The Hidden Mother of Savannah: The Slave Woman Who Bore Eleven Children — and Was Allowed to Keep None

A Purchase That Began a Secret History

It began in April 1842, with a single line in the Whitmore Plantation ledger, one of Savannah’s most chilling relics of the antebellum South:

“Female, age 23. Purchased from Charleston Market. $800.”

Her name was Mary Anne Dupri — a woman whose story would outlast the empire that enslaved her. The ledger failed to mention one crucial detail: she was already with child, a fact deliberately hidden to keep her value high.

That omission marked the start of one of Georgia’s most disturbing true histories — a story buried for more than a century beneath polite society and plantation myths.

The House on the Edge of Savannah

The Whitmore Estate, located just outside Savannah, Georgia, was a contradiction made of marble and misery — twelve acres of manicured cruelty. White columns shimmered in the sun while, behind them, the cries of the enslaved dissolved into the humid air.

Thomas Whitmore, the master, was a wealthy cotton merchant admired for his business acumen. His wife, Eliza, played the part of a Southern lady — pious, poised, and adored by the parishioners of St. John’s Church. Yet, beneath that genteel facade, the couple maintained one of the most psychologically brutal households ever recorded in Savannah’s slave history.

Mary Anne was purchased to serve in the nursery, not the fields. Her purpose was to nurse and raise the Whitmores’ four young children — Josephine (7), twins Robert and Richard (5), and infant Beatrice (3 months).

She slept on a straw mat beside the cradle. She was to remain unseen, unheard, and ever obedient — a shadow in lace curtains.

The First Child

Three weeks after arriving, Mary Anne gave birth. The family physician, Dr. Samuel Blackwood, recorded it in his private medical journal:

“Delivered female infant to house slave Mary Anne. Child healthy. Mistress has decreed infant to be sent away after weaning. Mother not informed.”

By week’s end, the baby was gone — sold to a plantation twenty miles away.

The Whitmore expense ledger captured it in one cold entry:

“Medical services — $2.50.”

Mary Anne’s grief was never written, only endured.

“The Nurse Performs Her Duties with Detachment”

Over the following decade, Dr. Blackwood’s records chronicle a nightmare that unfolded quietly within that polished house.

In 1845, his entry read:

“House slave Mary Anne again with child. Mistress greatly inconvenienced. Delivery occurred in secrecy. No evidence of infant remains on property.”

For ten years, Mary Anne gave birth six times, each child vanishing within days — sold, traded, or hidden.

And through it all, she continued tending to the Whitmore children, feeding and comforting them while recovering from her own lost labors. Neighbors whispered of the pale-faced nurse who never spoke and never cried.

One servant applicant wrote in 1843:

“The mistress struck the nurse for letting the baby cry. The woman did not move or defend herself. Her silence frightened me more than the blow.”

The Cruel Invention

In 1850, Eliza Whitmore bore twins — Charlotte and Catherine — a delivery so difficult that doctors declared her barren for life.

Two weeks later, Dr. Blackwood recorded a new pregnancy — Mary Anne’s.

Months later, he found her near death from what he called “a primitive and dangerous procedure to terminate pregnancy.” He suspected Eliza’s hand in it. Yet, somehow, Mary Anne survived — fragile, fevered, and wordless — and continued caring for the twins as if nothing had changed.

But everything had.

Children of Two Mothers

By 1851, Savannah’s parish records listed a new Whitmore child every 18 months — even though Eliza could no longer conceive.

Five children were born over the next eight years: James, William, Margaret, Henry, and Elizabeth — all recorded as Whitmores, all baptized under that name.

But Dr. Blackwood’s coded notes, unearthed nearly a century later, exposed the truth:

“Child bears strong resemblance to mother, not mistress. Three infants share identical mark on left shoulder as nurse.”

The shocking implication: the Whitmores’ last five “children” were Mary Anne’s — conceived by Thomas Whitmore and claimed by Eliza as her own.

A system built on ownership had now enslaved even motherhood itself.

The Letter and the Gunshot

On September 17, 1859, Thomas Whitmore was found dead in his study — a gunshot wound to the head.

The sheriff’s report mentioned an anonymous letter found on his desk. Servants later testified that he’d been “haunted by a secret that could ruin the family.”

Within days, Mary Anne vanished.

The newspapers called it “an escape.” The Whitmores called it “theft of property.”

Neither description tells the truth.

The Journal Beneath the Stone

In 1969, cemetery workers restoring a Savannah graveyard unearthed a weathered stone marked only:

“M.D., November 1859.”

Beneath it lay a rusted metal box, sealed in oilskin. Inside were eleven locks of hair, a baby’s cap, and a small journal written in unsteady, phonetic English.

It was Mary Anne’s own hand.

Linguists at Emory University translated her words:

“They take my children but cannot take what only I know.
Each has two names — one for the world that steal them, one that bind them to me forever.”

She described secretly marking her infants with scars or songs, so they would know her if fate ever returned them.

“William sick today. I sing soft so no one hear words my mother sang to me. He look at me with his father’s eyes but my mouth. Wonder if he feel truth in his blood.”

Her final entry:

“Master read paper. His face white as cotton. The letter say the children’s faces betray their true mother.”

That night, he died.

Escape and Silence

Abolitionist correspondence from the same year mentions:

“Received woman and infant from plantation after master’s death. Proceeding to safe house in Charleston.”

Records in Canada (1862) list a Mary Dri, widow, marrying John Freeman near Toronto — with one dependent: Elizabeth, age 3.

She lived as a free woman for thirty years, dying in 1891.

Her bloodline survived.

The Confession of Eliza Whitmore

When Eliza Whitmore died in 1882, her effects included a small ciphered notebook. Decoded in 1967, it revealed a chilling confession:

“Thomas’s plan began after the twins. God gave us a means to preserve our name. I hated her, pitied her, then needed her. The children have her hands, her eyes. They will never know.”

Her final line read:

“If truth were known, they would hate me as I have come to hate myself.”

The Legacy Beneath Our Feet

By the 20th century, the Whitmore plantation was gone. A suburban neighborhood rose in its place — driveways, lawns, and mailboxes paved over the unmarked graves of an erased history.

But history resurfaced.

In 1998, a Canadian descendant named Elizabeth Caldwell contacted the Georgia Historical Society with a list passed down through her family — eleven names written in careful script.

“My grandmother said these were her mother’s true children,” Caldwell told archivists. “Names given in secret. One for the world that took them, one that bound them forever.”

Those names — Adeline, Thomas, Solomon, Grace, Isaiah, Hope, Faith, Patience, Samuel, Ruth, and Joy — matched the eleven locks found in Mary Anne’s buried box.

The Bloodline Revealed

Modern DNA testing confirmed the impossible:
The descendants of the Whitmore family in Georgia and the Dupri line in Canada share the same maternal DNA.

The truth was undeniable — the enslaved nursemaid and the mistress’s “children” were one bloodline.

A Whitmore descendant later established a scholarship in Mary Anne Dupri’s name, saying:

“We cannot undo what was done, but we can honor the woman whose love endured it.”

Today, her journal and the locks of hair are preserved in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, displayed under soft light, beside a simple label:

“Mary Anne Dupri — A Mother Remembered.”

The Echo That Remains

Mary Anne’s story is not only a tragedy — it is an indictment of a world that enslaved not just bodies, but the very act of motherhood.

Her children lived as white in a society built on lies, unaware that their veins carried the strength of a woman once sold for $800.

Her final words, scrawled in trembling ink, still echo through history:

“They take my children, but cannot take what only I know.
Each has two names — one for the world that steal them,
one that bind them to me forever.”

And maybe, somewhere across centuries and continents, those names are still being whispered — reminders that blood, truth, and love will always find a way to be remembered.