Before Amherst was Amherst: Eighteenth Century Foundations, Part I

This is the first in a series of research blogs that will explore the history of enslavement at or adjacent the site now home to Amherst College.

On January 29, 1749, Reverend David Parsons (1712-1781) of Hadley 3^rd precinct performed two baptisms: one for his day-old son, David Jr.; the other for a child named Goffy. The baptismal record marking this event – a document housed at the Jones Library in Amherst, Massachusetts – does not indicate how old Goffy was at the time, describing him only as “Goffy a negro; of Pompey & Rose”; some historians have assumed he was a young boy.

As the first minister of Hadley’s 3rd precinct, an area incorporated in 1759 as the town of Amherst, Rev. Parsons was an important community leader and the patriarch of what was eventually a prominent Amherst family. After his death in 1781, he was succeeded in his ministry by his son, David Parsons, D.D. (1749-1823), the same person who was baptized alongside Goffy that January day. As beneficiary of his father’s legacy, Parsons D.D. was able to provide significant social and financial backing to local causes, including the establishment of Amherst Academy in 1814 and Amherst College in 1821. Histories of Black lives in Amherst have long concluded that young Goffy and his parents were enslaved by Rev. Parsons, Sr. Over time, this narrative expanded to include a possible site of their enslavement: at or near the town’s first meetinghouse which, in the 1700s, sat atop the little hill now home to the Octagon. What are the roots of this narrative of enslavement on the west side of the College’s campus? The College may not have been established until 1821, but its eighteenth-century foundations warrant a closer look.

Christian Ministers & Slavery

Christian leaders throughout the colonial Atlantic world played pivotal roles in perpetuating institutionalized slavery. While there certainly were some who abhorred it, it was not until the late 1700s and early 1800s that white Protestant leaders, primarily those in the American North and England, helped forge a path toward abolishing the trade. In the 1720s, Rev. Parsons prepared for the ministry at Harvard, during which time the school’s president and stewards enslaved multiple people on campus, some of whom waited on the college’s students; perhaps Parsons was one of them.¹

Following his graduation in 1729, Parsons set out to make his own way, itinerating through Western Massachusetts at the start of the religious movement known as the First Great Awakening. He would have crossed paths with religious leaders who, like his Harvard educators, were also enslavers, including notable Protestant forebears Rev. Jonathan Edwards (Northampton) and Rev. Isaac Chauncey (Hadley). Many revivalist preachers were known for leading multiracial congregations, encouraging the “Christianization” of all, especially Indigenous and African-descended people. Proslavery ministers cultivated diversity while simultaneously baptizing, praying with, and ministering to the non-white people whom they enslaved.

In 1739, when Parsons agreed to settle in what was then East Hadley/Hadley 3^rd precinct, he was presented with the opportunity to purchase over 400 acres at auction, which he did.² No documentary evidence is known to exist for his having also purchased human property to support his agricultural pursuits. However, his circumstances at the time – his probable exposure to slavery while at Harvard, his access to Northampton merchants who dealt in human property (some of these merchants he was distantly related to), and the fact that he did not yet have children to help him manage his land – increase the likelihood that he was an enslaver early in his tenure as Amherst’s inaugural minister.³

While no records exist for Parsons’ having purchased Pompey, Rose, or Goffy, records definitively show he was an enslaver by 1760. Based on a newspaper advertisement – or, more accurately, a “runaway” ad – Parsons was the self-proclaimed “master” of at least one man, Pomp.⁴

This ad provides excellent details about Pomp – we know he was literate, how tall he was, that he may have been in his mid-twenties at the time of his departure from Amherst. It also tells us much about the relationship of Rev. Parsons to slavery, namely his objectification of another human being and his willingness to spend money on retrieving what – or rather, who- he felt was his rightful property.

It remains unclear whether this Pomp is the same man as Pompey, the individual listed in the baptismal record. Pomp(ey) was a fairly common name for an enslaved man, and there were several people with this name who lived in the wider Amherst area during the mid-1700s. Some historians have concluded these two men are the same person, but upon what evidence is this claim based?

Archival Silences and Assumptions

Unfortunately, no journals, letters, or other papers are known to exist for the Amherst arm of the extensive Parsons family. This is unfortunate for many reasons, not least of which is that such materials often serve as entry points for learning about marginalized groups. If we had Rev. Parsons’ journals or daybooks, we would probably be able to know much more about Pomp(ey), Rose, and Goffy; we might more easily glean if Pompey and Pomp were the same person. In the absence of such records, we historians are left to cobble together a narrative using what does exist. Thus far, the scholarship of renowned local historian, James Avery Smith, has shed the most light on the history of Pomp and Parsons, and serves as an excellent example of the sort of scrappy archival history work I’ve just described.

For over 25 years, Smith’s book The History of the Black Population of Amherst, Massachusetts, 1728-1870 (1999) has provided a wealth of resources to historians, genealogists, and casual researchers alike.⁵ It is primarily a compilation of short summary profiles about free and enslaved Black people living in the Amherst area during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Ten years later, former Physics professor and Amherst alum, Robert Romer (’52), published Slavery in the Connecticut Valley of Massachusetts (2009).⁶ The focus of Romer’s book is Black life in Deerfield, but the study includes other towns in the Valley as well, Amherst among them; he leaned heavily upon Smith’s work in the publication of the Amherst chapter. Smith appears to have been first to connect dots between Pompey of the baptismal record and Pomp the alleged runaway, the result of which was to conclude they were the same person; Romer repeated this conclusion and others have followed in his example.

Today, historians and genealogists are privileged to have a vastly enhanced digital landscape at our fingertips, one far different from what Smith and Romer had access to in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The flip-side of this accessibility is that historical missteps are more easily noticed: a researcher’s misplaced assumptions; the limitations of the frameworks in which they were working. In the absence of additional documentation – financial records, Parsons’ journal, etc. – a juxtaposition of Pompey/Pomp in such close proximity to Rev. Parsons does seem like an obvious match. However, Goffy’s baptismal record is not proof that he or his parents were enslaved by Parsons, and the newspaper ad is not sufficient to conclude that Pomp and Pompey were one man. Maybe they were, but to claim as much without supporting documentation is, at this point, conjecture. It is entirely possible Pompey and Pomp were two different people.

In Part II of this blog series, we will look more closely at what else is known about Pomp, including an exploration into his life as an enslaved man in Chicopee, Massachusetts and his marriage to an enslaved woman, Betty, of Wethersfield, Connecticut.

 

1. See Chapter Two, “Slavery in New England and at Harvard,” in the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery project report. For more information on the history of slavery and race at elite institutions of higher learning, see Craig Steven Wilder’s Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013). ↩︎
2. Land sale to David Parsons from John Nash, Ebenezer Dickinson, Aaron Smith (acting as assessors). See “Massachusetts Land Records, 1620-1986,” images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G9ZH-G85F?wc=MCBL-SMS%3A361612401%2C361673701%26cc%3D2106411&i=518) Hampden > Deeds 1747-1750 vol R-S > image 519 of 692. ↩︎
3. Rev. David Parsons’ father (also Rev. David Parsons – there were a total of four) sold his Springfield-area property claims to Daniel Parsons in 1742. See “Massachusetts, Land Records, 1620-1986,” images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-99ZD-FKPP?cc=2106411&wc=MCBR-DT5%3A361612401%2C362430901)Hampden > Deeds 1744-1746 vol O > image 257 of 373. ↩︎
4. “Freedom seeker” is the preferred term for enslaved people who fled slavery and rightfully sought self-emancipation. ↩︎
5. James Avery Smith, The History of the Black Population of Amherst, Massachusetts, 1728-1870. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1999. ↩︎
6. Robert H. Romer, Slavery in the Connecticut Valley of Massachusetts. Amherst: Levellers Press, 2009. ↩︎