West Hartford

Remembers

Installation Ceremony

First Church and Old Center Cemetery

Bristow Middle School

Conard High School

Solomon Schechter

May 29, 2019

 “Slavery is the landscape that you learn to see.”

Anne Farrow, author, 

The Logbooks: Connecticut’s Slave Ships and Human Memory

First Church West Hartford and Old Center Cemetery

Kaliyah Ortiz, Emcee, Conard High School

Dr. Tracey Wilson, Town Historian

Mayor Shari Cantor 

Bristow, Stacy Genova’s Class

Zaara Shazad

Jacob Thomas
Estelle Cohen

Taylor Deka

Jennifer DiCola Matos,
Executive Director of NWH & West Hartford Historical Society

Conard High School, Steve Bassi’s Class

Matthew Schatz        

Roszena Haskins  

Director of Continuing Ed and Diversity Advancement, WHPS

Solomon Schechter, Colleen Simon’s Class

An Apology to Simone

Pauline Golder, Cooper Govoni Raich, Talia Leshem,

Miriam Newman, Halaylah Schechtman, Lily Temkin

Lorna Thomas-Farquharson, Board of Education

Bristow, Jennifer Omartian’s Class

Shannon O’Keefe

Lucy Homer and Kellyann Taylor

Drummer Curtis Greenidge leads us to the installation ceremony

What We Know About Bristow

Zaara Shahzad

The history behind Bristow, the person Bristow Middle School was named after, is something we are lucky to know much about. Bristow was an enslaved African, born in 1731, brought here through the Middle Passage and then sold.

Besides his duties to Thomas Hart Hooker and his family, Bristow was allowed to work and then buy his freedom for £60. Despite being freed in 1775, documents have shown that Bristow kept a close bond with the Hooker family even after Thomas Hart Hooker died in the Revolutionary War.

After nearly 13 years of freedom, in 1788, Bristow was able to buy land with a gristmill in Bristol. He earned his own money. Before he died on March 8th, 1814, he created a will, which was quite uncommon for an African man.  Bristow left his belongings to the two children of Sarah Whitman Hooker and was buried with a headstone in the Old Center Cemetery.

He is the only person of African descent to have a gravestone. After 189 years, in 2003, the stone broke off, was placed in an exhibit dedicated to Bristow in Bristow Middle School and replaced.

By being educated on what the enslaved went through, we can honor the memory of Bristow and of the other known and unknown enslaved people in West Hartford.

Bristow

Jacob Thomas

Bristow was a native African, taken from his home to be enslaved in America. He was born in around 1731 before he was kidnapped and forced into harsh labor. It’s unknown when exactly he was taken from Africa and when he was first enslaved.

It is not known how Thomas Hart Hooker ended up with Bristow. He himself could have purchased Bristow, received him as a wedding present, or inherited him from a relative.

While Bristow was enslaved by the Hooker family, agriculture was the main way people made a living in the West Division of Hartford, where the Hooker family lived. This means Bristow would have done work like tending to livestock, plowing the fields, and other laborious farm chores like churning butter or harvesting crops.

In 1775 after about five years of being enslaved by the Hooker family, Thomas Hart Hooker was leaving to fight in the Revolutionary war. Thomas Hart Hooker said that he could not bear to fight for his country's freedom and leave a slave at home. He freed Bristow, but not without payment. His manumission paper read:

Know all men…that I Thomas Hart Hooker of Hartford in the county of Hartford for the consideration of sixty pounds received to my full satisfaction do by these present fully, freely, and absolutely release, manumit, and set at full liberty a certain negro man named Bristow. (May 9, 1775)

Those sixty pounds would be about $11,330 today or 600 days of labor. The Hooker family had already profited from the work he did for them, and this made it worse.

After Bristow was freed, he most likely lived with the Hooker family for some amount of time while he saved money to buy his own property. Bristow bought his own property which was a very uncommon thing for previously enslaved people to do. He lived there until he sold the property in 1792.  

Bristow had his will written giving all of his possessions to Thomas Hart and Sarah Whitman Hooker’s children Thomas and Abigail Hooker. Bristow was the only African-American or enslaved person to be buried in the Old Center Cemetery with a stone. Bristow lived a life being enslaved for many years but worked to make it to being a free man and even owning his own property. 

By  Olivia Lapointe and Lilianne Rojek

We remember you

By Taylor Deka

In Memory of Bristow an enslaved man

We will remember you

1731

Born in Africa

Shackled

Enslaved by the Hooker family

Working every day

1775

Paid sixty pounds for freedom

Finally

Bought your own land at 44

1796

A written will

Signed with a cross

The mark of those

Who could not write

I wonder

How much

Did your troubles hinder you?

Dying at the age of 83

You had made yourself free

You gave your Estate

To the children

Of your Former Slaveholder

We’ll never know your motives but

We will remember you

And

I must believe

That the birds cried when you passed

And the clouds rejoiced that you would be returned to them

Only record in the church

Of death

And

In memory of

Bristow

A free man

A Time In Slavery

           Yousif Albur, Ivy Nguyen, Het Patel, Xaymara Rodriguez, Matt Schatz

October 29, 2018

African American History Period 7

What is it to be enslaved? It is to be tortured both physically and mentally. It is not being able to live with complete authority over your own life. As defined by Oxford Dictionary, it is to be someone who is legally owned by another person, and to be forced to work for that person without pay. Although slavery is a foreign idea to many Americans in the 21st century, it was a very common practice in the 18th and 19th centuries. People of color, all around the world, did not have a say in their own freedom. It is common knowledge that southerners enslaved many people. Little do people know, however, that West Hartford—a supposed safe place—also participated in the institution of slavery.

Most recent inhabitants of West Hartford do not associate slavery with their hometown. They do now know that some of the most recognized families in West Hartford, such as the Sedgwick family, willfully owned human beings for their service.^[1] Of course, there were individuals, such as the famous Noah Webster, who fought against the cruel practice and called for its abolishment.^[2] Despite this, most wealthy individuals in the 18th century, such as the Whiting and Hooker families, were the ones who enslaved people in West Hartford. As research on the topic has expanded in recent years, light has been shed on another highly esteemed family that enslaved people —the Coltons, who owned a man named Chris. As it is such a prominent issue within our history, it is crucial that West Hartford recognizes slave-owning families such as the Coltons.

The Colton Family

The Colton family is very important when considering how slaveholders were perceived in Connecticut, for they enslaved Chris. Understanding Chris’ history begins with Reverend Benjamin Colton (1690-1759) and his kin. Colton graduated from Yale College, class of 1710, and became the first pastor of the Congregational Church of West Hartford in 1713.  This position gave him high social status, as the head of the Church in the 18th century.^[3] In fact, he was paid about 240 pounds for his service, a large amount in his time.^[4] In 1713, he married his first wife, Ruth Taylor (1693-1725), and had Eli, Ruth, Theodosia and Benjamin.^[5] Colton married his second wife, Elizabeth Pitkin, in 1726 after his first wife’s death.^[6] He had five children with Pitkin, including Abijah, born in 1731^[7] 

As he grew old, his health started to deteriorate. He was removed from his job as minister in 1756, a church committee called for his resignation due to his incapability to “perform his duties due to ill health for more than seven months.”^[8] In addition to this, he was subject to a scandal of defamation in 1758.^[9] Rumors state that he started to have drinking problems, taking to the bottle.

Rev. Benjamin Colton, made a payment to buy Chris a year before his death in 1759. Although it is unclear how badly he treated Chris, it is definite that he regarded Chris as less than human, for Chris is listed under the ‘barn’ section of property to be given away in his will. As stated in his will, he passed Chris to his son Abijah, one of his only living sons, along with his household property, which consisted of: the “house barn, house lot [of] 104 acres, and a lot in Farmington adjoining to Hartford [of] 240 acres.”^[10] From his seven page inventory, it can be concluded that Benjamin Colton was wealthy during his lifetime, similar to other slave owners at that time.^[11] He was no better than other slave owners living in West Hartford despite his practice in ministry. He, too, took other humans to be his property. 

By the time Colton passed away, his son Abijah, was about 28 years old, and serving as a Deacon of the Congregational Church.^[12] Chris was passed to Abijah Colton in his father’s will in 1759. He also commissioned to establish a highway from Hartford to Farmington, Connecticut in his lifetime.^[13] He married Mary Gaylord in 1774, having seven children with her.^[14] Several of his kin continued to go into the ministry, and moved out to areas such as Ohio and New Hampshire.^[15] 

It is unknown whether Abijah freed Chris during his lifetime. When Abijah died in 1815, his will did not have any mention of Chris to be passed onto his kin.^[16] It can be inferred, however, that Chris somehow managed to escape the reigns of slavery before 1790, since the first U.S. Census taken in 1790 shows that Abijah had no enslaved people in his household within that year. In fact, only three families in West Hartford owned slaves in that year. A change in attitude had overcome the citizens of West Hartford, whether it be moral, or loss of motivation in gaining profit from slavery.

This call for the abolishment of slavery is often the only perspective citizens nowadays remember about Connecticut. They do not realize how long it took for the town of West Hartford and Connecticut as a whole to abandon the corrupt idea of owning humans for economic profit, that even a minister believed this cruel act to be considered morally acceptable.

This is why we must acknowledge Chris’ story, and the harsh establishment he had to comply to during his lifetime.

The Story of Chris

Chris was the last, and only, enslaved person that Benjamin Colton purchased before he passed away. We will never know what year Chris was brought to Connecticut, but we can confirm that he was purchased the year before Benjamin Colton died. Chris was valued at 33 pounds, which is around $8,800 in today’s money, about 330 days of work in 1760^[17] Chris may have been part of the slave trade. We do not know whether Chris was ever freed from the oppressive practice of slavery. As the census taken in 1790 states, Abijah Colton did not enslave any person under his household at that time, nor does Chris’ name appear in Abijah’s will in 1815. Chris may have died enslaved under Abijah’s ownership, or he may have escaped successfully. He may have never experienced another free moment of his life, or he may have felt the heavy weight of dehumanization and discrimination being lifted off his shoulders.

There is not enough information to know how Chris ended up. We can only assume what the rest of his life was after being bought by Benjamin, and trace back the thread of what little information we can find. From Rev. Colton’s inventory, we can infer that Chris lived in the barn while he was enslaved by Rev. Colton, as Benjamin’s inventory includes the “Negro’s bed bedstead & Furniture” in the barn section.^[18] This may have been his living space as he worked in the barn.

He might have been bought to help with Reverend Colton’s illness; there must have been a specific reason as to why Reverend Colton waited until the last year of his life to make such a purchase. In addition to this, it is known that Chris was baptized by Rev. Colton as of December 31,1758, as stated in church records.^[19] After he was passed on to Abijah, he was admitted to communion in the church in 1759.^[20] While Christianity may have not been Chris’ original religion, it definitely became a part of his life as an enslaved person, for he would have spent hours in the meeting house due to his slaveholders being a minister and a Deacon. He could have made friends during the services because it was  common for the enslaved to sit together in the back of or in the balcony of the church.

We cannot place together Chris’ life exactly. However we can gain bits and pieces of his story through the little traces we can find from his masters’ timelines. Through these details, we can piece together what life could have been for Chris, an important factor in acknowledging the practice of slavery that existed in West Hartford.

Acknowledging Slavery

Slavery was a reality in Connecticut, and in West Hartford. Although it is something we should not be proud of, it is part of our town’s history. We must acknowledge it, even if it is dark and hard to believe. The beauty in acknowledgment is the learning process we experience when we recognize our past mistakes; we find ways to educate ourselves and others so that a practice as traumatic and demoralizing as this can never happen again. We care that slavery happened in this area, we know enslaved people lived in West Hartford, and we are not willing to ignore it. We have to accept our past in order to learn from it, for only the past can help us save our future.

Bibliography

"Abijah Colton Will." https://www.ancestry.com/ Acts and Laws of the State of Connecticut, in America. MS, Yale University.

 "Benjamin Colton Family Tree." Accessed October 25, 2018. https://www.ancestryclassroom.com/.

Church Record Abstracts, 1630-1920.

Colton, Benjamin Will, ancestry.com.

Deacon Abijah Colton http://kevgen.wikidot.com/deacon-abijah-colton

Norris Galpin Osborn, History of Connecticut, III (New York, 1925), 318 https://we-ha.com/west-hartford-slaves-will-not-be-forgotten-thanks-to-witness-stones/

"Noah Webster History." Noah Webster House. Accessed October 26, 2018. https://noahwebsterhouse.org/noahwebsterhistory/

Rev. Benjamin Colton Bio. Accessed October 25, 2018. https://sites.google.com/site/westhartfordwitnessstones/chris/rev-benjamin-colton-bio.

"Rev. Benjamin Colton Inventory." ancestry.com.

Sedgwick, Dennis. "Stephen Sedgwick (1700 - 1768)." SEDGWICK.ORG. Accessed October 26, 2018. http://www.sedgwick.org/na/families/robert1613/5/5-sedgwick-stephen1701.html.

Siegel, Michael. "African Americans in the 13 Colonies, 17th-18th Centuries." Map. In "The Routledge Atlas of African American History".

Slavery in Connecticut. Accessed October 24, 2018. http://slavenorth.com/connecticut.htm.

Steiner, Bernard Christian.  History of Slavery in Connecticut, 1893.

The New England Historical & Genealogical Register. TS.

"The State That Slavery Built: An Introduction." Northeast Magazine. Sept. 29, 2002.

Woolworth, George. Colton Family. TS. Publisher: Lancaster, Pa., Wickersham Print. Co.

Simone,

We’d like to apologize if we tell your story wrong

and for not knowing it in the first place.

We only know about you from your slaveholder’s will

Like you were never alive

We didn’t keep proper records

and didn’t even make sure of your name.

Simone? Limone?

To tell your story we created these tributes which explain how you lived in New London with John Prentiss and in 1711 were gifted to Captain Thomas Hosmer who moved you to his farm and orchard in West Hartford.

You were promised freedom at age 30, but we don’t know if that promise was kept.  

We can’t pretend to know your pain, or ever make up for it,

but we can at least apologize for not telling your story

 and almost leaving you behind in history

We Jews were once enslaved too

We learn about our ancestors in Egypt and all that happened to them

We are told to always keep in mind our history of slavery    -

It is mentioned 36 times in the Torah

We understand because we were once enslaved.

Passover commemorates our day of freedom, the enslaved are remembered

Our story is told and is part of our history

And so it is our obligation to remember your story as well.

We apologize, our ancestors’ actions are unforgivable

We apologize for only seeing you as a slave and not for the real person you were.

It’s hard to know what you were like

since we can’t hear your story from you,

but we will tell it the best we can to keep your legacy alive.

The witness stone we place today is a memorial to let the world know that you lived.

People remember our story - now it is time to remember  yours.  זוכר

Your friends,

Schecter Classes of 2020 & 2021

Jeremy Eisen, Eli Gold, Pauline Golder, Cooper Govoni-Raich, Talia Leshem

Miriam Newman, Halaylah Schechtman, Ari Sobel-Pressman, Lily Temkin

Simone Amended by Miriam Newman

        This piece of artwork has a background of newspaper slave ads which have been crinkled to make it look like they are old. The house in the middle represents a house that could have belonged to Simone’s slaveholder. It is the Hosmer homestead, but Captain Thomas Hosmer never lived in this house. The smoke coming out of the chimney is in the shape of a girl and it is a silhouette of Simone. The collage is monochromatic and represents the idea that her life was probably not very colorful because when you think of slavery it is not something a person would choose. The collage as a whole represents that her entire life is unknown so this is putting together all possibilities and partly amending Simone by dedicating this piece of artwork to recognize her life. Even while we are amending Simone in this artwork, coming out of the chimney as a smoke silhouette is showing we can’t amend her fully because she was living in the house behind the doors. There is no record of her life, and so we can only guess. However, we can try our best by remembering Simone and the wisp of smoke is her memory in our heads.

Bristow
by Shannon O’Keefe

Labor

Skilled at carpentry

He’d milk cows and make the cheese

Churn the butter with ease

People

Thomas Hart Hooker

Claimed to grant Bristow’s freedom

But taxed him much more

AmBoy the enslaved

Working for the Hookers too

Was Bristow his pal?

Middle Passage from Africa

Born in Africa

In 1731

Middle Passage forced

Freedom 

His freedom promised

But he had to toil for it

Sixty pounds the debt

Working his hardest

Ample determination

Wasn’t for nothing

His freedom was earned?

Were the Hookers generous?

Their money given?

How was the price earned?

Were the Hookers generous

Their money given?

Will

Bristow’s complex will

Everything to Hooker kids

Were they his dearest?

Dear Bristow,

by Lucy Homer and Kellyann Taylor

I really don’t know what to say

I don’t understand how the world could be so different

Than what we know today.

In the dead of the night

You were stolen away

Without a fair fight.

You weeped in sadness,

As Africa left your sight.

Africa was once your home

Taken from it, and left alone

Forced to leave your life behind,

With thoughts streaming through your mind.

You had no idea

Of what was in store

And the life you would live

When you reached America’s shore.

Your name taken from you

Your rights tarnished,

And your life feeling like

The Hookers kept you in a harness.

Living upon a farm

Forced to use your strengths and arms

You did everything to keep animals and crops healthy

Even when you were stealthy

Working for freedom against the race,

Suppressing your anger as they spit in your face.

You worked most of your life,

Developing skills never to be done by those freed,

Planting the seeds for success on your own,

In hope they’d flourish, while not being owned.

You were a man

Who went by many names

The fact that we will never know which one is yours

Is really such a shame.

Although your story seems vague

Your friend Amboy died

Without any insight into his life, unlike you

The day of his death is all we’re left with.

Were you his friend?

Were you there until the end?

Or was that forbidden?

Were you supposed to be hidden?

And kept from those also enslaved?

Your owner was Thomas Hooker,

A privileged young white man.

Who acted like a hero,

When he made you pay to be a free black man.

Then Thomas Hooker left for war

And declared you an enslaved man no more

Never to return, he lived a short life

Leaving everything he had to his sad, widowed wife.

May 9th, 1775

Finally free to live your own life

60 pounds was its worth

Even when it should be free at birth.

You bought your 3 acre land,

In Bristol CT,

Reminding everyone you’re still free.

You worked for that land,

It wasn’t just placed into your hand.

At the age of 65

You thought of all fellow important lives

And hired a man to write your will.

The land you earned from hard work and skill,

Was placed into the Hooker children’s hands.

Was there anyone by your side

at the moment when you finally died?

On that dark night of March 8th,

Did you still have your faith?

Even with your 83 years,

Did you leave this earth with any fears?

Who was there to mourn your death?

Who held your hand when you took your final breath?

If you weren’t enslaved,

And your future wasn’t paved

What would you have become?

An inventor, a scientist,

Or an advocate with a green thumb?

I still have so many questions,

How did you cope with the oppression?

The idea you were only a possession,

Stripped of any original unique expression.

And I feel guilty

For the terrible things of the past,

A twisty churning in my stomach,

Will this feeling forever last?

My ancestors’ wrong doings

Was not a choice of mine.

But I’m sorry nonetheless

And I know things will

Never

Truly

Be fine.

 Bristow Students

    Thank you to Witness Stones WH Advisory Committee :

Jane Lehman, Mary Donohue,

Elena and Booker DeVaughn

Diane Mack, Stephen Armstrong,

Anne McKernan, Chad Ellis, Tammy Exum

Judy Wyman Kelly, Roszena Haskins,

Lorna Thomas-Farquharson

Lara White, Janet Jackson, Jennifer deSimas

Matt Winter

         Thank you to our funders:

Sandy Chase Foundation

Jane Lehman and Matt Winter

Conard Parent Teacher Organization

Noah Webster House & West Hartford Historical Society

Connecticut Humanities Council
H&R Block

West Hartford Public Schools

Special Thanks to

Mayor Shari Cantor

Renée McCue, Public Relations Specialist́

Principal Julio Duarte, Conard High School

Chad Ellis and Jessica Blitzer Social Studies Department Chairs

Andrea Rose Cheatham Kasper, Head of School Solomon Schechter  

Jennifer DeSimas, First Church

Marc Boucher, Independent Stone

Justin Andrews, West Hartford Public Works

Cricket Press

Through research, education, and civic engagement, the WITNESS STONES PROJECT seeks to restore the history and to honor the humanity and contributions of the enslaved individuals who helped build our communities. https://sites.google.com/view/westhartfordctwitnessstones/home