At a recent Newport Middle Passage Project event, Dr. Akeia Benard noted that in Newport, as in most cities, ‘history is written by the victors’. This truism is evidenced in public space and institutional culture that projects to visitors the world view of the wealthiest elite of society, enshrining it in monuments, historic buildings and even tourism. In this idolatry of the detritus of wealth, Newport is no better nor worse than any other American city. But beneath the visible veneer of venerated colonial and gilded age society, and the monuments to heroes of the many wars of conquest, lurks a far different story than any other American city – an untold “rest of the story”. How does one reclaim this story, and shed light on the memories of those lost and never acknowledged? How does one “un-erase” the lives and heritage of those forgotten – whether they be unconsciously forgotten or willfully suppressed?
While there are many stories to tell, we may at least begin with the most forgotten of the forgotten.
There were those who both perished and survived the voyages of bondage and the hardships thereafter – we have a small number of their stories and will recount them. And later, we have the stories of the carpenters, masons, weavers, sailors, painters, pastry chefs like Duchess Quamino, musicians like Newport Gardiner, sachems like Quanapen, abolitionists like Isaac Rice. These more documented legacies broaden and deepen our understanding of today’s Newport.
But to begin, let us start at the beginning:
- The 934 slave ships launched from Rhode Island in the 18th and early 19th century.
- The 106,544 slaves carried on Rhode Island ships from their homeland in Africa to the Americas.[1]
We know Newport was not simply a participant in, but dominated, the American slave trade. Rev. Samuel Hopkins said in 1787, “This trade in the human species has been the first wheel of commerce in Newport, on which every other movement in business has chiefly depended… at the expense of the blood, the liberty and happiness of the poor Africans.”[2]
But we also know that this “wheel of commerce” was not forced upon us from Europe or Africa, but rather was born in Rhode Island. In 1676 the first victims of the Rhode Island slave trade were two shiploads of Native American war captives sent to Newport and sold into slavery by Rhode Island founder Roger Williams and the town fathers of Providence. These founders listed some of their captives names in town records, recorded for posterity:
- “Awauscug and the woman and children”
- “Kwashinnit, his wife and three children, his father in law”
- “The old man Mamanawant Titus, his father in Law and the old Crooked Woman”
These captives were sent to Newport on a ship captained by Roger Williams Jr. and then purchased by wealthy merchants:
- “Three Indians sold to Peter Easton.”
- “Two Indians paid with eighty pounds of wool.”
- “John Nixen bought seven Indians for one Suit of clothes, linen cloth, shirts and drawers.”[3]
While enslavement of Native Americans institutionalized the practice of slavery in Rhode Island, within only a few years the importation of African slaves from the West Indies, and ultimately directly from Africa, grew from a trickle to a torrent.
Gov. Samuel Cranston answered inquiries from the British Board of Trade on slave trading in Rhode Island: “In 1696, arrived 47 Negroes, fourteen of which we disposed of in this colony [of Newport] for between 30 and 35 pounds sterling per head.”[4]
Then followed decades of advertisements in local newspapers for sales of Africans shipped directly to Newport:
1729: Newport Merchant Godfrey Malbone, owner of the brigatine Charming Betty, announced, “Just arrived from the Coast of Guinea, a parcel of fine young Negro Slaves, to be sold for ready money or credit upon security, on reasonable terms by Godfrey Malbone, Merchant at his Wharf in Newport, where the said Slaves may be seen”.
1740: “Just imported, directly from Guinea, a fine parcel of Gold Cost Slaves, men, Women, Boys and Girls, to be sold by Godfrey Malbone, Esq.”
1743: The Snow Jolly Bachelor, a ship owned by Peter Faneuil, builder of Faneuil Hall in Boston, and the target of controversy today in Boston left Newport and later returned with 22 men, women and children from Sierra Leone appraised August 31 at the Admiralty Court in the Colony House, Newport: “a boy Joba £75 sterling, a woman Burrah £100, girls Yalah, Morandah £85, men Pattoe £100, and Fassiah £50. They were purchased by the merchants Samuel Vernon, John Tweedy, Mr. Isaacs, Mr. Chaning, Mr. Brinley, Col. Cranston, Sailes Carr, Mr. Harte and others.[5]
1750: “From Africa, a Parcel of likely Negro Men, Women, Boys and Girls, to be sold by Channing and Chaloner, cheap for ready money or short credit.”
1758: “To be sold reasonably by Thomas & Samuel Freebody… Negro Men, Women, Boys and Girls”
1763: “Arrived from the coast of Africa, the Brig Royal Charlotte… extremely fine, healthy, well limb’d Gold Coast Slaves, Men, Women, Boys and Girls – to be seen at Taylor’s Wharf – apply to Samuel and William Vernon.”
1766: “To be sold at Public Vendue… at the Wharf of Mr. Aaron Lopez… a likely young Negro Girl, lately come from the Coast of Africa.”
By 1776, Rhode Island merchants chose to separate from Britain, calling its treatment of the American colony, “slavery”. But unsurprisingly, the freedom and independence sought by the American ruling class never intended to end the slave trade, but rather to expand it. The peak of the Newport slave trade was in fact thirty years after Independence.[6]
So while the War of Independence raged and Newport merchants famously followed their own self-interests, splitting allegiances equally between Tories and Rebels, their slaves followed their own self-interests. Rose Gozeman fled slavery in Newport during the revolution, escaping to the so-called “British occupiers of Newport” for her freedom. She journeyed with them to New York and later to Nova Scotia. The British recorded her as “24 years, stout wench… Formerly slave to John Easton… left him about 4 years ago”. And her child, Fanney Gozeman, “5 months old… Born free within British lines”. She won freedom for her child by fleeing, yet her owner still pursued her. Sometimes escaping Newport and America was the only path to freedom.[7]
Later, the descendants of the enslaved of Newport, such as George W. Easton, turned the tables on slavery during the Civil War joining the 11th Regiment, U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery to fight the southern slave-owning secessionists. George was the grandchild of Cato Easton, whose family is thought to have been enslaved by the white Easton family – the same intertwined family, founders of Newport, who in the 1600s had purchased the three Indians from Roger Williams, in the 1700s sought their slave Rose Gozeman who escaped to freedom, and in 1824 were the last in Rhode Island to free their slave. As the descendant of slaves George W. Easton prepared with his 11th Colored Regiment to ship out to the battlefield in 1864, he attended a sending-off ceremony addressed by the well-known African-American George Downing. Downing would later go on to desegregate Rhode Island schools.[8]
Without these people, many of whose memories have been “erased”, there would be no Newport. Without their memory Newport would be greatly diminished. It is time to bring back this heritage and their memory starting today.
[1] David Eltis. “Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database”. Accessed Aug. 25, 2018. www.slavevoyages.org .
[2] Anonymous (known to be Rev. Samuel Hopkins) , “Letter to the Editor”, Providence Gazette and Country Journal, October 6, 1787, p. 1.
[3] Horatio Rogers and Edward Field, The early records of the town of Providence, Volume XIV (Providence: Snow & Farnham City Printers, 1899), 152-158. Peter Easton was Attorney General of Rhode Island in 1676 – see John Osborne Austin, Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island (Albany: J. Munsell’s Sons, 1887). 292. Also, Margaret Ellen Newell, Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery (Cornell University Press, 2015), 170-172.
[4] John Russell Bartlett, Records of the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, in New England, Vol. IV, “Answer to the Board of Trade from Governor Cranston, April 17, 1708” (Providence : A.C. Greene, 1859), 54.
[5] Elizabeth Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America: Volume III: New England and the Middle Colonies (Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1930), 64-65.
[6] “The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database”, Voyages embarking from Rhode Island.
[7] Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester: Papers, National Archives, Kew (PRO 30/55/100) 10427, p. 150.
[8] For George W. Easton and George Downing, see William H. Chenery, The Fourteenth Regiment Rhode Island Heavy Artillery (Colored) in the War to Preserve the Union, 1861-1865 (Providence, Snow & Farnham, 1898) 38, 177. For his father Alexander and grandfather Cato, see “United States Census, 1810, 1850, 1860.” Database with images. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org : 26 June 2018. Citing NARA microfilm publication M432. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d. and “Rhode Island Deaths and Burials, 1802-1950,” database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F861-447 : 10 February 2018), Cato Easton in entry for Alexander Easton, 24 May 1872; citing Newport, Newport, Rhode Island, reference p 158; FHL microfilm 2,188,896. For Jeremiah Easton, Daniel C. Littlefield, Revolutionary Citizens: African Americans 1776-1804 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 65.
