Orindatus Simon Bolivar Wall (1825-1891)

    Today's profile centers on a very new political name discovery--the intriguingly named Orindatus Simon Bolivar Wall. Wall has the distinction of being the first African-American profiled here on the site, and this unjustly forgotten man forged a distinguished political and military career for himself in a time when it was difficult for any black person to receive even the most basic rights, let alone hold public office. The rare engraving of him shown above was originally featured in Joseph Thomas Wilson's The Black Phalanx: A History of the Negro Soldiers of the United States, published in 1890 (a year before Wall's death) and this book can be found in its entirety on the website www.archive.org.
  Orindatus (or "OSB", as most sources list him) was born in Richmond County, North Carolina on August 17, 1825, the son of a white plantation owner named Stephen Wall. OSB's mother was one of Stephen's slaves, whose given name was Priscilla. Orindatus's unusual first and middle names are historically based, "Datus" being a Latin deviation from the word "given" and "Simon Bolivar" having come from the famed Venezuelan military and political leader Simon Bolivar (1783-1830).
   OSB Wall was granted his freedom by his father at a young age, and in 1838 was sent by him to Harveysburg, Ohio. An excellent up on Wall's life and family, Daniel Sharfstein's The Invisible Line, notes that he was raised and educated in Harveysburg by a family of Quakers. During the 1840s Wall began learning the shoemaking trade and plied his craft in Harveysburg for several years before moving to nearby Oberlin, Ohio in the early 1850s. 
  The town of Oberlin was then regarded as a haven for the abolitionist movement, and within months of his arrival, Wall had reestablished his profession as a cobbler. Also during this time, Wall became prominent in the anti-slavery movement in Oberlin and married here in October 1854 to Amanda Thomas, a free woman. Born in Virginia, Amanda was later a classmate of OSB's sister Caroline at Oberlin College. Just seventeen at the time of her marriage to Wall, their union produced eight children. Amanda Wall would forge an important career for herself following the Civil War, teaching newly freed slaves reading and writing skills, and was an advocate for women's suffrage.
   As a prominent cobbler in Oberlin, Wall was afforded an opportunity few blacks had at the time: to make a name for themselves in the realm of business and public affairs. While Wall's stature in Oberlin is of some note, his role as an early civil rights activist is an integral part of his overall life story. In 1858 he became a pivotal player in the Wellington-Fugitive slave rescue. In this case, a group of Oberlin citizens (including Wall) forcibly rescued John Price, a runaway slave from Kentucky who had been captured by slave catchers. After retrieving Price, Wall and the other rescuers (37 people in total) returned with him to Oberlin and within a few days Price was spirited away to Canada, thus earning his freedom.
  Despite their heroic actions in John Price's rescue, Wall and the other rescuers were indicted for aiding him under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Nearly all of the rescuers (Wall included) were soon released from custody, and a daguerreotype of these heroic men was taken in front of the Cuyahoga County jail. The aforementioned portrait (originally published in the 1943 work A History of Oberlin College) has been posted below. In this rare photo, OSB Wall stands second from left and can be identified by his top hat.

   In the years following his actions in Oberlin, Wall became an attorney and during the Civil War served as a recruiter for the famed Massachusetts 54th Volunteer Infantry. In March 1865 Wall gained lasting distinction when he was commissioned as a Captain in the Union Army, one of the first African Americans to be so honored. In that same year, he was named as a Quartermaster for the newly organized Bureau of Freedman, Refugees, and Abandoned Lands, located in Charleston, South Carolina.

  In the 1860s the Wall family relocated to Washington, D.C., where OSB found employment as a police magistrate. He also became active in politics around this time, and in 1872 was elected to the Washington, D.C. Territorial House of Delegates. Wall was re-elected to the legislature the following year, and it is noted in the earlier mentioned The Invisible Line that during his two terms, Wall represented a district that had a white majority! A roster from the legislative sessions in which he served has been posted below.

   In addition to his terms in the legislature, Wall served in Washington as a notary public, justice of the peace, and president of the Howard Hill Aid Society. He also continued with the practice of law, and was praised in an 1890 edition of the Washington Post as "one of the best-known colored lawyers in the city". This same newspaper also mentions that in April of 1890, Wall suffered a paralytic stroke while engaged in work at the police court in Washington. He never fully regained his health and died at age 65 on April 26, 1891, at his home. He was subsequently buried in the Graceland Cemetery in Washington but was exhumed four years after his death and was reburied at the Arlington National Cemetery. His wife Amanda was interred alongside him following her death in 1902.

A Visit With O.S.B. Wall

  On May 8, 2o17 I was lucky enough to track down and photograph Orindatus Wall's gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery. One of over a dozen gravesites photographed during my near month-long stay in the nation's capital, other figures photographed on this day were former U.S. Representative and Commissioner of Pensions Green Berry Raum, Assistant U.S. Treasury Secretary Alvred Bayard Nettleton, and former Minnesota Governor and U.S. Senator Cushman Kellogg Davis. And now a photo of the trip!