Black Portsmouth: Three Centuries of African-American Heritage
by Mark J. Sammons and Valerie Cunningham
University of New Hampshire Press, 2004 Paper: 978-1-58465-289-2 Library of Congress Classification F44.P8S25 2004 Dewey Decimal Classification 305.89607307426
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Few people think of a rich Black heritage when they think of New England. In the pioneering book Black Portsmouth, Mark J. Sammons and Valerie Cunningham celebrate it, guiding the reader through more than three centuries of New England and Portsmouth social, political, economic, and cultural history as well as scores of personal and site-specific stories. Here, we meet such Africans as the likely negro boys and girls from Gambia, who debarked at Portsmouth from a slave ship in 1758, and Prince Whipple, who fought in the American Revolution. We learn about their descendants, including the performer Richard Potter and John Tate of the People's Baptist Church, who overcame the tragedies and challenges of their ancestors' enslavement and subsequent marginalization to build communities and families, found institutions, and contribute to their city, region, state, and nation in many capacities. Individual entries speak to broader issues—the anti-slavery movement, American religion, and foodways, for example. We also learn about the extant historical sites important to Black Portsmouth—including the surprise revelation of an African burial ground in October 2003—as well as the extraordinary efforts being made to preserve remnants of the city's early Black heritage.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
MARK J. SAMMONS is the Executive Director of Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion in Portsmouth, and has served as President and Executive Director of the Newburyport Maritime Society, Director of Research at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, and Coordinator of Public Buildings at Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, Massachusetts.
VALERIE CUNNINGHAM, award-winning historic preservationist and Portsmouth native, has spent more than thirty years researching and writing about northern New England's Black history. A community activist with seemingly boundless energy, she is the founder of the Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail, Inc. and directs the African American Resource Center.
REVIEWS
"The book's creation stands as testament to the lives and contributions of blacks to their community, and to the collaboration possible between people of different races."—www.seacoastonline.com
"Rooted in the lives of individuals, Black Portsmouth: Three Centuries of African American Heritage, is a lively story uncovering the buried history of black life in Portsmouth from 1648 until the present. The reader will meet coopers, tailors, mariners, printers, laundresses, dock workers, teachers, preachers and many more whose skills built a black community within the wider city of Portsmouth. Charles Lenox Redmond, Williams Wells Brown, Frederick Douglass are amount the nationally famous visitors remembered in the city. Other names known mostly in Portsmouth include Fowle, Whipple, Bruce and Spring. All are viewed against the background of the larger national history comprehensively recounted by the authors."—Kenneth A. Heidelberg, Site Manager, Boston African American National Historic Site
TABLE OF CONTENTS
contents
Preface 000
chapter 1. The Seaport 000
chapter 2. Colonists 000
The Origins of American Slavery - Transport - Perpetual Enslavement - Nonslaves - The Origins of an Afro-American Culture
Portsmouth and the Slave Trade 000
Cities and Numbers of Africans in Early New England
Sale of Enslaved People 000
Method and Location of Slave Sales in Portsmouth - Auction - Enslaved People in Stoodley's Household
White Fears, Regulation, and Legislation 000
Protective Legislation - Restriction - Avoiding Public Expense - White Confusion, Separation, and DiVerentiation
One Negro Man £200, One Ditto Woman £50: Location, Labor, Value 000
Relationships, Authority, Location, and Work - Placing a Cash Value on People
Skilled Craftspeople 000
Adam, Mercer, and Bess Marshall - Nero, Cato, and Jane Wheelwright - A Tailor - Hopestill Cheswell - Primus Fowle - Craftswomen, Craftsmen, and Local Myth
Fortune and James: Invisibility 000
Tavern Work - Fortune - James - A Curiosity
Hannah, Pomp, Nanne, Violet, Scipio: Agricultural Work 000
A Rural Slave Burial Ground - People Enslaved by the Langdons - Africans on the Farm - Further Reßections
Quamino, Prince, Nero, a Negro Girl, Cato, Peter, John Jack, and Phyllis: The Role of Slavery among the White Colonial Elite 000
The Macpheadris Household - The Wentworth Household - The Warner Household - The Role of Slavery among the White Elite
Venus: Decoding Clues 000
What's in a Name?
North Church People: Status and Religion 000
Rank, Location, Change, and White Ambivalence - Withholding the Message and Its EVects - Churches in New England - Black Church Members and African Tradition
Nero Brewster, Willie Clarkson, Jock Odiorne, Pharaoh Shores: Black Coronations, Internal Status, and Social Control 000
White Participation and Perceptions - Black Participation and Perspectives - A Tradition Ends
The Unnamed, Unrecorded Dead: Health, Medicine, Death, Burial 000
Age and Causes of Death - African Medicine - Burial Customs, Black and White - Discontinuance of the Negro Burying Ground
The Cotton and Hunking Families: Family, Women, Marriage 000
Marriage and Alternatives - A New Status for African Women in America
Revolutionary Petitioners: Politics and Freedom 000
Origins and Authorship of the Petition - Revolutionary Rhetoric - A Recent British Cout Case - Outcome
Prince Whipple: Revolution and Freedom 000
Black and White Whipples in the Revolution - Africans in the Revolution
Free Black People in an Era of Slavery 000
Self-Emancipation: A Sample Case - Documenting Freedom
The Long-Range Impacts of the Slave System 000
chapter 3. Early Americans 000
Dismantling Slavery - A Nation in Motion, Cities in Change - Exclusion - Numbers and Location of Black People in Portsmouth - Occupations
"3 Very Old Negroes Almost Good for Nothing": The Plight of the Elderly in Freedom 000
White Alternatives to Liability
Prince, CuVee, Dinah, and Rebecca Whipple: A Sample Family Living in Freedom 000
Prince Whipple as Caleb Quotem - CuVee Whipple and Black Music Making - Dinah Chase Whipple - Rebecca Daverson Whipple - The Next Generation
Siras Bruce and Flora Stoodley Bruce: New Freedom, Limited Options 000
Siras Gets Married - Envisioning Work - A Place to Live
Pomp and Candace Spring: A Glimpse of Home and Home Life 000
A House Tour
Dinah Gibson: Making It on Her Own 000
Richard Potter: Making an Itinerant Living in Entertainment 000
Black Marines of Portsmouth: Life at Sea and at Home 000
EVects of Racism on Maritime Employment
Esther Whipple Mullinaux: Kinship and Cluster DiVusion 000
chapter 4. Abolition 000
Slavery and the Constitution - Abolition - Abolition and Religion - Antislavery Organization in New Hampshire and Portsmouth - The Legislative Backdrop
Portsmouth's Continued Participation in Slavery 000
Consumer Goods - Continued Slave Trading
Frederick Douglass, Charles Lenox Remond, William Wells Brown: Black Abolitionist Orators and the Civil War Years in Portsmouth 000
Frederick Douglass's First Visit to Portsmouth - Charles Lenox Remond - Frederick Douglass Returns to Portsmouth - William Wells Brown - Riot in 1863 - Riot in 1865
"Most of the Colored People of the City, Both Old and Young": Celebrating Emancipation 000
chapter 5. Community 000
Regionalism in Black Communities - Migration and Its EVects
People's Baptist Church: Spiritual Life, Religious Community 000
Denominational Appeal - Antecedent Black Churches - Beginnings and Leaders of People's Baptist Church - Alternatives - Transformation
Deacon Hayward Burton: Community Leader 000
George M. King, Ralph Reed, Albert Auylor: Social Clubs and Political Action 000
Our Boys' Comfort/Lincoln American Community Club - The Knights of Pythias - The Colored Citizens League - The Black Masons
The Klan in Portsmouth 000
Louis George Gregory and Louisa Matthews Gregory: Spiritual Leaders for Racial Unity 000
A New Home
Elizabeth Virgil: Quiet Pioneer, Witness to a Changing World 000
A Pioneer Student, and Employment - Making a Home, Pursuing Interests - Another Who Went South
Owen Finnigan Cooper, Eugene Reid, John Ramsay, Emerson Reed, Doris Moore, Anna Jones: World War II and Patriotic Service 000
Black Americans, the Military, and Wartime Employment - Wartime Work in Portsmouth - The Home Front BattleÞeld
Rosary Broxay Cooper: Migration, Career Options, Patriotic Service 000
Wartime Work
chapter 6. Civil Rights 000
Legislation and Responses
Lost Boundaries, Broken Barriers 000
Inspired by . . .
Thomas Cobbs: Making a Living, Making a DiVerence 000
A Sample Action - Further Afield
Legislating Destruction: Government Policy and the Black Experience 000
Further Developments on the National Level
Working Together, Seeking Understanding: The Seacoast Council on Race and Religion 000
Religion, Ecumenism, and Civil Rights
chapter 7. Living with Diversity 000
Public Celebrations of Identity - Commercial Images of Identity - Urban Developments - White Reactions - Portsmouth since 1970 - Black Experience in Late-Twentieth-Century Portsmouth - Revival of Portsmouth's NAACP Chapter - Social, Fraternal, and Action Groups - Preserving Stories ; an Oral History Project - The African American Resource Center - The Portsmouth Blues Festival - The Martin Luther King Holiday in New Hampshire - The Klan ; Again - The Diversity Committee - The Black Heritage Trail - Ongoing in Portsmouth
CoYns under the Street: An Afterword 000
Appendix: Places Associated with Narratives in This Book 000
Notes 000
Bibliography 000
Index 000
Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: African Americans New Hampshire Portsmouth History, African Americans New Hampshire Portsmouth Social conditions, African Americans New England History, Portsmouth (N, H, ) History, Portsmouth (N, H, ) Race relations, New England Race relations
Black Portsmouth: Three Centuries of African-American Heritage
by Mark J. Sammons and Valerie Cunningham
University of New Hampshire Press, 2004 Paper: 978-1-58465-289-2
Few people think of a rich Black heritage when they think of New England. In the pioneering book Black Portsmouth, Mark J. Sammons and Valerie Cunningham celebrate it, guiding the reader through more than three centuries of New England and Portsmouth social, political, economic, and cultural history as well as scores of personal and site-specific stories. Here, we meet such Africans as the likely negro boys and girls from Gambia, who debarked at Portsmouth from a slave ship in 1758, and Prince Whipple, who fought in the American Revolution. We learn about their descendants, including the performer Richard Potter and John Tate of the People's Baptist Church, who overcame the tragedies and challenges of their ancestors' enslavement and subsequent marginalization to build communities and families, found institutions, and contribute to their city, region, state, and nation in many capacities. Individual entries speak to broader issues—the anti-slavery movement, American religion, and foodways, for example. We also learn about the extant historical sites important to Black Portsmouth—including the surprise revelation of an African burial ground in October 2003—as well as the extraordinary efforts being made to preserve remnants of the city's early Black heritage.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
MARK J. SAMMONS is the Executive Director of Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion in Portsmouth, and has served as President and Executive Director of the Newburyport Maritime Society, Director of Research at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, and Coordinator of Public Buildings at Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, Massachusetts.
VALERIE CUNNINGHAM, award-winning historic preservationist and Portsmouth native, has spent more than thirty years researching and writing about northern New England's Black history. A community activist with seemingly boundless energy, she is the founder of the Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail, Inc. and directs the African American Resource Center.
REVIEWS
"The book's creation stands as testament to the lives and contributions of blacks to their community, and to the collaboration possible between people of different races."—www.seacoastonline.com
"Rooted in the lives of individuals, Black Portsmouth: Three Centuries of African American Heritage, is a lively story uncovering the buried history of black life in Portsmouth from 1648 until the present. The reader will meet coopers, tailors, mariners, printers, laundresses, dock workers, teachers, preachers and many more whose skills built a black community within the wider city of Portsmouth. Charles Lenox Redmond, Williams Wells Brown, Frederick Douglass are amount the nationally famous visitors remembered in the city. Other names known mostly in Portsmouth include Fowle, Whipple, Bruce and Spring. All are viewed against the background of the larger national history comprehensively recounted by the authors."—Kenneth A. Heidelberg, Site Manager, Boston African American National Historic Site
TABLE OF CONTENTS
contents
Preface 000
chapter 1. The Seaport 000
chapter 2. Colonists 000
The Origins of American Slavery - Transport - Perpetual Enslavement - Nonslaves - The Origins of an Afro-American Culture
Portsmouth and the Slave Trade 000
Cities and Numbers of Africans in Early New England
Sale of Enslaved People 000
Method and Location of Slave Sales in Portsmouth - Auction - Enslaved People in Stoodley's Household
White Fears, Regulation, and Legislation 000
Protective Legislation - Restriction - Avoiding Public Expense - White Confusion, Separation, and DiVerentiation
One Negro Man £200, One Ditto Woman £50: Location, Labor, Value 000
Relationships, Authority, Location, and Work - Placing a Cash Value on People
Skilled Craftspeople 000
Adam, Mercer, and Bess Marshall - Nero, Cato, and Jane Wheelwright - A Tailor - Hopestill Cheswell - Primus Fowle - Craftswomen, Craftsmen, and Local Myth
Fortune and James: Invisibility 000
Tavern Work - Fortune - James - A Curiosity
Hannah, Pomp, Nanne, Violet, Scipio: Agricultural Work 000
A Rural Slave Burial Ground - People Enslaved by the Langdons - Africans on the Farm - Further Reßections
Quamino, Prince, Nero, a Negro Girl, Cato, Peter, John Jack, and Phyllis: The Role of Slavery among the White Colonial Elite 000
The Macpheadris Household - The Wentworth Household - The Warner Household - The Role of Slavery among the White Elite
Venus: Decoding Clues 000
What's in a Name?
North Church People: Status and Religion 000
Rank, Location, Change, and White Ambivalence - Withholding the Message and Its EVects - Churches in New England - Black Church Members and African Tradition
Nero Brewster, Willie Clarkson, Jock Odiorne, Pharaoh Shores: Black Coronations, Internal Status, and Social Control 000
White Participation and Perceptions - Black Participation and Perspectives - A Tradition Ends
The Unnamed, Unrecorded Dead: Health, Medicine, Death, Burial 000
Age and Causes of Death - African Medicine - Burial Customs, Black and White - Discontinuance of the Negro Burying Ground
The Cotton and Hunking Families: Family, Women, Marriage 000
Marriage and Alternatives - A New Status for African Women in America
Revolutionary Petitioners: Politics and Freedom 000
Origins and Authorship of the Petition - Revolutionary Rhetoric - A Recent British Cout Case - Outcome
Prince Whipple: Revolution and Freedom 000
Black and White Whipples in the Revolution - Africans in the Revolution
Free Black People in an Era of Slavery 000
Self-Emancipation: A Sample Case - Documenting Freedom
The Long-Range Impacts of the Slave System 000
chapter 3. Early Americans 000
Dismantling Slavery - A Nation in Motion, Cities in Change - Exclusion - Numbers and Location of Black People in Portsmouth - Occupations
"3 Very Old Negroes Almost Good for Nothing": The Plight of the Elderly in Freedom 000
White Alternatives to Liability
Prince, CuVee, Dinah, and Rebecca Whipple: A Sample Family Living in Freedom 000
Prince Whipple as Caleb Quotem - CuVee Whipple and Black Music Making - Dinah Chase Whipple - Rebecca Daverson Whipple - The Next Generation
Siras Bruce and Flora Stoodley Bruce: New Freedom, Limited Options 000
Siras Gets Married - Envisioning Work - A Place to Live
Pomp and Candace Spring: A Glimpse of Home and Home Life 000
A House Tour
Dinah Gibson: Making It on Her Own 000
Richard Potter: Making an Itinerant Living in Entertainment 000
Black Marines of Portsmouth: Life at Sea and at Home 000
EVects of Racism on Maritime Employment
Esther Whipple Mullinaux: Kinship and Cluster DiVusion 000
chapter 4. Abolition 000
Slavery and the Constitution - Abolition - Abolition and Religion - Antislavery Organization in New Hampshire and Portsmouth - The Legislative Backdrop
Portsmouth's Continued Participation in Slavery 000
Consumer Goods - Continued Slave Trading
Frederick Douglass, Charles Lenox Remond, William Wells Brown: Black Abolitionist Orators and the Civil War Years in Portsmouth 000
Frederick Douglass's First Visit to Portsmouth - Charles Lenox Remond - Frederick Douglass Returns to Portsmouth - William Wells Brown - Riot in 1863 - Riot in 1865
"Most of the Colored People of the City, Both Old and Young": Celebrating Emancipation 000
chapter 5. Community 000
Regionalism in Black Communities - Migration and Its EVects
People's Baptist Church: Spiritual Life, Religious Community 000
Denominational Appeal - Antecedent Black Churches - Beginnings and Leaders of People's Baptist Church - Alternatives - Transformation
Deacon Hayward Burton: Community Leader 000
George M. King, Ralph Reed, Albert Auylor: Social Clubs and Political Action 000
Our Boys' Comfort/Lincoln American Community Club - The Knights of Pythias - The Colored Citizens League - The Black Masons
The Klan in Portsmouth 000
Louis George Gregory and Louisa Matthews Gregory: Spiritual Leaders for Racial Unity 000
A New Home
Elizabeth Virgil: Quiet Pioneer, Witness to a Changing World 000
A Pioneer Student, and Employment - Making a Home, Pursuing Interests - Another Who Went South
Owen Finnigan Cooper, Eugene Reid, John Ramsay, Emerson Reed, Doris Moore, Anna Jones: World War II and Patriotic Service 000
Black Americans, the Military, and Wartime Employment - Wartime Work in Portsmouth - The Home Front BattleÞeld
Rosary Broxay Cooper: Migration, Career Options, Patriotic Service 000
Wartime Work
chapter 6. Civil Rights 000
Legislation and Responses
Lost Boundaries, Broken Barriers 000
Inspired by . . .
Thomas Cobbs: Making a Living, Making a DiVerence 000
A Sample Action - Further Afield
Legislating Destruction: Government Policy and the Black Experience 000
Further Developments on the National Level
Working Together, Seeking Understanding: The Seacoast Council on Race and Religion 000
Religion, Ecumenism, and Civil Rights
chapter 7. Living with Diversity 000
Public Celebrations of Identity - Commercial Images of Identity - Urban Developments - White Reactions - Portsmouth since 1970 - Black Experience in Late-Twentieth-Century Portsmouth - Revival of Portsmouth's NAACP Chapter - Social, Fraternal, and Action Groups - Preserving Stories ; an Oral History Project - The African American Resource Center - The Portsmouth Blues Festival - The Martin Luther King Holiday in New Hampshire - The Klan ; Again - The Diversity Committee - The Black Heritage Trail - Ongoing in Portsmouth
CoYns under the Street: An Afterword 000
Appendix: Places Associated with Narratives in This Book 000
Notes 000
Bibliography 000
Index 000
Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: African Americans New Hampshire Portsmouth History, African Americans New Hampshire Portsmouth Social conditions, African Americans New England History, Portsmouth (N, H, ) History, Portsmouth (N, H, ) Race relations, New England Race relations
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
