Slave Owners in my Family Tree

There has been a lot of recent focus on Black Lives Matter in recent months. I had already examined my own family tree and knew that there were no “Black Lives” in it, and had confirmation from my DNA results. But there was a nagging thought in the back of my mind that I needed to do some further investigation.

Then a fellow genealogist (and a distant cousin of mine from my hometown of Wolcott, CT), Pauline Merrick, posted a link to an article in the Facebook group “Descendants of Connecticut Founding Families”. The article was from the Washington Post Magazine with the subtitle “I discovered that my ancestors had enslaved people. Would connecting with a descendant of those who were enslaved bring anyone healing?” (*1). The author had discovered that her Dutch ancestors in the Hudson River valley of NY owned slaves in the late 1700s. She noted that New York was one of the last Northern states to outlaw slavery, as “the state passed the Gradual Emancipation Act of 1799, which slow-rolled freedom over nearly 30 years.” She also found slave owners among many other Dutch families of that time.

My wife’s family name is VanDeCar and she has roots among this same group along the Hudson River. But her family line did not remain there, as her great*5 grandfather, Ruloffe VanDerKar, fought for the British in the Revolutionary War and when the war ended he had to flee to Canada, with his descendants remaining there until eventual repatriating to Michigan a century later. So, finding any slave owners in my wife’s family tree would mean a lot of exploration into family lines that I had not examined.

But Pauline, in posting to that Facebook group about Connecticut genealogy, also posted one more link, to material specifically about slavery in Connecticut (*2). This article contained a long list of articles and books about the subject. Here was the material I needed to continue my research.

Slavery in Connecticut

I had noted in an earlier posting (*3), “I grew up in CT where slaves were gradually emancipated, beginning with the blocking of importation of slaves in 1774, then the passage of the “Gradual Abolition Act” in 1784, proposed legislation in 1844, and finally the passage of “An Act to Prevent Slavery in 1848” (*4). But as another fellow Wolcott genealogist friend noted, “By 1800 there were 951 slaves in Connecticut. By 1820 there were fewer than 100. The 1848 legislation freed 6 slaves.” Most of these slaves were not like those on the cotton plantations of the south, but tended to be household slaves. Also, unlike the South, families did not have dozens of slaves with cruel overseers but tended to have only one or perhaps a few.

[Household Slave]

But where would I look to try and find any slave-owner connections among my ancestors? One of the references in the second link that Pauline had posted was to a PhD dissertation by Guocun Yang titled “From Slavery to Emancipation: The African Americans of Connecticut, 1650s – 1820s (*5).

One of the significant pieces of research that Yang had undertaken was a thorough examination of the 1790 census for Connecticut. This census was only taken a few years after the passage of the “Gradual Abolition Act” of 1784, so it would have captured a picture of the spread of slavery before it began to stop in Connecticut. Even more significantly, it was only three years after the federal government had mandated taking a census in 1787.

The results of Yang’s work was later published in 2002 in the Hartford (CT) Courant (*6). While the formatting of this article makes it difficult to use, this would become the basis for investigating my ancestors. The Courant also published a follow-up article in 2004 which is also useful (*7).

1790 Census

The mechanism and rationale for the census was established in Article 1, Section 2, of the US Constitution, which was written in 1787. This reads:

“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.”

It's worth noting here that the indentured servants, like the Irish, were included in the “free persons” count, but the African American slaves were only counted as three fifths of a person so needed to be separately counted.

Unlike later federal censuses, there were no standardized forms that were printed to capture this first counting. The columns were standardized, but each census taker made up his own forms – some with column labels and some without, some with page-totals on the bottom, and others with just lines drawn down the page for the columns. There were six columns – the name of the head of household, free white persons – males sixteen and over, free white persons – males fifteen and under, free white persons – female, other free persons, and slaves. Some census takers added a column for the total of all the other columns.

My Results

Tying the census results from 1790 to specific individuals was not an easy task. Unlike the census records in 1850 and beyond, the only thing available was the name of the head of household and the town he/she lived in. There was no information about the age of the person, etc. If you were fortunate that an ancestor lived in a specific town for a long period of time (perhaps having been born there or being buried there), that would help. But if there were other individuals with that same name (and families of the period often reused names), then it would not be easy to assign particular results to particular individuals.

Fortunately, I have a very complete family tree along most of my family lines and a good knowledge of what families lived in what parts of the state, so I could identify the individuals likely to be related to me and then investigate how they might be connected.

I only found one of my direct ancestors in this list of slave owners – Samuel Canfield. But I also found several close relatives who owned one or more slaves. Here are the ones I found and their connection to me (if I was able to make a good determination). If the family owned more than one slave, that is indicated in parentheses. Since I was relying only on recognition of family names as being potentially related to me, there are probably others that I missed. But this is a good indication of how many slave owners there are who are related to me.

·       Rachel Starr (2), Danbury, first cousin via Josiah Starr

·       Ezra Starr (3), Danbury

·       Josiah Starr (2), Danbury, multiple individuals with that name

·       Eliakam Starr, Danbury

·       Thaddeus Disbrow (2), Fairfield, great*7 uncle

·       Asahel Disbrow, Fairfield, great*7 uncle

·       Ebenezer Merriman, Southbury

·       Judson Canfield, Litchfield, great*6 uncle

·       Sherman Boardman (3), New Milford, distant cousins of Canfields

·       Samuel Canfield (2), New Milford, great*6 grandfather

·       David Northrop (2), New Milford, third cousin through Joseph Northrop

·       Titus Hotchkiss, Watertown, fourth cousin through Samuel Hotchkiss

·       Thomas Canfield, Woodbury, third cousin

·       Bennan[?] Hotchkiss (3), Cheshire

·       Robert Hotchkiss (2), Cheshire, great*6 uncle

·       Enos Hemingway, New Haven, Hemingway family related through Pierpont family

·       John Hemmingway, New Haven, related through Pierpont family

·       Joseph Hemmingway, New Haven, related through Pierpont family

·       Samuel Hemmingway (4), New Haven, related through Pierpont family

·       Amos Hotchkiss, New Haven, fifth cousin through John Hotchkiss

·       Hezekiah Hotchkiss, New Haven, fifth cousin through John Hotchkiss

·       Perpont [Pierpont] Edwards (2), New Haven, first cousin through James Pierpont

·       Caleb Merriman, Wallingford, second cousin through Nathaniel Merriman

·       Isaac Baldwin, Waterbury

·       Noadiah Russell, Thompson, first cousin through James Pierpont

With over two dozen individuals in the above list, that’s certainly a longer list than I would have expected. I have a lot more connections to the institution of slavery than I believed. I don’t know the names of these enslaved individuals, nor how they were treated. But I certainly cannot just pass off the topic as something that only took place in the pre-Civil War south.

Notes:

*1 - https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2020/07/22/after-i-discovered-that-my-ancestors-had-enslaved-people-i-connected-with-descendant-those-who-were-enslaved/?arc404=true

*2 - https://museumofcthistory.org/research-guide-to-materials-relating-to-slavery-in-connecticut/?fbclid=IwAR3LefdjLBOHh5AON2dnVzz_FYujV58_W7kIZXTjDxmi0Emg9f-1CNSrRw8

*3 - https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2020/06/juneteenth.html

*4 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_Connecticut

*5 – Yang, Guocun, From Slavery to Emancipation: The African Americans of Connecticut, 1650s – 1820s. Thesis (Ph.D.), University of Connecticut, 1999. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Dissertation Services, 2001.

*6 - https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-2002-09-29-0210075138-story.html

*7 - https://www.courant.com/courant-250/moments-in-history/hc-250-beyond-complicity-introduction-20140604-story.html