A special meeting of this Society was called on the evening of the above date. In the absence of the President and Vice the meeting was called to order by the next table Officer—Secretary H. Cardozo Jr. Upon motion of S. W. Beaird, Esq., Mr. Wm. E. Marshall was unanimously called to the Chair. Mr. Beaird now arose and spoke of the object that called us together—he alluded to the many difficulties and discouragements under which the Society labors, and which has so greatly crippled her efforts, and retarded her progress as to bring its members to the reluctant conclusion that her existence had better be discontinued: he also alluded in feeling terms to the matter of a dissolution—which would cause a severance of ties that had been so pleasant and profitable. After he took his seat other members in succession arose and followed in the same strain of remarks—giving expression to the solemnity and grief that pervaded their minds while considering the impossibility of continuing the existence of our much loved, and highly cherished Institution under present political disadvantages. After a full interchange of opinions and feelings a motion from H. Cardozo Jr. was unanimously adopted that the Society do now discontinue its existence.

Mr. S. W. Beaird then moved that a Committee of five be appointed to consider the best mode of effecting a dissolution—which was unanimously carried, the Chair then appointed Messrs. S. W. Beaird, R. L. Deas, C. D. Ludeke, W. O. Weston, and H. Cardozo Jr. for this purpose, who will make a report at the next meeting of the Society.¹

All business being now concluded, the Society on motion adjourned.

Hy. Cardozo Jr.

1. 1. Simeon W. Beaird (1826–1894), who had been reared in the family of Samuel Weston after his own father died, taught a clandestine school for Black children in Charleston in the 1850s. Beaird moved to Augusta, Georgia, during the Civil War. A schoolteacher, Methodist minister, and Republican political leader, Beaird was elected to Georgia’s state constitutional convention in 1867–1868. Returning to South Carolina in the 1870s, Beaird served as county treasurer of Aiken County. He remained committed to education and religion throughout his life. See B. F. Witherspoon, “The Rev. T. [sic] W. Beaird,” Southwestern Christian Advocate, January 24, 1895, 5; and Angela G. Ray, “Warriors and Statesmen: Debate Education among Free African American Men in Antebellum Charleston,” in Speech and Debate as Civic Education, ed. J. Michael Hogan, Jessica A. Kurr, Michael J. Bergmaier, and Jeremy D. Johnson (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017), 25–28.

   Robert L. Deas remained in Charleston until his death of typhoid fever on April 27, 1865, at age thirty; death records listed his occupation as porter. At the time Deas was president of the Friendly Association. In 1860 he had paid tax on $1,600 worth of real estate, and he bequeathed a life interest in a house on Charlotte Street to his mother and the residue of his estate to his wife, Hannah G. Deas. He was interred in the cemetery of the Brown Fellowship Society. See “South Carolina, U.S., Death Records, 1821–1971,” Ancestry.com (online database), 2008, https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/8741/; Friendly Association Records, 1853–1869, South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston, SC; Robert L. Deas, last will and testament, Will Books for Charleston County, 1790–1860, vol. 50 (1862–68), 334, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, SC.

   Conrad D. Ludeke (1835–1895), who was an active member and sometime officer of the Friendly Association, resigned from that group in June 1860, stating his plan to leave the state and appointing Robert L. Deas to act as his agent to receive the financial allotment due him from the group’s treasury. In April 1861 Ludeke, then living in New York City, enlisted in the Union Army. During the war he served in Company B, 82nd Regiment, New York Infantry (1861), Company C, 90th Regiment, New York Infantry (1861–1863), and Company C, 1st Regiment, New Orleans Infantry (1863–1866), attaining the rank of captain and adjutant. He then worked as a clerk for the Metropolitan Police of New Orleans; in 1871 he returned to Charleston. Ludeke was married twice, first to Elizabeth Chloe Sparrow Wrigley Esmond Ludeke (m. 1864, div. 1873) and then to Julia Brennan Ludeke (m. 1874). His and Julia’s daughter, Ada L. Ludeke (1877–1932), was a schoolteacher in Charleston. Conrad D. Ludeke died on March 14, 1895. Friendly Association Records, 1853–1869; Conrad D. Ludeke, Pension Application File, Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs, 1773–1985, Record Group 15, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC; Angela G. Ray, “Rhetoric and the Archive,” Review of Communication 16, no. 1 (2016): 51–56.

   William O. Weston (1832–1907), son of Methodist tailor Samuel Weston and Hannah Clark Weston, was a teacher in freedmen’s schools in postwar Charleston, along with his wife, Monimia Weston. In the late 1860s he served on Charleston’s board of aldermen and was an associate pastor at Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church, where he was remembered as “a clear and strong preacher.” See American Page 137 →Missionary Association Archives, 1839–1882, Amistad Research Center, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA; Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church Records, Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC; Eric Foner, Freedom’s Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders during Reconstruction, rev. ed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996), 226; and William H. Lawrence, “A Sketch of the History of the Reorganization of the South Carolina Conference, and of Centenary Church,” in The Centenary Souvenir, Containing a History of Centenary Church, Charleston, and an Account of the Life and Labors of Rev. R. V. Lawrence, Father of the Pastor of Centenary Church (Charleston, SC, 1885), xvi.

   Henry Cardozo (1830–1886) was the eldest son of Lydia Weston, who was enslaved at the time of her birth, and the Jewish merchant Isaac N. Cardozo. Married to Catherine F. McKinney Cardozo, he worked as a tailor in Cleveland, Ohio, from 1858 to 1868. Cardozo was elected to the South Carolina state senate from Kershaw County in 1870 and later presided over the board of Claflin University. He served for many years in the Methodist Episcopal Church and was pastor of Charleston’s Old Bethel in the mid- 1880s. See Minutes of the Annual Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church: Spring Conferences of 1887 (New York: Phillips and Hunt, 1887), 84; Claflin University and South Carolina Agricultural College and Mechanics’ Institute, Orangeburg, S.C., 1876- 77 [Orangeburg, SC, 1877]; and Foner, Freedom’s Lawmakers, 40. Please note that two individuals in the Clionian minutes are named Henry Cardozo; one joined the society in 1849, the other in 1851.