William Costin ( - May 31, 1842) was a free African-American activist and scholar who successfully challenged District of Columbia slave codes in the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia.
Early life
Little is known of Costin's upbringing. His enslaved mother was Ann Dandridge-Costin, whose father is reputed to have been Col. John Dandridge of Williamsburg, Virginia, making her the half-sister of Martha Washington.
Costin is believed to have been of African and Cherokee descent. Native American slavery had ended and she should have been free under Virginia law via her maternal ancestry, but the slave colony put priority on African ancestry. While Ann and several of her children lived at the Mount Vernon plantation, owned by George Washington on the Potomac River in Fairfax County, Virginia, there is no evidence her son William lived there. He may have lived nearby with other family.
For more than a century, historians have identified Costin's probable father as John Parke Custis, George Washington's stepson. citing family-held genealogy as well as Elizabeth Van Lew "dossier" concerning Harriett Costin, William Costin's daughter Some debate Costin's legal status as "free" or "enslaved". However, his mother was manumitted by Thomas Law, in 1802 shortly after the death of his mother-in-law, Martha Washington, and five years later Law emancipated Ann's children (including William) as well as his wife, Delphy Costin.Weincek p. 290 also mentions an 1871 Congressional Report, but only the Elizabeth Van Lew papers are cited.
Career Around 1800, Costin was transferred from Mount Vernon to Washington City, what later became known as Washington, D.C. About that time, he married Philadelphia "Delphy" Judge, whom Martha Washington had given to her granddaughter Elizabeth Parke Custis Law as a wedding present in 1796. William, As well as Delphy and their children were manumitted in 1807 by Thomas Law, Elizabeth's husband. (see below).
In 1812, Costin built a house on A Street South on Capitol Hill. There he and his wife Delphy raised a large family.
From 1818, Costin worked as a porter of the Bank of Washington. He worked to save his money and buy properties in the developing capital. In 1818, Costin helped start a school for African-American children, which his daughter, Louisa Parke Costin (c. 1804 - October 31, 1831), eventually led. It was known as the first public school for black children in the city.
In the August 1835 Snow Riot, when a white mob burned abolitionist institutions and those associated with free blacks, it spared the school.
In addition to the school, Costin created other organizations. In 1821, he helped found the Israel Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, led by an African-American minister.Cromwell, John W. (1917). The First Negro Churches in the District of Columbia, 64-106, at 68 (Lancaster, Pa.; Washington, D. C.; The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, Inc.); and published in the Journal of Negro History 7, no.1 (January 1922), 64-106 ("Among the men and women active in the first efforts were Scipio Beans, George Simms, Peter Schureman, George Hicks, Dora Bowen, William Costin, William Datcher, William Warren and George Bell, one of the three colored men who fifteen years before had erected a building for a Negro school.") In June 1825, Costin co-founded an African-American masonic lodge known as Social Lodge #1 (originally #7).Miller, Randall M., and John David Smith (1997). Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group), (Costin served as the third Worshipful Master of this lodge, dying while still in office.), at 265 ("Beside churches and schools, free Negroes associated with one another in various ways....The Prince Hall Freemasons (named after the founder of black freemasonry in America) attracted members notable for their economic achievements—Absalom Jones and James Forten of Philadelphia, William Wormley and William C. Costin of Washington, D.C.") In December 1825, he helped found the Columbian Harmony Society, providing burial benefits and a cemetery for use by African Americans. Working with nearly the same group with whom he started other organizations, including fellow hack driver William Wormley () and educator George Bell (1761–1843), Costin served as the Society's vice president through 1826.Sluby, Sr., Paul E., and Stanton Lawrence Wormley (2001). History of the Columbian Harmony Society and of Harmony Cemetery (Rev ed. Washington, D.C.: The Society).
Legal challenge
Challenge to Surety Bond Law In 1821, Costin challenged part of the D.C. Code which restricted African Americans. The administration of Mayor Samuel Nicholas Smallwood had enacted that section to dissuade free blacks from settling there. The law required that free persons of color had:
to appear before the mayor with documents signed by three 'respectable' white inhabitants of their neighborhood vouching for their good character and means of subsistence. If the evidence was satisfactory to the mayor, the individuals were to post a yearly $20 bond with a 'good and respectable' white person as assurance of their 'good, sober and orderly conduct,' and to ensure that they would not become public charges or beggars in the streets. [T]o post an annual twenty dollar cash bond and present three references from white neighbors, purportedly to guarantee their peaceful behavior."An Early Civil Rights Victory in a D.C. Court", Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit
Costin refused to comply, and was fined five dollars by a justice of the peace. He appealed his fine to the court.
In the case, Chief Judge William Cranch accepted that the City charter authorized it "to prescribe the terms and conditions upon which free Negroes and mulattoes may reside in the city." (He was a nephew of the second U.S. President John Adams). Costin asked the court to strike the law entirely, saying that Congress could not delegate powers to the city that were unconstitutional, and that "the Constitution knows no distinction of color."
Cranch defended the peace-bond law by pointing to certain barriers in the state voting and jury laws of the time, writing:
It is said that the [C]onstitution gives equal rights to all the citizens of the United States, in the several states. But that clause of the [C]onstitution does not prohibit any state from denying to some of its citizens some of the political rights enjoyed by others. In all the states certain qualifications are necessary to the right of suffrage; the right to serve on juries, and the right to hold certain offices; and in most of the states the absence of the African color is among those qualifications.
But Cranch conceded that the law was unfair to free blacks who had long lived in the city and contributed to it, noting that they could not compel whites to give surety, and that the law threatened to force families apart. He ruled that those who had lived in the District prior to the law's enactment were exempted from having to abide by it. He said, "It would seem to be unreasonable to suppose that Congress intended to give the [city] corporation the power to banish those free persons of color who had been guilty of no crime."
Personal life
Marriage
In 1800, Costin married Philadelphia "Delphy" Judge (c. 1779 — December 13, 1831), the younger sister of Oney "Ona" Maria, known as Oney Judge (c. 1773 — February 25, 1848). Both woment were daughters of Betty (c.1738 – 1795) and "dower" slaves, owned by the Estate of Daniel Parke Custis, but under the control of Martha Washington (Custis's widow). According to Virginia Estate law, the dower slaves would pass to the Custis children upon Martha's death.
Children Louisa Parke Costin (1804 – 31 October 1831). Taught at the Washington, D.C. school for Black children founded by her father.
Ann Parke Costin (1807 – ?). Following Louisa's death at age 37, taught at the school founded by their father. "Louisa, age 2, and Ann Costin, age 4 months, were manumitted by Thomas Law on June 13, 1807."Mary V. Thompson, The Only Unavoidable Source of Regret: George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2019), p. 143.
Charlotte Parke Costin (1808 – 1880)
Frances "Fanny" Parke Costin (18xx – ?), married William Lee
William Parke Custis Costin (1814 – 1876)
Harriet Parke Costin (1820 – ?), married Richard A. Fisk, November 1849.Fisk-Costin marriage license, from D.C. Archives.
George Calvert Parke Costin (1822 – 1876), Died and was buried in Sydney, Australia.
Adopted daughters? In addition to the five daughters and two sons William Costin listed in his Will (above),Will of William Costin, Washington, D.C., District and Probate Courts. Wills, Box 0014. he and his wife adopted four biracial girls. Martha Costin may have been one of those four.
Martha Costin (1817 – 1898), married Woolberton Days (1809 – 10 May 1884) on 13 June 1848
Other Relatives In 1807, Costin purchased the freedom of six of his sisters and half-sisters from Thomas Law, the husband of Martha Washington's granddaughter Elizabeth Parke Custis. Costin paid "ten cents" to manumit all of them.May 5, 1807, Manumission from Thomas Law to Margaret Costin and Others, Washington, D.C., Archives, Liber R 17, folio 220-221 (old folio 288) (Six women freed: "Ex[ecuted] and Del[ivere]d Nancy Costin, their mother: ...[for] ten cents current money to me in hand paid have released from slavery...Margaret Costin, aged nineteen years, Louisa Costin, aged seventeen years, Caroline Costin, aged fifteen years, Jemima Costin, aged twelve years, Mary Holmes, aged eight years, and Eleanor Holmes, aged six years.") Retrieved May 17, 2016. Author Henry Wiencek argues that the Nancy Costin who was freed through this was Martha Washington's half-sister, the biracial daughter of Martha's father, John Dandridge.Ann's nickname was "Nancy," so these are her children or nieces. In 1802, Ann was freed, and the date for the manumission of Philadelphia Judge is uncertain. Wiencek, Henry (2003). An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves and the Creation of America, p. 84. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux ("The question of Ann's legal status was resolved when, through a descendant of hers, I found a record of her manumission in 1802, carried out after Martha's death. Ann came into the possession of Martha's granddaughter Eliza Custis Law, whose husband arranged the manumission when Ann was in her forties. She was freed under her married name, Holmes, and the nickname Nancy.")
Mount Vernon chief researcher Mary V. Thompson argues that Wiencek accidentally skipped a generation, and that the Nancy Costin who was freed in 1807 probably was the daughter of the Ann who had been the playmate of Martha Dandridge."Martha Washington's Black Sister," Stories from American History blog, June 16, 2012, citing Wiencek (2003), pp. 84-86, 282-290 ("Once George and Martha were both dead and Ann was in her forties, she came into the possession of Martha's granddaughter, Eliza Custis Law. Eliza and her husband, Thomas Law, were uniquely sensitive to the plight of mixed-race people, for Thomas, before marrying Eliza, had been an official of the East India Company, and had three half-Indian sons. Upon inheriting ownership of Ann Dandridge in 1802, the Laws freed her almost immediately. Five years later, they emancipated all Ann's children, her grandchildren, and William Costin's wife [Philadelphia Judge].") Thompson notes that Martha Dandridge was born in 1731, and Ann likely would have been close in age to her to be a playmate.
Both authors agree that Martha's son, John Parke Custis (born 1754), was almost certainly the father of William Costin. The question is whether he fathered him with a woman close to his mother's age, or with a woman close to his own age—his aunt or his first cousin?