Research debunks myth about 1849 student death

Local historian Judith Pfeiffer revisits the gravesite of William F. Howell. She began researching his death in 2004 after discovering his tombstone in the Methodist Cemetery on New Street in Newark.

11:28 a.m., July 29, 2005--In 1848, a trip by seven Choctaw and Chickasaw Indian students from Eagletown, Okla., to UD, then known as Delaware College, took 52 grueling days on horseback, horse-drawn wagon, steamboat and stagecoach.

Six of the students, the first American Indians known to enroll at UD, later transferred to other schools, but one of them, William Howell, died while he was still at Delaware College and was buried at the Methodist Cemetery on New Street in Newark. His death was long believed to have been caused by a fall down a flight of stairs, but Judith Pfeiffer, a local historian who has been researching the story of the Indians at Delaware College since she read about Howell’s death and found his unkempt gravesite in early 2004, recently uncovered new information that shows that Howell died of flu.

The young men, six Choctaws and one Chickasaw, joined Delaware College at the behest of Peter Perkins Pitchlynn, who was part Choctaw and became a lifelong advocate for justice for displaced Indians by negotiating with the U.S. government, Pfeiffer said.

“The trail that led from a weathered tombstone in a Newark cemetery to relatives of a young Choctaw student who attended Delaware College as part of an experiment in education began with a few lines in an old publication,” Pfeiffer said.

Pfeiffer said she was doing research in the UD Archives for a book when a statement written by William Ditto Lewis, who served at UD as head librarian and later as an archivist, caught her attention. According to Lewis, Howell died from a broken back after he was pushed down the stairs at Old College.

“The challenge was clearly how to find out the truth about William’s untimely death and, more importantly, how he came to be here and if he was the only Choctaw student on campus in 1849,” Pfeiffer said. “The intent to harm or murder a fellow student just did not seem credible.”

Lycurgus Pushmataha Pitchlynn was one of the six Choctaw Indians who enrolled at Delaware College, along with William Howell, in 1848. This photo was taken about 1860.

After months of research, with assistance from UD Archives staff, Pfeiffer pieced together the history of the Choctaw and Chickasaw students’ arrival at Delaware College and, most importantly, discovered that Howell actually died of flu.

After Howell fell ill on Feb. 24, 1849, then-President James Patriot Wilson wrote a letter to Commissioner of Indian Affairs W. Medill and stated that the “most promising of all the Indian youths” was weakened from influenza. The president wrote that Howell was given good care in the last four weeks before his death on Saturday, March 17, 1849.

R.D. Folsom, a lawyer in Washington, D.C., who lives in Arlington, Va., and is a great-great-great-grandson of Peter Perkins Pitchlynn, whose son, Lycurgus Pitchlynn, was one of the Choctaws in Howell’s group, said Pfeiffer’s findings were a pleasant surprise. Folsom’s daughter, Emily, graduated from UD with a degree in English and Spanish in 2001.

“Research like this is good for Delaware students and the University community to know about the rich and diverse history of the University,” Folsom said. “You can imagine the surprise it caused for me and Emily to know that she had been preceded to the University by a direct ancestor! As a student of history myself, I see the value of this sort of research and revelation. It is helpful to a better understanding of what the University stood for in its early years and what it can be in the future.”

“I did not know that I had a Choctaw relative [who] went to UD until I bought my father a book on the history of UD one Christmas and he read about him and told me,” Emily Folsom, who works as a magazine advertising coordinator in Falls Church, Va., said. “I had a very positive experience at the University of Delaware, and, while I didn't happen to know any other Choctaws/Chickasaws while I was there, I made a lot of very good friends.

“It’s unfortunate that until now literature has rarely focused on the history of American Indians,” Emily Folsom said. “Their stories and their perspective are a very valuable part of American history.”

An engraving of Old College from the course catalog for Delaware College, titled "Circular and Plan of Endowment of Delaware College, Newark, Delaware," King and Baird (Philadelphia), 1851. Source: University Archives

The Folsoms learned about Pfeiffer’s research through a letter that she sent to the Choctaw newspaper seeking information about Howell and the other student who joined UD with him.

“I did not know that Howell was buried in Newark,” R.D. Folsom said. “I’m glad she researched the story because it sheds light on an interesting part of American history and of the Choctaw tribe. It also reveals a lot about the tribal leaders at the time, especially Peter Pitchlynn.”

According to R.D. Folsom and Pfeiffer’s findings, the most notable of the young Delaware students was Allen Wright, who went on to graduate from Union College and Union Theological Seminary, become a Presbyterian minister, chief of the tribe and named the state of Oklahoma--land of the red man. One of his direct descendants, also named Allen Wright, is a friend of R.D. Folsom.

“Allen Wright translated the laws of the Chickasaw Nation from English into their native language. He compiled a Choctaw dictionary for use in tribal schools, and he translated the book of Psalms from Hebrew into Choctaw,” Pfeiffer said.

R.D. Folsom said the Choctaw tribal leaders decided to send their children to school because they recognized very early the importance of an education in order to compete with the white man.

"It's nice to reflect that these ill-prepared, rough-hewn young men of Indian ancestry from America's frontier West could come to Delaware, a place they probably had no idea even existed, and would grow from the experiences they had at UD. It would be great to know what they thought of Delaware, what they learned about life while there, as well as from the books."

Pfeiffer said she hopes that the memory of the Choctaw and Chickasaw students can be preserved and that student organizations can help maintain Howell’s gravesite.

“I have received permission from the relatives to put a new stone at the foot of the old weathered gravestone. The cost will be around $500,” Pfeiffer said. “I’m trying to figure out the best way to raise money, and I have been told that the fraternities would probably like to do this, since the Choctaw lad was a member of one of the two early literary societies.”

Article by Martin Mbugua
Photos by Kathy F. Atkinson

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