PRIMUS, Rebecca and Addie BROWN

PRIMUS, Rebecca (b. 1836; d. 21 February 1932), teacher, and Addie BROWN (b. 21 December 1841; d. 11 January 1870), domestic worker.

Rebecca Primus and Addie Brown were free African American women whose relationship transcended the normative boundaries of nineteenth-century female friendship. A series of 120 letters, written from Brown to Primus between 1859 and 1869, provides a rare glimpse into the private lives of two African American women engaged in an intensely emotional, and sometimes physical, relationship. Limiting our understanding of this relationship is the absence of Primus's letters to Brown. Enough evidence exists, however, to understand some elements of the relationship between these two women. One of the most important is the positioning of their committed and erotic love along a continuum of fluid sexuality that included relationships with men.

The eldest of four children, Primus was born into a well-respected and economically secure family in Hartford, Connecticut. As one of Hartford's oldest African American families, the Primuses were socially prominent and active in the small and close-knit black community. A teacher by profession, Primus used her status and education in the service of her community and race. Between 1865 and 1869, under the sponsorship of the Hartford Freedmen's Aid Society, Primus lived in Royal Oak, Maryland, where she educated newly freed Southern African Americans.

Five years Primus's junior, Brown was orphaned as a child and spent her early years with an aunt in Philadelphia. Unlike Primus, Brown lacked the privilege of high family status and received no formal education. Instead, her race, gender, and class status restricted her to a number of low-paying jobs—most of her working life was spent "in service" as a domestic worker. As these positions often required her to live in her employer's household, Brown's letters reveal work-related movement between various northeastern cities including New York, as well as Farmington, Hartford, and Waterbury, Connecticut. Brown's letters attest to the labor-intensive nature of domestic work, the toll that work took on her health, and her continued economic insecurity.

It is not known how Primus and Brown met, but when their correspondence began in 1859, Brown was already a close friend of the Primus family. Accepted by family and by community, the relationship between these two women offers an important example for exploring how close female friendships were viewed in black New England communities. Social acceptance of this friend-ship allows scholars to extend the findings of historians who argue that close relationships between white upper- and middle-class women were culturally acceptable. However, while white women's relationships were class-specific and emerged out of the homosocial structure of nineteenth-century white society, the relationship between Brown and Primus demonstrates the acceptance of cross-class friendships within the heterosocial black community. Female friendships were viewed as complementary to, and not competitive with, the goal of heterosexual marriage. Only when such a relationship became viewed as a hindrance to obtaining male suitors did it provoke criticism.

While Brown's letters employed the romantic language characteristic of nineteenth-century expression, they also exceeded the period's accepted definition of close female friendship. Over a nine-year period, Brown's letters reveal the changing nature of her relationship with Primus. At certain points, the letters are frankly erotic and indicate that the two women engaged in physical intimacies, although the exact nature of the sexual interplay is not known. Young and energetic, Brown described male suitors in her early letters as well as female friends, who, at least on one occasion, elicited Primus's jealous response. While the eroticism and passionate language is more marked in certain periods, the commitment and love between the two women is consistently expressed throughout the nine years.

Both women eventually married men—Brown in 1868 and Primus in 1872—but Brown's letters expressed the difficulty of such a decision. Throughout her engagement, Brown often expressed her ambivalence toward marriage and postponed the ceremony on several occasions. More importantly, perhaps, Brown lamented Primus's not being a man, for otherwise, Brown mused, she would marry her without a second thought. When expressing her love for her fiancé, Mr. Tines, Brown distinguished this sentiment from the passion she felt for Primus, suggesting an underlying and more erotically charged dimension to their relationship. After Brown finally married, her letters to Primus underscored the pragmatism of her actions, citing economic stability and love as the motivating factors. Upon Brown's move to her in-laws' home in Philadelphia, the correspondence diminished, and two years later, at the age of twenty-nine, Brown died of tuberculosis. Primus continued to teach; in 1932 she died at the age of ninety-five.

Bibliography

Baecking, Barbara. "Finding Rebecca Primus." Northeast Magazine (25 February, 1996): 10–22.

Griffin, Farah Jasmine, ed. Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends: Letters from Rebecca Primus of Royal Oak, Maryland, and Addie Brown of Hartford, Connecticut, 1854–1868. New York: Knopf, 1999.

Hansen, Karen. "'No Kisses is Like Youres': An Erotic Friend-ship between Two African American Women during the Mid-Nineteenth Century." Gender and History 7, no. 2 (August 1995): 153–182.

The Primus Papers, Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, Connecticut.

Smith-Rosenberg, Carol. "The Female World of Love and Ritual." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 1 (1975): 1–30.

Laila S. Haidarali

see alsoromantic friendship and boston marriage; same-sex institutions.