New Haven County Court Records: Blog

State of the Uncovering New Haven Project

July has been as busy with processing the New Haven County Court records as every other month in the archives! Today we discuss what has been going on with the Uncovering New Haven project, give a sneak peek into our workspace, and reveal a few of the neat discoveries we’ve made.

Overall Progress

Van Block Storage Facility in Hartford, CT: where the discovery happens!

One of the primary goals of the Uncovering New Haven project is to identify and digitize all cases in the New Haven County Superior and County Court records dating from 1666-1855 that involve African-descended, African American, Black, and Indigenous peoples. Since December 2020, we have processed the New Haven County, County Court files from 1666 to 1799, and here is what we discovered:

• Total cases involving BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color): 161
• African-descended/African American/Black cases: 121
• Indigenous cases: 33 (1 Mohawk, 1 Paugussett; 1 Wawyachtonoc, 30 unidentified tribe/nation)
• Mixed-heritage cases: 6 (1 African/Indigenous, 5 African/European)
• Other groups cases: 1 (Spanish)

The most common subjects for cases involving African-descended, African American, Black, and Indigenous peoples were debt (45 cases), trespass (27 cases), slavery (16 cases), and theft (15 cases).

The remaining case subjects included accomplices, assault and battery, breach of the peace, conservatorships, covenants, damages, default/failure to pay, enticed away servant, failure to deliver goods, failure to serve, fornication and illegitimacy, fraud, inheritances, marriages, offenses against property, partition, paternity, petitions, seisin and possession, shipwrecks, slander and defamation, trover and conversion, vandalism, and wages.

Recent Discoveries: Cases involving African American, Black, and Indigenous peoples

Unfolding, flattening, and labeling court records. We’ve got a pretty efficient system in place...

We are currently processing the New Haven County, County Court files from 1790-1799. In this decade, we have identified 26 cases in the New Haven County, County Court files involving African-descended, African American, Black, and Indigenous individuals, groups, or place names.

Given that chattel slavery treated people as property, constables or sheriffs sometimes seized enslaved individuals from debtors along with various goods, livestock, and lands. Four cases involved African American or Black individuals who were “attached” to writs in debt lawsuits:

• Susan, a girl from Derby
• Sharper, a boy from Derby
• Charles, a boy from New Haven
• Sandy, a boy from New Haven

Four cases involved the institution of slavery:

• Charles Baldwin and Daniel Tolles sued Samuel and Thomas Darling for failing to care for Caesar, “a Negro Servant or Slave” who “has become weak, aged and infirm & totally unable to support himself.”
• Titus Hotchkiss sued Joel Moss and John Ives for selling him an African-descended girl named Amy they claimed was a “Slave for life,” but they did not own and had no right to sell her.
• Benjamin Eliott complained that an African-descended enslaved girl named Annis (age 7) was “diseased & disordered & distempered” instead of “sound & well & in good bodily health” as promised by Justus Bellamy upon purchase. (We have examined other cases of this nature in a previous post, and discussed why this language is dehumanizing.)
• James Saunder sued Joseph Wheeler and William Clark for assaulting his wife Caroline, falsely imprisoning her, and forcibly taking her to Saint Martin in the West Indies “as a Slave for Life.”

Eight cases involved debt or failure to pay:

• Prince Umstead (also spelled Olmstead) was an African-descended Revolutionary War veteran from western Massachusetts who settled in Milford. He was the plaintiff in one debt case and the defendant in four debt cases.
• London Fannanak, identified as “a free Negroe” of New Haven, sued Jacob Brown for 14 pounds.
• Eneas Munson sued Samuel Russel for debt pertaining to service that an African-descended man named Dan provided (he was enslaved by Russel). Gad, “a Negro Man,” and Rose, “his wife,” also provided testimony for this case.
• John Nichols sued Isaac Baldwin, David Welton, and Pomp Freeman (Freeman was presumably African-descended). The three men were tenants of land owned by Nichols and failed to pay him for “the use, profits and improvement” of said land.

Five cases involved theft or assault:

• Samuel Cook was prosecuted by the State of Connecticut for receiving stolen indigo and gunpowder from Prince Perkins, “a Negro Man late of New Haven.”
• Jack, alias John Gardiner, an African-descended transient lately residing in Waterbury, was prosecuted by the State under the accusation that he “did, with Force and Arms” assault James Brown of Waterbury, and that he was armed with “Pistol and Scythe Blade.”
• Jack, “a Negro man... now a Servant to John Meriam,” was prosecuted by the State for stealing goods from Sylvanus Nichols and Daniel Hall.
• John Harris, “an [I]ndian and a transient of said Cheshire,” was prosecuted by the State for assaulting Samuel Tallmadge.
• Timothy Freeman sued John Beadel and a group of men including “Peter Negro of said Cheshire then & yet a Servant & Slave of the said Aaron Bellamy” for assaulting him.

Finally, we discovered five cases involving Indigenous lands or place names:

• Jonah Newton, the overseer of the Turkey Hill Indians in Milford, demanded an account of Peter Merrick’s activities as bailiff pertaining to the group’s land, goods, and other merchandise.
• Philip Stedman agreed to sell Reuben Fowler 30,000 acres of land “lying & being on Grand River in Upper Canada, being part of a tract of Land which the Government of Great Britain, Deeded to the Indians & part of a Township of twelve Miles Square which said Indians deeded to said Stedman lying next above the Mohawk Village extending Six Miles each side of said Grand River & known by the name of Stedmans Manor,” but refused “to perform his Covenants as aforesaid.”
• The remaining three cases mentioned land that was bordered by “Indian River” in Milford or “Indian Lands” (tribe/nation identity not given).

Recent Discoveries: Cases involving other areas of interest

...but there are still so many court records to process!

While processing the New Haven County, County Court files from 1790-1799, we came across several cases of interest in our secondary digitization categories, which include women, indentured servitude, minors, diseases, physically and mentally disabled, sexual crimes, transients, and other underrepresented groups. Here are a few of the interesting cases we discovered:

Court session: November 1790

• Nathaniel Storer sued John Dennison for not paying his “equal half” for Irish indentured servants Mrs. Gilbreth, William Meloy, Peggy Pork, Betsy McClarky, and Jounity McFagin, who were brought to America from Ireland on the ship Augusta.

Court session: March 1791

• Samuel Little accused John Clark of assaulting, kidnapping, and raping his wife Martha, declaring that Clark “carryed [Martha] away from the Pl[aintif]f & her carnally knew & did detain & keep s[ai]d Martha.”

Court session: November 1791

• Thaddeus Cook and the selectmen of Wallingford sued David Curtiss for not looking after his grandson Jonah Curtiss Miller, “a Child about four years of age & being wholly unable to provide for himself by reason of his infancy & tender years” whose father “absconded” and left Jonah and his mother Damaris with “no estate for the maintenance or support of the s[ai]d Child.”

Court session: February 1792

• The State of Connecticut prosecuted William Meloy for breach of the peace, claiming that he did “Prophanely Swear by the Holy Name of God, and did also abuse said Justice [of the Peace for New Haven County] by threatning his life by Shooting him and by turbulent behaviour, did disquiet & disturb the peace of many of the good people of this State.”

Court session: November 1792

• The State of Connecticut prosecuted John Nichols for electioneering, stating that he “did endeavour unduly to persuade and Influence John Thomson and Lemuel Harrison and several others being legal Members of s[ai]d meeting in giving their votes or sufferages.”
• Amelia Thomas complained that John Benner “did after various insidious attempts & with actual force and violence... seduce her the Pl[ain]t[iff] & have carnal knowledge of her body & did beget on her a Bastard Child;” she sued not for seduction or rape, but for “support & maintenance of the child.”

Court session: March 1794

• Calvin Beecher sued Avel Ives for slander and defamation, accusing Ives of spreading rumors that he had engaged in the felony of bestiality and “has had to do with a sow sundry times – He (meaning the Pl[aintif]f) lay with a sow by carnal copulation & I have seen him many a time.”

Court session: November 1795 (This was a busy one!)

• Oliver Blakesley was married to Elizabeth Humiston and sued Joel Blakesley for alienation of affections, claiming that Joel “wickedly intending to seduce the affections of the said Elizabeth... committed adultery with the said Elizabeth by having carnal knowledge of her body untill the Pl[ain]t[iff] was compelled to leave the said Elizabeth, she having ferociously refused to the Pl[ain]t[iff] the performance of any of the duties required of her as a wife.”
• The State of Connecticut prosecuted Thomas Bontecou, Master of the sloop George, for failing to inform the selectmen of New Haven that Edward Carrington, a man on board, was sick with Yellow Fever.
• Mary Cook sued Uriah Collens for slander and defamation, claiming that he stated “‘Polly Cook [Mary]... is the greatest whore, the greatest thief & the greatest Lyar on the face of the earth and I... am bold to say it’ meaning that the Plaintiff had lost all her virtue prostituted her chastity and been frequently guilty of a Criminal connection with men, and that she had feloniously Stolen and taken the property of other persons and had lost all regard for truth and veracity,” and that due to his words she “has lost the afores[ai]d love, affection, confidence and esteem of all her friends and acquaintances, is shunned & avoided by those who formerly loved caressed and visited her, is forsaken by her mates and neglected by those of both sexes, despised and rejected as a vile Prostitute Thief and Lyar, and all her once pleasing and fair prospects of a happy and honorable settlement for life, are now clouded over with dismal despair and her situation become the complete picture and patern of extreme wretchedness.”

A Final Postscript

We will get through these piles eventually!

During our semi-hiatus, we are continuing to profile interesting, amusing, tragic, and sometimes infuriating New Haven County Court finds on Instagram. We highly encourage you to check out these cases when they go online—this month, subjects include Revolutionary War privateering and assaults with odd objects—along with the other cases we’ve already posted.

In the meantime, happy summer!

As noted in a previous post, the records for these cases, 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.