Of Bondage and Isolation: Meditations on the Lives of Black Women Enslaved in the Pioneer Valley

With Dr. Jennifer DeClue, Smith College

Moderated by Gina Nortonsmith, Archivist, Northeastern University and Historic Northampton Board Member

The names of Black women enslaved by the powerful men remembered in history as “River Gods” can be found in their diaries, account books, wills, probate inventories, and church records. These records do the good work of offering confirmation that John Stoddard owned a woman called Elizabeth; that Jonathan Edwards owned Leah and Rose and Venus; that the Dwight family owned Sylvia Church; and that the Phelps family owned Peg and Rose and Phillis and Rose’s daughter Phillis.

Smith College professor Jennifer DeClue will discuss how these archival records make incontrovertible the fact of slavery’s violent history in the valley, but leave many questions unanswered. Dr. DeClue will work to paint a clearer picture of what life might have been like for Black women enslaved here, in the long years before abolition would unfold in Massachusetts.