Traditional African American healers go by many names in history and today, but in the slave era “root doctor” was the most common term.[1] Today I’m looking at some western Maryland men who practiced this folk medicine, and at something unexpected that they had in common. These are individuals I came across one by one in my research; gradually a pattern emerged.
In this region, the best known of these men is the Rev. Thomas W. Henry (1794-1877). Born in slavery, he achieved his freedom as a young man. He became a Methodist and later an African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) preacher, and we know him through his autobiography, a rich source for western Maryland.[2] Like most black ministers of his day, he made a living doing various other things. In his memoirs he mentions root doctoring just briefly: “In my early days I acquired some little knowledge of the art of mixing liniments and other medicines, and it was in this way that I managed to get along as well as I did under the trying circumstances that had been my lot.”[3]
Medicine for Money – Money for Freedom
Rev. Henry doesn’t divulge much about his medical activities, but another man with a similar life story has much more to say. The Rev. John Snowden (1801-85), like Thomas Henry, was born into slavery, earned his freedom as a young man, became a Methodist minister, and wrote his autobiography. Although he lived in Westminster, in Carroll County, MD, his ministry sometimes included Frederick County. In his memoirs, Snowden reveals that folk medicine was part of his freedom strategy: “After working all day for my owner, I would work till late at night for myself. I made baskets and hickory brooms, distilled peppermint drops, penny-royal drops, wormseed oil, sweet mint, wild bergamot drops, sweet fennel, and rose oil. These I sold during the holidays.” He also cleared land and “received the first crop raised” on it, working at night. All the money he earned through these activities he saved toward buying his freedom.[4]
Later, Snowden continued his medical work: “I made and sold my remedies at a very low price… I did not profess to have any great skill in the art of healing, yet I have effected some great cures. My son Joseph was given up by Dr. Payne to die. I took him in hand, and, by the help of the Lord, cured him. I have also cured a number of cases of the thrush that doctors fail to cure.”[5] In this passage he gives some credit to God, but not as much as we might expect from a man of the cloth.
Snowden was understandably proud of his healing abilities. “The mouth water that I made for many years was a sure cure of all cases of the thrush. Had I put that remedy on the market I might have made money out of it,” he wrote. “I never studied medicine from books, but gave a good deal of attention to the study of plants and herbs, and learned to recognize them readily and how to use many of them for medicinal purposes. After I once saw a plant or herb, and learned its name and how to use it, I never forgot it.”[6]
Spreading Folk Medicine
Snowden noted that his efforts were not confined to the black community: “My white neighbors often sent to me for medicines.” And he was aware of the limited opportunities he’d had, compared to white men: “Had I been permitted to have taken a regular course in medicine I might have made a good doctor.”[7]
Snowden believed in do-it-yourself medicine. He described treating himself for sickness, claiming he had “never had a doctor to attend me in eighty-three years…”[8] He usually treated his own children. “There is no doubt in my mind,” he wrote, “that in most of the cases where doctors are called, they are not needed.”[9] He believed “simple remedies” were better than “strong medicines”; that doctors were a “useless and expensive luxury … in most cases,” especially for the poor; and that every man and woman “should have some knowledge of medicines.”[10]
Where did Snowden’s knowledge come from? He hints at its folk and communal origins, writing: “The slave mothers and fathers had quite a good deal of medical knowledge—much more than the present generation has. No doubt this came from the fact that many of the slaves had to be their own doctors in most cases. Necessity compelled them to study the use of herbs and roots in order to effect cures.”[11] He lamented the loss of this traditional knowledge and urged families to take health care back into their own hands.[12]
From Hagerstown to Canada
The third root doctor I discovered was slightly different, and I believe he’s largely unknown to local historians. Dorsey Ambush (b. 1814) was enslaved in Washington County but escaped in 1842. He made his way successfully to Canada, and there he stayed, despite a flurry of letters from his Maryland enslaver trying to get him to return.[13] In Canada, Ambush became a Methodist pastor serving formerly enslaved people who had formed communities north of the border. In 1849, a white observer wrote that Dorsey was a “pious man, Intelligent circuit preacher, good preacher, great imaginative powers. Is a sort of physician for a living… He has great influence among the colored people.”[14] This is all we know about Dorsey Ambush as a healer, and it’s almost all we know about him as a leader. But I have to speculate that he was already a healer, and probably a spiritual leader, earlier in his life, before he left slavery and Washington County.
The parallels among these three examples are striking. Each man was born in slavery, gained his freedom, became a minister in the Methodist tradition, and—for some part of his life—practiced traditional herbal medicine to help support himself. Is it coincidental that the three known root doctors from Western Maryland were also ordained Christian ministers? Perhaps it is a coincidence, since ministers were people who wrote memoirs, so they’re the people whose lives we know the most about.
But I think there’s something more than coincidence here, a connection none of these men states explicitly. Enslaved people kept many African traditions alive in some form, and one of those traditions was the intersection of religion and healing. As one modern scholar puts it, “the conjuror was the most powerful, respected, and feared slave healer.”[15] It makes sense that in a Christianized slave community, men drawn to spiritual leadership would practice both root doctoring and preaching—ministering to both bodies and souls. These three men are, I think, examples of that.
As good Christian pastors in the nineteenth century, Thomas Henry, John Snowden, and Dorsey Ambush themselves no doubt regarded ancestral African religion as “heathen superstition,” something to be supplanted by Christianity. But the African American traditions they inherited were indelibly influenced by African practices and beliefs. In their holistic approach to caring for their flocks, these three men were, perhaps unknowingly, working in an African spiritual tradition.
Footnotes
[1] For more information, see Herbert C. Covey, African American Slave Medicine: Herbal and Non-Herbal Treatments (Lexington Books, 2008).
[2] From Slavery to Salvation: The Autobiography of Rev. Thomas W. Henry of the A.M.E. Church, ed. Jean Libby (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1994); also available at https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/henry/henry.html.
[3] Henry, p. 58.
[4] John Baptist Snowden et al., From Whence Cometh (New York: Vantage Press, 1980), p. 25.
[5] Snowden, p. 54.
[6] Snowden, p. 54.
[7] Snowden, p. 54.
[8] Snowden, p. 55.
[9] Snowden, p. 55.
[10] Snowden, p. 55.
[11] Snowden, p. 55.
[12] Snowden, p. 56.
[13] Calendar of the Letters of Gerrit Smith in the Syracuse University Library, Vol. 1, General Correspondence, 1819-1846 (WPA, 1941), pp. 205-6, 208, 211.
[14] Linda Brown-Kubisch, The Queen’s Bush Settlement: Black Pioneers, 1839-1865 (Toronto: Natural Heritage Books, 2004), 91.
[15] Kym S. Rice, “Medicine,” in World of a Slave: Encyclopedia of the Material Life of Slaves in the United States, ed. Martha B. Katz-Hyman and Kym S. Rice (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2011), 2.337.
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