Before Amherst was Amherst: Eighteenth Century Foundations, Part II

This is the second in a series of research blogs that will explore the history of enslavement at or adjacent the site now home to Amherst College. For context, begin with Part I of the series.

In the first blog of this series, we looked at the origins of the historical narrative of slavery at or near what is today Amherst College. Now we will turn our attention to the several individuals who are believed to have been enslaved by the Parsons family: Goffy, Rose, Pomp(ey) and Betty.

Goffy

At this time, the baptismal record (referenced in Part I of this series) is the only known documentary evidence for Pompey, Rose, and Goffy together as a family unit. An extensive search of local and town records reveals no other mentions of Goffy anywhere. Of course, such documents could simply be lost, but the absence of further mention nonetheless sparks a few questions. For example, if Goffy was a newborn in January 1749, was he undergoing the Christian ritual of infant baptism, or was he baptized that winter day because he was ill and unlikely to live for very long? If he did not survive past infancy, this would certainly explain his absence from the record. But if he did survive, did he go by “Goffy” as an adult? Was this a childhood nickname that did not persist? Was this a misinterpreting or misspelling of his actual name?

It is possible that “Goffy” is a distortion of Cuffe or Kofi, the latter being of Akan origin which translates to “born on a Friday.”¹ The baptismal record tells us this ritual took place on Sunday, January 29, so it is possible he had been born just two days prior.² If “Goffy” is a distortion of the masculine Akan name Kofi/Cuffe, we can assume not only that he was a boy but also that he was a direct descendent of African parentage; one or both of his parents may have been first- or second-generation Africans. Individuals with Akan language affiliations typically had roots in what is today Ghana, then known as the Gold Coast, which in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a region that saw many enslaved people forcibly removed and relocated to the Americas. By the early 1700s, there were people with Akan names living throughout the Caribbean, the North American coast, and New York City.³ Historian John Thornton has studied the spread of Akan as a connective link among diasporic groups, significant “even for those who were not born into Akan-speaking communities in Africa,” as it became the “lingua franca.”⁴ Akan’s transition from a communication mode to a tool for sociocultural organization is noteworthy, because while it may have begun as “a desperate measure of basic communication early in the enslavement experience of Akans in the Americas” it possessed “a momentum that was reinforced by the constant stream of newly arrived and similarly desperate Africans” and persisted.⁵ Thus, it is entirely possible that African-descended individuals who found themselves in the Amherst/Hadley area were Akan-speaking people whose shared language, rituals, and other cultural markers offered ways to forge community among those who had been displaced. The name “Goffy” – or, more likely, Kofi – is but one representation of African cultural survivals in the Connecticut River Valley.

Rose

Little is known to traditional archives about Goffy’s mother, Rose. Outside of the baptismal record, there are few references to any other women called Rose who were enslaved in this area of Massachusetts during the early-mid 1700s. As of this writing, there is no known documentation that makes clear which is the woman referenced in the baptismal record. The closest possible candidate to have been Goffy’s mother was one woman who, along with a man named Humphry, was enslaved in Hatfield by wealthy farmer and merchant, Henry Dwight.⁶ Rose and Humphry are listed alongside one another in Dwight’s 1732 probate record; see below.⁷

Is this Rose the same woman from the baptismal record? More research is required to answer this question. Of the other Roses who were enslaved in the wider area during this time – there are at least three documented in archives – they were probably too young to have been Goffy’s mother, leaving this Rose as the most likely candidate so far. What few details are known about her life make it possible to weave together a narrative of possibility, so it is worth exploring a bit more.

As indicated in the above probate, both Rose and Humphry were enslaved by Henry Dwight and assigned monetary valuations – £60 each, or about $19,000.⁸ Dwight’s probate offers few personal details, but his will alludes to Rose abstractly; namely, that one third of his “real estate” should go to his wife, Lydia (née Hawley). Over a decade later, in 1748, Lydia wrote her own will on the eve of her own death, and in it we glimpse a snapshot of her possessions at the time; Rose is listed among them. She would have been at least in her early thirties by that time, and evidently one of Lydia’s last earthly acts was to bequeath her “negro woman named Rose” to her daughter, Anna (1724-1802).⁹ But this is where we lose Rose’s story, because it is unclear whether Anna took the baton of enslavement her mother handed down. In July 1749, Anna married into the well-established Pynchon family of colonists and relocated from Hatfield to Springfield.¹⁰ Anna’s husband, Charles Pynchon (1718-1783), was a surgeon and physician, and as of this writing I have found no clear indication that Rose ever made her way to Springfield enslaved by Anna. This leaves open the possibility that Rose relocated – or, more likely, was relocated through purchase and sale – to the Amherst area sometime after Lydia Dwight’s death.

But what if Rose gained her freedom in 1748? Goffy’s baptismal record offers no clear indication that his mother was enslaved, that is just an assumption historians have made. Her partnership with a man named Pompey has contributed to this, and we are led to believe he – and she, by association – was enslaved by Rev. David Parsons.

Pomp(ey) & Betty

In December 1749, Rev. David Parsons’ brother-in-law, Rev. Edward Billing (sometimes “Billings”) wrote an entry in his daybook indicating there had been “many sudden deaths” that month. Among them were two “Negroes of Deerfield or thereabouts,” including a man named Pomp, who was killed after falling from his horse; see diary entry below, ninth line from top.¹¹

Pompey/Pomp was a relatively common name for an enslaved man during the eighteenth century. There were at least four or five men living in the wider Amherst area – Hadley, Deerfield, Springfield, Chicopee – who were called this as their first name, and “Pompey” was the surname for a whole family who lived in Monson.¹² The man named Pompey who we met through Goffy’s baptismal record has been presumed by historians to have been the same man, Pomp, that Rev. Parsons placed a “runaway” ad for in 1760. But is it possible they were two different people?

Recently recovered information about Pomp’s whereabouts and marital status during the late 1740s and early 1750s opens the possibility that he and Goffy’s father, Pompey, may not have been the same person. Or, if they were the same man, it is possible the Pompey of the baptismal record was not enslaved by Rev. Parsons at the time of Goffy’s baptism. That year, the Pomp who Parsons later places the runaway ad for was enslaved by John Chapin, Jr., of Chicopee. As part of his large estate, which spanned Chicopee to Brimfield, was “one negro man named Pompey,” for whom Chapin’s appraisers placed a monetary value of £340; see probate below.¹³

This probate was compiled in November 1749 and makes no other mention of any additional enslaved people, neither women nor children. It is unclear how old Pompey of Chicopee was at this time, but based on his assigned monetary valuation he may have been on the younger side; he was one of Chapin’s most prized assets, second only to his land in Brimfield. He remained enslaved in Chicopee well into the 1750s, and by 1753 was included among the 51 members of that town’s new church, which purportedly boasted a “negro’s seat” situated in one corner of the space.¹⁴ In 1755, he married an enslaved woman, Betty, of Wethersfield, Connecticut (see photo below), at which point the couple may have together become claimed as property by another Chapin family member, Phineas.¹⁵

By 1758, however, this Pompey of Chicopee transferred his church membership to First Church of Amherst, a fact reflected at both ends of the congregation equation: in Chicopee, his name is scratched out from a member list (see below); in Amherst, he is listed as a new member in 1758.¹⁶

In 1757, traveling from Chicopee to Amherst would have been an unlikely commute to make for church. Rather, it is likely that Pompey of Chicopee and his wife, Betty, stayed in Amherst for some reason. A close look at the account book of Dr. Nathaniel Smith, a physician who treated patients in town, reveals more of their story. Evidently, between summer 1758 and spring 1759, Smith attempted to treat Pompey for some sort of illness, charging these treatments to the account of Rev. David Parsons; see below, top four lines.

In June and September 1758, Smith provided him with a “vomiting physick” and bled him (a common treatment during this time), although it is unclear if these treatments had any effect. The following year, Pompey was treated again to another bleeding, this time with the added dose of “Ethiops mineral,” better known today as mercury; see below, ninth line down.

This mercury treatment from fall 1759 marks the last entry in the doctor’s book for Pompey of Chicopee who, within a few months, is alleged to have fled the area for an undetermined amount of time. In April, just over a month after Parsons’ placed his ad seeking to apprehend his “Negro man servant” Pomp, Betty received a bleeding from Dr. Smith.

What was the relationship between Rev. Parsons, Pomp of Chicopee, and Betty? Based on the fact that Parsons was paying for the couple’s medical treatments and, Pomp having allegedly left the area in February 1760, Parsons placed an ad offering a reward for his apprehension, it is likely he claimed ownership of at least Pomp. Did Chicopee’s Phineas Chapin sell the couple to Parsons? When? The ad placed by Parsons in 1760, eleven years after Goffy’s baptism, indicates that the Pomp he sought was 26 years old. If he was the same Pompey as that of the baptismal record, he would have been but fifteen years old at the time of his son’s baptism; possible, but likely? Records make clear that the Pomp of Chicopee, the same man being sought in the ad, was enslaved by the Chapin family in September 1749. Is it possible he was partnered with Rose at a young age and, Chicopee having no local church until 1753, went to Amherst for his son’s baptism? What became of Rose and Goffy? As ever, more research remains to be done.

1. John K. Thornton, “The Coromantees: An African Cultural Group in Colonial North America and the Caribbean,” Journal of Caribbean History Vol. 32, No. 1-2 (1998): 161. For a more in-depth study of Akan naming practices, see Kofi Kofi Agyekum’s “The Sociolinguistic of Akan Personal Names,” Nordic Journal of African Studies Vol. 15, No. 2 (2006): 214. ↩︎
2. To calculate historic days of the week, visit https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/?year=1749&country=1 ↩︎
3. Thornton, 161, 162, 164. ↩︎
4. Thornton, 165. ↩︎
5. Thornton, 173-174. ↩︎
6. Probate Records, 1660-1916; Index, 1660-1971; Massachusetts. Probate Court (Hampshire County); Probate Records, Vol 5-6, 1729-1745. ↩︎
7. Henry Dwight probate, Hampshire Probate Records, Vol. 5-6, 1729-1745, pages 115-116. You will observe that both individuals are listed as property alongside inanimate objects – in this case, two spoons – and are assigned respective monetary values. This was a shameful, but common, practice of appraising human property in the creacreating a probate or other property inventory list. ↩︎
8. Eric W. Nye, Pounds Sterling to Dollars: Historical Conversion of Currency. ↩︎
9. Lydia Dwight probate, Hampshire Probate Records, Vol. 7, 1745-1752, page 141. ↩︎
10. “Massachusetts, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 1626-2001,” Charles Pynchon and Anna Dwight, 20 Jul 1749; Dr. Joseph Charles Pynchon, Record of the Pynchon Family in England and America (Springfield, 1898): 11. Random interesting tidbit: Charles was purportedly a “bosom friend” of Williams College founder, Ephraim Williams. ↩︎
11. Diary of Rev. Edward Billing, 1743-56. Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association Library. Deerfield, MA. ↩︎
12. Documenting Black Lives of the Connecticut River Valley database. ↩︎
13. “Chapin Collection” Group 8, Box 1, Folder 22. SLMA Archives at Springfield Museums, Lyman & Merrie Wood Collection. For more on Chicopee during its founding years, see Clara Skeele Palmer. Annals of Chicopee Street (Springfield, 1899); Pompey mentioned on pages 17-18. ↩︎
14. See Palmer, 28, 31. The presence of a so-called “negro’s seat” is noteworthy, revealing both an early Black presence in colonial New England churches and the white propensity for segregated seating in public spaces. ↩︎
15. Record of marriage intention, Springfield MA. On Phineas Chapin as enslaver, see Palmer, 44. ↩︎
16. According to the third-hand copy of this document (original not located), his transfer date was July 2, 1758. “Catalog of the Pastors and Deacons and Members of the First Church of Christ in Amherst Mass,” 36-37, in First Church records, Jones Library, Amherst, Massachusetts. ↩︎