Author: Michelle Shen

African Americans have served the American military with distinction, even in the time when they themselves were not free. In the Revolutionary War, many of the African American men from this community joined the ranks of soldiers on both sides.

At first African Americans were barred from enlistment in the Continental Army, while the British admitted them into the ranks. Some African Americans hoped for freedom in return for service, others threw in their lot with the British regulars. Often, patriots who did not want to fight sent their enslaved people to fight in their stead or to work for the Continental Army in some capacity including as spies and double agents like enslaved Virginian, James Armistead Lafyette, who served under the Marquis de Lafayette.

Jack Rowland of Fairfield earned his emancipation in return for his service in the Colonel Bradley’s Connecticut regiment, serving at the battles of Ridgefield and Germantown. Cato Treadwell also of Fairfield joined as a free man in New York. Both soldiers petitioned Congress to receive their pension for time served in the War for Independence. Their counterparts Ishmael Coley, enslaved by Ebenezer Coley of Westport and Tom Hide, enslaved by John Hide of Westport both escaped to enlist with British forces, departing with them at the war’s end.

African American soldiers from Westport and Connecticut at large served on both land and sea in all the wars that followed, usually in segregated units. This was despite the fact that The First Rhode Island regiment accepted black soldiers in 1778 following poor enlistment among able-bodied white men. It was the first integrated regiment in American history.

The Saugatuck River was lined with merchants and docks in the 18th and 19th centuries. Both white, enslaved, and free black Westporters worked loading local farm goods onto ships heading up the coast to New Haven or Boston, or south toNew York. From New York the goods went on to the British West Indies and the American South to provide food, linens, and other supplies for the enslaved people who worked large plantations.

During the mid to late 1700s, John Hide Sr., who lived in the area of Long Lots Road, owned a store where his enslaved people likely worked. Ebenezer Coley, a prominent farmer with vast acreage in the area of Westport now known as Coleytown, owned at least five enslaved people. It is probable that some of them worked at his downtown store and dock at the building that still stands on the southwest corner of Main Street and Avery Place.

In the mid 19th century, black sailors found work on whaling vessels. Well into the 20th century, African Americans remained employed in maritime professions, particularly in the oystering trade. On land, African Americans shucked oysters for canning at large firms like Tallmadge Brothers Oyster Company, the largest commercial oystering operation of the late 19th and early 20th century.

The State of Connecticut didn’t adopt its first state constitution until 1818 – more than thirty years after most of the other twelve original colonies had adopted theirs. Instead, Connecticut had chosen to continue to abide by the charter it had received from King Charles II of England in 1662.   

Even before the charter, slavery as an institution had been legally recognized by Connecticut in 1650.    

Connecticut’s constitution, drafted well after the end of the Revolutionary War and establishment of a strong Federal government, had the unique opportunity to clarify and address issues faced by its residents of color – but did it? 

Although Hartford native Harriet Beecher Stowe’s seminal work Uncle Tom’s Cabin brought attention to the abolitionist cause, it also helped create the persistent fantasy that Connecticut was an emancipation state. In fact, 19th century Connecticut—and Fairfield County in particular— remained the most reluctant of the New England states to abolish slavery.

In 1781 Massachusetts had already abolished slavery via its constitution, which was legislatively affirmed with the case Brom and Bett v. John Ashley. Vermont ended the practice in 1777 with the adoption of its own constitution. Connecticut would not free its last enslaved people until 1848. 

The commonly held belief that slavery didn’t exist in New England as it did in the American South is a myth. Texts from Hartford and New Haven in 1639 and 1644, respectively, refer to enslaved African people in Bristol. By the 18th century Newport, Rhode Island and New London, Connecticut surpassed Boston as major slave trading ports.

Slave trading was a key facet of the Triangular Trade between Africa, the Caribbean, and New England. Just before the American Revolution, most of New England’s trade was with sister colonies in the British West Indies (the Caribbean). New England farms sent wood, livestock, and food to sugar plantations in the Caribbean that were so focused on sugar production, that not an acre of spare land was given over to other crops. In return, northern colonies received sugar, rum, molasses, and enslaved people who originally hailed from Africa. Manufactured goods were also sent directly to Africa from New England to barter for enslaved people.

The entire Triangular Trade economy was completely dependent on the work of enslaved Africans. In New England, enslaved people worked farms that produced food exports for the West Indies largely to be consumed by the many thousands of enslaved people working sugar plantations.The Caribbean was so dependent on North American exports that famine swept the islands during the American Revolution when British blockades prevented the arrival of American trading ships. In Jamaica alone, thousands of enslaved people died of hunger.

In Connecticut, river ports like Middletown did brisk business on the Triangle Trade. New England slave traders grew quite wealthy. In Boston, Peter Faneuil built a public meeting house, Faneuil Hall, with his inheritance from his slave-trading uncle’s estate. Faneuil Hall is often called the “Cradle of Liberty” for its role as a meeting place for American Revolutionaries.

While most enslaved people arrived on American shores via the Caribbean, the ship Africa brought enslaved people directly to New London from West Africa. The 1798 book, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa by Venture Smith, gives a first-hand account of the horror of the trip from Africa to Newport on a ship that was likely The Charming Susannah. In Newport, Smith was traded for “Four gallons of rum and piece of calico cloth.”

Enslaved people lived in the areas of Fairfield and Norwalk that would eventually become Westport. Over 240 men, women, and children were bound in the parish of Greens Farms alone in the eighty-year period from 1742 to 1822.

They were from the households of prominent families like the Jennings, Jesups, Nash’s, Sherwoods, and Coleys. Their labor – from farming to shipping to retail – produced wealth for those who enslaved them and prosperity in the community at large.

The stories of enslaved African Americans of the 18th and early 19th centuries are often only told in terms of the legal documentation relating to their existence as the “real property” of their captors. The purchase and sale of captive African Americans were recorded as “deeds” to real property. Manumission (emancipation) papers were similarly recorded with Land Records.

Enslaved people were also “handed down” to heirs in wills and appear as bond in legal proceedings, and even as mortgages to secure loans. These legal documents were archived in local town clerk offices, where they remain today. Church records also provide insight to the lives of those bound into slavery. Before the incorporation of the town of Westport, Green’s Farms Church records list the birth, death, baptism, and marriage of over 200 people enslaved here from 1741 to 1822.