He was born into slavery in 1812, in Versailles, Ky., at the Crittenden plantation. He had very light skin and was probably the son of a brother of Robert Crittenden, a future Arkansas Territory acting governor and co-founder of the Rose Law Firm. Crittenden and his wife took him to Little Rock in 1819 when President James Monroe appointed Crittenden the territory's first secretary of state. They built a large home on the site where the present-day Albert Pike Hotel now stands.
When Crittenden died in 1834, he was sold to Daniel Greathouse, who wrote a note stating that he would be granted his freedom in three and a half years. Greathouse died in 1836, and the note was honored, making him a freeman. He became the personal carriage driver for Chester Ashley, a prominent lawyer and city founder. That same year, he married Anne Lewis, a daughter of Ashley's head cook, Rebecca Beck; they had nine children. Although he was a freeman, Arkansas law dictated that Anne and their children would remain slaves.
He opened a confectionery shop on the site of the present-day Capital Hotel, becoming known as "Little Rock's Confectioner," catering various social events. He was also a talented fiddler, and he and some of his children played in the Ashley Band, a slave string and brass band that performed on the front lawn of Ashley's mansion (on the south side of Markham Street, between Scott and Cumberland streets). Anne died in 1853 and he married Mary Elizabeth, another of Ashley's slaves, and bought her freedom.
In 1859, the state Legislature declared that all free Black people must leave the state or become slaves. Leaving his slave children behind, he took his wife and their free daughter to Ohio, where he was ordained in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He brought his family back to Little Rock when the city fell to Union troops in 1863 and founded Bethel AME Church, in a home at 10th and Spring Streets, becoming its first pastor.
In 1868, they bought a house at 1012 Ringo St. and, until his death in 1888, he continued as a successful businessman, with ownership of several retail stores in the downtown area.
Who was this Black freeman, who became successful in a racially segregated Little Rock, and is buried in the Chester Ashley plot in Mount Holly Cemetery?