As part of Black History month I would like to suggest an important 1754 document from the BHS Archives.
~ BHS Docent, Cobb House Museum
The 1754 slave census for the town of Harwich, which until the 1803 separation included the area now known as Brewster, records eight male and six female slaves.
ENUMERATION OF SLAVES 1754
According to the Order of the General Court we the subscribers have taken an account of the number of the Negroes [sic] Slaves in the Town of Harwich [in 1754 this included Brewster] and find them to be Viz: Eight males and Six females
To the Honorable
Josiah Willard, Sec’try
[signed] Barnaby Freeman
Jabez Snow
(Assessors of Harwich)
Slavery remained legal in Massachusetts until 1783, when the State Supreme Court ruled that the slave Quock Walker must be freed based on the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution, which stated that “All men are born free and equal.” As a result, the 1790 state census lists no slaves in Massachusetts.
Although to date no studies have unearthed direct evidence that the Brewster shipmasters traded in slaves, they certainly benefited financially by trade associated with that institution. Here is one basic example: Alewives from what was then and is today Brewster’s herring run on Stony Brook Road were caught, salted, packed in barrels, shipped to Boston, and on to the West Indies to feed the slaves. Consider who benefited financially from this small-scale, peripheral connection to the slave trade: The fishermen who caught the fish, the men who made their nets, the men who delivered the salt to preserve the alewives, the coastal traders who delivered the barrel staves to the local coopers who made the barrels, and last of all the sea captains who delivered the alewives to Boston and then on to the West Indies.