The Slave Who Married Her Mistress: The Secret That Shocked Mississippi in 1873 | HO!!!! (1oa)

The Slave Who Married Her Mistress: The Secret That Shocked Mississippi in 1873 | HO!!!!

The Mississippi summer of 1873 was the kind that made the air shimmer like glass. The sun hung over Magnolia County like a curse, and the soil itself seemed to breathe heat. The great plantation houses that had survived the war stood half in ruin, their columns cracked, their fields thin with neglected cotton. The world had changed, but in this part of the South, change was the slowest thing alive.

At the edge of the Hatheraway estate, once called the pride of Magnolia County, a young Black woman named Ruby Washington stood beneath the shade of an old oak, her calloused hands resting on a basket of cotton. She had once worked these fields as a slave. Now, eight years after emancipation, she worked them as a free woman — though freedom, she had learned, did not mean safety.

The plantation had been reduced to its bones. Only a handful of paid workers remained, and most days the land felt haunted by what it had been. But Ruby stayed. Not for money, nor for memory — she stayed because of Evelyn Hatheraway, the woman who had once owned her.

Evelyn was thirty-two, a widow since the war, with the pale skin and fine features of a portrait come to life. The other white women in Magnolia County whispered that she had gone strange since her husband’s death — living alone, refusing to remarry, keeping company with the freedpeople who worked her land. But they did not know the truth.

For months, something forbidden had been growing between mistress and former slave — something that could not exist in daylight.

A Dangerous Kind of Love

Their first connection had been born not out of passion but survival. During the war, Evelyn had defied her husband by teaching Ruby to read — an act punishable by law. They had whispered over candlelight in the library, fingers tracing the shapes of letters in secret. When the war ended, and the chains were broken, Ruby had been offered the chance to leave. But she didn’t.

Now, years later, they stood face to face on a dirt path between the fields and the crumbling veranda, the ghosts of what they had been still clinging to them. Evelyn’s dress clung damp to her skin; the air smelled of rain and decay.

“Ruby,” Evelyn said softly. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Mrs. Hatheraway,” Ruby replied, her voice steady though her heart raced. “The cotton’s coming in better than expected.”

“That’s not why I came.”

Their eyes met. The world seemed to stop breathing. The invisible line that had once separated mistress from slave shimmered — and vanished. Evelyn stepped closer, the scent of lavender and salt in her hair. “They’re asking questions,” she said. “The officials from Reconstruction. About wages. About why you stayed. About… us.”

Ruby felt the warning like a chill up her spine. “What about us?”

But she already knew.

Three days later, that unspoken danger arrived on horseback.

The Threat

Jeremiah Colt had been overseer on a neighboring plantation before the war, and a man whose hatred had not surrendered with Lee. He rode with two companions, ex-Confederates who now called themselves “patriots.” They carried rifles and the smugness of men who believed God was on their side.

They found Evelyn and Ruby walking the fields at dusk. Colt tipped his hat, the gesture mockingly polite.

“Evening, Mrs. Hatheraway,” he drawled. “You’ve got yourself quite the helper there.”

“Miss Washington is my bookkeeper,” Evelyn said evenly.

Colt’s smile widened. “Bookkeeper, is she? Seems some folks around here are forgetting their places.”

Ruby said nothing, though her blood burned. She had seen that look before — the one that came before bloodshed.

“I think it’s time for you to leave my property,” Evelyn said.

“Of course, ma’am,” Colt said, still smiling. “But people are talking. And in times like these, talk can get people killed.”

They rode off laughing, and the sound of their horses faded into the dark.

Evelyn stood frozen, pale as paper. Ruby reached for her hand. “They know,” Evelyn whispered.

“No,” Ruby said. “They suspect. But that’s enough.”

She didn’t say what both knew to be true: in Mississippi, suspicion could hang a person faster than guilt.

The Pact

That night, in the old library where Ruby had once learned her letters, they faced the truth neither could ignore. Evelyn’s face glowed in the candlelight, her eyes rimmed with exhaustion.

“Ruby,” she said, “I can’t live like this. Not hiding. Not lying.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“Marry you.”

The words fell like thunder. Ruby stared, unable to breathe.

“Evelyn… it’s illegal.”

“Not everywhere. Not in Kansas territory. There are places where the law doesn’t ask so many questions.”

Ruby laughed once, bitter and broken. “You’d risk everything — your name, your land, your life — for me?”

“You are everything,” Evelyn whispered.

And just like that, the choice was made. They would leave Mississippi. They would flee north, marry in secret, and begin again.

But the South has a way of keeping what it thinks belongs to it.

Flight Through Fire

They planned their escape under the guise of a business trip. A wagon would be ready at dawn. But at first light, the sound of hooves shattered their plans. Colt had returned — this time with a dozen men.

From the window, Evelyn saw the dust cloud of riders approaching the house. “They’re here,” she breathed.

Ruby grabbed her arm. “We have to go. Now.”

They fled through the back door, running for the stables. Behind them came the shouts — “Mrs. Hatheraway! We know you’re in there!”

Evelyn’s skirts tangled in the grass, Ruby half-dragging her to the horses. They mounted just as a shot rang out, shattering the morning stillness. The bullet missed by inches. They rode into the woods, branches clawing at their faces, the thunder of pursuit behind them.

For miles they rode through swamps and creeks, the shouts fading into echoes. Only when the horses stumbled, foaming with exhaustion, did they stop.

Under the shadow of the cypress trees, Evelyn turned to Ruby. “We can’t go back,” she said.

“Then we don’t,” Ruby answered.

They rode north. Through Tennessee, through Missouri, through nights of cold and silence. In St. Louis, they nearly lost their lives when bounty hunters cornered Ruby in an alley. It was only the intervention of a Black minister — Reverend Joshua Williams — that saved her. He recognized their cause for what it was: love disguised as rebellion.

“Reverend Clark is waiting for you in Kansas,” he said. “He marries those the world calls unfit to love.”

The Wedding

The church in Lawrence, Kansas, was nothing more than a wooden shack on a windy plain, but it might as well have been a cathedral. On an October morning in 1873, with the first frost whitening the grass, Evelyn Hatheraway and Ruby Washington stood hand in hand before the altar.

They had no rings, no guests but the minister and his wife. Yet in that moment, the world was silent, reverent.

“Do you, Ruby Washington, take Evelyn Hatheraway to be your lawful wife?”

“I do,” Ruby said.

“And do you, Evelyn Hatheraway, take Ruby Washington to be your lawful wife?”

“I do.”

When the minister pronounced them joined, Evelyn kissed Ruby softly — the kind of kiss that could get them both killed anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line.

They signed the certificate together, their names joined: Evelyn Hatheraway Washington and Ruby Washington Hatheraway.

The minister handed it to them solemnly. “Guard this with your lives,” he said. “Because there are men who will try to take even this from you.”

He was right.

The Scandal

By the time they reached Boston, word had spread. Southern newspapers called it “The Hatheraway Scandal.” A white widow and her former slave, living as wives. It was blasphemy. It was treason. It was love.

A Charleston paper called Evelyn “a fallen woman unfit for Christian society.” Her sister filed petitions declaring her insane. Private investigators were sent north to find them.

In February 1874, one of them — a man named Harrison Blackwood — knocked on their boarding house door.

He came with polite words and cruel eyes. “Mrs. Hatheraway,” he said, “your sister believes you are being manipulated by this woman. She seeks only your wealth and reputation.”

“My sister seeks control,” Evelyn replied. “And as for Ruby — she is my wife.”

Blackwood’s smile thinned. “That is… an extraordinary claim.”

He left, but not before delivering his threat. If Evelyn did not return to Charleston voluntarily, he would see both women charged with “moral corruption” and indecency.

They spent that night in silence, holding each other, knowing the world had found them again.

Then, as dawn broke, Evelyn said quietly, “If they mean to destroy us, let them do it in the open.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ll tell the truth.”

The Trial

On a March morning, they walked into the offices of the Boston Herald and told their story. The headline that ran two days later would become legend:

THE SLAVE WHO MARRIED HER MISTRESS: A LOVE THAT DEFIED THE LAW

The South howled with outrage. Churches condemned them. Politicians denounced them. But in Boston, something unexpected happened — people began to listen.

Abolitionists, women’s rights advocates, and ministers rallied to their defense. When Blackwood returned with a warrant, he found not two frightened fugitives but a crowd of supporters, including lawyers from the Massachusetts Civil Rights League.

The case that followed captivated the nation. Could a marriage performed in Kansas between two women — one white, one Black — be recognized under Massachusetts law? Could love itself be legal if the world said it wasn’t?

The courtroom overflowed. Evelyn testified first, her voice calm and clear.

“I married Ruby Washington because she is my equal. I freed her, but she freed me.”

When Ruby took the stand, silence fell.

“They call me a slave,” she said, “but I have been more free in her arms than any of them will ever be.”

Reporters scribbled frantically. Ministers wept. Even the judge hesitated before rendering his decision.

On June 2, 1874, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared the marriage valid, citing the Kansas ceremony and the couple’s legal documents. The verdict was narrow — and revolutionary.

Legacy

Evelyn and Ruby lived quietly for the rest of their lives in Boston’s South End. They ran a small school for colored girls, taught reading, and gave lectures under assumed names about equality. They never returned to Mississippi.

When Evelyn died in 1916, Ruby placed her hand on the casket and whispered, “You gave me freedom twice.” She would follow her twelve years later, buried beside her wife under a single headstone that read simply:

“Together in Defiance, Together in Love.”

For decades, their story was whispered, not printed. Until, in 1973 — a hundred years after their marriage — a historian cataloging old records in a Boston courthouse found their certificate, its ink faded but legible.

At the bottom, two signatures: one in delicate cursive, one in bold, defiant script.

Evelyn Hatheraway Washington

Ruby Washington Hatheraway

Two women who had defied a nation — and won.

Their secret had once shocked Mississippi. But in the end, it changed America.