Today we are going to examine a case where an enslaved woman was forced into service at a household where people had smallpox. After she contracted the disease and died, her enslaver sued the town for damages.
When quoting from documents, we will use the actual spelling, including transcriptions of individual words as necessary. (For more information about colonial spelling practices, see The Standardization of American English at teachinghistory.org.) In certain circumstances, we will add missing letters to abbreviated words or substitute modern spelling in brackets to enhance reader comprehension.
In 1754, Samuel Hall of Wallingford sued Theophilus Yale and the inhabitants of Wallingford, demanding financial restitution for the death of Sim, an enslaved African-descended woman previously in his household.
Sim’s case: writ for Samuel Hall vs. Theophilus Yale. A photo of this writ also appeared in the Archivists and Archives of Color (AAC) Volume 35, No. 3: Summer 2021 newsletter on page 10.
In 1751, the dreaded smallpox had been “brot into s[ai]d Town by a Stranger and then being in a House then in the Occupancy of Doc[to]r Shadrach Sagar in s[ai]d Town.” The Wallingford selectmen subsequently ordered this dwelling to be cleansed and, with the backing of two town justices, had the constable issue a warrant to impress Sim into service. Sadly, Sim became infected with the disease, whereupon Hall “expended large Sums for Medicines and Nurses & whereof she Languished & Died whereby the Pl[ain]t[iff] has Lost said Slave.” Hall requested 50 pounds in damages.
Why did the Wallingford selectmen choose Sim for this dangerous service? As mentioned in the introductory post to this series on disease, colonial New England towns demonstrated few qualms about sacrificing individual household interests to the greater social good if they deemed it necessary to contain an epidemic. In addition, during such outbreaks, “the lower orders of society could be weighted with extra restrictions, burdens, and other markers of inferiority that reinforced social hierarchy. One of the central fault lines that developed was between whites and persons of color... No other divide emerges from official records of smallpox in eighteenth-century New England with the same force and clarity as race” (Ben Mutschler, The Province of Affliction: Illness and the Making of Early New England, pp. 152-153). For example, during the Boston smallpox epidemic of 1721, free Black men were ordered to “take up carts and cleanse the streets and lanes of the city of the filth that was thought to aid and harbor the distemper” (Mutschler, The Province of Affliction, p. 152).
While the court records do not discuss Sim’s previous exposure to illness, it is possible that the Wallingford selectmen may have believed that Sim had a preexisting immunity to smallpox. As a strong proponent of inoculation, Cotton Mather had previously circulated the (possibly apocryphal) narrative of Onesimus, an enslaved African-descended man in his household. According to Mather, Onesimus revealed the following information to him: “That abundance of poor Negro’s die of the Small Pox, till they learn this Way; that People take the Juice of the Small Pox, and Cut the Skin, and put in a drop; then by’nd by a little Sick, then few Small Pox; and no body dye of it: no body have Small Pox any more” (Cristobal Silva, Miraculous Plagues: An Epidemiology of Early New England Narrative, p. 172). Indeed, “prior exposure to smallpox added an intrinsic value to slaves, whose owners did not have to worry about losing them to epidemics” (Silva, Miraculous Plagues, p. 178).
When the case finally came to trial, both “Parties appearing desired to refer their matters of Difference to Arbitration & mutually chose Samuell Cooke, David Woster & John Eliot all of New Haven who are appointed Arbitrators in said Action” (County Court Records, New Haven County, Vol. 4, 1739 to 1755, p. 691). Upon deliberation, the arbitrators awarded Hall a substantially decreased total of 14 pounds in damages. Similar to the plight of Devenshare Nero, this case demonstrates the callous brutality of chattel slavery. Over the course of one arbitration, the colonists reduced the perceived monetary value of Sim’s life from 50 to 14 pounds.
Continuing our examination of cases involving disease and the enslaved, our next blog post will profile the cases of six African-descended people who found themselves at the center of court disputes due to their illnesses.
As noted in a previous post, the records for this case, as well as several of the cases previously profiled in this blog, are currently in the process of being digitized. They will eventually be available for public viewing at the Connecticut Digital Archive (CTDA).
The Connecticut State Library would like to thank the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) for their generous support of this project.
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