Rare Newtown Slave Document Recalls A

‘Girl Named Genny’

By Nancy K. Crevier

When a document of historical note comes across Dan Cruson’s desk, he sees more than words on dingy parchment. He is drawn into lives that have been lived in a world that has come and gone. Like the archeologist that he is, he digs beneath the surface to uncover answers to questions stirred by words set to paper decades ago. With each new discovery, he links the people of Newtown today to the people of long-ago Newtown. 

As town historian, Mr Cruson’s position “is to resurrect people who are long dead and forgotten.” A document penned by one of Newtown’s early settlers, Abel Bennett, to another historical Newtown persona, Philo Curtis, has offered him another chance to do just that.

“There is a Hebrew belief that you are still in existence as long as someone remembers your name,” said Mr Cruson this past week, as he regarded a fragile yellowed paper that has recently come into his possession. The bill of sale, found among 30 to 35 other deeds donated to the town in mid-February by West Hartford resident Gloria Hall, is one of only four bills of sale for a slave known to exist in Newtown, and the only one that is an original document.

“What’s chilling,” Mr Cruson observed, “is that this piece of paper may be the only indication that this woman ever lived.” That this paper represents the sale of one human being to another human being is also a sobering thought for this historian.

Ms Hall was a friend of descendants of Philo Curtis and the box of private documents had ended up in her care. “In the process of cleaning out, [Ms Hall] wanted to return the documents to the town,” said Mr Cruson. He sees her donation as a true gift to Newtown.

Among the reams of papers, mainly land sale deeds, the words “my certain negro girl named Genny” in faded script on one of them caught his eye. Emancipation documents, he said, were sometimes recorded on land records, but a bill of sale is “extremely rare, even in the South.”

The bill of sale for Genny, dated October 30, 1813, is unique in two respects, said Mr Cruson. “First of all, the age of the girl. She was only 3, maybe 3½, years old. Very young. Secondly, she was sold for 25 cents, an extraordinarily low price.” The usual price at this time for a young slave girl, said Mr Cruson, the author of Newtown’s Slaves: A Case Study In Early Connecticut Rural Black History, was at minimum $20.

He can only surmise why Genny, the daughter of the slave Sucky, also named in the bill of sale, would have been sold to the Curtis family for a paltry sum at such a tender age. “It is pure speculation on my part,” he said, “but it appears as if the transfer was for guardianship reasons. Only the father, not the mother, is mentioned. Maybe the mother died, or was unable to take care of the child. It looks like the document is asking Curtis to raise the child to serve as a servant until she reaches 21 years of age.” The very low price for Genny was probably due to her extreme youth, he guessed.

Abel Bennett and his family lived at the end of what is now Riverside Road. He was the builder of Bennett’s Bridge, which crossed the Housatonic near the location of the present-day Rochambeau Bridge, and was a fairly well-to-do landowner. Sucky may have served Mr Bennett as farm help.

Philo Curtis, Jr, who purchased the toddler slave, owned nearly 100 acres bordering today’s Philo Curtis Road in Sandy Hook. A prosperous farmer, his home was on the property directly across from the James Thurber house on Riverside Road. Mr Curtis was very prominent in town, said Mr Cruson, serving as selectman at one point. A household slave would not have been an unusual holding for a man of his stature.

Slaveholders were not common in Newtown, but many prominent families, as well as more than one Congregational minister, had a slave or two as part of the household. In Connecticut, a small number of slaves per household often served as hired hands or as domestic help. In a 1790 census, 71 slaves held by 46 families were listed in Newtown. By this period in history, legislation mandated gradual emancipation of slaves in Connecticut at the age of 25. Mr Cruson can only imagine why Genny’s bill of sale designates 21 as her age of emancipation, or what became of her.

To date, the vital records in town hall have divulged no further mention of her name. There does not appear to be a recorded emancipation document for Genny. “We are still seeking information, though,” stressed Mr Cruson. “This is definitely still a work in progress.”

Once all of the records donated by Ms Hall have been examined, the Newtown Historical Society will become custodian of the papers and they will then be made available to the public. It is his hope, Mr Cruson said, that this exceptional bill of sale for Genny will be preserved in some kind of public display.

“This is the kind of thing that keeps me going,” Mr Cruson said. “Serendipity has dropped this in our laps and there is tremendous exhilaration in playing with this stuff. Philo Curtis will be remembered because of a road named after him. This [piece of paper] brings Genny back to life.”