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The Working Girls Vacation Society: Keeping the ‘Sin’ Out of ‘Single’

During the Gilded Age, hundreds of thousands of young women worked long hours for low pay in sweat shops and factories. Some couldn’t get enough to eat, and some contracted tuberculosis in the crowded, dirty workplaces. Upper-class women came up with a way to help them: The Working Girls Vacation Society. It gave certain girls a two-week, supervised vacation in the country.

Unchaperoned co-ed bathing at Coney Island, 1897. Not the kind of vacation sanctioned by the Working Girls Vacation Society.

The rich ladies were as concerned about the morality of the working girls as much as their health. They worried the girls, once outside the home, would succumb to the blandishments of men or, worse, turn to prostitution. Getting them away from the temptations of the city and into the wholesome countryside seemed like a good way to prevent that.

And so in Boston and New York they started working girls vacation societies or clubs. They then sent the girls for two weeks to one of more than a dozen country homes — in rural Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and New Jersey. There they got three square meals a day, fresh air and in some cases medical attention.

They could read and knit and learn how to make paper flowers. On Sunday they went to church. They helped with the housework, a nod to the rich ladies’ preference that they find a morally safer line of work as domestic servants.

Doubtful Attractions

Led by copper heiress Grace Dodge, wealthy women philanthropists after the Civil War started the YWCA and a network of working girls clubs. The reformers then saw a need to to keep the girls from going unchaperoned to vaudeville shows, amusement parks, dance halls and sporting events. In 1894, Edith A. Sawyer described in The Churchman the horrors of a such a places, “where crowds congregate, and where there are electric lights, cheap music, pink lemonade and ‘merry-go-rounds’.”

The horror!

In such public places, they believed, the working girls could succumb to sinful temptations presented by men.

“There being so few week-end resources, the public amusement places with their doubtful attractions are all that is left,” reported Far and Near, the journal of the national coalition of working girls’ clubs, in 1890.

The Working Girls Vacation Society

Katharine W.D. Herbert, wife of a wealthy stockbroker, founded the Working Girls Vacation Society in 1883 as an offshoot of the New York Working Girls Club. She was a philanthropist known for donating thousands of pieces of carved jade to the Museum of Natural History in New York.

Herbert was “struck with the monotony of their ceaseless toil year in and out.”

To start the vacation club, she and her wealthy friends held a bazaar and raised nearly $1,000. She set up an advisory board that consisted of prominent men and half a dozen ministers.

The Society then found homes. In East Haddam, Conn., three houses and three barns once owned by the Working Girls Vacation Society is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1890, the Society’s social worker, Annie White Strathern, furnished one of the farmhouses as a vacation home for young working women.

Phebe Howell House 1834 aka Rose Cottage of the Working Girls’ Vacation Society

The Getaway Spots

Other vacation clubs and houses formed in Boston and New York during the Gilded Age, offshoots of the YWCA, the Working Girls Club in New York and the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union in Boston.

The New York Working Girls Vacation Society eventually had 10 houses. Uplands and Hillcrest in the Adirondacks, for example, were gifts of George Dodge, Grace Dodge’s uncle.

Girls could go to Connecticut, to Farmington Lodge in Farmington, Breezy Cottage at Penfield Beach in Fairfield, and to two in Westport, including Green Cottage in Green’s Farms. Or they could stay at lodgings in New York: at Elmcote in Chester or Neversink Manse in Huguenot.

New York’s Jewish Working Girls Vacation Society had two vacation houses, one in Bellport, Long Island, and one at Big Indian in the Catskills.

Boston’s working girls went to Fernside in Princeton, Mass., Good Rest in Lancaster, Mass., The Homestead Inn in the Temple Hills of New Hampshire and one in Methuen, Mass., called The Girls Boarding House.

Churches and settlement houses also maintained vacation homes for working girls; so did Bloomingdale’s, which had a vacation house in Long Branch, N.J., for its employees.

The Working Girls Vacation Society Vacation

The wealthy ladies realized some working girls didn’t like to accept charity, so they charged a nominal fee – about $3 – for a two weeks’ vacation. They’d lend money to those who couldn’t afford it. Some got a free ride.

But you couldn’t go if you had a reputation as a floozy. Harriet Comstock in the Christian Observer in 1907 made it clear that girls with loose morals weren’t welcome. The society sent “the better class of working girls to beautiful country homes for pure fun,” she wrote. [Emphasis added.]

How much fun? Certainly not too much.

In East Haddam, the girls’ supervisor carefully noted their weight gains and the amount of milk they drank as measures of their health improvement. The responsibilities of the trained resident social worker included “instruction in crafts such as making paper flowers and tooled leather purses, and leading hikes and motoring excursions to local sites.”

Every Friday evening the girls came up with their own entertainment, and they went to dances held in the recreation center.

At Fernside in western Massachusetts they could read, sew, walk, take a drive in a wagon or do nothing. At least the old mansion had a theater where they could put on amateur theatricals.

In 1890, Far and Near described a typical vacation, perhaps overselling the “fun” part.

How the girls enjoy the complete change from work and worry to good country air, the tramping to the mountains and the places of interest, or, if at the seaside, the bathing; the dances in the barn, the games and the music. On rainy days fancywork, crocheting, knitting, and reading make the time fly as if on wings.

Prayers Twice a Day

In 1913, Hugh Thompson reported the working girls chafed at the restrictions during their getaways. Thompson wrote in “The Vacation Savings Movement,” in Munsey’s Magazine:

[T]hey were unpopular because of the restrictions imposed on the inmates. In most of them the girls had to live by rigid rule; there was no freedom of action. The situation was summed up by a saleswoman who told an investigator: “Why, you can’t even look at a man if you go there! I do not want to be bound to go to prayers twice a day.

The general feeling, Thompson wrote, was that the self-supporting women who worked so hard wanted absolute freedom to rest or seek innocent amusement.

A U.S. sweatshop, around 1890.

They also may have resented their benefactress’ condescension. Harriet Comstock, who promoted the Working Girls Vacation Society in her writing for church magazines, described a missive from the society’s secretary. The secretary had written to a vacation home supervisor about a working woman:

“I am sending you a little forlornity; try to make her think she is in heaven.”

2-1/2 Percent

The 1900 census reported 261,081 unmarried working women between the ages of 10 and 35 living in the state of New York. By 1909, the New York vacation societies hosted about 1400 working girls a year, according to Amy E. Spingarn. “A trifle over 2-1/2 percent are provided for,” she wrote.

Springarn had conducted a survey on vacation resources for working girls and reported her findings in “Summer Vacations for Working Girls” in the The Survey.

A 15-year-old girl punching sheets at the Boston Index Card Co. in 1917. Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine.

Their income, she wrote, ranged from $1 a week to $16 a week, and their average age about 20. The vacation societies charged a few dollars, but most come free. The girls are factory workers, sales clerks, teachers, dressmakers and stenographers. Sometimes the girls didn’t have clothes, and sometimes the Society repaid the family for lost wages.

Tuberculosis

“Do the people of New York City realize how many working girls have tubercular and cardiac trouble?” the New York Vacation Club Society asked the editor of the New York Times in 1923.

Some of the girls with symptoms of tuberculosis went to the Adirondacks for treatment. They could stay at Hillcrest year-round for treatment.

Article from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 21, 1907

Anna Buchanan, the assistant treasurer of the Working Girls’ Vacation Society, in 1891 gave an example of a working girl helped by a visit to Santa Clara in a letter to The Christian Union.

One of these was a young dressmaker, who was very feeble and had a bad cough. She was sent to the mountains, where she not only gained strength, but her cough disappeared, and she came home comparatively well, and ready for her winter’s work.

Dining room at “Uplands,” Santa Clara. The caption read, “The good fellowship among the girls here makes it seem more like a school than a sanitarium.”
The Circle, volume VIII, No. 1, July-August, 1910, p. 9

In 1945, the Working Girls Vacation Society of New York shut down. Katharine Herbert died that same year.

The New York Working Girls’ Vacation Society mission continues as a successor organization, the Stony Wold-Herbert Fund, which provides grants for study and research in pulmonary diseases.

In East Haddam, the owner of the Phebe Howell House is undertaking a historically accurate restoration of the Phebe Howell House, aka Rose Cottage. You can see pictures at Facebook.com/WorkingGirlsVacationSociety.

Images: Coney Island bathers Campbell, Alfred S. On the beach, Coney Island. New York, ca. 1897. Elizabeth, N.J.: Alfred S. Campbell, Publisher, April 20. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2005677854/. Fernside By Izzysanime – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21538381. Merry go round Highsmith, Carol M, photographer. The carousel, or merry-go-round, at Richland Carrousel Park opened inin downtown Mansfield, Ohio. United States Ohio Richland County Mansfield, 2016. -10-07. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2016632407/. Sweatshop By Unknown – http://americansformorality.com/civilrights/civilrights.html, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27485325.

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The Connecticut Accent, Or Does Connecticut Even Have One?

Poor old Connecticut, invaded every day by thousands of Noo Yawkers and Bahstonians. Those people who don’t know what to do with their ‘r’s make it nearly impossible for the state to sustain a uniquely Connecticut accent.

You can make a good argument that Fairfield County, parts of New Haven and Litchfield County belong more to the Tri-State Area than to New England. Those places are where New Yorkers buy antiques, keep their weekend home and send their kid to prep school. They take Metro-NORTH trains into Grand Central and get their local news from New York City.

The pride of Westport

The Non-Connecticut Accent

They also tend to speak like New Yorkers, dropped ‘r’ and all. People who live near (or work in or escaped from) Noo Yawk are more likely to talk like Cuba Gooding, Jr. He lives in Greenwich, by the way. A big part of living in Connecticut is knowing which wealthy town which wealthy celebrity lives in.

People who live in Northeast Connecticut tend to talk more like Bostonians. They see ‘Jawdin’s Furnichah’ (Jordan’s Furniture) ads on television. They buy b’daydas at the Stawp & Shawp (potatoes at the Stop & Shop). And they root for the Sawx, the Broons and the Pats and in the summer you’ll find them down the Cape.

So you have two different non-Connecticut accents, both with the dropped ‘r.’ Phonologists call it non-rhotic.

The rest of New England tends to view Connecticut with suspicion. After all, half the state roots for the Yankees and the Giants.

Rich Talk v. Poor Talk

The state’s severe economic inequality also wipes out any possibility of a single, statewide Connecticut accent. It has some of the wealthiest towns in the country just a stone’s throw from the poorest cities.

Latinos make up about 40 percent of the population of Hartford, the fourth poorest city in the U.S. The same goes for Bridgeport and New Britain. They come mostly from Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic and they have distinct dialects and slang. Sometimes phonologists call it New York Latino or East Coast Latino English. It’s evolving, it’s varied and it’s usually spoken by people who grew up speaking English. (Listen to Pedro Martinez, a Dominican, here. He lives in Greenwich.)

Pre-Greenwich Pedro Martinez

Many of Connecticut’s rich residents speak in a neutral, upper-class accent sometimes called ‘Mid-Atlantic.’ People generally have to manufacture that accent, because no one speaks it naturally. Listen to Westport’s Martha Stewart, for example. She once had a heavy Joisey (New Jersey) accent, but worked to get rid of it. You wouldn’t know she’s a Jersey girl to listen to her now.

A young Jacqueline Onassis at Miss Porter’s in Farmingdale

Starting around the 1920s, New England prep schools had taught students to speak with a quasi-British accent. Jacqueline Onassis, for example, developed a serious accent at Miss Porter’s in Farmington. Katharine Hepburn got hers at the Oxford School in West Hartford, though her well-to-do Mummy and Daddy probably helped it along. You’ve heard the accent if you’ve watched old movies with upper-class characters. It’s rather stagey to American ears, and it fell out of fashion sometime in the 1960s.

Muddled Dialect Boundaries

So Connecticut has non-rhotic speakers in the northeast and southwest. Throughout the state it has manufactured Mid-Atlantic accents in the tony towns away from the gritty urban East Coast Latino English. Some have ‘r’s, some don’t.

But beyond all those muddled dialect boundaries, there is a place where a Connecticut accent survives: Somewhere from south of Hartford to somewhere north of Springfield (which started out in Connecticut).

Hartford, as pronounced by its inhabitants, has an ‘r.’

Connecticut accent likely pronounced here

T-Glottaling

Unlike most New Englanders, the Central Connecticut Mumbler has no problem with the ‘r.’ It goes in all the right places. ‘Gilmore Girls,’ ‘Waterbury’ and ‘cruller.’ All have ‘r’s in the right places. In Connecticut, lobster rolls have butter. Mark Twain lived in Hartford. Buy a steamed hamburger in Meriden.

The Merri’

It’s the ‘t’ that Central Connecticut Mumblers can’t deal with. Phonologists call what they do ‘t-glottaling.’ Or ‘gloh-a-ling.’

Ask someone from Connecticut to say “kitten from New Britain.” You might hear “kih-en from New Brih-en.” ‘Mou-en’ for ‘mountain,’ ‘bo-el’ for ‘bottle’ and ‘Kah-neh’uhkit’ for ‘Connecticut.’

The ‘t’ also tends to fall off the end of words. So if a word ends with a ‘t,’ that word duh-zen have a consonan’ a’ the end.

And Now for the Mumble

The Central Connecticut accent has a distinct mumble. People who have it rush through the syllables, especially in the middle of a sentence, mushing them into incomprehensibility. They eat their consonants and flatten out their pitch.

A student newscaster at Central Connecticut State University and his interviewee in New Britain had it bad. (Listen to them here.)

On the video we learn that because of the parking problems at CCSU, students risk getting a ticket or showing up to class late. Or in the Central Connecticut Mumble, it becomes ‘geh-in a tickeh orshowinuptclss late.’

“Sawdonsee …” equals “So I don’t see.”

Meg Ryan, who grew up in Fairfield, sometimes lapses into the Central Connecticut Mumble. In an interview with Ellen DeGeneres, she describes how she took ‘something like a six hour flight’ to pick up her adopted daughter. Only it comes out ‘tsngthin’ like a six-hour flight.’ “You’d think she’d be upset” turns into ‘you’d think she’d bempset.’

It can’t be a coincidence that Scrabble was invented in Connecticut. A game where people try to turn jumbled letters into intelligible words.

The Northern Cities Vowel Shift

Ironically, network newscasters used to talk as if they grew up in Hartford or Springfield. Those city accents resembled those of such Great Lakes cities as Buffalo, Rochester or Cleveland (which used to belong to Connecticut).

NBC news anchor John Chancellor grew up in Chicago, for example, but he spoke NBC standard. Phonologists call it Inland Northern American English.

Recently they’ve identified a trend: more people using the Northern Cities Vowel Shift – in Cleveland, in Hartford and in Springfield. Vowel shifters replace ‘o’ sounds with ‘a’ sounds and vice versa.

Instead of block they say black. Instead of busses they say bosses. And instead of more they say mawhr.

From Connecticut?

One easy way to tell if someone grew up in Connecticut: ask them to identify a submarine sandwich and a yard sale. Bingo! If they say grinder or tag sale.

Or ask someone to complete this series: 84, 91, 95. Correct answer: The Merritt, as in the terrifying Merri’ Parkway.

Ask where Yukon is and if they say Storrs they grew up in Connecticut; if they say Canada, they didn’t.

UConn Huskies logo in the ’60s

You can also tell someone isn’t from Connecticut if he calls himself a Nutmegger. It’s something no self-respecting Connecticut native would ever say. Or if they say NEW Haven. It’s New HA-ven.

You can get them going in whatever Connecticut accent they prefer by saying one word: Taxes. Connecticut has the worst taxes in the world, yes sir.

And if you want to talk to someone from Connecticut about pizza, just don’t.

Want to speak like a Bostonian? Click here. For New Hampshire, click here, for Maine, click here, and for Rhode Island, click here.

With thanks to Ana Celia Zentella, “Spanish Language in the Northeast,” from Language in the USA: Themes for the Twenty-first Century edited by Edward Finegan, John R. Rickford.

Images Tag sale By Jim Chute – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17010593; Grinder By jeffreyw – mmm…sammichesUploaded by Fæ, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23097562; Martha Stewart By David Shankbone – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15049241. This story was updated in 2022.

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Dorothy Quincy portrait by John Singleton Copley. On display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Ten Facts About Dorothy Quincy – John Hancock’s Wife

In 1775 at age 38, John Hancock was one of the most eligible bachelors among the Boston rebels. Made wealthy by his uncle, Hancock was a smuggler and a rising political star in the uncertain Patriot cause. Dorothy Quincy, 10 years younger, didn’t win the approval of all her family when she married him.

Born May 21, 1747, she was the youngest of 10 children from a prominent family. Though her relatives largely sympathized with the Patriots, one of her brothers-in-law, a staunch Loyalist, likened Hancock to the devil. He saw him as a traitor to his class.

Dorothy Quincy Hancock, by John Singleton Copley. Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

Nevertheless, Dorothy Quincy and John Hancock married in August of 1775, making them one of Massachusetts’ first political celebrity couples. Here are 10 facts about the lovely Dorothy Quincy.

1. She was adopted by John Hancock’s aunt.

When Dorothy’s mother died in 1769, Lydia Hancock – John’s aunt – took a special interest in her. Lydia was the widow of Thomas Hancock, who founded the fortune that John would nurture. She had a special affection for Dorothy Quincy and took her under her wing, serving as chaperone and also urging on her romance with John.

Lydia Hancock

2. She witnessed the Battle of Lexington.

When the Battle of Lexington broke out, Dorothy Quincy was staying in Lexington with friends, along with John. When Paul Revere arrived with his news of the British coming, Dorothy was doubtless among those awakened. While John, a wanted man, ran off into hiding, Dorothy witnessed the battle and comforted two wounded soldiers in the aftermath.

The Battle of Lexington.

3. Dorothy Quincy was no doormat.

She told John to get stuffed at least once. In the wake of the Battle of Lexington, Dorothy Quincy intended to return to Boston to be by her father’s side. John told her she could not go, and she gave him an earful: “Recollect, Mr. Hancock, that I am not under your control yet. I shall go to my father tomorrow.”

4. She lost two children.

John and Dorothy had two children together, but neither would reach adulthood. Their first daughter, named Lydia for his aunt, died in infancy. Their second, a son named John, died at age 8. He fell through the ice while skating on a pond in Milton, Mass., and drowned.

John Singleton Copley painted this portrait of John Hancock around 1771. Courtesy Massachusetts Historical Society.

5. Her feet won John’s heart.

Dorothy was, by all accounts, pretty, smart and poised. But Hancock family tradition holds that John’s first romantic thoughts about Dorothy came while attending a particularly tedious church service. John happened to glance at Dorothy’s feet while the service was underway and found them very attractive.

6. She had a crush on Aaron Burr.

For much of 1775, Dorothy Quincy and John’s Aunt Lydia stayed in Fairfield, Conn., with family friends. While there, Aaron Burr joined the household for a visit. The young Burr captured Dorothy’s attention. Aunt Lydia, who was planning the wedding of John and Dorothy, watched Dorothy like a hawk and never allowed them to be alone together. Lydia probably brought about an abrupt end to cousin Aaron’s visit. Of Aaron, Dorothy noted: “He was a handsome young man, with a pretty property.”

Aaron Burr

7. Dorothy Quincy, first presidential secretary.

Following their marriage, Dorothy and John lived together in Philadelphia. She found that society duties were largely replaced by secretarial ones. So Dorothy installed herself as her husband’s, assistant, trimming the rough edges off bills of credit issued by the Continental Congress, of which he was president, and organizing much of the paperwork that John had to deal with himself since he had no staff.

Independence Hall

8. She stole her neighbor’s milk.

In 1776, John Hancock invited the officers of the French fleet in Boston to visit his home, expecting a crowd of about 30 men. When the entire crews began arriving – a crowd of more than 100 – Dorothy scrambled to feed them. She used all the household’s bread and dispatched servants to the neighbors with orders to milk every cow they could find. Dorothy told them she would explain later.

9. She gave to the state, and gave, and gave.

Following the Revolution, John Hancock governed Massachusetts for 11 years. His health and his fortune suffered greatly as he paid for a never-ending series of dinners, hosted by Dorothy, for both state purposes and charitable purposes. Hancock instructed Dorothy to submit the expenses for his funeral to the state — $1,800 – but the Legislature declined to pay them, so she did.

Boston’s Old Statehouse

10. She shocked her relatives with her second marriage.

After John Hancock died in 1793, Dorothy relied on one of his old friends, James Scott, to manage her affairs. For three years Scott, a widower, courted her. And for three years she brushed him off. When she finally accepted his proposal, many of her relatives were dismayed, though many in the family came to accept the marriage. Dorothy Quincy Hancock and James Scott were married and lived in Portsmouth, N.H., from 1795 until his death in 1809. She returned to Boston for the remainder of her life, which ended in 1830.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Black Kings and Governors of New England

From about 1750 to 1850, New England had at least 31 elected black kings and governors, nearly all of them enslaved.

They were elected on ‘Negroes Hallowday’ or “Negroes Election Day,” the most important day of the year. Black men held it annually on the same day the white men of New England gathered to vote for their leaders.

In the royal colonies where the Crown appointed the governor – New Hampshire and Massachusetts – black men elected black kings.

In the charter colonies where white men elected their own governor – Rhode Island and Connecticut – black men elected black governors. (For a list of known black governors of Connecticut, click here.)

African-Americans elected a king in Portsmouth, N.H. So did the Massachusetts towns of Salem and Lynn. Newport and Narragansett in Rhode Island elected black governors, as did a handful of towns in Connecticut.

For New England’s African slaves, Election Day meant a rare break from toil and a chance to poke fun at their white masters. They could express pride in their African heritage. And they could elect black kings and governors to maintain discipline among the slaves. Better they do it than their white masters, went the rationale.

Rum, Gingerbread and Election Cake

E.R. Potter, his family and a slave. Newport Historical Society

E.R. Potter, his family and a slave, perhaps Black Governor John. Newport R.I. Historical Society

Election Day began with the Puritans as a jolly secular holiday. The colonists traveled to town in spring or early summer to elect their local leaders. Some had to travel quite far, and might stay overnight.

Important families, or maybe the local government, hosted election-day celebrations. They served rum and gingerbread and thick, fruit-studded election cakes.

The masters let the slaves take Election Day off or brought them into town. According to Salem minister William Bentley, African bondsmen and servants “were too restless at home to be of any use till (the election holidays) were over.”

And so the Africans started organizing their own elections and their own celebrations. They did it first in Newport and Hartford and then throughout New England.

In Connecticut, an enslaved African named London served as the first black governor known to history. London, who belonged to Capt. Thomas Seymour, won election as Connecticut governor in Hartford in 1755.

As Connecticut Colony’s population grew, black residents began to elect leaders who lived nearby. Historians know of black governors in Derby, Durham, Farmington, New Haven, New London, Norwich and Seymour.

A Real Black King

One of New England’s black kings, Nero Brewster, had been born of royal lineage in Africa early in the 18^th century. As a child, slavers captured him, took him to the American colonies and sold him to a wealthy tavern owner in Portsmouth, N.H.

For many years, Nero won the annual Negro Election and presided over an informal black government that mirrored the white polity.

Other black kings had royal African blood. Even before the Negro Election began in Lynn, Mass., African immigrants honored a prince of Africa named Pompey. Slavers had captured and sold him, but his master freed him when he grew too old to work.

Pompey then moved to a little glade near the Saugus River Every year he hosted a holiday for the African bondsmen from nearby towns. Women picked flowers to crown old King Pompey, and the men sat and talked about happier times on the Gambia River in West Africa.

Monarchs Held in Esteem

Some black kings and governors won election because of their achievements, their strength or their abilities. Their rank could also reflect their masters’ stature. Nero Brewster’s master, Col. William Brewster, owned the Bell Tavern in Portsmouth, a well-known gathering place for patriots during the Revolutionary War.

Advertisement for the Bell Tavern

Hartford’s Black Governor Peleg Nott, described as “a first rate feller,” had traveled far. He drove a provision cart during the American Revolution. Black Governor Tobiah of Derby, Conn., was “a man of tact, courage and unusual intelligence.”

Black Governor Guy Watson of South Kingston fought in the 1^st Rhode Island Regiment at the battles of Red Bank and Ticonderoga.

And black Governor Quosh Freeman of Derby, Conn., was a “man of herculean strength, a giant six-footer.”

The Parade

Portsmouth’s Negro Election Day was probably typical of what happened throughout New England.

Black King Nero dressed in his finest clothes to lead a procession of slaves and freedmen from Portsmouth and neighboring towns. His honor guard, perhaps decked out in feathers, flowers and ribbons, accompanied him.

The parade started with the crack of a gunshot. Marchers made a happy racket with many African languages, gunshots, tambourines, banjos, fiddles and drums. All the slaves wore their best clothes, often hand-me-downs from their masters, altered with an African flair. They borrowed swords, guns and even horses from their masters.

What did their costumes look like? According to a description of one fugitive from slavery, he wore a Saxon blue jacket with bright green baize lining, slash sleeves and small metal buttons, a brown sleeveless jacket and scarlet breeches.

In Portsmouth and elsewhere, bondsmen deliberately played the fool in their gaudy Election Day costumes. White people looked on with enjoyment, belittling the slaves’ deportment and clothing as “fantastic.”

Today, historians note the white onlookers didn’t understand that the black celebrants were making fun of their stiffness and pretensions. Some historians view their antics as a form of self-preservation. They didn’t want white people intimidated by their claim to participate in government.

Haranguing and Socializing

A black king's election was an occasion for dancing. Creative Commons

Election of a black king, an occasions for dancing. Creative Commons

When the Portsmouth marchers reached an open space, Nero and his opponent harangued each other as the crowd socialized and celebrated. Women, who couldn’t vote, lobbied for their favorite candidates. The revelers reunited with friends and family who lived far away, and exchanged news and opinion about the white people they served.

More than a hundred probably took part, for in 1767 Portsmouth alone had 124 male and 63 female slaves, according to Brewster’s Rambles. (The total population of Portsmouth, one of the biggest cities in the colonies, reached 4,466 that year.)

After about three hours of electioneering and merriment, men voted and then declared Nero the black king. He subsequently announced his court: Viceroy Willie Clarkson, Sheriff Jock Odiorne and Deputy Sheriff Pharoah Shores. All came from Africa.

Who ran against Black King Nero? One wonders if it was ever Prince Whipple, the literate servant of William Whipple, who lived in the Moffatt-Ladd House.

Prince Whipple, born a prince of Africa, served as General Whipple’s bodyguard during the Revolutionary War. He also stood with the general at the Battle of Saratoga and at the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

According to legend, Prince Whipple accompanied George Washington during his famous crossing of the Delaware.

In the 1851 painting by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, some identify the black oarsman as Prince Whipple.

Victory Party

Regardless of whom he defeated at the polls, Black King Nero led the raucous procession back to his master’s house for a victory party. As at the other Negroes Hallowdays, Nero’s master paid for the meal, though the black slaves and freedmen prepared it.

Nero and his so-called Negro Court were toasted indoors, while games were played and athletic competitions held outside. At the end of the day the celebrants moved to the slave quarters, where they danced energetically to fiddle tunes of West African origin or influence.

The black elections could get expensive for the masters. In Narragansett, R.I., E.R. Potter’s slave John was elected governor. Potter, a state and federal legislator, told John that one of them would have to give up politics or the expenses would ruin them both. John stepped down.

Black Kings and Their Courts

Throughout the next year, Black King Nero meted out judgments and punishments to slaves accused of petty crimes.

In 1859, Portsmouth columnist C.W. Brewster described one trial in a typically condescending (for whites) account. A slave named Prince Jackson reportedly stole an ax. The black sheriff, Jock Odiorne, seized him and summoned the court.

Black King Nero sat for the examination in which evidence was submitted. He found Prince guilty and condemned him to 20 lashes on the bare back at the town pump.

The slaves gathered at the pump. Then, wrote Brewster,

…the Sheriff, after taking off his coat and tying up the convict to the pump, hands the whip to his deputy, Pharaoh Shores, addressing the company, “Gemmen, this way we s’port our government” – turning to his deputy – “Now, Pharaoh, pay on !” After the whipping was over, the sheriff dismissed the prisoner, telling him that the next time he is found this side Christian Shore, unless sent by his master, he will receive twenty lashes more.

Prince did not reform. Shortly afterward he was found guilty of larger thefts and taken to the white people’s court.

“Here, we feel a just equality”

During the Revolutionary War, Black King Nero led at least one meeting of 20 black slaves to discuss their freedom. He may well have held more.

Inspired by revolutionary ideals and hatred of their servitude, they drew up a petition demanding their freedom. They may have borrowed some of the language from the patriots who talked of revolution at the Bell Tavern. They certainly took some language from the Declaration of Independence.

The petition ensured that history remembered Black King Nero better than his master.

The painting Washington Crosses the Delaware depicts a black oarsman reputed to be Prince Whipple.

As in the Declaration, the signers list their grievances and denounce their enemies:

…thro’ ignorance & brutish violence of their native countrymen and by similar designs of others, (who ought to have taught them better) & by the avarice of both, they, while but children, and incapable of self defense, whose infancy might have prompted protection, were seized, imprisoned, and transported from their native country, where (tho’ ignorance and inchristianity prevailed) they were born free to a country, where (tho’ knowledge, christianity and freedom, are their boast) they are compelled, and their unhappy posterity, to drag on their lives in miserable servitude. . . .

The Dignity of Human Nature

The bondsmen emphatically rejected any idea that they are inferior to white people. “[H]ere, we feel the passions and desires of men, tho’ check’d by the rod of slavery! here, we feel a just equality!” they wrote.

And they ended with a prayer, “that the name of SLAVE may no more be heard in a land gloriously contending for the sweets of freedom.”

They submitted the handwritten petition for freedom to the General Assembly in Exeter on Nov. 12, 1779. According to Black Portsmouth, the original manuscript disappeared. No one knows whether the men signed their own names or used a mark.

It was read in the House of Representatives on April 25, 1780, and ordered published in the New Hampshire Gazette. The newspaper printed it that summer, with a disclaimer that it was intended “for the amusement “ of its readers.

The House then took up the petition on June 9, 1780, but decided to table it until “a more convenient opportunity.” No other legislative action would be taken on it for 234 years.

Finally, Freedom

Prince Whipple’s grave in Portsmouth, N.H.

Six of the signers of the New Hampshire petition, including Prince Whipple, gained their freedom after the Revolution. Black King Nero died a slave, and possibly as the last black king of Portsmouth. Historians haven’t unearthed any evidence that any other black kings were elected after he died.

Nero’s obituary described him as, “A Monarch, who, while living, was held in reverential esteem by his subjects consequently, his death is greatly lamented.”

In 2013, state Sen. Martha Fuller Clark of Portsmouth declared Nero Brewster and the other 19 captive Africans deserved some closure. She filed a bill before the Legislature to posthumously free the remaining 15 slaves. The bill then passed, and Gov. Maggie Hassan signed it into law. King Nero Brewster won his freedom, on Friday, June 7, 2013.

What’s more:

Our story owes thanks to two books about black kings and governors: Black Portsmouth and Black Yankees.

Prince Whipple died in 1796 at age 46 and now lies buried in Portsmouth’s North Cemetery. In 1908, local military veterans placed a stone on his grave.

In October 2003, road contractors rediscovered the Negro Burying Ground under Portsmouth’s Chestnut Street.

This story about black kings and governors was updated in 2022.

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