Pioneer Black Lawyers Season 4 Episode 1

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

[Note — We need to find things that unite us. In this spirit, I present over the coming month stories of pioneer black lawyers who should be remembered for their humanity, their families, their mindsets and their times. I began this project during Black History Month 2021 and I derived great satisfaction from expanding the knowledge of my readers free of dogma and slogan words. If you are reading these words, you share my fatigue with how Black History is too often presented.

Today, we begin season 4 with a South Carolina lawyer born of a white father and a black mother. Very fitting for episode 1. Enjoy and learn about this individual in our national past.]

Samuel Jones Bampfield (1849 - 1899)

The Bampfield brothers were native to England. Nonetheless, they seemed curious about the larger world. One brother ended up in Australia. Another brother, Joseph Bampfield, Jr., came to the U.S. in the 1820s and made a new home for himself in Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston was a slave society during the 1820s. Tremendous pressures existed on Joseph to find a white wife, settle down and raise a white family. Love, however is colorblind. Yes, it is.

And so Joseph began to court a free black mulatto woman named Judith Robinson. The relationship developed into love and Joseph proposed marriage to Judith. Judith accepted and the two were married in 1827.

Joseph and Judith would have eleven children together, the oldest born in 1829 and the youngest baby born in 1849. The Bampfields were a poster family for diversity in a southern town. The baby boy is the subject of our episode 1 this season 4.

Unlike two of his ten siblings who died in infancy, Samuel Jones Bampfield survived into adulthood and left a lasting mark in Black History.

Not much is know about his experience in a mixed family growing up in Charleston.

After the Civil War, Bampfield graduated from Lincoln College in 1867. Lincoln College in Pennsylvania was the first degree-granting Historically Black College and University in the U.S. Few black Americans were literate after the Civil War. Only about five percent of Black Americans could read in 1865. That Bampfield was literate set Bampfield apart from 95% of other blacks. Now consider that only 28 blacks were college graduates as of 1860. In other words, 28 blacks held a college degree out of roughly five million black people.

Bampfield’s graduation from Lincoln immediately positioned him for a leadership role in Reconstruction South Carolina, a majority black state.

Returning home to Charleston, Bampfield “read law under Judge Cage of Charleston, South Carolina.” Bampfield passed the bar in 1872 and became a pioneer black lawyer. Lawyers are uniquely trained for public service and the conditions were ripe for black leadership in the new Reconstruction government. Bampfield ran for the South Carolina House of Representatives. He won the election and served in the lower South Carolina house from 1874 to 1876. Bampfield represented his new residence of Beaufort. One senses Bampfield sought out electoral opportunity in the larger world away from his native Charleston.

Bampfield courted the daughter of black Congressman Robert Smalls. A hero of a man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Smalls, Congressman Smalls’ daughter, Elizabeth Lydia Smalls, worked for her father as a congressional secretary. One imagines that marrying the congressman’s daughter stood Bampfield in good favor with local Beaufort society. Bampfield proposed marriage to the nineteen-year-old Elizabeth and she accepted. Samuel and Elizabeth were married in Beaufort on April 24, 1877.

Bampfield was now the son-in-law of the congressman. One concrete benefit of Bampfield’s new family relationship was a new house. “Robert Small purchased this circa 1830 property for Bampfield to house his large family. Originally only 2 rooms over 2 rooms, extensions were added to the rear and double-porches were added to the front of the house.” The Samuel Bampfield House can now be found at 715 New Street in Beaufort.

This gift of a home from a father-in-law to a son-in-law is important. Contrary to what some might believe, Black Americans have owned homes and houses on American soil for centuries. There is no period after the 1600s when some Black Americans did not own their homes in some manner. Query whether this reality lessens the case for reparations for American slavery? Should descendants of a white English immigrant and a free black woman quality for reparations? Why or why not?

“If someone was racist against you in life, pick yourself up and keep going.” — Headmistress Katharine Birbalsingh, Michaela School, the UK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Birbalsingh

As Bampfield began a new married life in Beaufort, the federal government withdrew troops from South Carolina. Reconstruction came to an end and the days of black participation in public service were numbered.

What I like about Bampfield’s story is that he continued his life of public service nonetheless and despite the rise of prejudice, bigotry and racism in South Carolina. He twice served as Beaufort’s postmaster, a political plum post. The voters in Beaufort elected Bampfield clerk of the court for Beaufort County where Bampfield served for nineteen years.

In 1892, Bampfield founded the Berean Presbyterian Church in Beaufort. The congregation purchased a lot and built a church which can be seen today at 602 Cateret Street, Beaufort, South Carolina. If one visits Beaufort, one can view the Gothic Revival style place of worship, another lasting legacy of Bampfield.

The Congressman’s son-in-law and pioneer black lawyer in his own right would pass away on Christmas Day, 1899. He never lived to see the 1900s. Elizabeth would later move to Durham, North Carolina and live until the age of 101. She passed away in 1959. Samuel and Elizabeth had eleven children, nine of whom survived to adulthood.

Conclusion: Samuel Jones Bampfield came into this word of mixed heritage, the son of an English immigrant and a free black woman. He was a non-conformer in many ways from his parentage to his college education and his passing of the bar in Charleston in 1872. Bampfield left his native Charleston for greater opportunity in Beaufort where he was remembered for public service and religious life. Bampfield’s life reminds us of the details of humanity — the courtship of and marriage to the congressman’s teenaged daughter and the gifting of a family home from a father-in-law.

There is a human dignity in Samuel Bampfield’s life that we miss if we can only perceive Samuel as an avatar for his race. He came into this world, lived in this world, and left on Christmas Day as an individual.