Candace - imagining the life of a woman enslaved in 18th-century New England

1742 ~ Stolen Away

On September 5, 1742, Rev. John Tucke opened the record book for his church in Gosport, a fishing village on the Isles of Shoals, off the coast of New Hampshire. He dipped his quill pen into his inkwell and, in the section where he noted the baptisms he had performed, wrote,

Candace, a Negro Child belonging to Mr. John Tucke.

There was only one John Tucke in Gosport. He referred to himself in the third person because he was keeping the official record. It would have been odd for him to write “me” or “myself” among the other names. Tucke never added “Rev.” before his name in his book. He was just “Mr. Tucke,” in keeping with his Congregational church’s focus on members bound together in a covenant of equal responsibility.

Where did this little girl come from? How old was she when Tucke bought her? What did it mean for him to baptize her? What was life like for her and other enslaved people on the Isles of Shoals?

We cannot answer these and many other questions with certainty, but we can explore various possibilities, based on knowledge about the time and place in which Candace lived. Though not precisely true, these conjectures capture the essence of her experiences and help us understand her circumstances and those of others in her situation.

Tucke calls Candace a “Negro Child.” She may have been as young as seven. If she were older than ten or so he probably would have called her a girl rather than a child. She was most likely born between 1730 and 1735. In these pages I will estimate that she was about nine when she arrived in Gosport.

We know of other children brought to New Hampshire and enslaved. A 1757 notice in the New Hampshire Gazette read, “To be sold a strong healthy Negro Boy about eleven years old. In country two-and-a-half years, can be recommended to a Gentleman’s Family, a farmer or tradesman.” This boy had been abducted from his home in Africa at about age nine.

Discovering information about the lives of enslaved people in Portsmouth was a 30-year quest for Valerie Cunningham, who sifted through three centuries of records looking for signs of them. In their book Black Portsmouth Mark Sammons uses her research to tell the stories of some 50 Black people who lived in the area during the 1700s, most of them enslaved, some of them free.

In the late 1600s Portsmouth captains began including captives in their cargoes, and by 1708 the governor reported that there were 70 “negro servants” in New Hampshire, which is what enslaved people were always called back then. Most Portsmouth ships seem to have carried one or two captives rather than the hundreds crammed into the holds of other ships in conditions of unbelievable misery.

By chance we know of one ship, the Exeter, that landed in Portsmouth with 61 captives in 1756. An inventory was taken because the captain had died, and among the tobacco, wine, rum, and turpentine were 35 men and women, 9 teenagers, and 17 children. The Exeter may have set out from Africa with more, but cramming dozens of people into the hold with no sanitation or fresh air led to outbreaks of disease that killed many a captive. Their bodies were thrown overboard. Some of the living, in despair, jumped after them, ending their suffering and avoiding the unknown terrors that awaited them far from their homes and loved ones.

Enslaving children was common. Among the dozens of advertisements for the sale of captives between 1757 and 1775 was one that read, “Likely Negro Boys and Girls just imported from Gambia, and to be sold on board the Sloop Carolina lying at the Long Wharff in Portsmouth.” In a 1779 petition to the New Hampshire legislature, 20 men stated that they had all been brought from Africa to Portsmouth as children.

Even babies were not spared. Records in Massachusetts and elsewhere show infants being sold or given away. Their chances of survival were even slimmer than most babies, whose odds were already low. The purchasers gave these little ones to enslaved women to raise and hoped for the best.

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September 1742
Maybe …

The Tryton was anchored in Portsmouth harbor and its boats ferried crew members and goods to the dock. One boat carried a terrified girl who could make no sense of the words spoken by the ghostly people around her.

On shore she was put into an outdoor pen with other captives. She huddled in a corner, for she did not know the language of these people, either. Captives were led away in ones and twos. A man came for the girl and led her through streets crowded with horses and carts. The people were dark, pale, and many shades in between. Piles of manure stank everywhere and the smell of fish and wood smoke was strong.

They stopped at a house. In the yard a woman had the girl stand over a basin of water while she scrubbed her with sharp-smelling soap. She looked closely at the girl’s scalp, then soaped her head and used a straight razor to shave off all of her hair. The girl closed her eyes and shivered in the wind.

The woman rinsed her off and slipped a clean shift over her head, along with a scratchy cap that hurt her newly shaved skin. The girl pulled off the cap. The woman slapped her across the face. The girl gasped and tottered but did not fall. She put the cap back on.

Two men arrived. They examined her hands and teeth, spoke in a rapid language, and exchanged some money. One man took the girl by the arm and led her down the street to a different house.

The man put her in a room with a pallet of straw and a chamberpot. He brought her a bowl of yellow mush and a mug with a pale golden liquid, left, and shut the door. She was very hungry and the food were soon gone.

She curled up on the pallet and began to weep. Her home was now forever out of reach. Her mother would never know what had become of her.

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Even though he could have afforded it, Tucke did not buy an expensive adult. Instead he, like others in New England, purchased a child. She cost much less and could be made to fit into his family more easily than someone older.

Tucke calls Candace a Negro, and if she had been of mixed race he probably would have used a different word to describe her. He made distinctions in his records. In 1742, the year he brought Candace to Gosport, he wrote,

Peter a Negro child belonging to Samuel Abbot was
baptized in private.

Four years later, in 1746, he wrote,

Dolly a molatto Child of Samuel Abbott was baptized.

Tucke’s spelling is variable, but he distinguishes between Peter, a Negro, and Dolly, a “mulatto,” which meant someone biracial, half and half. A “quadroon” was a person with one-quarter Black heritage, and an “octoroon” was one-eighth Black. Beyond that a person was likely to be so light-skinned that they could pass for white. Passing was a way to trade oppression for opportunity, and through the centuries many people took the drastic step of leaving behind their families and communities to find a better life.

These labels show the era’s drive to define exactly who was who. Everyone was supposed to know their place and stay in it. God was in charge of everything and had put everyone just where they belonged. In the prevailing view, some were born to rule and others to serve.

Peter was baptized in private, a type of record Tucke often accompanied by drawing a tiny pointing hand. Baptisms were held at home when an infant, or the mother, seemed unlikely to live long. Peter was a child, not an infant, but he or other people in the Abbott house were probably ill and could not make it to the meeting house.

Tucke’s wording suggests that Dolly may have been not just enslaved by Samuel Abbott but fathered by him, as well. Peter is described as “belonging to” Abbott, whereas Dolly is described as “a Child of” Abbott, and she is biracial. The evidence is slim but compelling.

In a 2020 article in the New York Times Caroline Randall Williams wrote, “I have rape-colored skin.” Her light brown tone testifies that enslaved women were powerless to escape abuse by their enslavers. Most Black people in America have European heritage in varying amounts, the result of ancestors who were forced to bear the children of their oppressors.

 

By the 1730s England’s 13 colonies extended north to New Hampshire, west to Virginia and the Carolinas, and south to Georgia. There were people from Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Pennsylvania was filled with Quakers, and many Dutch people settled in New York. There were lots of Germans, as well; even today the largest ancestry group in the United States are people of German descent. They all brought their culture with them, from the way they built their houses to the way they spoke, ate, dressed, worshipped, married, and raised their children.

The Puritans who founded New England believed in a strict hierarchy that began with God, whom the master served, extended down through wives and children, and on through servants, apprentices, and the enslaved. They believed that the status of each person was divinely dictated, and that wealth made from the labor of others was a sign that God approved of good management of the resources he had bestowed.

Under New Hampshire law the status of children was determined by the status of their mother. In 1760 a free biracial woman named Leisha Webb, whose husband, Caesor, was enslaved, insisted that the town clerk in Portsmouth write down in the record book that she and her eight children were free persons. By having their status in the public record, Leisha hoped to protect her family...