Communities of Color in Eighteenth Century Boston Eric M
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University of Massachusetts Boston ScholarWorks at UMass Boston Graduate Masters Theses Doctoral Dissertations and Masters Theses 8-31-2014 “So Succeeded by a Kind Providence”: Communities of Color in Eighteenth Century Boston Eric M. Hanson Plass University of Massachusetts Boston Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.umb.edu/masters_theses Part of the African American Studies Commons, Public History Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Hanson Plass, Eric M., "“So Succeeded by a Kind Providence”: Communities of Color in Eighteenth Century Boston" (2014). Graduate Masters Theses. Paper 270. This Open Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Doctoral Dissertations and Masters Theses at ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ―SO SUCCEEDED BY A KIND PROVIDENCE‖ COMMUNITIES OF COLOR IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BOSTON A Thesis Presented by ERIC M. HANSON PLASS Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies, University of Massachusetts Boston, in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS August 2014 Public History Program © 2014 by Eric M. Hanson Plass All rights reserved ―SO SUCCEEDED BY A KIND PROVIDENCE‖ COMMUNITIES OF COLOR IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BOSTON A Thesis Presented by ERIC M. HANSON PLASS Approved as to style and content by: ________________________________________________ Julie Winch, Professor Chairperson of Committee ________________________________________________ James Green, Professor Member ________________________________________________ Jane Becker, Lecturer Member _________________________________________ Paul Bookbinder, Program Director Public History Program _________________________________________ Jonathan Chu, Chairperson History Department ABSTRACT ―SO SUCCEEDED BY A KIND PROVIDENCE‖ COMMUNITIES OF COLOR IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BOSTON August 2014 Eric M. Hanson Plass, B.A., Pennsylvania State University M.A., University of Massachusetts Boston Directed by Professor Julie Winch The Freedom Trail has become an iconic symbol and major tourist attraction in the City of Boston. Yet since its Cold War-era inception, the Freedom Trail has remained problematically focused on a consensus history of leading white men who brought forth the American Revolution. Other heritage trails—most notably the Black Heritage Trail— have been established to correct the deficiencies of the Freedom Trail. These organizations have attempted to provide a revisionist counter-point by telling stories of internal struggle and by exploring groups traditionally overlooked by historians. However, with so many trails possessing so many particularized foci, many different narratives compete for the limited attention of visitors to Boston. This divide among the different heritage trails threatens to ―resegregate‖ history as perceived and interacted by the public. iv Using methods successfully employed in researching the antebellum black community on Beacon Hill, this thesis makes use of government minutes, deeds, court documents, census data, church records, and other public records to fill a gaping hole in the Freedom Trail‘s narrative. Four generations of communities and people of color were studied, spanning the entire eighteenth century. Slavery dominated the lives of people of color through much of the century. However, by the 1760s, the first landowners of color on Beacon Hill purchased and developed their land: Tobias and Margaret Locker and Scipio and Venus Fayerweather. Others, such as Lancaster Hill, organized and petitioned against slavery and exploitation alongside the freemason Prince Hall. Following the Revolutionary War, the legacies of activism and property ownership combined on Beacon Hill. The Smith, Watts, and Barnes families are used as case studies of those who subdivided, developed, and sold land and homes along today‘s Joy Street to house other families of color and formed a physical neighborhood that would thrive as black Beacon Hill for generations to come. Such stories bridge the interpretive gap between the Freedom Trail and the Black Heritage Trail, deepening the narrative of the former and building a prologue for the latter. The end result offers a far more vivid, critical, and complete public understanding of Boston‘s history. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are so many friends, family members, professors, colleagues, coworkers and organizations which deserve due thanks in making this major project possible. To each and every one of you, I wish to convey my deepest gratitude. At the University of Massachusetts, Boston, I wish to thank my advisor, Professor Julie Winch. I am deeply indebted to you for your valuable insight, guidance, and thorough and thoughtful edits, draft after draft, of my term papers, independent study writings, and this thesis. I also wish to thank the members of my defense committee and my mentors in the Public History program, Dr. Jane Becker and Professor James Green. Furthermore, I wish to thank the university‘s History Department as a whole, the faculty, staff, and my classmates, for your knowledge, insight, and support throughout my time pursuing my graduate degree. To the dedicated and helpful staff at the Massachusetts State Archives, the New England Historic Genealogical Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the Rare Books and Manuscripts department at the Boston Public Library, I wish to thank you all for providing access to your valuable collections, and greatly assisting me in understanding and locating your manuscripts, databases, and microfilm repositories. I also wish to thank all of my coworkers, colleagues, supervisors, and friends at Boston National Historical Park and Boston African American National Historic Site. You all were my primary motivation for undertaking this project. This work began, grew, and concluded with the goal of creating a resource for you. You already preserve, protect, vi and interpret significant historic sites and the stories they represent in Boston with determination and passion. This work aims to make those fascinating stories you already tell that much more valuable. Thanks to each and every one of you for supporting me throughout my pursuit of my Master‘s degree, and thank you to Boston National Historical Park as a whole for giving me the opportunity to begin my career with the National Park Service here at Boston. Lastly, thank you to my family, and thank you Kate, my wonderful wife, for being there for me through it all. Thank you for proofreading and editing draft after draft, keeping me motivated, and providing all the support I needed in seeing this project to completion. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... vi LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES.................................................................................. iv CHAPTER Page 1. INTRODUCTION: A PUBLIC HISTORY PROBLEM .................................... 1 Academic Progress.................................................................................... 11 2. THE FIRST GENERATION, 1700 – 1725 ...................................................... 20 Tradition, Morality, and Profit: Boston‘s Troubled Slave Past ................ 26 The Moral Crossroads ............................................................................... 32 Blurring Slave and Free ............................................................................ 37 The First Generation: Town Property ....................................................... 45 3. THE SECOND GENERATION, 1725 – 1750 ................................................. 56 The Lost Generation ................................................................................. 59 Awash in Slavery ...................................................................................... 65 Prince Holmes ........................................................................................... 71 4. THE THIRD GENERATION, 1750-1775 ....................................................... 76 The Fayerweathers and the Lockers ......................................................... 86 Lancaster Hill .......................................................................................... 109 5. THE CORNERSTONE GENERATION, 1775 - 1800 ................................... 121 Boston Smith ........................................................................................... 127 Prince Watts ............................................................................................ 136 Black Beacon Hill ................................................................................... 142 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................... 149 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 151 viii LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Table Page 1. Work Assignments from Selectmen of Boston to Free Men of Color in Days, 1708-1738 ......................................................................................... 47 Figure Page 1. Chart of Boston‘s Total Population and Population of Color, 1700-1800 ....................................................................................................... 58 2. Boston‘s Population of Color Detail, 1700-1800