Mariah Reddick

Mariah Reddick was an African American woman connected with Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage plantation in Tennessee. Born into slavery, she lived and worked within a community whose labour sustained the household and estate but whose individual histories were long overshadowed by accounts centred on Jackson. After emancipation she remained associated with the Hermitage and with the post-war Black community around it.

Mariah Reddick was an African American woman associated with the household of Andrew Jackson at the Hermitage in Tennessee, where she had lived under slavery before emancipation. After the Civil War she continued to work at the estate and became part of the community of formerly enslaved people whose labour and family histories were long marginalised in accounts focused on Jackson himself.

In Robert Hicks’ The Orphan Mother, Two years after the Civil War, Mariah Reddick has built an independent life as a respected midwife in Franklin, Tennessee. Formerly enslaved by Carrie McGavock’s family, she owns property and serves women across the town’s racial divisions. When her politically ambitious son Theopolis is murdered, Mariah refuses to accept the explanations offered by officials who have little interest in justice for a Black family.