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Chronology

1855 George Ambrose Newman is born free in Winchester, Virginia, on February 4.
1860 George Newman listed on the census as a Black male, age seven (although he would have been around five at the time). Living on a farm in Back Creek Valley, Frederick County, Virginia, with the “Parnell” family: William Parnell (age thirty-six), Elizabeth Parnell (seventy-four), and James Newman (“mulatto,” age two). Toliver’s Keeping Up with Yesterday explains that he was placed in a wealthy landowner’s employ as a farmhand “at an early age” by his parents, who were hoping he could thus obtain an education, which he did. It is likely that Newman’s depiction of the Sowers family was inspired by this early experience.
1863 Signing of Emancipation Proclamation (Newman eight years old).
1870 George Newman listed in 1870 census, age seventeen, as a farm laborer in Clarksburg, West Virginia, with the “Pinnell” family: William (forty-six), Margaret (thirty), and Elizabeth (ninety-five), along with James Newman (Black, farm laborer, age thirteen) and Elizabeth Stevens (Indigenous, domestic servant, age eleven). Their “place of origin” is listed as Virginia.
1873 Newman (eighteen) starts teaching in Linden Station, Virginia.
1874 Newman writes a letter to his brother Samuel, who lives in Washington, DC. This letter discusses young Newman’s ideas about romance.
1875 Newman moves to Harrisonburg, Virginia, to become principal of the Whipple School, where he serves until 1881.
1877 Newman marries Margaret (“Maggie”) Dallard in June. Newman’s father dies in September, and Newman writes an elegiac poem for the occasion (“Untitled Poem”).
1878 Newman becomes a Mason and serves as Grand Secretary of his order, the Independent Sons and Daughters of Purity. In this capacity, he delivers his address, “An Essay on Truth.” He also serves on a committee to plan a celebration of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
1879 Newman receives thirty votes to serve as Harrisonburg City Councilman despite not running for office.
1880 Census lists George A. Newman (age twenty-four, schoolteacher), wife Maggie Newman (twenty-one), son George Jr. (two), and sister-in-law Mary Dallard (ten). Newman helps found the Organization of Colored Republicans in Harrisonburg and serves as Secretary of the city’s Republican Party. He is appointed as an alternate delegate to the State Convention.
1881 Newman is appointed US Storekeeper and Gauger, a federal position with the Internal Revenue Service. He serves in this role until 1885.
1882 Newman serves as a juror for the Rockingham Circuit Court and canvases for the Liberal Readjuster Party of Virginia.
1884 Newman is elected president of the “Folly Mills Blaine and Logan Club,” a mixed-race group pushing for the election of the Republican candidate.
1885 Newman serves as principal in Staunton, Virginia, for one year after his four-year term as a Gauger with the IRS.
1886 Newman returns to Harrisonburg to serve at the Effinger Street School (newly built in 1882) as principal. Newman also serves as secretary of the local preachers’ convention.
1887 Margaret (“Maggie”) Dallard Newman dies.
1888 Newman marries eighteen-year-old Mary Dallard, sister of his deceased wife Maggie. He also serves on the board of John Wesley M.E. Church and works with other educators to promote a Normal Institute system for both Black and white students. Many believe he will be appointed the first Black head of the local post office, but he is ultimately denied the position.
1890 Newman serves as a Deputy US Marshal.
1891 While working as Marshal on the railroad, Newman is forced to sit in the “Jim Crow car” and writes a poem about the experience (“The Jim Crow Car of Tennessee”).
1892 Newman selected as a Republican delegate for the eleventh district of Virginia.
1893 Newman returns to his former position as principal at the Effinger Street School.
1895 Newman leads a choir that performs around the state.
1896 Newman takes a one-year hiatus from his position at the Effinger Street School, where he is briefly replaced by James Johnson.
1897 Newman is reported as being in DC fighting the sale of the Anthony Bowen School. He is also heavily involved with the Rosebud Literary and Epworth League Club. Newman returns to work as principal of the Effinger Street School. His tenure ends in 1908 because local Black community members demand he be replaced by a “credentialed” educator. He is replaced by H. A. M. Johns, who is succeeded in 1915 by W. N. P. Harris.
1898 Newman is part of an integrated delegation of the Knights of Pythias that travels to Indiana.
1899 Newman serves as a pallbearer for prominent white business leader J. Frank Kingan. Newman, Lucy F. Simms, and U. G. Wilson form the Colored Teachers Association.
1900 Census lists George Newman (forty-five), wife Mary (thirty), and children George Jr. (twenty-two), Maggie (nineteen), Frederick (sixteen), Hattie (fourteen), Harry (eleven), John (nine), Joseph (six), Ruth (four), and Ruby (two). George Sr., George Jr., Maggie, and Frederick are all listed as teachers. Newman joins the Methodist conference.
1901 Newman is elected by the Republicans as a delegate to the state convention in Roanoke.
1905 Newman reports to the Methodist circuit system, serving the Harrisonburg circuit until 1909.
1908 Newman organizes literacy lessons and funds voter-registration endeavors for Harrisonburg’s Black population.
1910 Census lists George Newman (fifty-five), Mary Newman (forty), and ten children—Fred (twenty-six), Hattie (twenty-four), Harrison (twenty-one), John (nineteen), Joseph (sixteen), Ruth (fourteen), Ruby (twelve), Myrtle (eight), Samuel (five), and Roger (one year, two months)—living at 191 Kelley Street in Harrisonburg, Virginia (the address was likely a clerical error, as the Newman home was at 192 Kelley Street). Newman is listed as a Methodist clergyman.
1911 Newman’s youngest daughter, Mary, is born. She would live to 103, dying in 2015.
1913 At the invitation of an unknown group’s “progressive pastor,” Newman delivers his “Observations on the Negro Problem.”
1920 Census lists George A. Newman (sixty-four) as an agent for sick and accident insurance, living at 192 Kelley Street in Harrisonburg. Also listed are his wife, Mary, and their children Ruby, Myrtle, Samuel, Roger, and Mary.
1930 Census lists George A. Newman (seventy-six) as an insurance agent, still living at 192 Kelley Street. Also listed are his wife, Mary, and their children Joseph, Samuel, Roger, Myrtle, and Mary. In December, Newman is photographed at a holiday party held outside his Richmond Beneficial Insurance Co. office at 145 East Wolfe Street and hosted by the Blue Circle 30 Club, a Black social organization formed in 1927 “for the betterment of the colored race.”
 1940 Census lists George A. Newman (eighty-five) as a public school teacher, living with his wife, Mary (seventy), at 192 Kelley Street. That same year, Newman attempts to help someone by cosigning their loan, but when it defaults, he almost loses their house. Mary pays for the house with her own money and receives the deed to the house in 1940.
 1944  Newman dies in Harrisonburg on April 6 at age eighty-nine.

This timeline was constructed by referencing Ruth M. Toliver’s book Keeping Up with Yesterday and the Shenandoah Valley Black Heritage Project’s Roots Run Deep tour guide, by examining historical census data and Virginia newspaper records, and in consultation with Ruth M. Toliver and Mark Metzler Sawin.

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This work (A Miserable Revenge by George A. Newman Sr.) is free of known copyright restrictions.

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