Benefactors

This section interrogates the monetary contributions of Gabriel Tichenor, an early benefactor to the Western Female Seminary. As a member of the board of trustees and having signed the constitution of the Seminary, Tichenor has a prominent role in the early history of the institution. He is remembered primarily through his connection with Harriet Beecher Stowe, a friend of the family who wrote the famous anti-slavery narrative Uncle Tom’s Cabin. However, this is an incomplete representation of Tichenor’s economic profile. The wealth he was able to donate to the Seminary was a result of his economic participation in slavery, having built his fortune from enslaved labor. Ann Battles Johnson, his daughter, and Harriet, her mother, were manumitted and went on to live in Natchez, Mississippi, where they became prominent members of the free Black community there. Although accounts of Western’s history remember him for having manumitted Black Americans he enslaved, it is not at all prominent in the historical record of the institution. These documents reflect the memories and reality of the monetary situation that Tichenor’s funds contributed to.

Note about Gabriel Tichenor's slavery connections and his relationship to Helen Peabody, undated

Dorothy Preston graduated Western College for Women in 1929, and in her time, took down parts of the history of her institution. S. B. Pike’s descriptions of Gabriel Tichenor, an early benefactor of the Seminary, are couched mostly in recounting his connection with Helen Peabody and his altered stance on slavery. Tichenor’s role as an enslaver is minimized in favor of the story of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a tale that is repeated in current Miami materials and history. The Black Americans Tichenor enslaved, such as Topsy and the unnamed man who tampered with another enslaver’s horse, are an important part of Miami’s history in regards to Western and its origins.

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