Women in the 19C United States of America: Another Portrait of African American Muslim Yarrow Mamout 1822

Monday, March 1, 2021

Another Portrait of African American Muslim Yarrow Mamout 1822

1822 James Alexander Simpson (American artist & teacher) Yarrow Mount. Peabody Room, Georgetown Public Library

Georgetown artist James Alexander Simpson, a sometime painter & instructor at Georgetown College, painted this portrait of Yarrow Mamout in 1822. The Simpson portrait appears to have been painted from life & is not a copy of the much better known 1819 portrait (done when Mamout was about 83 years old) by the celebrated American painter, Charles Willson Peale. The Simpson painting was probably done in 1822 (the date on the label next to the painting), about two years before Yarrow's death.

Yarrow Mamout was born in Africa around 1736 and was a teenager when enslaved & brought to America, apparently no later than 1752. Yarrow (Mamout was his first name) was born & educated in Guinea, West Africa. Recent research shows that Yarrow probably was of Fulani heritage (in which the name Yaro still is used) & was literate in Arabic.

At about age 14 he was captured by slave traders & shipped to the United States, where Samuel Beall of Maryland purchased him. Beall bequeathed Yarrow to his son, Brooke Beall, who had Yarrow make bricks for a house he was building in Georgetown. After Brooke Beall's death his widow freed Yarrow in 1796. Yarrow saved the money he earned as a laborer & after 4 years was able to purchase a house & other property in Georgetown.

According to James H. Johnston’s 2006 Washington Post article, Yarrow himself was a survivor, having amassed a hundred-dollar nest egg for his retirement. Twice, merchants who held the money for him lost it when their businesses failed. Yarrow scraped & saved a third time, putting aside two hundred dollars, which he used to buy shares in Georgetown’s Columbia Bank, finally allowing him to support himself in retirement with the interest from his investment.

Yarrow, who followed the Muslim faith at a time when few Americans did, was immortalized by these two white artists near the end of his life. Yarrow reportedly was buried in his yard; research is ongoing into whether his remains are still there & whether any part of the house at 3324, 3330-3332, Dent Place NW in Georgetown could have been Yarrow's.

Sources:
Valerie Babb, Carroll Gibbs, & Kathleen Lesko, Black Georgetown Remembered (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1991), 11-12.

Thomas J. Carrier, Historic Georgetown: A Walking Tour, Images of America Series (Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 1999).

Kenneth C. Haley, “A Nineteenth Century Portraitist & More: James Alexander Simpson,” Maryland Historical Magazine 72-3 (fall 1977): 410-411.

Yarrow Mamout, Vertical Files, Peabody Room, Georgetown Public Library

James H. Johnston, "The Man in the Knit Cap," Washington Post Magazine, Feb. 5, 2006.

Humanities Magazine, November/December 2008 Volume 29, Number 6
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About this blog

In colonial America, men were considered superior to woman in all ways. In a strict patriarchal hierarchy, men controlled not only wealth & political power but also how their children were raised, religious questions, & all matters of right & wrong.

In the early part of the 19Cy, however, many Americans experienced a revolution in gender. The doctrine of “separate spheres” maintained that woman’s sphere was the world of privacy, family, & morality while man’s sphere was the public world -– economic striving, political maneuvering, & social competition. But women were interested in equality.

In 1848, New York passed the Married Woman’s Property Act. Now a woman wasn’t automatically liable for her husband’s debts; she could enter contracts on her own; she could collect rents or receive an inheritance in her own right; she could file a lawsuit on her own behalf. She became for economic purposes, an individual. By 1900, every state has passed legislation modeled after this, granting married women some control over their property and earnings.

In 1870 after the Civi War, the 15th Amendment was ratified, saying, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” African-Americans could vote, but women could not.

But it was not until 1920, that the 19th Amendment was ratified granting women the right to vote. “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”