Matilda Hawkins Tyler: Mapping One Woman’s Geography of Kinship and Perseverance

Abstract

This essay journeys through the life of Matilda Hawkins Tyler, a woman once enslaved to the Jesuit order of Catholic priests and to St. Louis University in the nineteenth century. It examines how diasporic violence ruptured and scattered the archival records about her life, obscuring how, over the course of the antebellum period, she strategized, negotiated, and labored to purchase her own freedom and that of her five sons. The essay further explores how digital methodologies can be employed to reconstruct elements of Matilda’s life, her social world, and her values, as well as of other Black women of her era. Using a digital network analysis of Matilda’s kin relationships and spatial analysis of the places where Matilda and her kin lived, the essay demonstrates how Matilda Hawkins Tyler cultivated a strong community, both in slavery and in freedom, who supported one another in surmounting their bondage and seeking stability and equality after they became free.