travel writing from a “radically different” American slave

January 21, 2019 12:45 AM

David Dorr, who in 1853 became the first African American to visit the Holy Land, couldn’t pass up the trip – he was a slave, forced to travel with his owner Cornelius Fellowes. Dorr later wrote about his three-year journey through Europe and the Middle East in a unique travel book, A Colored Man Round the World, which provided white readers with a rare look, before the Civil War, at an educated Black perspective. Slaves back then were erased from history, but Dorr, turning the tables, wrote as if he was traveling alone, and barely mentioned Fellowes except to mock him as clumsy or awkward.

When the two returned to New Orleans, and Fellowes went back on his promise to free Dorr at the end of the trip, the latter used the Underground Railroad to escape to Ohio, where he earned the money to self-publish his book in 1858. If you’d like to own a first edition, there’s one for sale at the moment for $3,800.

posted by LeLiLo (6 comments total)

It's a fascinating book and for those of us currently without $3,800 it is available in an excellent edition from the University of Michigan Press
posted by fallingbadgers at 2:34 AM on January 21, 2019 [7 favorites]

The [Dome of the Rock] glittered in the sun beam ...

That's a neat trick, considering that it was covered in lead until the early 1950s. If you check the original text of the book, available free on Project Gutenberg, what Dodd actually wrote was: "The mosque of Omar’s dome glittered in the sun beam ...."

The Mosque of Omar is a much smaller building which is named after the Caliph Omar al-Farook, one of the companions of Mohammed and the ruler under whose authority Jerusalem was conquered. The Mosque is very close to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is why Dodd remarks that it "looked down upon our glorious sepulchre, as it were with contempt." I think I can discern why Teller chose to elide most of that passage, but in doing so he confused both geography and history. The Dome of the Rock is on the Temple Mount, maybe a kilometer away; it received its current aluminium-bronze cladding in 1965, under Jordanian rule, and in 1993 King Hussein of Jordan personally paid for the cladding to be gilded.

The rest of Dodd's account is well worth reading, too, but this passage made me pensive:

My attention was just at this time drawn to a large old building that had the bearing of royalty deeply marked on its furrowed decay. I asked its use, and was informed that it was a maccaroni manufactory. I drew nigh, and stood, in company with dozens of girls, looking through its decayed apertures. I saw hundreds of men walking about in a perfect state of nudity, and also as many more moving round at quicker step. I would discover every few moments a couple of these that seemed to be mantled with small reeds of a bending nature, step on a platform and commence turning round, like crazy men imitating the spinning of a top, but I could discover nothing of their intention until they walked off the platform, when I could plainly see that they had divested themselves of something I knew not what.

The way they make maccaroni in Rome, is thus: when it is hot or warm, the men stand by the aperture that squeezes it into a reed-like shape, and wind it round their bodies until they are totally covered or mantled, and then they walk in great haste in a circle until it is nearly cool, after which they walk on the aforesaid platform and unwind themselves from its cooling grasp, and there it stays until it becomes totally dry, after which they box it for export. That which is made for home consumption is not made on so extensive a scale, and different ideas of neatness is needed lest it affect the home consumption.

Well, maybe. As his Roman interlocutors might have said, se non è vero, è ben trovato.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:36 AM on January 21, 2019 [15 favorites]

Admirable how he reframed his experience! Also available here (slgb)
posted by otherchaz at 2:39 AM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

Also available at Gutenberg.
posted by Enturbulated at 4:38 AM on January 21, 2019

Dorr says Fellowes treated him “as his own son”

Which he may well have been.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:32 AM on January 21, 2019 [3 favorites]

Dorr says Fellowes treated him “as his own son”.

The title page lists the author as David F. Dorr. Can't find the F. with certainty.

A little digging reveals that one Cornelius Fellowes Davis married Eliza Smith Dorr in 1829. Both of Massachusetts, so it could be just coincidence. On the other hand, there seem to be some pre-war connections to New Orleans in general and to our guy's business, Fellowes & Co of New Orleans, in later decades. And there seems to be some post-war connection to another Fellowes Davis brokerage interests in NYC, not least of all, cotton. Enough to swing this nice joint. (Another later Cornelius Fellowes, president of St. Nicholas Hygeia Ice Company, married Mlle. Dazie of Ziegfeld Folies - but we are now well and truly down the rabbit hole, and who has the time? Still - provocative, none the less.)

I digress. Here's what the New Orlean's business folk had to say about Cornelius Fellowes, merchant and broker (not plantation owner, U of Mich press seems to have gotten that wrong) in 1855. He survived the war by six years, having rebuilt to a degree the ruined business. A pdf of the intro to the modern edition is available here.

And to end - Dorr's Civil War service seems to have been with the Ohio 7th infantry and later the 5th infantry, white units, rather than USCT. One can see it. The pay was better, for starters. His record: "DORN, DAVID F.; Entered the service Aug. 25th, 1862, for 3 years; wounded in the head during the Battle of Ringgold, Ga., Nov. 27th, 1863; transferred to detachment of recruits and assigned to 5th O. V. I., Oct. 31st, 1864. (Recruit)"

We will assume "Dorn" is a typo.
posted by BWA at 12:32 PM on January 21, 2019 [4 favorites]