Elizabeth Matelski, PhD, and Abby Battis, ALM — Slavery’s Legacy in a New England Town

Elizabeth Matelski, PhD, and Abby Battis, ALM

In 2019, Historic Beverly launched its first free online exhibit, Set at Liberty: Stories of the Enslaved People in a New England Town. The exhibit tells the story of almost 100 years of enslaved history in the city of Beverly – stories of citizens, black and white, battling against the unjust system of slavery; of enslaved men fighting for the freedom for our nation, though not free themselves; of a woman using the law to emancipate her family; and of the racism that affected the lives of Beverly’s black population, long after they were freed from bondage. One such story is that of Robin Mingo (c.1661-1748) who lived with his wife, a free indigenous woman named Deborah Tailer, on a small plot of land that overlooked the ocean. A legend describes that Mingo’s enslaver, Thomas Woodbury, promised Mingo his freedom if the tides recessed enough for him to walk from the shore out to a rocky passage known as ‘Aunt Becky’s Ledge’—a rare phenomenon. Rather than bury, silence, or ignore these stories, our task as historians is to bring that history to light and to draw attention to the under-examined lives of enslaved and indigenous people on Boston’s North Shore.