Ebony and Ivy

by Craig Steven Wilder

  12. A conflict between Jay and the trustees of King’s College undermined the appeal for a royal grant. These grants were largely in the disputed area that became Vermont. Lieutenant Governor Cadwallader Colden apportioned a twenty-four-thousand-acre tract west of the Connecticut River to King’s. The trustees secured twenty thousand acres to the north. Governor William Tryon then gave the college ten thousand acres of his own estate. Because of the location of these lands and the sparse populations in these areas, the board had trouble attracting tenants. “The Memorial and Humble Petition of Sir James Jay, Knight, in behalf of the Govrs of King’s College in the City of New York in America” and “To the Right Honble Lords of the Committee of His Majesty’s Most Honble Privy Council for Plantation Affairs,” in E. B. O’Callahan, ed., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New-York (Albany, NY: Weed, Parsons, 1853–), VII:643–46; David C. Humphrey, From King’s College to Columbia, 1746–1800 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 132–34.

  13. Governor Belcher was urging the trustees to choose a location and begin constructing a campus. Entries for 15 May 1751 and 27 September 1752, “The Minutes of the Proceedings of the Trustees of the College of New Jersey,” vol. 1, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University; Gerald Breese, Princeton University Land, 1752–1984 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 3–34; “University Land Records” (AC028), Folder 12, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University; Brendan McConville, These Daring Disturbers of the Public Peace: The Struggle for Property and Power in Early New Jersey (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 31–36, 51; T. B. Chandler to Samuel Johnson, 26 February 1753, in “Some Early Princeton History,” Princeton Alumni Weekly, 7 January 1914; James Manning to Rev. Dr. Samuel Stennett, 5 June 1771, James Manning Papers, 1761–1827, Box 1, Folder 5 (A753), John Hay Library, Brown University.

  14. William W. H. Davis, The History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, from the Discovery of the Delaware to the Present Time (Doylestown, PA: Democrat Book and Job Office, 1876), 181–83, 789–97; Samuel M. Janney, The Life of William Penn: With Selections from His Correspondence and Auto-Biography (Philadelphia: Hogan, Perkins, 1852), 184–85; entries for 9 October 1759, 9 November 1762, 11 October 1763, and 14 June 1764, in Minutes of the Trustees of the College, Academy and Charitable Schools of the University of Pennsylvania, vol. 1, 1749–1768 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1974), 108, 174–75, 224, 269; Thomas Harrison Montgomery, A History of the University of Pennsylvania: From Its Foundation to A.D. 1770 (Philadelphia: W. Jacobs, 1900), 380–82, 415–16; George B. Wood, Early History of the University of Pennsylvania: From Its Origin to the Year 1827 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896), 49–50, 60–61.

  15. Onesimus is the slave in Paul’s Epistle to Philemon. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds., African American Lives (New York: Oxford, 2004), 640–41; Donald G. Tewksbury, The Founding of American Colleges and Universities Before the Civil War with Particular Reference to the Religious Influences Bearing upon the College Movement (New York: Teachers College, 1932), 84–87; Thomas Symmes, “Notebook, 1696–1774,” American Antiquarian Society; Cotton Mather, Diary of Cotton Mather (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1957), I:579. Quoted in John Langdon Sibley, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts (Cambridge: Charles William Sever, 1873–) V:esp. 432.

  16. “Benjamin Wadsworth’s Book (A. Dom. 1725) Relating to the College,” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts (Boston: By the Society, 1935), XXXI:461, 470.

  17. The board comprised James Noyes, Stonington; Israel Chauncy, Stratford; Thomas Buckingham, Saybrook; Abraham Pierson, Kenilworth; Samuel Mather, Windsor; Timothy Woodbridge, Hartford; James Pierpont, New Haven; Samuel Andrew, Milford; Joseph Webb, Fairfield; and Noadiah Russell, Middletown. Edwin Oviatt, The Beginnings of Yale (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1916), 196, 333; “Act for a Collegiate School,” October 1701, in Hoadly, ed., Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, IV:363–64; last will and testament of Timothy Woodbridge, 1 April 1732, The Woodbridge Record: Being an Account of the Descendants of the Rev. John Woodbridge of Newbury, Mass. Compiled from the Papers Left by the Late Louis Mitchell, Esquire (New Haven: Privately printed, 1883), 234.

  18. David Lawrence Pierson, Narratives of Newark (in New Jersey) from the Days of Its Founding: 1666–1916 (Newark: Pierson, 1917), 18–46, 88; Abraham Pierson, Some Helps for the Indians: Shewing Them How to Improve Their Natural Reason, to Know the True God, and the True Christian Religion … (London: M. Simmons, 1659); Rev. Joseph F. Folsom, “Church History,” A History of the City of Newark, New Jersey: Embracing Practically Two and a Half Centuries, 1666–1913 (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing, 1913), II:949–52; Sibley, Harvard University Graduates, II:253–58; Sketches of Yale College, with Numerous Anecdotes, and Embellished with More Than Thirty Engravings (New York: Saxton and Miles, 1843), 20–22; John Fiske, The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America (Cambridge: Riverside, 1903), II:17–18.

  19. The last will and testament of Benjamin Pierpont, and the last will and testament of John Pierpont, Acts and Resolves of the General Court, vol. 17, 27–28, Massachusetts State Archives; R. Burnham Moffat, Pierrepont Genealogies from Norman Times to 1913, with Particular Attention Paid to the Line of Descent from Hezekiah Pierpont, Youngest Son of Rev. James Pierpont of New Haven (New York: Privately printed, 1913), 34–37; John S. Whitehead, The Separation of College and State: Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Yale, 1776–1876 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), 13–14.

  20. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, IV:192–95, V:588–97, VII:496.

  21. President Francis Wayland of Brown, for instance, used the story during one of his own commentaries on slavery. The various accounts disagree on whether Stiles traded a barrel of rum or a hogshead of whiskey. Franklin Bowditch Dexter, ed., The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, D.D., LL.D., President of Yale College (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1901), I:521, 525, II:271, 272; Edmund S. Morgan, The Gentle Puritan: A Life of Ezra Stiles, 1727–1795 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), 124–25; Richard Fuller, Domestic Slavery Considered as a Scriptural Institution: In a Correspondence Between the Rev. Richard Fuller, of Beaufort, S.C., and the Rev. Francis Wayland, of Providence, R.I. Revised and Corrected by the Authors, 5th ed. (New York: Lewis Colby, 1847), 38.

  22. The Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage was founded in 1775. Edmund S. Morgan, Benjamin Franklin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 105; Alan Houston, Benjamin Franklin and the Politics of Improvement (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 200–201; Benjamin Franklin to Mrs. Abiah Franklin, undated, in Jared Sparks, ed., A Collection of the Familiar Letters and Miscellaneous Papers of Benjamin Franklin (Boston: Charles Bowen, 1833), 17–19; David Waldstreicher, Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004), 25–26, 144; Publications of the Rhode Island Historical Society (Providence: By the Society, 1899), VII:140–41; William G. McLoughlin, Rhode Island: A History (New York: Norton, 1986), 78–80, 106–7.

  23. Bill for Jonathan Dickinson’s purchase of Genny, “a Negro Girl,” 9 June 1733, in Anson Phelps Stokes, Memorials of Eminent Yale Men: A Biographical Study of Student Life and University Influences During the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1914), I:196; bill for Aaron Burr’s purchase of Caesar, a black man, 2 September 1756, in Milton Meltzer, Slavery: A World History (Boston: Da Capo, 1993), 142; Samuel Davies, Letters from the Rev. Samuel Davies, &c. Shewing the State of Religion in Virginia, Particularly among the Negroes … (London, 1757), esp. 28–31; Samuel Davies, The Duty of Christians to Propagate Their Religion among Heathens, Earnestly Recommended to the Masters of Negroe Slaves in Virginia. A Sermon Preached in Hanover, January 8, 1757 (London: J. Oliver, 1758); notice for Finley estate auction, 31 July 1766, in Francis Bazley Lee, ed.
, Genealogical and Personal Memorial of Mercer County, New Jersey (New York: Lewis, 1907), I:27; Kenneth P. Minkema, “Jonathan Edwards’s Defense of Slavery,” Massachusetts Historical Review IV (2002): 23–30; Morgan, Gentle Puritan, 125; County Tax Ratables, Somerset County, Western Precinct, 1780–1786, reel 18, New Jersey State Archives; Samuel Stanhope Smith, Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species. To Which are Added Strictures on Lord Kaims’ Discourse, on the Original Diversity of Mankind (Edinburgh: C. Elliot, 1788), 182; Constance K. Escher, “She Calls Herself Betsey Stockton,” Princeton History, 1991, 98–102. Jennifer Epstein produced a full study of slaveholding patterns at the college and in the larger community in Princeton. See Jennifer Epstein, “Slaves and Slavery at Princeton,” thesis, Princeton University, 2008.

  24. County Tax Ratables, Somerset County, Eastern Precinct, 1793–1795, reel 18, New Jersey State Archives.

  25. Bills of sale from William Clark, 7 February 1757 (#757157), Timothy Kimball, 22 April 1760 (#761477), and Peter Spencer, 26 April 1760 (#760276), Dartmouth College Archives, Rauner Library.

  26. Bills of sale from Ann Morrison to Eleazar Wheelock, 13 May 1762 (#762313), Eleazar Wheelock to Gideon Buckingham, 23 December 1770 (#775673), and Gideon Buckingham to Eleazar Wheelock, 17 February 1772 (#772167), Dartmouth College Archives.

  27. Eleazar Wheelock to Capt. Moses Little, 6 May 1773 (#773306), and Eleazar Wheelock to Asa Foot, 28 January 1776 (#776128), Dartmouth College Archives.

  28. See the letter announcing John H. Livingston’s acceptance of the call to the Dutch Reformed Church of New York, 10 May 1770, in Ecclesiastical Records, State of New York (Albany, NY: James B. Lyon, 1905), VI:4184; William R. Davie, agreement for the sale of “a negroe girl slave called Dinah,” 9 August 1793, William R. Davie Papers, Folder 13, Manuscripts Department, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

  29. Eleazar Wheelock to John Wheelock, student at Yale College, 24 August 1769 (#769474.2), and last will and testament of Eleazar Wheelock, 4 June 1779 (#779252.6), Dartmouth College Archives.

  30. “Benjamin Wadsworth’s Journal Concerning the Five Nations Commission, 1694,” 51–53, Benjamin Wadsworth Diary, 1692–1737, Massachusetts Historical Society.

  31. Frederick Lewis Weis, The Colonial Clergy of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1976), 22; John Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neighbours (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1897–1902), II:227; Philip Alexander Bruce, Institutional History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century: An Inquiry into the Religious, Moral, Educational, Legal, Military, and Political Condition of the People (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910), I:213; Rev. John Moncure, “Christ Church, Middlesex, County, Virginia,” in Colonial Churches in the Original Colony of Virginia (Richmond: Southern Churchman Company, 1908), 246; Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts (1943; New York: International Publishers, 1987), 134; Wilford Kale, “Educating a Colony: The First Trustees of the College of William and Mary in Virginia,” Colonial Williamsburg, Autumn 2000, 25–27.

  32. Benjamin Wadsworth, The Well-Ordered Family: Or, Relative Duties. Being the Substance of Several Sermons, About Family Prayer, Duties of Husbands & Wives, Duties of Parents & Children, Duties of Masters & Servants (Boston: B. Green, 1712), 103–21. The reference is to Proverbs 29:19.

  33. “The Case of Maria in the Court of Assistants in 1681,” Transactions: Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1899, 1900 (Boston: By the Society, 1904), VI:330.

  34. Abner Cheney Goodell Jr., The Trial and Execution, for Petit Treason, of Mark and Phillis, Slaves of Capt. John Codman, Who Murdered Their Master at Charlestown, Mass., in 1755; for Which the Man Was Hanged and Gibbeted, and the Woman Was Burned to Death. Including, also, Some Account of Other Punishments by Burning in Massachusetts (Cambridge, MA: John Wilson and Son, 1883), 4–30; Elise Lemire, Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Concord, Massachusetts (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 42–69; Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, XIII:99, 230; John Winthrop, 1755 Almanac, entry for 18 September 1755, Almanacs of Professor John Winthrop, Papers of John and Hannah Winthrop, Box 4, Vol. 14, Harvard University Archives; “Portrait of Professor John Winthrop,” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts: Transactions, 1900–1902 (Boston: By the Society, 1905), VII:325–27; entries for 12 April 1754, 18 September 1755, in “Rev. Edward Brooks Journal, 1753–1762,” 9, 27, Massachusetts Historical Society; entry for 10 April 1754, “The Diary of Ebenezer Parkman, 1754–1755,” ed. Francis G. Walett, in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society at the Semi-annual Meeting Held in Boston, April 20, 1966 (Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 1966), 76:95–96; Boston Weekly News-Letter, 14 March 1754, 11 April 1754.

  35. New-York Mercury, 16 April 1764; Thomas Bradbury Chandler, D.D., The Life of Samuel Johnson, D.D., the First President of King’s College, in New-York (New York: T. and F. Swords, 1805), 106–8.

  36. Entries for 9 February 1763 and 16 November 1769, College of William and Mary, “Faculty Minutes, 1729–1784”; Terry L. Meyers, “A First Look at the Worst: Slavery and Race Relations at the College of William and Mary,” William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, April 2008, 1144–45; Records of the Town of Hanover, New Hampshire, 1761–1818, 6–8; Lord, History of the Town of Hanover, 148–49.

  37. Entry for 19 February 1759, Augustus Van Horne, “Account Book,” New-York Historical Society; New-York Mercury, 22 January 1759; Elizabeth Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution, 1931–), III:463–87; Cynthia A. Kierner, Traders and Gentlefolk: The Livingstons of New York, 1675–1790 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 254, 259.

  38. John Watts to Isaac Young-Husband, 27 November 1762, and John Watts to John Riddell, 27 November 1762, 21 February 1763, 13 July 1763, The Letter Book of John Watts: Merchant and Councillor of New York, January 1, 1762–December 22, 1765, vol. LXI of The Collections of the New-York Historical Society for the Year 1928 (New York: Printed for the Society, 1928), 97–98, 126, 154.

  39. In 1812 the New Jersey trustees decided to reduce the faculty and reemphasize theology. Maclean had turned down an offer from South Carolina College several years earlier and now found himself in need of a position, which he found at the College of William and Mary. Professor Maclean died in 1814, just a couple of years before his son graduated from New Jersey.

  The New York merchant John Delafield, closely tied to Columbia, sold a number of black children, often into black households, with the condition that they be freed by age twenty-one or twenty-five. Bill of sale between John Maclean and William Gulick, 1 January 1809, Gulick Family Papers, Box 1, Folder 65, C0436, Firestone Library, Princeton University; Edwin L. Green, A History of the University of South Carolina (Columbia: State Company, 1916), 22–23; William D. Carrell, “Biographical List of American College Professors to 1800,” History of Education Quarterly, Autumn 1968, 365; John Delafield’s bills of sale and indenture, dated 14 May 1798, 21 May 1798, 10 June 1805, and 25 November 1807, Delafield Family Papers, Box 102, Folder 10, C0391, Firestone Library, Princeton University.

  40. George P. Fisher, Life of Benjamin Silliman, M.D., LL.D., Late Professor of Chemistry, Mineralogy, and Geology in Yale College, Chiefly from His Manuscript Reminiscences, Diaries, and Correspondence (New York: Charles Scribner, 1866), I:21–23, 87–107; Benjamin Silliman, An Introductory Lecture, Delivered in the Laboratory of Yale College, October, 1828 (New Haven: Hezekiah Howe, 1828).

  41. Fisher, Life of Benjamin Silliman, 22–23; Chandos Michael Brown, Benjamin Silliman: A Life in the Young Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 3–61.

  42. Barbara S. Lindemann, “‘To Ravish and Carnally Know’: Rape in Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts,” Signs, Autumn 1984, 79–82; Catherine Adams and Elizabeth H. Pleck, Love of Freedom: Black Women in Colonial and Revolutionary New England (New York: Oxford Univ
ersity Press, 2010), ch. 1.

  43. Philip Alexander Bruce, History of the University of Virginia, 1819–1919: The Lengthened Shadow of One Man (New York: Macmillan Company, 1920), II:208–10; “Benjamin Wadsworth’s Book (A. Dom. 1725) Relating to the College,” 470; Constance M. Greiff and Wanda S. Gunning, “Tusculum: The History of a House,” Princeton History, 1998, 37–40.

  44. Hugh Jones, The Present State of Virginia. Giving a Particular and Short Account of the Indian, English, and Negroe Inhabitants of that Colony. Shewing Their Religion, Manners, Government, Trade, Way of Living, &c. With a Description of the Country. From Whence is Inferred a Short View of Maryland and North Carolina. To Which are Added, Schemes and Propositions for the Better Promotion of Learning, Religion, Inventions, Manufactures, and Trade in Virginia, and the Other Plantations. For the Information of the Curious, and for the Service of Such as are Engaged in the Propagation of the Gospel and Advancement of Learning, and for the Use of All Persons Concerned in the Virginia Trade and Plantation (London: J. Clarke, 1724), 88; Samuel K. Lothrop, Life of Samuel Kirkland, Missionary to the Indians (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1848), 208.

  45. Wheelock, Continuation of the Narrative of the Indian Charity School, 3–5; Lord, History of the Town of Hanover, 301–2; see the sworn statement of Nathaniel Hovey, 12 May 1783, Papers of Richard Hovey, Box 1, Folder 6, Rauner Library, Dartmouth College.

  46. Jacob Rodriguez de Rivera to Nicholas Brown and Company, 21 March 1770, and “Rough Draft of the Rev. Mr. Smith’s Authorization, 1769,” University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice, Brown University Library; James T. Campbell et al., Slavery and Justice: Report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice (Providence: Brown University, October 2006), esp. 11–15.