Chance Bradstreet placed "within these walls"
[Bradstreet, Chance (1762 – 1810)]. Isaac Story (1749–1816). Autograph Document Signed for Lease of Slave. One page, 7.75" x 5.25", Marblehead, Massachusetts, May 20, 1777. Document is moderately age toned and lightly foxed. Minor wear along folds and at fold intersection. Fine condition.
An uncommon document from colonial Massachusetts offering a telling window into the life of one man bound in slavery whose life has been well documented thanks to the labors of genealogists.
Chance Bradstreet was born into slavery. His mother Phillis was owned by Simon Bradstreet (1709 – 1771), the great-grandson of the poet Anne Bradstreet (1612 – 1672) who served as the minister of the Second Church of Marblehead.
When the Reverend died in 1771, Phillis and Chance were inherited by his daughter Rebekah Bradstreet (1749 – 1823). She married Rev. Bradstreet’s successor, Rev. Isaac Story (1749 –1816), several months after her father’s death. In 1777, Story leased Chance, then 14 years old, to Abraham Dodge (1740 – 1786), a merchant of Ipswich engaged in maritime trade. The lease was for a period of “twelve years & a third,” and the price paid was £30. This document records the transaction.
The 1783 Quock Walker case allowed enslaved individuals to sue their masters, effectively ending legal slavery in Massachusetts, and many slaveowners negotiated new arrangements. But the terms of Chance’s contract may have left a legal loophole – Dodge had not bought the boy, but leased him, so the question of ownership was a bit murky. However, Dodge’s will makes it clear that he regarded Chance as a slave. Probated in 1786, the will left to the merchant’s widow, Bethiah Staniford (1742 – 1829), “all my Right to the Service of my Negro Man Chance.” She profited from his labor by hiring him out to cod fisheries.
Like many colonial slaveholders, both Story and Dodge fought on the side of freedom during the American Revolution. The house Chance occupied when he was enslaved by the Dodges, originally located at 16 Elm Street in Ipswich, is now on permanent exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American History under the title “Within These Walls.”
Chance Bradstreet's home under the terms of his enslavement is now at the Smithsonian.
Curators note that he likely slept in the unheated attic, among the Dodges' stored goods.
Selected References
Child, Christopher Challender. “Chance Bradstreet (1762-1810), Servant of Abraham Dodge of Ipswich Massachusetts,” American Ancestors 11 (2010): 4:41-43
-----. “Updating an exhibit.” Vita Brevis, AmericanAncestors.org, 28 June 2017. https://vitabrevis.americanancestors.org/2017/06/updating-an-exhibit/
Within these walls, exhibit, National Museum of American History. https://americanhistory.si.edu/exhibitions/within-these-walls
Product tabs
SOLD
Earn 0Reward points
Recommend this product
Chance Bradstreet placed "within these walls"
Related products
Q & A with Louisa May Alcott, 1872
Alcott, Louisa May (1832 – 1888). A printed questionnaire excised from an edition of Mental Photographs, completed in full by hand. Signed and dated O...
view details
$14,500
View details
$0
The business records of Eli and Ted Wilentz's Eighth Street Bookshop
The Eighth Street Bookshop. Financial Records, 1947-1980. 21 volumes, chiefly folio. Various sizes and pagination. Some mold and water damage to cove...
view details
$0
View details
$2,750
Sermons of Thomas Picton, West Point's second chaplain
Picton, Thomas (1775 – 1861). An archive of ten sermons and other documents, mostly 1816 to 1823. Ten manuscripts on bifolia bound with strings, about...
view details
$2,750
View details
$0
Francis Golffing: A Bennington College Archive, 1938-1997
Golffing, Francis (1910-2012). Personal papers of the Austrian-American poet, essayist, teacher, and translator, dating from 1938 to 1997. Includes hi...
view details
$0
View details
$12,500
Stefan Zweig. Nine letters to Felix Wittmer, 1930-1937
Zweig, Stefan (1881 – 1942). A file of nine typed letters to the writer Felix Wittmer (1902 – 1985). 13 pp. total, with holograph corrections and sign...
view details
$12,500
View details
$35,000
Correspondence of Oscar Slater, the Jewish prisoner championed by Arthur Conan Doyle
SLATER, Oscar [Oscar Leschziner] (1872-1948). A rich and substantial archive of 110 letters, telegrams and cards sent between 1927 and 1930 to Leslie ...
view details
$35,000
View details
$0
“Kansas City Mac”: The Archives of A. B. Macdonald
Macdonald, A[lexander] B[lack] (1871-1942). An extensive archive documenting the life and career of journalist A. B. Macdonald, including scrapbooks a...
view details
$0
View details
$2,500
Captured by Pirates!; or, The Case of the Elusive Copyright
[Doyle, Arthur Conan (1859-1930)]. Correspondence relating to the American copyright for The Firm of Girdlestone, 1896. Four items from the files ...
view details
$2,500
View details
$45,000
Literary archive of Wyandotte author Bernard N. O. Walker (Hen-Toh)
Walker, Bertrand N[icholas] O[liver] (Hen-Toh) (1870 – 1927). A substantial archive of unpublished writings, including stories, poems, and a Wyandot g...
view details
$45,000
View details
$25,000
A richly detailed diary of Gold Rush California 1850-1852
Pangborn, David Knapp (1803-1874). Manuscript journal, 1850-1852, 1862-1864. 256 pp.; about 6½ x 8½ in. Bound in original calf journal with contrastin...
view details
$25,000
View details
$17,500
Image archive of a female street photographer in California, 1904-1908
Phillips, A[nita Emily] (1881-1936) [?]. An archive of photographs of street scenes in San Francisco, Los Angeles and elsewhere in California and Colo...
view details
$17,500
View details
$17,500
A Great American Songbook: Ann Stewart's Revolutionary hymnal, c.1767 to 1789
Stewart, Ann (ca. 1741 – 1821) Manuscript Musical Notebook, Cheltenham, Pennsylvania, circa 1767-1789. 4 ¼ x 8 ½ in. 86 pp. on 45 leaves (two blank). ...
view details
$17,500
View details
$1,350
A San Francisco judge starts in Cleveland (1849-1850)
Cowles, Samuel (1823-1880). Diary, July 1849 to July 1850. About 50 pages, written in a clear, easily legible hand with a few lines in Pitman's shorth...
view details
$1,350
View details
$4,500
Class notes from the first years of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts
Sargent, Franklin Haven (1856 – 1924) and Ida Ellen Serven (1859 – 1928), Pantomime, class notes by Kathryn A. Fischer (1859 – 1939). Manuscript noteb...
view details
$4,500
View details
$0
Merle Armitage, An archive of correspondence and ephemera, 1924-1962
Armitage, Merle (1893-1975). An important archive of materials pertaining to the one of the most important graphic designers of the twentieth century,...
view details
$0
View details
The Family Muskat: Archives of an Orthodox Rabbi and his Father in Ohio and Florida, 1929-1936
$2,750
$2,750
The Family Muskat: Archives of an Orthodox Rabbi and his Father in Ohio and Florida, 1929-1936
Muskat, Shlomo “Samuel” (1873-1962) and Muskat, Isser W[olfe] (1902 – 1949). Family archive of a pious Latvian immigrant in Marietta, Ohio, and his so...
view details
$2,750
View details
$9,500
A memoir of the Black Hawk War and the Founding of Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin (1833)
Smith, Henry (1798 – 1847), Indian Campaign of 1832. Holograph manuscript, 1833. 18 pp. 10 x 8 inches, approximately 4500 words. Authorial corrections...
view details
$9,500
View details
$0
Original Script for The Sacco-Vanzetti Story, Vanzetti’s Copy (1960)
Rose, Reginald. Sunday Showcase: The Sacco-Vanzetti Story. Typescript for the NBC drama. Third Revision, 5/9/60. 2 parts in 1 volume, 192 leaves (rect...
view details
$0
View details
$7,500
Richard Allen: the modest power of an pioneering African-American leader
Allen, Richard (1760-1831). Holograph document, signed. Philadelphia, 26 October 1799. 4 3/4 x 8 1/4 in. (121 x 212 mm). Scattered spotting, light to ...
view details
$7,500
View details
$0
Joseph Lindon Smith: A Famous Artist Trifles with a Boston Debutante
Smith, Joseph Lindon (1863-1950). Seven letters to Margaret (“Margetta”) Wesselhoeft (1888- 1947), with one original envelope. The letters are bifol...
view details
$0
View details