In 1883, the Supreme Court of Tennessee ruled that Temperance “Tempe” Downs, “a free woman of color,” was entitled to a dower (one-third) of her deceased husband’s estate. Her suit, sensationalized in the Daily American (Nashville Tennessean), was considered “one of the most noted cases in the jurisprudence of Tennessee.” However, Tempe Downs’ recorded struggle to emancipate herself, remain in Tennessee and later receive her rightful inheritance as the widower of William B. Downs started over 45 years earlier when she saved the money to purchase her freedom.
Before Emancipation in Tennessee, enslaved and free black residents navigated state and local laws and customs, challenging the institution of slavery and laws that enforced white supremacy. In 1837, Temperance Crutcher (Tempe Downs) petitioned the state Legislature to allow her to remain in Tennessee upon her emancipation. Since about 1835, Thomas Crutcher, who purchased Tempe from James Barrett, had permitted her to “act as a free person” with the understanding that she “refunded” him the price of her purchase.
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| 1837 petition to the Legislature submitted on behalf of Temperance Crutcher for permission to remain in Tennessee upon her manumission. It contains the signatures of 17 white Tennesseans who knew Tempe and the request of her enslaver, Thomas Crutcher. Part of the legislative petition collection in Record Group 60, Tennessee State Library and Archives. |
Tempe paid Crutcher from money she earned working as a chambermaid at the Nashville Inn. It was there she met her husband, William “Billy” B. Downs, a free black man, who moved from Brownsville to Nashville with James B. Ferguson around 1832 to work as the steward for the Inn. Mr. William B. Downs, the son of an enslaved woman and a white enslaver, purchased his freedom in 1830 from William P. Downs, who had inherited him from his Uncle James P. Downs.
Unable to legally marry, Tempe and Mr. Downs cohabitated as man and wife and in 1837, with the consent of Thomas Crutcher, were married by Methodist minister Reuben P. Graham, “a free man of color,” who had a barber shop below the Inn. According to William P. Anderson Cheatham, employed at the Inn, “Nearly every respectable servant about town and nearly all the old settlers were there.” A reception dinner took place at the Inn following the ceremony. It was reported that from then on, despite the State’s denial of their marriage, black and white persons in the community of Nashville treated them as man and wife.
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| Drawing of the courthouse in Nashville as it looked in 1832, including the Nashville Inn and the City Hotel. Tempe Downs lived at the Inn and tried her cases in the neighboring courthouse. Her 1837 legislative petition would also have been heard here before the construction of the Tennessee State Capitol. |
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| Close-up of Nashville Inn, at the corner of Public Square and Second Avenue, where Tempe and William B. Downs lived and worked. The Inn was considered the gathering place for many Jackson Democrats. The image is a lithograph by T. Sinclairs announcing the leasing and refitting of the Nashville Inn by J. Mosher, late of Mammoth Cave. |
Although she paid Crutcher her purchase price, an 1831 Tennessee Law required that all enslaved people leave the state upon their emancipation and any slaveholder intending to emancipate any person was required to provide bond for their hasty removal. Despite the requests of “a number of [white] ladies and gentlemen of the city of Nashville” to grant special permission to Temperance to remain in the state, the legislature denied her request, claiming they already rejected a bill that session on the subject and another could not be passed. In order to not “be driven from the home of her nativity kindred and friends, to seek a [sic] home in the land of strangers,” Tempe had to legally remain enslaved.
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| 1838 response of Julian Frazier, Chairman of the Legislative Committee on Propositions and Grievances, to Temperance’s Dec. 2, 1837, petition to the state Legislature. Record Group 60, Tennessee State Library and Archives. |
Tempe and William P. Downs lived and worked together at the Nashville Inn until the early 1840s when she started working as a chambermaid on the Steamer Nashville that traveled the rivers to New Orleans. The same year, Thomas Crutcher conveyed Tempe to John H. Eaton and James B. Ferguson (host of the Nashville Inn) in a trust that stated they set her free as soon as possible and until then, she was “to have and enjoy her own time and be subject to her own control without the interference of anyone.”
With the money they earned, Mr. Downs purchased several lots in Nashville, including one on College Street where they planned to retire. Betsy Craighead, Tempe’s friend since childhood, testified she had planted evergreen trees on the lot “at Billy’s request.” Tragically, in 1846, shortly before the completion of their new home, he was stricken with smallpox. Downs died within a few days and was buried in the Nashville City Cemetery. The State did not legally recognize their marriage or the life they built together. Therefore, Tempe’s right to his estate and status in Tennessee were equally untenable.
Not until after the Civil War and the amendment of the state constitution in 1865 was Tempe legally emancipated and free to personally file suit against James C. Allen et al., the heirs of William P. Downs, to recover the estate of her husband. In 1866, she first filed her suit with the Freedmen’s Bureau but their court dissolved leading her to refile in the state court in 1868. Tempe testified that she was paid the $550 with the threat from William P. Downs that any further claims to her husband’s estate through her legal emancipation would be met with her expulsion to Liberia.
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| Newspaper excerpts about the case of Tempe Downs v. James C. Allen et al from the Daily American, July 18, 1879, and March 6, 1883, respectively. Complete article for “Tempe’s Trouble” available at the Tennessee State Library and Archives. |
Though the laws at the time of the case entitled her to all the property of her husband, the law at the time of his death limited her to a claim of dower, despite her more than fifty-percent contribution to the estate. The Supreme Court of Tennessee declared that since she was functionally not “imprisoned,” though technically enslaved, before Emancipation, the statute of limitations barred her from collecting the entire estate.
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| Cover, cases style and parties of Tempe Downs v. James C. Allen et al. in the Tennessee Supreme Court Case files at the Tennessee State Library and Archives. Check out our growing database: http://supreme-court-cases.tennsos.org/ |
In 1887, the last known record of Tempe places her at 502 Melvina [Malvina] Street (now 10th Avenue) between Gleaves and Division Streets. Tempe Downs v. James C. Allen et al., detailed in the Library and Archives historic Supreme Court holdings and Tennessee Reports, spanned from 1868 to 1883 and offers valuable insight into the lives of the Downs, other local persons and places and the legal history of Tennessee. Her story illustrates the strength and persistence of enslaved and free black men and women to build their lives in Tennessee despite state-sanctioned slavery and oppression.
The Tennessee State Library and Archives is a division of the Office of Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett
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