Elizabeth Freeman: A Free Woman on God’s Earth

By Victor Curran

It was cold outside, but the glowing fire in the brick oven warmed the kitchen as Elizabeth busied herself baking the week’s bread for her enslavers, Col. John Ashley and his wife Hannah. Her younger sister Lizzie, also enslaved in the Ashley household, was too frail for heavy labor, so she watched as Elizabeth stirred the fire with an iron shovel. As she carefully placed the loaves in the oven, Lizzie scraped a bit of leftover dough from the mixing bowl and formed it into a tiny loaf that she put alongside the others to bake.

When the bread was done, the lady of the house, Hannah Ashley, came to inspect Elizabeth’s work. As she did, she spied Lizzie sitting near the hearth with her little crust of bread. “Thief!” she cried, as she took the iron shovel, still hot from the fire, and struck at the terrified girl.

Elizabeth threw her strong arm in the path of the blow, saving Lizzie but suffering a wound that would leave “a frightful scar she carried to her grave.” By her own account, Elizabeth never hid her scar. Whenever someone asked how she got hurt, she would look them in the eye and say, “Ask Missus.” 1

The Colonel John Ashley House in Sheffield, MA

Courtesy of the Sheffield Historical Society

Though described on her gravestone as a “most efficient helper,” Elizabeth was anything but meek. When Mrs. Ashley attacked Lizzie, Elizabeth didn’t hesitate to offer physical resistance, and afterward proudly wore her personal red badge of courage. “When I set my foot down,” she declared, “I kept it down.” 2

Elizabeth was born into slavery in New York State around 1744. As a young girl she became enslaved to the Ashleys, who called her Bett.3 John Ashley was a wealthy and influential figure in the town of Sheffield in southwestern Massachusetts. His neighbors revered him as a wise and compassionate man, but like many prosperous men in the American colonies, he used enslaved people to do the hard labor of keeping an 18th Century household running smoothly, and Mrs. Ashley was their “despotic” overseer.4

Even as she faithfully did the bidding of her enslavers, Elizabeth ached for freedom. The writer Catharine Maria Sedgwick, who knew her personally, quoted her as saying “Any time while I was a slave, if one minute’s freedom had been offered to me and I had been told I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it just to stand one minute on God’s earth a free woman.” 5

Elizabeth Freeman (`Mumbet`) Miniature portrait, watercolor on ivory by Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick, 1811

Courtesy of Massachusetts Historical Society

Others in Sheffield yearned for a different kind of freedom—freedom from King George III, who sent thousands of soldiers to Massachusetts in 1768 to enforce the hated Townshend Acts (which taxed such staple items as china, glass, paint, paper, and tea). Col. John Ashley had distinguished himself fighting for England in the French and Indian Wars, but now felt his loyalty to the King waning. In the winter of 1772-73, he hosted a series of meetings of Sheffield patriots who drafted one of America’s first declarations of independence—the Sheffield Resolves.

As Ashley and his neighbors hammered out the wording of their manifesto, Elizabeth was “keeping still and minding things,”6 but she listened intently to these words:

Mankind in a State of Nature are equal, free, and independent of each other, and have a right to the undisturbed Enjoyment of their Lives, their Liberty and Property.

Over the next few years, many Massachusetts towns would issue similar statements that culminated in the Massachusetts Constitution, whose first article states:

All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.

In 1780, the Massachusetts Constitution was read aloud from the steps of Sheffield’s Old Parish Church, where no doubt Elizabeth heard it, and was emboldened to make her dream of freedom a reality. Across the street from the church lived Theodore Sedgwick,7 one of the authors of the Sheffield Resolves, who was known for his opposition to slavery. More importantly, he was a lawyer. She crossed the street and “called on Mr. Sedgwick, and asked him if she could not claim her liberty under the law . . . Mr. Sedgwick undertook her cause, which was tried at Great Barrington.”8 In an irony that today seems grotesquely familiar, her being enslaved did not prevent her from taking the Ashleys to court, but her being a woman did. The case was able to proceed because a man enslaved to the Ashleys, whose name we know only as Brom, joined Elizabeth in her lawsuit.

Sedgwick argued that the new Massachusetts constitution prohibited slavery, and therefore Col. Ashley had no legal claim to Elizabeth and Brom. The jury agreed, and on August 22, 1781, they found in favor of the plaintiffs, awarding them their freedom and damages of 30 shillings each. Elizabeth marked her victory by taking the last name of Freeman.

Elizabeth Freeman’s verdict paved the way for the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts and helped make it safe for formerly enslaved people like Caesar Robbins and Brister Freeman to live in freedom here in Concord.

Last year, State Representative William “Smitty” Pignatelli (D-Lenox) met sculptor Brian Hanlon at the unveiling of Hanlon’s statue of Susan B. Anthony in Adams, MA, and both were drawn to the idea of honoring Elizabeth Freeman with a statue in the Town of Sheffield where she lived.

Rendering of Elizabeth Freeman statue by sculptor Brian Hanlon

Photo courtesy of Brian Hanlon

Rep. Pignatelli invited local Black leaders and town officials to develop a plan and partnered with the Sheffield Historical Society to raise the money for the statue. Sheffield will unveil the 9-foot-tall figure on Sunday, August 21, at 12:00 noon. Fittingly, the statue will stand at the center of town, with the Old Parish Church on her right and the home of Theodore Sedgwick on her left.

Sheffield plans a gala day to celebrate the unveiling, including a Walk for Freedom from the Ashley House to the statue, and a production of Meet Elizabeth Freeman by Black playwright Teresa Miller, starring Wanda Houston and funded through a grant from the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation.

It’s a well-deserved tribute to a courageous woman who didn’t wait for white leaders to emancipate her, but overturned slavery for herself and for all of Massachusetts.

NOTES

1 Catharine Maria Sedgwick, “Mumbett,” (1853) unpublished manuscript in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 2 Ibid. 3 Many documents call her “Mum Bett” or “Mumbet.” This article refers to her as Elizabeth, the name she chose to use. 4 Sedgwick, op. cit. 5 Ibid. 6 Harriet Martineau, Retrospect of Western Travel, vol. 2. London, Saunders and Otley, 1838. 7 Theodore Sedgwick was the father of Catharine Maria Sedgwick, whose recollections of Elizabeth Freeman are quoted in this article. 8 Martineau, op. cit.

Victor Curran writes and leads tours of historic Concord and is an interpreter at the Concord Museum and the Old Manse. He teaches courses and writes articles about the men and women who made Concord the home of American independence and imagination.