Slavery and Wethersfield
by Martha Smart
The past is never dead. It is not even past.
William Faulkner
Sugar and Slavery
The popular book, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, written by Elizabeth George Speare in 1957, tells the story of Kit Tyler, orphaned on Barbados, traveling to relatives in Wethersfield in 1687, and of her life there. The story opens with her trip on a sailing vessel out of Saybrook, the Dolphin, traveling from Barbados on its final leg up the Connecticut River As the vessel starts upriver, Kit angers Nat Eaton, the young first mate and son of the captain, telling him that the vessel is filthy with the stench of horses. Nat’s angry reaction leads to the subject of slavery, he asking Kit if she prefers the smell of dead bodies stinking in the holds of ships. When she shows confusion over his response, he throws up the subject of slavery in Barbados. She admits to it but asks if there are not also slaves in America. He replies, yes, mostly “down Virginia way”, but fine New England folk “like you” pay good prices for slaves. “We Eatons are almighty proud that our ship has the good honest stink of horses…” rather than that of Africans dying on slave ships, for Nat proudly states that his father refuses to carry cargoes of slaves.
Slavery then totally disappears from the story, although the records show that there was slavery in Wethersfield at this time. This opening exchange is rife with unintended irony and hypocrisy. In Nat’s reality, slavery occurs elsewhere—in Barbados, in Virginia, and among rich people in other parts of New England. The hands of the Eaton family are clean of the stain of slavery. However, that “good honest trade”, bringing to Connecticut sugar and molasses from Barbados in exchange for Connecticut horses, in reality supports some of the most brutal of the slavery that Nat so abhors. This dialogue between the protagonist of this Newbery Award winning book and the young man who becomes its hero can be read as a paradigm for what over the years became the telling of the history of slavery and Wethersfield.
The West Indies, which includes Barbados, became a big market for Wethersfield trade, as well as that for all of New England. Wethersfield, far from needing the aid of a vessel from Saybrook was one of the first towns on the Connecticut River engaging in maritime trade. In 1642, The Connecticut Colony authorized The River Towns-Wethersfield, Hartford, and Windsor-to cooperate in building a “shipp.” This is the first mention of ship building in Connecticut. In 1648, the town of Wethersfield granted Thomas Deming, a ship’s carpenter, land to operate a “work yard upon the Common by the Landing Place.” Then, in November, 1649, the General Court authorized the owners of the “shipp at Wethersfield to get and make so many pipestaves, as will freight out the said shipp the first voyage….” The name of the vessel was The Tryall.
The West Indies were also the big British market for the African slave trade in the 17th and 18th Centuries, and into the 19th Century. Discovered by Columbus on his voyage west in 1492, The West Indies are a group of mostly volcanic islands lying largely in the Caribbean between Florida and the coast of South America. Columbus claimed these lands for Spain, but as Spain ebbed in power, other European nations—Britain, France, The Netherlands, Denmark–rushed in to establish colonies.
What started out as small holdings by individual settlers in these islands, soon turned into large plantations run by slave labor. in the British colonies, this first occurred on Barbados, due to what has been labeled the “Sugar Revolution.” Columbus originally introduced sugar cane to the New World; his mother-in-law grew it in the Canary Islands, and he apparently expected it to do well in the “Indies.” However, in the new world, it first took hold in the Portuguese Brazil, and from there was introduced into Barbados in the 1640s, probably by the Dutch.]
It was the Portuguese who provided Europeans with the model for large-scale sugar plantations run by slave labor. In the mid-1400s, Portugal sought a route to the spice trade of India that avoided the Islamic control of the eastern Mediterranean. Muslim Arabs also controlled the gold and ivory trade of sub-Saharan Africa, a trade greatly coveted by the Portuguese. Armed with the authority of a papal bull, Dum Diversas, to enslave “Saracens,” pagans, and “other enemies of Christ”, the Portuguese found their route to India and East Africa by sailing through the southeast Atlantic and around the Horn of Africa. They also won the dominant European role in the trade of the riches of Africa, including captured Africans. It is estimated that by the close of the 1400s, ten per cent of the population of Lisbon was African. At the same time, the Portuguese established sugar plantations from Madeira to Cape Verde and down the West African coast to Sao Tome and Principe, while also supplying these same plantations with the labor of enslaved Africans. Portugal then transported this plantation model to their possession in the New World, Brazil.
Labor intensive, the growing, harvesting, and processing of sugar cane required a large and continuing supply of cheap labor, and, as the Portuguese had shown, captives from Africa offered the best option for that labor. Carried to markets in the New World, first by the Spanish and Portuguese, the British and Dutch also became participants in the slave trade. In treaties of 1641 and 1642, first the Dutch and then the British gained treaty rights from Portugal that opened the Portuguese slave depots and plantation islands to British and Dutch traders. Slaves from these Portuguese plantations were especially desired for their knowledge of sugar culture and processing. Gaspar Dias Ferreira, a Brazilian planter, quoted by J. M. Opal in “Why the Portuguese Restoration 0f 1640 Matters to the History of American Slavery,” “boasted in 1645, ‘both the Negroes and the sugars have to pass through the hands of the Portuguese’ before sugar production is a success.” With the increased production of sugar came an increased demand for slaves. With this demand for human bodies, perhaps upwards of 12,570,000 humans were transported from Africa between the mid -1600s and 1867 in this horrific and brutal commerce.
Sugar and Trade
Sugar became the cash crop of the British, in part because of European colonial exploitation of other tropical or near tropical food stuffs, namely tea, coffee, and cocoa. Great profits accrued to planters, bankers, slave traders, merchants. and ship owners from growing sugar as a single crop on the islands of the West Indies. Consequently, food, livestock, horses, lumber and manufactured items were not produced there. Therefore, the need to import such products by ship, and for that that, the southern coast of New England was conveniently close. These conditions proved a perfect fit for trade between New England and the Sugar Islands of the West Indies. Farmers here needed markets for their farm produce, livestock, fish and the ready production of forest products. Wethersfield, with its early start in shipbuilding and maritime trade, participated fully in this trade.
As is seen by the shipment in 1649 on The Tryall, the trade in pipe, barrel, cask, and hogshead staves and bundles of hoops grew to become an important part of the trade with the Caribbean, and this continued into the 19th Century. These containers were necessary for shipping grain, salted beef, pork and fish, lard and butter to provision islands such as Barbados, Nevis, San Domingo, Antiqua, etc. The staves for barrels, casks, hogsheads, etc. were also shipped flat in great quantities for sale to planters for shipping sugar, rum, and molasses, as well as such use by the Connecticut merchants themselves. Some Wethersfield vessels, such as the sloop Hepsabeth, 1763, Edward Bulkeley, master, also carried a cooper to construct barrels once the ship arrived in port. The log book notes: “Friday June 24, 1763…got our Deck full of staves….” “Saturday June 25: Landed sum [sic] Board and Beams to make a Cooper’s Shed.”10
Flour, corn, peas, oats, and wheat, as well as the famous Wethersfield red onion, bricks, livestock, pigs, barreled salted meat and fish, and, of course, as Kit had noted, horses were shipped on Wethersfield vessels. Herded overland to New London, the point of exit and entrance for all Connecticut shipping, both oxen and horses were there loaded onto vessels. Many of these animals were headed for work in the sugar mills, providing motive power for these mills, crushing the cane to release the sweet sap. This sap was then processed into molasses and progressively finer grades of sugar. Wethersfield vessels then returned with the products of this system–molasses, sugar, and rum.
The log book of the sloop Fair Trader, on two trips to the West Indies in 1768, and 1768-69 John Webb, master on the first trip and Edward Bulkeley master on the second, provides a closer look at this trade. After loading bushels of oats, corn, flour, and barreled pork, beef, and fish, staves and bunches of hoops, the Fair Trader weighed anchor on 21 June, 1768 and left Rocky Hill, taking on 7 hogs at Middletown. At New London, the crew loaded horses, 9 oxen, and 2 “coues” and calfs (sic) as well as hay. On July 29, 1768, the sloop sailed into Nevis Road, where it sold the 9 oxen and the 2 cows, plus all the horses, barreled fish, beef, and pork, bundles of staves, and hoops, oats, corn, etc., as well as the 7 hogs. In return the Fair Trader took on hogsheads of rum, as well as several barrels of limes.11
Sailing on to Anguilla, the schooner landed 3068 bricks, which were probably carried as ballast, and took on many “bot lods” [sic] of salt which the crew then packed into hogsheads and stowed away. More rum, described as “sundry barrels,” were also boarded and stowed. Arriving back in Rocky Hill on September 17, 1768, off-loading of the rum, salt and limes began, and on October 19, 1768, preparation started for a second voyage.
Salt
While much was written about the trade of the American colonies with the West Indies—and this holds true for Wethersfield—in sugar, molasses, and rum, salt was not extensively noted as a factor in that same trade. Undoubtedly so much attention was paid to trade in these commodities because they were key components in the triangular slave trade among the American colonies, Europe, and Africa. Moreover, people also greatly desired these items; salt was an unglamourous necessity. An absolute necessity in preserving quantities of food before the advent of modern refrigeration, the human body also requires it. Meat, fish, butter, cheese, and lard were important foodstuffs salted for preservation. Other methods of preserving food, such as pickling, also required salt, and many a ham, pork shoulder, or bacon slab were brined in a solution of salt, sugar, and water before being smoked.
Most of the salt used in trade, raked out of shallow salt ponds, or pans in the Bahamian Archipelago or the Antilles, were carried to the North American seaboard colonies, including New England and Canada. In a sense these British colonies along the northeast coast conducted their own triangular trade with the West indies, involving salt. Harvested by slaves, salt was then returned by sea captains to New England in trade for foodstuffs and forest products. These things were absolutely vital to the West Indian islands, if starvation was not to occur. The salt was then used in preparing fish, beef, pork, butter, and lard. The return shipping to the West Indies of a good deal of these foodstuffs, repeated the trade cycle.
The second voyage of the Fair Trader October, July 1768-July, 1769 demonstrates the key role of salt in this cycle. After its first voyage, the sloop returned with quantities of salt, and before setting sail again, a number of days were spent at a wharf in Rocky Hill “cutting up creatures,” corning (salting), and packing them into hogsheads and stowing them aboard the sloop. Also taken on board were oats, rye, flour, potatoes and ropes of Wethersfield onions. But the overwhelming impression is of salted “creatures.”
This trade and the profits salt harvesting produced, rested on the labor of enslaved persons, just as that of sugar did, and became a key element driving the American colonial economy and that of the Caribbean and Western Europe. Salt, truly the other ‘white gold,’ yielded great profits to nearly all Western European colonial powers and wrought misery for thousands of women and men forced to work the salt ponds of the Bahamas and Antilles. So concludes Cynthia M. Kennedy’s paper, “The Other White Gold: Salt, Slaves, and Turks and Caicos Islands and British Colonialism.”
Kennedy’s paper also quotes the slave narrative of Mary Prince. Notable as the first published account of slavery by a woman, Prince describes in detail the miserable labor and long hours in the tropical sun spent in raking out the salt from the salt ponds and pans of the Bahamas. “I was given a half barrel and a shovel, and had to stand up to my knees in water from four o’clock in the morning until nine.…sometimes we had to work all night, measuring salt to load vessels…’” This same scenario applied to Anguilla in the Antilles, where the Wethersfield sloop The Fair Trader obtained salt on its first voyage of 1768. Prince’s narrative also told of the bestial punishment meted out if a slave could not keep up the punishing pace of salt harvesting.
A horrific, brutalizing business, all stages of sugar culture as well as salt harvesting savaged and destroyed animals as well as people. Trade in and misuse of enslaved persons was woven into the very fiber of life in the 17th, 18th, as well as a good part of the 19th centuries. Walter Dorn in his book, Competition for Empire, 1740-1763, states: “Both the French and the British empires were erected on the foundation of slave labor ….This [slave ]trade …involved not merely the West Indies but the trade of the two rival east India Companies and in some measure that of the North American colonies.” In this colonial trade competition, Wethersfield and the Northeastern British colonies of America were fully complicit.
Slavery in Wethersfield
Wethersfield vessels were also returning from the Caribbean with cargo other than sugar, salt, rum, and molasses. On a balance sheet for the sloop Polly, owned by Justus Riley of Wethersfield, the account signed by his son, Justus Riley, Jr. lists “two Negroes,” along with their evaluation and the portion due the ship. The dateline for the accounting is Cape Francois, 1792, in what is now the nation of Haiti. The connection between this balance sheet and a headstone in the Wethersfield burying ground is telling. It marks the grave of Francois, who according to the burial records of First Church, was the “servant” of Justus Riley. An account book for the stone carver Samuel Galpin charges Riley with the cost of the stone and its placement. The assumption that other enslaved Africans arrived in Wethersfield from the West Indies by the same method requires no imagination.
Wethersfield certainly had its share of local slavery. It is more than likely that the earliest slaves here were Native Americans, captives of the Pequot War of 1637. Officially sending male captives as slaves to the West Indies and enslaving the women and children here was the stated policy of Massachusetts Bay Colony and Connecticut, the victors in that conflict. When John Latimer died in April, 1662, he left both a Native American slave and a “negress and child.” In trade for natives to the Caribbean, enslaved Africans were brought back to Connecticut. There is no record of when the first such arrived in Wethersfield, but the Code of 1650 …The Earliest Laws and Orders of the General Court of Connecticut…adopted by the Towns of Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield in 1638-9…states that not only an Indian accused of a crime is liable for seizure, but also any Indian who aided such in evading capture could be seized and subject “either to serve or, to bee shipped out and exchanged for neagers, as the case will justly beare” When Leonard Chester died in 1647, his inventory noted “a Neager maide” belonging to him appraised at 25 pounds.17 In no fashion hidden, slavery in Wethersfield is documented in records replete with entries on enslaved persons. Owned by merchants, ship captains, farmers, lawyers, ministers of the church and tradesmen, they left witness to such ownership in wills, inventories, land and sale records, manumissions, ads for runaways and for sales of slaves, account books, court and tax records. This was especially true for the records kept by the church. One place enslaved persons do not generally appear is in vital records kept by the town.
Thomas Hurlburt, Jr, was a Wethersfield shoemaker and his account book of 1755-1793 contains a number of entries for Silas Deane- “Nov. 1763, a pare of shoes for your negro garl” followed throughout 1764 by separate entries for “your negro boy, negro man and negro woman.” Also, similar entries for Joseph and Mehetable Webb and other prominent people of Wethersfield including Stephen Mix Mitchell, later to be a U. S. senator and first chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, appear in this account book.
In his will of 1712, the Rev. Gershom Bulkeley gives to his daughter Dorothy Treat “my Negro maid Hannah, willing and solemnly requiring that into whose hands…she may happen to come, they use her well and consider that she hath a soul to save as well as we….” Samuel Stillman’s account book of 1725, lists his intention to give to daughter Mary Blinn, an Indian woman worth 50 lbs., and to daughter Sarah Willard, an Indian girl worth 30 lbs. But in his son’s hand (the father being then dead) is the note dated 1739: “Then I took Coffey, the old negro to keep, being disenabled to work….”
Not all slave owners in Wethersfield displayed consideration for those they owned. An entry in the record book of First Congregation Church for 1801, August 28 reads,” Doll, a Negro woman, servt of Thos Newson, murdered by an unknown hand.” Rumors sped the town that Capt. Newson, in a fit of anger, killed Doll with an axe. However, a jury found Doll died “from three large wounds made on her head with an axe or hatchet…by person or persons unknown.” Newson bore the reputation of a harsh and brutal man; one other of his slaves, Salem, ran away and another drown. Perhaps it is instructive that during the American Revolution, Capt. Newson commanded a privateer sloop named “The Lash.”
This was not the only account of cruelty by a master. Samuel Wolcott (1656-1695), a merchant serving Wethersfield as both a constable and a selectman, was also a member of the prominent Wolcott family that produced two governors of Connecticut. One of them, Oliver Wolcott, also served as Secretary of the Treasury under President John Adams. Two cases were brought against Samuel for cruel treatment of servants. In a special Court of Assistants held in July 1690, the court fined Wolcott and served an order that the servant boy, Hugh Peck “shall not return to his master because of cruel abuse, and another master shall be found (to the satisfaction of any two of the Assistants)” with whom he shall serve out his time. Peck was an indentured servant, but Wolcott also owned enslaved persons.
The same Wolcott faced accusation in the same Court of Assistants for beating his servant Shumackpock, probably an enslaved Native American. However, the most infamous case involving Wolcott is that of his slave, Jack, who fled his master in 1681. Accused of arson in Northampton, Massachusetts while on the run, Jack was seized and tried in Boston. Apparently searching the larder of a house for food, Jack managed to set it afire. The enslaved man testified in the trial that Wolcott habitually and cruelly beat him,” sometimes with 100 blows,” testimony consistent with that given in the case of Hugh Peck. In spite of the evidence of brutality on Wolcott’s part, the authorities hanged Jack and burned his body on a pyre.
Enslaved people in Wethersfield did not escape sexual exploitation. The Particular Court records in 1654 excuses the town of Wethersfield of responsibility in maintaining the families of Mathew Williams and John Lyley, the two charged with “committing (sic) uncleaness with Mr. Chester’s Blackamore.” The accused fled, leaving their families without support.
The First Congregational Church records lists baptisms of slaves or the children of slaves, but far more records exsist there of deaths of “servants” (ie slaves), but these records are of limited help in identifying most of the enslaved. Often a name is not given, only “Negro man or Negro woman, servant of” whomever. A number of times a first name is given, but seldom a surname. The name of the owner, however, can be an entry through other records to a broadening of the story of slavery in Wethersfield. Town, as well as tax records, give further information, and as has been shown, so do account books.
Slavery, Wethersfield, Manumission, and the American Revolution
The land records of Wethersfield, as well as entries in records of the town votes are a good, if not extensive, source of information. Some sale of slaves, plus manumissions are recorded here. With the approach of the Revolution and in its aftermath, many more manumissions appear. Most certainly, the rhetoric of liberty surrounding the push for freedom from Great Britain became an impetus to freeing slaves. Some people realized the hypocrisy of demanding liberty for themselves while holding people in bondage. In January, 1778, Phineas Andrus, “being convinced of the injustice of the general practice of this country, in holding the Negroes slaves, during life, without their consent” released Prince Nauqui, age 47, unconditionally.
Seemingly all of the most fervent Wethersfield supporters of freedom from Great Britain owned slaves, but they made no move to automatically nor to totally free those they held in bondage. Among these were Sheriff Ezekiel Williams, Joseph Webb, Captain John Chester, and, as previously, noted Stephen Mix Mitchell and Silas Deane. Deane deserves special note. The son of a Groton blacksmith, he graduated from Yale, studied law, and as a lawyer, set up practice in Wethersfield. His marriage to Mehitable Webb, plunged him into the midst of the West Indian trade, of which the widowed Mehitable’s dead husband, Joseph Webb Sr, had been a mainstay. His second marriage to Elizabeth Saltonstall brought him into the sphere of the prominent political and merchant Saltonstall family of New London. Elizabeth’s brother Gurdon ran several slaving voyages to Africa. While moving in this nexus of slavery, Deane was one of those leading Wethersfield in the push for liberty from Great Britain. It is small wonder that Samuel Johnson wrote in 1775 “…how is it that we hear the loudest Yelps for Freedom from the Drivers of Slaves?”
Manumissions in these revolutionary times had conditions attached, one of these being military service. In August, 1780, William Warner released Caesar, “my Negro servant man” outright; he to enlist for three years in Col. Webb’s regiment, with no further stipulations stated. Another Caesar, released in June, 1777, by Elias Williams on condition of service for three years in the Continental Army, carried the burden of further strictures. That same summer, David Griswold freed a third Caesar, also on the same condition of serving three years in the Continental army.
There are interesting stipulations on these conditions of manumission. Griswold, in his freeing of Caesar, states that if he fails to complete the term of enlistment, the manumission is null and void. Moreover, Griswold signed the statement in 1777, but did not register it with the town until three years later, in 1780 when Caesar received his discharge. The contract of Elias Williams goes further by reserving one half the army wages of Caesar (whom he bought at the age of eight) to himself, and stating that any of the army term that Caesar fails to serve, will be served instead as Williams slave.
Other sorts of conditions appear on releases; some were not to take place until the death of the owner. Stephen Mix Mitchell gave a bond in 1793 for the release of Zimri in three years if he “behave as becomth an honest, faithful, obedient, diligent servant…and he be guilty of no stealing or bad conduct no more than is common for good servants…” Apparently. Mitchell was to be the only judge of the conduct of Zimri in those three years. However, in releases of 1797 and 1798, Mitchell frees first Phillis and then Dorcas with no requirements attached. Mix notes that he bought Phillis from Rev. Napthali Dagget, late of New Haven. Dorcus he describes as a “negro girl slave.”
Joseph Webb in Sept. 1795 sells “a negro girl called or known by the name of Chloe” to Charles Johnson “a molatto [sic] man who resides in Wethersfield, for his wife.” The further stipulations were that Johnson was not to sell or convey Chloe, but she was to be a free woman and become his wife. That wedding took place on May 1, 1796, at First Church, it’s marriage record stating Charles Johnson, Negro, married Cloe Frisby, Negro, both of Wethersfield. Sadly, in the death records of First Church, Wethersfield, Feb 28, 1798, is an entry telling of the death of an infant child of Charles Johnson, Negro, at the age of two weeks.
Luke Fortune and John Wright “manumit, liberate, and set free Abner Andrew, a negro slave…” May 20, 1777. Andrew also served in the Continental Army. In March of 1781, John Robbins sells to Abner Andrew, “Negro Man, freeman…a Negro Woman named Zipporah,” for the sum of forty pounds. The record goes on to state “Said Zipporah is not to go for him the said Abner till next Winter, but to work for me, I finding her cloaths” (sic). Enslaved persons of Wethersfield did buy their own freedom. In April, 1781, Bristol Miranda paid Abigail Griswold and her daughter Abigail “100 silver dollars.” For his freedom. An accounting sheet for the sloop Nancy, Justus Riley, the owner, credits one salmon to Bristol Negro for seven shillings, 11 pence, dated April 11, 1783.
In the old burying ground in Wethersfield, a simple, elegant headstone introduces Quash Gomer, “Native of Angola in Africa, brought from there in 1748 and died June 6, 1799, aged 68 years.” Gomer belonged to a farmer named John Smith from whom he bought his freedom for 25 ponds in June 1766. He worked for other people while enslaved, with at least some his earnings credited against the debts of his owner. Gomer obviously saved enough of what he earned, perhaps playing the fiddle for wedding or other parties, to purchase his freedom. As a free man, he bought fiddle strings from merchant Joseph Webb.
The same month he became a free man, he married Elinor Smith in New York City by the rites of the Church of England, the Rev. Samuel Auchmuty, rector of Trinity Church and missionary to the Blacks in the city, officiating— not in Wethersfield; not in the Congregational Church. Gomer was distinctive in other ways. His surname is not a Connecticut name, but appears among German settlers in Pennsylvania and the mid-west. The name also appears in the Old Testament of the Bible; in Hebrew it means wholeness or completion. Did Quash Gomer know this, feeling himself finally a complete person now that he was again free? There is no way of knowing, but Gomer, a literate man, signed notes due Thomas Hurlbut. Jr. for shoes Hurlbut made for the growing Gomer family. He also negotiated apprentice indentures for several of his sons.
It is sad to relate that Quash Gomer died a poor man, and the town of Wethersfield paid for his coffin and burial. Elinor apparently struggled on for a time, as many poor widows of whatever color did, doing what she could to earn money. An entry in a small anonymous account book, circa 1804, notes her buying onion seeds and also credits her with washings. She died in the Wethersfield Jan.17, 1831, the notation in First Church death records reading “Eleanor, colored, about 90,” the cause of death: “old age.” The writer of a manuscript at the Connecticut Historical Society manages a sniff of moral condemnation, reporting that she died in the poorhouse of rum and old age at the age of eighty-eight.
There were obviously many enslaved persons who never made it into official records or account books, or if they did, such have been lost. As an instance, The Centennial History of Newington, Connecticut, 1971, reprints a copy of both the sale of a “negro boy named Pomp, twelve years old,” from John Thomas of Hartford to John Camp in 1761, and the manumission for the same man in 1782. The owner of both documents, a descendant of Deacon John Camp, supplied them for inclusion in the book; only the manumission appears in the records. In a further example, The History of Ancient Wethersfield, notes: “from an old Chester (MS) we copy the names and birth dates of nine slaves, who must have belonged to the third John Chester, viz.: Dick B., Sept 7, 1751; Timon, Sept. 14, 1753; Phillis, Mch.,1751; Caesar, Mch, 1754; Asher, May, 1755; Maubry, 1757; Sabian, 20 Aug., 1759; Chloe, 14 Sept., 1761; Sylva, Dec. 2, 1766.” Judging by the spacing of the dates, at least two enslaved families, and perhaps more, gave birth to these babies.
It is likely that the Caesar whose birth is mentioned above is also a Caesar serving in the 5th Connecticut Regiment” [of the Continental Army]. In the manumission granted by Daniel Griswold in 1777, Griswold states that Caesar was born in this town, and bought “with my money of John Chester.” Attached to Griswold’s manumission document is the following: “Entered June 12, 1780—Caesar Fideler Soldier in the 5th Connecticut Regiment in the Army of the United States of America having served the term for which he engaged, with reputation [emphasis is the author’s] is hereby discharged.” The discharge is signed at Springfield {New Jersey} May 14, 1780 by David F. Sill, Lt. Col., commander of the 2nd Continental Brigade. Caesar is to draw eight days rations.
The official records of men who served in the American Revolution list a Caesar Fiddler, serving in the 5th Connecticut, and dying in February, 1780. This report is reenforced by a document at the Connecticut State Library: ”…Black Caesar, alias Caesar Fidler, Wethersfield, death in the army and petition by Daniel Buck, administer and former master of Caesar, showing there is a balance for settling estate….” A manumission record by Daniel Buck has not been found. It is likely that one was never filed, as such documents were apparently registered with the town on completion of the military service of the slave. With the death of this Caesar, an official manumission record became a moot point.
Identifying Wethersfield Blacks
Other Blacks of Wethersfield named Caesar served with armed forces during the American Revolution. Caesar Negro, of course, appears on a record for 1777, and that name again appears on a pension record for service of 1780-1783. From the official records, it is difficult to determine just which Caesar, a name commonly given to male slaves, is which. David O. White in his book Connecticut Black Soldiers, 1775-1783, credits two Caesars to Wethersfield: Caesar Negro and Caesar Freeman. This is where some official records fail us, for there were apparently two Blacks soldiers known as Caesar Fidler/Fiddler/Fideler serving in the Revolutionary Army from Wethersfield. However, only one survived the war and received a discharge, and he was manumitted by David Griswold. This leaves us with a count of four Caesars serving from Wethersfield in the Continental Army. It is possible to identify Caesar Freeman as the one freed with stipulations by Elias Williams, because Williams calls him that, it and may be Caesar Negro is the slave freed outright by William Warner, but the latter is uncertain as corroborating records are lacking.
Abner Andrews has a Revolutionary War record for serving from 1777-1780. This is undoubtedly the man noted previously as freed in 1777 by Luke Fortune and John Wright, and who in 1781 was buying his wife, Zipporah, from John Robbins. These entries in the town records thus fill in information on Andrews. At the other extreme, a cryptic entry in the Town Votes, vol.1 for Sept. 21st, 1782 states: “We have enlisted George Andrew, a Negro boy into the Continental Army for three years and no longer.” Nothing further is found in the records for a Black male of that name. Records do exist, however, for Reuben Harrison and Timon Negro, two other Blacks known to have served during the Revolution.
Connecticut officially mandated militia units in all towns as the main component of citizen defense from the beginning of the colony, but almost no Blacks were allowed in these units. When the Revolution began in 1775, however, Blacks, whether or not they had military training, responded to the Lexington Alarm, most from Massachusetts. Timon Negro of Wethersfield was one of the few from Connecticut to answer that alarm. It is more than probable that Timon Negro is that same Timon listed in the birth record of slaves in John Chester’s manuscript. Captain John Chester, the son of the man who kept the account of slave births, also answered the Lexington Alarm. Whether Timon served in the capacity of servant to Captain Chester, or as a soldier is made clear by his drawing pay for six days of service just as did every militia man who rushed to Lexington from Wethersfield. A document in the Connecticut State Library also lists Timon Negro as a private.
The First Church death records contain a bit more information on Reuben Harrison. Unhappily, they document the deaths of three of his children, and his own death from consumption in 1805. The description of the father of these children given by the record varies. At times, he is just Reuben, also Reuben Negro, and in another entry, Reuben Harrison. An evocative entry also tells the death of Caesar, a Negro, Feb. 3, 1785, at the age of 27, possibly the Caesar Freeman, manumitted by Elias Williams, who gives Caesar’s age at enlistment as about 18 years. This takes him very close to the age of the Caesar whose death is recorded.
Constructing a semblance of a life from bits and pieces of information is a tenuous process, not exact and perhaps not very revealing. However, the habit of naming a free man in the records by only a first name or labeling him as to race as is done with Reuben Harrison and many other free Blacks, of being regarded as the “other,” perhaps tells more than a bit of the texture and quality of that life. Blacks released from slavery may have been free but they were not also equal. This method of recording became a method of keeping them to that inferior status, where many Anglo Americans, the keepers of the records, considered them to belong, even when the ex-slaves had fought for American freedom.
Enslavement of Native Americans
Even less was recorded, and therefore less is known, about Native American slaves in Wethersfield. Some mentioned in inventories and wills appear earlier in this account. It is also known that Rev. Elisha Williams owned a women slave who was Native American, as well as owning Black slaves, and Elisha Williams himself recorded the names and ages of a son and daughter of his Native American slave. Also, we do know that enslavement of Native Americans was ongoing during the colonial era in New England.
Margaret E. Newell, in her article for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, The Changing Nature of Indian Slavery in New England, states “… New England armies, courts and magistrates enslaved more than 1200 Indian men, women, and children in the seventeenth century alone, and bound many others into finite terms of servitude.” At one point, the New England colonies stopped taking captive Native Americans as slaves and instead turned to other methods of binding them to unpaid labor, such as servitude for debt, crime, or by pauper indentures of even very young children. Ironically, one of the reasons colonial authorities ceased to enslave Native Americans was their desire to enlist them as soldiers in the wars against other Native Americans and the French. Concerning how this practice involved Wethersfield, Sherman Adams states: ‘In Captain Eliphalet Whittlesey’s Company, of General Lymam’s Command, in several campaigns of the French war (1756 to 1760) we find that sundry Indians were enrolled as soldiers. Captain Whittelsey was of Wethersfield, and most of his men (as is apparent on examining the muster rolls were from that township. The names of these Indians were: in 1756, Sockhegon, Stephen Queesod, Richard Toroway and Isaac Suneemon; in 1758, Ambo, Tando (or Dando, Daniel Neepash and Stephen Taphow”.
Four of these Native Americans, Adams identifies as probably of Wethersfield: Ambo as the son of the “Indian slave woman,” belonging to Rector Elisha Williams, and Suneemon, corrupted to Cinnamon, Adams thinks was perhaps the ancestor of “Old Cinnamon” who at Adams’s time was still remembered in Wethersfield. The Tando family were residents of Wethersfield, as were those of the Taphows. Beaver Brook was originally known as Tando Brook and a one-time wild region in town was called Taphow. In 1777 and in 1794, the death records of First Church in Wethersfield give first the death of an infant daughter of Ammon Tanto, and then his own death at age 53.
The possible connection of Suneemon (actually recorded in the French and Indian War rolls as Issac Suncemon) to “Old Cinnamon”, described by Adams as “more black than copper colored,” is more interesting and complex than Adams states. In the vital records of Wethersfield are the following listed under Cinnamon: “Cinamon…Winthrop of Hartford m.[married] Elizabeth Green of Wethersfield [Newington Church record],” also, a death record: “Winthrop, laborer, s. [son of] Thomas, colored, b.[born] Stonington, res. Wethersfield, married; d. [died] Feb. 14, 1864, ae. 60.” The following document from 1800-1801 appears among records for the Pequots: a list of signers for deeds selling some of the tribal lands and stating: “all [are] of Groton in the County of New London and state of Connecticut, all of us belonging to the Pequot or Mashantucket Tribe of Indians.” Among those signatures is that of a James Sunsemon. Is it not likely, allowing for the corruptions of the spelling, that Winthrop Cinnamon, aka “Old Cinnamon” is a member of this Pequot family?
Of the Tando/Tanto/Dando family, Adams comments that people in Wethersfield thought them to be of mixed “African and Indian blood.” “Negro” designates both “Dando” and Ambo in the French and Indian War rolls. All of the foregoing demonstrates the racial mixing of Black and Native American peoples taking place in New England. Because many native men were sent to the West Indies and even to Europe as slaves, and because of high mortality rates for other Native American males in the colonial wars, Native American women sought mates among Black males. Wethersfield records two such marriages, and these are notable because they involve free Native women indenting their labor to the master/mistress of their Black slave husbands.
In one such of January 10, 1756, Phebe Parsons “free Indian”, binds herself to Widow Dorothy Bulkley, Wethersfield. “Phebe wishing to marry Prince, Negro man belonging to Dorothy, binds herself as servant for the term of the natural life of Prince”. A similar case of which more is known is that of Rachel a free Native American. In 1730, she contracted herself to become “a servant of Daniel Warner and heirs until the death of Ben Negro manservant of Said Warner.” However, at Warner’s death neither Ben nor Rachel were listed among the chattel goods in the inventory or will of Warner. Ben did, moreover, appear in the tax records for Wethersfield starting in 1744 and also in the account books of Joseph Webb, Sr.
Judicial binding of Native Americans or Native American/Black people for crime or debt was common in New England. So was indenture of children of such, either as pauper indentures done by town officials, or as actions by a parent because he/she wished the child to learn a trade. Cases also exist of Native American mothers working as free servants indenturing their very young children to keep them close, or of their employers indenturing them, claiming as justification the expense of keeping them. No record of a pauper indenture for a Native American child was found in Wethersfield, but there is one for Hannah, the daughter of Sarah Keeney, a white woman and Sampson, a free Black man. Sampson died, and the selectmen of Wethersfield, because her mother was neglecting her, bound the small child to Sherman Boardman and his wife until she be eighteen years of age. A standard practice, known as pauper indenture, existed in the law code of 1650, and was employed by the selectmen of the town in all cases of abuse, neglect, or failing to properly educate a child, whatever the racial identity of the child. A separate section in later versions of the law code dealt specifically with Native American children. In these cases, the binding out was done by the white overseer of the tribe with judicial approval. Apparently, no input was sought from members of the tribe. That provision was still on the books in the law code of 1902.
According to historians who pored through records, the use of pauper indentures was a judicial and official method of binding Native American children to a form of perpetual slavery. Most of this documentation deals with Rhode Island and, in Connecticut, with New London. There is one case with a passing connection to Wethersfield. April 7, 1785 is the date of indenture for “Ebo, a mustee of Brookhaven New York, born 26 May, 1782, child of Charity (a mustee), bound to Benjamin Tallmadge of Litchfield for a period of twenty-one years.” The child was not quite three years of age.
Originally from Brookhaven, N.Y., Benjamin Tallmadge settled in Wethersfield as a teacher after graduating from Yale. When the Revolution started, he helped form the Second Dragoons, eventually becoming the head of Washington’s spy network. After the Revolution, he made his home in Litchfield. Mustee was a term used in New York, and certain areas of New Jersey, as well as in Rhode Island. The English equivalent of the Spanish mestizo, it denoted a person with both Native American heritage and that of another race, often Black.
Wethersfield did not use that term, but often the designation “colored” appears in the records. What cannot be determined, however, is if that term identifies exclusively a person of mixed African American/Native American heritage. What is known is that in the census which Connecticut submitted to the British Board of Trade in 1762, 2636 whites, 135 blacks, and no Indians were tabulated for Wethersfield. This was of the time that Adams placed in Wethersfield, Ambo, the son of Elisha Williams’ female Indian slave, who also had a daughter, Desire, born in 1717, plus members 0f the Tando and Taphow families of Wethersfield, who were a mixture of Native American and Black. It was also close to the date of the marriage of Phebe Parsons, Native American, to a Black slave. Obviously, then, the white authorities in town were counting such people as Blacks. This sort of confused counting continued over the centuries. In some cases, the same person was variously labeled as Indian, Negro, mulatto, or colored. In the 1980 U.S. Census, people who checked both Negro and Indian boxes were tabulated as Negro. What this labeling did was to first propagate and then perpetuate the legend of “The Vanishing Noble Savage.” More importantly, the labeling deprived people who considered themselves to be culturally Native American, of that identity. Thus, Native Americans were not only being dispossessed of most of their land, but also the status they had a right to as the original residents of this land.
In 1784, Connecticut began by law to free some slaves. After the American Revolution, greater numbers of free Blacks, mulattoes, and those designated as colored appear on the Wethersfield records. However, total emancipation by Connecticut was a slow, gradual process, with slavery not completely disappearing from the state until 1848.
Forgetting and Remembering the Past
What do the histories say about the two- hundred years of slavery in Connecticut? Many white historians of the iconic colonial history of Connecticut do not even mention it. Moreover, even eminent historians display historical amnesia when it comes to the larger role Connecticut played in supporting slavery. Bonnie Collier and Christopher Collier, Connecticut state historian emeritus, in their bibliography of Connecticut history have this to say about why the subject of slavery and Connecticut was not competently studied or written about: “The time of Northern disillusionment with the Reconstruction effort in the South from about 1877 to the end of World War II is known historiographically as the period of ‘National Consensus.’ That is, white Northerners and Southerners agreed to leave Black Americans to the mercies of ‘local custom”’ Said mercies often downgraded Blacks, or totally ignored their contribution to Connecticut.
This is also the time frame encompassing the Colonial Revival Period. The emphasis of this period was on the cultural heritage of the colonial past with its architecture, furniture, clothing arts and crafts, and in local histories, mainly on its white people and the heritage they created. The animating force was admittedly preservation of the American colonial past and the desire to recreate it, or at least recreate somebody’s idea of that past. This occurred not only in New England. To many other Americans, New England truly represented that glorious iconic colonial past. By the late nineteenth century, New England Societies had sprung up all over the United States.
Heritage and preservationist societies such as The Daughters of the American Revolution, and The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities were also founded during this time as well as many local historical societies, including that of Wethersfield. The founding of family history and genealogical societies also occurred in this time frame. Not only were people seeking a history of the past, but also a story of their own past and their family’s social standing there. Hence the search for family coats-of-arms, and any ties, however spurious, to English gentry, or even nobility.
There were two chief gurus of the recreation of this New England that was: the popular historian Alice Morse Earle and Wallace Nutting. The influence of the latter on Wethersfield cannot be over-emphasized. He used the Webb house for a time as part of his “Chain of Colonial Picture Houses” and shot a number of his “Colonials” photographs in its rooms. These depicted women in traditional 18th century dress and 18th century rooms, doing traditional 18th century things, all very genteel and picturesque. No depiction of Black or Native American slaves ever crept into such photographs, not even in the kitchen maid scenes.
Nutting became one of the great commercializers of the Colonial Revival Era, with the sale of his photographs, books, and reproduction “colonial” furniture, also in his opening of restored historic houses to the public. But Nutting also fervently believed in and evangelized for, the beauty and values of America’s colonial past. He believed that such would educate the young and uplift the masses. And in the early 20th Century, Americans of old Anglo-American heritage were feeling threatened by “the masses” arriving in large numbers from southern and eastern Europe. This reflected the cultural anxieties of old- line Yankee stock and the perceived need to save that culture.
The Colonial Revival zeitgeist, therefore, as well as “local custom” certainly framed local history and local historical societies, resulting in a selective memory of the past. History in Connecticut, as elsewhere in New England, belonged to ancestors who were white, free, male, Protestant, and of English descent. Blacks and all those in racial slavery –mulatto, colored, mustee–were incidental to the real history of Connecticut, including that of Wethersfield. As noted by Dr. Rufus Griswold in The History of Ancient Wethersfield: “Our forebearers…though they were tenacious for freedom for themselves and ready to fight for it, seemed to be oblivious to the fact that a ‘n*****’ had any right to the same glorious heritage.” Neither, apparently, did Blacks have a right to their share in the telling of that heritage.
Moreover, many of these histories, when they did write of slavery, down-played and put the best face on it, noting how mild it was, and how few the number of slaves were. Some even emphasized how Blacks prospered under slavery, but not so much as free men. All in all, Blacks, when they were presented, it was often in a patronizing and even insulting manner. There had been the custom among 18th century Connecticut Blacks to elect a governor from among themselves. Henry R. Stiles, in his History of Ancient Windsor, Vol I, gives the following: “ For many years previous to the American Revolution and as late as 1820…it was the custom of the Connecticut negroes—in the spirit of emulation and imitation, which is peculiar to their race and the monkey tribe—to elect a governor for themselves….”
Additionally, such histories dealt only with the visible slavery, the slavery which existed at home. The much broader and more pervasive influence that Wethersfield and all of Connecticut had in supporting and perpetuating slavery was almost totally ignored until fairly recently. This was of course the slavery of the West Indies. Such could not have existed without the trade in foodstuffs, animals, etc. provided by the Northeastern colonies of North America, in trade for sugar, rum, molasses, and salt—all produced by slave labor. This trade, most definitely, included Wethersfield. Most people in Wethersfield did not own slaves, but most participated in some fashion in supporting and supplying the trade with the islands of the West Indies. The farm wives and daughters, tending, harvesting and bunching their Wethersfield red onions, preparing the cheeses, butter, and lard destined for sale in the West Indies; their husbands’ and fathers’ growing livestock and harvesting produce for sale. Then there are the people involved in Wethersfield shipbuilding; the carpenters, cabinet makers, sawyers, mill owners, caulkers, okum makers, producers of pine tar and turpentine, coopers, blacksmiths, etc., and, the mariners themselves: masters of vessels, with many of them also merchants and, at least some part owners of vessels, and the local young men who manned the vessels as sailors. In short, most people of Wethersfield participated in the West Indian trade.
Again, we must ask why the largely total amnesia when it came to acknowledging that involvement. Partly it may be an unconscious expression of our modern saying, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” The West Indies, not being a part of Connecticut, or even the United States, were therefore perceived as out of the range of our responsibility for what happened there. Stunningly enough, most historians, as well as not dealing with the role Connecticut played in maintaining West Indian slavery, displayed little knowledge of that role. “Slavery in Connecticut,” booklet XXXVII of the series published by Yale for the Tercentenary Commission of the State of Connecticut was written by historian Ralph Foster Weld. He acknowledges that some Connecticut shipmasters had a role in the slave trade in that they took corn meal, staves and horses to the West Indies and brought back cargoes of slaves. However, as the Connecticut maritime trade was small and largely coastal, the ship captains disposed of most of the slaves elsewhere. No mention of the continual and important trade between Wethersfield, as well as other towns in Connecticut, and the West Indies for the products produced there by slave labor in exchange for foodstuffs, livestock, and forest products produced here. Weld further avers: “While half a dozen small ports in the colony sent vessels out to engage in coastal trade, commercial enterprise was relatively unimportant, and Connecticut remained throughout the colonial period a self-contained agricultural province.”
To remark that this take on Connecticut’s economy and commerce is extremely dumbfounding is an understatement. Fortunately, later historians of the 1950s and 1960s redressed the balance. They include Glenn Weaver, Bruce Daniels, Albert Van Dusen, and Gaspare John Saladino. The latter, in his dissertation “The Economic Revolution in Late Eighteenth Century Connecticut.” Describes that revolution thus: “The Connecticut economy, …became increasingly commercially-oriented. The emergence of a market economy and a large export trade precipitated this fundamental change. Connecticut traded with the West Indies and neighboring colonies…existing as an integral part of their economies.”
What these latter histories failed to do was connect this Connecticut trade with its concomitant support of slavery. While providing needed redress to the export and mercantile history of Connecticut, they remained largely parochial in their outlook, never really connecting this economic history to the wider picture of 18th century economic and colonial activity, and its dependence on slavery and the slave trade, and hence, its support of the same.
An integral part of our history has become irrelevant. We cannot rectify or change the past, and to do nothing but hold a righteous attitude to the standards of that same past is a barren exercise no matter how morally superior it makes us feel. Acknowledging our compete history, telling and teaching a true version of the Wethersfield story, not just the white colonial history, not just the iconic version, that task is long overdue. We can rectify our telling of that local past by uncovering, telling, and teaching the real story of Wethersfield’s support of slavery– Native American as well as Black—local and West Indian, and how intertwined slavery, almost from the beginning, was with all our history. If we fail to do this, especially locally, our past will never be thoroughly understood, and, without that understanding, there is little hope of having a basis for a more just society.
Above all, we must listen for the story of those who suffered in slavery, to hear of their considerable role in forming our common past. As of now, far too many remain voiceless, faceless, and nameless ghosts haunting the history of Wethersfield, waiting for a true embodiment.
NOTES
Sugar and Slavery
Elizabeth George Speare’s The Witch of Blackbird Pond continues to be a popular book for middle school readers. Speare hit all the tropes of Wethersfield history while not producing a book true to that history. Therefore, it should be enjoyed as a coming-of-age book and not read as history.
Both records on shipbuilding are cited in Sherman Adams and Henry Stiles, The History of Ancient Wethersfield, 2 vols., facsimile of the 1904 edition (Somersworth, N.H., 1974), Vol. I: The permission for “Tho: Demon” (sic) to receive a lot on the common by the landing place for a home and work yard appears in the Town Records, Sept. 22, 1647. Deming was a ship’s carpenter. Adams, who largely wrote vol. I, ibid, has an extensive chapter, XII, on the maritime history of Wethersfield, pp. 536-595.
For background on slavery and the culture of sugar in the Americas, see the following: Dr. Hakim Adi, “Africa and The Transatlantic Slave Trade (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/abolition/africa_article_01.shtml); also, AAME, “The Transatlantic Slave Trade,” on the web at (http://www.inmotionaame.org/migrations/landing.cfm?migration=1). This paper tells of the growth of the slave trade due to the actions of the Portuguese in Africa. Also see M. Opal, “Why the Portuguese Restoration of 1640 Matters to The History of American Slavery” (htpps:www.processhistory.org/opal-barbados-slavery/) . A full history of Barbados appears in Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Period in American History, vol.!!: The Settlements (New Haven, 1939).
For the Papal Bull “Dum Diversas” and the effects it had on Portuguese actions in Africa and on slave trading of the 15th and 16th centuries, see “Papal Bull Dum Diversas , 18 June 1452 (https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/responses/what-fifteenth-century-papal-bulls-can-teach-us-about-indigenous-identity) and William L. Langer, The Encyclopedia of World History: Ancient Medieval and Modern, Chronologically Arranged (Boston, 1952), pp328-32 gives accounts of Arab trade to Ghana and down the east coast of Africa. Also pp.363-365 catalogs Portuguese successes in Africa. Brazil and India. For further explanation of Arab/Islamic presence in North Africa, the paper by L. Mendola and V. Salemo, “Sicilian Peoples: The Arabs, Moors, and Saracens in Sicilian History”, (www.bestofsicily.com/mag/art/68.html/) should be looked at.
Sugar and Trade
Again, see Charles Andrews, ibid, vol II and vol. III, the latter volume in particular should be looked at for its exposition on the trade of New England with the West Indies. He describes the British Empire existing in several parts: the mother country, the sugar and tobacco colonies, the fisheries, the provision or bread colonies, and Africa. For a complete history of the competition for empire, both British and French (which involved New England, indeed all of British North America, Canada and the West Indies) and how sugar, coffee, tea, cocoa and African slavery were the basis for that competition, see Walter L. Dorn ,Competition for Empire, 1740- 1763 (New York and London: 1940) Also see Brenda Milkovsky “Connecticut and the West Indies: Sugar Spurs Transatlantic Trade” originally in Connecticut History Jan, 7, 2016 also on the web at (https://connecticuthistory.org/connecticut-and-the-west-indies-trade/).
Log book, sloop Hepzibeth and the log book, sloop Fair Trade, Maritime Collection, Wethersfield Historical Society (Hereafter WHS)
Salt
Logbook Fair Trader, ibid
For this section, see the paper by Cynthia M. Kennedy, “The Other White Gold: Salt, Slaves, and Turks and Caicos Islands and British Colonialism,” The Historian/vol.69, issue 2 (May 16, 2007) and on the web (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1540-6563.2007.00178.x) which goes into the exploitation of slaves over the harvesting of salt in the West Indies. Again, see Walter Dorn, ibid. which emphasizes slavery as the basis for empire and trade, but also as the engine driving the economies of western civilization in the 18th Century.
Slavery in Wethersfield
Justus Riley, Jr, balance sheet, Maritime Collection. Series II, Wethersfield Historical Society. Yes, of course, enslaved blacks had been arriving in Connecticut from the West Indies, since at least circa 1640. Adams and Stiles, The History of Ancient Wethersfield vol. 1, ibid, p. 944, tells of a report to the British government by the Colony of Connecticut in 1680: “As for Blacks, there comes sometimes 3 or 4 from Barbados, and they are sold usually at the rate of 22 (probably) pounds apiece, sometimes more and sometimes less, according as men can agree with the masters of vessels or merchants that bring them hither.” However, the date on the Riley balance sheet, 1792, is almost 20 years after Connecticut had forbidden the importation of Black slaves.
Account Book, Dickinson & Galpin, 1807-1818, Account Book Collection, WHS. For information on the policy for enslaving Native Americans, see The Winthrop Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society; also see The Code of 1650, being a compilation of the earliest laws and orders of the General Court of Connecticut, also the Constitution, or Civil Compact entered into and adopted by the Towns of Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield in 1638-1639….(Hartford: 1825)
The original inventories for Leonard Chester, John Latimer, and Gershom Bulkeley are in the probate records at the Connecticut State Library. The first two are also cited in Adams, and Stiles,The History of Ancient Wethersfield, vol. 1, ibid. Bulkeley’s appears in the biography by Richard Tomlinson, Gershom Bulkeley, Zealot for Truth (self- published: 2018). The shoe maker’s account is that of Thomas HurLburt, Account Book, 1758-1783, Account Book Collection, WHS. The account book for Samuel Stillman is in the Connecticut State Library. This account appears in a paper by Alice Webster Stillman, “Some Old Families in Old Wethersfield…June, 6, 1932,” Wethersfield Collection, WHS. Stillman donated the account book titled “George Stillman His Book, Anno Domini, 1725, Wethersfield in New England” to the CSL and used it in writing her paper.
The records of Doll’s death, and the drowning of the boy, both slaves of Capt. Thomas Newson are in the death records, First Church, Wethersfield, WHS. Newson as captain of the privateer Lash is in Louis Middlebrook, History of Maritime Connecticut During the American Revolution 1775-1783, 2 vols., vol. 2. Material on Samuel Wolcott came from: Charles W. Manwaring, A Digest of Early Connecticut Probate Records, Hartford District, 1635-1750, 3 vols. (Hartford:1904-1906), in volume I, a special court record July 1690 for the abuse of the indentured boy. The citation for the beating of a Native American slave is in The History of Ancient Wethersfield, vol ii, “Wolcott Genealogy.” For the slave Jack, the following: Maria Mutka, Historic Northampton, letter to WHS July 1, 2020, WHS, and [Samuel Wolcott], [17th Century Connecticut Daybook] Account book of merchant and slave owner, Wethersfield, CT., 1678-1682. James E. Arsenault & Co. On the web at: (https://www.jamesarsenault.com/pages/books/4128/samuel-wolcott/17th-century-connecticut-daybook?soldItem=true)
For the sexual abuse record, see Connecticut Society Historical Collections. Vol. XXII: Records of the Particular Court of Connecticut, 1639-1663 (Hartford: 1928) p. 137: Williams, Mathew
A word on the First Church Records. The Wethersfield Historical Society has three record books in its collections: the earliest are those of the Rev. Stephen Mix, beginning in 1697, sparse and in bad shape; records kept by Rev. James Lockwood from 1739-1770 have baptism and marriage records, but no death records; those started in 1774 by Rev. Marsh run until 1835, and record marriages, baptisms, and what are most helpful, deaths. When it comes to records for Blacks they appear in these church records, but not in the official town records. It is only into the 19th century where these records start to appear in town statistics.
Slavery, Wethersfield, Manumission, and the American Revolution
The manumission records appear in the Wethersfield Land Records, vols. 8, 20, and 21, Town Clerks Office, Wethersfield Town Hall. A number, especially those dealing with freed slaves who served in the army during the American Revolution, are in Wethersfield Town Votes, Volume I, 1647-1717, and Wethersfield Town Votes, No. I, Mar. 16, 1646-June 6, 1753; both are also in the Wethersfield Town Clerk’s office. There are indices to the land records, and as well as searching by name of the owner and/or the slave, the listing “slave” should also be searched. Both Town Record volumes have an index, and the searching technique is the same as for the land records. The dates of the town records do not jibe with the dates of the manumissions because entries seemed to have been made where ever there was space. A number of these records are also in Adams, ibid vol. I in his article on slavery. A word about the writing of The History of Ancient Wethersfield, Sherman Adams and Henry Stiles, authors. Volume I is mostly the work of Sherman Adams while Stiles contributed editing. Volume II is genealogy and the work of Henry Stiles. Adams was a lawyer, judge, veteran of the Civil War, and a dedicated chronicler of Wethersfield history, with a fairly balanced, even-handed take on the Blacks in Wethersfield history. As we will see in his two volumes on the history of Windsor, Stiles did not share that attitude.
In the manumission record for Phyllis, Mitchell states that she was obtained from the Rev. Napthali Daggett. Daggett served as president of Yale from 1764 -1775. Naming where he bought Phillis, reflects the practice of identifying in deeds, as well as wills, various plots of land as to where each was obtained thus emphasizing that slaves were property. Manumissions in the land records does the same.
For an excellent article on Quash Gomer and his descendants, see Diane Cameron, “ Enslavement, Freedom, Possibility, and Poverty: Four Generations of Quash Gomer’s Family in Connecticut. 1748-1864,” Slavery/Antislavery in New England, The Dublin Seminar for New England Folk Life Annual Proceedings, June, 2003 (Boston: 2003) edited by Peter Benes. The issue is available at WHS. Accounts for Elinor Gomer are in [Anonymous], Account booklet, 1802-1807, Howard Crane Collection, #2016.003, WHS. The death records of First Church have Elinor/Eleanor’s death. The other account is in Records of Deaths in Wethersfield 1829—39, Including Deaths in Wethersfield’s 1st Society After 1st January, 1828,” manuscript 65093, The Connecticut Historical Society.
Elizabeth S. Baxter, The Centennial History of Newington, Connecticut, (Newington, Ct: 1971 reproduces the documents on Pomp. Adams and Stiles, The History of Ancient Wethersfield. Vol 1, ibid, has the birth records of the Chester slaves.
For records of both manumission and discharge for Caesar freed by Daniel Griswold, see entries for Town Votes, above. Records for Black Caesar/Caesar Fiddler are to be found in Record of Service of Connecticut Men, vol. I: War of the Revolution, Henry P. Johnson, compiler (Hartford. 1880) and Daniel Buck, petition Connecticut State Library, Revolutionary War Series I, II, III, Vol. XXXVIII, doc.242-244, taken from the website of the Museum of Connecticut History, research guide to African American Genealogical Resources.
Identifying Wethersfield Blacks
For Revolutionary War records of the various Caesars, see War Record of Service of Connecticut Men, ibid, and David O. White, Connecticut’s Black Soldiers, 1775-1783. (Chester, Ct.: 1973). Timon Negro’s war record appears in Adams, ibid, and is augmented by a record in the Connecticut State Library, ibid, describing Timon as a private.
First Church Records, ibid. To see what can be accomplished in fashioning the lives of people of color, slaves, and free, from records, see Diane Cameron, “Circumstances of Their Lives: Enslaved and Free Women of Color, Wethersfield, Connecticut” Connecticut History Review, Fall 2005, Vol. 44, No. 2, taken from the web: (https://www.jstor.com/stable/44369692)
Enslavement of Native Americans
Margaret E. Newell, “The Changing Nature of Indian Slavery in New England, 1670-1720,” Colonial Society of Massachusetts, web address (htpps://www.colonialsociety.org/node/1397). For the information on Native Americans in the French and Indian War pertaining to Wethersfield, see Sherman Adams, History of Ancient Wethersfield, vol. I, also check The Connecticut Historical Society Collections, vol. IX: French and Indian War Rolls, vol. 1: I1755-1757; vol. II: 1758-1762 (Hartford, 1929). Cinnamon records from The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town Vital Records: Wethersfield. 1634-1868, Debra F. Wilmes, compiler (Baltimore: 2002). For the name Sunsemon, see Jack Campisi, “The Emergence of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe.1637-1975,” The Pequots in Southern New England: The Fall and Rise of an American Indian Nation, Laurence M. Hauptman and James D. Wherry, editors (Norman, Oklahoma and London: 1990).
The binding of Phebe Parsons is in the CSL; it is cited by Katy Ritter, Apprentices of Connecticut, 1637-1900 (Salt Lake City:1986). The binding of Rachel Indian, “formerly servant to Lt. Daniel Warner binds herself…to the decease of Ben Negro, man Servant to Mr. Daniel Warner”, March 29, 1730, Wethersfield Land Records, Vol. 8, p. 108. The binding of Ebo to Benjamin Talmadge is a record at CSL, also cited by Ritter, Apprentices of Connecticut, ibid. Little Sarah’s indenture is recounted by William P. McDermott, Wethersfield, 1634-1790: Families Community and Change (Tolland, Ct.: 2009).
The census to the British Board of Trade is reported on by Christopher P. Bickford, “The Lost Connecticut Census of 1762 Found” Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin, no. 2 (April, 1979) (Hartford: 1979). Pp.336-337. Information on the use of indentures as a device to bind Native Americans to perpetual unpaid labor is reported on by Ruth Wallis Herndon and Ella Wilcox Sekatau, “Pauper Apprenticeship in Narragansett Country: A Different Name for Slavery in Early New England,” Slavery/Antislavery in New England, Dublin Seminar, 2003, ibid. See also The General Statutes of the State of Connecticut….1902. p. 1064. For information on the general practice of pauper indentures, see Martha H. Smart, “Pauper Indentures”, Wethersfield Collection, WHS.
Forgetting and Remembering the Past
The quote of the Colliers is from Christopher Collier with Bonnie Collier, “Slavery,” The Literature of Connecticut History: An Occasional Paper of Connecticut Humanities Council, No. 6 (Middletown, 1983), p 252.p. 60. There are any number of publications dealing with the Colonial Revival period and various manifestation of that period, but for the purposes of this paper, see Country Acres and Cul-de-Sacs, Connecticut Circle Magazine Reimagines the Nutmeg State, 1938-1952, Jay Gitlin, editor (Simsbury, Ct.: 2019). Special attention should be paid to the introduction: “Connecticut Circle, The Life of a State in Transition,” by Jay Gitlin. For more on Wallace Nutting and his influence on the Colonial Revival Period, see Mary E. Baker, “Apostle of Americana, editor’s introduction” and Douglas Kendall, “Wallace Nutting at Wethersfield: The Colonial Revival and the Joseph Webb House” The Connecticut Antiquarian, The Bulletin of the Antiquarian and Landmarks Society, inc. Volume 40, No. 1 (Winter, 1989) (Hartford, 1988). Pp 3-19. Special note is due the reproductions of four staged “colonial” photographs taken by Nutting.
Dr. Rufus Griswold wrote the chapter on Rocky Hill history in Adams and Stiles, History of Ancient Wethersfield, ibid, and he is here quoted. For the comparison of Blacks to monkeys, see Henry Stiles, The History of Ancient of Ancient Windsor, 2 volumes a facsimile of the 1892 ed. (Somersworth, NH, 1976). At the same time Stiles insults Blacks, he heaps purple praise on the original settlers of Windsor. The comments on Connecticut commerce in the 18th Century are from Ralph Foster Weld, Slavery in Connecticut,” Tercentenary Commission of Connecticut Booklet XXXVII (New Haven: 1935).
Christopher and Bonnie Collier, The Literature of Connecticut History, ibid, are the source for information on authors giving a truer picture of Connecticut maritime commerce. Of course, evidence has been presented in these notes on that commerce with the entries on the Wethersfield log books and the volumes by Charles M. Andrews, Yale professor and historian, Wethersfield born; and also, with the Dorn volume. Of this batch of historians writing in the 1950s-60s, Glenn Weaver deserves an extra mention, His book, Jonathan Trumbull, Connecticut’s Merchant Magistrate (1710-1785), (Hartford, 1956), gives a thorough and very personal i telling of the provisions business in 18th Century Connecticut.
AFTERWORD
Just a few short words about papers and books that have broken through the crust of Colonial Revival attitudes on slavery and Connecticut history. There are many books and scholarly studies about slavery in New England now being published, as a search of the web will show. Two of note are: Wendy Warren, New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America published in 2019; and, closer to home because written by three journalists of The Hartford Courant, Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery by Anne Farrow, Joel Lang. and Jennifer Frank. The latter was published in 2007. And older volume dealing with Blacks in New England is that by Lorenzo Johnston Greene, The Negro in Colonial New England, first published in 1940.
Again, Diane Cameron’s two papers, cited above, must be commended. They both deal with Wethersfield Blacks and Native Americans, who were slaves and freed slaves. Cameron does an excellent job of research and in recreating lives from the bare bones of old records.