Cornelis Star Numan: heir and abolitionist?

On Tuesday morning, 16 November 1841, a few people gathered in a house on the Oude Kijk in ‘t Jatstraat in Groningen to meet an Englishman. The house belonged to Cornelis Star Numan, professor of law at the Groningen university, and his wife Octavia van Swinderen. The Englishman was John Scoble, who was travelling through the Netherlands on behalf of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society to persuade the Dutch to abolish slavery in their colonies. A few weeks later the Society’s paper reported what happened that morning:

Next morning Mr. Scoble met several friends of the slave at Dr. Numan’s and was much encouraged to find that the ladies present felt deeply interested in it.1

Who those “ladies” were is not stated. Octavia is not named either, although it was her house.

Scoble came from a country that had already abolished slavery. In 1833 the British parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act. On 1 August 1834 the enslaved people in the British colonies were declared free, although most of them still had to work for their former enslavers as “apprentices” until 1838. The enslavers received twenty million pounds in compensation between them.2 After that the British abolitionists turned to the rest of the world. In 1839 they founded the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, with its own paper, the Anti-Slavery Reporter.3 Scoble was one of its leaders. The Drentsche Courant called him “mededirecteur” [co-director] of the society.4

The day before, Scoble had already met Star Numan, at the home of Hermannus Rudolphus Haijunga. Haijunga had been president of the high court of Suriname. The theologians Petrus Hofstede de Groot and L.G. Pareau were also at the table. According to the report, the conversation was about “the various difficulties” of an “immediate and entire emancipation”.1 That same Tuesday evening Scoble spoke at the De Doelen inn to a gathering of prominent Groningen citizens, chaired by Governor Rengers. Star Numan was there again, as were Haijunga, Hendrikus Octavius Feith and Hendrik Ludolf Wichers.1 The Drentsche Courant wrote that Scoble spoke in English for “zeven quartier uurs” [seven quarters of an hour]. He argued “dat de invoering van het Christendom onder de slaven eene hersenschim is, zoolang zij niet in vrijheid gesteld worden” [that bringing Christianity to the slaves is a pipe dream as long as they are not set free], and that little would come of the preaching “zoolang de slaven de Europeanen zien naderen met den bijbel in de eene, en de slavenzweep in de andere hand” [as long as the slaves see the Europeans approach with the Bible in one hand and the slave whip in the other].4

When Scoble left shortly afterwards by stagecoach, Star Numan was there to say goodbye. We know this from a letter that one of the others present sent after him. The writer himself had arrived too late. “My friends, professor C. Star Numan and Captain Cool, of the royal navy, were happier than I was.” In the same letter he asked for more copies of the Society’s paper for “the members of the Committee at Groningen”.1 Issues of that paper from 1841 and 1842 are still in Star Numan’s archive.5

The house on the Oude Kijk in ‘t Jatstraat is today’s Hinckaertshuis, one of the few medieval stone houses left in the city. Star Numan lived there at least from 1836 until his death.6 He had come to Groningen as a professor in 1834, at the age of twenty-seven. In that same year, in Sappemeer, he had signed the declaration of the estate of his grandfather, Cornelis Star Lichtenvoort.7 That grandfather had been an advocate on Curaçao. Together with his wife Maria Kock he had owned enslaved people there. One of them, Louis Alons, they had taken with them to their country house Welgelegen near Sappemeer, where he was servant and coachman.

The man who received Scoble in his house was, then, the grandson and heir of an enslaver. This story is about the question of what he did with that inheritance.

Cornelis Star Numan was born on 2 February 1807 in Sappemeer, “een der bloeijendste dorpen in de provincie Groningen, waar zijn vader, de Heer Alexander Numan destijds de Genees- en Vroedkundige praktijk uitoefende” [one of the most flourishing villages in the province of Groningen, where his father, Mr Alexander Numan, was then practising medicine and obstetrics].8 His mother, Catharina Dorothea Star Lichtenvoort, was a daughter of Cornelis Star Lichtenvoort and Maria Kock. He was baptised in Sappemeer on 15 February.9

His biographer, his Groningen colleague J.H. Philipse, describes a parental home where people liked to talk about Latin poets. The grandfather took a full part in this: it was said of him “dat hij op bijna tachtigjarigen ouderdom nog vlug en juist het Latijn schreef en sprak” [that at almost eighty years of age he still wrote and spoke Latin fluently and correctly].8 Star Lichtenvoort had been a curator of the Groningen university from 1795 to 1802.10 Shortly after his seventh birthday Cornelis went to the school of P.J. Rünckel in Hoogezand. His teacher there remembered him as “vlug, nadenkend, getrouw van geheugen, vrolijk en goedhartig” [quick, thoughtful, with a reliable memory, cheerful and good-natured]. According to him, “ieder op school en in ‘t dorp” [everyone at school and in the village] liked the boy.8

At Welgelegen, his grandparents’ country house in Kleinemeer, Louis Alons worked in those years as servant and coachman. His history is told in the story of Louis Alons. In April 1820 the grandfather had his carriages and horses sold.11 Cornelis was then thirteen. In the memoirs of Star Numan, Louis, Curaçao and the origin of the family property do not appear. The boy can hardly have failed to know him, but there is no source that says so.

In 1822 Alexander Numan became director of the Veterinary School in Utrecht. The family moved with him, and Cornelis, “ter naauwernood den vijftienjarigen leeftijd bereikt hebbende” [having barely reached the age of fifteen], became a student at the Utrecht university.8 He studied letters first and then law. After the Belgian revolt the Utrecht students formed a company of volunteer riflemen in the autumn of 1830. Star Numan became a sergeant, “aan het hoofd geplaatst van het 3e peloton” [placed at the head of the 3rd platoon], and carried out “maanden lang met onverdroten ijver zijne soms moeilijke dienstpligten” [for months, with unflagging zeal, his sometimes difficult duties].12 On 12 August 1831 the company faced the Belgian army near Leuven.8 A little over three months earlier, in the night of 7 to 8 May, Louis Alons had died in his house in Kleinemeer.13

After the campaign Star Numan took up his studies again. On 27 November 1833 he took his doctorate in Utrecht with a study of Machiavelli’s Il Principe.8 Less than three weeks later his grandfather died.

The year 1833 took two people from him. On 16 August his mother died in Utrecht, aged just over 63.14 On 15 December his grandfather died in Sappemeer, “in den ouderdom van ruim negentig jaren” [aged over ninety].15 Because his mother had died before her father, her share of the inheritance passed directly to her two children: Cornelis and his sister Johanna Sophia.

In March 1834 the heirs submitted the memorie van successie, the declaration of the estate. Besides the four children of Star Lichtenvoort it lists “Zyne twee meerderjarige Kindskinderen den Heer Mr. Cornelis Star Numan, Advokaat en Mejuffrouw Johanna Sophia Numan, zonder beroep, beide woonachtig te Utrecht als representerende wylen hunne moeder Katharina Dorothea Star Lichtenvoort” [his two adult grandchildren, Mr Cornelis Star Numan, advocate, and Miss Johanna Sophia Numan, without occupation, both living in Utrecht, representing their late mother]. The memorie lists 33 items of land and houses, among other places in Sappemeer, Hoogezand, Noorddijk and Slochteren. One of them is “de Buitenplaats Welgelegen genaamd, bestaande in huis, schuur, erf, tuinen, water, bosch, bouw en weideland” [the country house called Welgelegen, consisting of house, barn, yard, gardens, water, woodland, arable and grassland], almost eight hectares in size. At the bottom is the signature “C. Star Numan”.7

It says nothing about Curaçao, nor about money, securities or people. That means little: for heirs in the direct line, the declaration at that time only had to list real estate.16 Where Star Lichtenvoort’s wealth came from, and how much of it still derived from the plantation and the people on Curaçao, cannot be told from this document.

The new year also brought something else. After the death of the Groningen professor Gabinus de Wal, the curators were looking for a successor. Their choice fell on the young Utrecht doctor. At the end of April 1834 Star Numan was appointed professor of law in Groningen by royal decree.17 On 11 June he gave his inaugural lecture, in Latin, on how public law could best be practised in his own time.18 Three months later, on 15 September, he married Octavia Cornelia Susanna van Swinderen van Rensuma in Groningen, a daughter of the member of parliament Oncko van Swinderen. One of the witnesses was her brother Oncko Quirijn Jacob Johan van Swinderen.19

The couple went to live on the Oude Kijk in ‘t Jatstraat. Their five children were born there: Catharina Dorothea in 1836, possibly named after Cornelis’s mother, a daughter who was stillborn in 1838, Oncko Wicher in 1840, Anne Willemine in 1843 and Alexander Henricus in 1845.20 When Scoble came in November 1841, the couple had two children: a daughter of five and a son of one.

What did Star Numan do after Scoble’s visit? The answer has to come from a handful of papers. In Groningen in those years there were people who concerned themselves with the fate of the enslaved. In May 1841 an Amsterdam correspondent of the Society wrote to London that he had had a visit from a friend from Groningen. There they had founded an association that did have “anti-slavery principles”, but did not call itself that. Its name was “Society for the Promotion of the Temporal and Spiritual Welfare of the Negros in the West India Plantations”.21 In 1842 Teenstra reported that a Groningen branch had “onlangs” [recently] been founded of the Maatschappij ter bevordering van het godsdienstig onderwijs onder de slaven in Suriname.22 Whether that was the same association, and whether the “Committee at Groningen” from the letter to Scoble belonged to it, we do not know. No list of members has been found. That Star Numan was a member is quite possible, but it is not recorded anywhere.

He did keep issues of The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter from 1841 and 1842. They are in his archive at the Groninger Archieven, together with notes for a speech against slavery. Those notes are not dated. At the top of the first page is the number “5”.5

In the speech he observes that slavery is no longer called God’s deserved punishment for Black people. Yet in his view people are still not prepared to root out the evil.5 In undated notes for a lecture or class he writes that “Christennatieën” [Christian nations] too have the task “om arbeid van slavernij te bevrijden” [to free labour from slavery], and that “het eigendom van slaven op onregt berust” [the ownership of slaves rests on injustice]. But the same line of reasoning states that “de eigenaars, die onder bescherming van de wet […] geld voor menschenwaar hebben betaald, bij eene latere wet, aanspraak op schadeloosstelling hebben” [the owners who, under the protection of the law, paid money for human goods are entitled to compensation under a later law].23

That was the position of a lawyer. Slavery was an injustice, but the property had been acquired under the law, and whoever changed the law had to pay the enslavers. About the people who were themselves counted as property, and what they were owed, these sentences say nothing. In 1863 the Dutch state would arrange abolition in exactly this way: the enslavers received a payment per person, the enslaved themselves received nothing.

The contact with London did not end after 1841. On 15 November 1844, three years after his visit, John Scoble wrote Star Numan a letter. It is now in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, in a collection of letters that probably reached the Hofstede de Groot family through his daughter.24 What it says has not yet been studied.

In 1848 there was an opportunity to take a public stand. A circle in Utrecht around Jan Ackersdijck, whose lectures Star Numan had once attended, sent a petition to the Tweede Kamer “over de afschaffing der slavernij” [on the abolition of slavery]. The petition called it “een schreeuwend onregt” [a crying injustice] to “menschen als eigendom te betrachten, hen als lastdieren te gebruiken en hen met zweepslagen te bedwingen om aan de willekeur van eigenaars te gehoorzamen” [regard people as property, use them as beasts of burden and force them with the whip to obey the whims of their owners]. It also said something about the enslavers. It was “geenszins in de bedoelingen der Adressanten, dat de belangen der eigenaars in de koloniën zouden worden voorbijgezien” [in no way the intention of the petitioners that the interests of the owners in the colonies should be overlooked]. The signatories wanted “dat uit de vrijheid der arbeiders eene betere toekomst voor de planters worde mogelijk gemaakt” [the freedom of the labourers to make a better future possible for the planters], and they considered it “als eene schuld der natie, om de opoffering, die de vrijverklaring welligt zal vorderen, te dragen” [a debt of the nation to bear the sacrifice that emancipation may require].25

Under the petition is written: “C. STAR NUMAN, Hoogleeraar te Groningen.” His father signed too, as director of the Veterinary School in Utrecht. Among the signatories were fifteen people from Groningen, including his colleague Pareau, Haijunga, Hofstede de Groot and his former student B.D.H. Tellegen.25 The petition said what Star Numan had written in his notes: slavery had to go, and the nation had to pay the enslavers.

That did not make him a progressive man. The same year, 1848, brought a new constitution, with more power for parliament. Star Numan was against it. His biographer quotes him on the “huwen van het Koningschap aan eene onhuwbare Democratie” [marrying of the Monarchy to an unmarriageable Democracy].26 Two years later he became involved in a public quarrel. He had written a preface to a Dutch translation of addresses by the American minister William Ellery Channing, translated by Tellegen. Channing was also a well-known opponent of slavery, but his writings on that subject are not in the volume. In the Tweede Kamer, in the debate on the electoral law, the liberal member J.F. Zijlker appealed to that little book. Star Numan replied with an open letter in the Groninger Courant. In it he used slavery as an argument against democracy:

Ook weet ik, dat de Amerikaansche Staten democratieën zijn, en deze de afschuwelijkste dwingelandij vormen, in de eerste plaats voor de zwarten, en niet minder voor het blanke menschenras, zoo dit ooit door eenig negerbloed is bezoedeld geweest.27

He wrote that the American states were democracies and the most abhorrent tyranny, first for Black people, and no less for any white person whose blood had ever been “sullied” by “Negro blood”. He had already written something similar in his preface. Zijlker quoted it in his reply: “Wee hen, indien eenmaal door de neger-slaven, en door de vrijgelaten en vrije negers, die paria’s, in dat gedeelte der Unie, waar men van slavernij gruwt, de toepassing zal worden geëischt, van hetgeen oorspronkelijk aan allen is toegezegd” [Woe to them if one day the enslaved, and the freed and free Black people, those pariahs, in the part of the Union that abhors slavery, demand that what was originally promised to all be put into practice].28

In those sentences slavery is an abomination, but not because of what it did to the enslaved. It serves as proof that popular sovereignty leads to tyranny. Black Americans who claim the rights promised “aan allen” [to all] are a threat in them. The language about “negerbloed” speaks for itself. The same man who signed in 1848 that it was “een schreeuwend onregt” to treat people as property wrote about them in this way two years later.

Star Numan’s last years were those of an established man. In 1848 he and Octavia lost their youngest child, Alexander Henricus, just over three years old.29 In 1852 his father died in Utrecht. In 1854 he became rector of the university for the second time. On 12 August 1856 he presided in Utrecht over the reunion of the volunteer riflemen, exactly twenty-five years after Leuven. It was his last speech.8

Shortly after Easter 1857 he fell ill. On Saturday 9 May, at eleven in the evening, he died in his house on the Oude Kijk in ‘t Jatstraat, fifty years old.6 Octavia placed an advertisement in the newspaper: he was “diep betreurd door mij en zijne drie nagelatene Kinderen” [deeply mourned by me and his three surviving children].30 He was buried on 13 May. “Bijna alle kweekelingen der hoogeschool” [almost all the students of the university] walked in the procession. At the grave Philipse, the rector and the president of the student corps spoke, and afterwards “de jeugdige zoon des afgestorvene” [the young son of the deceased], sixteen-year-old Oncko Wicher, thanked those present.31

Octavia outlived her husband by almost forty years. In 1887 she was still living in the house on the Oude Kijk in ‘t Jatstraat, and she died in Groningen on 4 December 1896, ninety years old.32 Her brother Gerard Regnier Gerlacius van Swinderen was a member of the Eerste Kamer for Friesland from 1849 until his death in 1879.33 When the Eerste Kamer voted on the abolition of slavery in 1862, he voted in favour.34 On 1 July 1863 the enslaved people in Suriname and the Antilles were declared free. The enslavers received a payment per person, paid by the state. Among them were the children of Hendrikus Octavius Feith, who had sat with Star Numan in De Doelen in 1841. They were co-owners of the plantation ‘t IJland in Suriname.35 The Star Numan family does not appear in the lists. No colonial property has been found belonging to the family or its heirs after 1834.36

What did Cornelis Star Numan do with his inheritance? His grandfather’s money and land came to him in 1834 without the declaration naming their origin. Curaçao does not appear in his memoir. Yet in 1841 he received an English abolitionist in his house, he kept his paper, wrote notes against slavery and in 1848 put his name to a plea for abolition. Did that make him an abolitionist? He considered slavery an injustice, but also thought the enslavers had to be paid, and he just as readily used slavery as an argument against democracy. That contradiction was not his alone. It was built into the law that abolished slavery in 1863.

For Louis Alons, whom his grandparents had brought from Curaçao as a child, that law came too late. He had died in 1831, as a labourer in Kleinemeer. No one had asked for compensation for him.