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

John Jackson never lived here

“Not until the first hours of May 29, 1711, could they finally act. On that day, Jackson stood watchful and uneasy on his master’s boat, as he and John Rogers maneuvered it across the dark waters of the Sound." - Allegra Di Bonaventure, For Adam’s Sake, p.153 

In was the middle of the night when John Jackson, father of Hempsted slave Adam Jackson, sailed from New London, CT to Long Island, NY with his former owner, John Rogers, at the helm. Once on Long Island, John would sneak into the home of his wife’s owner and, without waking the other occupants, find his wife, Joan Jackson, and their two children inside. The group would leave the house, return to the boat and sail back to New London undetected. The next day Joan and the two children would be spirited away to Rhode Island while John Jackson and John Rogers faced an angry New London court– where no one doubted who had done the daring deed.

At the time of this dramatic event Adam Jackson was 11 years old. It will be nearly 16 years before Adam will be enslaved at Hempsted House.

So here is the question – Is this amazing tale an appropriate story to tell at the Hempsted House?  By the definition of many historic home interpretations the answer is clearly no. The story did not take place within the Hempsted property and had little impact on the occupants at the time. Yet if you were visiting the Hempsted House in New London and wanted to learn about Colonial slavery wouldn’t you want to hear this story?  

Certainly the story and its aftermath must have helped to form Adam Jackson’s view of his world. Adam would have heard of the later capture of Joan, his mother, and two of his siblings within months of the dramatic rescue and their immediate sale to yet another family. He may have gotten regular updates of his father’s extraordinary efforts to gain Joan’s freedom over the next 6 years and even longer to regain the freedom of Jack, his little brother, and Rachel, his little sister, in the Massachusetts courts system. He would also see his parents and siblings struggle with the limits of freedom for free men and women of color in Colonial America.  For Adam the idea and reality of freedom must have been complex.

Joshua Hempsted himself chronicled the murder of a 9 year old slave named Zeno. Whipped to death by her master, Zeno’s death and the heavily attended trial of her well-heeled master grabbed the attention of all of New London. While clearly the community disapproved, in the end her owner, the upper crust Nicholas Lechmere, would escape punishment. Joshua and Adam would have known all of the players in this drama personally, and it is hard to image that this life experience did not shape both their views as a slave owner and a slave – yet none of this took place within the Hempsted House nor involved its occupants.

Which leads to our question:  is this an appropriate story to share at the Hempsted House?  What do you think?

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.

The Writers’ Block students first impressions of the Hempsted House

[Note:  As part of our interpretive planning process, the planning team is working with a group of young students from The Writers’ Block, to learn more about their impressions about museums and how they would prefer to experience them.  On July 30 they will be presenting the stories of the house with the public during an open house, the details of which will follow in an additional blog post.] 

The students gathered at the house for the first time on June 25th. Many knew very little about the House, so this was our opportunity to hear their preconceptions. From the beginning they understood that the House is very old, but they had no idea how old. Anywhere from 1640 to 1850 would have made sense to them. Some had heard that the House was haunted and some knew that a slave had lived there.

We asked the students about their past museum experiences. In retrospect this was a trick question since many did not think of a historic house as a museum. In fact the students’ answers suggest that they do see historic houses in a different category. While the kids had gone to science museums and art museums, they also gave examples of monuments – the Statue of Liberty and Lincoln Memorial.

The kids are right.

Many historic houses are presented as monuments and not museums.  How often have you been to a historic house interpreted through:

• Discussions of the architecture
• Lists of who lived here when
• What they might have done in each room
• How the house’s occupants would have used this antique candle holder that the curator bought last year

Often what is lacking is a broader context: community, moment in history, theme – the basic building blocks of a museum exhibition.

As the students explored the Hempsted House, they enjoyed playing- “what is that?” and, “Can you uncover the story of this house?” Then it was time to give  them some historical context. It was 11:30 in the morning, 92 degrees and humid outside. We told them the basic history of the house, who lived here and when.  We tried to add a little variety into the program with a timeline activity. I brought a bright red 8’ by 1’ board on a stand with a lot of stickers and asked the kids for help. They could put what every dates they wanted between 1630 and 2013. We helped identify dates of major events the kids brought up. My hope had been that the kids might see this as theirs. They might put their own birthday or 9/11 or some anything that had meaning in their lives. It was not to be. While they participated, the students, from 11 to 17, did not include any dates with personal meaning. I then realized that, for them, so far, this was school without air-conditioning.

Many of the kids did start to participate in a discussion, or at least ask some questions when it came time to talk about Colonial slavery. The story is complex and different from place to place. Many students and Writers Block staff had made assumptions like – there must have been a number of slaves at this house, they would have lived outside of the main house, the slaves would have eaten different food. While none of these are true at the Hempsted property, they might have been true right down the road in 1730.

So what is the difference between the life of the Hempsted family and the life of Adam Jackson? To me (a father of two in his mid 40’s) it is family. Joshua Hempsted does everything he can to provide for his children, while denying Adam Jackson even the hope of family. Even if Adam could have children, his offspring would be born into bondage. We know that in the coming weeks the students and Writers Block staff will pull apart slavery, and there are many directions they can choose to explore. My hope is that at some point this will no longer feel like school.   

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.