by Christopher Challender Child
On display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington D.C., is a 240–year-old house relocated from Ipswich, Essex County, Massachusetts. An exhibit, entitled “Within These Walls . . . ,” examines the lives of the families that lived there over the centuries. Between 1777 and 1789, Abraham Dodge, his wife Bethiah, and their African American slave, Chance, resided in the house. When I viewed the exhibit in May 2010, additional facts about Chance’s life — birth and death dates, other owners, apprenticeship, and his life after 1786 — were unknown.
I decided to accept this implicit challenge, and after returning home searched for post-Revolutionary African Americans named Chance throughout Massachusetts. All “Chance” listings I found referred to the Chance I sought. When Chance died in 1810, he was Chance Bradstreet, having taken the surname of his first owner, Rev. Simon Bradstreet (1709–1771), minister of the Second Congregational Church in Marblehead, Massachusetts. By looking at documents associated with his various owners, more details of Chance’s life were revealed.
Chance was born on September 16, 1762, probably at Marblehead, and probably the child of Phillis, Bradstreet’s other slave. This birth date is gleaned from a posting by “E.L.B.” in the genealogy column of the Boston Evening Transcript on February 12, 1912:
The book originally belonged to Simon Bradstreet’s daughter, Sarah, born in 1756.[2] Simon Bradstreet died intestate in 1771; his lengthy inventory lists the following human property:[3]
[£]28 _____
Negro Boy Chance
[£]40 _____
Rev. Isaac Story married Rev. Bradstreet’s daughter Rebecca and succeeded Bradstreet as pastor of the Marblehead church. The following announcement was published two years after Bradstreet died:
The woman described is certainly Phillis, the female slave in Rev. Bradstreet’s inventory, married by Reverend Bradstreet to a “Negro man” Bradstreet did not own. Marblehead vital records list the marriage of “negroes” Fillis Story and Francis Glover on February 26, 1773, just a few weeks before the announcement in the paper.[5]
Since the original marriage took place about 1763, if Phillis was the mother of Chance, Francis Glover was likely Chance’s father.[6] Phillis was born about 1739, based on her age at death, noted below.
Upon Bradstreet’s death, Isaac Story assumed ownership of Phillis and Chance. Since Story followed his father-in-law as minister of the Second Congregational Church, Chance likely remained in the same house. Chance’s probable birthplace, built by Samuel Goodwin in 1723 and occupied by both Bradstreet and Story, still survives at the corner of Mechanic and Pearl Streets in Marblehead.[7]
Chance next appeared in a record on May 20, 1777, when, at age fourteen, he was leased to Abraham Dodge of Ipswich:
In consideration of the sum of thirty pounds L My [Legal Money] paid me by Abraham Dodge Esqr. of Ipswich, & do by these presents relinquish & make over to him & his Heirs all rights & title to my Negro Boy Chance & his Services, for the space of twelve years & a third from the day of the date hereof. Isaac Story[8]
Abraham Dodge’s brother Thomas was married to Story’s sister, Eleanor/Ellen, so the two men shared a family connection.[9]
Slavery was ruled illegal in Massachusetts in 1783, in response to court challenges based on the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution. Abraham Dodge died in 1786, and although Chance was free according to Massachusetts law, Dodge’s will left his wife Bethiah “all my Right to the Service of my Negro Man Chance.”[10]
While the Quock Walker case of 1783 stated that slave owners had no recourse in court against their slaves and any slave in Massachusetts could thus claim to be free, how quickly the ruling took effect is uncertain. By 1790, however, no slaves were enumerated in Massachusetts. The lease for Chance’s service would have expired in 1789, the year the Dodge house was sold to repay debts,[11] and no non-white persons were listed in Bethiah (Patch) (Staniford) Dodge’s Ipswich household in 1790.[12] The 1777 twelve-year lease likely kept Chance in servitude six years after slavery was abolished in Massachusetts.
In the 1790 census, one other free (non-white) person resided in Isaac Story’s Marblehead household;[13] Isaac cannot be located in the 1800 census. The additional non-white person in Isaac’s household in 1790 could have been Chance, Phillis, or someone else. In 1809, “Chance Broadstreet” is included in the Marblehead town valuation list (compiled house by house), living on Darling Street, close to the waterfront.
His two-person household was taxed for one poll, an assessment made on each male citizen sixteen years or older.[14] The additional person in Chance’s household could have been the above Phillis ([Bradstreet/Story][Glover] Pedrick), his probable mother. As stated above, Chance Bradstreet died at Marblehead on July 29, 1810.[15] Phillis Bradstreet, using the surname of her earlier owner, died at the Marblehead poorhouse on January 9, 1815.[16] Several newspapers reported the death of “Mrs. Phillis Bradstreet, a very respectable black lady, once a Princess in Africa, Æ. 76.”[17]
Whether Chance married or left descendants is unknown, but documents concerning his three masters—Bradstreet, Story, and Dodge — have provided a fuller outline of Chance’s life. This additional information will be incorporated into revised text at the National Museum of American History.
Notes
1 Boston Evening Transcript, Feb. 12, 1912, genealogical column #2443, item 2. This posting was found by using the American Genealogical-Biographical Index on Ancestry.com.
2 Clifford K. Shipton, ed., Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, Volume VIII:1726–1730 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1951), 364–68.
3 Essex Probate Records, 347:450. The full inventory spans thirteen pages, 446-59.
4 Essex Gazette, March 16, 1773, 3. The author of the Bradstreet sketch in Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, cited above, concluded that the two men were Story and Bradstreet.
5 Vital Records of Marblehead, Mass. to the End of the Year 1849 (Salem, Mass.: Essex Institute, 1904) 2:472.
6 Phillis Story married Mark Pedrick in Marblehead on Oct. 21, 1779 (Vital Records of Marblehead [note 5], 2:472).
7 Marblehead historian Robert Booth, Jr., shared the history and provenance of Chance’s likely birthplace.
8 Heritage Auctions, Inc., Heritage Historical Manuscripts Auction#6019, March 6–7, 2009, Dallas, Texas, 30. This document was sold March 5, 2009 for $597.50 (ha.com).
9 Marblehead historian Robert Booth, Jr., alerted me to the family connection between Abraham Dodge and Isaac Story.
10 Essex Probate Records, 358:392.
11 Essex Deeds 149:265.
12 1790 U.S. Census, Ipswich, Essex Co., Mass., roll M637_4, p.299. Viewed at Ancestry.com.
13 1790 U.S. Census, Marblehead, Essex Co., Mass., roll M637_4, p. 384. Viewed at Ancestry.com.
14 Town valuation lists of Marblehead, as examined by Robert Booth, Jr.15 Vital Records of Marblehead [note 5], 2:707.
16 Ibid.
17 Newburyport Herald, Jan. 13, 1815, p. 3, also in The Reporter(Brattleboro, Vermont), Feb. 1, 1815, and The Boston Chronicle, Jan. 12, 1815.
Christopher Challender Child is Senior Genealogist of the Newbury Street Press and Editor of The Mayflower Descendant at American Ancestors/New England Historic Genealogical Society.
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