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Jane Minor (c. 1792 – 1858), also known as Gensey (or Jensey) Snow, was an African-American healer and slave
The SAGE Encyclopedia of African Cultural Heritage in North America
p. 578, SAGE Publications, Feb 15, 2015
Inspiring African-American Women of Virginia
IUniverse, 2015 *Darlene Clark Hine, Kathleen Thompson
A Shining Thread of Hope
Crown/Archetype, 2009 *S Mitchell
Bodies of Knowledge: The Influence of Slaves on the Antebellum Medical Community
,1997, Virginia Tech Digital Archives * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Minor, Jane Folk healers People from Petersburg, Virginia 19th-century African-American businesspeople African-American women in business 19th-century American businesspeople African-American nurses People enslaved in Virginia African-American history of Virginia Year of birth uncertain 1858 deaths American nurses American women nurses Free Negroes 19th-century American slaves People from Dinwiddie County, Virginia 19th-century African-American women 19th-century American businesswomen 19th-century African-American people African-American slave owners
Jane Minor (c. 1792 – 1858), also known as Gensey (or Jensey) Snow, was an African-American healer and slave emancipator
Emancipation generally means to free a person from a previous restraint or legal disability. More broadly, it is also used for efforts to procure economic and social rights, political rights or equality, often for a specifically disenfran ...
, one of the few documented enslaved healing practitioners in United States history.
Early life
Minor was born intoslavery
Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...
as Gensey Snow in Dinwiddie County, Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...
. She worked on the estate of Benjamin Harris May.
Healer and emancipator
Minor "was apparently skilled medically and a very gifted, nurturing healer, someone patients really responded to," according to historian Susan Lebsock. In 1825, a feverepidemic
An epidemic (from Greek ἐπί ''epi'' "upon or above" and δῆμος ''demos'' "people") is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of hosts in a given population within a short period of time. For example, in meningococcal infection ...
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
Manumission, or enfranchisement, is the act of freeing slaves by their owners. Different approaches to manumission were developed, each specific to the time and place of a particular society. Historian Verene Shepherd states that the most wi ...
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 ... "
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
( , ) is a Race (human categorization), racial classification that refers to people of mixed Sub-Saharan African, African and Ethnic groups in Europe, European ancestry only. When speaking or writing about a singular woman in English, the ...
woman named Emily Smith and her five children. In another, the same month and year, she emancipated a fellow healing practitioner named Phoebe Jackson. Lebsock says Minor was the most active free black emancipator in Petersburg, male or female.
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." Cupping and leeching were standard medical practices of that time. Researchers have observed that enslaved medical practitioners like Jane Minor often brought herbal and other medical knowledge from Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...
that was at that time unknown in early colonial America.Mwalimu J. Shujaa, Kenya J. Shujaa,The SAGE Encyclopedia of African Cultural Heritage in North America
p. 578, SAGE Publications, Feb 15, 2015
See also
*Onesimus (Bostonian)
Onesimus (late 1600s–1700s) was an African (likely Akan people, Akan) man who was instrumental in the mitigation of smallpox in Boston, Massachusetts.
He introduced his enslaver, Puritan clergyman Cotton Mather, to the principle and procedure ...
(the 1600s – 1700s), an enslaved African man in Boston who advocated smallpox inoculation
References
Further reading
*Veronica A.DavisInspiring African-American Women of Virginia
IUniverse, 2015 *Darlene Clark Hine, Kathleen Thompson
A Shining Thread of Hope
Crown/Archetype, 2009 *S Mitchell
Bodies of Knowledge: The Influence of Slaves on the Antebellum Medical Community
,1997, Virginia Tech Digital Archives * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Minor, Jane Folk healers People from Petersburg, Virginia 19th-century African-American businesspeople African-American women in business 19th-century American businesspeople African-American nurses People enslaved in Virginia African-American history of Virginia Year of birth uncertain 1858 deaths American nurses American women nurses Free Negroes 19th-century American slaves People from Dinwiddie County, Virginia 19th-century African-American women 19th-century American businesswomen 19th-century African-American people African-American slave owners