Lucy Delaney

Lucy Delaney ( Lucy Ann Berry; c. 1828–1830 – August 31, 1910) was an African American seamstress, slave narrator, and community leader. She was born into slavery and was primarily held by the Major Taylor Berry and Judge Robert Wash families. As a teenager, she was the subject of a freedom lawsuit, because her mother lived in Illinois, a free state, longer than 90 days. According to Illinois state law, enslaved people that reside in Illinois for more than 90 days should be indentured and freed. The country's rule of partus sequitur ventrem asserts that if the mother was free at the child's birth, the child should be free. After Delaney's mother, Polly Berry (also known as Polly Wash), filed a lawsuit for herself, she filed a lawsuit on her daughter's behalf in 1842. Delaney was held in jail for 17 months while awaiting the trial.

In 1891, Delaney published the narrative, From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom. This is the only known first-person account of a freedom suit and one of the few slave narratives published in the post-Emancipation period. and 1830. Her mother, Polly Berry was born a slave in Kentucky around 1803 or 1805. In October 1817, when Polly was about fourteen, she was taken to Edwardsville, Illinois. After 90 days in Illinois, slaveholders were required to register their slaves as indentured servants, which legally made them free. However, months later, in April 1818, Polly was transported to Little Dixie of central Missouri, where she was sold. after which Judge Wash sold Delaney's father to a plantation in the Deep South. Nancy was taken with them on their honeymoon trip, with a stop in Niagara Falls, New York. Nancy had been previously instructed by Polly to escape into Canada (where slavery had been abolished and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was invalid). In Niagara Falls, Nancy received assistance from a servant at the hotel where they had been staying, and she made it safely across the border into Canada.

While Polly was owned by the Coxes, she periodically worked on riverboats along the Mississippi River The National Park Service says in its article about Delaney that Polly went to Chicago on the Underground Railroad. Anna K. Roberts states that she left St. Louis on a steamboat to cross the Mississippi to meet up with Naomi Woods, whom she knew from her childhood near Alton, Illinois, and the years before that in Kentucky.

Delaney, who took care of Mary Berry and Henry Sidney Coxe's children, was subject to the parents' "fiery personalities." (It was customary to lease out slaves to offset expenses and earn money for such slaves' masters.)

By the time the case went to trial, her mother's case had been settled, and Polly was freed. Polly had affidavits from people who knew her and her daughter. Judge Robert Wash (Fanny Berry Wash's widower and Polly's previous master) testified that Delaney was definitely Polly's child. With the case settled by the principle of "once free, always free," Bates was able to convince the jury that her daughter should be freed. The judge announced that she was found to be free. She left the jail the day the verdict was made. Once free, Delaney would have had to register with the city of St. Louis and find someone to post bond in support of her registration.

Marriage and family Delaney and her mother worked as seamstresses in St. Louis after they gained their freedom.

Lucy Ann married Zachariah Delaney in St. Louis on November 16, 1849, a free black man from Cincinnati, Ohio. The Delaneys lived in a house on Gay Street in Mill Creek Valley of St. Louis. She was a successful seamstress and her husband was a porter, cook, mail clerk, janitor, and laborer. They were members of the middle class. By 1880, they had no children living with them.

Civic engagement She was active in women's clubs, religious organizations and charity groups. She also served as president of the Daughters of Zion, as well as the Free Union, Funeral services were held for her at the St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church in St. Louis,

The city of St. Louis has frequently acknowledged Lucy Ann Berry's significance to local and national Black History.