Hannah

The only records we currently have of Hannah are legal records, and they do not contain any vital information. We do not know how old Hannah was, where she was born, or the names of her family members. We do know that she was enslaved by Timothy Baker, and of childbearing age in 1692 (this could put her birth year anywhere from the mid 1640s to the late 1670s). In the early 1690s, she was charged twice with fornication with another enslaved person named Mingo. The second case would have been regarded as more serious, because this time Hannah became pregnant.

Sylvester Judd copied the record of this second court session on April 12, 1692. The notes are as follows: “she [Hannah] owned the fact [that she was guilty of fornication] and accused Mingo as the father of her child in open court…Mingo stood mute, yet there was sufficient evidence that he had owned that it was his child — and it being a heinous crime against the light of nature, the laws of god + man, & provoking evil in the sight of God + which so much abound among us, especially in such ignorant ones, rendering themselves like brutish beasts, which, if not suppressed + restrained, such wicked practices will abound to the reproach of all religion” (Judd manuscript).

This is not a typical judgment in a Hampshire County fornication case. Most often, the father of the child would not be named, only the woman would face punishment, and there was none of the moralizing that is seen here about the evil effects of fornication. Both Mingo and Hannah were sentenced to 15 lashes on their naked bodies.

Since both Mingo and Hannah were enslaved (Mingo was enslaved by Samuel Parsons), their child would have been born into slavery. After deciding the punishment for fornication, the same court session decided the manner of which man, Parsons or Baker, would enslave Mingo and Hannah’s child. The decision was reached that Parsons and Baker would be “joint + equal in charge of the child” until the child was nine years old. When the child was 9, either Parsons or Baker would pay the other half the value that they assigned to the child, thus taking full ownership, or they would have a “joint + equal property in said child, the value whereof to be divided betwixt them.” Dividing the value implies the intent either to hire out the child and split the wages, or to sell the child away from their family and split the profit (Judd manuscript, Hampshire Matters, p. 182). ​

Samuel Parsons’ will mentions that Mingo eventually married, but does not name his wife, so we do not know if it was Hannah (see the entry on Mingo for more detail).