“About 18 years old, uncommonly large of his age”

Earlier this month I wrote about Dick Morey, a young boy of African descent indentured to David S. Greenough of Jamaica Plain in the 1780s as the commonwealth’s law was shifted away from the slavery system.

I couldn’t find anything more about that child, but Wayne Tucker of the Eleven Names Project spotted a newspaper advertisement that must refer to him under a different name.

On 4 July [!] 1798, the Columbian Centinel ran this ad:

ONE DOLLAR REWARD.

RAN away from the Subscriber on the morning of the 21st inst. [i.e., of this month] an indented Molatto Servant by the name of Dick Welsh, about 18 years old, uncommonly large of his age; carried off with him a new broad cloth Coat; a chocolate colour’d short Coat; one fustian short coat; a drab colour’d cloth great coat almost new; one spotted velvet and several other Waistcoats; 3 pair tow Trowsers; 2 pair nankin Overhalls; 3 new tow Shirts; 1 linen do. 2 round Hatts, &c. &c. Whoever will apprehend said ran away and return him to the Subscriber at Jamaica Plains (Roxbury,) shall be entitled to the above reward.

All masters of vessels and others are hereby cautioned against harbouring or concealing said ran away, if they wish to avoid the penalty of the law.

DAVID S. GREENOUGH
Roxbury, June 25, 1798.

The same notice ran again a week later.

Both little Dick Morey and this teenager called Dick Welsh were born in 1780 and “Molatto.” It’s so unlikely that Greenough had two indentured servants matching that description, both named Dick, that this advertisement must refer to the same person.

Among the notable details in this ad is the phrase “about 18 years old, uncommonly large of his age.” That’s a reminder that people reached puberty later in the early modern period, so eighteen-year-old males still had significant physical growth ahead of them. It also gives us a peek at Dick Welsh as an individual.

The advertisement said Welsh took away a lot of clothing—far more than listed in similar ads. He probably planned to sell most of those garments to have money for a longer trip. All told, that clothing was worth more than the dollar Greenough was offering for his indentured teenager—I’ll discuss that promised reward later.

Back in 1785 Greenough and John Morey referred to this child as “known by the Name of Dick”; most slaves were not acknowledged to have surnames. But a year later Dick’s relationship to Greenough was put on a new legal basis when the selectmen indentured the boy, and they called him “Dick Morey.” Twelve years after that, Greenough stated he was “Dick Welsh.”

It wasn’t unusual for African-Americans to change their names in this period (or to convince the authorities to refer to them by names they were already using) as they developed their own identities, no longer bound to masters.

I wondered if the Morey surname implied something about this boy’s father, but the selectmen may simply have chosen it because John Morey was Dick’s last owner. As for the new surname “Welsh,” did that indicate the boy had a familial tie to a man in Roxbury named Welsh (or Welch, or Walsh, or even Weld)? Was it an ethnic signifier for a father in town during the war? Or did Dick adopt that name out of admiration for someone? We don’t know.

The second advertisement indicates Dick Welsh was still free as of 11 July—almost three weeks after he left Greenough’s house. It’s possible he came back, or was made to come back, to serve out his term until age twenty-one. It’s also possible he made good his escape.

TOMORROW: Rewards for runaways.

Seeking John Morey in Roxbury

There were two generations of men named John Morey (also spelled Mory) in Roxbury.

The first John Morey was born in 1687 and married a woman named Hannah. They had several children, including a baby named John in 1736 who died early and another named John born on 23 Jan 1738. The couple’s daughters married into the Pierpoint and Turrell families.

This John Morey became prominent and wealthy. In 1734 he served as one of the two coroners of Suffolk County. As of 1741, he was using the suffix “Esq.” in a newspaper advertisement. In 1745 and 1753, Morey took in poor teenagers under indenture from the Boston Overseers of the Poor.

Morey also owned enslaved people. According to Hannah Mather Crocker, he was the owner of a mason named John Marcy, whom he hired out for jobs in Boston. Marcy was evangelized by hearing the Rev. George Whitefield, joined the Rev. John Moorhead’s church, married an enslaved servant of Lt. Gov. William Dummer, and eventually gained his freedom.

That John Morey died in 1771. He left an estate valued at almost £3,400. It included a large farm and lots of livestock, but also an eight-day clock, a map of the city of London, and five books—more luxury goods than an ordinary farmer had. He was labeled a “Gentleman” in his son’s newspaper advertisement settling the estate.

Also on that 1771 estate inventory were:

• …a Nego [sic] Boy Named Cato about 12 Years Old…[valued at £]32.0.0
• …a Negro Garl About 11 Years Old…26.13.4
• …Ditto Named Bino About 7 Years Old…16.0.0
• …Ditto Named Zippra an Inferm garl…6.0.0

It looks like the clock went to the West Roxbury meetinghouse. At least, the publication of an 1853 sermon referred to the meetinghouse having that clock with Morey’s name as donor on it. The church also received a silver baptismal basin in 1774; I’m guessing that was given by the younger John Morey but at the behest of his father.

Back in 1768, that second-generation John Morey had turned thirty and married Mary Cheney, born in 1743. The following year, that couple had their first baby, a son they naturally named John. He was followed by Hannah in 1771, Ebenezer Cheaney in 1774, and Susannah in 1776.

Mary’s father was Ebenezer Cheney (1699–1780) of Roxbury. His will left her considerable real estate in Middleborough. The couple prepared to move south. On 2 Oct 1783 John Morey advertised in the Independent Chronicle to sell “A very valuable Farm in Roxbury…containing one hundred and fifty Acres,” plus “Salt Marsh” and “near twenty Acres of good Wood Land.” Interested parties could speak with Morey or three of his neighbors, one being Eleazer Weld, Esq. Morey also called in his debts.

In March and April 1785, four Boston newspapers ran identically worded advertisements announcing the sale “By Publick Vendue [i.e., auction], on the premises, the Monday the 25th day of April next, The valuable FARM of Mr. John Morey, lying in Roxbury.” Reflecting the postwar economic situation, this ad said:

N.B. The payment will be made easy to purchasers, as the whole sum will not be immediately wanted, and government securities will be taken at their common rate of discount.

This time people could inquire of Weld and two other neighbors, but Morey was no longer said to be living on the property.

The facts of John Morey’s life shed a little light on the sale/indenture of the boy named Dick Morey in July 1785, discussed yesterday. For one thing, Morey was leaving that child behind in Roxbury as he moved to a new farm in Middleborough. David Stoddard Greenough paid him £5 for Dick’s next sixteen years, less than the value of a seven-year-old girl for life back in 1771. 

More ominously, it looks like that enslaved girl named Bino whom Morey inherited in 1771 was probably the mother he called “my Negro servant Binah” in 1785. She had given birth around 1780 when she was about sixteen years old. We don’t know who the father was, but he was white since Bino was listed as “a Negro Garl” and her son as “a Molatto Boy.” The list of possible fathers has to start with John Morey himself.

Finally, the Eleazer Weld who helped in selling the Morey farm was also one of the magistrates who affirmed Dick Morey’s indenture in 1787.

John Morey died in Middleborough in 1800, his widow Mary in 1821.

David S. Greenough and his wife Anna had a son (shown above) in the Loring Greenough House in 1787. Anna also had one surviving child from her first marriage. Those boys presumably grew up with Dick Morey as a household servant or farm hand in between their ages but not in their class.

However, I haven’t found any record of Dick Morey past those two documents from 1785–1787.

Dick Morey “in the Capacity of a Servant”

As I mentioned yesterday, David Stoddard Greenough, the lawyer and landowner who took control of what’s now the Loring Greenough House in Jamaica Plain, secured the labor of a small black boy in 1785.

The Massachusetts Historical Society shares the documents of that transaction on its website.

That happened a couple of years after Massachusetts’s highest court rendered chattel slavery unenforceable in the commonwealth. However, another widespread system of unpaid labor continued to be in force: indenturing apprentices.

Parents with teenagers, particularly boys, voluntarily entered into those agreements to provide the children with training they could use to establish themselves in professions and support themselves and their families as adults. The master didn’t pay the young worker but was responsible for feeding, clothing, sheltering, and medicining him.

In addition, local law provided for a town’s selectmen or Overseers of the Poor to indenture children born to unwed mothers or whose families couldn’t support them. Those indentured boys and girls might be separated from their relatives, treated as servants, taught lesser skills, and turned out with few resources to fend for themselves when they came of age. But, society felt, this was better than letting them starve.

In July 1785 Greenough paid £5 to John Morey of Roxbury for a little boy’s labor. The bill of sale leaves no doubt that this deal treated little Dick as property:

I do hereby acknowledge Do give, grant, & sell unto him the said David, his Heirs or assigns a Molatto Boy of Five years Old called and known by the Name of Dick who was Born in my House of my Negro servant Binah. to live with and serve him the said David, his Heirs, or assigns in the Capacity of a Servant untill he shall attain to the Age of Twenty one Years & I do hereby renounce and foreverquit claim to him the said David all right & title I now have or ever had to the said Molotto Boy

Unlike the sales records for enslaved people, however, that document put a sixteen-year limit on Greenough’s claim. It acknowledged that Dick would eventually be an adult and therefore free.

In September 1786 Greenough (who was, after all, a lawyer) put his relationship to “Dick Morey” on a different legal basis, more solid under the new Massachusetts law. Using a standard printed form, the selectmen of Roxbury indentured the boy to Greenough.

To do so, the men producing this contract had to cross out the parts of the form about how Dick “doth voluntarily and of his own free Will and Accord, and with the Consent of his” parents, bind himself to Greenough. The boy was too young to enter such an agreement. His mother, Binah, wasn’t mentioned at all; she may have been dead, absent, or shunted aside.

Greenough promised to teach Dick “the Art, Trade or Calling of a Farmer,” suggesting the boy was supposed to work around the Roxbury estate. That was basic, not specialized, training. But with an indenture Greenough did make a legal, handwritten promise to supply “good and sufficient meat, Drink, washing, Lodging & Clothing” for the next fifteen years. Again, that was more than slave owners ever had to promise.

These documents are thus evidence of Massachusetts’s transition away from legalized slavery. One possible interpretation is that Greenough found a way around the court’s decision to exploit a vulnerable child for sixteen years. Another is that he and the Roxbury selectmen used the legal tools of their society to secure a home for little Dick until he became an adult. And in fact both those readings could be true.

TOMORROW: The Morey household.