Enslaved Africans and African-Americans have played a significant role in NH history and the community of Strawbery Banke. Our museum staff is committed to telling their stories as enslaved and free people before NH’s ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865, as well as throughout Puddle Dock’s post-13th Amendment history.
African American History Initiative
Historians have debated whether it is better to use modern phrases or historic language to describe people and their circumstances. By choosing more descriptive, thoughtful, and humanizing language to tell stories, historians can help to restore personhood and agency to those who were denied it while they lived. For example, by replacing words like “Master” with “enslaver,” “run-away” with “self-emancipated,” and “slave” with “enslaved person,” we are reminded that enslaved people had complex identities. Enslavement is a condition that was imposed on them, not the sum of who they were.
Enslaved Peoples
In the Puddle Dock neighborhood, people from Africa and the Caribbean were enslaved by several prominent families. Learn more about the historic households at Strawbery Banke where enslaved Africans lived and worked below.
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There were two enslaved Africans who lived and worked at the Sherburne House. Joseph Sherburne was a mariner, merchant, and farmer, whose 1744 estate inventory listed one Negro man valued at 200 pounds and one Negro woman valued at 50 pounds. Material evidence of their origins on the African continent includes a cowrie shell recovered during archaeological excavations in 2019 (seen above, left).
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Frank and Flora lived and worked at the King's Arms Tavern (c. 1766). They were enslaved by tavern keeper James Stoodley. Frank and Flora were also included in the pews Stoodley owned at North Church. Stoodley's estate inventory at the time of his death in 1779 included Frank and Flora, valued at 20 and 100 pounds, respectively.
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James and Fortune lived and worked at the William Pitt Tavern (c. 1766). They were enslaved by tavern keeper John Stavers. Fortune emancipated himself as a “run-away” when he was 16 years old, which was recorded in an advertisement in The New Hampshire Gazette on May 11, 1764 (seen below).
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Nero, Jane, and Cato lived and worked at the Wheelwright House. They were enslaved by Cooper Jeremiah Wheelwright (d. 1768). Nero was a cooper himself, acquired by Wheelwright through marriage. Wheelwright purchased Cato prior to 1752 for 200 pounds, a price equal to some houses at the time. Nero and Jane were listed in Wheelwright's estate inventory, valued at 30 and 20 pounds, respectively.
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Adam, Mercer, and Bess lived and worked at the Marshall Pottery (c. 1736-1749). They were enslaved by Samuel Marshall. Adam and Mercer likely worked alongside Marshall, making and shipping redware pottery for sale locally and along the Atlantic coast. A redware jar manufactured in the West Indies was recovered by archaeologists from the Marshall Pottery site in the 1970s, linking the household to the Caribbean (see above, right).
Preparing to interpret one story on Portsmouth’s Black Heritage Trail -- Judge Samuel Penhallow whose home and office were once in this house when it was two blocks away -- Strawbery Banke found a deeper, richer history within the walls. When last occupied, just before the museum was created in 1958, Penhallow House contained three apartments and the daily lives of an extended African-American family. Like many other houses in the neighborhood, many of the original 1750 architectural features -- doors, cornices, window glass, and several windows with folding window shutters and window seats -- surrounded the family, along with floral wallpaper and linoleum of the 1950s. Strawbery Banke intends to interpret the 20th-century Black experience in Penhallow House: the story of Kenneth “Bunny” Richardson, a 20th-century story of Black Portsmouth and Civil Rights.