NEW RICHMOND, Ohio — Masters students from Northern Kentucky and Mount St. Joseph Universities are in the midst of a mystery. They're working to piece together the last years of a woman many don't know.
"Mary Lumpkin is a great American hero no one has ever heard of," NKU Public History Director Dr. Brian Hackett said.
There are no pictures of Lumpkin, but her legacy looms large.
Greg Roberts with Historic New Richmond remembers when he first heard her name.
"A big tour bus pulled right here in front of the cemetery and (Dr. Carl Westmoreland) pronounces, 'This is Samarian Cemetery. This is where Mary Lumpkin is buried,'" Roberts said. "I didn't have a clue who Mary Lumpkin was but everyone on that bus stood up and looked and said 'Where? Where?'"
Now, NKU graduate student Alisha Burnett is working on research that could breathe new life into Lumpkin's last years. But that takes learning about Lumpkin's difficult past. At 13 years old, she was forced to be a mistress to notorious slave trader Robert Lumpkin in Richmond, Va.
"It makes me emotional because I couldn't imagine myself in that position or having to be forced to go through those things," Burnett said.
When Robert died in 1866, he left Lumpkin his slave jail. It's where he imprisoned thousands during the time of the domestic slave trade.
"At the end of the Civil War, she converted it into a school for free slaves," Hackett said. "And for some reason, she's buried in New Richmond."
During the spring semester, graduate students from NKU and MSJU had the task of filling in why Lumpkin would leave her inheritance that she turned into something positive and come to New Richmond.
Their theory is that it all connects to her children. Lumpkin was the mother of five kids of mixed race and she wanted an education for them. And the only school where she felt they'd be accepted was in New Richmond, a hotbed of abolitionists.
"Parker Academy was the first school we believe in America that was open to all races and all genders," Hackett said.
"They found enslavement immoral and they didn't believe at all it was trying to achieve that more perfect union," MSJU History Professor Dr. Jennifer Morris said. "So what's really fascinating is you have someone like Mary Lumpkin who experiences enslavement, who tries to make her life for her children better, sends them to the Parker Academy."
Lumpkin lived out the rest of her life in New Richmond.
As these students try to weave together those last years, Roberts said he's trying to answer the question those people had on the bus.
"We still don't know where she's buried," Roberts said.
Many of the graves in Samarian Cemetery are unmarked. So Hackett said he plans to use a ground penetrating radar system to figure out exactly where Lumpkin is buried.
He doesn't have an exact timeline, but with permission from the city, he's hoping to get started sometime this fall.
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