Researchers uncover Warren's slavery ties

Preservation society effort shows extent of slavery here in late 18th, early 19th century

By Ted Hayes
Posted 8/31/16

When he died in 1749, a clerk at town hall dutifully recorded an inventory of Warren resident Samuel Low’s possessions for probate. They included a horse saddle, a bridle, a handful of pigs, …

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Researchers uncover Warren's slavery ties

Preservation society effort shows extent of slavery here in late 18th, early 19th century

Posted

When he died in 1749, a clerk at town hall dutifully recorded an inventory of Warren resident Samuel Low’s possessions for probate. They included a horse saddle, a bridle, eight pigs, several bushels of corn and dozens of other common household items. They also included more precious possessions: One negro man, one negro woman, two negro boys and four negro girls. The eight slaves were appraised at just over 1,300 pounds sterling, and the inventory was recorded with the town clerk, sealed and filed away.

Warren’s records are full of such stories. Though it was no Newport or Providence, many early residents owned slaves and many others were actively involved in the trade, sailing out of Warren’s wharves aboard locally built slaving ships.

In three weeks, the Warren Preservation Society will delve into a little-known part of the town’s early history as it explores Warren’s complicity in the slave trade and examines the number of slaves that lived and toiled here.

“Warren: 19 Years in the Slave Trade” will be held at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 22, at the Methodist Church on Church Street. All are welcome, and there is no cost to attend.

The program is one of several planned over the coming year, each covering a different aspect of late 18th and early 19th century slaving. The volunteers behind it, including Pat Mues, say they’ve uncovered a wealth of information about Warren’s involvement in the trade, which flourished in the 1700s until it was officially abolished in 1808. Officially, the presentation gives an overview of slavery in Warren from 1789 to 1808.

When she first started researching the subject, Ms. Mues said, “I was surprised, and I was also surprised that when I talked about it, people were surprised.”

“Nobody was surprised that there were slaves here, but that we’d been involved in the trade surprised a lot of people. We built ships for the DeWolfs,” the wealthy slave-trading family from Bristol, “and there were a lot of captains involved in sailing.”

The slave trade worked like this: Ship captains hired by slaving outfits would ship locally made rum and other goods to Africa, where they would trade for or purchase slaves. Packing them into the holds of their ships, they would then head to the Caribbean — Cuba, Jamaica and other islands; there, slaves would be sold and/or traded for molasses and sugar, which would then be transported back to the colonies and later, the United States.

Slaving families, including the Browns of Providence and the DeWolfs of Bristol, got rich in the trade, and Newport was one of the largest slaving ports in the nation during the years when the so-called ‘Triangular Trade’ was active.

Warren, as a ship-building town in the 18th century, produced many vessels that became involved in the trade, and many captains as well. Some of them, including Capt. Charles Collins, took several voyages, and his house remains, directly across from the Warren Town Wharf at 296 Water St.

Other traces of the trade are less visible, but still there. Over the past months Ms. Mues has found many traces of many of them in the town’s records, and notes that by 1774 there were approximately 44 slaves counted in Warren.

“The number was probably greater than that, but we don’t know,” she said. “We counted 40 from wills and inventories.”

“The number goes down to 22 in 1790, and then by 1808 when (the slave trade) was officially ended, Warren had none. But Warren was not about having slaves, it was about buying and selling.”

Note: Ms. Mues said much more information about Warren’s involvement in the trade, and the life of slaves here, will be included in the Sept. 22 presentation. The meeting itself is part of a larger, longer-term effort to place a marker acknowledging the trade here.

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