D." foreword. She argues that the Bible sanctions slavery, defends its practices as humane, and applauds the opportunity slavery provides masters to introduce Christianity to their enslaved people and thereby to save souls from eternal damnation. In other words, she was an unrepentant Southern apologist.  

The Library of Congress identifies Mary as the "A Southern Lady" who wrote The Household of Bouverie (1860) while many others credit the work to Catherine Ann Ware Warfield. 

The Library of Congress owns the Henry Rowe Schoolcraft Papers, of which some documents have been digitized. His first wife, Jane Johnston had far more literary import than his second. The Johnston and Schoolcraft Families Timelines are quite helpful in tracking when and where Henry is through the years.   

The Research Room has a vertical file of clippings about her and two copies of The Black Gauntlet. The one published in 1860 was owned by a John Williamson who paid $1.25 for it on September 11, 1860. Our other copy was rebound at some unspecified date since its publication in 1861. 

Plantation Life: The Narratives of Mrs. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Negro Universities Press, 1969 combines both of her works into one online volume. 

For a 21st century person, the belief of Southern apologists such as Mary, William John Grayson and Robert Barnwell Rhett that enslavement was a morally just and beneficial institution is abhorrent. But then again, history is not always a tale of inspiration, progress, and goodwill. We must study history in its fullness, taking into account events and actions from a variety of perceptions - even when another's views may be distasteful or disturbing. Understanding the viewpoint of a 19th century person can be challenging.   

SOURCES: 

Find-A-Grave website: Mary Howard Schoolcraft

"Who doth but Patient wait," in Catlin and His Contemporaries: The Politics of Patronage by Brian W. Dippie, University of Nebraska Press, 1990, pp. 398-402. 

Ancestry.com. Washington, District of Columbia, U.S., Wills and Probate Records 1801-1999 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2025. 

The Black Gauntlet, Uncle Tom's Cabin & American Culture website by Stephen Railton & the University of Virginia, 2012. 

Promotional sales notice, The Black Gauntlet: A Tale of Plantation Life in South Carolina by Mary Howard (Mrs. Henry R.) Schoolcraft, McBlain Books, link no longer active. 

"Diplomacy in the Time of Cholera" by Leo Filipczak, Chequamegon History: Primary Research about the Chequamegon Region before 1860 blog. 

Schoolcraft, Longfellow, Hiawatha by Chase S. Osborn and Stellanova Osborn (Lancaster, PA: The Jaques Cattell Press, 1942). 

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft by Kimberly Harper, Historic Missourians website by the State Historical Society of Missouri. 

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft Papers, Library of Congress

"Schoolcraft, Mary Howard" by Harriette Cuttino Buchanan, Encyclopedia.com, Accessed 1 November 2025. 

"The Black Gauntlet," Wikipedia, last edited on 29 March 2925, at 17:15 (UTC). 

Congressional Cemetery Interment Index includes obituaries and biographical sketches of both Henry and Mary, last updated, 27 July 2001, accessed 18 November 2008, link no longer active. 

Reminder: The Library is closed Thursday, November 27 and Friday, November 28, 2025 for the Thanksgiving holidays. Regular hours resume on Saturday, November 29, 2025.