Finally Freedom: Peg and Zebulon at Forty Acres
Receipt for purchase of Zebulon Prutt. 1745
Zebulon and Peg were both enslaved at Forty Acres and both gained their freedom towards the end of their lives. Zebulon Prutt, known as Zeb, was the first enslaved worker to live at Forty Acres having been purchased by Moses Porter at the age of fourteen from Jerusha Chauncey. After Moses was killed at Bloody Morning Scout, a battle of the French and Indian War at Lake George, Zeb became the property of Elizabeth Pitkin Porter, Moses’ widow. He lived at Forty Acres until 1766, possibly fathering two girls, Roseanna, b. 1761 and Phillis, b. 1765 with Peg. Zebulon was also a freedom seeker; in 1766, he ran away from Forty Acres, prompting the family to place an ad in the Connecticut Courant calling for his recapture and his return. The notice reads as follows:
Run away from the Widow Elizabeth Porter of Hadley, a Negro Man named Zebulon Prut, about 30 years old, about five Feet high, a whitish Complexion, suppos’d to have a Squaw in Company: carried away with him, a light brown Camblet Coat, lin’d and trimm’d with the same Colour- a blue plan Cloth Coat, with Metal Buttons, without Lining- a new redish brown plain Cloth Coat, with Plate Buttons, no Lining—a light brown Waistcoat, and a dark brown ditto, both without Sleves—a Pair of Check’d, and a Pair of Tow Trowsers—a Pair of blue Yarn Stockings, and a Pair of Thread ditto—two Pair of Shoes—two Hats—an old red Duffell Great Coat. – Whoever will takeup said Negro, and bring him to Mrs Porter, or to Oliver Warner, of said Hadley, shall have Ten Dollars Reward, and all necessary Charges paid, by
OLIVER WARNER
Connecticut Courant September 8, 1766 [1]
Notices like this one ran in every issue of the Connecticut Courant, Boston Gazette, and newspapers all over the North, usually listing in great detail the clothing and physical appearance of the enslaved. Zeb had taken extra pairs of trousers and waistcoats probably with the hopes of selling them and earning some money for his journey. As Oliver Warner did in this ad, rewards of five or ten pounds were typically offered, and the notices would occasionally warn readers not to “conceal or carry the said Negro, as they would avoid the Penalty of the Law.” [2]
Sometime after Zeb had fled, Elizabeth Porter sold him to Oliver Warner for 50 dollars. Families were apt to sell slaves even when they were not physically present, often for less than their purchase price due to the risk of the transaction.
Indentured servants at Forty Acres seemed to have a better chance of finding freedom—in 1779, two indentured servants ran away within a week, but no evidence shows that notices were placed in newspapers or that a search was put in place. [3] Zeb however was captured and enslaved to Oliver Warner only gaining his freedom at the end of the 18th century, most likely in 1786 when Oliver Warner died, in a period when it was becoming increasingly common for enslavers to specify in their wills that the people enslaved by them should be freed or paid wages after their death. Zeb died a free man in 1802, and Elizabeth Porter Phelps made no mention that he returned to Forty Acres after his sale.
Peg was purchased by Moses shortly after the construction of Forty Acre and lived there until she was sold to Captain Fay of Bennington in 1772. This sale is unusual in that it seems that Peg had a personal say in it, as it sought to benefit her in a small but powerful way. Elizabeth wrote in her diary that Peg was sold along with “a Negro man from this town al for the sake of being his wife”. [4] We know that Peg spent a year negotiating this sale in order to marry her husband-to-be, Pomp, who was enslaved to a different family. While marriages between enslaved laborers were legal at the time, the Porter-Phelps and Pomp’s enslavers were resistant to this idea, so Peg had to make the difficult choice of leaving her daughters behind to marry Pomp. Peg was later repurchased in 1778 by Charles Phelps, Moses’ son-in-law and Elizabeth’s wife.
In 1782, Elizabeth writes in her diary that Peg has “gone off free.” What exactly did that entail? It is possibly that she was manumitted, legally freed, as some older enslaved people were, though Peg at the time was only about forty. As well, in 1782 the ‘abolishment’ of slavery, which was really a gradual period in which the practice was phased out, was only just beginning. Peg did return to Forty Acres a year later to help care for her granddaughter Phillis when she was ill with tuberculosis.
Notes:
1. Romer 44
2. Romer 73
3. Carlisle 84
4. Phelps 129
Sources:
“African Americans and the End of Slavery in Massachusetts.” Massachusetts Historical Society: 54th Regiment, Massachusetts Historical Society, www.masshist.org/endofslavery/index.php?id=55.
Carlisle, Elizabeth. Earthbound and Heavenbent: Elizabeth Porter Phelps and Life at Forty Acres. New York: Scribner. 2004.
Diary of Elizabeth Porter Phelps, in Porter-Phelps-Huntington Family Papers, Box 8 Folder 2, on deposit at Amherst College Archives and Special Collections, Amherst College Library.
Judd, Sylvester, 1789-1860. History of Hadley, including the early history of Hatfield, South Hadley, Amherst and Granby, Massachusetts. Northampton, Printed by Metcalf & company, 1863.
Phelps, Elizabeth Porter. The Diary of Elizabeth (Porter) Phelps, edited by Thomas Eliot Andrews with an introduction by James Lincoln Huntington in The New England Historical Genealogical Register. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, Jan. 1964.
Receipt of purchase of slave, Porter-Phelps-Huntington Family Papers Box 3 Folder 4 Amherst College Archives and Special Collections
Romer, Robert H. Slavery in the Connecticut River Valley. Florence, Massachusetts: Levellers Press. 2009.