A Boston Stone
HERE LYES Ye.Kelly Thomas, director of the Historic Burying Grounds Initiative for the Boston Parks and Recreation Department, told WBZ: “I was reviewing the photos of headstones, and then I noticed that the stone only had one name.” A geographic name, at that. That hinted the person buried there had been an enslaved man.
BODY OF BOSTON
AGED 70 YEARS
DECd. FEBy. Ye. 28
1 7 2 8
Some documentary research turned up records of such a man. Indeed, Gloria McCahon Whiting discussed Sebastian’s marriage to Jane Lake at length in her 2024 book, Belonging: An Intimate History of Slavery and Family in Early New England. Judge Samuel Sewall helped to negotiate the terms of that union at the same time he was writing The Selling of Joseph, his pioneering but self-suppressed anti-slavery pamphlet.
On 13 Feb 1701, after protracted discussions between the couple’s two owners, the judge married the couple. Sebastian’s owner, John Waite, died the next year. Six years after that, when the Boston selectmen listed free black men in town they put to work mending roads (since those men were free/barred from militia training), one of those men was identified as “Bastion Waite.”
Interestingly, Sebastian’s wife came to be known as Jane Basteen and then Jane Boston, taking (or being assigned) her husband’s name while he was assigned his late owner’s surname. As Whiting pointed out, Sabastian would name his second son Joseph, echoing Sewall’s pamphlet. Meanwhile, Sebastian’s name evolved into “Boston.”
The issue of the New-England Weekly Journal dated 24 Feb 1729 included this death notice:
On the 14th. Instant [i.e., of this month] died here a Negro Freeman named Boston, in an advanced Age, and on the 17th, was very decently Buried. A long Train follow’d him to the Grave; it’s said about 150 Blacks, and about 50 Whites, several Magistrates, Ministers, Gentlemen, &c.——The carved gravestone, whether paid for by Boston’s estate or by his friends, was another sign of his standing in the community. It is, Mayor Michelle Wu now notes, “one of the oldest gravestones of a free Black person in America.”
He having borne the Character of a sober Virtuous Liver, and of a very trusty honest and faithful Servant to all that employ’d him, and having acquir’d to himself the general Love and Esteem of his Neighbours by a Readiness to do any good Offices in his power for every one; his Funeral was attended with uncommon Respects, and his Death much lamented.
At first I was confused by the different death dates stated in the newspaper and on the gravestone. But then I realized the stone was written in the Old Style, Julian date system while the newspaper followed New Style, Gregorian dating decades before the British Empire adopted it officially.
2 comments:
There's still a discrepancy in the dates, John, between the newspaper and the gravestone. You're adding where you should be subtracting.
If we assume that the newspaper date of death, February 14, 1729, is indeed New Style (Gregorian), then the Old Style (Julian) date would be February 3, 1728/29, a difference of 11 days. This is 25 days off from the gravestone date of February 28, 1728.
If the newspaper date is Old Style, then it's nearly a year after the date of the gravestone.
The slash in the year is because the Old Style New Year officially started on March 25, but some people did observe it on January 1. Thus, to avoid ambiguity, dates in the first three months of the year were often given in the slash format.
In Britain and its colonies the switch from Old Style to New Style was in September 1752.
It appears that further investigation may be warranted here.
I’m just quoting the gravestone (visible here) and the New-England Weekly Journal newspaper, which stated two different death dates for Sebastian/Boston and used two different dating systems (neither adding “O.S.” or “N.S.” or other clues for readers).
Mary Farwell Ayer’s checklist of Boston newspapers, published by the Colonial Society in 1907, reported that the Weekly Journal used New Style from its launch in 1727. That surprised me, but it explained most of the difference between the two death dates.
Indeed there’s still a mystery. But a discrepancy of a few weeks is easier to comprehend than a discrepancy of nearly a year.
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