Special Articles and Monographs

The list below is a very mixed bag, but even the worst stuff published in turn-of-the-century popular magazines can tell something about the racial attitudes of Connecticut’s white citizens during the period of the National Consensus.

Adomeit, Peter. “Selection by Seniority: How Much Longer Can a Custom Sur­vive that Bars Blacks and Women From the Connecticut Supreme Court?” Connecticut Bar Journal 51 (September, 1977)3:295-327. See under “Women.”

Andrews, Charles M. “Slavery in Connecticut.” Magazine of American History 21(May, 1889)5:422-23. Manumissions were common in eighteenth-century Connecticut, Andrews tells us, and here he provides illustrations of manumis­sion certificates found among the Wethersfield records.

Bingham, Alfred M. “Squatter Settlements of Freed Slaves in New England.” CHS Bulletin 41(July, 1976)3:65-80. Bingham believes that some stone struc­tures in Lyme were built as shelters in the middle of the eighteenth century by liberated slaves. There are similar shelters in Groton. The author is an attor­ney.

Bishop, M. Guy. “Voices for Moderation: Anti-Slavery Thoughts of the Lyman Beecher Family,” Mid-America 63( October, 1981).

Bronson, E. B. “Notes on Connecticut as a Slave State.” Journal of Negro History 2(January, 1917)1:79-84. Summary of anti-slavery legislation; account of anti-abolitionism in Torrington. Nothing important.

Burr, Nelson. “United States Senator James Dixon: 1814-1873 Episcopalian Anti-Slavery Statesman,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 50(March, 1981) 1:29-72. Check index for reference to annotation.

Coley, James E. “Slavery in Connecticut.” Magazine of American History 25(January-June, 1891)6:490-92. A few miscellaneous documents, notably a bill of sale from Westport and an advertisement for a runaway from Greenwich.

Farnham, Henry W. “Joseph Earl Sheffield.” Papers of the NHCHS 7(1908):65-119. This biography of the principal benefactor of the Sheffield Scientific School is listed here because an appendix includes an essay written by Sheffield in 1865 titled “The Future of the Negro,” which is a good example of the Con­necticut anti-emancipationist mind.

Fowler, William C. The Historical Status of the Negro in Connecticut New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse and Taylor, 1875. A politically motivated work attempting to demonstrate as historically sound the inferior position of blacks in Connec­ticut.

French, H. W. Art and Artists in Connecticut. New York: C. T. Dillingham, 1879. This book is treated above, under “Art.” It is included here to call attention to the one-paragraph biography of Nelson A. Primus (b. Hartford, 1843), a black artist of note. He was especially active as a portraitist around Boston in 1878, when French wrote the book. See below: David White’s “Addie Brown.”

Hill, Isaac J. A Sketch of the 29th Regiment of Connecticut Colored Troops. (Baltimore:

Dougherty, Maguire and Co., 1867). A forty-two-page work. Check the index for articles on this and the 30th, also a black Civil War regiment from Connec­ticut.

Johnson, Charles S. “The Negro Population of Waterbury, Connecticut.” Journal of Negro Life 1 (October-November, 1923):298-302, 338-42. Johnson was then Director of the Department of Research and Investigations of the National Urban League. In 1920, blacks constituted 1 percent (951) of the Waterbury population. There were another 349 Portugese blacks and mulattoes. Of the whole, only 20 percent were native to Waterbury. Of 547 employed, all but one were in domestic service. A few were self-employed. A wealth of hard-to-find data about this small group of Connecticut people.

Logan, Gwendolyn Evans. "The Slave in Connecticut During the Revolution." CHS Bulletin 30(July, 1965)3. A good piece, but not nearly as inclusive as David White, cited below.

Mattatuck Historical Society. “Slaves in Waterbury.” Waterbury, 1953.

Mitchell, Mary Hewitt. “Slavery in Connecticut and Especially in New Haven.” [ 1650-1848] Papers of the NHCHS 10(1951): 286-312. A good early piece; well researched, still useful, but thoroughly exploited by Warner, cited above.

Morris, Henry. “Slavery in the Connecticut Valley.” Papers and Proceedings of the Connecticut Valley Historical Society. Springfield, 1881. Almost exclusively Springfield.

Norton, Frederick Calvin. “Negro Slavery in Connecticut.” Connecticut Magazine 5(June, 1899)6:320-28. Adds nothing to standard sources, but don’t miss the illustration “An ‘Election Parade’ of a Negro Governor,” page 302.

O’Dea, Michael. “The Negro Governors.” American History Illustrated 15(July, 1980):23-25,48. See Platt, below.

Platt, Orville H. “Negro Governors.” Papers of the NHCHS 6(1900):315-36. An account of the custom of blacks during the late-eighteenth and nineteenth cen­turies to elect one of their number "governor" each year. Interesting for what Senator Platt unconsciously tells us about his own racial views, which were typi­cal of the 1890s’ national consensus. Includes a recipe for “election cake.”

Preston, Howard W. “Godfrey Malbone’s Connecticut Investment.” Collections of the Rhode Island Historical Society 16(0ctober, 1923)4:115-19. This article lists the slave holdings of the man who was probably Connecticut’s largest slaveholder ever. Malbone owned twenty-seven in 1764.

Scott, Kenneth. ‘“Rude and Prophane Behavior’ in the Litchfield Meeting House in 1764.” CHS Bulletin 19(July, 1954)3:93-95. Nim, a Negro, refused to sit in the special section set aside for blacks.

Schmoke, Kurt. “The Dixwell Avenue Congregational Church, 1829 to 1896.” Journal of the NHCHS 29(May-June, 1971)1:1-21. The Temple Street Church, founded by Simeon Jocelyn, a white, and four black colleagues, was the first church in New Haven to have a black minister, James C. Pennington. Excellent “Bibliographical Note.” See also Mary Beth McQueeney, “Simeon Jocelyn, New Haven Reformer,” Journal of the NHCHS 19(September, 1970)3:63-68.

Smith, Martin H. “When the Bugle of the Stage Coach Sounded through the Vil­lage.” Connecticut Magazine 8(1903)2 +. This is the initial installment of a trio of stories about nineteenth-century Suffield, based on Smith’s reminiscences. The material is quite unusual in that it deals sympathetically, and I think per­ceptively, with the normal course of events in a typical small-town Connecticut black man’s life. The series focuses on a white family, but central to it and inte­grated into it is the story of Titus Kent, a real slave in the family of the Rever­end Ebenezur Gay. Kent was emancipated in 1812 and died in 1837. Smith, of course, is writing about events at least sixty years before his time, but the stories have a ring of authenticity to them. The others in the series are “Reminiscences of Old Negro Slavery Days,” 1(1905)1, 4; and “Old Slave Days in Connecticut; Romance and Tragedy of Negro Serfdom,” 10(1906)1, 2. Smith has his facts about the emancipation laws of 1784 and 1792 wrong in this one.

Stewart, Daniel Y. Black New Haven, 1920-1977. New Haven: Advocate Press, 1977. Anecdotal, hard-to-find material.

Warner, Robert A. “Amos Gerry Beman—1812-1874, A Memoir of a Forgotten Leader. “Journal of Negro History 22(April, 1937). Beman was the first black minister in New Haven. His papers are at Yale.

White, David O. Connecticut’s Black Soldiers, 1775-1783. Bicentennial pamphlet IV (1973). White developed a list of 289 Connecticut blacks who fought on the winning side, and there were probably a great many more. The author de­scribes their life and contribution and adds a chapter on their post-war problems. Very helpful citations. White has done a great deal of research in Con­necticut black history, first in his capacity as Special Assistant to the Historical Commission researching the Prudence Crandall house in Canterbury (see below), and then as Director of the State Museum at the Connecticut State Li­brary in Hartford. He is white.

—”Addie Brown’s Hartford.” CHS Bulletin 41 (April, 1976)2:56-64. Materials drawn from the “Primus Papers” at the CHS. Brown corresponded with Re­becca Primus, a school teacher and daughter of one of Hartford’s leading nineteenth-century black families. Rebecca’s brother was Nelson A. Primus, mentioned above under French. This is an absolutely fascinating peek at a life seldom explored.

—”Augustus Washington, Black Daguerreotypist of Hartford.” CHS Bulletin 39(January, 1974)1:14-19. Washington was a teacher in one of Hartford’s black schools in the 1840s and 1850s. In addition to running his studio, he was also an active abolitionist and intellectual adventurer.

—”Hartford’s African Schools, 1830-1868.” CHS Bulletin 39(April, 1974)2:47-53. Schools for blacks were established as segregated institutions in 1833 and not integrated until 1868. White lists teachers, discusses several of them, and com­ments on the level of instruction.