The Goldens:
From Monticello to Pittsburgh
Left: This framed piece, now part of the collection at Sen. John Heinz History Center, contains two 19th-century portraits of relatives: a tintype of Anna Birdy Matson Woodson and an ambrotype of James Woodson. Mr. Golden displays The Woodson Source Book, compiled by Minnie Woodson Shumate.
Pittsburgh's Golden family has the meticulous family genealogy you'd expect from descendants of one of America's most famous mothers, with seven generations going back to 1790. The Goldens are direct descendants of Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson's famous slave. Hemings' grandson Lewis Woodson settled in Pittsburgh, becoming an outspoken advocate for African-Americans, and later generations achieved notable Pittsburgh firsts.
The Jefferson name has other connections here; Jefferson Township was named for the president, honoring his leadership in repealing the whiskey tax that enraged local farmers in the 1790s. But the seventh-generation Goldens can't claim that name.
The Goldens joined the Woodson line through the descendants of Lewis Woodson, who was born in 1806. Lewis, the famous black abolitionist and writer for The Colored American, was a supporter of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. (Look for the historical marker for the Bethel A.M.E. Church at First and Smithfield streets, downtown.) In the national debate on slavery and emancipation, Woodson wrote the famous "Pittsburgh Memorial" of 1837, which argued that Pennsylvania blacks should retain the right to vote. Blacks lost the franchise, but Woodson's efforts helped secure public funding for African-American education. Writing in The Colored American under the pen name Augustine, he urged society to prepare for a future in which freed slaves would require social, organizational and financial assistance. Before becoming a barber in Pittsburgh, he founded the first African Methodist Episcopal Church west of the Alleghenies in Chillicothe, Ohio, and was later a founder of Wilberforce University in Wilberforce, Ohio.
"Sophie Woodson, Lewis' daughter, married Robert Golden, who had a delivery and hauling business in Pittsburgh," explains their great granddaughter Pamela Golden. She is senior vice president for regional marketing for the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, which is helping to plan the Pittsburgh 250 celebration this year. But the barbering profession also continued in the family, with striking results, she notes. "Lemuel Googins Sr. [a Golden family cousin] was a barber, too, with a downtown shop on Fifth Avenue. As he cut the hair of white men in town, he picked up stock tips. He became prosperous." As a result, Googins became the first black member of the Pittsburgh Stock Exchange.
Left: Pamela Golden and her father, Samuel Golden III, display memorabilia related to their family.
Descendant John Golden, Pam's great-great uncle, was one of the first African-American physicians in Pittsburgh; Samuel Golden, her grandfather, was a shipping clerk and well-known superintendent of Bethel A.M.E. Church school. His interest in history led him to the presidency of the Western Pennsylvania Historical Society and board service with the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. Samuel Golden III, Pam's father, is retired from the Pittsburgh Public Schools.
Current-day members of the Woodson clan, at least 75 of them in the Pittsburgh area, include the Stevenson, Lewis and Proctor families.
The Woodsons continue to press for research on their ties to Jefferson.
Sally Hemings (1773-1835) was a slave at Monticello in Virginia. She lived in Paris with Jefferson and two of his daughters from 1787 to 1789, and she had at least six children, all conceived while Jefferson was at Monticello. Jefferson later freed all of Hemings' children. Rumors about Jefferson's paternity of her children, all named Woodson, surfaced as early as 1802, and several of Hemings' children said Jefferson was their father. But because he never acknowledged her children, the Woodson heirs can't legally claim that they are descended from both Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson.
It's a riddle that pits the family's oral history and family resemblances against two centuries of official silence and inconclusive DNA results. Tests administered in 1998 and in 2000 proved that "at least one of Sally's children was fathered by Jefferson," says Golden. She says the search for answers goes on. Meanwhile, after 200 years, white and black sides of the clan have joined for Jefferson family reunions. "One part of the white family said, 'We don't believe it,'" says Golden of the Woodson connection. "Another side agreed - 'we are related; we accept it.' We've had a couple of gatherings in the last 10 or 15 years."
Footnotes: * See a rare sample of The Colored American and displays about Pittsburgh's 19th-century Underground Railroad on permanent display at the Sen. John Heinz History Center.
* In Jefferson Memorial Cemetery in Pleasant Hills, there is an impressive monument to Thomas Jefferson. A bronze statue of the third president is surrounded by 30-ton classical columns that came from the Bank of Pittsburgh, demolished around 1940. Founded in 1810 during the life of Jefferson, this financial institution was the oldest bank in the United States west of the Allegheny Mountains.