Letters to the editor

Crossing Paths

It was probably not intended, but there is a nice link between two articles in the fall issue. As noted in "Ancient Oceans," serpentinite rock is present in the Baltimore region, including abundant examples in nearby Lake Roland Park, site of one of our local rail-trails [see "Along for the Ride," Fall], which once carried the Ma & Pa Railroad trains from downtown Baltimore to York, Pennsylvania. The trains also ran along the Stony Run Trail, part of which hugs the edge of Homewood campus.

Beryl Rosenstein, Bus '87 (MAS)
Professor Emeritus, School of Medicine
Pikesville, Maryland

We're Blushing

Reading Johns Hopkins Magazine is always educational and enriching. My household receives several other alumni magazines, and too often, the articles I find in them are self-congratulatory or superficial or not-so-subtly preachy. Johns Hopkins Magazine, by contrast, has been rewarding me over recent years with stimulating subject matter that's relevant to our time with a quality of writing and editing that consistently makes for cover-to-cover reading and learning. It seems that I wrestle with each page in the other publications, whereas your pages almost turn themselves. It's a very impressive standard of excellence, and I thank you for your hard work.

Doug Mitchell, Bus '00 (MBA)
North Bethesda, Maryland

A Theory on Our Founder

Bret McCabe's report ("The Namesake," Spring 2021) that the federal census records show that founder Johns Hopkins held one slave in 1840 and four in 1850 invites for me one imponderable question in particular: Was the increase related to the death in 1846 of his mother, Hannah Hopkins? Sometime in 1840, Johns had brought her to Baltimore to live out her life in a "large and comfortable home on Lombard Street" that he also shared with two sisters. (This and subsequent quotes, up to the final one, come from former Johns Hopkins English professor and university librarian John C. French's A History of the University Founded by Johns Hopkins, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1946.)

Assuming that Hannah had morally/religiously opposed slavery ever since as "devout Quakers" she and husband Samuel had freed their slaves in 1807, in "fondly hop[ing] that [her] sons w[ould] dignify the name of Hopkins" (from a letter of hers, italics retained), she could not have countenanced slaveholding. Johns Hopkins might have felt obliged to conceal such involvement from his aged mother, as much as possible, to spare her from disillusionment and maybe self-reproach. Even to the point of, before moving her to Baltimore, selling or freeing the 1840 slave? A bit tantalizing or not, his implied departure, wholly unspecified, before the next census is the only known development over the period, beyond the arrival of each of the four 1850 slaves.

By implication the four Hopkins slaves recorded in August 1850 in "Baltimore County," per McCabe's reporting, were serving at their owner's country estate, Clifton, source of Baltimore City's expanded Clifton Park not far from Homewood. Johns Hopkins would have been summering as usual at his beloved second home, used also for important dinner meetings, notably for electing B&O Railroad President John W. Garrett, an original JHU and JHH trustee, in 1858 and five years later arranging "the first large-scale movement of troops by rail in a military campaign."

Concerning the founder, French observed that "certainly any conspicuous figure in Baltimore known to disapprove of slavery and to give effective support to the Union cause might be sure of the deep disfavor of some of his fellow citizens." Hopkins' effective Union support was just cited. As for the founder's documented approval of slavery, in terms purely practical, the Vivien Thomas Scholars Initiative and the Diverse Names and Narratives Project sound like worthy forms of the "repair initiatives" that the Universities Studying Slavery consortium is seeking.

Terry K. Sheldahl, A&S '67 (PhD)
Savannah, Georgia

Corrections:

In "Mapping the Universe's Origin Story" [Fall], we incorrectly identified the year James Webb became NASA administrator. It was 1961. We regret the error.

In "Big Brass, Bigger Dream" [Fall], we incorrectly stated that Richard White is the only African American full professor of tuba in the country. It should have read that he is the only African American man to have that title. Velvet Brown at Penn State is also a full professor of tuba.