Location: NC 210 (Murchison Road) at Edgecombe Avenue in Fayetteville
County: Cumberland
Original Date Cast: 2010
Lewis Sheridan Leary was born free in 1835 in Fayetteville, the son of Matthew N. Leary, Sr., and his Guadeloupian wife, Julia. The 1850 United States census lists the father as a saddler and harness maker and sons Lewis and Matthew Jr. as saddlers. The elder Leary owned three slaves: a 14-year-old female, and two males, ages 30 and 45. Leary no longer owned slaves by 1860, indicating that he possibly had bought the individuals to free them. In 1856, at age 21, Lewis Leary left for Oberlin, Ohio, where several of his sisters had moved and married. Sarah had married Henry Evans, brother of Delilah Evans Copeland, mother of fellow John Brown party conspirator John A. Copeland, Jr. Oberlin, home to a college granting admission to blacks, was considered by many to be the most racially progressive town in America and became a center for the abolitionist movement and an important hub on the Underground Railroad.
Late in 1858 Leary took part in the rescue of runaway slaves imprisoned in Wellington, Ohio, but managed to avoid being indicted as a member of the rescuers. The following year, Leary, along with Copeland, was introduced to John Brown by abolitionist John Mercer Langston. Shortly after the meeting, the two joined Brown’s party and declared themselves “ready to die, if need be” under his leadership. During the attack on the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (today West Virginia), Leary and Copeland were assigned to take control of Hall’s Rifle Works. They did so, but soon were cut off from the remainder of the party by militia companies. The three men attempted to escape out the back door and cross the Shenandoah River but were caught in a hailstorm of bullets. Leary, dragged back to the riverbank, lived for several hours until succumbing to multiple gunshot wounds. It remains unknown where he was buried, but it is assumed he was interred in a common grave in Harpers Ferry.
Leary left a widow and a daughter named Lois. The widow in 1869 married Charles Langston. Their daughter, Caroline Mercer Langston, became the mother of the Harlem Renaissance poet and playwright Langston Hughes. Leary’s youngest brother, John S. Leary, graduated from Howard University in 1871 and was the second black man admitted to the bar in North Carolina. He served in the legislature for two terms and in 1884 was sent as a delegate to the national Republican convention. He later served as the first dean of the law school at Shaw University and in the 1890s moved his family and practice to Charlotte. Today the Charlotte chapter of the North Carolina Association of Black Lawyers is named the John S. Leary Bar Association in his honor.
References:
David S. Reynolds, John Brown: Abolitionist (2005)
Franny Nudelman, John Brown's Body: Slavery, Violence, and the Culture of War (2004)
William and Aimee Lee Cheek, John Mercer Langston and the Fight for Black Freedom, 1829-1865 (1989)
North Carolina Civil War 150 website: http://www.nccivilwar150.com/history/john-brown-nc.htm