Content warning: This page includes information on enslavement and rape.
Pauli Murray's connections to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) did not begin with her application to the University's Graduate School in 1938 but were rooted in complex and deep relationships that began many generations before her birth. As explained in her autobiographical book Proud Shoes, this history was well-known to Murray. Indeed, Murray’s repeated contact with Chapel Hill via UNC, the Chapel of the Cross church, and Wilson Library was deliberate and intentional, a reflection of her own identity and birthright.
Pauli Murray’s extensive knowledge about her family history and connections to UNC came from her grandmother Cornelia. Cornelia Smith Fitzgerald was born into the prominent white Smith family of Orange County, North Carolina. The family consisted of James Strudwick Smith (1787-1852), his wife Delia Jones (1787-1854), and three children: Mary Ruffin (1814-1885), Frances Jones (Frank) (1816-1877), and James Sidney (called Sidney) (1819-1867).
Harriet, Cornelia’s mother and Pauli’s great-grandmother, was enslaved by the Smith family. Harriet was raped by James Smith’s son, Sidney, and as a result gave birth to Cornelia in 1844 (Proud Shoes, page 43). Harriet gave birth to three more girls fathered by Sidney's brother, Frank: Emma (born 1846), Annette (born 1848), and Laura (born 1851).
Property deed from William Kell to James Strudwick Smith for the sale of Harriet, 1834
James Strudwick Smith purchased Harriet, Pauli’s great-grandmother, in 1834 from another Orange County resident, William Kell. She was 15 according to the deed. Harriet was to be Mary Ruffin Smith's maid. During the slavery era, records show the family enslaved about 30 people at one time and used enslaved labor to farm parts of their numerous properties.
Photograph of Gattis House in Hillsborough, circa 1935-1938, by Frances Benjamin Johnston
Until 1847, the Smiths had their primary residence in Hillsborough, the Orange County seat, where the Smith men were active in business and politics. The family's house in Hillsborough was also known as the Gattis House. They lived there with some of the people they enslaved, including Harriet.
Harriet married Reuben Day, a free Black man, but they were not allowed to live together. Of James Smith giving permission for them to marry, Murray explains: "He cared nothing for free Negroes generally — he had helped to change the state constitution in 1835 to take away their vote and bar them from education — but he had no objection if one of them wanted to marry his slave girl. It was good business. He had no obligation to the husband, and every child by the marriage would be his slave and worth several hundred dollars at birth." (Proud Shoes, page 39)
Harriet and Reuben's son Julius was born circa 1840. Regardless, Sidney and Frank Smith both pursued Harriet: "When Sidney wasn't following her around, Francis' eyes were on her with an unmistakable look in them. Each brother was biding his time." (Proud Shoes, page 41) The brothers threatened Reuben and forced him to leave. Following this, Sidney assaulted and raped Harriet, which led to the birth of Cornelia in 1844.
Deed of property transferral from James Strudwick Smith to Mary Ruffin Smith, 1845
Due to his business and investment failures, James Strudwick Smith strategically passed most of the family’s money and property to his daughter, Mary Ruffin Smith, to protect himself from debtors and bankruptcy. Harriet, Julius, and Cornelia were part of that transfer: James sold them to his daughter in 1845. This fact was likely not known to Pauli Murray, as in Proud Shoes Murray mistakenly asserts that Mary Ruffin Smith dutifully sought to buy Harriet and her children to raise them herself, rather than see them separated.
To avoid outright scandal after Sidney raped Harriet and Cornelia was born - a fact that was no secret within the family, and no secret to the community at large - the Smiths sold their Hillsborough property and moved to the more remote Price Creek Plantation, just southwest of Chapel Hill. The original extent of this land was about 1,500 acres. Construction on the main house at Price Creek, called Oakland, began in 1845 to accommodate the move from Hillsborough.
After the American Civil War and the emancipation of people enslaved by the Smiths, according to Pauli Murray, "Aged beyond her [Mary Ruffin Smith's] fifty years and burdened with debts and worthless Rebel bonds, she made a proposition to her former slaves. If any of them wanted to stay on and work the crops for her, she'd stake them to food and clothes and let them live in their cabins rent free. Most of them accepted her proposal and life continued much in the same way on the surface, but tentatively and with odd formalities on both sides. The Smith girls remained with her in the Big House and Great-Grandmother Harriet, who was at last free to shut the door of her cabin, stayed on as Miss Mary's maid." (Proud Shoes, page 164)
After the Civil War, Frank lived in a cabin by himself on the Price Creek property. Harriet’s own cabin where she lived with Julius was struck by lightning, gravely injuring her. She died in 1873 because of these injuries.
The full extent of Mary Ruffin Smith's significant wealth may not have been known by Pauli Murray, as Proud Shoes portrays Mary as struggling, particularly after the American Civil War. But this was not the case. James Strudwick Smith started transferring property to his daughter well before his death, and with the passing of her parents in the 1850s, then her brother Sidney in 1867, the family's wealth and possessions became consolidated under her control. Frank died in 1877 and like their parents and brother, also willed his estate to Mary.
Well before her own death, Mary Ruffin Smith planned what to do with her large estate. Mary negotiated with her friend and lawyer, Kemp Plummer Battle, who was also President at UNC from 1876-1891, to donate some of her great wealth to the University. The Smith family had long and deep connections with UNC. James Strudwick Smith, the patriarch, had been elected to the UNC Board of Trustees in 1821 and served for 31 years. Frank and Sidney both attended UNC as students, but neither graduated with degrees.
Mary died in 1885 and gave the entirety of a piece of family property, Jones Grove, just over the Orange line in Chatham County, to Battle to sell at his discretion. He and co-commissioners John Manning and A.H. Merritt decided to break the 1,500 acres (about twice the area of Central Park in New York City) into lots, selling each one individually. Overall, this entire process took many years to conclude. In total the land sold for about $15,000 (about $503,000 today). In the late 1890's the University borrowed from this fund to start the first electric plant in Chapel Hill, and some of the proceeds were set aside for a Francis Jones Smith fund for scholarships.
A very small portion of Mary’s estate went to Harriet’s children. To each daughter went 100 acres and $150 (to build a house). Only 25 acres went to Julius. Emma and Annette remained in the area and started families, living on the land Mary bestowed to them that had been a part of Jones Grove. Emma married Henry Morphis, son of Sam Morphis who himself had very deep connections with UNC. Annette married Ned Kirby, a well-known local Reverend. Julius and his wife Fannie sold their inheritance and moved to Hillsborough. Laura married Gray J. Toole and moved to Charlotte.
Disregarding Mary Ruffin Smith's true relationship to Harriet's children, Kemp Battle writes in his published history of the University: "After some minor bequests to her former household slaves, she devised the bulk of her fortune to the Protestant Episcopal Church in North Carolina, and a plantation of about fifteen hundred acres in Chatham County to the University to further the education of indigent students. She appointed President Battle executor." (Page 344) Further ignoring Cornelia and her half-sisters, Battle mourns that "Miss Mary," as he and others called her, "died the last of her race." (Page 344)
Zoom in and out of this interactive map displaying important sites connected to the Smith family in Orange and Chatham counties: