It was a fearful time in America for persons of color. Fleeing intolerable conditions in the land of their birth, many risked a perilous journey to the north, mothers with babes in arms crossing raging rivers, seeking refuge. Many white people defied the law to protect them while Federal agents roamed throughout the country apprehending many, even some who had documentation like a man in Indianapolis. Some lawyers tried to help, but as was a case in Springfield, Illinois, to no avail. Americans were at odds with each other over the issue, and it appeared the country was edging ever closer to being rent asunder.
This was America 169 years ago; this was the United States after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Moved by these events, a young woman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, put pen to paper and wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The narrative was serialized in the National Era, with the first of forty chapters appearing on June 5, 1851. A year later it was published in book form. Next to the Bible, Uncle Tom’s Cabin became the most widely read book of the age and stirred a nation. Playwrights adapted the book to the stage and those productions further stirred the conscience and propelled people to action. Uncle Tom’s Cabin later appeared in various versions on the silver screen.
While Stowe acknowledged that the inspiration for Uncle Tom’s Cabin came from an 1849 book, The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, she knew the personal stories of former slaves that she had met while living in Cincinnati and of Quaker settlements that “have always been refuges for the oppressed and outlawed slave.” In a companion book, A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe documents “the truth of the work,” writing that the novel was “a collection and arrangement of real incidents…grouped together…in the same manner that the mosaic artist groups his fragments of various stones into one general picture.” Although she doesn’t mention him by name, one person who published accounts as early as 1857 is credited with influencing her years before the book was written was Thomas “Uncle Tom” Magruder of Indianapolis.
“Uncle Tom” Magruder had been a slave of the Noble family, and like the main character in Stowe’s novel, he was a “very religious old Negro” of commanding appearance, his “open, gentle, manly countenance made him warm friends of all persons, white and black, who became acquainted with him.” Dr. Thomas Noble, a medical doctor, gave up his practice and became a planter in Frederick County, Virginia when his brother gave him a plantation sometime after 1782. Uncle Tom was probably one of the slaves on this plantation who were removed in 1795 to Kentucky when Dr. Noble moved to the Blue Grass State, taking his slaves with him, and established a farm, Bellevue, in Boone County. Uncle Tom managed the farm, and after Dr. Noble’s death in 1817, his widow Elizabeth Noble continued to have him manage the farm, until her death in 1830. Uncle Tom was permitted to go free and he moved his family to Lawrenceburg, Indiana. Noah Noble, Dr. Noble’s son, brought the aged Uncle Tom and his wife Sarah to Indianapolis in 1831 and had a cabin built for them on a portion of a large tract of land that he had acquired east of the city. The cabin that became known as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” was located on the northeast corner of Noble (College Ave.) and Market St. and eventually Tom and Sarah Magruder’s daughter Louisa Magruder and granddaughter Martha, known as Topsy, joined the household. Uncle Tom was a member of Roberts Park Methodist Church and was an “enthusiastic worshipper — his ‘amens,’ ‘hallelujahs,’ and ‘glorys’ being…frequent and fervent.”
Living a few blocks from Uncle Tom at the southwest corner of Ohio and New Jersey in the 1840s was Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, pastor of Second Presbyterian Church. He was “a constant visitor of Uncle Tom’s, well acquainted with his history, and a sincere admirer of his virtues.” It is known that Rev. Beecher mentioned the venerable gentleman in a sermon that may have been when he preached on slavery on May 3, 1846. Harriet Beecher Stowe visited Indianapolis in the summer of 1846 and may have accompanied her brother on one of his frequent visits to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” It is probably that when she left the city, the future title of her novel and its main character were in her mind and maybe notes. It is also likely that the names of the Magruder sons — Moses and Peter — and the name of their granddaughter Topsy remained with Stowe to later find their way into her tale of “Life Among the Lowly.”
Uncle Tom Magruder died on February 22, 1857 and was buried in the Noble family lot at the city’s Greenlawn Cemetery. He was about 110 years old. The Indianapolis Journal said of him, “If there was ever a Christian in the world, we believe ‘Old Tom’ was one. Indeed he had no distinguishing mark but his Christian virtues. There was nothing to describe him by to a stranger but his piety.”
There was a universal belief in Indianapolis at the time that “there are some circumstances which give it an air of probability” that “Old Tom” is Stowe’s celebrated hero. Among other things, “‘Uncle Tom’s cabin’…was a familiar phrase here long before Mrs. Stowe immortalized it.” Local papers “stood up for the claim” in the immediate years after Uncle Tom’s death. The Daily Citizen wrote in April 1858, “It is believed here that Thomas Magruder…was the ‘veritable Uncle Tom’,” and the Indianapolis News in March 1875 bluntly stated, “[Josiah Henson] is a fraud. The original Uncle Tom lived in this city and his old cabin was near the corner of Market and Noble Street.”
