'Above-ground' railroad in Ashleyville took in Connecticut runaways

Historians have pondered whether Ashley was, in fact, sympathetic to the case and was a little disappointed at the outcome. A paternalistic slaveholder, he had two women (Bett and her sister) and three men (Zack, who had earlier brought an unheard suit against the Ashleys as well, John, an older man, and Harry). Zack left the Ashleys until after Mrs. Ashley’s death, further suggesting the woman’s ill-temper. John stayed on as Ashley’s manservant. Harry, who probably worked outdoors, also stayed with the colonel. Ashley hired a white woman, Jane Steele, through an apparent indenture arrangement, to keep house and cook.

Ashley had several rural businesses, including a blumery forge, grist mill and country store. A dozen ledgers that survive in the family from the late 1790s through early 1810s reveal some interesting things going on.

With the success of Bett, and the near-simultaneous case of Quok Walker in the eastern part of the commonwealth, slavery was finished. There was no instant manumission, however. News traveled slowly. Owners hated to give up free labor.

Gen. Ashley found a way around the ruling; he went to New York state, purchased an enslaved black woman, converted her status to indentured servant, and brought her back to Ashley Falls.

Most of the freed blacks had no place to go. When shooed out the door, blacks were handed no coins to help them become independent. They had minimal skills.

Deed records show only one Negro, Jupiter Rogers, purchased land in Sheffield before 1800. Most who left their white owners’ employ apparently squatted on nearby land in a benevolent arrangement; benevolent, as the property owners looked the other way when it came to land ownership, and the blacks continued to labor the fields for the whites. Several of these freed agrarian blacks apparently settled on Berkshire School Road in Sheffield, in a section uncharitably known as New Guinea for years. For decades there were remnants of this settlement and others in Sheffield, Great Barrington and Stockbridge.

Meanwhile, Connecticut squires were in no hurry to change laws regarding slavery, nor was New York. The Nutmeg State introduced gradual emancipation in 1784 (allowing slaves born after that year to become free at the age of 25) but it did not finally abolish slavery until 1848. By then, there were six slaves remaining in the entire state.

The Empire State followed a similarly lethargic path with a 1799 "Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery," ultimately ending slavery in 1841.

Something interesting was going on in Ashleyville while Connecticut and New York dawdled. Blacks may not have been educated, but they were smart and had good ears. They began to run away. Many channeled from North Canaan or Salisbury into Ashleyville.

No one ever wrote of it directly. There’s little hard evidence. But the Ashley account books certainly suggest an early "above-ground" railroad. New names appeared in Ashley’s ledgers. Some, such as Cesar Negro and Adam Negro and Henry and Luther Brown, were around a while. Others, such as William, Isaac, Belijah, Heary and Ebenezer, disappeared within a few months. (Transactions were barter; there was no cash economy.)

In a 1798 day book, Jim Negro came into the store to purchase brandy, immediately followed by Mary Negro and Banajah Negro to do the same. They were obviously on a toot. They were a bad risk. But the storekeeper was agreeable that day. They never reappared in the ledger.

It seems very likely these individuals were Connecticut or New York runaways who had stopped temporarily with others of their color to catch their breaths before traveling elsewhere to settle in freedom. It’s a pattern familiar to many ethnic groups then and since.

Bounty hunters sought the runaways. No story of the hardships endured by a runaway is more dramatic than that of North Canaan-born James Mars, who fled an unsympathetic indenture holder by way of Norfolk, hid out and barely escaped capture before he eventually settled in Pittsfield, Mass. In freedom, he proudly voted in five presidential elections.

Never great in number—by 1800 there were 6,281 people of African descent in Connecticut, 83 percent of them free and virtually all living in urban areas—blacks in the Northwest Corner who hadn’t run away before, found no agricultural opportunity here when freedom finally came.

Thus the dearth of black communities or even hints of them here today.