At my brother's house, over the holiday, I read a wonderful recently published book, Lives of Consequence: Blacks in Early Kittery and Berwick in the Massachusetts Province of Maine by Patricia Q. Wall, the first scholarly investigation of slavery in York County, Maine, the area we grew up and still live in.
From the foreword
Based on careful research conducted over many years by Patricia Q. Wall, this book presents the first detailed look at the lives of more than four hundred Black individuals who lived in Kittery and Berwick, Maine, from the seventeenth century until about 1820. Pat has patiently combed the available public and private documents to find whatever scraps of information had been recorded about these African Americans. Because most lived their lives in the shadows of the historical record, much has been lost. As Pat reveals, however, in addition to the personal trajectories of their own lives, they also played important roles in the life of their towns. Thanks to her research, we have a much better understanding of the importance of the Black, Native American, and mixed-race populations in southern Maine, both in qualitative and quantitative terms. We congratulate Pat on her research and are proud to publish her work. As a pioneering modern social historian, she has shed light on an important but largely ignored subject.
The book deals with what must be the largest part, if not all, of the existing documentary record documenting the existence of slavery, the scant documentation of the lives of those enslaved and the few who managed to become free, the identity of the enslavers and the importance of even the small number of slaves in what was became the early history of European communities in Maine.
Most interesting is her documentation of the few named slaves (many are referred to in documents without their names and, in some cases, even gender being recorded) about whom something is knowable. One, William Black, was able to somewhat establish himself as a property owner who must have had a similar footing with many of the English and Scottish residents of the two towns covered in her study. And there is "Black Sarah" enslaved by the Lord family who is largely known through a somewhat romanticized (and patronizingly racist), 19th century account of her as told from the Lord Family history as well as several contemporaneous documents. The names and lives known so partially would seem to attest to intelligent, strong personalities who must have endured and overcome enormous difficulties requiring maturity and tact in almost superhuman abundance.
Also interesting is Ms. Wall's observations on clues that slavery, in practice, persisted even after legal emancipation of slaves in Massachusetts by court ruling in 1783, (Maine was a part of Massachusetts until 1820) and that by then racism and discrimination had replaced formal slavery as a means of oppressing Black people. Having grown up in the area, I was interested to see that slaves were owned by a family whose descendants (or at least those closely related to the enslavers) were among the most viciously racist people around here.
The book is very well written and quite good history, my brother, who majored in history though isn't a practicing historian, is a friend of the author. Coming during my re-reading of Wendell Phillips' book and considerations of how the slave power, in collusion with Northern commercial interests perverted and deformed what should have been egalitarian democracy, the book is as important to understanding that as the Wendell's observations. Ms. Wall's book is published by Portsmouth Marine Society books and can be ordered through a link given at the site.
Ms. Wall asks the question of where the descendants of those enslaved Black people went and sadly notes that the largest number of them apparently left, forced out of the area they and their ancestors had helped create out of the wilderness that was here. It's a question I'd heard asked. She notes that in one of the towns, freed blacks had been driven out on the excuse that they'd likely become dependents on the town, it would be interesting to note if any white people were driven out on that excuse.
On a happier note, I know that at least one of the families with the infamy of having had slave owners in its past now has Black members through marriage and grandchildren, though I won't mention the dual heritage to them. Old, viciously racist Aunt "P". died about ten years ago, she's the one of those I referred to above. I've seen even rather strong racists have to learn something when their grandchildren are Black.
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