November 7, 2022
Lemuel Freeman integrates white Civil War Units, Child Trafficking at Historic JP Home, Phoebe Abdee & Abigail Adams, and Benjamin Kent's contradictions,
Thank you for reading! Welcome to Open Notebook.
New eleven-names.com Content
Gov Sprague sir I am a colored man and would like to enlist in the colored regiment of your state will you please write to me if I can join and what bounty your state pays recruits and what aid the familys receive and if should be entitled to it yours Respectfully,
Lemuel Freeman
An 1862 letter in the Rhode Island State Archives shows how activism from men like Lemuel Freeman integrated U.S. Army units months before recruitment for the 54th Mass. began. This story first appeared in The Bay State Banner, but I also posted it to eleven-names.com with additional content (extensive photographs, linked sources, map details, and additional insights). For that version, click Norwell’s Lemuel Freeman Integrated White Civil War Units. Lemuel was the great-grandson of an enslaved Black Revolutionary War veteran.
If you like the Eleven Names Project…
Susan Elliott writes about enslaved people in her corner of Norfolk County and beyond at Enslaved New England and her Hosea of Franklin Facebook community. Be sure not to miss Susan’s examination of incredible primary documents in Bess Corbett, Gone But Not Forgotten, and an all-time favorite, What Would Hagar Do?
We need more visual arts that imagine the enslaved and free people of color in colonial and Revolutionary New England.
Susan also provided great notes to help me with research on enslaving ministers.
Slavery and Child Trafficking at the Loring Greenough House
In preparation for an upcoming excavation, Boston’s City Archeology program displays two archival documents (housed at the Massachusetts Historical Society) that connect Jamaica Plain’s historic Loring Greenough House to the traffic of African-descended people. On social media, City Archeology first discusses the three people enslaved at the property prior to the Revolution. It then highlights post-1783 legal workarounds to keep Black, indigenous, and multiracial people in unpaid involuntary servitude that was not legally slavery but looked and smelled a lot like slavery.
On July 30, 1785, David Stoddard Greenough purchased a 5-year-old Black child named Dick whose mother, Binah, was enslaved by John Mory of Roxbury. The bill of sale stated that Dick’s servitude would end when he turned 21. On September 6, 1786, Greenough signed an indenture agreement with John Mory naming Dick a farmer’s apprentice. Both documents are featured here. [Facebook]
(Those documents are remarkable and are very offline. Take a look.)
Enslaving Minister of the Week: Rev. William Smith
Rev. William Smith of Weymouth was the father of Abigail Adams and slaveholder of Phoebe, Tom, Cato & Tower. Abigail was quite fond of Pheobe & stayed in touch until Phoebe's death.
Phebe appears in Smith’s 1783 will, in which he confirms that she is to be free. Commonwealth v. Jennison, the final of the Quock Walker cases that ruled slavery counter to the state constitution, was adjudicated months earlier.
We know that Abigail attended Pheobe’s wedding. And at a small and lonely 1798 Thanksgiving gathering, Abigail writes to John lamenting that “the two families to unite in the Kitchin with Pheby the only surviving parent I have.”
Scholar Woody Holton gives an excellent treatment of Pheobe Abdee’s life in a 2010 Historynet.com article. He points out that their relationship “was at once intimate and unequal,” and when Abigal was away from Braintree, Pheobe faced harsh treatment from Abigail’s family.
Probate File of the Week: Joseph Kent
Benjamin Kent, Esq., was a prolific Massachusetts litigator and is noted for being the Assistant Attorney General during the Revolutionary years and at the time of Elizabeth Freeman and Quock Walker's freedom suits. In 1753, we find Benjamin in his father Joseph’s will where he inherited a woman named Villot.
In 1775, unpublished church records from Braintree/Quincy show that three-year-old Dorinda, “a negro child. . .belonging to Benjamin Kent, Esq.,” received baptism.
This is counterintuitive to those who learned about Kent through his representation of enslaved people in Massachusetts courts. For example, Kent represented Plymouth’s Caesar Watson in his 1771 freedom suit (which I wrote about) and Pompey, who sued Benjamin Faneuil for his freedom. Jared Hardesty tells us that Pompey won, then lost on appeal, and was countersued and ordered to pay Faneuil’s court costs. Pompey promptly fled.
Another compelling Kent case is “Jenny Slew, Spinster, versus John Whipple Jr., Gentleman.” In Freedom for Jenny Slew, Gordon Harris of Historic Ipswich skillfully recounts how Slew, born free, the daughter of a white woman and an enslaved Black man, was enslaved at age 46. I won’t give more details about Slew’s struggle because Harris’ work is superb, and I strongly recommend it. John and Abigail Adams play supporting roles in this story for the Adams completists reading.
Podcast Reccomendation
If you haven’t read Breathern by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery by Margaret Ellen Newell, fire up this detailed discussion of the book at Ben Franklin’s World, Episode 220.
During our exploration, Margaret reveals information about the practice of Native American slavery in New England and the labor shortage that led to the practice; Details about the Pequot War; and how New England legal codes, laws, and customs around slavery developed and worked to support the institution while leaving openings for enslaved people to contest their status.
Essential Links
Legislature backs Emancipation Day: Observance would mark the 1783 date Massachusetts ended slavery, The Bay State Banner
How Did the 8th of July Become Quock Walker Day?, J. L. Bell’s Boston 1775
Archaeologists find evidence of Wampanoag site atop Coles Hill in Plymouth, Old Colony Memorial