Hidden Literacies

Page 2 - Newport and Its Black Community

Cesar and Phylis Lyndon are enslaved to Josias Lyndon, a clerk and one-term colonial governor of Rhode Island. Famed bricklayer and stonemason John Stevens owns Zingo Stevens, a well-known stonecutter and engraver of gravestones in his own right. Boston Vose is a sailor whose travels take him abroad to Surinam and elsewhere. Neither Sisson nor Thurston or their wives is listed among the free heads of households in time for Newport’s 1774 census. 2 Their last names are shared by Newport’s prominent slave-trading or slave-owning families; these families—Lyndon, Stevens, Sisson, Thurston, Wanton or Lopez—grow their wealth by selling and trading in men, women, and children on the coasts of West Africa, the Caribbean, South America, and in ports of call along the eastern seaboard, including Newport. These nine men and women are evidence of Newport’s slave-trading cosmopolitanism. This coastal town is one of the first examples of religious tolerance in action and a hub of colonial American slave trading. By the time Lyndon writes of his pig roast, this colonial town with its deep harbor is a noteworthy epicenter of every part of slavery’s business, from the makings of rum and ships to the sale and purchase of people. 3 Slave ships are plentiful in the town’s harbor, and they bring to port all sorts of imported goods from the West Indies, Europe and Asia: tea, sugar, textiles, spices, and citrus fruits. 4 Because rum is the currency of the slave trade, Newport boasts at least twenty-two distilleries. 5 The town’s slave markets dot the nearby wharves and Gravelly Point. Its enslaved (and sometimes freed) African residents make up about twenty percent of the town’s population. One in five persons are African, and this population is exceeded only by colonial Charles Towne, South Carolina. 6

Newport’s enslaved women, men, and children are artisans, pastry chefs, stone masons, grocers and woodcutters, Christians, mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, and oftentimes, readers and writers too. Cesar Lyndon’s crew of partygoers are no different. Neptune Sisson occasionally sells food at the market. Boston Vose returns from a Surinam with six China cups and saucers and a yellow framed mirror for Lyndon. Zingo Stevens carves wings and cherubs, names, dates, and epitaphs into gravestones. Lyndon’s friends are part of a larger community that worships together at First Congregational Church, Second Congregational Church and sometimes at First Baptist Church. Rev. Ezra Stiles, pastor of Second Congregational Church and seventh president of Yale, will lawfully marry Cesar and Sarah Searing and baptize Zingo’s and Phylis’ children.  Lyndon and his friends are part of this cultural and economic landscape as women, men, and children who work to make a community of friends, fellow worshippers, and families while also helping to ensure the economic viability of Newport. They live near each other, work together, and are in this way part of the transactional business of slavery. As residents of this port town, they are part of an economy that renders them both commodities and consumers. But, on this day, Lyndon doesn’t bother mention their enslavement or name to whom they belong; it doesn’t seem to be particularly noteworthy.

While it’s true the Rhode Island General Assembly might take issue with his beverage selection or even the number of enslaved persons that far from their respective homes, Lyndon spends quite a few pounds, shillings, and pence in this slaving economy for this barbecue. In total, he spends ￡33.13 on a rented room and on his local and imported goods; while pigs, bread, corn, and butter are available locally, there are no limes, wine, sugar, tea or coffee made or grown in Rhode Island. How Lyndon has access to these imports is not certain, and but that he does is curious because Newporters are battling the metropole over the imposition and repeal of various forms of taxation—namely, the Stamp Act of 1765 and Sugar Act of 1764. The town’s ongoing conflicts with England’s misuse of power encourage smuggling and riots in town. Despite the rippling effects of England’s tax policy or Rhode Island’s restrictions on the mobility or beverage purchases of enslaved persons, Lyndon chooses food and drink that are certain to make this party fun and delicious. 

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