Friends of Dacus Library

The Fall 2016 meeting of the Friends of Dacus Library on October 3 showcased Dr. Gregg Hecimovich's presentation on his forthcoming  book, The True Story of Hannah Crafts: America's First Black Female Novelist, slated for publication by Ecco/HarperCollins in 2017.

Dr. Hecimovich is Professor and Chair of the Department of English at Winthrop University. He earned his BA at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where he won the Louis D. Rubin Jr. Prize for most outstanding creative writer in his graduating class and graduated Phi Beta Kappa and cum laude in both English Literature and Creative Writing. 

He earned his MA and PhD at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.  He is the author of four previous books.

The research Hecimovich has conducted on this latest project on Hannah Crafts has garnered front-page attention in The New York Times, a review essay in The New Republic, and support from the National Endowment for the Arts.  

After a decade scouring government documents, diaries and other private family materials Hecimovich was able to deduce that the author of The Bondswoman’s Narrative, who used the name Hannah Crafts, was actually Hannah Bond, a fugitive slave who escaped in 1857 from her N.C. owner, John Hill Wheeler.  Wheeler was a well-known Tar Heel planter, attorney, politician, and amateur historian, best known for his book Historical Sketches of North Carolina, from 1584 to 1851.

Hecimovich, a Charlotte, N.C., native, related that he has obsessively researched the mystery surrounding the identity of the work's author who escaped from his home state. The slave to a family with an extensive library, Bond is believed to have educated herself. She escaped from the Wheeler plantation in eastern North Carolina in early May 1857 and made her way to central New York, Hecimovich said.

She took cover at the Craft farm, knowing that her owner was in pursuit. Hecimovich writes that Bond continued work on the novel and completed it the following year. She later settled in New Jersey where she became a school teacher.

In 2014-2015, Hecimovich was a Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellow at the W. E. B. DuBois Institute at Harvard University.  During the 2015-2016 year, he served as the Josephus Daniels Fellow at The National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.  Additionally, Hecimovich  just completed his 2015-2016 Public Scholar Fellowship appointment from The National Endowment for the Humanities.

Dr. Hecimovich has spoken widely on what is a fascinating bit of historical detective work.  His informative presentation gave the audience insights into historical and literary research and a detailed portrayal of Hanna Bond's tenacious path to freedom and authorship.