Cato Freedom:

The Multicultural Mindset Of A Former Newtown Slave

By Dottie Evans

From September 2004 until the weather closed in at Thanksgiving, Town Historian Dan Cruson and his Joel Barlow senior anthropology students conducted an extensive archaeological dig at the Sherman Street home of Mike and Pam Davis.

The house, built in 1784 by a former slave named Cato (with successive last names of Platt, Freedom, and Freeman) was of interest because one black family –– Cato and his descendents –– occupied it for 100 years.

Considering that Mr Cruson had already researched the lives of Newtown’s slaves for his 1994 book titled A Case Study In Early Connecticut Rural Black History, new insights into one particular family were significant. (In 1790, just after Cato’s house was built, there were 71 Newtown slaves among 46 slave-holding families, and Newtown’s total population numbered approximately 1,500 people.)

Mr Cruson already knew that Cato had been born into slavery in 1742, and that by 1773 his owner was Moses Platt, from whom he took the first of his three consecutive last names.

In 1783, Cato was manumitted (freed) by Platt’s wife, Hannah, after Platt died, and he proudly called himself Cato Freedom. Shortly thereafter, Cato Freedom bought ¾ of an acre adjacent to Platt’s land and built his house on Sherman Street. He later added to this property, buying another two acres in 1799 and 1803, including a second house that was eventually occupied by his son, Ozias.

Mr Cruson knew that Cato’s family had enjoyed 100 years on this property, but he had never been able to spend time there looking around.

“This was a rare opportunity to explore the mindset of a former slave; how much was carried over when the slaves came to this country. What was Cato Freedom thinking when he became a free man, bought property, and settled down to build a house and raise a family in Newtown?” Mr Cruson said.

“We know there were religious and European influences,” he said.

Cato Freedom — then Cato Platt — was first married in 1773 in the Congregational Church of his master, Moses Platt. After he has been manumitted, he called himself Cato Freedom and named his sons by his second wife Levi and Ozias after Biblical characters. His daughter, born first, was named Dinah after his first wife, who died.

Another European influence was the fact that Cato used a post and beam construction style for his house. And Mr Davis had discovered a “concealment shoe” that was undoubtedly Cato’s hidden in the crawlspace under the kitchen. This was a typical custom practiced by European colonial residents at the end of the 18th Century who felt the shoe would protect their home and its residents.

At the same time, Cato did not forget his African roots. While searching in the basement of the Davises’ home, Mr Cruson and his students found a crude X, known as a spirit mark, etched into the chimney foundation –– a superstitious carryover from Cato’s African heritage.

“It was supposedly used for communication with the ancestral spirits who would protect the house,” Mr Cruson said, adding that if there had not been a concrete basement floor added later, he would have been able to dig down beneath the mark and possibly find a collection of shiny stones known as “flash points” that were often buried beneath the mark to attract friendly spirits.

One discovery led to another –– a faint X similar to the chimney spirit mark had been drawn into the leather of the concealment shoe.

“Here was a man that had one foot in each culture,” Mr Cruson wrote in the January-February issue of The Rooster’s Crow published by the Newtown Historical Society.

Finally, in laying out his house, Cato follows African custom in choice of dimensions and orientation.

“We took basic measurements of the house and immediately found it was not the standard European module based on 16-foot units [theoretically, the width of a team of oxen]. Cato’s house was built on the 12-foot module and it was square not rectangular. The door did not face the road and it was not placed under the eaves, as it would have been in a European colonial house. Instead, it was placed at the gable end on the side of the house.

“This was just not done in the 1780s. These conscious choices show a distinct African mindset,” Mr Cruson concluded.

Finally, Mr Cruson suspects that “Cato spoke in a dialect,” leading to his assumption that those who recorded his name in town records thought the name was Freeman not Freedom. (Cato was not able to read or write)]. His descendents are also recorded as Freemans and Platts.

 

Digging Through Old Rubbish

After Mr Cruson approached Mike and Pam Davis about wanting to dig in two locations behind their house –– outside the kitchen wing and 30 feet up the slope where he thought Ozias’s cooperage might have been located –– activity in the wooded Sandy Hook back yard was nonstop.

“It seems like swarms of people were here every weekend, and they found some exciting things,” said Mrs Davis, mentioning a broken chamber pot, a piece of pipe, glass, and bits of iron.

“It has been great fun for our kids. Dan gets so excited and he has such a wealth of information. His students are all ears around him,” she said.

The Davis’s children, Megan, 10, Michael, 8, and Matthew, 5, attend Middle Gate School, and all three enjoyed being a part of the discovery process.

Mr Cruson was eager to begin digging through what he called the “rubbish pits of the past,” referring to the fact that prior to 1800, people simply “let fly” with their garbage out the kitchen door.

“After 1800, they carted it off to a discrete dumping place,” he explained.

Mike Davis had already found “a marvelous pile of junk” gathered from various places all over his back yard, leading Mr Cruson to believe more lay beneath the surface.

During the second phase of the dig in an area where there had been a terrace garden, Mr Cruson pursued his “prime theory” that this was the site of Ozias Freedom’s cooperage, or barrel-making workshop.

“We found evidence of a fire, a blob of molten glass, charcoal, dark earth mixed into loose soil, and uncorroded nails showing contact with high heat,” he said, and there were bits of iron bands that might have been cut off of barrel staves, confirming his theory.

Then the temperatures dropped, the snow began to fall, and he had to cover over the site.

“I can’t wait for spring,” Mr Cruson said. “There’s more out there to discover.”

The following details about Cato’s life were taken from Mr Cruson’s book on Newtown slaves:

By Cato’s death in January 1828, he had amassed a modest estate of $419.33, which included two and three quarter acres of land, a barn and one dwelling house. The other house [still on the property] was occupied by his son, Ozias, and the three other members of Ozias’ family –– a wife and two daughters.

Cato died of old age at 80. His wife, Dorcas, lived another seven years, dying of palsy on October 6, 1835. Thus, the first generation of freed slaves had died, but they left a legacy in their three children who had been born free and who continued to dwell on and around the estate of their parents.

After the death of spinster sisters Jennette and Charlotte Freeman Platt [Ozias’s daughters] in 1886 and 1887, the property was purchased by a family of European descent.