Collect Day #22 FOREVER UNKNOWNS
Jesus, who called Mary by name at your resurrection; we hold up, with broken hearts, the knowledge that countless of your children were deprived of their given names and identities, their families and their lives, through racism and enslavement; by your Spirit grant that we do more than mourn them. Give us courage and strength to see every friend and stranger as sacred and known by you. Help us to get beyond our sense of guilt and shame to stand beside the ostracized and fight oppression in our own day. Free us from our sense of helplessness so that we fight for every child separated from a loving family, and for each person whose name is obliterated by our institutions and policies. You call us by name; let us do the same for every person, because in your economy, there is no one of “no value”. This we ask in the name of Jesus, the Good Shepherd who calls us each by name. Amen.
DAY #22, March 30, 2019
FOREVER UNKNOWNS
Patricia Q. Wall
Enslaved Blacks were a presence in nearly every town and village in early New England, more so in some places than others. Estimated total, based on documents, was 17,000 enslaved persons between the 1630s and 1820s. However, that figure fails to include unknown numbers of uncounted children, young teenagers, some women, and persons over age forty.
While the following in no way justifies the institution of slavery, it is abundantly clear that Blacks’ unpaid, enforced labor and value as property aided in the settling of New England and the building of prosperity for hundreds of New England’s early settlers, craftsmen, merchants, and others. At the same time, the well-being of thousands of White families was substantially aided, and often dependent upon, the skills, labor, and innate wisdom of their enslaved Black “servants.”
But, except for a small number of individuals, there is no knowing about who the enslaved people were or their ancestral connections to Africa. Family and tribal links were destroyed and swept away. In historical records, Blacks are rendered anonymous either by generic references or by slave owner-assigned, meaningless, and often ridiculous one-word names. And, in documents of the period, they were always seen as property:
- A shipment of six new Negro girls.
- A mulatto boy, aged two.
- Item: two cows, twelve sheep, a dozen hens and a Negro boy and girl.
- Item: a pair of old moose horns and a Negro man.
- An old Negro woman of no value.
- For sale: a quantity of boys and girls of the blackest sort newly arrived in Kittery from Guinea.
Records referring to enslaved persons by a one-word name offer no distinction, especially when the same names were used repeatedly. Among the enslaved in Kittery, for example, new research shows eight Pompeys, six Princes, thirteen Phillises, and nine Dinahs. Some of the duplicates might represent the same person being re-sold or passed along to different owners, but there is no way of knowing that.*
At the time of the American Revolution, and during the gradual decline of enslavement in northern New England, many Blacks living independently or free chose or were assigned a surname. But, though that provided more distinction among individuals, it mainly served the needs of White officialdom. Most surnames were that of a former owner, European-derived, or related to a trade. Many chose “Freeman” as a surname for obvious reasons.
Enslavement’s ending merely marked the beginning of further tragedies and suffering: Blacks’ struggle to find work and survive in a climate of growing racism and ostracism while also dealing with pernicious psychological damage to self-worth and personal identity. Regrettably, these struggles continue to confront Blacks today.See LIVES OF CONSEQUENCE: Blacks in Early Kittery & Berwick in the Massachusetts Province of Maine. Patricia Q. Wall. (Portsmouth Marine Society Press, Portsmouth, NH 2017)
