Hempsted House Hosts a Panel on Northern Slavery

The Hempsted House has been grappling with the best way to talk about Adam Jackson, enslaved worker, and Joshua Hempsted, slaveholder. We have Joshua’s diary, which mostly provides a record of Adam’s work, but we have nothing from Adam’s perspective.

The idea of one enslaved person living in a house with a family is a very different concept than the more familiar concept of plantation slavery, where large numbers of enslaved people lived in separate quarters and often had very little interaction with white slaveholders and their families. This concept of Adam and Joshua sharing a roof, sharing similar chores, and sharing the task of training Joshua’s grandsons for their futures can lead to confusion about the roles and realities of colonial slavery. As there were 200 years of slavery before the cotton loom, the Hempsted House can help visitors learn more about Northern slavery.

We know that within three generations of Hempsteds there were at least nine slaveholders in the family. Other enslaved workers owned by Hempsted family members included Dinah, a middle-aged worker, who ran away from the house in 1803, and the famous Venture Smith, who purchased freedom for himself and his family and became a successful landholder in CT. 

Ad placed by Joshua Hempsted (Joshua the Diarist’s grandson, 4^th in the line of Joshuas) in the Wednesday, May 4, 1803 issue of Connecticut Gazette and The Commercial Intelligencer after Dinah, his enslaved worker ran away in 1803

 

We have some amazing stories of freedom, perseverance, and opportunities lost and gained. How do we make these stories come alive? What’s the best way to tell these stories? Those are the central questions 12 advisors grappled with June 20-21 during a symposium funded by Connecticut Humanities at the Hempsted Houses in New London.

The panelists were all chosen for the work they have done in the field of Northern slavery, either through research, artistic expression, or museum and classroom interpretation. They debated how the site should be shared with visitors, best avenues for special programs and events, proposals for a school curriculum, and how to incorporate the enslavement of Native Americans into the stories told at the site. Their suggestions listed below give us much to work on!

• Go global. Share that slavery was a global business and show places throughout the globe where enslaved people were sent to work for others. Convey that slavery was a global system of incredible cruelty and places in North America, like New London, represent just a very small piece of this global story.

• Present a typical day in the life of the enslaved at the Hempsted House. This will help share the realities of slavery in the colonial north. Show some of the places “disobedient slaves” might be sent if they became known for insubordination.

• Focus on the role of Native Americans and African Americans in the maritime world. New London is a port city and it is important to show what many people of color were doing at sea. Historically, New London was approximately 6-10% people of color, while at sea approximately 20% were non-white. At sea, society was often merit based and there was a very different sense of power.

• Move away from documents written primarily by white men by using Museum Theater to give voice to the enslaved. Theater provides an opportunity to show how someone whose voice wasn’t recorded could have reacted to and resisted the system of slavery. (For example, Joshua’s diary provides a list of everything Adam Jackson breaks while working for him.) Reader’s Theater can be a great way to get school groups involved in these discussions.\

• Create a visitor experience that focuses on a specific year in the life of the Hempsted House. Focus on different historic events that happened during that year. Every few years, the visitor experience can be changed by moving to a new year and focusing on different historic events. This allows visitors to participate in living history, as seen through the eyes of the people associated with the Hempsted House.

We are grateful for the support of Connecticut Humanities and the work of our panelists:

Dr. Allegra di Bonaventura, author of the book that has brought Joshua Hempsted and Adam Jackson to life in For Adam’s Sake: A Family Saga in Colonial New England, and Assistant Dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at Yale University.

Dr. David Canton, Associate Professor of History at Connecticut College.  Dr. Canton also serves on our community advisory panel for the reinterpretation of the Joshua Hempsted House.

Tammy Denease, an accomplished Connecticut performing artist/storyteller.

Dr. Paul J. Grant-Costa, Executive Editor of The Yale Indian Papers Project.

Richard Josey, Manager of Programs for Historic Sites, Minnesota Historical Society, formerly spent 12 years working at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Robert Kiihne, Exhibit Developer, working on the Hempsted House reinterpretation.

Michael A. Lord, Director, Education, Historic Hudson Valley, Philipsburg Manor.

Dr. Jason Mancini, Senior Researcher at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center.

Paulie Reed, 4^th and 5^th Grade Teacher at the Regional Multicultural Magnet School, New London.

Dr. David A. Spatz, Assistant Director of The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University.

Dr. Wendy Warren, Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University.

Sheryl Hack, Barb Nagy, Aileen Novick – CTL Staff

 - Aileen Novick

Three Different Starting Points

African American families may bring very different attitudes about slavery to the Hempsted House. In my last post I talked about the young man that felt ashamed of slavery until he came to know Adam Jackson. Recently, I had the opportunity to hear two other local African American perspectives on slavery. 

Megan Sandberg Zakian, Danny Glover (who performed in "Roots of Liberty"), Debra Wise, and Catherine Carr Kelly. Photo: A.R. Sinclair Photography.

The large and active Haitian community in greater Boston recently provided a very different perspective. On Saturday, May 4, 2013, a theatrical performance produced by Underground Railway Theater entitled, "Roots of Liberty – The Haitian Revolution and the American Civil War" made connections between Haiti’s successful slave rebellion and the American Civil War.  The Tremont Temple Baptist Church was packed with over 1400 people, with the performance in presented in both English and Creole. For Haitian Americans, the history of slavery is linked to freedom and self-determination.

A family friend provides yet another perspective. This young woman is the daughter of immigrants from Uganda. While attending high school here in Concord, Massachusetts in 2008, she sat in a classroom one day and learned about American slavery. The teacher that day kept looking at her and addressing the content to her as if this was a very personal story. After a short while she had enough and interrupted, “Why are you looking at me? I am from Africa and my ancestors were not slaves. You should know that.” She relayed the event that night to my family. Remembering that story I asked her recently: Was she interested in learning about slavery in the United States? Was it relevant to her in some way? She told me that it was interesting to her, and that some of her friends had asked her to go to the theatrical presentation on Haiti's history on May 4th with them.

The interpretation of the Hempsted house must make room for visitors coming with very different perspectives of slavery.  What is also clear is how powerful telling that story could be.

Robert Kiihne of RK Exhibits will be participating in the teen audience research this summer and will draft the exhibitions component of the interpretive plan in the fall.

Listening to the Stakeholder for the First Time

 

On April 28^th CL organized a lunch and open forum on the grounds of the Hempstead House. Academics, board members, community leaders, Writers Block InK staff and students joined together with CL staff and project staff for an open ended discussion of the Hempstead House and Adam Jackson. Allegra Di Bonaventure began the discussion with highlights from her amazing book, For Adam’s Sake A Family Saga in Colonial New England. She told us how she was unexpectedly sucked into Adam’s story.

Ernie Hewett, CT State Representative and former Mayor of New London, picked up the discussion relating his own family connection to slavery and how it resonates with him today. He spoke of attending a family reunion of the family that freed his ancestor and gave him land that is in Ernie’s family to this day. For Representative Hewett slavery is neither abstract nor simple.

Others spoke of the complex nature of colonial slavery and the tenuous position of free African Americans in colonial America. Adam’s parents’ constant struggle to remain free is an important lens through which to view Adam’s life. Adam lived at the Hempstead house within the 100 year period of slavery before there is even the idea of Abolitionism, and over 200 years before the civil rights movement. The sheer scale of Connecticut slavery and length of its slow decline must also be understood.

Of course all history stories are complex, especially to those that dedicate their lives to interpreting and understanding history, but what will speak to the average visitor?

One of the Writers Block InK students then spoke to the group of his own experience getting to know Adam Jackson last summer. He told us how he first felt uncomfortable and even a little ashamed of slavery. Over the summer this remarkable young man came to be enthralled and creatively inspired by Adam’s plight. For many of us this teenager’s insight spoke volumes. It pointed out how important it would be both to tell this story and to create a safe comfortable learning experience. It also illustrates that families may come to the site with preconceived ideas about colonial slavery and what it means to them.

Many historical narratives provide an opportunity for 4^th graders to image a foreign world that once was, but for African American kids the history of slavery could be intertwined with their self-image.   Most young visitors would not have the opportunity to get to know our characters over a summer. If we are to be successful in engaging the community, visiting the Hempstead House must be a positive experience for even our youngest visitors.  

Louisa Brouwer is a material culture scholar who has recently written a revised four-period furnishing plan for the Joshua Hempsted House in New London, Connecticut. She currently works at the Yale University Art Gallery as the Sack Archives Fellow in the department of American Decorative Arts.