An Early Black Family in Tiffin
It seems appropriate to celebrate Black History Month by looking into the black families who have been part of the town’s history from its beginnings. Especially well known was the Bibb family who built the handsome brick house at the southeast corner of Circular and Monroe Streets, This house at 491 Circular Street is now owned by City Council President, Mike Grandillo and his wife, Nancy.
Mr. and Mrs. Dennis M. Bibb were so well known as long-time residents of Tiffin that more than two hundred and fifty Tiffin residents accepted invitations to attend a reception in their home in honor of their fiftieth wedding anniversary in March, 1898. The following is an excerpt from the Tiffin Daily Tribune.
“The bride and groom sat in state in an alcove of the parlor in armchairs gaily decorated beneath a canopy of smilax from whose graceful festoons was suspended a wedding bell lined with gold-foil. … The presents were numerous and included a silk purse bearing a list of babies of neighbors on Sycamore and Monroe Streets which contained $37.50 in gold coins. The Colored Ladies Literary Society’s souvenir was a five dollar gold piece. The total contribution in cash amounted to $170.75.”
“The happiest couple in all the city today is Mr. and Mrs. Bibb and it is their expressed wish that the Tribune record that fact,” stated Mr. Bibb.
Dennis Marshall Bibb was born a slave on a large plantation belonging to Jackson James in 1818. The plantation was located in Logan County, near the Tennessee border. It can be noted that Jackson James was the grandfather of the famous outlaws, Jesse and Frank James.
When Dennis Bibb was eight years old his master died and the son, D. W. James, then only a few years old, became his owner. Bibb’s special duty was the care and guardianship of this child as a valet or body servant.
Because of the nature of his duties, Bibb had opportunities for learning that most of the slaves in the south did not have. He had plenty to eat and good clothes to wear. However, as he grew to manhood and realized that he was bound to slavery for life, he began thinking of running away to freedom.
An incident when he was 23 years old confirmed his commitment to escape. He accompanied his master to sell some of his slaves in New Orleans, one of the great slave markets in the south. He witnessed the heart-rendering separation of families at the market and he knew of slaves forced to work under a slave driver’s whip in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. He feared that he also might be sold if his master faced hard financial times. As one slave owner remarked as he made preparations to sell his daughter by a slave, “Rather sell her than be sold out by the sheriff.”
Bibb’s young master and he returned from New Orleans on a passenger steamship. They had intended to get off at Paducah, Kentucky, but young James fell in the company of some gay young men and decided to go on to Cincinnati, where his companions promised him a high old time. In that city the young men had a carousel that lasted a few days and Bibb was left to himself much of the time. So he resolved on flight. From Cincinnati he traveled the “Underground Railroad” to Oberlin. It took him three weeks.
At that time, around 1837, Many people in Oberlin were friendly to the anti-slavery movement so he decided he was safe in staying there. He found work in a hotel there. On one occasion, after he had delivered a message to a group of men, one of them handed him a silver coin and said, “I suppose you are a runaway slave”. Bibb, feeling that all the men in the group were friendly and believing that he was safe from pursuit, said “yes, sah!”
“Well, we’re glad you got away. You were treated pretty cruelly down there, wasn’t you?”
“Not so awful bad, sah.”
“Did you have good clothes?”
“Suttingly, sah!. Just as good as my massa had.”
“But you got a good many thrashings, eh?”
“Nebber had a whipping in my life, sah.”
“Never thrashed? Well, but I suppose you didn’t always get enough to eat, did you?”
“Always had enough, sah, Nebber went hungry”.
“What?” said the colored man’s questioner, “Good clothes, no punishment, plenty to eat! And you runaway and came up north without knowing what fate awaited you?” He turned to his friends. “Now here’s a fellow that enjoyed all these privileges and gave it up for uncertainty.” He said then to Bibb, “Don’t you think you made a mistake?”
“Well, sah, and gemmen,“ said Bibb, “all I’se got to say respecting dem privileges is, dat if any one ob you wants to avail hisself ob ‘em, the situation am open.”
While Dennis Bibb was in Oberlin, he met an attractive young colored woman. Her name was Emeline Janey. She and her family had moved to Oberlin from the Tiffin area so she could get an education at Oberlin College, the first college in Ohio to admit women. Dennis Bibb wooed and wed her in Oberlin and after five years they moved to Tiffin.
The story of the Bibb family and their life in Tiffin will be continued next week
– Mary