“So much for smug assumptions”

Earlier this year the Yale Alumni Magazine ran a feature headlined “A reckoning with our past,” reexamining the university’s historic ties to slavery in America—and in India, where Elihu Yale made his fortune.

That prompted a striking letter from Chuck Banks, a member of the college’s class of 1959:

I was very struck (if that’s the right word) by the series “A Reckoning With Our Past” in your January/February issue. When I was a freshman, I took classes in Connecticut Hall without any notion of the role of enslaved persons in its construction, and I’ve recently become aware of the role of slaves in many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century public projects, including the White House.

Now I can’t look at these buildings without being reminded of what we owe to generations of slave labor.

Nevertheless, I’ve spent much of my life regarding slavery as a regrettable, tragic historical artifact, but one that didn’t personally affect me or my 11 generations of Yankee ancestors, all farmers and tradesmen. Surely none of them, who lived their entire lives in New England, could have been directly involved in exploiting slave labor.

Or so I thought. Some years ago, a friend who is a colonial history buff brought me a facsimile copy of a colonial-era newspaper which featured an “escaped slave” notice. The fugitive was described not by his name, but by his mutilations: a nick taken out of an ear, and a missing finger joint. The slave owner posting the notice was my fifth great-grandfather James Banks, who lived in the Greenwich/Banksville area of Connecticut in the 1700s.

So much for smug assumptions. Thanks for bringing the series to our attention.

This letter apparently refers to an advertisement that appeared in Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer for 15 Sept 1774, the New-York Journal on the same date, and the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury for 26 Sept 1774, as well as subsequent issues.

James Banks of North Castle, New York, was seeking “A NEGRO MAN, Named WILL, about 27 years of age.” Will had “part of his right ear cut off” and “a mark on the back side of his right hand,” the latter not necessarily an injury but close to the description in the letter. North Castle contains a neighborhood called Banksville, which also spills over into Greenwich and Stamford, Connecticut.

According to James Banks, Will was “very talkative.” In searching for this item, I found 160 advertisements using that phrase in 1774 and 1775 alone. It appears to have been a trope, and a trait that masters of slaves and indentured servants considered hard to change and thus identifying.