In St. Mary’s Churchyard in Hornsey High Street there is a row of flat gravestones that are hardley visible. One of these bears a unique inscription.
This is the grave of two Americans from Virginia, Harriet Long and Jacob Walker, who died less than two months apart.
HARRIET LONG
A NATIVE OF VIRGINIA
THE WIDOW OF JOSEPH SELDEN
LIEUTENANT COLONEL IN THE ARMY
OF THE UNITED STATES
AND THE WIFE OF GEORGE LONG
DIED AT HIGHGATE
ON THE 18TH DAY OF JUNE 1841
IN THE 40TH YEAR OF HER AGE
This is followed by a Latin inscription and then it continues:
JACOB WALKER
A NATIVE OF VIRGINIA
IN AMERICA THE FAITHFUL SLAVE
IN ENGLAND THE FAITHFUL SERVANT
OF
HARRIET AND GEORGE LONG
AND AN HONEST MAN
DIED AT HIGHGATE
ON THE 12TH OF AUGUST 1841
ON THE 40TH YEAR OF HIS AGE
This grave is so unique that English Heritage gave it a Grade II listing as part of the 200th year of the abolition of the slave trade. We know nothing about Jacob apart from this glowing reference written by George Long. Jacob must have meant a great deal to Harriet and George that he was buried in Harriet’s grave.
Harriet Gray first married Joseph Selden, a member of a distinguished Virginian family, in 1812: the year when Britain went to war against the infant USA and managed to burn down the White House. Tragically, Joseph was killed in a duel in 1824. Harriet moved in with her mother-in-law Mrs Miles Cary Selden at her plantation in Richmond, Virginia.
George Long’s time in Virginia
At the time Virginia depended on a plantation economy and thereby on slaves. Thomas Jefferson, third President, had retired to his plantation property, Monticello, in 1809 to plan his University of Virginia. Twenty-five year old don George Long was appointed the first professor of Ancient Languages and moved to Virginia. He and widow Harriet Selden were married in July 1827 but their time in the States was short as according to biographical accounts, George was never reconciled to slavery.
George Long secured a new post of Professor of Greek at the newly founded University of London, Gower Street, later University College. Academic life obviously didn’t suit Long. He resigned his post in 1831, studied law and was called to the Bar in 1837.
Jacob Walker as a free man
Harriet and their servant Jacob, who had travelled to England with them, adapted to their new surroundings in Highgate. Jacob was now legally a free man in England. In 1772, the Lord Chief Justice of England, William Murray, Lord of Mansfield, who lived in Kenwood, had judged that the state of slavery was not ‘allowed or approved by the Law of England’.
Whilst living in Highgate, Harriet gave birth to four sons and a daughter, who died in infancy. The 1841 Census records the family living in Jackson’s Lane. This may have been a large home known as Southwood Lawn, demolished in 1964. Sadly, Harriet died soon after the Census was taken. On her death certificate the cause of death is ‘scirrhous’, a fibrous cancer, possibly breast cancer. From the information on Jacob’s death certificate it seems that he died of ‘Smallpox after vaccination’. George Long was present at both deaths.
Records show that the Rector of Hornsey, Richard Harvey, was not present at Harriet’s burial service in June but he certainly officiated at Jacob’s burial in August 1841. In these days of reflection when the evils of the past are being scrutinised anew, the inscription on this gravestone is a reminder that the right beliefs and attitudes can triumph over the most evil of systems.
This article is an abridged version of ‘The Grave Inscription Which Speaks Volumes: Harriet Long and Jacob Walker’ from ‘100 Stories from the Archive‘ by Janet Owen, Hornsey Historical Society, 2022
The story is a retelling of Roy Hidson’s article in the HHS Bulletin 27 (1986), ‘The Lady and the Slave’.
Image credits
‘George Long’, See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George_Long,_Professor_of_Ancient_Languages,_University_of_Virginia.jpg
‘The grave of Harriet Long and Jacob Walker’, via Author’s collection