Join the Woods Hole Historical Museum for a conversation with scholar Brandon McGrath-Neely entitled “Joseph Story Fay, Thomas Simms, and a Nation on the Brink” on Thursday, February 12 at noon at the Woods Hole Public Library.
In his work, McGrath-Neely examines the “inverted lives” of Joseph Story Fay, a prominent landowner and “the first summer resident” of Woods Hole, and Thomas Simms, a man who escaped slavery, both of whom utilized geographic mobility to enhance their circumstances. Fay relocated from Boston to Savannah to capitalize on opportunities in the cotton trade and improve his financial standing. Conversely, Sims escaped enslavement in Savannah and stowed away on a Boston-bound vessel.
Both men’s endeavors collided with the crisis between North and South epitomized by the Compromise of 1850, particularly the Fugitive Slave Act. This compelled Simms’s return to slavery and complicated Fay’s business relationships in Savannah due to escalating distrust in a nation increasingly divided by region.
Their intersecting narratives reveal how individual ambition was constrained by the machinations of the slave economy within a nation teetering on the brink of civil war.