SLAVES IN BILLERICA

Most of the general public in the U.S. has no understanding of the very long history of slavery in the northern colonies and the northern states... ~ Christy Clark-Pujara

slavery in the north

Because the number of African slaves in the northern colonies never approached the numbers in the south, historians tend to downplay their role in the slave trade. But the first African slaves were brought to Massacusetts in 1638, only eight years after the 1630 arrival of the Winthrop Fleet. And Massacusetts was the first colony, even before Virginia, to legalize slavery. For 150 years, Boston Harbor was a main hub for the slave trade in the northern colonies.

Note: Massachusetts was also the first state to abolish slavery. This happend in 1783 when the Massachusetts Court held that laws and customs that sanctioned slavery were incompatible with their new state constitution.

In 1750, Massachusetts had only 4,000 African slaves to 183,000 whites. Virginia, by contrast, had 101,000 African salve to 129,000 whites. Because of these staggering numbers, the story of slavery in the north has been eclipsed by the horrors of southern plantation life. Historians, writing about slavery after the Civil War, helped to quell the flames by portraying northern slaves as "only status symbols" and "just part of the family." This line of thinking perpetuated a myth of the “house slave” as being a benign, acceptable form of bondage.

The majority of slaves in New England were owned by wealthy men wanting to better their position in a myriad of professional and political careers. The ownership of slaves provided rich and powerful men both time and opportunity to concentrate on non-farming activities such as teaching, medicine, and innkeeping as well as various government positions. Ten percent of town selectmen and a full twenty-six percent of representatives to the General Court in New England owned slaves.

Isaac Royall

It might seem surprising that the largest largest number of slaves in Massacusetts were concentrated in the town of Medford and not Boston.

The man who owned most of these African American men and women was Isaac Royall, no stranger to slavery. Isaac had his roots in the South. His brother was Joseph Royall, a wealthy plantation owner in Virginia whose family intermarried extensively with our Eppes, Poythress and Littlebury families.

Below is a picture of the former slave quarters in Medford belonging to Isaac Royall. To his credit, Royall's slave quarters are a far cry from what you would generally have found in the South.

in Billerica

While slave owners made up a little less than two percent of the population, Christopher Spraker, who wrote The Lost History of Slaves and Slave Owners in Billerica suggests that "almost all slave owners in Billerica were engaged in some sort of secondary activity, be it professional or civic." These men were large landowners who became increasingly influential in town politics. Slaves in a town like Billerica generally became skilled in a wide variety of home and farm duties leaving their owners free to pursue other occupations.

In this way, slavery directly contributed to the economic and political success of many wealthy families over generations.

According to Spraker, there "remains a striking reality that while every important person in early Billerica was certainly not a slave owner, nearly every slave owner was a person of importance." Billerica slave owners were not just farmers, but also served as town selectmen, representatives to the general court, town clerks, justices of the peace, ministers and military leaders. So the slave's role in Billerica, as in other smaller New England towns, was to provided their owners with the time and prestige necessary to climb the town’s political and social ladder.

Small interior communites like Billerica, however, were particularly problematic for African slaves. In Boston and Salem, the numbers of free and enslaved Africans created communites which provided a degree of comraderie. In small towns, Blacks were "almost completely isolated physically and psychologically..." and forced to “...live, work, eat, and sometimes even sleep, alongside their masters in an environment that remained predominantly white.”

slaves in the family

Our cousin Simon Crosby, Jr. (1C12X) , a wealthy tavern owner, bought at least one slave some time before 1700 and his descendents continued to own slaves throughout the eighteenth century. In addition, according to Spraker, various members of our Kidder, Kittredge and Stickney families each owned at least one slave.

All of these families were well connected to or descended from wealthy and influential families. Simon Crosby's father, Simon Crosby, Sr. (2C13X), was one of the wealthiest residents of Cambridge and Simon, Jr.'s stepfather, Reverend William Tompson, was an influential minister in Braintree. Simon's older brother Thomas (1C2X) had graduated from the prestigious Harvard College.

Spraker writes of a "second web" of connectivity in slave ownership. This is where slave owning families intermarried amongst themselves. William Tompson, grandson of Reverend William Tomsom serves as an example. He was connected to slavery through both his father, Benjamin, and his step-uncle, Simon Crosby. William's sister Dorothy Tompson married into our slave-owning Kidder family. Another example would be our aunt Abigail Kidder (6A) who married tavern owner Simon Crosby's grandson, Simon Crosby IV (3C10X). These ties among slave-owing families in Billerica helped to perpetuate the practice into future generations.

As slave-owing families moved to newly created towns like Tewksbury and Bedford, they "helped spread the web of connection outside of Billerica’s borders into Middlesex County and beyond." In Tewksbury, our Kidder, Kittredge and Stickney families all owned slaves. Timothy Rogers, who also owned several slaves in Tewksbury, married our cousin Rebecca French (1C8X). Rebecca was the daughter of our aunt Elizabeth Davis (7A) and our cousin Jacob French (3C7X). The Frenches were another prominent slave-owning Billerica family.

Cousin William Crosby

Christopher Spraker uses the family of our cousin William Crosby (3C10X) to summarize slavery's impact on the lives of slave owners in Billerica. William, one of twelve children, was a grandson of tavern owner Simon Crosby (1C12X). His upbringing brought him two very important things. One was the invaluable connections that came with the Crosby name itself. The other was property and other assets which also included slaves.

William, the owner of at least three slaves, had the title of Mister conferred upon him. This title set him apart from the commoners, the goodmen of the town. When William died, he bequeathed to his children the same land, money and influence that he had received from his father. These bequests, naturally, included slaves. His three sons, Jesseniah (4C9X), Hezekiah (4C9X) and Seth (4C9X) became leading citizens who produced powereful children of their own. One of William Crosby's grandchildren became a Massachusetts senator and another, William G. Crosby (3C6X), held the office of governor of Maine from 1853-1855. Sparker maintains that these men were "the product of several generations of influential family members, many of whom benefited from slave labor."

Below is a picture of our cousin William G. Crosby who descended from not only from our Crosby family but also from our Kittredge and Davis families. Willam did not own slaves.

the beginnings of racism in New England

In 1783, Massachusetts was the first state to abolish slavery. In other New England states, however, the practice continued well into the nineteenth century. Still, due to the extensive abolitionist work done in the north, New Englanders maintained that racism was a Southern problem. But the ownership of African men and women by prominent New Englanders created a cultural and ethnic divide that would prove difficult to bridge in the coming years.

Shortly after the Revolutionary War, many northern states began what Spraker calls "the process of abolishing" the fact that slavery existed in their past. For both Blacks and Whites, however, coping with a new population of free African Americans proved difficult. Though most Northerners recognized the deeply ingrained cruelty of slavery, their beliefs alone did not translate into a true sense of equality. It turns out that New Englanders, for the most part, had one thing in common with Southerners: they truly believed in the "inherent inferiority of darker-skinned races."

A very creative rewriting of history turned out to be a boon for New Englanders. They managed to craft "a past without slavery or at least one in which slavery’s impact on the development of the region was grossly minimized." According to Spraker, John Farmer's An Historical Memoir of Billerica, written in 1816, "contains no reference to Africans, enslaved or free..." And Henry Hazen's extensive History of Billerica, which I have personally referenced many times, presents slavery as merely an off-hand occurrence. Joanne Melish in Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England, argues that the process of emancipation in the northern states "had been tackled, in part, to restore New England to an idealized original state as an orderly, homogeneous, white society.”

the aftermath of racism in New England

Racism in New England has obviously not been limited to African Americans. Don Stevens is the Chief of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk - Abenaki Nation in Vermont. He is also an award-winning leader, businessman, writer, and lecturer. Stevens maintains that the treatment indigenous people have received in their native land goes beyond racism. He calls it eradicatication and dehumanization. The Abenaki tribe was legally extinct in New England until 2011.

James W. Loewen, author of the best selling Lies My Teacher Told Me, writes of an insidious method used by New England towns, to control their non-white residents. "Sundowner towns" are so called because non-whites caught on the streets after sundown are stopped, harrassed and often arrested or beaten. Loewen tells the story of a woman from Burlington CT who had an African American friend. Whenever this friend visited her he would always leave before sunset. If it got dark, he would sleep on her couch. When she asked him why, he told her that the police would always stop him. "Being a black man, he couldn't be up to any good."

Loewen and his colleagues created a map of the United States with a list of former and present "sundown towns." Massachusetts had 17, New York, 47, Connecticut, 39 and Pennsylvania, 48. Sadly, in California there have been 113 "sundown towns," the most of any state. The towns include Berkeley, Chico, Irvine, La Jolla, all of Orange County, Placerville, Redding, Redlands and Riverside.

It's a sad legacy to leave to our children, but Loewen hopes that, with truth, we can begin to understand and accept our past in order to change our future.

Negro births and deaths in the family

The carefully kept records of New England towns included a list of Negroes who were born, married and died in that town. Of nine negroes listed as baptized in Billerica, five of them belonged to our families:

Dinah, d. (daughter) Phebe "negro slave of William Crosby [3C10X]," bp. June 3, 1753. CR1

Lois, d. Jenny "Negro Wench of Wm. Crosby," bp. Apr. 30, 1749. CR1

Nimri, s. Jenny "Negro Slave of William Crosby," bp. May 19, 1751. CR1

Osmur, "negro child offered by David Stickney [3C7X]," bp. June 12, 1768. CR1

Pompey, "Negro child belonging to Thomas Kidder Esqr. [1C8X]," bp. Oct. 20, 1752.

Two negro deaths were listed in Billerica, one of them belonging to Simon Crosby:

Dick, "a negro, servant of Si: Crosbee" [Simon Crosby. MR], Feb. 7, 1674.

Of fourteen negro births listed in Tewksbury, four belonged to our family:

Lois, belonging to James Kittridge (1C9X), bp. Oct. 16, 1743. CR1

Zilla, belonging to James Kittridge, Jr. (2C8X), bp. Apr. 23, 1758. CR1

Violett, belonging to Jeremiah Kidder (2C7X), bp. July 28, 1765. CR1

Henry, belonging to Samuel Stickney (6U), bp. July 5, 1772. CR1

There were eighteen negro deaths listed in Tewksbury. Eight of these were children. Four of them belonged to our Kittredge family:

–––––, servant of James Kittridge, jr., scalded, Jan. 3, 1760. CR1

Lois, servant of wid. Sarah Kittridge (W1C9X), consumption, May 28, 1765. CR1

–––––, ch. belonging to James Kittridge, jr., fits, Apr. 5, 1766. CR1

Reuben, servant of Joseph Kittridge (2C8X), mortification, June 29, 1777. CR1