Valuing the Philip Mortimer Estate’s Human Property

After Philip Mortimer’s death, his executors began to work through his substantial estate in Middletown, Connecticut.

As quoted yesterday, executors Elihu Starr and George Phillips advertised for creditors and debtors to come settle their accounts with George Starr, acting as their attorney. And also for people to bring back any borrowed books.

In August 1795 the executors submitted Mortimer’s will and codicil to the probate court. The man’s estate was appraised at almost £5,000.

That legal paperwork included another list of the people Mortimer had enslaved, most of whom his will freed according to one schedule or another:

• Briston, aged 60, called Bristol in the will
• Jack
• Dublin, not mentioned in the will
• Prince, “sick with the yaws”
• Peter, “on board man of war and likely dead”
• Sophy, labeled a “girl” like the following two but old enough to have three sons; the Barbour collection says she was born in 1752 
• Silvy, born 1773 
• Peg, born 1777 as Margaret—though other documents estimate her to have been about 20 years old in 1794
• Lester, born 1787, first of three sons of Jack and Sophy
• Dick, born 1789 as Richard 
• John, born 1790
• Rachel, a “girl child,” born 1793, perhaps the daughter of Hagar, mentioned in the will, or Amarillas, born 1770

As property, all these people were assigned a monetary value. But those low values reflected how Connecticut was turning away from slavery. Mortimer was the state’s biggest single slaveholder in 1790, but his human property comprised less than .1% of his estate.

Jack was valued at £10, Sophy and the three boys at £5 each. The women Silvy and Peg were each valued at £1. The other four men and the little girl were assigned a market value of zero. That makes sense for Peter, who was out of reach in at least one way, but those prices suggest the appraisers thought any purchaser would have a hard time compelling most of the other people to work, or getting more value out of them than the cost of maintaining them.

In contrast, back in 1740 the inventory of Daniel Jones of Colchester valued a “young man” and a “negro wench” at £150 each, “an old negro man” at £40, and a boy at £25. Two years later, Samuel Allyn of Windsor priced his “servants, Cyrus and William,” at £100 apiece.

Almost all of the people listed in Philip Mortimer’s inventory appear to have still been living on his estate or nearby, continuing their work in his ropewalk or fields or house. Indeed, Jack and Sophy had another baby, Charles, in 1795; the local vital records assigned him to the Mortimer household even though the patriarch was dead.

The one exception among those workers was Peter. Mortimer mentioned him in the 1792 will and 1794 codicil, meaning he was still in Middletown then. Had he left for the sea after the old man’s death? If so, he was exercising the freedom Mortimer promised, but the appraisers didn’t think that had turned out well for him.

The probate court accepted Philip Mortimer’s will. It even accepted his codicils, one unsigned and the other unwitnessed. Though he was in his tomb, the man’s wishes still carried some authority in Middlesex County, Connecticut.

But there was one wrinkle: George Starr asked the court to relieve him of his job as executor.

TOMORROW: That freed Starr to contest the will.

The Last Last Will of Philip Mortimer

After Philip Mortimer completed his six-page handwritten will, he signed it in front of three witnesses, all neighbors in Middletown, Connecticut: Timothy Starr, Joseph Sage, and Elihu Starr.

Elihu Starr was also one of the three men Mortimer designated as his coexecutors, along with George Phillips and George Starr, the husband of his niece. At least two of those men would need to agree on any action regarding the estate.

As noted yesterday, the will also granted Elihu Starr the labor of Peg, an enslaved young woman, until she turned twenty-six.

In October 1793 Mortimer wrote a codicil to that will, micromanaging his estate a bit more. At the top of his list of people to be freed were the couple Jack and Sophy. He added two provisions for their benefit:

• Sophy should receive “my chest which I had made at the beginning of the late War, also my wash kettle who contains about four or five gallons, also one small kettle which contains about eight gallons, also so much of the furniture as either two of my coexecutors shall see fitt to give her.”
• Jack and Sophy could “use and enjoy the Interest I have in a Fishing Place in Chatham…during their Natural Lives,” with their three sons inheriting that right.

Then in March 1794 Mortimer, now in his mid-eighties, started to copy the entire will. Unable to complete the task himself, he called in Elihu Starr. Mortimer made only one revision: to grant the two ropemakers Prince and Peter their freedom on his death rather than three years later.

Mortimer signed the papers that Elihu Starr had written for him. Starr didn’t add his own signature, however, nor did anyone else.

The old man died just a few days later on 15 Mar 1794. One week later the Middlesex Gazette reported:

Died, on Saturday last, Capt. PHILIP MORTIMER, of this City, aged 84.—His Funeral was attended, on Tuesday last, with all the honors becoming his most worthy and respectable Character.

On 30 August this notice appeared in the same newspaper:

TWELVE Months from the Date being allowed, by the hon. Court of Probate for the Creditors to the Estate of PHILIP MORTIMER, Esq. deceased, to being in their Claims; those who neglect to exhibit them within the Time will be debarred Recovery. All indebted to said Estate are requested to make immediate Payment, to GEORGE STARR, Attorney to the Executors.

ELIHU STARR, GEORGE PHILLIPS, Executors.
Middletown, August 25, 1794.

ANY Person who may have borrowed BOOKS of the Deceased, in his Life, are desired to return them to George Starr.

TOMORROW: Tied up in court.

“Verging fast towards its Last Period in this Stage of Existence”

In 1792, Philip Mortimer, having turned eighty, drew up his will.

In doing so, Mortimer appears to have aimed to preserve his good name in Middletown, Connecticut, in three ways:

• He bequeathed land and money to the city to build a granary and to stock it with two thousand pounds of grains. He also left land for a cemetery; Middletown still has a Mortimer cemetery.
• He promised freedom to all the people he held in bondage, under various conditions, in tune with Connecticut’s general turn against slavery (but not yet).
• He left his mansion, ropewalk, and other property to Philip Mortimer Starr on the condition that that boy—then nine years old—legally take the surname of Mortimer when he came of age.

Little Philip was Mortimer’s great-nephew, son of his niece Ann and her husband George Starr. Mortimer and his wife had had no children of their own, so he had brought that niece over from Ireland. The Starrs had named their children Martha Mortimer Starr and Philip Mortimer Starr after her benefactors.

In the will Mortimer wrote of having adopted both Ann and young Philip. In his study of Prince Mortimer, A Century in Captivity, Denis R. Caron made much of how Mortimer had never formally adopted those relatives. But such arrangements weren’t so formal in the eighteenth century as more recent law demands.

Caron also interpreted Philip Mortimer’s will as expressing hostility toward George Starr since it didn’t leave his estate to Ann (and thus to her husband as well) but merely let them use it until their son was old enough to inherit. But to me it looks like Philip Mortimer’s driving motivation was to give that boy the maximum incentive to carry on the Mortimer name. And there were plenty of precedents for that sort of bequest.

According to the legal analysis of the will, if young Philip didn’t take steps to become a Mortimer, then the estate would go to a son of his older sister (then only fifteen) as long as that youth would change his surname. And if the family still didn’t come up with a boy willing to carry on the name Mortimer, then everything would go to the Episcopal church.

As for the enslaved workers, Mortimer tailored his grants to each family unit:

• Bristol and Tamer: freedom for Bristol (no emancipation mentioned for Tamer, so she might already have been free) and the use of their “Garden Spot and House thereon as it is now fenced” for the rest of their lives, after which the land would revert to the estate.
• Hagar and her daughter: freedom plus £5 to “buy her Mourning” for his funeral.
• Jack and Sophy, and their three sons: freedom and use of “one and three-quarters Acres Land” during their lives, after which that land would be divided equally among their sons Lester, Dick, and John, all still under age fourteen. Those boys were to be “kept to School until they arrive at the age of Fourteen Years then put to Apprentice by my Executors, the two Eldest to be put to House Joiners until they arrive to the Age of Twenty-one Years and then give them their Freedom.”
• Amarillas and her children: freedom and “one Rood Land,” probably a quarter-acre.
• Silvy: freedom.
• Peg: freedom when she turned twenty-six; until then she was supposed to work for Elihu Starr, one of the executors.
• Peter and Prince, ropemakers: freedom in three years, but until then “both be kept at spinning” and “to live with and serve Capt. George Starr.”

Back in February 1790, George Starr had advertised in the local Middlesex Gazette asking people to settle their debts since he “purposes to carry on the Rope-Making Business one Year more.” But he decided to stay in the business. Receiving three years of free labor from two experienced ropemakers would be a windfall.

TOMORROW: Legalities.

Independence and Enslavement in Middletown

At the end of the Revolutionary War, lots of things changed in Middletown, Connecticut.

In 1784, Hugh White left that town to start surveying an area of upstate New York that would become Whitestown. Relatives and neighbors would follow. The central part of that area would take the name Whitesboro and for a long time have an unfortunate town seal.

Other Middletown residents also moved west to lands made available by the U.S. victory over Britain and its Native allies. Retired general Samuel Holden Parsons became a director of the Ohio Land Company. He traveled to western Pennsylvania in November 1789 and drowned while canoeing.

There were also legal changes at home. The area around the Connecticut River port, where the merchants and ship-builders lived, incorporated itself as a city in 1784. Instead of a town meeting with nearly every farmer eligible to vote, the city of Middletown had a mayor, four aldermen, and ten “common-council-men” chosen from the upper class.

The first set of aldermen included two former generals—Comfort Sage and the ill-fated Parsons—plus Col. Matthew Talcott and, for old times’ sake, former militia captain Philip Mortimer.

Among the first common-council-men was the husband of Mortimer’s favored niece, George Starr, as well as Col. Return Jonathan Meigs.

Also in 1784, the state of Connecticut passed a Gradual Emancipation Act—so gradual that it didn’t actually emancipate anybody for another twenty-five years. Children born into slavery after 1 Mar 1784 would become free on their twenty-fifth birthdays.

The 1790 U.S. Census counted 2,648 people enslaved in Connecticut, alongside 2,771 free blacks. The person who owned the most other people in the state—eleven by official count—was Philip Mortimer.

Back in Boston, as we know from newspaper advertisements, Mortimer employed at least one Irish teenager at ropemaking in 1738, and he imported young indentured servants from Ireland in 1740 and 1741. Maybe he enslaved Africans then, too, but he was doing so in a big way (by New England standards) in 1790.

That number grew to seventeen by July 1792. Mortimer then listed the people working for him for free as:

• Bristol, married to Tamer
• Hagar and her daughter
• Jack, Sophy, and Sophy’s sons Lester, Dick, and John, all under age fourteen
• Amarillas and her children
• Silvy
• Peg, still under the age of twenty-six
• Peter and Prince

That first census also found that Mortimer was the only white person on his estate, the biggest in Middletown. Most of the people he claimed as property must have been his household and farm help. But Peter and Prince worked at his ropewalk as spinners.

TOMORROW: Freedom, but not yet.

Philip Mortimer, from Waterford to Boston to Middletown

The Mortimer brothers arrived in Boston from Waterford, Ireland, in the early 1700s. They appear to have come with a bit of money since they quickly set themselves up in businesses.

James Mortimer (c. 1704–1773) was a tallow chandler. On 16 Aug 1741 at King’s Chapel he married another arrival from Waterford: Hannah Alderchurch, twelve years his senior.

James Mortimer advertised “Good Dipp’d Tallow CANDLES” and “the best of IRISH BUTTER by the Firkin” from his shop near Clark’s Wharf, later Hancock’s Wharf. He prospered enough that by the 1760s he owned at least one enslaved worker, named Yarrow, and Apple Island in Boston harbor.

Peter Mortimer (c. 1715–1773) was a ship’s captain.

The middle of these three brothers, Philip Mortimer (c. 1710–1794), was a ropemaker. He married Martha Blin (1716–1773) on 14 Nov 1742, also at King’s Chapel. Though she was said to be “of Boston,” she came from a Wethersfield, Connecticut, family.

Philip Mortimer had a higher profile than his brothers. He was in Boston by 1735, when he witnessed a deed. Two years later, he was one of the founders of the Charitable Irish Society. On 17 Oct 1738 Philip Mortimer shared an advertisement with two other ropemakers, each seeking the return of a teen-aged indentured servant.

On 11 Aug 1740, the Boston Gazette carried this notice:

Just Imported and to be Sold by Edward Alderchurch and Philip Mortimer, on board the Schooner Two Friends, Thomas Carnell Master, now lying at the Long Wharfe near the upper Crane, Choice Welch Coal, a Parcel of likely Boys and Girls; good Rice, Virginia Pork, good Cordage, Cod-Lines and Twine, all at a very reasonable Rate, for ready Money.

A year later a similar ad appeared in the Boston Evening-Post, this one adding that the “likely Boys and Girls” were “fit for Town or Country; the Girls can spin fine Thread, and do any sort of Houshold Work.” They were evidently more indentured youths from Ireland.

By 1749, according to the American-Irish Historical Society’s Recorder in 1901, Philip and Martha Mortimer had moved from Boston to Middletown, Connecticut. As the name implies, that was an inland town, halfway between the towns of Hartford and Wethersfield and the Connecticut River’s mouth at Saybrook. Nonetheless, Middletown had small shipyards, and Philip Mortimer saw the potential to build a ropewalk running perpendicular off the main street.

Mortimer quickly became a big fish in that small pond: town official, militia captain, Anglican church warden, Freemason. He owned the grandest house in town, shown above.

Eventually Philip Mortimer also owned an enslaved rope spinner named Prince. If the man later known as Prince Mortimer was indeed born in 1724, as calculated from his reported age when he died, and brought to Connecticut as a child, then he was in his late twenties and had been worked in Middletown for almost two decades before Philip Mortimer arrived. On the other hand, if Prince Mortimer was born later, then he could have arrived at the ropewalk as a child or teenager, fresh from being kidnapped and transported across the Atlantic, and immediately put into training to make rope.

COMING UP: Deaths and marriages.

Walking in Prince Mortimer’s Footsteps

Last week Connecticut Public reported how Middletown, Connecticut, renamed a street after Prince Mortimer, a man enslaved in that town before and after the Revolutionary War.

Prince Mortimer Avenue was once a walkway connecting the Irish-born trader Philip Mortimer’s mansion and his ropewalk, where he assigned his bondsman Prince to work as a spinner.

In 2006, Denis R. Caron published a book about the enslaved ropemaker: A Century in Captivity: The Life and Trials of Prince Mortimer, a Connecticut Slave.

More recently, John Mills has delved into Prince Mortimer’s life, sharing his work on his nonprofit website and at Enslaved.org. Mills led the push for memorializing Prince Mortimer, as the Middletown Press reported in 2023.

In a Commonplace review, Watson Dennison complained that Caron’s book about Prince Mortimer actually had very little to say about him, and a lot more about the Connecticut prison system in which he spent the last years of his life after being convicted of attempted murder. Dennison also felt that Caron mistakenly portrayed slavery in Connecticut as “a benign institution,” based on outdated analyses.

Studying the latest scholarship is something an author can control. Having detailed sources isn’t. For example, Caron found that no record of Prince Mortimer’s criminal trial survives. So unfortunately there’s no way to recount, much less assess, the evidence in that case.

The sources we do have can also be shaky. The earliest author to write about Prince Mortimer was Richard H. Phelps, who in 1844 published the first edition of his Newgate of Connecticut. Having grown up near that notorious prison made from the Simsbury copper mine, Phelps seems to have created this book for the edification of tourists.

Apparently Phelps conversed with Prince Mortimer himself before his death in 1834. He said the aged inmate was “supposed to be 110 years old,” having been born in Guinea and kidnapped to America as a child. But of course we don’t have records to corroborate that age.

Phelps also described Prince Mortimer as an a war veteran:

He was a servant to different officers in the Revolutionary War—had been sent on errands by General [George] Washington, and said he had “straddled many a cannon when fired by the Americans at the British troops.”

Again, there’s no other record of such service. (And that’s not a safe way to fire a cannon.)

On the one hand, we want to respect the personal statements of Prince Mortimer, wrenched away from his family and terribly victimized through life. On the other hand, exaggerating one’s age, military service, and proximity to the beloved Washington were common fibs for old men in the early 1800s, white or black. Such claims might be most understandable coming from an old man forced into prison after a lifetime of slave labor who needed all the sympathy he could get. 

The earliest contemporaneous evidence about Prince Mortimer appears to be Philip Mortimer’s will, signed in 1792. That document makes clear that “my Negro Prince” was a valuable asset. While the merchant bequeathed freedom to most of the people he enslaved on his death, he wanted Prince and another man, Peter, to “be kept at spinning” in the ropewalk for the benefit of his niece’s husband, George Starr, for another three years.

It might be a mistake to accept Phelps’s 1844 statements as facts and anchor all other evidence about Prince Mortimer’s life to them. Caron and Mills describe Philip Mortimer sending his enslaved man Prince to war in 1780. Even though that man’s skills would probably have made him more valuable, to both his owner and the American cause, in the ropewalk. And even though he was, in their analysis, in his fifties and in poor health. And even though there’s no record of such an action.

At the same time, there’s solid contemporaneous evidence that Philip Mortimer enslaved Prince Mortimer in Middleton, making him work in the ropewalk. He did walk the path now known as Prince Mortimer Avenue as an enforced laborer.

TOMORROW: The Mortimers of Boston.