Johns Hopkins

This article is about the Quaker philanthropist. For the university that bears his name, see Johns Hopkins University.

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Johns Hopkins (May 19, 1795, Anne Arundel County, Maryland – December 24, 1873, Baltimore ) was a wealthy entrepreneur, philanthropist, and abolitionist of 19th century Baltimore, now most noted for his philanthropic creation of the institutions that bear his name, namely the Johns Hopkins University, Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Birthplace, family and name

On May 19, 1795, Johns Hopkins was born on Whitehall, a 500-acre (two km²) tobacco plantation with approximately 500 slaves located in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. His birthplace is now located close to the intersection of Reidel Road and Johns Hopkins Road in a new community in Maryland named Crofton. Johns Hopkins, who was nicknamed "Johnsie", was the second son and the second child of the eleven children born to Samuel, and Hannah Janney, Hopkins. He spent his childhood and youth on the Whitehall plantation where his parents settled after their marriage in a Quaker ceremony in Virginia on August 19, 1792. When his parents married, his mother Hannah Janney, born in 1774 in Loudoun County, Virginia, was 18 and his father Samuel Hopkins, born in 1759 in Anne Arundel County, was 33 years old.

The first member of the Hopkins' side of this family to settle in America was Gerrard Hopkins. Gerrard Hopkins, a member of the Church of England, emigrated from Canterbury, England and settled in Anne Arundel County, Maryland in the 1660s, approximately one hundred thirty five years before Johns Hopkins' birth. Johns Hopkins' birthplace, Whitehall, was one of many pieces of land purchased by Gerrard Hopkins' son and namesake, and Johns Hopkins' great great grandfather. According to one of Crofton's online sites, "The Hopkins family was in the Crofton area for 270 years and accumulated more than 1000 acres (4 km²) of land".

On the maternal side of the Johns Hopkins' family, Thomas Janney was the first member of the Janney family to arrive in America, He emigrated from Cheshire England and he was a preacher who had been prosecuted in England because of his Quaker faith. Thomas Janney arrived in America with his family in the 1680s. He settled first in a Quaker settlement in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Later the Janney family moved to Loudoun County in Virginia. In Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South published in 1996 by historian Brenda E. Stevenson, at least one member of the Janney family is cited as one of Virginia's largest land owners.

Johns Hopkins' first name, "Johns", is and was then an unusual first name for a child, but not for children in the Hopkins' family. A tradition of naming sons of the Hopkins' family "Johns" seemed to have started in the second generation after Gerrard Hopkins settled in Anne Arundel County. Gerrard Hopkins married Thomasin Eard after arriving in America.This couple had four children: three girls and a boy whom they named Gerrard. This Gerrard Hopkins seemed to have become a Quaker and he married Margaret Johns in a Quaker ceremony. "Johns", the wife's surname, was the first name they gave their tenth and last child. The first name "Johns" was given second to the first Johns Hopkins' oldest son, and then to the sons of Samuel and Philip Hopkins, the first and second sons of the first Johns Hopkins, by his third wife. Johns Hopkins' siblings also have their mother's surname "Janney" as part of their names. And by 1836 Janneys were also naming their children "Johns Hopkins".

Both the Janney and Hopkins' families arrived in America with indentured servants. Both families were farmers. Both families accumulated a lot of land. However, while the Hopkins' family became slave owners like so many other tobacco farmers in Anne Arundel County, the Janney family members were rarely slaveowners. Some members of the Janney family were even outspoken opponents of slavery. The Janneys were nevertheless divided when it came to their response to the Civil War. At the beginning of the Civil War, one member of the Janney family was a representative of his Loudoun County, Virginia. This community was one where many were opposed to slavery. He gave his support to the Confederacy. And despite their early adherence to slavery,even after they became Quakers, in 1778 the first Johns Hopkins freed his slaves. However, by the time of his marriage to Hannah Janney, Samuel Hopkins, the first son of the first "Johns Hopkins" and of the first "Johns Hopkins"' third wife, and the present Johns Hopkins' father, had become a slaveowner who possessed nearly 500 slaves and almost all of the land he and his brothers had inherited from their father. For nearly the first fifteen years of their marriage, and for the first twelve years of their son's Johns Hopkins' life. Johns Hopkins' parents were Quaker slave owners

The emancipation and its aftermath

In 1807 Johns Hopkins' Quaker parents freed their slaves. The family emancipated their able-bodied slaves, without any request for compensation, and took on the responsibility of taking care of the less able bodied slaves. As members of the local Quaker society, his parents had been among those who had decided on emancipating their slaves in this way and who had made this a requirement for all members who wanted to retain their membership in their local Quaker society. Because of this emancipation, the formal education of Johns and his older brother, Joseph, was interrupted. The two oldest of the eleven siblings, Joseph, the eldest who was fourteen years old, and Johns who was twelve years old, returned home from school to help with the farm and domestic work. Johns Hopkins also started to help to care for the younger children in the family, some born after this emancipation. At Whitehall the family, w after 1807 often could not afford hired labor. They instead worked along with the former slaves remaining on the farm, young and old, to do the child care, other domestic and farm work previously done by the family's slaves.

After his father's death in 1814, Johns Hopkins helped to take care of his mother. His mother died in 1846, a year after her eldest son, Joseph, also died. Johns Hopkins who lived longer than his other brothers, and who was the most successful of his siblings, helped to take care of his brothers and sisters, and his siblings' families after their's and their spouses' deaths, and after financial and other crises. Taking care of the elderly, the less able-bodied slaves, among them the elderly slaves, his siblings and their families, were responsibilities he began to undertake in 1807 and undertook from 1807 onwards. The story of the family's struggles and their life after this emancipation was told by a relative, Mrs.Helen Hopkins Thom, in the first and only biography of Johns Hopkins, Johns Hopkins: A Silhouette. This biography was published in 1929 by the Johns Hopkins Press. Thom named "Mintie", whom Thom said was born in Africa, and she mentioned Mintie's elderly daughter as two of the less able bodied slaves of the Hopkins' family, who were taken care of and who worked after the 1807 emancipation when and if they could. Throughout his life after 1807, Johns Hopkins continued to follow in his parents' footsteps after this emancipation, especially when it came to his Quaker faith and the abolitionism he displayed. His capacity for hard work and his frugality were two qualities which are linked to this experience by the authors of most sources on him. He shared a love of learning with his mother Thom said, and Thom recounted his and his family's efforts to continue his education after his formal education ended. His mother, also early, identified his instinct for business.

Business years

After he left the plantation, Hopkins worked for a time in his uncle's wholesale grocery business. His first success in business came while his uncle was away during the War of 1812. This also was his first experience operating, or assisting in the operation of, a business during and immediately after a war.

While staying at his uncle's home, he fell in love with his cousin, Elizabeth Hopkins. A Quaker prejudice against the marriage of first cousins existed and Elizabeth's parents would not allow them to marry. They pledged never to marry anyone else and remained single for the rest of their lives. Just as Johns Hopkins provided for his extended family, he provided a home for her in his will. She lived there until her death in 1889, almost fifteen years after his death in 1873.

After he left his uncle's store, Hopkins and Benjamin Moore, also a Quaker, went into business together. The business later became Hopkins & Brothers after Moore dissolved the partnership claiming that Johns loved money more than he did. One writer though calls this statement a "myth" or "fact" which "was so widely reported that the comment calling Hopkins "the only man more interested in making money than I" is variously attributed to his former business partner, a close associate, and even the international financier, George Peabody". Peabody like Johns Hopkins was also born in 1795.

After Moore's withdrawal, Hopkins partnered with three of his brothers and established Hopkins & Brothers. The company prospered by selling various wares in the Shenandoah Valley from Conestoga wagons, sometimes in exchange for corn whiskey, which was then sold in Baltimore as "Hopkins' Best." Later, Hopkins invested heavily in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and he also became a banker and a ship owner. He put up his own money more than once to save Baltimore City during financial crises, and at least twice in 1857 and 1873 he bailed the railroad out of debt. During the American Civil War, this businessman was a Union man. As the railroad's financial director, he and John Work Garrett, the railroad president, were largely responsible for the use of the railroad to support the Union cause. Many Marylanders, including its leading citizens and businesspersons, sympathized with, and often were supporters of, the South and the Confederacy. After the war, Johns Hopkins selected George William Brown as a trustee on the university board of trustees later established by Johns Hopkins. Brown had been the mayor of Baltimore during the Civil War, and while mayor Brown thanked Johns Hopkins because he was a member of a umber of bankers who gave $500,000 to the city of Baltimore soon after the start of the Civil War. Mayor Brown who later became a judge spent much of his term as mayor in jail because of his sympathies with the South which he discusses in his memoir.

One of the first campaigns of the Civil War was planned at Johns Hopkins' his summer estate, Clifton, and it was a meeting place for local Union sympathizers. Federal officials visited his home, which also was a place where he entertained at least one royal visitor from England. In a state which did not vote for Lincoln as the US President, and which opposed Lincoln's presidency and his policies including stationing troops in the state, in 1862 this businessman wrote a letter to Lincoln requesting the President to keep troops under the command of General John Ellis Wool stationed in Maryland. In addition to using his wealth and the B & O railroad to take troops to the front, Johns Hopkins supplied horsehoes and other supplies to the Union Army.

Johns Hopkins is listed as one of the 100 wealthiest men in America, in The Wealthy 100: From Benjamin Franklin to Bill Gates - A Ranking of the Richest Americans, Past and Present, a book by Michael Klepper and Robert Gunther published by Citadel Press in 1996. Johns Hopkins is 69th on this list.

His death and his philanthropy

Johns Hopkins died without heirs on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1873. He left $7 million, mostly in Baltimore & Ohio Railroad stock, to establish his namesake institutions. This sum was the single largest philanthropic donation ever made to educational institutions up until that time. The bequest was used to found the Johns Hopkins Colored Children Orphan Asylum first as he requested, in 1875, the Johns Hopkins University in 1876, the Johns Hopkins Press (the longest continuously operating academic press in America) in 1878, the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in 1889, and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1893. The first of these posthumously founded institutions, the Johns Hopkins Colored Children Orphan Asylum (JHCCOA) aka Johns Hopkins Hospital Colored Children Orphan Asylum (JHHCCOA) was founded by the trustees selected by Johns Hopkins to serve on the hospital board of trustees, one of the two interlocking boards of trustees established by Johns Hopkins.

The rest of the institutions named above were founded under the administration of the first president of the Johns Hopkins University, Daniel Coit Gilman. Gilman, formerly the president of the University of California. Gilman was unanimously chosen by the trustees of the university board of trustees, the other board of trustees established by Hopkins. The university and the hospital boards of trustees were interlocking ones in that the president of one board was a member of the other board and about nine members of the trustees on one board were also members of the second board. Some of these trustees were also the executors of his will. Johns Hopkins' views on their duties and responsibilities and his bequests can be found primarily in four documents, the incorporation papers filed in 1867, his instruction letter to the hospital trustees dated March 12, 1873. and in his will's two codicils, one dated 1870 and the other dated 1873. . , his will, which was quoted from extensively in the Baltimore Sun's obituary,

The original site for Johns Hopkins University was chosen personally by Hopkins. It was to be located at his summer estate, Clifton. This property, which is now owned by the city of Baltimore, is the site of a golf course and a park named "Clifton Park." This site was referred to in his will. While a decision was made not to found the university at Clifton, the orphan asylum which was constructed by one of most famous architects of that time, was founded first as Johns Hopkins had formally requested. The educational and living facilities were praised at its opening and a Baltimore American reporter said about the orphan asylum founded by the hospital trustees, that it was a place where "nothing was wanting that could benefit science and humanity". It was constricted by one of the most prominent architects of that time, John Niernsee,and after correspodences with those in charge of similar institutions, and visits to such sites in Europe and America. The Johns Hopkins Orphan Asylum opened with twenty four boys and girls. This orphanage was later changed to serve as an orphanage and training school for black female orphans principally as domestic workers, and next as an "orthopedic convalescent" home and school for "colored crippled" children and orphanage. It was closed in 1924 nearly fifty years after it opened and never was reopened.

Johns Hopkins' wish for a training school for female nurses was also formally stated in the March 12th 1873 letter. The Johns Hopkins School of Nursing was founded in 1889, also by the hospital trustees led by a fellow Quaker businessman and friend. Florence Nightingale was consulted. Like the colored orphan asylum, the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing was closed in 1973. Unlike the asylum, it reopened in 1983.

Both the nursing school and the hospital were founded in 1889 by the hospital trustees almost sixteen years after the abovementioned instruction letter and Johns Hopkins' death. In this instruction letter completed about eight months before his death, Johns Hopkins formally stated in the section on the hospital his wish to provide assistance to the poor of "all races', and no matter the indigent patient's "age", their sex, second, and their "color" third. Wealthier patients, he wrote, should pay for services and thereby subsidize the care provided to the indigent. The hospital he wrote further was to be the administrative unit for the orphan asylum for African American children, which was to receive $25000 annual support out of the hospital's half of the endowment to the institutions that would become his namesake. The hospital and orphan asylum should serve 400 patients and 400 children respectively. These African American children could be orphaned or could be in need with one parent or two parents.In the abovementioned documents scholarships were provided for poor youths in the states where Johns Hopkins had made his wealth. Assistance was also given to orphanages other than the one for African American children and to other institutions for youths. In addition to the assistance he gave to members of his family, Johns Hopkins provided assistance, often unsolicited, to unrelated youths who needed help to start a career or business. One of the latter youths was one of those who asked Thom to write her biography on Johns Hopkins. Also in his will he provided for those he employed, black and white, his family, the cousin he loved, and many institutions for the care and education of youths, including educational ones for blacks and whites, and for the care of ill,including the mentally ill. In the beginning sentence of the Chicago Tribune's obituary of December 28, 1873, and titled "A NATIONAL BENEFACTOR" it is said "In these days of degeneracy, dishonesty, fraud, and corruption, it is refreshing to read the record of the life of Johns Hopkins, who died in Baltimore last week."

Johns Hopkins' abolitionism

Johns Hopkins was represented as an abolitionist during three periods in his life in Johns Hopkins: A Silhouette. This biography was published by his relative Mrs. Helen Hopkins Thomin 1929 by the Johns Hopkins Press. Today this biography is still the first and only book-length biography on him. After the 1970s, a few other sources represented him as an abolitionist. . For instance,in 1974 almost fifty years' after Thom's 1929 publication, Kathryn Jacob, a former archivist at Johns Hopkins University's library called him a unionist and an abolitionist.She discussed the 1807 emancipation and also gave examples of his use of the railroad to support the Union cause. In 1995 almost two decades later Mike Field stated that Johns Hopkins was a abolitionist before the word "abolitionist" was "invented" Field's article was published in the Johns Hopkins Gazette to commemorate the bicentennial anniversary of Johns Hopkins' birth in 1795. Jacob's article was published in an alumni publication, the Johns Hopkins Magazine, to commemorate the centennial anniversary of Johns Hopkins' death. Field like Jacob, and Thom before her, also portrayed Johns Hopkins as a child or twelve year old, participant in what Thom referred to as his parents' "abolition" of the family's slaves in 1807.. Both Jacob and Field, though less so Jacob, point to the paucity of writings by him, and both use adjectives like "anecdotal" and "apocryphal" to describe the sources of information on him, including Thom's biography. Jacob's article titlrf "Mr. Johns Hopkins" has been cited as the best brief biography of Johns Hopkins.

Between 1807 and the Civil War Johns Hopkins' abolitionist stance was also evident. Before the Civil War Johns Hopkins worked closely with two of America's most famous abolitionists, Myrtilla Miner and Henry Ward Beecher. During the Civil War Johns Hopkins was a supporter of Abraham Lincoln In 1862 Johns Hopkins wrote a letter to Lincoln which he signed "your servant" and "friend" . This letter can be found in the holdings of the Library of Congress. While many Marylanders were demanding the removal of troops from Maryland, in this letter Johns Hopkins asked that the troops remain stationed in Maryland. Thom also cited the 1887 memoir by Baltimore's mayor referred to above. In this memoir by George William Brown Johns Hopkins was referred to as a "wealthy Union man" and again a member of a committee of bankers who gave $500,000 to the city of Baltimore after the first bloodshed in the Civil War was shed in Baltimore city.

After the Civil War and during Reconstruction, Thom represented Johns Hopkins as a banker, a railroad man, and an abolitionist. His abolitionism was demonstrated in various ways during this period, some Thom reported and others she did not. The instructions he provided in the four documents mentioned above also said that his philanthropy should be used in ways that were often opposed to the racial practices that were beginning to emerge or re-emerging during the American Reconstruction period, and later even in the posthumously constructed and founded institutions that would carry his name. Local newspapers and magazines in the post Civil War Reconstruction period also covered his actions and they usually praised him for founding three institutions, a university, a hospital and an orphan asylum for colored children. The Baltimore American praised him for being beyond his times when it came to his provisions for blacks and whites in the the hospital. This Baltimore reporter also pointed to similarities between Benjamin Franklin's and Johns Hopkin's views on hospital care and construction, such as their shared interest in free hospitals, the availability of emergency services, and the hospital location in urban area.

The newspapers also covered Johns Hopkins and the others who filed an injunction to "block" the holding of the Constitutional convention in Maryland where the present constitution of Maryland was framed. The Maryland Constitution had been previously framed by Marylanders who were unionists and radical republicans. At their 1864 Constitutional Convention they ended slavery in Maryland, required oaths for those who sided with the Conferderacy, provided state support for the education of African Americans, and gave the vote to all white males, but not to blacks. The Baltimore Sun article on Johns Hopkins, this injunction, and the response to it can be found online in the Maryland Archives, and in William Starr Myer's book on "self-reconstruction" in Maryland. also online.

1867 was also the sixtieth anniversary of his family's emancipation of their slaves without any request for compensation. The 1867 Constitution passed by the democrats and conservations stated that ex-owners of slaves should be compensated, removed both the requirement of an oath, and the state support of education for African American schools. Again, in articles yet unpublished, Dr. Reynolds points to Johns Hopkins' "dream" and formally stated wish for a colored children orphan asylum and the trustees' founding of it in the papers incorporating the Johns Hopkins Institutions, and discusses its existence for the nearly fifty years before it was completely closed in 1924. Reynolds presents her findings almost seventy years after Thom wrote about his wish for this orphan asylum and reported that Johns Hopkins stated this wish in his "long and painstaking will." Interestingly while Thom stated that Johns Hopkins' wish for an orphan asylum was expressed in his will, she did not mention that this institution was actually opened on Biddle Street in 1885 in her 1929 biography on him,or that it was closed only about five years before this biography was published. Thom did include Johns Hopkins' March 12th, 1873 instruction letter at the end of her biography on him, and it is evident that this letter was prepared for the members of the hospital board of trustees.

According to Thom's account, Johns Hopkins was a Reconstruction actor whose abolitionist stance angered the leading citizens of Baltimore especially those who had been supporters pf slavery, secession, the South or the Confederacy. These citizens she wrote attacked and belittled him only after his death and he was no longer able to defend himself.phere is more support for Thom's representation of Johns Hopkins as an almost life long abolitionist in publications during Johns Hopkins' lifetime, and immediately after Johns Hopkins' death, than there is after the founding of the Johns Hopkins University.

Thom's definition of the word "abolitionist" differs in many ways from the definition of the word "abolitionist" used by popular and academic writers until recently. At Johns Hopkins, and in the academy in general, there has been a long-standing convention which only now seems to be ending. The word "abolitionist" coined in 1836 according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), was long used as a label only to refer to 1830s abolitionists, and their methods and activities. A 2001 publication was praised by reviewers for being one of the first publications on pre-1830s abolitionists, and on their organizations, methods, and activities. In light of this publication, Johns Hopkins appears to be more like the pre-1830s abolitionists than the 1830s abolitionists. Pre-1830s abolitionists were elite white males who used the legal system, the legislatures, petitions, and their wealth to end slavery or to provide education and social services to those of African descent. In addition, the word "abolitionist" was an epithet for many including George William Brown in his 1890 memoir, before, during, and after the Civil War. Even now few call the activities Johns Hopkins undertook after the Civil War abolitionist ones as Thom did.

In line with this conventional way of defining abolitionists, it is unsurprising that writers on Johns Hopkins and on the institutions that carry his name rarely use the label of "abolitionist" for Johns Hopkins. Furthermore, it is almost never reported that the first, and the most well known of the Johns Hopkins Institutions were all posthumously constructed and founded during Reconstruction. This period is an understudied one, especially when one compares attention to it and to the Civil War. Studies of this period like that of Hawkins who wrote the second major history of the Johns Hopkins University and who reviewed local newspapers written during and after Johns Hopkins' lifetime in this history, may well uncover the competing definitions of science, research, medicine, public health, doctoral education, medical education, and education in general, of freedom , cirizenship and equality, or of services and institutions for and of the poor, the aged, women and African Americans, and of the role of those employed by and educated in the elite institutions that emerged during this period. The role and legacy of this real world actor in his world will be better understood with such studies of this period. Such studies may give us a better understanding of the winners and losers in this period's contests, the silences in the literature, including that which surrounded Johns Hopkins and his life story, his abolitionism. The emphases in the academy, public relations, and the media during his lifetime, and since will also be better understood..

One silence in the literature is that on Thom's discussions of the negative responses to his activities as an abolitionist from 1807 to his death. In her opinion, "hostility" towards Johns Hopkins began with his family's 1807 emancipation in a tobacco growing county dependent on slave labor since slavery became legal in the 1660s. This hostility Thom wrote persisted when he became a banker, philanthropist, and railroad man who often did not subscribe to many of the racial and class prejudices of his time. In addition she criticized those who misrepresented him as illiterate, and as a self-made man. Representing him as a self-made man she wrote ignored the support he received from his own family in Maryland and Virginia, and other Quakers. Representing him as illiterate ignores his literate mother's, his and other efforts he and his family undertook to continue his education after his formal education ended as well as the love of learning he inherited from his mother.

Until today Johns Hopkins is cited for saving Baltimore city and the B&O railroad after financial crises. He is rarely cited as an abolitionist, a friend of Lincoln, a Unionist, or for being a businessman who used his earlier war time experiences during and after the War of 1812 to rebuild Baltimore city's economy after the Civil War, as Thom also suggested. Further studies may well provide further support for her representation of Johns Hopkins,including her representation of him as as an almost lifelong abolitionist. There also may be more support for a December 2006 statement of Ross Jones, an alumnus and a retired assistant to six presidents and board of trustees of the Johns Hopkins University who like most others does not refer to Johns Hopkins the abolitionist, namely that "Without Johns Hopkins, I don't think the city of Baltimore or the state or the world would be what it is”.

The legacy of Johns Hopkins

Johns Hopkins' greatest legacy are the institutions that carry his name. The Johns Hopkins University, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Johns Hopkins Schools of Nursing, Medicine, and Public Health, and the other institutions that carry his name are some of the most renown institutions in the nation, and the world. These institution are renown for the world class services provided in the areas of research, the sciences, medicine, public health, the arts and humanities, and education, in particular doctoral education. The Johns Hopkins Press founded in 1898, is the longest continuously operating academic press in the nation. Johns Hopkins Institutions are also renown for a tradition of public relations and record of publications.

Almost fifty years after Johns Hopkins' death in 1873, Thom in her 1929 biography on him expressed how proud she was of the legacy of her relative. She was proud of the Johns Hopkins Institutions not just because of their emphases on research and on science, these institution's contributions to higher education, medicine and public health, their role in founding doctoral education in America, but also for the Johns Hopkins Hospital's many services to the poor, both black and white. Thom argued further that the legacy of Quakers to America was similar to that of Puritans. Members of both religions, she wrote, had used their wealth to increase freedom in the world. She felt that much more was known about Puritans in this regard than about Quakers, and she hoped that her biography of Johns Hopkins would provide an example of a Quaker who contributed his wealth and increased freedom in the world community.

It is difficult to assess the legacy of this man who lived under the first eighteen presidents in America, more specifically, from the second term of the America's Revolutionary hero and first president, George Washington to the second term of Civil War hero and America's eighteenth president Ulysses Grant. Not a president, political, public or literary figure, Johns Hopkins is an understudied figure and this is especially so when it comes to his opposition to slavery, his support for quality education and medicine for the poor, the elderly, women and blacks, and his role as a philanthropist, businessman, banker, investor and an abolitionist. Two major representations of Johns Hopkins and his legacy now appear in the literature, Johns Hopkins and his legacy as represented before and after the founding of the Johns Hopkins University in 1876.

Johns Hopkins and his Legacy Before 1876

Johns Hopkins' last acts and his death occurred during the Reconstruction period. Moreover, the first and nost renown of the Johns Hopkins Institutions were founded during this period. This period is known for the growth of segregation, and Jim Crow practices. Less is known today about those who defied such practices, or about when and if individuals defied or promoted such practices. As stated before, it was in an 1870's article in the Baltimore American, Baltimore City's premier newspaper at that time, where Johns Hopkins was praised for being a man whose "humanity knows no race". He was praised for three "projected charities' of a university, a hospital, and an orphanage. And while it has been, and is now often, in Johns Hopkins University's and other publications. that Johns Hopkins, left no instruction letter to the university board of trustees like he did for the hospital board of trustees. this 1870 newspaper article did present the views reported earlier on some of Hopkins' ideas on the university and the hospital just days after the first and only meeting of a board of trustees before Hopkins' death. This board was the university board of trustees. Its board meeting was held in June 1870.

Johns Hopkins' March 12th 1873 instruction letter to the trustees of the hospital board of trustees with its provisions for the poor of all races, and without regard for age, sex, and color was published in part and in its entirety in the newspapers of Baltimore City and New York City, in the 1874 book Chronicles cited earlier. References to the university, hospital, orphan asylum, and nursing school appear in this instruction and in other newspaper and magazine articles and books. Rhe author of the latter book, had fought on the side of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Local newspaper articles were his major sources of infornation. Also included in Chronicles was the Baltimore city council expressions of their appreciation to Johns Hopkins which soon followed this letter. During the Civil War, John Niernsee, the renown architect of the orphan asylum, who assisted in building the hospital, also had fought on the Confederate side.

In 1875, Baltimore city newspapers and The Nation, founded in New York in 1865 and which is today the longest operating publication of its kind in the nation, covered the opening of the Johns Hopkins Colored Children Orphan Asylum. The Nation praised John Niernsee and his plans for constructing the orphan asylum. After Johns Hopkins' 1873 death, the obituaries and later articles which were published in New York and Chicago, presented him similarly and the latter praised him for not taking the actions, business and philanthropic, now associated with the capitalists or those now called robber barons, or with Peabody when it comes to the latter's involvement in slavery. Overall newspaper, magazine articles, and books reported and commented favorably on Johns Hopkins until about three years after his death in 1875. The obituary of the Baltimore American even referred to Johns Hopkins' grandfather's freeing of his slaves in 1778.

Still, in 1870 when a journalist praised Johns Hopkins for being a man whose "humanity knows no race", Marylanders were rejecting the Fifteenth Amendment. Similarly, three years before, in 1867 when Johns Hopkins filed the papers incorporating the Johns Hopkins Institutions, Marylanders were then rejecting the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1867 political leadership in the state had begun to shift from the side of republicans and those who had passed the Thirteenth Amendment to side of the democrats and conservatives. Democrats and conservatives rejected the constitution framed by the republicans which incidentally provided state support for the education of black children (Wolff, 2006). The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were not passed in Maryland until 1959 and 1972, respectively.

Johns Hopkins' references to a nursing school were covered by the media as well largely because his statement of interest in women being trained to work in the hospital appeared in the widely published March 12th 1873 instruction letter to the hospital trustees.

It should not be disregarded, however, that in a many ways Johns Hopkins was also a man and a Quaker of his times. To him as it was to most men of his time,a hospital was an institution that served the poor. It was a fellow Quaker, businessmen, friend and trustee, Francis T. King,who was the leader of the hospital trustees when they built the orphan asylum, the nursing school, and the hospital. King seems to be more responsible than Johns Hopkins for the lack of segregation initially at the hospital. Other trustees Johns Hopkins selected to lead the institutions named after him frequently seem not to have taken the leadership like King did when it came to Johns Hopkins' interests "color", "age", "sex" or the indigent of "all races". Until today, Hopkins' interest in age is almost never cited. There is an inattention to his views on religion's role in the hospital. His nonsectarianism was more noted during his lifetime. None of the trustees Johns Hopkins selected were of African descent, and there seems to be almost no record of his dealings with persons of African descent who were not his slaves or servants.

Johns Hopkins after 1876

In 1876, 1889, 1893 the Johns Hopkins University, Hospital and Nursing School, School of Medicine were founded. In the post 1876 publications by and on these institutions personnel, students and alumni, and by those in other universities and colleges, it has been and is often said that almost no one knows what Johns Hopkins thought about admitting blacks,or women, because his writings were so few. Unlike pre 1876 writers, many do not refer to the fact that he specifically stated that the hospital should provide quality personnel, facilities, services and care free to the poor, again, no matter their age first, their sex second, and their color third, and that the well off should pay to subsidize the free services for the poor.

Because the hospital was constructed under the leadership of Francis King,the members of the board of trustees later had to make a decision to segregate the hospital. They did so within a year or two after the death of Francis King. King died in 1891, and the hospital was segregated in 1892 King was a Quaker, and the person who knew Johns' Hopkins' plans before and better than most others according to French. King led in the building and the founding of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and over a decade before, of the Johns Hopkins (Hospital) Colored Children Orphan Asylum. It was under his leadership that both the hospital and the orphan asylum were built by one of the most renown architects of their time, John Niernsee and only then after travels, correspondences, and visits to similar institutions in Europe. Billings, handpicked by Gilman, was the lead architect of the hospital.

King visited and consulted with Florence Nightingale while in Europe/ He was a supporter of the women's efforts to attend the university and the hospital in the 1890s, and of their successful efforts to integrate the graduate school of the university according to Hopkins. He also helped to select the university's faculty members. Johns Hopkins University did not admit undergraduate women to Johns Hopkins University until 1970, making it one of the last educational institutions to admit undergraduate women.

The orphan asylum like the other Johns Hopkins Institutions was constructed by one of the best architects of the time, and after travels to Europe and in America to identify best practices. It is also reported that because those who knew Johns Hopkins were still alive and memories of Johns Hopkins were still fresh, Kelly Miller was admitted to the Johns Hopkins University's graduate school to study physics, mathematics, and astronomy in the 1880s, and he became the university's graduate student. Miller did not graduate because of a tuition increase. He would later become the future founder of Howard University's sociology department, Howard University's Dean of the Arts and Sciences, and a prolific writer. At least one source reports that Howard University was sometimes called "Kelly Miller's University".

Johns Hopkins' memories also positively affected the first African American member of the Medical and Chirugical Society, and of another medical society that merged with it, Dr. Whitfield Winsey. Two other Africans also became members and they could attend Med-Chi meetings since they were held in McCoy Hall on Johns Hopkins University's campus. After these three men left Med-Chi or died, no other African Americans were allowed to become members of Med- Chi until the 1940s. Memories of Johns Hopkins, his influence, and local knowledge of his abolitionism, soon waned both within and outside of the institutions named for him.

Hawkins in the second major history of Johns Hopkins University states that Gilman exhibited a "conservative" response to race and gender relations in a chanpter on women aand blavks. The Uninbited was the title of this chapter. One trustee, Reverdy Johnson who worked closely with Gilman, resigned because of his opposition to coeducation. according to Hawkins. Others have since reported that the chemist, Ira Remsen, one of the first faculty members selected by Gilman, became the second president of Johns Hopkins stated that it would be "almost suicidal" if he followed the practices of the Quaker Johns Hopkins and admitted persons of African descent as students. Many of Hopkins' students were from the south and “the natural feelings of men from that part of the country” were opposed to admitting such persons to the Johns Hopkins University. Suicide would result if one followed Johns Hopkins legacy, according to the second president of the Johns Hopkins Institutions.

Post 1876 publications focus on Johns Hopkins primarily as the rich businessman and raulroad executive who endowed the Johns Hopkins Institutions, and the first president, Daniel Coit Gilman os praised as the founder of the posthumously founded Johns Hopkins Institutions. The Johns Hopkins (Hospital) Colored Children Orphanage is traditionally omitted from these accounts. Until today Gilman, not Hopkins, is the central figure in most celebrations of founders day. Founders day usually occurs on February 22nd, the month and day of Gilman's inauguration. This day was chosen because it is the birth day of America's revolutionary hero and first President, George Washington. The year 1876 was also the centennial anniversary of the birth of America as an independent nation, and of its Constitution. In his inaugural address on February 22th, 1875, Gilman stated that he would "leave the commemoration" of Johns Hopkins to those who knew him better. Others since seem to have followed in Gilman's footsteps, and there is still an inattention to Johns Hopkins, his life story, to Johns Hopkins as represented herein, by Thom, and by pre-1876 works until today.

Overall, a lack of attention to Johns Hopkins is evident in writings and his legacy as described herein does not greatly influence leaders of the Johns Hopkins Institutions. This is evident in the two major histories of Johns Hopkins University, published in 1946 and 1960.Changes do occur beginning in the 1940s.

Johns Hopkins after the 1940s

The two major histories of the Johns Hopkins University are by alumni of the Johns Hopkins University. In A History of the University Founded by Johns Hopkins, the first major history of Johns Hopkins University published in 1946, John C. French, an alumnus and then university librarian, asked in this book's opening paragraph why 1876,and not 1867, was the founding year of the Johns Hopkins University. Unlike leaders of the posthumously built Johns Hopkins Institutions, French wrote, the leaders of most other educational institutions in America, had displayed an interest in showing the "antiquity" of their institutions by searching for the oldest document, and then dating their institutions from this document. French added information on the trustees selected by Johns Hopkins and on Mintie, an African born slave of the Hopkins' family who was discussed by Thom.

Another alumnus Hugh Hawkins says little about Johns Hopkins in the second major history of the Johns Hopkins University, Pioneer: A History of the Johns Hopkins University 1874 - 1889. "The Uninvited" is the title of one chapter in this book which is principally on when Gilman was and was not a "pioneer". In this chapter Hawkins discusses women and less so African Americans at the Johns Hopkins University. Both are discussed ub a chapter with the titke "The Uninvited" of the Johns Hopkins University. He discusses the struggles of womwn that culminated in the entry of women into the Johns Hopkins. These struggles had been widely reported in the 1880s and 1890s as they are now. The nursing school was segregated like the other institutions that were founded as Johns Hopkins' namesakes. It was also closed in 1973 and opened in 1983. In a little over a page in this chapter he provides additional information on the early African American applicants to Johns Hopkins in this chapter where Gilman is described as a "conservative" and not a "pioneer" when it came to gender and race relations. Trustee Reverdy Johnson who was close to Gilman, Hawkins describes as an opponent of coeducation. Others cite Johnson's opposition to mixing the races. Hawkins like most others is also critical of Thom's biography on Johns Hopkins, this time, because of her lack of knowledge of what was really going on at the university.

In other chapters, Hawkins notes other problems as well, such as Gilman's handling of a conflict in the economics department. Because of Gilman's choices, Hawkins' writes, Darwinism permeated even the "vocabulary" of those working and studying at this university. Although this was a typical choice by academicians during Gilman's lifetime, Hawkins suggests that the latter choice was later seen as less than a positive development at Johns Hopkins University, or elsewhere.

In Pioneer, Hawkins presents and analyzes local newspapers where charges of elitism, and of not carrying out Johns Hopkins' wishes, were not uncommon. Reported in these newspapers were local sentiments for and against Gilman, and on the differences between Hopkins' and Gilman's vision of the Johns Hopkins Institutions. Charges of elitism were leveled at Gilman when he was president of California state university, and these charges were also reported in local newspapers.

Hawkins reported on the efforts of women to become students at Johns Hopkins University, and provided more information on the attempts of African Americans to to become student in a chapter titled "The Uninvited". Hawkins though says little about Johns Hopkins or his life story in "Pioneer" in the 1960 edition of this book or in the 2001 edition published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was at first a dissertation. Hawkins interestingly later studied abolitionists and abolitionism, but "Johns Hopkins" was not one of them. Neither Hawkins nor the two writers who later labeled Johns Hopkins an abolitionist (Jacob and Field) mention the Colored Children Orphan Asylum as one of the institutions Johns Hopkins established.

A question which has often been raised since the founding of the Johns Hopkins Institutions is asked is whether the Johns Hopkins Institutions would have survived or flourished had they followed Johns Hopkins' his and King's lead in the post Civil War Reconstruction. Another question is would these institutions have survived and flourished if not for Gilman and his leadership. Some easily would and have stated "yes" to both questions. Such questions are not so easily answered affirmatively by others. Another alumnus for instance, commented that the Anglo Saxon germ theory or whig theory early found a home in history and the social sciences at the Johns Hopkins University under Gilman and those who worked as faculty. Notice that [Basil Gildersleeve]], who taught at the University of Virginia, and served as a Confederate soldier during the Civil War, was the first faculty member and a proponent of the lost cause thesis. W.E.B DuBois in Black Reconstruction stated that Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University were the two centers where publications on such ideas were produced. As reported elsewhere, the signature of "Gilman", who was then the head of the Slater Fund, was on the letter that denied DuBois the funds to complete the doctoral program he was enrolled in at the University of Berlin. Gilman was much closer to Booker T. Washington than to W.E.B. DuBois.

Gender and race were continuing issues at the Johns Hopkins Institutions. Segregation was the reality in the Johns Hopkins Institutions until the 1940s. The Johns Hopkins Hospital, as stated before was segregated in 1892, a few years before the passage of Plessy vs Ferguson in 1896 which legally sanctioned "separate but equal" as the law of the land. The leaders of the Johns Hopkins Institutions in many ways seemed to have been much more influenced by those whose definitions of a "separate but equal" contrasted with Johns Hopkins' actions and the actions of the leader of the hospital trustees, Francis King, who stressed quality and even world class services and faciliyies and institutions for the infigent no matter their sex, age,or color. Separate but equal to the leaders of the Johns Hopkins institutions quite often meant "separate and unequal". This was so also for trustees like Reverdy Johnson,Jr. and ex-mayor Brown.

In the 1940s a Baltimore native Frederick Isadore Scott, became the first African American undergraduate admitted to the Johns Hopkins University, and the first African American graduate of the Johns Hopkins University in 1950 after he served in World War II. He majored in chemical engineering. In 1950 Scott also became the first African American graduate of the Johns Hopkins University, of its engineering program, and of the university's undergraduate peogram.

Reports around the 1960s also showed that African American employeeswere paid less for decades. And, it was not until 1967, seventeen years after Scott's graduation in 1950, that an African American, the late Robert Gamble and the Kenyan born British trained James F. Nabwangu, graduated PHI BETA KAPPA from the famed Johns Hopkins Medical School. That same year African Americans, Miriam DeCosta Sugarmon and Percy Pierre received doctorates from Johns Hopkins University, she in Romance Languages and he in Electrical Engineering, making them the first African Americans to graduate from Johns Hopkins University's doctoral programs.

That same year, 1967, was the one hundredth anniversary of the documents Johns Hopkins used to incorporate the Johns Hopkins Institutions, the one hundredth and sixtieth anniversary of his family's 1807 emancipation of their slaves, the one hundredth and fiftieth anniversary of the Dred Scott case in 1857 and of Johns Hopkins' service as a trustee of the school Myrtilla Miner founded for black females. Miner's school is now considered to be the founding institution of the University of the District of Columbia (UDC), one of the HBCUs (historically black colleges and universities}.

DeCosta Sugarmon received a master's degree in Romance Languages from the Johns Hopkins University in 1960 making an African American woman the first African American to receive a graduate degree from the Johns Hopkins University. In 1964, fourteen years after Scott graduated from the university with a bachelor's degree in engineering in 1950,James Nabwangu now a neurosurgeon in the Dakotas, received a bachelor's degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Arts and Sciences In 1948 and 1949, and about sixty years after Kelly Miller enrolled in Johns Hopkins University's graduate school, Dr. Clifton Wharton, Jr., attended and graduated from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C. making him the first graduate of a Johns hopkins institution, and of a graduate program of the Johns Hopkins Institutions. He later became the president of Michigan State University, the first African American CEO of a Fortune 500 company (TIAA-CREF), and a foreign policy advisor to six presidents.

In sum, Wharton's graduation occurred about one hundred and fifty four years after the birth of this child of Quaker slave owners in 1795, one hundred and forty one years since the 1807 emancipation and eighty years before Johns Hopkins incorporated a university, hospital and colored children orphan asylum, seventy six years after Johns Hopkins' request that the orphan asylum be founded first, sixty four years after the colored orphan asylum was constructed by one of the best architects of his time, and twenty five years after the orphan asylum was closed, again after about fifty years of existence in 1924.

Change was even slower when it came to persons of African descent and women as faculty members and administrators. In the case of the former, change has been so slow that persons of African descent in staff positions and in service jobs have a history of employment as long as the history of the Johns Hopkins Institutions while most of the first students, alumni, faculty, and administrators of the Johns Hopkins University are still living. For instance, Jamaican born Dr. Franklin Knight became a faculty member in the 1970s, and became the first tenured faculty member in the 1980s. The first faculty member, staff, and administrator, though was Vivien Thomas. He worked with Dr. Alfred Blalock and Dr. Helen Taussig by helping to devise the blue baby shunt for babies with the blue baby syndrome, and by assisting in the "first operation" on a baby with the blue baby syndrome. Thomas' contributions are not always cited. Thomas was the head of a laboratory, a laboratory worker, and a laboratory instructor to Hopkins' students and other African Americans workers, starting in the 1940s. Other faculty members following him were Dr. Ralph Young, "the first African-American physician to practice at Johns Hopkins Hospital and the first African-American to be appointed to the state board of health",, Dr. Walter Shervington was a president of the National Medical Association, the African American medical association, and Hopkins' second African American physician. Young did not have admitting privileges. Shervington was not allowed admitting privileges for twenty five years. Dr. Roland Smoot was the first African American hired with admitting privileges, and later the first African American president of Med-Chi.

Until today reporting on Johns Hopkins' bequests to the poor and to those of African descent in quite uneven. In 1995 Field for instance reports on Johns Hopkins' scholarships to poor youths. He also reports that after the 1807 emancipation Johns Hopkins "would carry the habits of thrift and hard work he developed at this time with him throughout his life. Nor would he lose his sense of social justice. An abolitionist before the term was even invented, Johns Hopkins demonstrated a lifelong concern for those the larger society exploited or ignored". Yet, he wrote. mistakenly, that rural blacks were the poor and so they were the chief recipients of Johns Hopkins' bequests to the hospital.

Even after the racial incidents at Johns Hopkins University in October 2006, there are questions about whether or not Johns Hopkins and his family's emancipation of their slaves 200 years after the founding of Jamestown will be celebrated in 2007.Publications after both Jacob and Field, and Thom before them, still are ones where the word "abolitionist " is not used to label him, his words, deeds, or writings. There are those who write that Johns Hopkins had no vision and those who omit the orphan asylum as part of that vision. Except for a few exceptions, Johns Hopkins is almost never viewed and treated as a founder other than financially. There is an inattention to his deeds, his writings, and others' writings on him before the founding of the renown Johns Hopkins Institutions. All of this has meant that these institutions still are not known as ones that express a "humanity that knows no race". So many have been deprived of an exemplar of a poor boy who carried "the habits of thrift and hard work ... throughout his life", and who would not "lose his sense of social justice". So many are unaware of him as an abolitionist before and after this term was "invented". Johns Hopkins is not known as as someone who "demonstrated a lifelong concern for those the larger society exploited or ignored" as Field describes him. Two founders Hopkins and Gilman's, two legacies, together, could possibly mean a future of even greater "triumphs", and of less "tribulations" especially in the areas of research, science, education, business, philanthropy and the services provided to the poor no matter their age, sex, or color. 2007 was the two hundredth anniversary of the 1807 emancipation, the one hundredth and fortieth anniversary of his incorporation of a university, a hospital, and a colored orphan asylum in 1867, the four hundredth anniversity of the founding of America at Jamestown, and the year of apologies for slavery by the State o Virginia, and later Maryland.

In 2007 the Johns Hopkins 212th Birthday Address was given by Barry Richmond, A&S '75 (MA), on Friday, May 18, 2007). The 1807 emancipation is ciyed as folloes: "1807 his family freed their slaves and thereafter did not have sufficient help to continue to work their farm". The address concludes by stating the following:

Johns Hopkins decided to leave his wealth to found the Johns Hopkins University and the Johns Hopkins Hospital, which were incorporated in 1867. After his death on December 24th 1873, his will was probated and his fortune of seven million dollars was divided equally between the two institutions. At the time, this was the largest donation of a philanthropic gift. Johns Hopkins had the great foresight to appoint trustees of both institutions who would carry out his vision to establish the University and Hospital which have become renowned throughout the world. On the occasion of your 212th birthday, we thank you and honor you Johns Hopkins for your generosity and vision in establishing the University and Hospital which have enriched all aspects of our lives in every area of advanced education and the healing.

Johns Hopkins' dreams and his vision still lives. Some have been realized, and some have not. This founder is represented as someone who was influenced by his participation in an emancipation two hundred years ago in 2007, as almost a lifelong abolitionist in word and deed therafter, as a man who formally stated his dream of quality personnel, male and female, quality services, facilities and institutions for all races and classes and no matter the age, sex or color of the patient. In the 1970s he was seen as someone who was praised for his nonsectarianism, for continuing the tradition of Benjamin Franklin when the latter founded free hospitals, including emergency care, in Philadelphia, and as a man whose "humanity knows no race" probably unaware of the segregation and Jim Crow practices that would become dominant in this nation.

External links

• Genealogical Records on Marylanders
• Thom and Jacob discuss his love for his cousin and Quaker traditions
• In his 1887 memoir, Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861: A Study of the War, George William Brown city Johns Hopkins as a wealthy Union man in Baltimore, a city with strong Confederate and Southern leanings
• In The Chronicles of Baltimore: Being a Complete History of "Baltimore Town" and Baltimore City from the Earliest Period to the Present Time published in 1874, John Thomas Scharf cited the 1873 instruction letter to the hospital trustees and a city council resolution thanking Johns Hopkins for his philanthropy. Thom's biography and New York and Maryland newspapers were sources that published parts or all of this letter
• The Institutional Records of The Johns Hopkins Hospital Colored Orphan Asylum
• Abstract Johns Hopkins Dream for a Model of its Kind: The JHH Colored Orphans Asylum", 2000 Conference International Society for the History of Medicine BY Dr. P. Reynolds
• Grave site of Johns Hopkins
• Graveside ceremony for Johns Hopkins
• Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861: A Study of the War, the memoir of George William Brown then the mayor of Baltimore city, later a member of the university board of trustees of the Johns Hopkins University
• The Chronicles of Baltimore: Being a Complete History of "Baltimore Town" and Baltimore City from the Earliest Period to the Present Time published in 1874 by John Thomas Scharf
• "If He Could See Us Now: Mr. Johns Hopkins' Legacy Strong University, Hospital Benefactor Turned 200 on May 19, 1995", Mike Field, the author, contradicts this statement
• Chronology, Nursing school
• The Institutional Records of The Johns Hopkins Hospital Colored Orphan
• Abstract Johns Hopkins Dream for a Model of its Kind: The JHH Colored Orphans Asylum" By Dr. P. Reynolds
• "If He Could See Us Now: Mr. Johns Hopkins' Legacy Strong University, Hospital Benefactor Turned 200 on May 19, 1995" by Mike Field a writer for the Johns Hopkins Gazette. Field, Thom, and Jacob called Johns Hopkins an abolitionist. See also The Racial Record of Johns Hopkins University in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, No. 25, Autumn, 1999, pp. 42-43/ JSTOR
• Johns Hopkins, Maryland State Archives
• "The History of African Americans @ Johns Hopkins University" See in particular the chronology and the paper by Danton Rodriguez.