from WFMZ’s History’s Headlines
by Frank Whalen - CWRT Board Member
June 3, 2023
It is 1921. In his inaugural address that March, newly elected President Warren G. Harding has promised “not nostrums but normalcy” to an American public exhausted in the aftermath of World War I and the Red Scare of 1919/20. In Tulsa, Oklahoma that June white supremacist mobs attacked the city’s Black neighborhood of Greenwood, burning schools, businesses and churches, leaving at least 100 dead.
That same year in Upper Nazareth, Pennsylvania in the early morning hours of July 18, a 78-year-old Black man- Daniel Prime of Easton- lie dying from a combination of diabetes and a stroke in Northampton County’s almshouse. Prime’s front-page obituary in the next day’s Easton Express suggests that he was a fixture in the river city and well regarded. “DEATH OF DANIEL PRIME; Well-Known Colored Man Was Civil War Veteran,” read the headline.
The Express noted that Prime was born in Easton in 1844, the son of Samuel (1811-1883) and Rachel Prime (1824-1902). Samuel was born in Easton to Daniel (1798-1849) and Mary Prime. Daniel Prime was apparently named after his grandfather. Daniel Prime’s wife Annie (Jefferson) Prime is listed in the 1870 and 1880 census as born in New Jersey and dying in 1900 in Niagara Falls, New York. According to the research of Susan Gothard, librarian at the Easton Public Library’s Marx History Room, the Primes had three children.
Prime’s sister, Mrs. Ellen Hubbard, lived at 116 North Green Street in Easton, and another sister, Mary Mebus, lived in Passaic, New Jersey. Other children of Samuel and Rachel Prime listed in the 1860 census were Emma, Virginia, Samuel P., William and Harriet. In 1921, according to the Express, one sister and granddaughter lived in Darby, Pennsylvania and a stepson, Marcus Prime, in Buffalo. Daniel Prime also had numerous nieces and nephews. This information, although it does not confirm it, suggests that Prime’s parents may have been free born and not enslaved Black people. Under Pennsylvania’s Gradual Emancipation Act of 1808 all enslaved people who were slaves that year would remain so till their deaths; their children born that year and thereafter when they reached the age of 28 would be free and their children would be free at birth. So, Daniel Prime, born in 1844, was born free, and not enslaved as some newspaper articles in 1921 later claimed. Some sources claim that Pennsylvania’s law was structured that way at the request of unmarried or widowed poorly paid ministers who felt they could not afford to hire domestic help but could own a slave to fill that role for their lifetimes. It is estimated that the last enslaved person in Pennsylvania died in 1847.
According to the obituary, after the Civil War Prime was employed at a stove store as a tinsmith by Charles W. Meeker. But the Express noted, Prime was also a “born cook” who worked at Harvey G. Seip’s café (a popular spot for local Republicans) and other restaurants around the city and was especially known for his clambakes. He eventually ran a successful catering business. Oysters were a specialty of the café and Prime’s fame spread into Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where he was “often in demand.” The Humane Fire Company No. 1 of Easton made Prime an honorary member, perhaps to ensure they would get his skills for a clambake first. Somewhere along the way in Easton Prime acquired the nickname of “Oakey.”
But perhaps the most interesting part of the obituary to readers today was the following paragraph:
“While working in Massachusetts as a barber during the Civil War he enlisted in a colored regiment and was distinguished by carrying a wounded soldier from his company from the field of battle. The officer died several years ago and remembered Prime in his will with a bequest of $500, but Mr. Prime never got the money.”
54th Massachusetts
The regiment of which Prime was a member was the 54th Massachusetts Colored, one of earliest regiments of its kind and commanded by Col. Robert Gould Shaw, a member of a prominent Boston family. Prime was part of the attack force on the Confederate Fort Wagner, a battery protecting Charleston harbor and the rebel- held Fort Sumter, on July 18th, 1863. Unlike many of his comrades he survived the battle. In 1989 the battle was made into a Hollywood film, Glory, whose stars included Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, and Morgan Freeman.
In 1897 Augustus “Gus” Saint-Gaudens, America’s leading sculptor, depicted Shaw leading the 54th in a bronze relief monument placed on Boston Common. At first the sculptor wanted to create an equestrian statue of Shaw alone, but Shaw’s family and others encouraged him to take a different approach. Saint-Gaudens’ depiction of the Black soldiers, notes the National Park Service, “was a revolutionary concept for the time period.”
Prime enlisted in the 54th Colored Regiment on April 21st, 1863, four months after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was issued. He was not alone. Black men from… CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE STORY