SYMHC Classics: Belinda Sutton

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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. As we mentioned in our episode on Sarah Bradley Fulton and the Daughters of Liberty, our main source of information on her comes from local historian Helen T. Wild. Wilde's other projects included working with the Daughters of the American Revolution to purchase and preserve Royal House now the Museum Royal House en Slave Quarters. Our episode on Belinda Sutton, who was enslaved at Royal House, came out on December fourteenth, twenty sixteen, and that is today's Saturday Classic. In this episode, we mention Isaac Royle Junior's bequest to Harvard University and the professorship at Harvard Law that was named for him. The Royal Professorship in Law was retired in twenty twenty two. Also in this episode, we talk about recording some videos for the website House Stuff Works. Our podcast is not affiliated with that website anymore, but you can still see the video on YouTube and will put a link in the description of today's episode. Only look at the comments on that video if you want to see a lot of people asking, but what about the Irish slaves? Other than that, enjoy welcome to stuff you missed in history class. A production of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. This October, Holly, you and I had a pretty exciting time on the podcast because you came to visit me. I did. I brought camera and sound people, you did. I make it sound like this was like just a trip for funzies, but no, it was a trip to basically go on a video recording extravaganza field trip with two of our House Stuff Works video crew, Casey and Paul, and the four of us spent a lot of time over three days interviewing people and recording videos and seeing amazing historical sites. It was both fun and exhausting, super exhausting, but super super fun. Yeah. I think even more exhausting for Casey and Paul. They did so much of the heavy lifting by nature of being the video and sound people. Yes, both literally and figuratively, they did a lot of heavy lifting. Yes, yes, you and I helped carry whenever we could, But you know, we can't be in front of the camera and also holding it. That doesn't really work with our setup. So the first stop that we made was at the Royal House and slave quarters in Medford, Massachusetts, and the Royal House was home to Isaac Royle and his family during the eighteenth century, and the Royals were the largest slave slave owning family in Massachusetts, and they had an enslaved workforce both at their Medford home and on sugar plantations in Antigo, which is a big part of how the Royals made all that money. There is already a video on our website that tells more of the story of the Royals and their enslaved worked workforce and how those lives intertwined together on the property, and we're going to put a link to it in the show notes and on our social media and all of that kind of stuff when this episode comes out. There are also some more videos already out and coming soon from that trip, which we are really excited about, and we'll also be sharing on our website and social media as those are ready. Today's episode of the podcast is also inspired by our trip to the Royal House Museum. There's a lot that we don't know about the people who were enslaved when it was still a home, and there's documentation for about sixty enslaved people over two generations of Royal ownership there on the Massachusetts property, but the actual number was probably quite a lot higher. One enslaved woman in particular stands out Belinda Sutton, who successfully petitioned for compensation for her years of enslaved labor on the royal property. And by the time Belinda pattis for compensation, the Royal family was already incredibly wealthy. And just for clarity, I feel like we should point out that when we say the Royals again, it's roy All, it's a proper name. Even though you mentioned that his name was Isaac Royal. We just want to make entirely clear they were not actual royalty and this family was by this point incredibly wealthy, but they did not start out incredibly wealthy. Isaac Royal Senior born sixteen seventy two came from a New England family of relatively modest means, but that changed after he purchased a sugar plantation in Antigua. This was during the era of the Triangle trade, that interconnected trading system that relied on enslaved Africans crops like sugar and cotton, and products made from those crops like rum and cloth, by trading mainly in rum sugar and enslaved Africans, Isaac Royal Senior became fair, very wealthy. It's a common misperception that in North America only the southern economy relied on slavery, but in reality, a lot of the wealth in New England and other northerly areas was connected directly to the slave trade and on industries that relied on slave labor. For a time, the Royal family actually lived in Antiga, but in seventeen thirty seven, Isaac Senior decided to relocate back to New England, and his reasons for doing so were not specifically recorded, but we do know that the year before, a series of gruesome executions had been carried out on Antigua in response to the threat of a slave revolt. Whether this revolt really was in the works continues to be the subject of some historical debate, and it certainly would not have been the first occurrence of a slave resistance effort on the island. If it was. An enslaved man known as Prince Class confessed to having planned a massive uprising that would not only have overthrown the island planters, but also would have massacred its white population. However, there isn't much physical evidence to support the idea that such a vast uprising was really imminent, So while some historians are completely convinced that it was, others suspect that the white slave owners and the court, who were vastly outnumbered by the island's enslaved population, exaggerated what was actually a much smaller threat, possibly as a product of their own fear. The executions, however, were definitely real, with five people being broken on a wheel, six gibbeted, and seventy seven burned at the stake. One of the royals enslaved overseers was among those burned at the stake, and another was reprieved at the stake in exchange for information he had so it. While it's not written down anywhere exactly what prompted them to go back to New England, it's pretty reasonable to suspect that the royals went back because they feared for their safety. To prepare for the family's arrival back in Massachusetts, Isaac Royal Senior bought a piece of property in Medford Is called ten Hills Farm, and this was a five hundred acre property that housed a colonial farmhouse which was expanded into a three story Georgian mansion. Along with barnes and other outbuildings. There was also a slave quarters, which still stands today and is the only free standing slave housing still left in the North. The structure that became the slave quarters started out as an out kitchen or a separate kitchen that would allow people to cook in hot weather without heating up the house, and that was standing before the rest of the quarters were added on to it. The museum on the property today includes both the mansion and the slave quarters, and when the royals took up residence there at ten Hills Farm, they had at least twenty seven in slaved Africans with them. Isaac in seventeen thirty nine, and Isaac Junior, one of his two surviving children, inherited most of the estate. At this point, the Royals were one of the wealthiest families in Massachusetts, and Isaac Junior and his wife Elizabeth were very prominent in society, living a life of absolute luxury and holding lavish parties and for Isaac's part, also holding public office. With the approach of the Revolutionary War, Isaac Junior fled Massachusetts, leaving his mansion most of his physical property and more than twenty enslaved people behind. Apparently he had some sympathies with the cause for independence, but he also had a lot of financial reasons to stay loyal to the crown. He tried to get passage back to Antigua, but he couldn't and instead he went to Nova Scotia just before the Battle of Lexington in seventeen seventy five. A year later, he joined his daughter's families in England, and he died there of smallpox in seventeen eighty one. In his will, Isaac Junior left money to Harvard, which was used to endow the university's first law professorship. The shield of Harvard Law School was for this reason originally modeled after the royal family coat of arms. The Royal Professorship still exists, but the Law school agreed to retire the shield and replace it with a new one in March of twenty sixteen, and as part of the same protests that led to this decision, students actually also occupied a lounge on campus and renamed it Belinda Hall after Belinda Sutton, who we will be talking more about it a moment. Basically now is the moment we would be talking more about her the moment has arrived. Belinda was mentioned in Isaac Junior's will as well, saying quote, I do also give unto my said daughter, my negro woman, Belinda, in case she does not choose her freedom. If she does choose her freedom, to have it, provided that she gets security that she shall not be a charge to the town of Medford. And he also instructed his executor to pay Belinda thirty pounds for three years. However, by the time of his death, Isaac Junior actually no longer had a lot of his property in Massachusetts. A lot of it had been confiscated during the war, and some of the people who had been slaved there had been enslaved there had been freed, and others had been sold elsewhere. In later documents, Belinda, who was referenced in his will, is called Belinda Sutton a widow, but we don't actually know who her husband was or when she married him. Some of the earliest documents that reference her present her last name as royal, but it was common for enslaved people to be given their owner's surnames. Belinda had at least two children, a son named Joseph and a daughter were guessing on the pronunciation of whether it's prime or Primey, but it's Prine who were baptized in Medford in seventeen sixty eight, and it appears that her son was sold away from her, possibly at the same time that she was freed. Although the Commonwealth Health did manument Belinda along with at least some of the other people who were confiscated from the royal estate, they didn't really make provisions for her survival afterward, and we will talk about how that led to her petition after a quick word from a sponsor. When Belinda was freed, she and her daughter made their way to Boston to try to start a new life among the free black people living there. But by this point Belinda was elderly and her daughter was also not well. Because she had spent most of her life working for no pay, Belinda had essentially nothing to live on and no way to support herself and her daughter. On February fourteenth, seventeen eighty three, Belinda presented a petition to the Massachusetts General Court. It began quote Commonwealth of Massachusetts to the Honorable the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court assembled the petition of Belinda and African humbly shows that seventy years have rolled away since she on the banks of the Rio Devlta received her existence. The mountains covered with spicy forests, the valleys loaded with the richest fruits spontaneously produced. Joined to that happy temperature of air to exclude excess, would have yielded her the most complete felicity, had not her mind received early impressions of the cruelty of men whose faces were like the moon, and whose bows and arrows were like the thunder and the lightning of the clouds. The Rio Devlta is what's called the Volta River today and what was at that point known as the Gold Coasts, and it's now Ghana. That was where Belinda had lived until about the age of twelve, where as she described in the petition, she was in a sacred grove with her parents, paying devotions to Arica and quote. An armed band of white men, driving many of her countrymen in chains, ran into the hallowed shade. Referring to herself in the third person, she goes on quote, she was ravished from the bosom of her country, from the arms of her friends. While the advanced age of her parents, rendering them unfit for servitude, cruelly separated her from them forever after. She describes her passage across the Atlantic and her arrival on a new continent. She states that she worked for fifty years for Isaac Royle until after the war, before concluding quote, the face of your petitioner is now marked with the furrows of time, and her frame feebly bending under the oppression of years, while she, by laws of the land, is denied the enjoyment of one morsel of that immense wealth, a part whereof has been accumulated by her own industry, and the whole augmented by her servitude. Wherefore, casting herself at the feet of your honors as to a body of men formed for the extirpation of vassalage, for the reward of virtue and the just return of honest industry, she prays that such allowance may be made her out of the estate of Colonel Royal, as will prevent her and her more infirmed daughter from misery in the greatest extreme and scatter comfort over the short and downward path of their lives. And she will ever pray so. In five paragraphs, Belinda describes her childhood in Ghana, her capture, the middle passage, her arrival, and the fact that she spent most of her life helping to build the wealth of the royal family, when she herself was not allowed any portion of that wealth or even to own any property. And she ends by asking for reparations, a payment of damages for having been wronged, specifically to be taken out of the estate of the man she worked for without being compensated for all that time. Some of the petition's passages aren't necessarily meant to be read completely literal. For example, the word Aricha is Yoruba, and it's a word that means deity. But Yoruba was spoken a little farther west than the Gold Coast, where Belinda would have been from, so it's not entirely clear where Belinda, or perhaps the person who helped her write this petition might have learned it or how they might have used it. The description of Belinda's capture also specifies that her captors were white. However, it's far more likely that she was initially captured by other Africans further inland before being taken to the coast and sold to white slave traders. You can learn more about this aspect of the slave trade in our past podcasts on Dajome and the Royal Palaces of Abome. Describing her abductors as white may have been an intentional effort to appeal to the moral sensibilities of the white judges, or to resist attempts to shift the blame for slavery onto Africans who captured the slaves rather than on the Europeans who created the demand for them. You will still see people trying to make this argument on the internet today. Most likely Belinda herself was illiterate. Her signature on this and other petitions is an ex and her most likely assistant in creating this petition was a man named Prince Hall. He had been enslaved from birth around seventeen thirty five, and then he had been freed in seventeen seventy. After becoming freed, he became an activist and an abolitionist in Boston, where he was also the founder of an African Masonic lodge. He helped author at least two petitions for a general manumission in Massachusetts, and we will talk a little bit more about these other petitions that were also presented during Belinda's life and around the same time a little bit later in the show, Belinda's petition also quickly became part of a growing body of anti slavery literature. Quaker abolitionists distributed copies, and the New Jersey Gazette reprinted it in its entirety on June eighteenth of seven, seventeen eighty three. Soon this petition was being reprinted in other newspapers and anti slavery journals on both sides of the Atlantic. In at least one British case, there were quite a number of creative liberties, basically rewriting this legal petition into a slave narrative in the first person. In terms of the ruling, Belinda's petition was successful when seventeen eighty three, the court awarded her and her daughter an annual pension of fifteen pounds twelve shillings to be paid out of the profits of the Royal Estate. However, the estate only paid this pension for a year and then ignored Belinda's repeated requests for it. In seventeen eighty seven, Belinda went back to court to try to force the Royal Estate to pay the pension as ordered, and the court once again found in her favor. The estate did make its payments for three years before stopping again, leading Belinda back to court in seventeen ninety and after payments stopped once again, she had to submit yet another petition in seventeen ninety three, and once again the ruling was in her favor. From there, there's really no record of her until Willis Hall, who had been the executor of Isaac Royal Junior's estate, requested that he be granted the rest of the money in the state treasury, saying, quote, two family servants who were left behind end quote had then died. Presumably one of the people he is talking about was Belinda, And that was in seventeen ninety nine. And Belinda's petition was by far not the first nor the only petition connected to slavery to be presented in Massachusetts courts. As we mentioned just a moment ago, and we're going to talk more about this topic after we first paused for a word from one of our fantastic sponsors. Belinda's petition was part of ongoing legal efforts of enslaved and formerly enslaved people to advocate for themselves through Massachusetts courts. A lot of these were petitions for freedom. There were enough of those that there are definitely sources that missed report Belinda's petition as being one for her freedom, which it was not. The anti slavery petitions Massachusetts Data Verse at Harvard has a huge collection of anti slavery and anti segregation documents, including Belinda's petitions online. As early as seventeen seventy individual enslaved people in Massachusetts were suing their owners in court for their own freedom, or for compensation for their labor, or for both, and some of these suits were in fact successful. Petitions for general freedom for all people enslaved in Massachusetts started before the Revolutionary War as well. Enslaved people submitted six different petitions for general emancipation between seventeen seventy three and seventeen seventy seven alone. Prince Hall, who probably helped Belinda craft her petition, had submitted two of these in the late seventeen seventies, asking for a general emancipation, protection against being kidnapped back into slavery, financial help for former slaves who wanted to settle in Africa, and public education access for black students. Many of these early petitions were connected directly to the language the Patriot Cause was using to frame the Revolutionary War and the wish for the colonies to be freed from British rule. They called on the courts to recognize that the inalienable right to freedom was not limited only to white people. These seventeen seventies petitions prompted one bill to abolish slavery in Massachusetts, although it was ultimately unsuccessful. Some of the petitions also drew from the Bible, citing Old Testament passages requiring the freedom the freeing of slaves every seven years, with those freed slaves being compensated. In one case, petitioners submitted a pamphlet by James Swan, who was a member of the Sons of Liberty and a participant in the Boston Tea Party, which attacked slavery from numerous angles, including the biblical one. It's possible that Belinda's petition was patterned after or inspired by the petition of Anthony Vassal of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He had submitted a petition in seventeen eighty one requesting the title to land owned by his former owner, John Bassel as compensation for his years of unpaid labor before being enslaved under John Vassel. Anthony and his wife had lived in Medford, where they had been owned by Isaac Royal Junior's sister, Penelope Vassal. John Vassel was a loyalist who had been exiled and whose estate had been confiscated, and Anthony successfully argued that he was owed reparations for having worked on that land where his wife and their children had also been enslaved. Although he wasn't awarded the title to the land that he asked for, he was granted an annual pension of twelve pounds out of the proceeds of the estate. It was in fact court rulings that would eventually end slavery in Massachusetts. In seventeen eighty one, Elizabeth Freeman, then known as Mom Bett, successfully sued her owner for freedom under the grounds that the newly adopted Massachusetts Constitution forbade it in article one quote, all men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights, among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties, that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness, that same year, an enslaved man known as Kwak Walker escaped from Nathaniel Jennison, and when Jennison found Walker, he beat him, leading Walker to sue him for assault and battery. This led to a series of countersuits, ending with Commonwealth versus Jennison in seventeen eighty three. During the instructions to the jury, Chief Justice Cushing stated, quote, and upon this ground, our constitution of government, by which the people of this Commonwealth have solemnly bound themselves, sets out with declaring that all men are born free and equal, and that every subject is entitled to liberty and to have it guarded by the laws, as well as life and property. And in short, is totally repugnant to the idea of being born slaves. This being the case, I think the idea of slavery is inconsistent with our own conduct and constitution. There can be no such thing as perpetual servitude of a rational creature unless his liberty is forfeited by some criminal conduct, or given up by personal consent or contract. Commonwealth versus. Jennison effectively ended slavery in Massachusetts, although there continued to be some people enslave for some time. Afterward, particularly under the guise of indentured servitude that is Belinda's petition. There are a lot of people and articles that describe Belinda's first petition as the first petition for reparations for slavery to exist in the United States. I think that's a little oversimplified, not to fault anybody in that a lot of these petitions were really difficult to access until that big Harvard database that we talked about a little bit earlier was online and it became a lot easier to search through them. It made those documents a lot more accessible to people. But Belinda's petition definitely is part of a much greater legal effort that was ongoing in Massachusetts for years to try to, at least on an individual basis, compensate some previously enslaved people for basically the damage that was done to them by having them be part of building their owner's wealth while forbidden to accumulate any wealth or possessions of their own. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook RL or something similar over the course of the show that could be obsolete now Our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can find us all over social media at missed Dhistory, and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.