Join historian Susan Cooke Soderberg on Friday, November 15, from 7:30-9pm for a Zoom presentation based on her upcoming book, “My Name is Not Tom.” Discover new findings about Reverend Josiah Henson’s life, revealing a more complex story beyond his autobiographies. Addition details below:
“New research beyond his autobiographies has revealed a very different Josiah Henson than previously portrayed in earlier biographies or even in four of his autobiographies. By extensive investigation of primary resources and visiting the places where he lived and paths that he traveled from Maryland to Kentucky to New England and Canada, the author has discovered a complex man, dedicated to his family and his community, driven by his search for freedom and knowledge, encompassed by his Christian morality.
Josiah Henson was an ordinary man who was able to rise out of enslavement by using his intelligence and insight to adapt to different situations and difficult predicaments. Fortified by his religious convictions and personal courage, he escaped enslavement in Kentucky with his wife and four children, returning several times later to lead others to freedom. In Canada he dedicated his life to helping his fellow refugees attain a better quality of life through spiritual guidance and education. His constant search for funding for a school near Dresden, Ontario led him to lecture circuits in New England and in England where he met many well-known and influential people, including Frederick Douglass, President Rutherford B. Hayes, Queen Victoria, and many others.
Unfortunately, all of his autobiographies after the first were heavily embellished, added to and even changed by unscrupulous publishers in order to take advantage of his association with the fictional character Uncle Tom from the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Josiah Henson finally got tired of this misrepresentation and began a speech in Scotland in 1877 by saying:
It has been spread abroad that “‘Uncle Tom’ is coming,” and that is what has brought you here. Now allow me to say that my name is not Tom, and never was Tom, and that I do not want to have any other name inserted in the newspapers for me than my own. My name is Josiah Henson, always was, and always will be.”
Go to https://germantownmdhistory.org to register for this free event.”