Yesterday I quoted Samuel Adams’s descendant William V. Wells on an African-American woman named Surry, who came to the second Elizabeth Adams as a slave and remained with the family after emancipation. Wells wrote that when the Adamses gave Surry freedom papers, she “threw them into the fire, indignantly remarking that she had lived too long to be trifled with in that manner.”That story put me in mind of some anecdotes in William D. Piersen’s book Black Yankees: The Development of an Afro-American Subculture in Eighteenth-Century New England. Piersen pored through many sources, particularly local histories, for clues to how black New Englanders lived in the late colonial and early republican periods.
In particular, he described other resisting attempts to free them:
Slaves who became old in service to a white family often refused a “reward of freedom because they felt at home in their master’s household and because they could have assurance there that they would be cared for in their old age. Prince Jonar [also called Prince Yongey], an African-born slave owned in succession by Joseph Buckminster and his son Thomas, managed a farm in Framingham, Massachusetts, where he lived in a small cabin overlooking a meadow he had picked for cultivation because it reminded him of the soil of his native country. Offered freedom in his old age, Jonar refused by sagaciously citing a proverb common to Yankee slaves in this situation: “Massa eat the meat; he now pick the bone.”Wells dated his story to after “the institution of slavery was formally abolished in Massachusetts,” or 1783. He also said that Surry had arrived in the household about 1765 as a “servant girl” and remained “for nearly half a century,” or well into the 1800s. So Surry was apparently only in early middle age when she destroyed the freedom papers. But she felt “she had lived too long to be trifled with.”
As William Brown, the son of a Rhode Island slave, explained, “The old bondsmen declared their master had been eating their flesh and now it was the slaves’ turn to stick to them and suck their bones.” Mose Parson’s slave avoided the African proverbial intricacies by commenting more bluntly: “You have had the best of me, and you and yours must have the worst. Where am I to go in sickness or old age? No, Master, your slave I am, and always will be, and I will belong to your children when you are gone; and by you and them I mean to be cared for.”
Domestic slaves were especially apt to remain with their masters or return shortly after gaining freedom. The refusal of freedom was, as might be expected, more common among older women since they would have greater difficulties outside the family and because they usually retained close bonds to the white children they had helped raise.
In 1703 Massachusetts passed a law. No master (enslaver) might emancipate a slave without posting a bond of fifty pounds. And no slave was to be regarded as free unless the bond had been posted.
ReplyDeleteSource: The Negro in Colonial New England 1620-1776 by Lorenzo J. Greene p.138
Question:
So is there documentation Sam Adams ever posted the fifty pound bond? If he did not post the fifty pounds would not that mean Surry was technically never emancipate before slavery was abolished in Mass. Thus technically he did own a slave...
There’s no question that Samuel Adams and his family owned Surry at some point. The Adams family lore about her being "free" of course reflects the later generations' understanding of the situation and comes with no documentation or even dates. We can therefore be skeptical about it.
ReplyDeleteThere are some complications in applying Massachusetts's 1703 law to this case, or any case from the later eighteenth century. The legislature definitely passed that law to discourage the situation that this posting describes: enslavers freeing people only after they were no longer productive and needed community help to survive. And the law remained on the books for a long time.
However, I've found no evidence that the law was enforced. Where are the £50 manumission bonds? Where are the mentions of them in wills when enslavers freed someone after they died? Where are the records of towns keeping track of manumissions? Where are the arguments between towns and individuals over who had responsibility for poor former slaves? A great deal of any town's records in this period (handled by the selectmen or Overseers of the Poor) involves dealing with poor people from other towns, yet I haven't seen any mention of manumission bonds or disputes over them. I'd be happy to see some examples to learn more.
That state of the documentary evidence leads me to think that the 1703 law was forgotten or ignored by the time Samuel Adams owned Surry. So I don't think the lack of such a bond in Adams's name says much about how Surry was treated, viewed by people outside the family, or saw herself.
Reading back over the family lore, I was struck by how many ways the descendants insisted Surry was free. She was somehow "free" even before the 1783 decisions that made slavery unenforceable in for Massachusetts residents. Then that decision ended slavery for her and everyone else. Then the Adams family gave her a paper.Those descendants really wanted (readers) to believe Samuel Adams opposed slavery. I wish we knew Surry's side of the story.
The story of Samuel Adams freeing Surry goes back at least as far as 1837, as described in a book entitled "Liberty," by abolitionist Julius Rubens Ames. The book consists of a collection of anti-slavery writings and poems by prominent individuals. The source of the information is credited to "Rev. Mr. Allen." Wells (a great-grandson of Samuel Adams), also credited Rev. George Allen for the information, which came in the form of a letter, years later, and with additional details. Allen was the great-grandson of Samuel Adams' father and lived until 1883. Besides the family connections, Mary Avery and George Allen were both listed as secretaries of Massachusetts abolitionist societies in the 1836 "Anti-slavery magazine." Thus it seems likely the information is credible.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the emancipation paperwork would likely have been completed before Surry went to live with the Adams's without Samuel's knowledge? If not why would it have been completed after Samuel said that a slave couldn't live in his house? "If she comes, she must be free" suggests that Surry would have been freed before she arrived. On the other hand, "He accordingly liberated her on going into his family" suggests that the "ownership" was first transferred to Samuel before he freed her, if in fact he did.
--David Hurwitz