Mary Mildred Williams, was an American mixed-race child born into slavery who became a symbol used by abolitionists before the Civil War to advance the cause of ending slavery in the U.S.
Early life
Mary Mildred Williams, born Botts in 1847, was the second child of Seth Botts and his wife Elizabeth. Seth and Elizabeth were married in the early 1840s. Williams had an older brother, Oscar, and a younger sister, Adelaide.
Freedom
At age seven in 1855 she became free through the efforts of her father, an escaped slave. Botts had escaped bondage in 1850, renamed himself to Henry Williams, and spent the subsequent four years seeking out the help of prominent abolitionists in Boston in his quest to secure his family’s freedom. Williams, with the help of his wealthy backers, bought the property from Cornwell and ended his family’s bondage. This is how Henry’s daughter, Mary Mildred Williams, came to the attention of abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner.
Her photograph was published, and she accompanied Senator Charles Sumner, a leading abolitionist, on a publicity tour. The photo and tour made her famous, and she was considered a real-life Ida May, the child hero of the then popular novel about a white girl kidnapped into slavery, Ida May: a Story of Things Actual and Possible by Mary Hayden Pike. Mary's appearance was that of a white child, and abolitionists emphasized that fact to enlist sympathy, as well as to frighten Northerners that any child, regardless of appearance, might be snatched away and made a slave. Articles were published about her in the Boston Telegraph and the New York Times, and copies of her photograph were widely publicized. On May 19 and 20, 1856, Sumner spoke in the Senate comparing Southern political positions to the sexual exploitation of slaves then taking place in the South. Two days later Sumner was beaten almost to death on the floor of the Senate in the Capitol by Representative Preston Brooks from South Carolina, known as a hothead.
Mary never married nor had children. Her mother Elizabeth lived her life as a white woman and died in 1892. Her death certificate listed her maiden name as that of her white father: “Elizabeth A. Williams.” Mary also maintained her identity as a white woman and became a clerk at Boston’s Registry of Deeds in 1900. She rented an apartment in the Eleventh Ward of Boston. Her “partner” was a fellow professional named Mary Maynard, the child of immigrants from Ireland and England, who worked as a bookkeeper and probation officer. Mary Mildred Williams died in 1921 and her body was returned to Boston and buried with her family in an integrated cemetery.
