Hartford (cont'd)

Marietta Canty House 
61 Mahl Avenue

Marietta Canty (1905-1986) was an American of African descent who, although she received critical acclaim for her performances in theatre, radio, motion pictures, and television, was limited to portraying domestic servant roles throughout a professional career spanning the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Movies in which Canty appeared included The Spoilers, Father of the Bride, and Rebel Without a Cause. In accepting such roles and performing them with dignity, Canty, like other African American actors and actresses of her day, maintained a presence (although circumscribed by prejudice) for minority performers in the entertainment industry. She assisted in paving the way for successful future African American artists of radio, stage, and film. Canty's political and social activism in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s following her retirement from the entertainment industry further increased her status as a pioneer in advancing opportunities for women and minorities.

African American Memorial Ancient Burying Ground,
Main and Gold Streets

During three years of archival research, middle-school students in Hartford and their teacher uncovered evidence that over 300 Americans of African descent were interred in this cemetery, one of the oldest in Connecticut. The students research shed light on the fact that African Americans helped settle the Connecticut Colony. Among the students' findings were the discoveries that the first enslaved person in the country to sue for freedom and five of the Black Governors were buried here in unmarked graves. To commemorate these forgotten souls, this large slate monument was set in the ground and inscribed with documented names and interment dates. The memorial was dedicated in 1998 with the assistance of the Ancient Burying Ground Association and the Connecticut Historical Commission.

Walter Bunce House,
34 Bidwell Street

While there are many structures in the Southern states which are attributed to the craftsmanship of African Americans, few such buildings exist in New England. One example, however, is the Walter Bunce House, constructed by Alpheus Quicy. Born in June 1774, Quicy dealt in real estate in southeastern Connecticut along with his father and brother. As a stonemason he built several fieldstone houses for prominent citizens and numerous dams in Manchester. The Walter Bunce House is the only fieldstone dwelling constructed by Quicy that still stands today.

West Burying Ground (Washington Street Cemetery),
Washington and Vine Streets

To the rear of this cemetery are the graves of local African Americans, including Fanny Beman, the mother of Amos Beman, one of Connecticut's best known African American civil rights leaders of the nineteenth century. There are also graves here of men who fought in the Connecticut Twenty-Ninth Regiment and other African American units of the Civil War. Among them is James Powers, who is listed on the Civil War monument located on the green at South Main Street near the Benjamin Douglas House.

Cross Street African Methodist Episcopal,
Zion Church 160 Cross Street

This church originated in 1823, although a building was not erected until 1830 under the leadership of Jeheil Beman. Beman, the son of a Revolutionary War soldier and the father of Amos Beman (see Dixwell Avenue Congregational Church, New Haven), led the congregation in the antislavery cause. The church became known as the Freedom Church for its abolitionist activity. Women of the church, under the leadership of Clarissa Beman, created one of the first women's abolitionist societies, known as the Colored Female Anti-Slavery Society of Middletown. Its goal was not only to bring an end to slavery, but also to improve the condition of free African Americans. The church was rebuilt in 1867, was moved about a quarter mile in the 1920s, and underwent renovation in 1978.

Leverett Beman Historic District,
Cross and Vine Streets

The first known residential subdivision in the state, 1847, to have been laid out by a free black man for black homeowners, the Leverett Beman Historic District occupies a narrow triangle of almost five acres. The neighbor-
hood today consists of 18 houses built between c. 1840 and 1959 and includes the Cross Street A.M.E. Zion Church.

Redeemer's A.M.E. Zion Church
110 Whiting Street

The Redeemer's African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Zion Church represents a movement also evident elsewhere in Connecticut: the joining together of African Americans who were members of various denominations in town to establish a church which nurtured black leadership and generated community support. Organized in 1903, the congregation built its church structure a year later. Throughout this century members have been leaders in Plainville and have providers a voice for the black community.

West Cemetery
Route 177, and Norton House Site, 109 Main Street

The West Cemetery on Route 177 (next to exit 33 off Route 72) contains the graves of John C. and Harriet H. North. The Nortons hid escaping slaves in their Plainville house, which was demolished in the 1960s but is commemorated by a marker at the Ideal Machinery company, 109 East Main Street. Etched in Memory by Charles Norton contains recollections of the family's antislavery activities. The Norton graves are midway back between the two driveways. Also located in the cemetery are the graves of five African American soldiers who fought in the Civil War with the all-black Connecticut Twenty-Ninth and the Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Regiment.

Joseph Rainey House,
299 Palisado Avenue

This property was purchased by Joseph Rainey on May 20, 1874, and it was owned by him for the remainder of his life. It was used by his family as a summer residence. Rainey is best known for being the first African American elected to the U. S. House of Representatives, serving for the State of South Carolina. He was elected to five terms, holding office from 1870 to 1879, and during this period introduced petitions for the passage of civil rights legislation that would guarantee African Americans their full constitutional rights. He dramatized his stand on the issue of access to public accommodations by his refusal to leave the dining room of a hotel in Suffolk, Virginia, forcing the owners to remove him from the premises. The Rainey family was active in the First Church of Windsor, and in 1876 Rainey spoke at the town's observance of the American Centennial celebration. The house is privately owned and not open to the public.

Archer Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church,
321 Hayden Station Road

A community of African Americans developed in the Hayden Station area during the nineteenth century. One of the religious and social centers for this community was the Archer Memorial African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Zion Church. Its first building was constructed under the guidance of the Reverend Dennis Scott White, who received financial assistance from a local philanthropist, Frederick Thrall. The church was located next to a pine grove north of Hayden Station Road and Pond Road; the Reverend White conducted popular camp meetings in the grove during the 1880s and 1890s. The pond nearby was used by the town for swimming and ice-skating, and by the congregation for baptismal services. The present church building was erected in 1982.

Palisado Cemetery,
Palisado Avenue

Only a few slaves remained in Connecticut by the time the state passed its full emancipation law in 1848. Apparently, several of these individuals were determined too aged to care for themselves and therefore continued with their former owners. It is believed that Nancy Toney, a former slave of the Chaffee/Loomis family of Windsor, was the last survivor of this group in Connecticut. When she died in 1857, she was buried in Palisado Cemetery. The grave is at the rear of the cemetery, located on the left side of the road in an area with few markers.

Also buried in the cemetery is
Civil War veteran 
Virgil Simmons, who was enlisted in the Connecticut Twenty-ninth Colored Regiment C.V. Infantry. His gravesite is located next to that of Nancy Toney.

Riverside Cemetery,

The graves of African American soldiers who served in the 
Connecticut Twenty-Ninth and 
Thirty-First Colored Regiment C.V. Infantries during the Civil
War are located in the cemetery

Paul Robeson House,
1221 Enfield Street

Paul Robeson was an All-American football player, a Phi Beta Kappa scholarship student at Rutgers University, and a graduate of the Columbia University Law School. An African American of extraordinary artistic gifts, he later became an internationally known actor and singer, and he was an activist in civil rights causes. Robeson purchased this house during the height of his popularity and used it to entertain his guests. His family owned it from March 1940 until December 1953. Robeson's refusal to remain silent about racism in the United States, along with his ardent desire for full human justice, resulted in his being ostracized by American society. He was barred from appearing at concert halls, had his passport revoked, and saw his name removed from the football records he had established. He spent the last 15 years of his life in exile abroad or as a recluse in Philadelphia, dying in January 1976. In 1995 Robeson was posthumously inducted into the National Football Foundation's College Football Hall of Fame. The house is privately owned and not open to the public. It is included in the Enfield National Register Historic District.

Shakers Village,
Shaker Road

This area was once occupied by the only Shaker settlement in Connecticut. Dissenting from many activities of American society, the Shakers were associated with reform movements, including feminism, pacifism, and abolitionism. The diary of one member records the visits of fugitive slaves to the settlement, including Sojourner Truth, who spoke at the Meeting House on Shaker Road. Now owned by the State of Connec-ticut and administered by the Department of Correction, the Meeting House was built in 1827 and is sited adjacent to Shaker Road. The entire Shaker complex is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Ancient Burying Ground,
Main and Marsh Streets

Quash Gomer, who purchased his freedom in 1766 from John Smith for 25 pounds, is interred in the Wethersfield Ancient Burying Ground. The inscription on his stone reads: "In memory of Quash Gomer a Native of Angola in Africa, brought from there in 1748 and died June 6, 1799. Aged 68 years." Burials of Americans of African descent in the Wethersfield Ancient Burying Ground were segregated.

Kimberly Mansion ,
1625 Main Street

The Smith family used this house as a base for its antislavery activities. The five Smith sisters and their parents hosted abolitionist meetings, permitted anti-slavery lectures on the lawn, distributed literature, and obtained signatures on anti-slavery petitions. At this site the family worked with African American anti-slavery leaders and sought not only the end of slavery, but also improved conditions for free blacks as well. Julia and Abby Smith involved themselves wholeheartedly in the abolitionist cause. With their mother, Hannah, they circulated an anti-slavery petition among the women of Glastonbury, obtained 40 signatures, and sent the petition to U.S. Senator John Quincy Adams to present to Congress. Historians often suggest that this was the first petition to receive such a hearing. Hannah and Zephaniah Smith (parents). Nancy, Laurilla, Cyrinthia, Julia, and Abby (daughters).

Glasgo (Mill Village),
Intersection of Routes 201 and 165

This village was named for Isaac Glasko, a man of mixed Native American and African American heritage, who purchased land in 1806 and established a blacksmith shop in what is now the center of Glasgo. He harnessed waterpower to a triphammer and produced farming and carpentry tools. When the whaling industry was at its height, Glasko specialized in whaling implements for which he held several patents. His harpoons, lances, spades, and mining knives were well-known in the ports of New England. Glasko's daughter, Eliza, attended the Prudence Crandall School in Canterbury in the 1833-1834 period. His house still stands, although it has been considerably altered. The graves of Isaac Glasko and his wife are in a nearby but not easily accessible cemetery.

Fort Griswold is one of few locations in Connecticut where a Revolutionary War battle took place. The American defenders, greatly outnumbered, were local militia for the most part and included two African Americans: Jordan Freeman and Lambert Latham. During the battle Freeman helped to spear a British officer, an incident depicted on a marker inside the fort. Freeman was later killed in the fighting. When the Americans surrendered, the enraged British began to massacre the unarmed defenders. Before the British officers could halt their troops, Latham and a number of other Americans had died. Fort Griswold is on the National Register of Historic Places and open to the public.

Charles W. Morgan, Mystic Seaport,
75 Greenmanville Avenue (Route 27)

Among the many displays at Mystic Seaport, renown for its maritime village and working craftspeople, is the ship Charles W. Morgan, last of the nineteenth-century wooden whaling vessels. Connected with this ship are information and displays noting the role of Connecticut's African Americans in the state's important maritime industries. Studies have shown that in addition to African Americans, Native Americans and other diverse groups made up 50 percent of whaling crews in the 1840s. The Charles W. Morgan is a National Historic Landmark, and Mystic Seaport is open to the public.

Flora Hercules Gravesite
Antientest Burial Place

Offering evidence of the existence of Black Governors in Connecticut during the 18th century, the headstone of Flora Hercules notes that Flora Hercules was the wife of Hercules “Governor of the Negroes.” Flora died April 1749 at the age of 60.

Hempstead Historic District

Located in the center of New London and surrounding the seventeenth-century Joshua Hempstead House (see Underground Railroad section), the Hempstead Historic District includes houses that were purchased by free African Americans in the 1840s. These proper ties were sold by Hempstead descendants, who were abolitionists, to Savillion Haley, who believed that African Americans deserved adequate housing as well as whites. African Americans of colonial New London had already lived in this area, and with these new purchases and later home building by African Americans, organizations important to the community's interests developed. One of these is Shiloh Baptist Church, which is now located on Garvin Street, named for early twentieth-century African American leader Albert Garvin. The Joshua Hempstead House is one of two historic houses in the district open to the public. Owned by the Antiquarian and Landmarks Society, it contains a family archives of early abolitionist papers. The district is on the National Register of Historic Places.

U.S. Custom House,
150 Bank Street

The U.S. Custom House, built in 1833 from a design by architect Robert Mills, was where Africans were brought from the Spanish slave ship Amistad by the U.S. Coast Guard on August 27, 1839. Although the ship remained in New London for more than a year, the captives stayed for less than a week and were then transferred to the New Haven jail. One African youth who died during the brief New London stay was buried in an unmarked grave in the city's Third Burying Ground. A marker on the front of the U.S. Custom House highlights a separate case in which an escaped slave won his freedom in 1850 through the legal efforts of Augustus Brandegee and the custom collector, John Mather. When asked if he wanted to be slave or free, the man replied, "Free!" The U.S. Custom House is on the National Register of Historic Places and open to the public under the direction of the New London Maritime Society.

Boston Trowtrow Gravesite
Norwich Town Old Burying Ground

The inscription reads: “In Memory of Boston Trowtrow Govener of ye Affrican Trib he Died May 28 1772 At 66”. The election of governors by Connecticut’s black population emerged out of African political traditions and can be viewed as a form of political revolt and self-determination. Enslaved and free Africans used the election of governors to assert their humanity and to organize for the abolition of slavery. Boston Trowtrow served as governor in Norwich from 1770 to 1772. His gravesite located at the rear of the cemetery in an area reserved for black residents, is one of the very few remaining tangible resources which provide evidence of the existence of Black Governors in Connecticut.

Jail Hill Section,
Fountain, Cedar, and School Streets

In the 1830s a new county jail was built in Norwich between Cedar and Fountain Streets north of the business district, an event which made the area less appealing to wealthier families. Because of lower property values and proximity to businesses and employment, a number of African American families built houses in what became known as Jail Hill. Among these families were the Williamses, Harrises, Spelmans, and Smiths. Members of these families were active in the antislavery movement in Connecticut, and after the Civil War they provided teachers in the North as well as the South. Several daughters from these families attended Prudence Crandall's school in Canterbury. The Underground Railroad was active in Norwich, although there is little information available on how Jail Hill residents worked in this endeavor. One escaped slave who resided here was James L. Smith, who wrote an autobiography in 1881 (see Five Black Lives). Two of Smith's daughters graduated from Norwich Free Academy and were teachers in Washington, D. C. The black community remained in the Jail Hill area into the early 1900s.

James Pharmacy,
2 Pennywise Lane

Anna Louise James (1886-1977), licensed in Connecticut as a pharmacist in 1911, operated her pharmacy from that year until 1967, when she retired. James was the first African American woman, and one of the first women, to become a pharmacist in the state. She was also among the first women who registered to vote when women's suffrage was passed in 1920. In 1974 the Old Saybrook Veterans of Foreign Wars gave James its Citizen of the Year award. This site is also the birthplace of James' niece, Harlem Renaissance writer Ann Petry (born 1908), whose most famous work was the novel The Street. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places and privately owned and not open to the public.

Thomas Taylor Grave,
Grove Street Cemetery

A simple rectangular marble gravestone marks the resting place of Thomas L. Taylor, an African American sailor who served with the U. S. Navy on the Union's ironclad ship U.S.S. Monitor when it fought the Confederate ironclad Merrimac during the Civil War. Taylor is recorded as being the last survivor of that famous battle. He died on March 7, 1932, at age 84.

Prudence Crandall House,
Routes 14 and 169

This imposing late Georgian-style house was purchased by Prudence Crandall in 1831 to be a private academy for local young women and men. When she admitted Sarah Harris, an African American student, Crandall found that parents of white students objected. In April 1833 she opened her house as a boarding school for young African American women, an action which led to harassment by neighbors, passage of a state law against her work, and her being jailed for one night. Through two court trials and an appeal to the state's Supreme Court of Errors, Crandall continued to operate her school. Only after a violent attack on the house on the night of September 9, 1834, did she agree to close the school and send her students home. In the United States during the years leading up to the Civil War, the Crandall incident was one of many that helped solidify attitudes against slavery. However, Crandall's effort to provide integrated and equal education in this house was a rarity for the times. In 1995 Prudence Crandall was designated as Connecticut's State Heroine. The Crandall House, a National Historic Landmark, is a museum open to the public.

Town Green

During 1803-1804 the "Old District School House for Colored Children" was established behind the Congregational Church near Colchester's town green, predating any other attempt in Connecticut to provide educational opportunities specifically for African American youth. Although racially segregated in that white children attended a district school inside Bacon Academy, the African American school was nonetheless famous throughout the state for the uniqueness of its mission. It attracted students from outside the bounds of Colchester. One of its graduates was Amos Beman, who was later associated with Hartford's Talcott Street Congregational Church and New Haven's Temple Street Congregational Church, both of which are included on the Freedom Trail. The school closed in 1848 as its students found acceptance at Bacon Academy and other local schools. While no longer extant, the school is depicted in the sketch of Colchester's green in John Warner Barber's Connecticut Historical Collections (1835).

Benjamin Trumbull House,
80 Broadway Street

Lyman Trumbull, a grandson of Benjamin Trumbull, was born and reared in this house, which is still on its original site. Later a United States senator from Illinois, Lyman Trumbull was one of the founders of the Republican Party and in 1865 helped author the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution that ended slavery in the nation. The house is included in the Colchester Village National Register Historic District.

Venture Smith Grave, First Church Cemetery,
Route 151

The cemetery located next to the First Church contains the graves of Venture Smith (1729-1805) and several members of his family. Smith was captured as a child in Africa and brought to Connecticut, where he was sold as a slave. He dictated a pamphlet about his experiences that can be read in the book Five Black Lives. Despite being a slave, Smith was able to work at other jobs so that he earned money to buy his freedom and that of his wife and children. One of his sons served in the American Revolution. His wife is buried next to him, and nearby is the grave of another son, Solomon, who served in the War of 1812. Venture's granddaughter, who died in 1902, is buried here as well. These stones are located near the wall that is next to the church, about halfway back from Route 151.