In honor of Black and African American History Month, we examine the first case discovered in the New Haven County Court records involving an African-descended plaintiff.
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 January 1765, Phillis, a freewoman of African descent who resided in New Haven, sued John Clark, late of East Haddam and presently of Colchester, for assault and false imprisonment.
She alleged that Clark “with Force & Arms [made] an Assault on the Body of [herself] then being in the Peace of God & the King.” Furthermore, she declared he “did unlawfully make & her Imprison & restrain of her Lawful Liberty against her Mind & Will, & [he] hath ever Since with the Same Force & Still doth most unjustly imprison [her] & restrain her of her Lawful Liberty, to her grievous Injury.” In recompense for such atrocious offenses, she sought 200 pounds in damages.
Writ for Phillis of New Haven vs. John Clark
No doubt eager for justice, Phillis came to court on the day of the trial. But John Clark did not.
Failure to appear was not uncommon. Though no reason was given for Clark’s absence, a common excuse for missed court dates was illness—whether due to malingering pretense or genuine malaise (Ben Mutschler, The Province of Affliction: Illness and the Making of Early New England, p. 14). It was also not unusual for defendants to avoid a trial that would most likely go against them, as the cases of Cubitt Freeman and Gad and York of New Haven demonstrate.
Because Clark failed to appear, the Court “thereupon considered” to award Phillis her full damages plus court costs (County Court Records, New Haven County, Vol. 6, 1764 to 1767, p. 130).
While we were unable to discover more information about Phillis, we do know that she was a part of a steadily growing population of freemen and freewomen in New Haven. In 1775—ten years after her court case—New Haven’s population of enslaved Black persons was estimated to be 262. However, after the implementation of Gradual Abolition in Connecticut following the American Revolution, the population of free Black persons in New Haven increased to 390 in 1810 and numbered over 625 by 1820. This free population may have been undercounted, due to several escapees making their way North in the years before the Civil War (Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, & Abolition, The Emergence of Free Black Communities in Connecticut, 1800-1830, p. 3).
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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