Born into slavery in North Carolina, Mary Walker, a light-skinned woman with "lightish eyes inclined to blue," would be long forgotten today if not for two events.
The first, in 1848, was her escape from the state's wealthiest slave-holding family - the Camerons of Raleigh.
The second came more than a century later, when Sydney Nathans, a Duke University history professor, read a letter written on her behalf. Spurred by that letter, which he calls "the most poignant document I'd ever read about a refugee from slavery," Nathans spent 20 years researching Walker's story.
Now, with the publication on Monday of "To Free a Family: The Journey of Mary Walker," Nathans, 71, presents a page-turning history that Publishers Weekly calls "as spellbinding as a novel."
Walker's story begins in Durham County. She was born a slave on a plantation called Fairntosh, property of Duncan Cameron, plantation owner, lawyer and later president of the State Bank of North Carolina in Raleigh.
The powerful Cameron family had plantations in three states and a mansion on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh. They owned a thousand slaves. Today, their family name can be found throughout the Triangle, at Cameron Village shopping center in Raleigh, Cameron Avenue in Chapel Hill, Cameron Park in Hillsborough.
Research suggests, Nathans says, that both Walker's grandfather and father were white. Their identities remain unclear. Nathans found one handwritten letter that points to Duncan Cameron as Walker's father. A coroner's report, however, suggests a local physician might have been her father.
What is known for sure is that Walker was childhood playmate to Duncan Cameron's younger daughters, that she learned to read and write alongside them and that she became caregiver to the youngest Cameron daughter, Mildred, when she fell ill.
In 1848, Walker, 30, accompanied Mildred and her father to Philadelphia in search of a cure for Mildred's chronic ill health. During that trip, Walker and Duncan Cameron quarreled - it's not clear over what - and he threatened to send her to a farm in Alabama.
"This was a man, when he made a threat, he carried through," Nathans says.
'Her mother-heart yearns'
Walker faced a heartbreaking decision. Her three children remained in slavery with the Cameron family in North Carolina. If Duncan Cameron sent her to Alabama, she might never see them again.
And so she chose to escape, disappearing on the streets of Philadelphia. Then, for much of the next 17 years, she worked to reunite with her children.
"To Free a Family" (Harvard University Press; $29.95) recounts Walker's efforts to recover her children with the help of Northern friends and acquaintances, especially the couple who gave her sanctuary, minister-turned-geologist Peter Lesley and his wife, Susan.
Their efforts included a letter Peter Lesley wrote to "Miss Mildred Cameron of Raleigh, N.C." In it, Lesley pleads with the ill woman to let Walker buy back her children, noting she had "saved a considerable sum of money to buy them, can command more from friends, and will sacrifice anything to see them once again. ..."
"She speaks of nothing else when she speaks of herself at all, which is very seldom," Lesley writes. "Her mother-heart yearns unspeakably after them."
He never got a reply.
Using letters written by the Lesleys and others, Nathans describes Mary Walker's life in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and places it amid historical events of the day. Along the way, he introduces prominent figures, including Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who played small parts in Mary Walker's story.
Many people, he notes, were involved in this attempt "to mitigate the agony of one woman, and free people one by one."
"Mary Walker's experience mirrored that of thousands," Nathans writes. "Everyone who escaped bondage left family members behind."
'Relentless struggle'
Walker did reunite with two of her children, but not until the Civil War ended. As it turned out, the Union general overseeing the occupation of Raleigh knew Walker's story.
By then, her children were grown and her oldest son, Frank, had already escaped the Cameron household and disappeared. But the Union general found her younger son and daughter, Bryant, 21, and Agnes, 25. "He tells them their mother is in Cambridge, and she wants them to join her," Nathans says.
Later that year, they do.
Some Cameron descendants still live in the Triangle, including John P. Graham of Durham. He said he hasn't seen Nathans' book, so he can't comment on its content. He knows little about Duncan Cameron, he said, but he would be interested in reading the book to learn more.
One interesting postscript to Walker's story: In 2008, Nathans, who had retired from Duke, arranged a reunion of two women, one a descendant of Mary Walker, the other of the Lesleys.
"By then," he writes, "they knew in full the stories of their forebears - of Mary Walker's relentless struggle to recover her children, of the long-lasting ties between their ancestors, of those who had joined together to free a family."
The Life of Mary Walker
1818 - Born to Silla, a slave who served as domestic servant and seamstress to Rebecca Cameron, wife of Duncan Cameron. Some 30 years later, a Philadelphian who knew both Mary Walker and Walker's closest Philadelphia friend asserted that her father was Duncan Cameron. Casting uncertainty on this claim is the fact that Silla stayed in the Cameron household throughout Rebecca Cameron's life.
1832 - Becomes pregnant at age 14 and has her first child, Frank. There's no indication who Frank's father is or why Mary and her children were given the surname "Walker."
1848 - Escapes slavery while in Philadelphia.
1859 - Peter Lesley writes a letter asking Mildred Cameron to let Walker buy her children. He receives no reply.
1865 - Reunites with her children, Agnes and Bryant.
1872 - Dies in Cambridge, Mass., at age 54.
Source: "To Free a Family: The Journey of Mary Walker"
