Relationship with the Wylie Family

Perhaps Lizzie in the garden

Thought to be Lizzie working in the garden, no date.

It appears that overall, Lizzie and the Wylie family were on good terms during the roughly fifty-five years she spent with the family. Lizzie is mentioned fondly in the family letters, though mostly in passing and in reference to her work. There are several implications of a bond between Lizzie and Theophilus and Rebecca's Wylie's grandson, Anton Theophilus (1876-1965), who grew up in the house with his mother (Lou) and siblings. Letters written when Anton would have been just three years old mention that he is "helping" Lizzie make bread and churn butter. At one point, Anton fell off the back porch and hurt himself; while they waited for the doctor, Lizzie helped dress the wound.

As an adult, Anton continued to be close to Lizzie. Towards the end of Lizzie's life, when Anton would have been about thirty years old, he speaks of her with affection in the occasional letter. In one letter to his mother in 1903, he expresses concern that the current arrangements at the Wylie house "will work considerable hardship on Lizzie." A few months later, when Lizzie had returned from a short stay away from the family, he wrote to Lou, "I am very glad to hear of Lizzie's return. You must give her my best regards and tell her I wish I could be there to hew the wood and draw the water." Anton also took interest in Lizzie's outside studies, mentioning in 1904 that he was mailing an astronomy textbook to Lizzie: "she will make better use of it than I..." This letter points out Lizzie's literacy, which would have been unusual for a female African American servant at the time. Lizzie likely never went to school. In 1850, when she would have been old enough to attend, there were only 1,026 African American children in school in Indiana out of the 4,505 school age African American children in the state. It is possible that she gained some education through church Sabbath schools if she attended and her mother, but her skills likely evolved with help from Wylie family members (for more information on the history of Africans in Indiana, see Coy D. Robbins' book, Forgotten Hoosiers: African Heritage in Orange County, Indiana).

Lizzie

Lizzie, no date.

In contrast to her seemingly warm rapport with Anton, some mentions of Lizzie and Rebecca Wylie in family letters suggest that Mrs. Wylie felt colder towards her servant than others. Though Theophilus Wylie was suspected to be sympathetic towards African Americans due to his attendance of the "African Society" meetings in Philadelphia (noted in an 1835 diary entry), there are hints of less openness to the cause on the part of his wife. When Harvey Young, the first black student to attend Indiana University, came to board with the Wylies during Lizzie's tenure, a letter recounts that "Ma you may be sure made arrangements about his status in the family. She has had the room in the woodhouse very nicely fixed up for him and he takes his meals with Lizzie. A leetle of the old prejudice lingers with her." More specific mentions of Lizzie do not directly mention prejudice, but imply at least a certain impatience on Mrs. Wylie's behalf. Lou's sister, Margaret, wrote to her in 1859 that "Ma don't know how good [Lizzie] is, she thinks she is so slow."

Lizzie faced a complex hierarchical system in the Wylie family. Though favored by the Wylies in comparison to the rest of their workers, she was still deeply defined by her servitude. In an 1880 letter, Seabrook Wylie wrote, “Lizzie (our Liz) is well and good as ever. She has been cleaning the front room and putting down the new carpet. It makes the room look so nicely. We have a boy and he’s about the same as all the others. Now I have told you about the whole family, unless you want to know about the cats and birds and lizards.”

Relationship with the Wylie Family