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• 1 2020-01-21T19:10:51+00:00 Page 1 - A Summer Gathering 14 Bynum Page 1 plain 2020-02-19T16:37:25+00:00

  Cesar Lyndon is having a party. It’s actually a pig roast. He’s already made a list of invitees and bought the necessary food stuffs for it. There’s rum, sugar and limes for punch, green corn, wine, bread and butter, tea and coffee. And, of course, there is a pig. He doesn’t mention how big the pig is, but roast-worthy pigs can range in size from 20 pounds to 200 pounds or larger. When he notes an extra pint of rum for killing the pig—because it subdues the animal and sweetens its meat—he hints at the pig’s heft: a pint of rum suggests this is neither a small pig nor a small party. This is to be a good-sized gathering set for a summer’s day and maybe a corn harvest, just a week after a solar eclipse, on Tuesday, 12 August 1766. 1 And, it’s not too far out of town, about nine or so miles up the main road from Newport, Rhode Island, in Portsmouth. There are at least eight other people traveling those nine or so miles with Lyndon on this day: Boston Vose, Zingo Stevens and Phylis Lyndon, Neptune Sisson and his wife, Prince Thurston and his wife, and Sarah Searing and of course, Cesar Lyndon. Given the size of a roasting pig, they may be on their way to meet even more partygoers who will share in this feast. What takes them on a “pleasant ride out of town” is not clear; neither is how they travel with a pig in tow. But the story of this party isn’t just that it happens. It is what all nine of them—aside from this shared trip—have in common. They are all enslaved or living in various forms of “unfreedom” in Newport. All are friends, and some are lovers.