by Rachel May
Fitts, Robert K. “The Landscapes of Northern Bondage,” Inventing New England’s Slave Paradise: Master/Slave Relations in Eighteenth Century Narragansett, Rhode Island. Studies in African American History and Culture. Routledge, 1998. Pettaquamscutt Historical Society, October 18, 2014.
Franklin, Susan B. “Early History of Negroes in Newport, An Address Before the Union Congregational Church,” Newport, Rhode Island. Pettaquamscutt Historical Society, October 18, 2014.
Gaspar, David Barry and Darlene Clark Hine. More than Chattel: Black Women and Slavery in the Americas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.
Gilkeson, John S., Jr. Middle-Class Providence, 1820–1940. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.
Glymph, Thavolia. Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
“God’s Little Acre,” The Washington Times, September 21, 2004, https://www.washingtontimes .com/news/2004/sep/21/20040921-110704-9800r/
Denease, Tammy. “Compelled to Servitude: The Story of Belinda,” performance by storyteller Tammy Denease. 3 October 2015, Royall House and Slave Quarters, Medford, MA.
Jaffee, David. A New Nation of Goods: The Material Culture of Early America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.
Jones, Rhett S. “Plantation Slavery in Narragansett County, Rhode Island, 1690–1790: A Preliminary Study,” Plantation Society II, no. 2, (December 1986): 157–170. South County History Center, Kingston, RI, October 18, 2014.
Kalin, Andrea and Bill Duke, directors. Prince Among Slaves. PBS Studios, 2008.
Kinzie, Juliette. Wau-Bun: The “Early Day” in the Northwest. Menasha, WI: The Collegiate Press, 1948.
Kirk, William. A Modern City: Providence, Rhode Island and Its Activities. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1909.
Lemire, Elise. Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Concord, Massachusetts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.
Lemons, J. Stanley. “Rhode Island and the Slave Trade,” Rhode Island History 60, no. 1 (2002): 101.
Lewis, Catherine M. and Richard J. Lewis. Women and Slavery in America: A Documentary History. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2011.
McBurney, Christian M. A History of Kingston, R.I., 1700–1900: Heart of Rural South County. Kingston, RI: Pettaquamscutt Historical Society, 2004.
Melish, Joanne Pope. Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England, 1780–1895. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015.
Selig, Robert. “Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route,” Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route Resource Study & Environmental Assessment, 2006. National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/waro/learn/historyculture/washington-rochambeau -revolutionary-route.htm.
Smith, Andy. “Couple’s burial ground research details black life in Colonial Newport,” Providence Journal, 23 February 2014. http://www.providencejournal.com/features/lifestyle /content/20140223-couples-burial-ground-research-details-black-life-in-colonial-newport.ece.
Stokes, Keith and Theresa Guzmán Stokes. God’s Little Acre: America’s Colonial African Cemetery. http://www.colonialcemetery.com/.
Stokes, Keith and Theresa Guzmán Stokes. 1696 Heritage Group. http://www.1696heritage.com/.
Chapter 9: Canuto Matanew
Notes
Bernardo (Nelson) Valmaseda Mendoza kindly provided information about the history and culture of Trinidad, Cuba, on a guided tour through the town and museums. I’m grateful for the time and knowledge he shared with me.
Email from Professor Manuel Barcia, University of Leeds, August 5, 2017 & August 7, 2017:
Dr. Barcia noted that we can’t know for sure when the brick was made. He suggested that, though we have no way of knowing for sure, it might have been inscribed by a Creole slave or free man, perhaps an overseer, as the handwriting might indicate that the person was literate. He suggested searching the plantation archive, but I was told that there are no records to tell us more about the possible origins of the brick nor about Canuto Matanew.
For more on the transatlantic slave trade, please see: Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History. New York: Penguin Books, 2008; Thomas, Hugh, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999; Eltis, David and David Richardson, afterword David W. Blight, Foreword Brion Davis. Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015; Lisa A. Lindsay, Captives as Commodities: The Transatlantic Slave Trade. New York: Pearson, 2007; Gregory E. O’Malley, Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British American, 1619–1807. Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016; Sowande M. Mustakeem, Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage, New Black Studies Series. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2016.
Katrina Browne, descendant of the DeWolf family, produced a film on her family’s legacy, “Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North,” and speaks widely as part of her advocacy work. As part of the documentary journey, the family visited a DeWolf sugar plantation in Cuba. http://www.tracesofthetrade.org/family/ I viewed a screening at The University of Rhode Island during the 2014–2015 school year, followed by a Q&A with Katrina. Some family members maintain a website and have been active in helping to establish the Center for Reconciliation in Providence: http://cfrri.org/index.php/our-team/.
The Rhode Island Episcopal Diocese is planning a Center for Reconciliation in acknowledgement of both the state and the Diocese’s long involvement with the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Rhode Island merchants may have controlled as much as 90 percent of the American trade in African slaves in the years following the Revolution, and the state was once called “the Deep North” for its heavy involvement.” https://www.episcopalri.org/rhode-island-episcopal-church-confronts-slave-trading-past-2/.
In addition to papers that include “Havana,” there are many in the back of the quilt tops that mention Barbados and the West Indies. I chose to visit Cuba because of the existence of plantation ruins there.
For more on the history of Cuba and enslavement in Cuba, please see: Ada Ferrer, Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014; C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, New York: Vintage, 1989; David Wheat, Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570–1640. Omohundro Institute and the University of North Carolina Press, 2016.
p. 287, “Finding evidence of ‘games’ and leisure . . .” “Slave Life at the Royall House,” Royall House and Slave Quarters, http://www.royallhouse.org/slavery/slave-life/.
Primary Sources
Belinda’s Petition to the Massachusetts General Court, February 14, 1783, Massachusetts Archives, transcribed by the Royall House and Slave Quarters: http://www.royallhouse.org /belinda-suttons-1783-petition-full-text/.
Denease, Tammy. “Compelled to Servitude: The Story of Belinda,” performance by storyteller Tammy Denease. October 3, 2015, Royall House and Slave Quarters, Medford, MA.
Digital Archive of Massachusetts Anti-Slavery and Anti-Segregation Petitions, Massachusetts Archives, Boston MA, 2015, “Council; Council Files March 13, 1788, GC3/series 378, Petition of Belinda Sutton”, doi:10.7910/DVN/J8CWB, Harvard Dataverse, V3.
Digital Archive of Massachusetts Anti-Slavery and Anti-Segregation Petitions, Massachusetts Archives, Boston MA, 2015, “House Unpassed Legislation 1785, Docket 1707, SC1/series 230, Petition of Belinda Royall”, doi:10.7910/DVN/1ZHSM, Harvard Dataverse, V2.
Digital Archive of Massachusetts Anti-Slavery and Anti-Segregation Petitions, Massachusetts Archives, Boston MA, 2015, “Senate Unpassed Legislation 1795, Docket 2007, SC1/series 231, Petition of Belinda Sutton”, doi:10.7910/DVN/H5VLP, Harvard Dataverse, V5.
Franklin’s note “fire-breathi
ng southerner,” Series F: Franklin Cushman’s notebooks, vol. 2: 29–30, (Elijah Williams Papers, Rhode Island Historical Society).
Jason Williams Papers, Elijah Williams Papers, Rhode Island Historical Society.
“Letter from Winthrop to Eliza Williams,” August 28, 1835, Series F: Franklin Cushman’s notebooks, vol. 2: 26–29, (Elijah Williams Papers, Rhode Island Historical Society).
“Mary Ann: Plot maps of the grounds and gardens, ca. 1820,” Double-oversized Box 1, Sub-series 1. Mary Ann. Series III: Plantation Accounts, 1818–1852 Records of supplies, maps, receipts and slave lists for the family’s Cuban coffee and sugar plantations. MSS 382, DeWolf Papers, 1751–1864, Rhode Island Historical Society.
Passed Resolves; Resolves 1787, c. 142, SC1/series 228, Petition of Belinda, Digital Archive of Massachusetts Anti-Slavery and Anti-Segregation Petitions, Massachusetts Archives, Boston, MA, 2015 doi:10.7910/DVN/XFFLL, Harvard Dataverse, V3.
Survey of Federal Archives, Ship Registers and Enrollments of Providence, Rhode Island, 1773–1939, The National Archives Project, 1941, Hathi Trust Digital Library: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000968977.
Secondary Sources
Allahar, Anton L. “Slaves, Slave Merchants, and Slave Owners in 19th Century Cuba.” Caribbean Studies. Vo. 21, No 1/2 (Jan.–June 1988), 158–191.
Barcia, Manuel. The Great African Slave Revolt of 1825: Cuba and the Fight for Freedom in Matanzas. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012.
Clark-Pujara, Christy. Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island. New York: NYU Press, 2016.
Coughtry, Jay. The Notorious Triangle: Rhode Island and the African Slave Trade, 1700–1807. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981.
hooks, bell. Art on My Mind: Visual Politics. New York: The New Press, 1995.
Marques, Leonardo. The United States and the Transatlantic Slave Trade to the Americas, 1776–1867. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016.
McBurney, Christian M. A History of Kingston, R.I., 1700–1900: Heart of Rural South County. Kingston, RI: Pettaquamscutt Historical Society, 2004.
Rediker, Marcus. The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom. New York: Penguin Books, 2013.
Rodriguez, Garcia and Nancy L. Westrate. Voices of the Enslaved in Nineteenth-Century Cuba: A Documentary History. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011.
Smith, Roberta. “Sugar? Sure, but Salted with Meaning: ‘A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby,’ at the Domino Sugar Plant,” The New York Times. May 11, 2014.
Trinidad, Cuba, Y El Valle De Lose Ingenios. Guia de Arquitectura. Trinidad: Assamblea Municipal del Poder Popular de Trinidad, 2003.
Chapter 10: An Abomination
Notes
Harriet Thorne (Hilton’s wife) writes to Susan, 9 February 1837, the following account, explaining that Susan’s enslaved people were sold. Until then, they had been rented out. Minerva was sick with scarlet fever in the summer of 1837, and Harriet wrote that they would sell her as soon as she was well in order to better “invest” the money from her sale. Eliza, Hilton wrote, paid her wages to the family from being rented out every month—six dollars and fifty cents. A man named Mr. Poole was renting the boy John, and since Mr. Poole had said he’d buy John’s clothes (thus no expense to the Williamses), the Williamses decided to keep renting him out until they were ready to sell him. Harriet wrote, “Your negroes have been sold I suppose you have had an account of the sales from Winthrop so it would be useless for me to repeat them, we intend to let John stay with Poole a year longer, he is too small for us yet, and I do not think he could be in a better place you would scarcely know Jenny she has grown so fleshy and looks so happy she inquired after you and little Emily. My Negroes are all well. Hilton has Peter in the mill we get fourteen dollars a month. Lavinia behaves very well, she is so afraid of my selling her she would do anything I propose. I have no fault to find with her at all . . . they [Eliza] liked to have lost a negro the other night, Gilbert with the Quinsy, the same complaint that Osceola died with you must have seen an account of his death in the paper unfortunate Chief he would not let a Physician attend him. An old Indian doctor that had cured him before administered, he might of cured him again if they had been in the Woods when he could have had access to roots and herbs but it was folly to attempt it shut up as they were, he is no more, and his life could have been easily saved if they would have suffered a Physician to attend him however I think he would have died from grief, his countenance was the Picture of Melancholly—Tell Mother I have not had but one of the plates broken she gave me. Maybe she will think that is one too many but in our land of Slaves we think that is doing well in three months to have but one piece Broken.” Series F, Vol. 8, 74–76 (Elijah Williams Papers, Rhode Island Historical Society).
Winthrop goes on to describe his encounter with Osceola in the letter that was also published in the South Carolina Historical Magazine in 1964.
Franklin makes note of the economic crisis. He writes that in “1836, The Second U.S. Bank was about to expire under Jackson’s opposition, withdrawing the funds of the United States and distributing them in Pet Banks and Wild Cat Banks.12½ ¢ = York shilling (NY) 6¼ ¢ = sixpence (NY).” Winthrop’s letter follows: “Enclosed I send $50.00 in Bills on the U.S. Bank, which I want Father to get into 10 cent and 5 cent pieces and ship them in an unsuspicious way to Hilton’s care in Charleston who will forward them to me on their arrival there put them in such shape as they will come safe without being known what they are, say for instance in the middle of a Bbl. packed as Crockery or any way that you think the best and safest. 10 cent and 5 cent pieces pass here for 12½ cts and 6¼ cts and as I have an opportunity to get rid of a great many besides being very handy as change I will try to speculate for once in my life—say nothing to any one about it,—for if it succeeds well I may be induced to try it again, Whatever expense it may be to you, you can retain out of it I presume it will not be much trouble to get them if you do not let your object be known—You will write me immediately upon the receipt of this for I shall be anxious to know if it arrives safe.” January 24, 1836, Series F, vol 1: 92 (Elijah Williams Papers, Rhode Island Historical Society).
p. 292–293, Information on Patty and Amelia was found by Sarah Nesnow.
p. 292, Winthrop shot himself in the hand: “Winthrop met with an accident on Thursday last which came very near being a serious one he started very early in the morning to shoot Marsh Hens, went over the River to James Island in a small canoe with only a negro man to paddle the Canoe in attempting to land on the Island, his gun went off he having the muzzle in his hand, the charge shot away the Fleshy part of his Thumb, Sixteen of the shot went into his arm + Brest two through his cheek into his mouth and one through his Ear, the Rim of his Hat is riddled.” (Vol. 3: 31) I wonder if it was the man who paddled the canoe who saved Winthrop that day.
p. 294: For more on Nat Turner’s rebellion and the subsequent history, see: David F. Allmendinger, Jr., Nat Turner and the Rising in Southampton County, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014; Davis, Mary Kemp, Nat Turner before the bar of judgment: Fictional treatments of the Southampton slave insurrection, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999; Foner, Eric, compiler, Nat Turner, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971; Alfred L. Brophy, “The Nat Turner Trials,” North Carolina Law Review, 91.5 (June 2013): 1817+; John Mac Kilgore, “Nat Turner and the Work of Enthusiasm,” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America. Vol. 130, 5 (October 2015): 1347-1362; Shaun O’Connell, “Unhealed Cultural Memories: Styron’s Nat Turner,” New England Journal of Public Policy, Vol. 28, 2 (January 1, 2018): 1-…; Stephen B. Oates, The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner’s Fierce Rebellion. New York: Harper Perennial, 2016; Patrick H. Breen, The Land Shall be Deluged in Blood: A New History of the Nat Turner Revolt, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016; Kenneth S. Greenberg, Nat Turner” A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2004.
Nat Turner’s remains were recently returned to his family: Javonte Anderson, “Descendants of Nat Turner honored in Gary,” Chicago Tribune, 7 October 2016. http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-nat-turner-skull-st-1008-20161007-story.html. Lon Wagner, “Nat Turner’s skull turns up far from site of his revolt,” Baltimore Sun, June 15, 2003, http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2003-06-15/news/0306150247_1_nat-turner-benjamin-turner-skull
For more on Denmark Vesey, please see notes to Chapter 4.
p. 301, The commemorative presidential fabric is printed in red with the date 1829. The URI Historic Textile and Costume Collection owns a length of the same fabric in blue. As for the black and white fabric with parrots, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation owns a similar piece of fabric donated by Franklin R. Cushman. The fabric in the Williamsburg collection is white and “china blue” (the pieces in the Cushman quilt are black and white), and it is dated 1774–1811. The piece at Williamsburg is said to have been a remnant from fabric used for chair and window seat covers, and window curtain tiebacks. Form No. 148, Curator’s Worksheet, Accession No. 51-364, 1–2, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, Virginia.
p. 304, In the 1960s, when the letter from Winthrop describing Osceola was published, the letter was held by the Gaud family in South Carolina; it’s now in the Rhode Island Historical Society.
p. 308, There are several letters from Eliza Williams, Emily Williams, and Sarah Williams. In one, they mention that they’ve found a new doctor who knows about “breasts,” and is able to help with issues around breastfeeding, and in another, they say they deterred a gossiping neighbor who asked whether or not Susan had a new beau.
p. 322, Sarah Nesnow found Jane Jones listed in these records. Jane Jones (previously listed in Zion Presbyterian’s Records as Jane Thorn, “servant of Mrs. E. H. Williams,” Hilton’s wife) is not the same Jane as the woman who was owned by Hasell and Susan. There are no mentions of Jane Jones in the letters from Hilton. For now, we know only that she joined Zion Presbyterian on 6 March 1859, when she was “admitted on profession of faith,” and that she was a member in 1866 and 1869, listed as Jane Jones, formerly Jane Thorn. In 1869, white church members “dismissed” black members and kept the name Zion Presbyterian Church along with the building on Calhoun Street. “Dismissed” is another term that disguises the ugliness of the truth—they were kicked out. The building that the white members kept is the one that Reverend Jonathan C. Gibbs, an African American preacher from Philadelphia, tried to have given to the Northern Presbyterian Church, a black congregation, because the building was constructed for African Americans. When his suit under the Civil Rights Act in 1866 failed, the church was given to the Southern Presbyterians, and many black members then left for other churches. Those who stayed, or left and then returned, were pushed out three years later. Jane Jones is one of the people listed as “dismissed” in 1869. White members had kept the records books just after the war, when they merged with Glebe Street Presbyterian.