Slavery/Antislavery in New England

This publication is a collection of papers presented in at the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife conference in June of 2003. The purpose of the conference was to examine a New England perspective on American slavery, not only enslaved African and African Americans, but also Native American slaves and other captive people. This volume tries to examine the larger issues of slavery (and the attempt to abolish slavery) raised in New England society over the past four hundred years.

The following is a list of the title and author of each paper:  Slavery in Boston Households, 1647-1770 by Peter Benes, “Sold to Mayntence a Bastard”: Sylvannus Warro’s story by M. Michelle Jarrett Morris, From Goddess of Love to Unloved Wife: Naming Slaves and Redeeming Masters in Eighteenth-Century New England by Richard A. Bailey, Pauper Apprenticeship in Narragansett Country: A Different Name for Slavery in Early New England by Ruth Wallis Herndon and Ella Wilcox Sekatau, “That the name of slave may not more be heard”: The New Hampshire Petition for Freedom, 1779 by Valerie Cunningham, The Anti-Man-Hunting League: “Kidnapping” the Slave Hunter by Jennifer S. Alpert, Radical Reform in Public Sentiment: Lydia Dixon and the Dover, New Hampshire, Ladies’ Antislavery Society by Jody R. Fernald, Enslavement, Freedom, Possibility, and Poverty: Four Generations of Quash Gomer’s Family in Connecticut, 1748-1864 by Diane Cameron, Calvin T. Swan, African-American Carpenter in Rural Massachusetts by Elizabeth A. Congdon, Freedom in the Archives: The Pension Case of Primus Hall by Margot Minardi, “The Black First”: Crispus Attucks and William Cooper Nell by Tavia Nyong’o, “One Night Only!: Blackface Minstrelsy in Nineteenth–Century Northampton, Massachusetts by Stephanie Dunson.