The NPS’s attention to the other participants — the separate biographical pages, the naming of crew members, the inclusion of the women and children in the headcount and in the narrative — represents a scholarly and institutional effort to correct the compression that has characterized earlier accounts. The escape was a collective act. The documentation of it should reflect that.
## Clara Jones and the Women Aboard
The NPS also maintains a biographical page for Clara Jones, one of the people who came aboard on the night of the escape. Clara was one of Hannah’s daughters from before her marriage to Robert Smalls — his stepdaughter, a child whom he was choosing to include in the attempt that could have cost them all their lives.
The presence of children on the Planter that night — Elizabeth Lydia Smalls, who was four years old; Robert Jr., who was about a year old; Philip Small, the son of John and Susan Small; Clara and Charlotte, Hannah’s older daughters — is a dimension of the escape that can be easy to pass over in accounts focused on the tactical and military aspects. These were small children. They were below deck during the crossing of the Confederate defenses. They could not have been fully informed of what was happening or why. They were there because their parents had decided that freedom was worth the risk, and that risk extended to the children.
Robert Jr. died in 1863, at approximately age two. He was free for less than two years before he died. The historical record does not explain the cause of his death. He is noted in the biographical accounts of his father and is one of the four children Smalls is identified as having had with Hannah.