Perry “Pinky” Samuel
1868 - 1938
Perry Samuel (center) is pictured to the right of the man rumored to be his birth father and his mother’s enslaver, Dr. Reuben Samuel. To the right of Perry is Zerelda, Dr. Samuel’s wife and the mother of outlaws Frank and Jesse James.
Perry Samuel’s mother Charlotte Garrett (above) was born into slavery in 1830 in Woodford County, Kentucky and was eventually sold to Dr. Reuben Samuel. She is shown on his 1850 Slave Schedule as a 21 year old Black Female. Names of the enslaved were not recorded and ages were approximations, not exact. After her emancipation, Charlotte moved to South Carolina, where she lived until her death at age 90. It is not clear if she ever married, though some records suggest she eventually wedded a man also enslaved by Dr. Reuben Samuel, named Samson.
Perry Samuel was born on Tuesday the 15th of September, 1868 in what is now Kearney, Missouri. He is believed to have been the son of an enslaved woman Charlotte Garrett, and Dr. Reuben Samuel, the white physician who was Charlotte’s enslaver. Charlotte was the housekeeper for the Samuel family at the James farm property in the now inactive Washington Township, just a few miles from Liberty. Reuben Samuel’s wife, Zerelda, was mother by a previous marriage to famed bank robbers and outlaws, Frank and Jesse James, making Perry Samuel their half brother.
Perry Samuel was born three years after the Civil War ended, yet he was woven into a culture that resisted reconstruction. In the 1860’s, Clay County was among sixteen Missouri counties known as, “Little Dixie” and was one of seven counties whose populations were still made up of more than 25 percent of enslaved persons. Sympathy for the Confederacy was prevalent and ownership of humans as property was widely accepted. Although historical records show many instances where enslaved women gave birth to their slaveholder’s offspring, as is suspected in the case of Perry Samuel, it was common for the white father to not claim paternity, but rather ownership over the child and to raise him or her as a servant. This is what we see in the case of Perry Samuel per census records.
1880 Census Records
Perry Samuel, 11, listed as “Servant” to Samuel/James family.
At age eleven, Clay County census records from 1880 show Perry Samuel was registered with the Samuel family on the James farm. The Samuel’s “slave cabins” were still standing at the time, and it is suggested that Perry Samuel was still living on the property where his mother had formerly lived before she was emancipated. Where the other Samuel children are listed as, “son” or “daughter” on the census and their occupations listed as, “at school” or “at home” Perry Samuel is listed as “Servant” in both relationship and occupation. Where the rest of the Samuel family is registered as “W” for white, Perry Samuel’s race is registered as “M” for “Mulatto,” a term used at the time for persons of mixed white and African American ancestry.
June 14, 1893
The Marriage Certificate between Perry Samuel and Littie Harris.
June 14th, 1893 Perry Samuel married Littie Harris (also recorded as Hanis) of Holt, Missouri. Although the following events are hard to trace, in the June 1900 census, Perry Samuel was 31 and, once again, listed at the Samuels residence as a “Servant” and as widowed. Around this time, Perry Samuel is seen in a photograph of the James / Samuel family, strewn out in front of all the posed serious faces with a wide smile, giving away a resilient and perhaps even gregarious disposition.
Perry Samuel pictured (front and center) with a wide mustached smile in front of the Samuel / James families.
Two months after the 1900 Census, Perry Samuel married Susie Willis of Liberty. On August 2, 1900, Reverend Charles Swader signed a marriage certificate as a Preacher of the Gospel, pronouncing Perry Samuel and Susie Willis as husband and wife. Susie was four months shy of her sixteenth birthday at the time and within a year their first child, Ruth, was born. A decade later, Perry and Susie had been married for ten years and owned their own home in Liberty, where they lived along with their four children, Ruth (9), Charlie (6), Dora May (4), and Fannie (3). Perry Samuel made his living shoveling coal at a mill during these years while Susie worked as a launderess at an Orphan Home.
August 2, 1900
A Marriage Certificate is filed for the marriage of Perry Samuel and Susie Willis.
In November of 1914 Perry and Susie mourned the deaths of two of their children, Charles (11) and Fannie (7), who lost their lives within a span of twelve days to typhoid fever. They buried them in the segregated section of Fairview Cemetery. A few years later, on February 3, 1917, their eldest daughter, Ruth, got married. Much like her mother had, Ruth married young, a shotgun wedding to Hubert Castle at age 16. They started a family within a year of their marriage, like Susie and Perry did. Just as he had been for Perry and Susie’s wedding seventeen years earlier, Reverend Swader was once again present to officiate the marriage of Perry and Susie’s daughter.
1920, Clay County, Perry Samuel worked as a teamster at a flour mill.
In 1920 Perry Samuel was working at a teamster at a flour mill, married twenty years to Susie, who stayed home in their Liberty rental with their daughters Dora (14) and Allie (7). Although no one can know the grief they suffered at the loss of Charles and Fannie, we do know they lived just two doors down from their eldest daughter, Ruth, her husband and their two children. They were most likely able to spend time enjoying and helping out with their granddaughters, Mary and Vera. Nine years later, in 1929, Susie Willis Samuel died at age 45 of unknown causes.
1930 Liberty Census Perry Samuel listed with Mat Dawson, daughter Ruth, and granddaughters Mary, Vera, and Lovell.
The next year on the 1930 census, Perry owned a home in Liberty, and his daughter Ruth and three granddaughters, Mary, Vera S, and Lovell M, lived with him, as well as Ruth’s new husband of two years, Mat Dawson. At the time Perry Samuel was working as a laborer around town doing odd jobs. He never remarried, but his wife Susie Willis Samuel, as well as his children Charles, and Fannie were all buried in the segregated section of Historic Fairview cemetery in unmarked graves.
Eight years later, on March 1, 1938, Perry Samuel died of a heart attack at age 69. He was laid to rest beside his family in the segregated section of Fairview cemetery in a grave that remains unmarked to this day. Even though Perry Samuel was born the son of an enslaved woman and was a servant to a man who was rumored to be his father, but never publicly claimed paternity, Perry Samuel built a life and a family for himself, during the strains of the reconstruction era and the time of Jim Crow. Through decades of hard work and untold griefs, he loved and supported his family and lived to see much of his legacy unfold before him. We honor his presence and story here and seek to reclaim his soul’s memory, as well as the memories of his family, through the Liberty African American Legacy Memorial.
Images and additional materials thanks to:
The National Archives
The Garrison School
Local Historian Cecelia Robinson
KCUR
Find a Grave
Ancestry Records and Census Records