Henry Fleet
boot and shoemaker in Georgetown in 1798
(“Ten Dollars Reward,” The Centinel, and Country Gazette, March 2, 1798, p. 3)
Henry Fleet, in an 1807 document, seems to have been the son of Patience Turner, and brother of Robert Hicks and Sally Turner. (Wesley Pippenger, District of Columbia Probate Records, 1801-1852, p. 33)
His wife may have been named Ann (Nan), but it is also possible she was named Ary –– i.e. Ariana/Arianna:
in 1822, when Jane Swan willed a house and lot on High Street in Beatty and Hawkins’ Addition to Georgetown to Ary Fleet, Swan’s executor was Henry [his “X” mark] Fleet of George Town. (Wesley Pippenger, District of Columbia Probate Records, 1801-1852, p. 115)
There were at least two Henry Fleets:
“Henry Fleet (colored man)” died March 20, 1824. (William King Mortality Journal)
“Henry Fleet (colored man)” died July 29, 1834. (William King Mortality Journal)
James Fleet
Born about 1797, died 1859:
“Died,” Evening Star, January 11, 1859, p. 4. (Research by Lisa Fager)
Thomas Fleet
colored hairdresser, Washington City, married Susan Jackson, July 8, 1829.
Thomas Fleet’s child (colored), died July 7, 1830 (1827 directory; William King Mortality Journal)
Washington Fleet
born about 1805, died September 12, 1830 (William King Mortality Journal)
“Died: recently, in Georgetown, D.C., at the residence of his Grandmother, in his 25th year, Washington Fleet, a resident of Washington. His complaint was of a pulmonary nature, and had confined him to bed about 3 months. He was a colored man, endowed by nature with so many good qualities, that his death is most sincerely lamented by others than those of his own casts, who chanced to know him.” (National Intelligencer, September 13, 1830)
James H. Fleet
born about 1815, died 1861
Nephew of James Fleet
Student at Georgetown Lancastrian School on O St., one of very few black students admitted. Sponsored by the American Colonization Society, who intended him to be a physician in Liberia. Fleet attended Columbian College, but declined to go to Africa when he graduated.
Instead he opened a black school at 14th Street and New York Avenue, circa 1836.
James H. Fleet, president of the National Negro Convention of 1835. (Maryland Archives; National Negro Convention Movement)
James H. Fleet, music teacher, married Hermione C. Peters, April 21, 1845.
Their children include:
James H. Fleet, Jr.
Genevieve, born 1849
Mozart, born 1851;
Bellini, born 1853,
Mendelssohn, born 1856.
“New York Central College.––The Fall term of this institution commences on Thursday, the 4th Sept. Its faculty has another accession in the person of James H. Fleet, M. D., of Washington, as Professor of Music.” (“New York Central College,” New-York Daily Tribune, August 28, 1856, p. 7. Research by Lisa Fager.)
Lived at 109 Washington Street in 1859. (1208 30th Street?)
In 1860 census, James H. Fleet, is in the first ward of Georgetown, on page 30, a music teacher, mulatto, age 45, and wife Hermione, 35.
James H. Fleet died of typhoid fever in 1861. “Hundreds of our fellow citizens will learn with sincere sorrow of the death, last night, in Georgetown,, of James H. Fleet, the so well known colored music teacher. His disease was typhoid fever. He was universally respected and regarded where known by these whose respect and regard was creditable to him.” (“Dead,” Evening Star, December 7, 1861, p. 3; research by Jerry McCoy, Peabody Room, Georgetown Branch Library.)
“There were several good musicians, among them Mr. James H. Fleet, father of the wife of Prof. R. T. Greener. He also taught a school on the present site of the Y. M. C. A. building on N. Y. avenue, between 14th and 15th streets. The building was wrecked about 1837 by the Anti-Negro mob spirit which swept over the country about that time.” “There were no regular graduated colored physicians in those days, although several studied medicine with the purpose of emigrating to Liberia… Among those who studied medicine were Mr. James H. Fleet.” (Colored Washington: The Twentieth Century Union League Directory (1901), pp. 9-10)
James H. Fleet, Jr.
“James H. Fleet, a young man of color belonging here, has this week been appointed Assistant Assessor for the Fifth Collection District of North Carolina. How few comparatively realize the revolution that has been effected in the United states within the past decade!”
(Georgetown Courier, June 10, 1871; research by Jerry McCoy, Peabody Room, Georgetown Branch Library.)
Pauline Fleet
Daughter of James H. Fleet… married Henry Jerome Brown… of Baltimore. When H.J. and Pauline Brown’s oldest daughter, Ione, married in 1886, Prof. Bellini D. Fleet of Washington performed a wedding march.
Maryland State Archives: https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/stagser/s1259/121/6050/html/11425100.html
Genevieve Ida Fleet (later Genevieve da Costa Van Vliet)
Daughter of James H. Fleet, born circa 1849, married Richard Theodore Greener, September 24, 1874.
Richard Greener attended Phillips Andover, Oberlin Preparatory, and enrolled Harvard in 1865, graduated in 1870, first black man to do so.
Preparatory School for Colored Youth (ancestor of M Street School, Dunbar High) founded in basement of the 15th Street Presbyterian Church in 1870 by William Syphax. Its first three principals were: Mary Patterson, Octavius Catto, and Richard Greener.
Richard Greener, Dean of Howard Law School, 1879. Greener, wife and daughter moved to NYC in 1885, then separated.
Circa 1898, Greener was appointed US consul at Vladivostok. After that, he went to live with his relatives in Chicago, and died there 1922. (Katherine Reynolds Chaddock, Uncompromising Activist: Richard Greener, First Black Graduate of Harvard College, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017 )
Genevieve I. Greener” appeared in the NYC directory circa 1898
By 1903, it read “Genevieve I. Greene, widow”; and by 1908, “Genevieve Van Vliet Greene, widow” (Van Vliet being a New York patrician equivalent to Fleet).
The process culminated in “Genevieve da Costa Van Vliet”.
(The surname da Costa, suggesting a Portuguese lineage, was understood to explain an “exotic” complexion.)
Genevieve da Costa Van Vliet accompanied her daughter to Princeton, and gave music lessons there. She died in Manhattan, March 22, 1941.
Serena Fleet, Sarah Fleet, Isaac N. Cary
In 1830, Isaac N. Cary––a young barber originally from Fredericksburg, now located in Washington––married a Serena Fleet in Washington. In the 1850 census of Washington, Cary appears to be a widower, and Sarah Fleet, age 60 (his mother-in-law?) is living with him and his children. After 1853, Cary moved to Canada where he was involved in the anti-slavery movement. In 1859 Cary married Mary E. Miles Bibb, and, some time after 1871, the couple moved to Washington.
In 1874, when Genevieve Ida Fleet married Richard T. Greener, the wedding was reported in the press. Among the attendees––listed after Frederick Douglass and the Grimke sisters––were Isaac N. Cary and his second wife. This may be coincidental, or it may mean that his first wife was related to the Fleet family of Georgetown.
Isaac N. Cary appeared in the 1880 census of Washington, and his occupation was listed as Deputy Marshall at the Police court. He died in Washington in 1884.
(Contributed by Guylaine Petrin, York University Library, Toronto)
Belle da Costa Greene
Genevieve da Costa Van Vliet’s daughter, Belle Marion Greener (born November 26, 1879, at 1462 T St NW) became Belle da Costa Greene, and began to pass as white at about the same time as her mother.
Belle da Costa Greene worked at Princeton University Library, and became librarian to J. P. Morgan, his purchasing agent, a person to be reckoned with in the field of rare books and art. After Morgan died in 1913, she was considered the “soul of the Morgan Library” at Princeton (Notable American Women).
She died May 10, 1950.
(Jean Strouse, The Unknown J.P. Morgan, 1999; Morgan, American Financier, 1999; Heidi Ardizzone, An Illuminated Life: Belle da Costa Greene, Journey from Prejudice to Privilege, 2007)