78. Uncovering African and Native American Lives in 17th - 18th Century Hartford

Four hundred years ago, in August 1619, more than 20 kidnapped enslaved African people were sold to the Virginia colonists. Slavery was well established in the early Connecticut Colony, too. Traded, sold, given as gifts, and subjected to beatings as documents attest, the enslaved people of Hartford suffered no less than enslaved people anywhere. In today’s episode, Connecticut Explored’s Mary Donohue finds out about an innovative, model project that uses fine-grained scholarship to uncover the lives of almost 500 Africans, African Americans, and Native Americans buried between 1640 and 1815 in Hartford’s oldest historic site, the Ancient Burying Ground. She talks with Dr. Kathy Hermes, professor at Central Connecticut State University, about the project, sponsored by the Ancient Burying Ground Association and about the new website that makes all this research available with a click of a mouse.

For more information, visit the new website at www.africannativeburialsct.org. Join us on September 12, 2019 at 6 p.m. at the Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library, 500 Main Street, in downtown Hartford for a free lecture by Dr. Hermes “Uncovering Their History: African, African American and Native Americans Buried in Hartford’s Ancient Burying Ground, 1640-1815” that will launch the website. To learn more about how to research Hartford’s early black community, join Dr. Hermes for a workshop at the Hartford History Center, October 5, 2019, 11 a.m., also free to the public. And come view the exhibition at the Hartford History Center: Uncovering the Ancient Burying Ground, an exhibition featuring historic photos, maps, drawings, and postcards.

This episode was produced by Mary Donohue, assistant publisher, Connecticut Explored, and engineered by Patrick O’Sullivan. Visual art by coramarshall.com.

To order a Fall 2019 issue of Connecticut Explored with a feature article by Dr. Hermes about this project, go to ctexplored.org.

Subscribe to Connecticut Explored and get the upcoming Winter issue with stories about events or inventions that disrupted history.  Subscribe, buy back issues and collections—including a make-your-own collection at a special price—at ctexplored.org. 

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