Life of Maumer Juno, of Charleston, S.C. A Sketch of Juno (Waller) Seymour.

“Of her native land she talked often…”

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Written through the lens of the “Lost Cause” ideology, this life sketch of Juno (Waller) Seymour (d. 1883) was crafted by a member of the Whilden family of Charleston, South Carolina—possibly Ellen Ann Whilden (1822–1895) or W.G. Whilden, to whom she was enslaved as a domestic servant. While presented as a memorial tribute to Seymour’s life, its text blends plantation and evangelistic literature, folklore, and, perhaps, occasional kernels of biographical truth.

According to the narrative, Seymour’s given name was Cumba, and she claimed her lineage as a member of West Africa’s Fula tribe and the daughter of a king. She was captured by slavers as a child and initially brought to the French colony of St. Domingue, now Haiti. Amidst the tumultuous backdrop of Toussaint Louverture’s Revolution, she was sold and transported to Charleston in 1800, where she came under the ownership of Bayfield Waller, a city merchant.

Seymour was subsequently given to the prominent Whilden family, with Joseph Whilden, Bayfield Waller’s stepson and co-founder of the City Gazette and Advertiser in 1816, serving as the family patriarch. To the Whildens, she became known as “Maumer Juno” or “Maum Juno.” Apart from tending to her daily domestic duties, Seymour looked after the growing family’s children, and continued to do so, across several generations.

The front wrapper and frontispiece of the Life of Maumer Juno feature an identical image of Maumer Juno, gently cradling a baby in her arms, accompanied by the caption “Minding the great great-daughter of her first owner (1853).” Known as the “chattel Madonna formula,” this visual motif was employed by 19th-century photographers to portray enslaved African American women as the benevolent care-takers to the children of their enslavers. (Matthew Fox-Amato)

Support for this construct is found in elsewhere in the text, but in words, not images. In one passage, Seymour is found to be “surprise[d] and delight[ed] when, for the first time, a tiny white babe was placed in her arms.” Seymour’s exuberant expression of joy is juxtaposed with a passage elsewhere in the text that underscores the fact that she never bore any children with her enslaved husband.

Enlarging the “Madonna formula” further, Seymour is posthumously labeled by the author as being a “saint of African birth” on the day of her funeral. This resonates with the author’s intention of depicting this faithful, yet enslaved, servant as deeply religious, truly Christian and, in fact, purified, as exemplified in an earlier passage where Seymour declares, “I am black outside, but inside I am white, for every day my heart is washed in blood.”

Following the primary text, there is an additional seven-page profile of Seymour, penned by “Mrs. J.C.H.” The reliability of this white woman’s observations seem questionable, as when she writes: “She [Seymour] told me that when first dressed in our clothing she thought she was being prepared for sacrifice, and fled away, hiding in an outhouse, while she took off her garments, tearing them almost into ribbons in her fright.” (p30)

Still, at least one observation may be deemed reliable, such as this passage: “Of her native land she talked often, and as the days of her pilgrimage lengthened her memories grew more bright and strong of her life in the far-away land. The customs of her people, their worship of the new moon, the wearing of cloth, their method of preparing food, all seemed vivid mental pictures…” (p30)

Price: $1,500.00