By Jamie Mastrogiacomo
Slavery education in the north often credits the region for its staunch abolitionist sentiment and its moral opposition to slavery. However, focusing solely on abolitionist history erases the practice of enslavement that occurred in many northern places – like Northampton, Massachusetts – or the ways in which the larger northern economy profited from southern slave economies.
In June of 2023, I began working as a research intern at Historic Northampton, a local history museum in the Connecticut River Valley region of Massachusetts. As an alumna of Northampton’s Smith College, I knew of the organization but had yet to see the depths of its collections, including everything from city directories and financial ledgers to scrapbooks made by former residents. More scarce, however, are remnants of the city’s history of enslavement – examples of what historian Tiya Miles calls “precious exception[s].”1 Rarely do historians come across physical evidence of slavery’s legacy.
Across New England, and certainly across Massachusetts, local historical societies are grappling with this legacy. Since 2019, Historic Northampton has been compiling – and has made publicly accessible – a list of all known Black and Indigenous persons who were enslaved in the city. Researchers at the museum have combed account books, wills, and probate records to find traces of enslaved people in the archive. While still ongoing, the project has identified 50 enslaved Black people (13 unnamed), 21 free Black people, 2 Indigenous enslaved people, and 55 enslavers who lived in and around Northampton. With the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the museum emphasized curating this project digitally. While its ability to reach beyond the museum’s physical walls is essential to its visibility, the project might someday also have a home in the Historic Northampton gallery. But before that can happen, the museum needs to review its collections and determine what material objects could be used to tell this story.
The scope of this project begins long before 1783 – the year that slavery was abolished in Massachusetts – and extends into the slave economy of the nineteenth century in which Northampton was complicit. The museum’s collection includes a number of objects to illustrate this involvement: cotton dresses, account books full of rum transactions, and farm equipment used by enslaved people, whose labor often produced provisions for slave economies. While these objects illuminate the economic impact of enslaved labor, they tell us little about actual people. Museums across the United States are asking the following questions: how can we commemorate the Black and Indigenous people from whom so much tangibility has been stolen? How do we archive the stories of those who were not documented? These dilemmas make curating a physical exhibition difficult.2
One approach is to use items from our collection as approximations of what enslaved people in Northampton kept in their possession, insofar as that can be known from wills, probate records, and account books. These objects can tell historians about their aspirations and abilities. For example, upon her death in 1759, white enslaver Mercy Bartlett bequeathed personal possessions to the people that she enslaved. She left a silk fragment and a copy of the New Testament to a woman named Dinah; from this we gather that Dinah was both literate and had sewing skills. Moreover, she was religious – and shared that religion with her enslaver despite their vastly different circumstances. For a potential physical display, we would include a contemporaneous copy of the New Testament and a similar fragment of silk from our collection. This strategy may not capture a wholly accurate inventory, much less tell a full story of Dinah’s life. However, it is better to share the personal characteristics and experiences of enslaved people rather than solely focus on their economic contributions.
Another form of material culture that helps tell these stories are gravestones, and tours of the cemetery facilitate other kinds of storytelling. In the fall of 2023, I developed and led tours of Bridge Street Cemetery, an active non-denominational cemetery that has been in use since 1680. A notable stop on this tour is the resting place of Sarah Gray and Sylva Church, two Black women who lived in Northampton in the wake of statewide abolition. Although they died fewer than ten years apart, their stories differ vastly. Sylva Church was born sometime between 1755 and 1757. Because slavery was abolished in Massachusetts in 1783, she may have been enslaved. Sarah Gray, by contrast, was born in 1808. She would have been considered a “servant,” and at this transitory time, she probably completed the same duties as an enslaved person would have previously. While we cannot be certain why these women were buried together, a clue on Sylva’s stone suggests that this plot belonged to the Williams Church. Her epitaph reads “She was for many years a member of the Williams Church, and we trust lived agreeably to her profession [that is, the profession of her faith], and is now inheriting the promises.” Not only does this point us toward more context, but it gives us an idea of her piety and the trust that her community placed in her.
Unfortunately, far fewer records document Northampton’s early Black population than its first white settlers. Gravestones help fill those gaps of knowledge. By drawing visitors’ attention to these stones, we can illuminate how crucial it is to commemorate Black history and to continue asking questions that have been left unanswered. Ultimately, a physical exhibition would continue this work, but in the meantime, we must use the sources available to us to amplify marginalized voices from beyond the grave.
Jamie Mastrogiacomo is a historic interpreter passionate about museums and their ability to serve communities, reach wide publics and inspire curiosity. A 2024 MA graduate of the UMass Amherst history department and public history program, she is currently working as a Visitor Guide at the U.S. Capitol.
- Tiya Miles, All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake. New York, NY, Random House, 2021. 26. ↩︎
- The National Museum of African American History and Culture relied on almost 43,000 donations to open its doors, a process that took thirteen years to realize. The challenge of acquiring remnants of slavery is acknowledged in the exhibit A Century in the Making. ↩︎