Candace: Imagining the Life of a Woman Enslaved in 18th-Century New England

By Diane Taraz

For decades Diane Taraz and her husband have attended week-long conferences on Star Island, off the coast of New Hampshire. She has always been interested in the history of the Isles of Shoals, of which Star is a part. Before the conference era that began in the 1900s, before the golden age of seaside resorts in the 1800s, Star Island was home to a village called Gosport, founded long before the American Revolution.

The town and church records in the Star Island library let Taraz peek into the lives of the colonial residents. When she found entries showing that people were enslaved on Star, including a woman named Candace brought there as a child, she began to ponder what this woman's life might have been like.

Most of this book is about the world in which Candace found herself nearly 300 years ago. It is based on a wealth of research, nearly all from primary source documents. The scenes that imagine her experiences are conjecture, and Taraz recognizes that she has no way of knowing anything about this woman's inner life. But Candace can be placed in the midst of an ocean of facts, and it is worthwhile to envision her as a live person rather than just a fading bit of ink on a page.

This book is filled with everyday details about life in the eighteenth century, many from Taraz's extensive library of works about that time. The book "Black Portsmouth" was a treasure trove of knowledge about the continuous presence in New Hampshire of people like Candace, a rich history long ignored, belittled, and erased. But the real treasure was digitized archives containing wills and court records, and foremost the Gosport town and church records.

Taraz made many passes through these records, each time with a different focus. She noted the dates of each annual meeting, which took place in March. Figuring out why they chose that month led to the history of off-kilter calendars that have plagued civilizations for millennia, along with a most unusual event that Candace experienced in 1752 when 11 days were left out of the month of September. Deciphering records that mention currency led to exploring how the colonies handled money, which was not very well. Noting when various names appeared and what those people were doing added another layer. The town had numerous concerns, from wayward livestock to maintaining the meeting house, a task done by a Black man named Charles, whose pay was noted in the minutes of two annual meetings.

The parsonage was moved to the mainland after the Revolution and a photograph of it shows us the building in which Candace spent her life. Tucke's estate inventory reveals what was in the parsonage – the tools Candace used every day, the furniture that surrounded her.

Taraz notes the interactions between the three populations that were mingling in New England -- Indigenous people, white colonists, and Black residents, both enslaved and free. She explores how they grappled with the basic organization of their lives, including how they measured days, years, and quantities; what they ate; what they wore; how they handled birth and death; what they taught their children; and how they ran their households and communities.

Taraz has drawn on her own experiences in bringing Candace's world to life, from breastfeeding to hand-sewing to many weeks living on the Isles of Shoals. Books and plays from the eighteenth century give her the cadence of the Shoalers' speech. The lyrics of hundreds of folk songs rattle around in her head, steeping her in antique language and letting her glimpse the hearts and minds of people who lived long ago.

I hope we all can benefit from knowing more about the origins of our society through this work of imagination anchored in a sea of facts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9781667885445

Book preview

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Copyright © 2022 Diane Taraz

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-1-66788-544-5

The drawing on the cover depicts the parsonage where Candace spent her life, as it would have looked in the 1700s. The building was moved to York, Maine, in about 1780 and survived long enough to be photographed, in black-and-white. This sketch by Diane Taraz is architecturally accurate, and the building’s color is consistent with the paints of the time.

Table of Contents

Preface

Timeline

Introduction

1742 ~ Stolen Away

1742 ~ Already Here?

1742 ~ The Tucke Household

1743 ~ Gosport Town

1743 ~ Birth and Death

1744 ~ Daily Bread

1745 ~ Gathered Together

1748 ~ Heaven Preserve Us

1750 ~ Church and State

1752 ~ Hands to Work

1755 ~ Peril on Land and Sea

1759 ~ Sins and Sinners

1766 ~ As Long as Ye Both Shall Live

1772 ~ Revolution

References

About the Author

Preface

The idea for this book came to me in 2022 as my husband, John, and I sailed home from Star Island. For decades we have attended week-long conferences on that little rock in the sea, and I have always been interested in its history. Before the conference era that began in the 1900s, before the golden age of seaside resorts in the 1800s, the Isles of Shoals were home to a village called Gosport that was founded long before the American Revolution.

The town and church records in the Star Island library let me peek into the lives of the colonial residents. When I found entries showing that several people were enslaved on Star, including a woman named Candace brought there as a child, I began to ponder what her life might have been like.

Most of this book is about the world in which Candace found herself nearly three hundred years ago. It is based on a wealth of research, nearly all from primary source documents. The scenes that imagine her experiences are conjecture, and I recognize that I have no way of knowing anything about her inner life. I have tried to leave her a fairly blank slate and avoid taking liberties with her memory. But I can place her in the midst of an ocean of facts, and I think it is worthwhile to envision her as a live person rather than just a fading bit of ink on a page.

Candace led a life of coercion. Violence was common in the eighteenth century and I have tried to include enough to be realistic, without knowing to what extent it filled her days. Her circumstances may have been much worse than I have depicted, a distinct possibility that acknowledges the terrible nature of her misfortune.

As I learned more and more about her time and place, I kept bumping into my own assumptions, and deeper research helped me get things right. I added to my collection of books about the eighteenth century and the Isles of Shoals, and found a great deal of information on-line. The book Black Portsmouth was a treasure trove of knowledge about the continuous presence in New Hampshire of people like Candace, a rich history long ignored, belittled, and erased.

But the real treasure was digitized archives. From my comfy chair I could look through wills and court records, and foremost the Gosport town and church records. I roamed through transcripts typed in 1913 and made a pilgrimage to New Hampshire to see the ink-blotted script written some three centuries ago.

I made many passes through these records, each time with a different focus. I noted the dates of each annual town meeting, which took place in March. Figuring out why they chose that month led to the history of off-kilter calendars that have plagued civilizations for millennia, along with a most unusual event that Candace experienced in 1752 when eleven days were left out of the month of September.

Deciphering records that mention currency led to exploring how the colonies handled money, which was not very well. Another pass showed when the town gave up trying to scrape up enough valid cash to pay their minister and switched to commodity currency, hefty batches of highly valuable dried cod.

Noting when various names appeared and what those people were doing added another layer. The town had numerous concerns, from wayward livestock to maintaining the meeting house, a task done by a Black man named Charles, whose pay was noted in the minutes of two annual meetings.

I have tried to include as much known detail as possible. The names of Candace’s neighbors come directly from the church or town records. The parsonage was moved to the mainland after the Revolution and a photograph of it shows us the building in which Candace spent her life. Tucke’s estate inventory tells us what was in the parsonage – the tools Candace used every day, the furniture that surrounded her.

One of my favorite research tactics is to determine how old people were at any given time. This provides a census-like snapshot of families and households. Throughout the book I use ages to inform my scenes, making imagined interactions more likely to be true in a general sense.

John and I spent many hours in happy companionship, side by side on our laptops. He has delved deeply into both of our families and become adept at locating records of all kinds. His assistance and expertise were invaluable. We delighted in the things I kept discovering about how colonists grappled with the basic organization of their lives. Each scene I imagined brought up fresh questions about how they measured days, years, and quantities, along with what they ate, what they wore, how they handled birth and death, what they taught their children, and how they ran their households and community.

One evening after we’d been peacefully tapping at our keyboards for some time I suddenly said, What’s a gill? John winced, imagining the twisty history that question would involve, and we burst into laughter. As I uncovered family trees I took to asking him, "And guess what they named this baby? He soon realized that answering John Tucke" would usually be correct.

I have drawn on my own experiences in bringing Candace’s world to life, from breastfeeding to hand-sewing to many weeks on the Isles of Shoals. Books and plays from the eighteenth century give me the cadence of the Shoalers’ speech. The lyrics of hundreds of folk songs rattle around in my head, steeping me in antique language and letting me glimpse the hearts and minds of people who lived long ago.

I hope we all can benefit from knowing more about the origins of our society through this work of imagination anchored in a sea of facts.

Diane Taraz, 2022

Arlington, Massachusetts

Timeline

1702      John Tucke is born

1705      Mary Dole is born

1724      they marry in Hampton, N.H., she 19, he 22

1726      John is born

1729      John dies, age 3

unnamed girl is born, dies

1731      Benjamin is born, dies

1732      John and Mary move to Gosport

1733      Mary is born, dies

1734      Samuel is born, dies

1736      Bithiah is born, dies

1738      Mary is born

1740      John is born

1742      Candace is brought to Gosport, about age 9

1743      Love is born

1745      Benjamin is born, dies

1748      Jonathan is born, dies

Candace is about 15

1761      John, 21, becomes minister in Epsom, N.H.

1762      Dinah is born

John marries Mary Parsons

Candace is about 28

1766      Mary marries Mark Walton

Love marries Jeffry Muchmore

Candace is about 33

1773      Mary dies, age 68

John dies, age 70

Candace is about 40

1774      John leaves the Epsom church

1777      the Isles of Shoals are evacuated

Candace is about 44, Dinah is 15

Introduction

For decades I have attended conferences on Star Island. One August day, hiding from the sun in the Vaughn Cottage library, I looked through the shelves for something to read and came across the transcribed records of the town of Gosport, which run from 1731 to 1870, along with the church records kept by their minister from 1731 to 1773.

I was fascinated by the entries from so long ago, evoking the daily lives of fishermen and their families. Rev. John Tucke was their beloved leader for 41 years, honored with a towering monument erected by a descendant in 1914. While enjoying such antique names as Pelatiah Kisswell and Love Muchmore, I was stopped cold by an entry from 1742, ten years into Tucke’s time on the island. He wrote that he had baptized Candace, a Negro Child belonging to Mr. John Tucke.

The glowing epitaph on his monument does not mention that he had enslaved a child. I continued through the records hoping to learn more about Candace. Tucke baptized Black children enslaved by other Gosport residents, but there was nothing about her until a 1762 entry made 20 years after the first: Dinah, daughter of Candace, a Negro, was Baptized.

These are the only two entries that mention Candace. Like so many enslaved people, we know nearly nothing about her. At least we have names; most records of the enslaved note only ages and sexes.

But it is possible to use these entries to embark on a voyage of possibility. We know many facts about the people who enslaved Candace, and how they lived. We know much about Gosport and the Isles of Shoals, where she spent her life. We know about New Hampshire and the other colonies that made up New England. Adding many details about life in the eighteenth century, we can make informed guesses about what Candace may have experienced.

She deserves to be remembered.

1742 ~ Stolen Away

On September 5, 1742, Rev. John Tucke opened the record book for his church in Gosport, a fishing village on the Isles of Shoals, off the coast of New Hampshire. He dipped his quill pen into his inkwell and, in the section where he noted the baptisms he had performed, wrote,

Candace, a Negro Child belonging to Mr. John Tucke.

There was only one John Tucke in Gosport. He referred to himself in the third person because he was keeping the official record. It would have been odd for him to write me or myself among the other names. Tucke never added Rev. before his name in his book. He was just Mr. Tucke, in keeping with his Congregational church’s focus on members bound together in a covenant of equal responsibility.

Where did this little girl come from? How old was she when Tucke bought her? What did it mean for him to baptize her? What was life like for her and other enslaved people on the Isles of Shoals?

We cannot answer these and many other questions with certainty, but we can explore various possibilities, based on knowledge about the time and place in which Candace lived. Though not precisely true, these conjectures capture the essence of her experiences and help us understand her circumstances and those of others in her situation.

Tucke calls Candace a Negro Child. She may have been as young as seven. If she were older than ten or so he probably would have called her a girl rather than a child. She was most likely born between 1730 and 1735. In these pages I will estimate that she was about nine when she arrived in Gosport.

We know of other children brought to New Hampshire and enslaved. A 1757 notice in the New Hampshire Gazette read, To be sold a strong healthy Negro Boy about eleven years old. In country two-and-a-half years, can be recommended to a Gentleman’s Family, a farmer or tradesman. This boy had been abducted from his home in Africa at about age nine.

Discovering information about the lives of enslaved people in Portsmouth was a 30-year quest for Valerie Cunningham, who sifted through three centuries of records looking for signs of them. In their book Black Portsmouth Mark Sammons uses her research to tell the stories of some 50 Black people who lived in the area during the 1700s, most of them enslaved, some of them free.

In the late 1600s Portsmouth captains began including captives in their cargoes, and by 1708 the governor reported that there were 70 negro servants in New Hampshire, which is what enslaved people were always called back then. Most Portsmouth ships seem to have carried one or two captives rather than the hundreds crammed into the holds of other ships in conditions of unbelievable misery.

By chance we know of one ship, the Exeter, that landed in Portsmouth with 61 captives in 1756. An inventory was taken because the captain had died, and among the tobacco, wine, rum, and turpentine were 35 men and women, 9 teenagers, and 17 children. The Exeter may have set out from Africa with more, but cramming dozens of people into the hold with no sanitation or fresh air led to outbreaks of disease that killed many a captive. Their bodies were thrown overboard. Some of the living, in despair, jumped after them, ending their suffering and avoiding the unknown terrors that awaited them far from their homes and loved ones.

Enslaving children was common. Among the dozens of advertisements for the sale of captives between 1757 and 1775 was one that read, "Likely Negro Boys and Girls just imported from Gambia, and to be sold on board the Sloop Carolina lying at the Long Wharff in Portsmouth." In a 1779 petition to the New Hampshire legislature, 20 men stated that they had all been brought from Africa to Portsmouth as children.

Even babies were not spared. Records in Massachusetts and elsewhere show infants being sold or given away. Their chances of survival were even slimmer than most babies, whose odds were already low. The purchasers gave these little ones to enslaved women to raise and hoped for the best.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

September 1742

Maybe …

The Tryton was anchored in Portsmouth harbor and its boats ferried crew members and goods to the dock. One boat carried a terrified girl who could make no sense of the words spoken by the ghostly people around her.

On shore she was put into an outdoor pen with other captives. She huddled in a corner, for she did not know the language of these people, either. Captives were led away in ones and twos. A man came for the girl and led her through streets crowded with horses and carts. The people were dark, pale, and many shades in between. Piles of manure stank everywhere and the smell of fish and wood smoke was strong.

They stopped at a house. In the yard a woman had the girl stand over a basin of water while she scrubbed her with sharp-smelling soap. She looked closely at the girl’s scalp, then soaped her head and used a straight razor to shave off all of her hair. The girl closed her eyes and shivered in the wind.

The woman rinsed her off and slipped a clean shift over her head, along with a scratchy cap that hurt her newly shaved skin. The girl pulled off the cap. The woman slapped her across the face. The girl gasped and tottered but did not fall. She put the cap back on.

Two men arrived. They examined her hands and teeth, spoke in a rapid language, and exchanged some money. One man took the girl by the arm and led her down the street to a different house.

The man put her in a room with a pallet of straw and a chamberpot. He brought her a bowl of yellow mush and a mug with a pale golden liquid, left, and shut the door. She was very hungry and the food were soon gone.

She curled up on the pallet and began to weep. Her home was now forever out of reach. Her mother would never know what had become of her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Even though he could have afforded it, Tucke did not buy an expensive adult. Instead he, like others in New England, purchased a child. She cost much less and could be made to fit into his family more easily than someone older.

Tucke calls Candace a Negro, and if she had been of mixed race he probably would have used a different word to describe her. He made distinctions in his records. In 1742, the year he brought Candace to Gosport, he wrote,

Peter a Negro child belonging to Samuel Abbot was

baptized in private.

Four years later, in 1746, he wrote,

Dolly a molatto Child of Samuel Abbott was baptized.

Tucke’s spelling is variable, but he distinguishes between Peter, a Negro, and Dolly, a mulatto, which meant someone biracial, half and half. A quadroon was a person with one-quarter Black heritage, and an octoroon was one-eighth Black. Beyond that a person was likely to be so light-skinned that they could pass for white. Passing was a way to trade oppression for opportunity, and through the centuries many people took the drastic step of leaving behind their families and communities to find a better life.

These labels show the era’s drive to define exactly who was who. Everyone was supposed to know their place and stay in it. God was in charge of everything and had put everyone just where they belonged. In the prevailing view, some were born to rule and others to serve.

Peter was baptized in private, a type of record Tucke often accompanied by drawing a tiny pointing hand. Baptisms were held at home when an infant, or the mother, seemed unlikely to live long. Peter was a child, not an infant, but he or other people in the Abbott house were probably ill and could not make it to the meeting house.

Tucke’s wording suggests that Dolly may have been not just enslaved by Samuel Abbott but fathered by him, as well. Peter is described as belonging to Abbott, whereas Dolly is described as a Child of Abbott, and she is biracial. The evidence is slim but compelling.

In a 2020 article in the New York Times Caroline Randall Williams wrote, I have rape-colored skin. Her light brown tone testifies that enslaved women were powerless to escape abuse by their enslavers. Most Black people in America have European heritage in varying amounts, the result of ancestors who were forced to bear the children of their oppressors.

By the 1730s England’s 13 colonies extended north to New Hampshire, west to Virginia and the Carolinas, and south to Georgia. There were people from Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Pennsylvania was filled with Quakers, and many Dutch people settled in New York. There were lots of Germans, as well; even today the largest ancestry group in the United States are people of German descent. They all brought their culture with them, from the way they built their houses to the way they spoke, ate, dressed, worshipped, married, and raised their children.

The Puritans who founded New England believed in a strict hierarchy that began with God, whom the master served, extended down through wives and children, and on through servants, apprentices, and the enslaved. They believed that the status of each person was divinely dictated, and that wealth made from the labor of others was a sign that God approved of good management of the resources he had bestowed.

Under New Hampshire law the status of children was determined by the status of their mother. In 1760 a free biracial woman named Leisha Webb, whose husband, Caesor, was enslaved, insisted that the town clerk in Portsmouth write down in the record book that she and her eight children were free persons. By having their status in the public record, Leisha hoped to protect her family from being kidnapped and sold.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

September 1742

Maybe …

The next morning the girl was fed more mush and led back to the dock. A man put her in a small sailboat among bundles of goods. The boat sailed down a long river to the open sea, where the waves were bigger and the wind was cold. After several hours she saw islands in the distance and they entered a little harbor. At the dock she climbed out, bringing nothing but herself to this new place.

The girl was led to a house where a man opened the door and beckoned her in. She saw a big fireplace, a table, chests, and herbs drying on the walls. A tall wooden box clicked in the corner. A woman sat in a seat that moved forward and back. A little boy stared at her, sucking his finger, and a small girl stirred a pot on the fire.

The man said something and motioned for her to sit down. She gingerly lowered herself into a chair at the table. The woman got up and poured some hot water from a kettle on the fire into a cup, added something, and put it on the table. The girl stared into it. The woman made a sipping motion with her hand and the girl tried it. The warmth was good even though the taste was strange.

The man pointed at the girl and said, Candace.

Candace, said the little girl at the pot.

The woman could see the girl was exhausted. She unrolled a pallet in the corner and the girl lay down and fell asleep.

When she woke it was early evening. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. The Tuckes were eating from a big wooden bowl on the table.

Candace is awake! said the little girl.

The woman motioned to the girl to come to the table. The girl stood and watched the woman scoop food from the pot into a small wooden cup. It had meat and beans. She sipped the broth and tipped the stew into her mouth, watching the man and the woman as they spoke with one another.

When the cup was empty the girl patted her belly and looked at the door. The woman led her outside and left her in a bushy area next to a large building. She relieved herself, then peeked in the wide, open doorway. A cow gazed back at her. She went around the corner and could see many buildings spread across the rock-strewn island, and beyond them the harbor, other islands, and the ocean stretching far, far away.

She went back into the house and sat on her pallet. After a while the woman unrolled another