Who Was Aunt Dealy?

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Forging Family & Identity in Mid-19th Century America

Officially designated by President Gerald Ford in 1976, Black History Month has been an opportunity to celebrate achievements by African Americans and a time to recognize the significant role that Black people have had in the history of the United States. Dr. Carter G. Woodson (1875 – 1950), distinguished Black historian, author, and scholar, conceived of Black History Month as a way for Black people to be proud of their heritage, and for other Americans to understand and engage with this important historical material.

The 2021 Black History Month theme is “Black Family: Representation, Identity and Diversity,” exploring the African diaspora and the spread of Black families across the United States. In this context, we would like to share the story of Clara Körner, a Black woman who had an immeasurable yet often overlooked impact on the lives of the Körner family. As she lived through enslavement, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, Clara’s experience spanned a period of intense upheaval and change in America that can tell us much about our shared past and future.

Clara Körner, known as Aunt Dealy

Birth and Early Life

Clara, sometimes spelled “Clary” on official documents, was born in 1820 in what was then called Stokes County, before the southern part became Forsyth County in 1849. She was born into slavery, the daughter of a woman named Charity, with two sisters, Alise and Mary.

In Kerner family documents, Clara’s mother Charity was described as having “light skin and Indian [Indigenous North American] features,” Clara herself was noted to have “light, copper-colored skin, straight black hair, and strong Indian [Indigenous North American] features,” and her sister Mary was “so light she could almost pass for a white person” (1). Clara and her sisters’ paternity is unknown or undocumented, which was not uncommon for the time period. (2) (3).

Not much is certain about Clara’s early life, but from historical documents we know that her owner, John Kinnamon (sometimes spelled Kinamon on official documents), maintained a comparatively small ‘plantation’ or farm, growing a mix of subsistence and cash crops such as wheat, oats, potatoes, beans, corn, cotton, and tobacco, and livestock, including horses, mules, cattle, sheep, pigs, and chickens, as well as honey, flax, and wool (4).

Below: Map of Philip Kerner’s 452 acres and his siblings’ (John Frederick and Salome) tracts of land, 1830. Dotted lines represent main roads, including the Mountain Road (today’s West Mountain Street), Salem Road/Danville Road (today’s South Main Street), and Salisbury Road.

Clara’s unpaid and physically demanding labor would have included tending crops, cooking, cleaning, washing and ironing laundry, and helping to raise children. A typical day in the life of an enslaved woman during the 1820s – 1850s would involve labor from sunup to sundown, often with no opportunity for rest or leisure. Some slave owners offered Sundays as days of rest, while others did not (5).

Philip Kerner

We do not have documentation describing Kinnamon’s treatment of the people he held in bondage, but we do know that he allowed Clara to be “hired out” to neighbors for a limited time. In this way, Clara came to know Judith Kerner, a neighbor of Kinnamon’s. Judith’s husband, Philip Kerner, paid Kinnamon to have Clara serve as his wife’s personal maid (6).

When Kinnamon passed away in 1842, his assets, including enslaved people, were to be sold at auction (7). Charity, Clara’s mother, attempted to prevent her daughters being “sold South,” a euphemism for being transferred to bondage in Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama, to work on vast cotton, rice, or sugar plantations. Disease, violence, and mortality occurred at much higher rates in the Deep South than in the Mid-Atlantic States (8). Charity must have felt desperate for her daughters to avoid this fate.

She “succeeded in finding a good master as purchaser for Ailse,” according to J. Gilmer Körner, Jr., author of Joseph of Kernersville.

We understand this phrasing this problematic today. While the conditions of slavery were unevenly applied, and some masters were far kinder than others, the underlying dehumanization of enslaved people was always palpable in enslaved peoples’ lack of autonomy or choice. The ever-present threats of family separation, violence, and lack of free will underscore the unequal power dynamics between “master” and “slave” (9). Unfortunately, we do not know what happened to Ailse, as she is never again mentioned in historical documents.

For Mary, Charity was able to entreat a group of Quakers, as members of a Christian religious sect that was pro-abolition and actively practiced manumission (the freeing of enslaved people by their owner), to purchase Mary, and they did so, eventually helping her get passage to a Free State (10).

As for Clara, Charity asked William Gardner, a local Quaker, and Judith Kerner’s father to purchase Clara. According to Joseph of Kernersville, Judith “liked Clara, and wanted to keep her.” Gardner purchased Clara for $356. He transferred his ownership to Philip Kerner, Judith’s husband (11).

Unfortunately, Charity herself was unable to avoid the fate that she had worked so hard to prevent for Ailse, Mary, and Clara, and she was taken away after the sale. The sisters were allowed to spend one last night with their mother at the encampment made by the band of slave traders before they headed south in the morning on the Great Wagon Road. To our knowledge, Clara never saw her sisters or her mother again (12).

Judith Gardner

The Deed of Sale for Clara (“Clary”), 1844

 In consideration of the sum of three hundred and fifty six dollars to Mr. John Henley, Executor of John Kinamon deceased by P. Kerner in hand paid the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged in a bond payable on the 1st day of February 1844 in having the highest bid made by Wm. Gardner and daughter and said P. Kerner at publick sale the 31st December 1842 – I do by law present bargain, sell unto him a certain negro slave, named Clary aged about twenty three […]

From Clara to “Aunt Dealy”

At age 24, Clara came to live full-time at the Kerner plantation, as the property of Philip Kerner. She joined eight others in enslavement on Philip’s larger plantation, including farmhands Cal, Alex, Tom, and four other unnamed people (13).

Although Clara was allowed to work in the Kerners’ house, she probably did not sleep there. Likely, she shared an outbuilding, located some distance away from the main home, with other enslaved people, or stayed in a makeshift space above the summer kitchen (14).

Philip Kerner and his son Jule, ca. 1860

Clara came to work primarily as Judith Kerner’s maid, waiting on her, cooking, cleaning, and washing and ironing laundry. She was instrumental in providing childcare, feeding, and help with the Kerner children. In 1843, when the property transfer was completed from the Kinnamon estate to Philip’s, there were several children in the home, including Florina (age 14), Antoinette ( age 11), Gaston (age 6), Sally (age 3), and Joseph John, a newborn. In 1844, Medora was born, followed by two children who died in infancy, and Jule Gilmer, known as the pet of the family and the future builder of Körner’s Folly, who was born in 1851 (15).

Caring for children probably took much of Clara’s time, and she managed to do so with apparent devotion, illustrated by the formation of her nickname, “Aunt Dealy” during this period. Clara used “dearie” as a term of affection for the children, who could not pronounce the word when they repeated it to her, using “dealie” instead. Eventually, according to Gilmer in Joseph of Kernersville, Clara became exclusively known as Aunt Dealy and her “real name Clara was forgotten” (16).

Reading this passage from the family history today, we recognize that this “forgetting” must have been a double-edged sword for Clara. On the one hand, she had arrived at a place in the world that was filled with people who cared about her enough to use an affectionate nickname when speaking to or about her (17). On the other hand, to care for this family was her lot in life as an enslaved woman, and she had little choice but to perform her responsibilities, casting off a previous identity and family to reconcile herself to her reality of a new life with the Kerners.

In 1853, two years after little Jule’s birth, Judith Kerner passed away from pneumonia, and Clara was an even more important maternal figure for the four young Kerner children. This was a tumultuous time for Philip and his children, as unrest grew in advance of the Civil War.

Although Philip reportedly “abhorred” slavery (18), as a Southern landowner and enslaver, Philip’s economic fortunes were tied up in this system of bondage.  He did not take steps during his lifetime to free his enslaved people, but instead at this death. His last will and testament, first drafted in 1860, included the bequest that:

 His servant woman Clara with the provision and full injunction that they are to send her to a free State unless it can be so provided for her that she may have her full freedom here,” together with $100 to be paid to her; the giving of her freedom, and the money to be a reward for her faithfulness and her long service in rearing my children. All of this I think she is fully entitled to for her carefulness and her trustworthy faithfulness to my family (19).

Sarah Gibbons, second wife of Philip Kerner

From the 1850s to the 1870s, Philip served Forsyth County as a local magistrate, keeping the peace between Unionists and Secessionists and performing judicial functions, and although North Carolina did not formally secede from the Union until 1861, there was much violence and discord surrounding ‘the slavery question.’ It was also common during this period for “slave patrols” and county militias to track down runaways, harass people of color, and retaliate against whites for freeing their slaves, which was also punishable by fine (20). We do not know if this culture of fear and violence is directly tied to Philip not freeing Clara in his lifetime, but we should acknowledge that it could have had significant influence.

In 1861, Phillip Kerner began sending his children North for school.  First, Joseph was sent to a Quaker school in Indiana, followed in 1865 by Philip’s youngest children, Medora and Jule. Economically, the household was challenged, as food and other items became scarce, and the value of currency plummeted, requiring more unpaid labor to produce subsistence crops for the family. In 1863, with President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, Clara was legally freed.

However, she continued to work for Philip Kerner, and when he married a woman named Sarah Gibbons and had two additional sons, Henry Clay and Corwin, Clara was there to provide assistance (21). It remains unknown if Clara was paid for her work, or perhaps “given room and board” in exchange for her labor in the post-Emancipation era.

TRUE or FALSE?

Did the Emancipation Proclamation free all enslaved people in the South?

FALSE! The 1863 Proclamation actually freed relatively few enslaved people. It was not until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, a requirement for readmission to the Union, that North Carolina held a Constitutional Convention, ratifying the legislation in this state and ending slavery in practice as well as law. Thus began the period known as Reconstruction, which toggled between the rapid advancement of “freedmen” and a predictable, though ghastly, backlash of white supremacy.

Why did Clara remain with Philip and Sarah Kerner after Emancipation? We don’t know the answer to this question, and likely never fully will. We do know that Clara could not read or write, and thus could not leave a historical record of her thoughts or intentions. She may have had strong familial feelings for the children and the adults in her care.

Clara Körner’s spinning wheel, which she would have used to spin yarn from cotton or wool. Weaving this yarn into fabric and offering it for sale helped Clara gain some financial independence in the era of Reconstruction.

She likely lacked the funds or capacity to locate her mother or sisters or move out of the South. There is also the possibility that Clara was content in her situation, with Sarah reporting that Clara was “showing great expertise as a weaver; that on the loom which she had set up in her cottage she was making this pay; that she received $12 in gold for enough material for a suit of clothes, and that she was saving all of it” (22).

There was also the ever-present threat of those who refused to let the ideas of the Confederacy die, and who wreaked vengeance on freed men and women alike. In an 1868 letter to his daughter Medora, Philip describes an environment that has “taken a turn for the worse,” with “various reports the Ku Klux Klan are quite numerous and even in this immediate neighborhood. […] it was said that two hundred were seen near Salem, and & about 3 or 4 weeks ago 15 or 20, or a large company, were seen passing up the hollow road toward Loves Meeting House. About 12 or 15 days ago, reports say, a large crowd were seen passing through Kernersville on horseback about 11 o’clock at night, very noiselessly. I know not their object, but it is not for any good” (23). Philip’s description of the turbulence convinced Medora to stay in Indiana with Jule for the foreseeable future. We can only imagine what effect this show of force would have had on Clara and other Black people recently freed from bondage.

Later Life and the Folly

By 1870, as the younger children grew, Clara began to keep house for Joseph, Jule’s older brother, who had “fixed up his new home in great style” (24), splitting her time between two the households to continue to care for Henry and Corwin (25). In 1871, Phillip updated his will, with the new draft removing language about manumission, and added a bequest for a farm and house for Clara (26).

In 1875, Philip Kerner passed away after suffering a stroke. His widow Sarah was now alone with Henry Clay and Corwin, and Clara returned to help her full-time. Philip’s will was faithfully executed and Clara received a small farm, which adjoined Sarah’s (27).

During this period of Reconstruction, many people who had survived enslavement continued to practice their skills in agriculture and tending livestock as tenant farmers or sharecroppers, and tried to make a living growing subsistence crops for their families, as well as, cash crops like cotton, corn, and tobacco for large landowners. Clara tended her own small gardens and home with pride and skill. Many formerly enslaved people also decided to keep the surnames that were given to them during their enslavement; as did Clara, hence the name Clara Kerner/Körner appears on official Census documents (28).

Following his father’s death, Jule returned to Kernersville, moving into his brother Joseph’s home once again and planning for the next phase of his career (29). In 1878 Jule began construction of a combination studio, office, reception hall, ball room, carriage house, and stables, close to the Salem Road (now Kernersville’s Main Street), in the southwest corner of Joseph’s tract of land. Joseph helped Jule manage the project, and the brothers completed the whimsical, unforgettable construction of “Körner’s Folly” in 1880.  Also around this time Jule reverted his surname Kerner back to its original Germanic spelling, “Körner,” which had become Americanized when his grandfather Joseph arrived in New York from the Black Forest region of Germany in 1765.

Körner’s Folly, completed in 1880

Tin lantern from the Körner’s Folly Collection, donated by J.G. Wolfe III

Thus situated with an impressive home, Jule needed help running his household. Clara, the woman on whom he depended as a child, stepped in to assist.  As family legend goes, she gently prodded Jule to seek a wife. He found one in Polly Alice Masten, the daughter of the Forsyth County Sheriff Mathias Masten, who had been a good friend of Jule’s father Philip.

To the left is a decorative punched-tin lantern belonging to Clara, holding a candle stub inside. She would have likely used this lantern daily as she walked from the main house to her home.

In preparation for his marriage, Jule built a two-room cottage on the grounds of Körner’s Folly for Clara (31). Echoes of the elaborate design of Jule’s masterpiece can still be seen in the architectural details of Clara’s home, including beautiful hardwood flooring, plaster lion’s head adornments, and crown molding. Later, Jule and Polly Alice had two children, a son, Gilmer, born in 1887, and a daughter, Doré, born in 1889, that became the next generation of Körners in Clara’s keeping.

“Aunt Dealy’s Cottage” built by Jule Körner. The original structure featured two rooms (visible on the right side of the home). Additional rooms were added later on the left side.

Although Clara was nearly 70 years old, she remained an indomitable force in the kitchen of Körner’s Folly. Doré remembers:

Her vegetables were cooked perfectly. She seasoned them with bacon drippings, ham hock or fat back. The bowl of turnip greens was always carefully topped with overlapping slices of hard-cooked eggs. Of all the corn bread she made, none was as popular as the little corn cakes cooked on top of the stove in a black iron frying pan, she always served them with summer vegetables. My father was delighted when I learned how to make them (32).

The stove in the Main Kitchen in Körner’s Folly, where Clara would have cooked for the Körner family.

In 1895, Clara received a surprise visit from a young gentleman, described by Jule’s son and biographer Gilmer as “an elegantly dressed man with a Van Dyke beard, who would never have been suspected as being colored” (33). It appears as though Mary, Clara’s sister, had made it to the free state of Pennsylvania in 1843, married a successful businessman, and had a son. Clara’s nephew, then living in Norristown, Pennsylvania, had received letters written on behalf of Clara, and had come to meet her. They exchanged subsequent letters, and he sent her photographs of himself and his wife, which Clara kept in an apron pocket for the rest of her days – her only physical ties with her kin that we know of.

In 1896, Clara passed away at the age of 76, attended by many in the Kerner/Körner family, including Jule and Polly Alice, their children Gilmer and Doré, Joseph Kerner and his wife, and Henry Kerner and his wife. Her funeral was held on the lawn at Körner’s Folly, and was a non-segregated event, featuring both a white and Black preacher. In her will, she left her property and possessions to Jule and Joseph (34).

After her death, Jule attempted to have Clara buried in the family plot at the Kernersville Moravian Church, but was denied the request because of their policy of segregation. Not to  dissuaded, Jule purchased a small strip of land adjacent to the cemetery and laid Clara to rest as close to the family as possible, later erecting a surrounding brick wall to create a unified site (35).

View of the Kerner/Körner family plot at Kernersville Moravian Church, with Clara’s headstone in the foreground. The low brick wall that encloses the plot, echoing the shape of the porch walls of Körner’s Folly, can also be seen.

Clara Körner’s headstone in God’s Acre at Kernersville Moravian Church.

Clara’s Legacy

To this day, Clara’s story remains a complex one. Jule Körner and his family no doubt cared for Clara like a member of their family, as evidenced by her funeral and the family gravesite. Clara had privileges that were unique for an emancipated Black woman in the 19th century, such as owning her own property. But we will most likely never know Clara’s true self. For most of her life, it was illegal for her read and write, and her thoughts and feelings have been filtered through the eyes and minds of the Körner and Kerner family members who communicated for her through letters to one another over the years. She left behind no written historical record of her own, other than the X to mark her consent on the property deed from Philip Kerner.

Aunt Dealy’s chair, donated by Jules Gilmer Körner, IV, located in Aunt Dealy’s cottage.

Fortunately, care was taken by the Körner/Kerner family and their descendants to preserve material aspects of Clara’s life that were probably very significant to her: her spinning wheel and wool carders, which helped her gain financial independence, her handmade chair, on which she must have had much-deserved rest, her punched-tin lantern, a symbol of her travels from one house to another, and the photos and letters of her nephew, her only physical ties to her kin by birth.

This research has been compiled to gain a clearer picture of Clara Körner’s complex life. Clara’s lifetime spanned the better part of a century, a time of enormous change in America, and her story is representative of the upheaval that slavery, its end, and the Reconstruction period have had on the dispersion of Black families across the country. In honor of Clara and in celebration of Black History Month, we appreciate all who have made this exhibit possible.

Sources

(1) Körner, Jules Gilmer Jr. Joseph of Kernersville, Seeman Printery, 1958, p. 56.
(2) Public Broadcasting Service. “Conditions of Antebellum Slavery, 1830 – 1860”. Africans in America. Accessed January 26, 2021. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2956.html
(3) Slaves and Free Persons of Color. An Act Concerning Slaves and Free Persons of Color, 1830 c 6 s 2, “No slave to teach another to read.”
(4) Fearnbach, Heather/Fearnbach History Services. “Forsyth County’s Agricultural Heritage. February 2012, p. 10.
(5) “Narrative of James Curry, A Fugitive Slave.” The Liberator, January 10, 1840. – Original Source, NCPedia. Accessed January 26, 2021.
(6) Körner, Jules Gilmer Jr. Joseph of Kernersville, Seeman Printery, 1958, p. 56
(7) Ibid, p. 56
(8) Public Broadcasting Service. “Conditions of Antebellum Slavery, 1830 – 1860”. Africans in America. Accessed January 26, 2021. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2956.html
(9) Cone, James H. “Christianity and Black Power.” Risks of Faith the Emergence of a Black Theology of Liberation, 1968-1998. Boston, MA: Beacon, 1999, pp. 14-15.
(10) Körner, Jules Gilmer Jr. Joseph of Kernersville, Seeman Printery, 1958, p. 56
(11) Ibid, p. 56.
(12) Ibid, p. 56
(13) Ibid, p. 57
(14) Back of the Big House, John Michael Vlach
(15) Körner, Jules Gilmer Jr. Joseph of Kernersville, Seeman Printery, 1958, p. 57
(16) Ibid, p. 57
(17) Excerpts of letters from Philip Kerner’s daughters Medora and Florina, found in Joseph of Kernersville, pp. 68-70.
(18) Körner, Jules Gilmer Jr. Joseph of Kernersville, Seeman Printery, 1958 p. 60
(19) Ibid, p. 78
(20) Slaves and Free Persons of Color. An Act Concerning Slaves and Free Persons of Color, 1830 c 9 s 1, “How slaves may be emancipated.”
(21) Körner, Jules Gilmer Jr. Joseph of Kernersville, Seeman Printery, 1958 P. 67
(22) Ibid, p. 71
(23) Ibid. P. 73
(24) Ibid p. 72
(25) Körner, Jules Gilmer Jr. Joseph of Kernersville, Seeman Printery, 1958, p. 76
(26) Ibid, p. 78
(27) Ibid p. 79
(29) U.S. Census Bureau, 1870. Inhabitants of Forsyth County, North Carolina, p. 110. Accessed January 26, 2021. https://archive.org/details/populationschedu1137unit/page/n109/mode/2up
(30) Körner, Jules Gilmer Jr. Joseph of Kernersville, Seeman Printery, 1958, p. 88
(31) Ibid, p. 92
(32) Tartan, Beth. The Körner’s Folly Cookbook, 1977, pp. 27-28.
(33) Körner, Jules Gilmer Jr. Joseph of Kernersville, Seeman Printery, 1958, p. 56
(34) Last Will and Testament of Clara Kerner, probated in the Forsyth County Superior Court, September 1896.
(35) Körner, Jules Gilmer Jr. Joseph of Kernersville, Seeman Printery, 1958, p. 89