from the series Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery…
Number 237 in a Series
By SUE HUNTER WEIR
Sometimes it only takes a few words to open the door to a much larger story. In the case of Maria Chinn, the words, which appeared in her daughter’s Obituary, were “Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.” Why are they so important? Because Hamilton was a major terminus on the Canadian Underground Railroad. An estimated 30,000-40,000 Blacks settled in Ontario before and during the Civil War. Not all of them had been enslaved but many, perhaps the majority, had been, and it is likely that Maria and her parents were among those who were.
Maria’s story is an important one. It is often difficult to find information and documentation for women who had been enslaved.
Maria was born in Kentucky on December 18, 1845. Her parents, Isaac Wilson and Sarah Dorsey, were also born in Kentucky but relocated to Canada some time before the end of the Civil War. By 1865, Maria, who was about 20 years old, was married and living in Hamilton and it was there, in 1865, where she gave birth to her only child, a daughter named Capitola.
For reasons that became clear later, Maria was hard to trace in Minneapolis. She was only listed in a Minneapolis City Directory in 1906, the year that she died. There were no listings for other people who shared her last name. Why was she here and when did she arrive?
More research needs to be done to confirm that Maria
and her parents were Freedom Seekers but, if that turns
out to be the case, that means that Maria is the fifth
person, and second woman, buried in the Cemetery
who gained her freedom on the Underground Railroad.
It was her daughter’s unusual first name which helped fill in some of the blanks in her Mother’s story. Capitola lived to be 88 years old. When she died in 1953, the Minneapolis Spokesman printed her Obituary.In just a few paragraphs, her story, and that of her mother, began to unfold. The information was likely provided by one of Capitola’s two daughters and said that Maria and John Chinn left Canada when Capitola was a baby. That was borne out by the 1900 Federal Census which showed Capitola as a naturalized citizen who came to the United States in 1867, when she would have been about two years old. The family settled in Indianapolis, where according to the 1880 Federal Census, John worked as a laborer, Maria was a housekeeper, and 14-year-old Capitola was a student. Just a few years later, by the time she was 18, Capitola was employed as a schoolteacher in Bridgeport, Indiana. John Chinn appears to have died in Indianapolis sometime in the early 1880s since by 1885 Maria is referred to as a widow. When she was 21 years old, Capitola married Frank Hayden, a Baptist minister, and they had two daughters, Daisy and Pearl. After Frank Hayden died, Capitola, her two daughters, and her mother moved to Minneapolis. They arrived in 1905.
Maria died on August 26, 1906, only a year after the family moved here, which explains why she left barely a mark here. She died from “chronic catarrh of the stomach” (gastritis–an inflammation of the stomach lining) and dementia at the age of 60 years and eight months. She died at the home of her granddaughter Pearl Gilbert. Maria is buried in an unmarked grave in Lot 48-53, Block F.
Maria’s story is an important one. It is often difficult to find information and documentation for women who had been enslaved. Maria was not among the people who were named in the Cemetery’s Nomination for listing on the National Park Service’s Underground Railroad Network to Freedom because her life before she died in Minneapolis was something of a mystery. More research needs to be done to confirm that Maria and her parents were Freedom Seekers but, if that turns out to be the case, that means that Maria is the fifth person, and second woman, buried in the Cemetery who gained her freedom on the Underground Railroad.
