Jenny & Sojourner (May 29, 2005)
Notes for a brief (10-minute) talk on May 29, 2005 at the second annual celebration for the Sojourner Truth statue in Florence, held at the Florence Community Center, across the street from the statue. (It would have been outdoors, but there was a threat of rain.) This is approximately what I said. Ruth Hooke also talked, in her case about Sojourner, whereas I decided to tell them about Jenny. Reynolds Winslow was MC.
During the talk I showed three items: (1) My 1752 “snapshot” of the Deerfield street; (2) Shamek Weddle’s sketch of the design we plan to put up in the Memorial Hall Museum (PVMA) in Deerfield; (3) The “Vision Statement” of the PVMA committee we have formed to begin to introduce the story of the enslaved African-Americans of the Connecticut Valley – including information as to where to send your check if you would like to participate by contributing. (Items 1 and 3 are to be found elsewhere on this website.) It turned out that before me on the May 29 program there was some music with two drums that looked very much like Shamek’s sketch, so (as I said) I really didn’t need to explain to this audience what the drum was.
Robert H. Romer, Amherst College rhromer@amherst.edu
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We are here today to celebrate the life of Sojourner Truth, but I want to take a few minutes to tell you about another black woman who lived here in the valley almost a century earlier. Her name was Jenny. That was not her real name. There is no way of knowing what name was given to her by her parents, so I will refer to her as “Jenny”, the only name I know. Jenny was born in Africa, about 1720. As a little girl, she was kidnaped by slave traders, ended up in Boston, and then, in about 1738, Jenny – together with her baby Cato – was sold to the Deerfield minister, Reverend Jonathan Ashley.
Jenny lived in Deerfield for the rest of her life. Jenny was by no means the only enslaved black person in Deerfield. During the past few years I have been putting a lot of time into finding out as much as I can about the enslaved blacks of the Connecticut Valley, and I want to tell you something about what I’ve learned.
So – Let’s take a trip together in time and space, 15 miles up the river to the main street of old Deerfield, and two and a half centuries back in time – to May 29, 1752 (it was a Friday, by the way), and take a walk along that mile-long street.
Jenny is not the only enslaved black person you will meet. You may see, at Reverend Ashley’s house, not only Jenny but also her teenage son, Cato, and Titus, a 30-year old slave also owned by Ashley. Across the street you’ll see Cesar and Mesheck, a few houses down another Cesar, then Ishmael, then Prince (who lives in the house now occupied by the headmaster of Deerfield Academy), then three more Cesars belonging to various owners, then Lucy, then Humphrey, Phillis, Fortune, and another Titus, as well as several black slaves we know of but for whom we do not even have first names.
Not just 1 or 2, but about 20 enslaved blacks in a population of about 300, a very significant part of the community. And Deerfield is not unusual. Though I happen to know more about Deerfield than other towns, I expect that similar numbers apply to valley towns such as Hatfield, Hadley, Springfield, and, yes, Northampton. Most of the “important people” in the valley owned black slaves. In particular, almost all the ministers owned 2 or 3 slaves.
I’ve made my own 1752 map of the Deerfield street, a “snapshot” as I call it, that shows everything I know about who lived where and who they belonged to at that moment in the middle of the 18th century. This map has completely changed what goes through my mind when I drive up that street. I brought along copies of my map, and I urge you to take one – it will give you a view of that street that is unlike one you will get from any existing tourist brochure.
Jenny, who came unwillingly to Deerfield in 1738, lived there for the rest of her life. We know very, very little about what her life was actually like. As far as I know, there are just three contemporary documents that mention Jenny. One is Ashley’s 1780 will, in which there occurs the memorable sentence: “ I give, devise, and bequeath to my beloved wife Dorothy Ashley my grey mare, two cows & ten sheep, also my easy chair and my Negro servant woman Jenny”. (There’s Jenny, right in with the cows and the sheep and the furniture.) The second one is an account book in which Elihu Ashley, the reverend’s son, recorded an expense for fixing Jenny’s shoes. The third mention of Jenny is in the church death records. In the 1700s, slave deaths were not even recorded, but Jenny lived until 1808 -- by which time slavery was really over in Massachusetts -- and her death was recorded as (quote) “Jenny, a black woman, age 90, killed by a fall”.
Jenny lived on with the Ashley family after the Reverend died in 1780. Both Jenny and Jonathan’s widow, Dorothy, survived him by 28 years. I have gotten to know Jonathan Ashley rather well by now, and I am quite sure that – for both women – those must have been the best 28 years of their lives.
Jenny and Dorothy died in the same month, in1808. Dorothy Ashley has a nice big gravestone in the old burying ground at Deerfield, but no one knows where Jenny – and other Deerfield slaves – were buried. I confess that I have become emotionally involved with Jenny, and – though I know it’s not rational – it still makes me angry that the Ashley family, with whom Jenny had lived for 70 years (most of that time as a slave) wouldn’t put up the money for even a small gravestone. (Well, they did fix her shoes, give them credit for that.)
In fact, of all the many tablets and monuments and the like that now fill old Deerfield, not one of them mentions the many enslaved blacks who lived there in colonial times. To borrow Ralph Ellison’s term, they are the “Invisible Men and Women” of our colonial past here in western Massachusetts. In talks I have given, I have often mentioned this strange invisibility and my hope that we can begin to fix it. And last summer Tim Neumann, director of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association (PVMA for short, the group that runs the museum in Deerfield), picked up on this idea. We got together a small committee (Reynolds Winslow is on the committee, so is Lawanza), and began a program to recognize, belatedly, these important people from our history.
For starters, we will install in the museum in Deerfield a plaque, based on a design by artist Shamek Weddle, to remember the enslaved blacks, not only of Deerfield but also of other valley towns.
This is the design. It will be readily recognized by most African-Americans, and by many white visitors as well. In the center is an African drum, surrounded by a ring of cowrie shells, and also a chain – but a chain with a broken link.
Later we plan to prepare a brochure for a self-guided tour of known slave sites (like my map of the street), to put markers in front of those houses and sites on the street where we know that slaves lived in the 1700s, perhaps erect a statue on the old town common. We will also begin to integrate some of this material into the teacher workshops that PVMA has long been doing with local school teachers, and take them on walking tours like ones that I have already been doing with various groups. And, this being the 21st century, of course we will eventually have some sort of interactive computer display.
We’re just beginning, but we expect to have a plaque on the wall by this September. I have with me copies of a sheet that describes our plans in more detail. I hope you’ll take copies (and also copies of my 1752 map) home with you.
One final comment. The history of slavery with all its horrors is embedded in the history of this country. I think it is important to realize that it was a national phenomenon, not simply something that we virtuous northerners can blame on the southerners, that it was just as much accepted here in the picturesque Pioneer Valley as it was in the deep south. Knowing as much as possible about the history of this terrible institution can, I believe, help us to deal with its continuing legacy.