As people prepare to honor Martin Luther King Jr. next week, they can be grateful for a local group who has brought an important part of the area’s history to light. Due to the overwhelming positive public response from local residents to the first annual Juneteenth Heritage Jubilee last summer, Weston’s Black Ancestors Awareness Campaign (BAAC) was formed on June 20, 2021.
One of BAAC’s many goals is to go back as far as possible into Weston’s complete history and be a resource for the general public, and for genealogists to find their Weston roots.
More than 15 years of research by local residents, Angela Hagenbach and her sister Joyce Johnson has revealed many interesting facts about their heritage.
“Our mother’s people were brought to Missouri enslaved, from Kentucky and Virginia in the mid-1840s, and ended up in Weston, a town I adore,” Hagenbach said. “As a Parkville resident for over 30 years and Weston being so near, my focus has been on our mother’s people.”
Johnson’s focus is more on Texas, their father’s side.
Within the last few years, things changed, and Hagenbach realized her research was no longer enough, and neither was “Folks of Weston,” the historical fiction novel she is writing to connect the dots.
“I’m proud to have Weston roots, but there is no visible evidence in modern-day Weston that the Black ancestors, nor their community, ever existed,” Hagenbach said.
The highly successful 2021 Juneteenth Heritage Jubilee, created and organized by the Black Ancestors Awareness Campaign of Weston, demonstrated the public’s desire to learn more about the rich heritage of the Black community in Weston, according to the Weston Historical Museum
Hagenbach’s inner circle of friends, Rebecca Ehrich, Marilyn Carpenter, and Phyllis Becker, knew her story, read some of the chapters in her book, and have gone to Weston with her many times.
“Their invaluable participation in Juneteenth, both in front and behind the scenes, was a tremendous support to its success,” Hagenbach said. “The concept was born at our retreat debriefing the next day at Marilyn’s farmhouse. We reviewed our Juneteenth volunteer sign-up sheet and reached out to Sally Gaskill, a Weston descendant and the only person to check the not-for-profit slot. In short order, we became the charter members of the Black Ancestors Awareness Campaign of Weston.”
Being a committee within the Weston Historical Museum affords the group many opportunities to foster inclusion in the multi-facets of Weston Black History and into the rich historical story of Weston. Their work is reaching a new and more diverse audience.
“We’ll be able to build and preserve archives, primary source documents and conduct any number of outreach programs,” Hagenbach said. We have great plans and are eager to start digitizing our findings.”
On Sept. 13, 2021, the Weston City Park Courtyard was named the Dinah Robinson Courtyard, after Hagenbach’s great-great-great-grandmother. Born around 1817, Dinah Wright arrived in Weston, in the mid-1840s from Virginia, as a slave of Presbyterian minister, Rev. J.B. Wright.
Abolitionist Reverend Frederick Starr admitted Dinah and her husband Thomas, to the Presbyterian Church on April 1, 1854. Dinah purchased herself free, Feb. 16, 1859, from Reverend J.B. and Virginia Dale Wright, then the freedom of her husband Thomas, and their children, Moses and Eliza Jane Robinson.
“Dinah (Wright) Robinson’s story illustrates one of the many roles the Black population performed for Weston, making it one of the most prosperous river towns in Missouri,” Hagenbach said. “Dinah’s early trade was laundress, seamstress, lady’s maid, and housekeeper, which allowed her owners the luxury of leisure and time for more prosperous pursuits. For us, this life-achievement tribute acts as a beacon, spotlighting Weston’s Black forebearers, their enduring resilience – even under duress, as they carved a life for themselves.”
One of the many services enslaved people performed in Weston was making and laying bricks to build the City of Weston, making it very fitting, that the City of Weston has gifted the Black Ancestors Awareness Campaign with a cache of historic bricks salvaged from the old Livery building that once stood at Thomas and Blackhawk streets.
“These historically significant bricks will be repurposed for the Buy-a-Brick campaign,” Hagenbach said. “In addition, populating the courtyard bricks with names of loved ones will encourage community involvement, and help raise needed funds for renovation. Purchasing memorialized bricks would also bring the names of Dinah’s family, friends, and community together again.
In addition, funds raised would offset the costs of design and fabrication of the interpretive signage and the metal Dinah Robinson Courtyard sign under the Weston City Park arch. The result will be beautiful and all are invited to the May, 2022 ribbon cutting.”
Weston’s rich history has been made even richer by Dinah Robinson, who, at the height of the Border Wars bought her first property from her former owners, located at Main and (Cross) Short streets, approximately where the brick and fountain respite in downtown Weston stands today.
“I discovered Dinah Robinson’s identity in 2015 in the 1894 Last Will, written by her widowed daughter, Eliza Jane Dayton, naming Dinah, ‘…my Beloved Mother, Dinah Robinson full custody of my daughters, Ida Mariah and Emma Dayton…,’” Hagenbach said. “We had mistakenly thought Eliza Jane’s mother’s name may have been Lorraina.”
After discovering her identity, the most surprising thing for Hagenbach was finding Dinah’s Emancipation Deed, dated Feb. 16, 1859, during the height of the Border Wars, then learning she not only bought her family’s freedom, but became a landowner in 1860. “Both my third great-grandmothers were owners of multiple properties during these tumultuous times; a tremendous feat for a woman during that era, formerly enslaved or otherwise. We’re supremely proud of them both,” Hagenbach said.
Dinah purchased additional lots during the Civil War, extending from the courtyard to the other side of Mill Creek. On June 15, 1867, Dinah acquired the Thomas Street Alley along with her 804 Thomas Street home for the Board of Trustees of the Second Missionary Baptist Church, established in 1865. Often called the Colored Baptist Church, the alleyway ran past the Weston School for Colored Children and made its way to the church at 627 Blackhawk Street. These buildings still stand today.
“The church’s ownership of the alley also secured safe access to a section of Mill Creek where Colored baptisms and community social gatherings took place,” Hagenbach said. “In 1893, Dinah Robinson witnessed the Second Missionary Baptist Church’s move to 502 Spring Street. The only known photo of Dinah shows her standing among the congregation in 1893, in front of the newly acquired church building.”
Dinah played an active role in Weston’s community with the help of friend and neighbor Mariah Dayton-Vaughn, a former slave of Stage Coach King Ben Holladay. As prominent civic leaders, these women played a significant role in the Colored School and Church. Dinah’s daughter, Eliza Jane married Mariah’s son, Willis Dayton; their children were among the first in their families to be ‘legally’ educated. Near the turn of the century, the brick schoolhouse was christened the Mary McLeod Bethune School for Colored Children. Dinah and Thomas Robinson and David and Mariah Dayton-Vaughn are Hagenbach’s great-great-great-grandparents.
On March 26, 1887, a Kansas City Times article headlined Dinah’s achievements as “An Example of Industry.” The article mentioned her resourcefulness and entrepreneurial spirit as being the tools for how she earned a living. The article also noted her remarkable achievements considering this manumitted slave woman accomplished this before and during the Civil War, through Reconstruction and its aftermath and maintained it all until the end of the century. Dinah Robinson died on Feb. 22, 1895 and she and her family are buried in unmarked graves at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Weston.
Dinah has inspired her great-great-great-granddaughter, Hagenbach, to believe that she can achieve her dreams as well.
“Dinah Robinson is an excellent role model and indeed an example of industry,” Hagenbach said. “Her story is featured in the Weston Historical Museum’s quarterly newsletter, Museum Musings as a way to inaugurate the newly included Black History column. We see Dinah Robinson as the face of the Black Ancestors Awareness Campaign’s efforts to reintroduce African-American history into the story that is Weston.”
Although multiple locations in and around Weston eloquently extol Weston’s past with historical markers and signage, Hagenbach said none of them reflect the third of Weston’s forgotten Black population. The BAAC initiative, Museum Without Walls is a multi-locational project with interpretive signage highlighting Weston Black History, and those who helped, throughout Weston.
“In addition, our beautiful Weston Historical Museum (WHM) is full to the brim with artifacts, archives and displays, with small exceptions also not reflective of Weston’s Black history,” Hagenbach said. “For some time, WHM has been aware of the need of expansion, but until it becomes reality, and the historical society markers are updated, Museum Without Walls is our best and most expedient solution to address this lack.”
When Hagenbach was growing up she used to love listening to her sibling’s music. She was enveloped in a musical family. Her father, Leslie Washington, was a professional musician during the late 1930s through the 1950s and her mother, Emma Jean, played piano and organ beautifully.
But one day, when Hagenbach heard Sarah Vaughan’s silky voice float out from her car radio, it changed her life.
“She could soar relatively high, but it was her lows that caused me to pull off the interstate,” Hagenbach said. “Her lower register seemed at least as low as mine. Before then, I had never considered pursuing vocals, having such a low voice. However, I also have range and realized that, like Sarah Vaughan, I am a contralto. The rest is history.”
Now a successful jazz artist, Hagenbach said that maybe Dinah would be proud that she has achieved a successful jazz recording and touring artist career despite the lack of a music degree. She has toured the world twice as a Cultural Jazz Ambassador for the United States of America.
“Jazz is beloved around the world because like most genres, Jazz developed and evolved out of years of strife and conflict, in this case, the generational Black experience in America,” Hagenbach said. “The music and those who perform it, musically search and interpret inspiration from the sounds, moods and situations around them, in order to express release and comfort. I think people not only hear this but feel it too.”
Hagenbach believes that Dinah and her community are relieved to be recognized and remembered, not only for having been buried in unmarked graves at Laurel Hill Cemetery, but that their life-stories and legacies are at last, being told, and preserved in perpetuity.
“Knowing one’s history, the good with the bad, helps us understand ourselves and each other so that we can move forward, together as a community, as a country,” Hagenbach said.
Hagenbach most admires Dinah’s entrepreneurial spirit and her ability to navigate her world, to enact change for herself, her people, and the fact that she seemed to be a bridge between Weston’s black and white residents.
When asked if she could speak with Dinah, what she would ask her, Hagenbach said, “If I could spend a bit of time with her, what wouldn’t I ask? For starters, I’d want to know who her and Thomas’s parents were, where they came from, did she have siblings or other children, and if she knew her grandparents. I’d want to learn as much about her relatives and her community as she could tell me. But also, what was life like in Weston?”