“Which service has not as yet been fully comply’d with”

Yesterday I described how in 1707 Massachusetts and Boston instituted a legal system of drafting free black men to work a certain number of days each year on maintaining highways.

The Boston selectmen’s records show that system being used often in the early decades of the eighteenth century, then less often. Eventually men were able to pay to get out of the labor.

In 1762, three wartime years after the last time they invoked this law, the selectmen of Boston once again cranked up the system to draft the town’s free black men.

The effort started on 12 May with a list in the selectmen’s records of all the free black men they could think of:

• Scipio—late a Servant of Capt. Osbornes
• Scipio, late a Servant of Mr. [Charles?] Apthorp
• Pompy Blackman
• Lank (a Lemmon Merchant, who has been sick)
• Charlestown ——
• Dick, late a Servant to Mr. Tyng, (both sick & lame).
• Toby, living at New Boston.
• Boston. (Jackson)
• Cesar Clark (Baker) keeps at Mr. Pollard’s Old House.
• Another Negro keeps with ye. above named, his name unknown
• Thomas (a Baker) late a Servant to Mr. Knox.
• Homan (late a Servant to the Widow Blackadore[)]
• Joseph, late a Servant to Richard Bill Esq.
• Scipio, late a Servant of Capt. [Thomas] Fayerweather
• Prince Holms
• A Negro at Deacon Fosters
• Jack Clemmons, so called
• George Cobourn, he came from Redding.

You can picture the town officials scratching under their wigs, trying to remember the men they’ve seen around town. “Oh, yeah, there’s a Negro baker over at Pollard’s.” “No, there are two.” “Didn’t Knox’s man become a baker?” “Yes, but he’s not one of them. What was his name?” “Speaking of names, why do we call so many ‘Scipio’?”

Six days later, the selectmen added more information they had collected. In particular, they noted how long each man had been free and how many days since becoming free each had worked for the town (and thus how many days of labor they owed):

• Prince Holmes, “has been free 23 years has paid for 12 Days work.”
• John Thurber, freed “last Novemr. Order’d to work...2 Days.”
• Pompy Blackman, free for six years the next October, 20 days.
• Fortunatus Pitts, free for seven years the next September, 24 days.
• Scipio Fayerweather, free for one year the next September, 2 days.
• Scipio Apthorp, free for two years the next September, 8 days.
• Homer Blackader, “has been sick since his mistresses death,” 0 days.
• Peter How, free nine years, “has work’d 2 Days,” 30 days.
• Richard Tyng, free five years, 10 days.
• Tobias Lockman, free six years as of 1 March, 18 days.
• Scipio Gunny, free as of the previous August, 2 days.
• Boston Jackson, free three years and “(has a Rate Bill),” 6 days.

The selectmen directed John Sweetser to set these men to work on the highways.

That information could be useful in connecting these men to their moments of manumission. In addition, I think the notation by Boston Jackson—“had a Rate Bill”—meant that he’d paid taxes, perhaps arguing that he didn’t need to contribute more to the community in labor.

Even with that added information, however, the selectmen and Sweetser couldn’t make the system work. On 15 December, the selectmen’s minutes say:

Whereas there was an Assignment made on the 18th Day of May last of a certain number of Days on which the Free Negros of this Town were to Work on the High Ways, which service has not as yet been fully comply’d with—therefore Voted—

that the Town Clerk Issue a Warrant this Day, Ordering and requiring them to work such a number of Days as shall be affixed to their respective Names.

Boston ss.
To Scipio and other Free Negros residing in the Town of Boston.

You are hereby severally Ordered and Required to perform so many Days work as is here under affixed to your Names, and this at the Time and Place you shall be directed by mr. John Swetser, appointed an Overseer for this purpose. It being such a proportion of Time as is adjudged to be equivalent to the service of Trainings, Watchings and other duty required of his Majesty’s Subjects, the benefit of which you share. Hereof fail not as you avoid the penalty of Law in such case made and provided.

By order of the Select men
Boston Decemr. 15. 1762
William Cooper Town Clerk.

The numbers of days demanded were:

• Lancaster Hill 16
• Pompey Blackman 20
• Dick Tyng 10
• Boston Jackson 6
• Toby Lockman 18
• Cesar Clark 16
• Thomas Knox 16
• Scipio Osborne 2
• Scipio Apthorp 8
• Peter How 30
• John Thurbur 4
• Fortunatus Pitts 24

Did that work? Not in all cases. On 11 June 1766, four years later, the selectmen’s records say: “Order was this Day issued to Tobias [Lockman, presumably] & Scepio (late Capt. Fayerweathers) Free Negros, to work on the High Way before the Market, four Days each, there being Several Years duty due from them.”

Through one method or another, free black Bostonians kept resisting the town’s demands for free labor. And the town evidently lacked the means or will to force the issue.

This was, of course, the same period when Boston’s Whigs were talking more and more about the importance of ”liberty,” making slavery and its remnants harder to defend. In the 1770s the Massachusetts General Court voted to end the slave trade. One of the men being pursued for work in 1762, Lancaster Hill, would sign a petition to the legislature seeking an end to slavery fifteen years later, as shown above.

The last sign of this law that I spotted in the selectmen’s records appeared on 17 June 1767: “Voted, that Mr. John Sweetser be directed to procure two Pick Axes, & two Wheelbarrows, and four Shovels, for the use of those Negros that may be imployed on the High Way,—and that those Tools are to be left in his care, he to be accountable for them.” Yet it’s unclear who actually used those tools and on what terms.

The selectmen of Boston never officially discussed drafting black men to work again. There were plenty of discussions about streets needing repair in the town records from 1769 to the start of the Revolutionary War, but no lists of black citizens or discussions of how to compel them to work.

TOMORROW: One last gasp.