Jane Minor

{{Short description|African-American healer and slave emancipator}}

Jane Minor (c. 1792 – 1858), also known as Gensey (or JenseyDarlene Clark Hine, [https://books.google.com/books?id=-CZtAAAAMAAJ&q=black+women+in+white Black Women in White], Indiana University Press 1989) Snow, was an African-American healer and slave emancipator, one of the few documented enslaved healing practitioners in United States history.

Early life

Minor was born into slavery as Gensey Snow in Dinwiddie County, Virginia. She worked on the estate of Benjamin Harris May.Stacy Hawkins Adams. "[http://www.richmond.com/special-section/black-history/article_5328088c-6b14-11e2-811f-001a4bcf6878.html Jane Minor]", Richmond Times Dispatch, February 23, 1999, D-1

Healer and emancipator

Minor "was apparently skilled medically and a very gifted, nurturing healer, someone patients really responded to," according to historian Susan Lebsock.Adams, Richmond Times DispatchSuzanne Lebsock, "[http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail-inside.aspx?ID=11135&CTYPE=G The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town], 1784-1860, W. W. Norton & Company, 1985

In 1825, a fever epidemic struck Petersburg, Virginia, and many families, black and white, were affected. As a result of her healing work, Benjamin May gave Minor her freedom. In the manumission deed, he notes that he freed Minor "for several acts of extraordinary merit in nursing at the imminent risk of her own health and safety, exercising the most unexampled patience and attention in watching over the sick beds of several individuals of this town, as well as on account of my belief that she will in the future continue ... to perform similar acts ... "Adams, Richmond-Times Dispatch

In 1826, she met and married Lewis Minor, a free laborer. After her emancipation, she took the name Jane Minor. The money Jane Minor earned as a medical practitioner, usually from $2-$5 per visit, allowed her to purchase and free at least sixteen slaves, some of whom cost over $2,000. In one case, in July, 1840, she bought and freed a mulatto woman named Emily Smith and her five children. In another, the same month and year, she emancipated a fellow healing practitioner named Phoebe Jackson.Claude A. Green, [https://books.google.com/books?id=FK8YdrwXz6sC What We Dragged Out of Slavery with Us], Infinity Publishing, 2006, p. 111Carter Godwin Woodson, Rayford Whittingham Logan, The Journal of Negro History, 1930 Volume 15Luther Porter Jackson, Free Negro Labor and Property Holding in Virginia Appleton Century Company, New York 1942 Lebsock says Minor was the most active free black emancipator in Petersburg, male or female.Lebsock, p. 96-111

More than 30 years after her manumission, Petersburg newspapers printed reports of operations performed by physicians in "the Hospital of the well-known nurse Jinsey Snow."Todd L. Savitt, [https://books.google.com/books?id=ru_tDLLB0wMC&q=%22jane+minor%22+%22nurse%22 Medicine and Slavery], University of Illinois Press, 2002 Cupping and leeching were standard medical practices of that time.Rosalyn Fraad Baxandall, Linda Gordon, Susan Reverb, [https://www.amazon.com/Americas-Working-Women-Documentary-Publications/dp/0393312623 America's Working Women: A Documentary History, 1600 to the Present], W. W. Norton & Company, 1995, p. 50 Researchers have observed that enslaved medical practitioners like Jane Minor often brought herbal and other medical knowledge from Africa that was at that time unknown in early colonial America.Mwalimu J. Shujaa, Kenya J. Shujaa, [https://books.google.com/books?id=ooVNCgAAQBAJ&dq=mwalimu+sage+encyclopedia+jane++minor&pg=PA578 The SAGE Encyclopedia of African Cultural Heritage in North America], p. 578, SAGE Publications, Feb 15, 2015

Jane Minor

Early life

Healer and emancipator

See also

References

Further reading