Traverse Benjamin Pinn Sr.
Traverse Benjamin Pinn Sr. (November 6, 1840 - March 26, 1888) was an African American politician, civic leader, and entrepreneur. He co-founded The People’s Advocate,[1] the first weekly newspaper in Virginia owned and operated by African Americans. Pinn also invented and received a patent for the wooden file holder,[2] predating the metal filing cabinet by 20 years.[3] Pinn died of an suspected homicide on March 26, 1888, at the age of forty-seven.
Early Life
Born free, on November 6, 1840, in Prince William County, Virginia. His father, Howison Pinn, was born free in Fauquier County, Virginia and his mother, Pattie Pinn (nee Stokes), was free but had been enslaved as a child by the Lewis family in Prince William County. In 1843, members of the Lewis family sought to enslave and sell Traverse and his siblings. His parents petitioned the court for confirmation of the children’s freedom, and on May 15, 1845, a judge decreed that they “were born free, and are free.” In 1846, Howison Pinn bought 130 acres of farmland in Prince William County at public auction, and the 1860 U.S. Census lists Traverse as working as a farmhand there.
Capture and Escape
On July 21, 1862, following the Confederate States Army's victory at the First Battle of Manassa, the Union Army trampled Pinn's cornfield and helped themselves to their limited provisions. Earlier that year the Virginia General Assembly passed a law permitting the capture and impressment of free African Americans to work as laborers. Traverse Pinn was forced to work in Confederate field hospitals in Manassas and Richmond. In 1863, Pinn escaped to Union-controlled territory, where, according to a later account formed with the Union Army, and served as a wagoner for the Army's Quartermaster Department moving supplies in the Alexandria area. In May 1864, Pinn purchased a house on Duke Street in The Bottoms, an African American neighborhood in the city.
Post Civil War
He became familiar with Alexandria and following the war, began a career in politics and public service, becoming one of the first two African Americans elected to local office in Alexandria and serving as magistrate, member of the city council, and county supervisor. His 1880 patent for a file holder made him one of the few nineteenth-century Black Virginians to receive a patent. In his final years, Pinn moved to Washington, D.C., where he owned and operated a barbershop near the Capitol. [4]
References
- ^ Penn, Irvine Garland (1891). The Afro-American Press and Its Editors. Willey & Company. ISBN 978-0-598-58268-3.
- ^ Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the ... Congress. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1894.
- ^ Negro Heritage. S. C. Watkins. 1976.
- ^ https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/traverse-benjamin-pinn-sr-1840-1888/?
External links
- "Traverse Benjamin Pinn Sr. (1840–1888)". Encyclopedia Virginia.
- Pinn’s testimony before Congress on being threatened ahead of a planned political meeting
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