by !WENDY!HUBBARD& Site Manager, Lincoln, Massachuse%s, and DOROTHY!A#!CLARK&!Editor
Bonds of Family, Bonds of Chattel
The Codman Estate’s legacy of “the peculiar institution”
T
he two-story Georgian mansion and expansive farm that Charles Chambers built between 1730 and 1741 in what then was part of Concord, Massachusetts, was situated high on a man-made hill where its size and placement were meant to impress, serving as a daily reminder of the owner’s mastery over land and people. That mastery included his ownership of people of African heritage. The slave trade was an important system of wealth accumulation for many prominent New England families, enabling the amassing of fortunes that would be passed down to their descendants for centuries. One of these families was the Chambers-Russell-Codman clan, whose interfamilial and multigenerational ties of mutual interests, money, and inherited property—the Codman Estate in Lincoln, Massachusetts—grew upon a foundation that included slavery. In stark contrast to the continuity of this family’s history, the enslaved did not have lucrative or illustrious legacies to pass down. Considered commodities, they were separated and scattered by their owners’ bequests, purchase or sale, payment of debts, and other transfers or exchanges. The names of some are listed as property in family account books, wills, probate records, and inventories, or in public notices, pamphlets, and publications, much of which is
in Historic New England’s Library and Archives. Their personal possessions and spaces were not preserved. Nothing associated with them was passed down for posterity. Still, the geographies where and in which their lives were spent remain. The subjugation of people of color underpinned colonial commerce and systems of wealth acquisition. Indeed, New England’s prosperity was funded directly and indirectly by the slave trade with investments in shipping, shipbuilding, rum distilling, exports, raw materials, and finished goods through trade with Caribbean plantations. As prominent landowners of European descent, the Chambers, Russell, and Codman men helped to uphold these systems, occupying positions of authority in government and the courts to better secure their vested interests. Charles Chambers (1660-1743), a British immigrant, was the progenitor of the Chambers-Russell-Codman clan. The multiple intersections among the Chamberses, Russells, and Codmans over four generations began in 1708 when Chambers was appointed guardian of orphaned John Codman I (1698-1755) of Charlestown, Massachusetts. A sea captain in Antigua, Chambers maintained investments in more than sixteen vessels, some of which worked out of Barbados. No longer active at sea by 1708, the Charlestown resident purchased 275 acres in Concord [now a part of Lincoln, which became a separate town in 1754]. Over time HistoricNewEngland.org
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