8 minute read
Unraveling the Threads of a Tangled Past: Recovering the History of Black New England
by Erika Slocumb, Recovering New England Voices Research Scholar
Erika Slocumb was Historic New England’s 2023 Recovering New England's Voices research scholar. Her research focused on the lives and experiences of free Black and enslaved people of color who lived and worked at our sites. Each year we ask the outgoing research scholars to reflect on their experiences doing this work and share some of the stories they recovered.
As a historian, I am a storyteller. My practice is rooted in Black and Indigenous traditions of recovering and sharing history that values community narratives and oral storytelling. As a researcher, I use these narratives to discern where I need to look to uncover the breadth of any history. This year, as I embarked on the position of research scholar of African American history at Historic New England, I turned first to community narratives—the stories that are currently being told—and then to past scholars to develop my own interpretation of Black experience across New England.
My approach has centered on the reliance of those who have done this work before me, both scholars at Historic New England as well as community scholars. Over the past year I have been to six different archives and read numerous papers and books scouring for a name, a mention of a family, or to just learn more about the events that took place in Lincoln and Salem, Massachusetts, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. I have been working to unravel the tangled histories of Black communities in New England, working toward the goal of recovering voices that have been obscured by dominant narratives. The following are stories that I have found to be the most interesting and fulfilling from my work this year. While there has been more work uncovered I am delighted to share these snippets of the history of Black experience in and around Historic New England’s sites.
Watson Tyler
One of the first stories that I learned about was that of a Black man named Watson Tyler. His is a name known to many people who have toured the Codman Estate in Lincoln. He labored at the estate for more than forty years and was followed by at least three generations. His family is still part of the Lincoln community today. As I walked through the Italian Garden that he constructed and listened to the stories of enslaved people who had worked on the property before him, I envisioned what his life might have been like. Watson was born and raised in Nova Scotia, Canada. He lived his life, like his father, as an agriculturalist. Throughout the 1870s, members of the Tyler family began emigrating to Massachusetts from Nova Scotia. According to his mother, Hannah Tyler, his maternal grandfather was from New York and had been relocated to Canada sometime after the Revolutionary War. Watson eventually settled in Lincoln with his wife, Annie, and their children. To piece together the history of Watson and his family, I utilized birth records, death records, census records and other town records, and newspaper accounts, as well as the research of other scholars. I was able to compile a somewhat comprehensive narrative of the life of Watson Tyler and his descendants. This research allowed me to think about Watson’s labor and contributions to the Codman Estate and more broadly to the town of Lincoln to expand on the fullness of his life.
Black Salem
I was drawn next to Salem, originally by the history of Negro Election Day, a celebration of free and enslaved Black people who voted for their Black “kings or governors.” These men were advocates of Black politics, both within the Black community and among the white community. By 1754 the Census of Salem listed 3,462 inhabitants of Salem, 123 (3.5%) of those individuals were Black. The population of Black families in Salem continued to grow and in 1790, Salem officials discovered that the majority of property was “in the hands of persons not Town born and who lacked permission to live within its limits.” These people were specifically Black folks, other people of color, and poor white folks. A “Warning to Depart” was issued to about 400 individuals and families. The first list of 103 Black individuals was given in December 1790, and they were warned to depart within twenty days of receiving the notice if they were not “lawful” inhabitants of the town. Many families did not in fact leave and a number of them settled in two neighborhoods, the area around Salem Neck and the Mill Pond area.
On April 20, 1816, Reverend William Bentley visited High Street at Pickering Hill burying ground and Mill Pond vulgarly called “Roast Meat Hill.” I was not able to determine why the neighborhood was named “Roast Meat Hill,” though it may have been related to the tannery and the smell of burning cattle hide. Reverend Bentley described the area: “properly our Black town…it was a mere pasture when I first came to Salem. There is now a twine factory about one hundred huts and houses for Blacks from the most decent to the most humble appearance.” This area was home to many Black families for up to fifty years after Reverend Bentley made his comments, even into the 1870s. The poor conditions in the neighborhood and the low rent around Mill Pond made the area attractive to poor Black families and recent immigrants. Upon visiting the Phillips Library, in Rowley, Massachusetts, I was able to discern that Benjamin Cox, the owner of Gedney House (now owned by Historic New England), had owned a tenement house in the Mill Pond neighborhood on the Salem Turnpike—Cox simply called this the “Turnpike House.” In this home, Cox rented rooms to a number of Black Salemites and, in one case, a white man by the name of George Morgan lived in the “negro house.”
With little to draw Black people to Salem, the population shrunk further. There were no jobs for Black people and by 1910 fewer than 150 remained. The Great Salem Fire of 1914 destroyed the Mill Pond neighborhood. After this, many Black families dispersed to other parts of the city or left completely. And by the 1920s many had chosen to move to larger cities where economic opportunities were better. By the twentieth century, the demographics of the neighborhood had begun to shift to a largely Italian immigrant community and the area surrounding Gedney House and Cox Cottage became known as the Endicott neighborhood.
Isabelle (Grimes) Tilley
Isabelle Grimes—often spelled Grimm—was born in Richmond, Virginia, and was enslaved. She came to New Hampshire at the age of twelve by way of the Underground Railroad, according to family narratives. She was promised an education, but instead was made to wash clothes for local white families and sleep in barns until she was able to acquire a small shack for herself when she was about fourteen years old. In New Hampshire she met her husband, Jacob Tilley, who had run away from slavery to the North. Isabelle and Jacob married and had three daughters and two sons. They lived in the Old Jackson Hill House in Portsmouth until Isabelle's death in 1937. Though there are not many records of her life in archives, the family has passed down the story of Isabelle through oral stories and family papers. This year, I had the pleasure of speaking with the great-granddaughter of Mrs. Isabelle Tilley. When I sat down with her, she shared with me a letter that Isabelle had written to her granddaughter over ninety years ago from her home in Portsmouth about the arrival of her new great grandson, Floyd. She wrote, “He is the dearless [sic] I had ever saw and the people do too,” adding that she wished that she had been well enough to go to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to help with his birth. Her letter (pictured above) was posted from 63 Jackson Hill Street in Portsmouth. Isabelle died a little while after Floyd was born. Through the interview I was able to learn that some of the information that Historic New England had about Isabelle was not complete and in some cases was inaccurate.
Mrs. Tilley’s story is passed to Historic New England through oral histories, and some of it through family archival documentation. Oral storytelling has long been the way that Black and Indigenous histories are passed from generation to generation. This project enabled me to work with family and community to unearth the story of a matriarch who was revered and respected in Portsmouth. I believe that Mrs. Tilley’s story and those of Watson Tyler and the Black community in places like Salem will continue to grow the more we commit ourselves to reaching out to archives, community members, and local scholars.
What I have learned from my research is that our work does not exist in a silo. This research must be a collective effort across repositories of historical collections. Through Recovering New England’s Voices, I have connected with scholars and community advocates who are working diligently to preserve the history of Black New Englanders. These individuals untangle narratives so they are clear and accessible to future generations and historians.
