Our President is attacking the Smithsonian for its portrayal of slavery. He wants exhibits that show the horrors of slavery taken down. We don’t want our children to get the wrong idea.
It reminds me of comments I heard in the ‘60s. Comments like, most slave owners treated their slaves like family. Or, slaves benefited from slavery because they could learn a trade—a viewpoint recently written into the Florida public schools curriculum.
Which brings me to a document that surfaced this summer in the Stoneham Public Library titled “A History of the Black in Stoneham.” Written in 1969, it was published in the Stoneham Independent.
Disregarding the awkward reference to “the Black,” the reader is left with the impression that slavery was not so bad.
The article covers three periods, Colonial, pre-Civil War, and modern, and provides much good information. But it starts to break down when it compares slavery to indentured servitude, implying little difference. The authors failed to distinguish between the contractual—and finite–obligations of the indentured person and the ownership in perpetuity of slaves and their offspring. In other words, barring exceptional actions by their owners, enslaved men, women and children labored with no rights and no expectation of freedom. They were chattel.
That hopelessness is expressed in the will of one slave owner: “I bequeath unto my son … one negro woman named Fanny and her children now in his possession and one Negro man named Harry and all their increase to him and his heirs forever.”
A few of the article’s statements about enslaved people in Stoneham can only be described as absurd, like this one: “They were all shoemakers and they laid stone walls, but none was exploited!” And another: “Conditions must have been good because free blacks settled here.”
As we celebrate three hundred years of our history, it’s important to understand the role slavery played in Stoneham. It’s important to know that apart from how individuals were treated and the degree of physical trauma or deprivation they endured, they would have suffered deep and lasting psychological wounds.
Some basic facts. From the colonial period, we have records of some three dozen enslaved men, women and children in Stoneham. Named and unnamed, they show up in church and town records, wills and inventories. Like a “Negro woman and her children” mentioned in Daniel Green’s will. Like the 8-year-old “Mulatto Negro” purchased by James Hay in 1744.
Like “a Negro named Cato, the son of Simon, a Negro servant of Deacon Green,” or a maid named Dinah, owned by the school teacher William Toler.
Like a woman named Phebe, purchased that same year for 75 British pounds by the Rev. James Osgood, and listed along with his house furnishings after his death as simply, “a Negro Woman—70 £.”
Like Jack Thare, 40, “a servant of Joseph Bryant, Jr.,” one of six free or enslaved Black men from Stoneham who fought at Bunker Hill. When Jack failed to return from his enlistment, his master posted a fugitive want ad. Here’s what it said:
Ran away from the subscriber on the 24th of February, a Negro fellow, named Jack, of a — stature, has lost his upper teeth; had on when he went away, a blue coat, with large white buttons. Whoever will take up said Negro, and convey him to the subscriber in Stoneham, shall have three dollars reward. Joseph Bryant, Jr.
The 1969 article on Blacks in Stoneham was published the year I graduated from college. Our nation was still reeling from the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. We were being challenged to examine not only our actions and prejudices, but a long history of subjugation and dehumanization of Black people.
As we celebrate our Tricentennial, let’s look honestly at our history. The value of doing so is that it will affect who we will become. By insisting that we tell the truth about our past, we commit to embracing the full humanity of all those around us.
Do the traits of our ancestors affect who we are today? Does the character of our town still bear the imprint of its founders? When we look at the lives of Stoneham’s early settlers, we see, as historian William B. Stevens calls it, “the best traits of English yeomanry.”
But what does Stevens mean by referring to those who carved out small farms in the hilly terrain north of Charlestown as “yeomen.”
Today, the word has come to mean someone who works hard at a something and is skilled at it, a ground-level worker.
In Chaucer’s medieval England, yeomen were small farmers, foresters and skilled fighters. Historians credit the long bows of English yeomen with turning the tide when the English defeated the French at Agincourt in 1415.
What Stevens is getting at is not far from the original meaning. Silas Dean, whose brief history reaches back to the first settlers, writes of a Scotsman named Hay, who “came over from Lynnfield with his ax and gun.”
What made our 17th century village different is that there were no wealthy settlers, no people of rank, no nobility. There were no massive land grants, or plantations, or any from the top tier of Puritan society. There were also, at first, no slaves. They were farmers and blacksmiths, shoe-makers and weavers.
They included deserters from British ships anchored in the Boston harbor, and some escaping indentured service. They plowed and traded, planted orchards and corn fields. They harvested the abundant cedar trees around Spot Pond, turning them into posts, shingles and clapboards. They built saw mills and grist mills.
Most of the women, as well as the men, knew what to do with a musket. They hunted deer and turkeys, fought Indians and wolves, and drank rum when they could get it, often when they came together to slaughter the pigs, or to build a school or a church. They went to church, religiously.
Stevens writes: “The foundations of Stoneham were laid, not by men of culture or wealth, but by the brawn and courage of laborious yeoman.”
Yet Stevens, an attorney, judge and the grandson of Stoneham’s longest serving minister, the Rev. John H. Stevens, seems to take pride in the town’s humble beginnings.
To bolster his point, he catalogs the possessions of several of the first settlers at their death. I find the details fascinating. He starts with Thomas Cutler, who died in 1683.
He left 25 acres of land and a house valued at 40 pounds; 3 cows, 4 young cattle, 18 pounds; 1 mare, 2 colts, 2 pounds; 10 swine, 40 bushels Indian corn and some rye and oats and barley, 9 pounds and ten shillings; 1 plough and ax and implements for husbandman’s work; 2 beds with bedding; 3 pair sheets with other linen, woolen and flax, 2 pounds, 4 shillings; 5 yards home-made cloth and some yarn, 2 iron pots with iron things and pewter and brass, 2 pounds, 5 shillings; chests and boxes with other usable things in house, 1 pound 10 shillings; wearing clothes, 2 pounds; gun and sword, 1 pound.
After listing the estates of several early settlers, Stevens notes that there were no carriages, no glassware, and only chairs and boxes for furniture. They had no carpets or curtains, watches or clocks. Their staples “were Indian corn, wheat, rye barley and pork, with mutton and beef at intervals, and doubtless veal and lamb now and then.”
They consumed plenty of milk, butter and cheese, but grew few vegetables. They supplemented their diet with meat from wild game. And they planted orchards. Later, when the trees had matured, they harvested the apples. As Stevens notes, “and afterward great quantities of cider were made and consumed.”
With the passing of time, came more comforts of life. In the 18th century personal wealth increased, and in the 19th century, fortunes were made, as the Industrial Revolution brought capitol, mechanization and employment to a town of farmers, traders and shoemakers.
Today, a suburban town of some 23 thousand souls, we celebrate our origins as a community forged by the labor and creativity of hard-working men and women. I like to think that the spirit of our yeoman ancestors is still alive.
Note: Excerpted from If the Shoe Fits: Stories of Stonehan, Then & Now, by Ben Jacques, available at the Book Oasis on Main Street and at the Stoneham Historical Society & Museum.
I guess you could call him an illegal alien. It was sometime in the 17th century, and a British sailor by the name of Hadley had just jumped ship in Boston and high-tailed it inland, looking for a place to hide. The man who found him was a farmer named Gould, one of the first settlers of our town.
A century later town clerk Silas Dean told the story. Dean, also a longtime church deacon, had an ear for stories, and this is how he told it:
A man by the name of Gould . . . on a certain morning during the first settlement of the town, while at his barn at a very early hour, a man approached him, stark naked, and told him he came over to this country on board a war ship. The night previous he had deserted from the ship, and being fearful that his clothes might retard his escape, or the procuring of them cause some alarm, he left the vessel in a state of nudity.
He also stated to Gould that if he would provide him clothes, and afford him means to keep himself secreted till after the vessel left Boston, he would work for him for a sufficient length of time to satisfy him for all the trouble he might be at. The proposal was agreed to, and by this means Hadley took up his abode in this town, and from him all of that name now living in town descended.
This wasn’t the first time desperate sailors sought refuge in Stoneham. In Colonial times, serving in the British navy was no picnic. “Recruits” were often men seized in taverns or sentenced in court to a grueling life at sea.
Silas Dean tells of another deserter, who hid under the floor in a saw mill in Stoneham. British soldiers sent to find him entered the mill and stamped about on the floor, but never discovered him.
Flash forward to the 1830s and we find Stoneham is again a refuge for runaways, this time, runaway slaves. Here we turn to a history of Stoneham written by Marina Memmo in 2010. She writes:
The issue of African slavery divided the town in the 1830s, but by 1850, Stoneham had fully embraced the abolitionist cause. Members of the Congregational Church led the reform. In 1838, Deacon Abijah Bryant, Levi D. Smith and 60 others formed the Stoneham branch of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and Bryant’s home on Main St. became a “station” on the Underground Railroad. When Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Rev. William C. Whitcomb expressed his outrage in a sermon that was later published. In it, he urged the people to fight for their enslaved brethren, even if it meant suffering and death.
From a village on the outskirts of Colonial civilization to the present, our suburban town has been a place of refuge and opportunity, a place where men and women have come to plant their fields, open their shops, work in the mills, or simply raise their families. They have come from around the world.
Among those who live or work among us today are more recent immigrants, and some of them are living in fear. Whether they lack proper documentation, or have had their legal status revoked, they, like those before them simply need a safe place to live. They want to know that their children won’t be taken from them, and their children know a parent will be there when they come home from school or camp.
You know the stories. You’ve been watching the news. Being true to our history, being true to our best selves, we must protect the rights and humanity of all who live among us.
You came north after the Civil War, a Black man from Norfolk, Virginia, looking for a place to work and raise a family. You chose us, Stoneham, Massachusetts, a shoe-factory town of about 3,500 people just north of Boston.
In Virginia, were you enslaved? I could find no record. I did find that the year after the Emancipation Proclamation you enlisted in the Union Navy and spent a year aboard the USS Ohio. The Ohio was used to blockade Confederate ships along the Carolinas and in Europe.
The USS Ohio
In 1867, two years after the war, you appeared before the Justice of the Peace in Stoneham with your bride, Sarah Cecelia Hill, from Brooklyn. You were 23 and she was 18. With her you would raise five children, three sons and two daughters.
Cabinet card portraits of African Americans from the David V. Tinder Collection of Michigan Photography. Left: Man with Pipe, circa 1887. Right: Woman in Silk Dress, circa 1888. William L. Clements Library
I don’t know if you were tall or short. I do know you were strong. I found this ad in an old Stoneham Independent: “The services of Charles Cephas stone mason can now be had. He tends to laying pipes, sinking wells, digging cesspools and blasting. ‘He thoroughly understands his business.’”
Remember that summer when people were praying for rain, you made the news when you dug and lined a 35-foot-deep well, a record in Woburn.
Business must have been good, because in 1876 you bought a house on Hancock Street, then moved it over to Albion Avenue on the northwest side of town.
Lining a hand-dug well
For you and the few other African American families, Stoneham was a good place to put down roots. But the soil was rocky, in more ways than one. Getting along in an overwhelmingly white community sometimes meant conflict. Sometimes you were the target. In 1878, as reported in the Independent, five men attacked and beat you and your friend Thomas Shanks.
Another time, when you were walking by the Cogan and Sons shoe factory, from the upstairs window, someone dumped a bucket of white wash on your head. Furious, you stormed into the building demanding to know who the culprit was.
You raised such a fuss that the police were called. But instead of helping to find the offender, the police arrested you and charged you with disturbing the peace.
Another time, faced with arrest after a domestic dispute, you threatened to blow up the police station with dynamite you had in your work bag. Appearing in court the next day you stated you couldn’t remember making such a threat, but if you did, you were sorry. You were fined $10.
1870 U. S. Census showing Charles Cephas, his wife, Sarah, his mother-in-law and two children.
Were there good times? Did you and Sarah get together with other families after church for dinner? Your children would have gone to school in town.
In 1902 the Independent reported the wedding of your son, George, to Carrie Yancey. It was “a very pretty home wedding, performed in the presence of a large company of friends.”
Another time we learn of your son, Ernest, playing hockey on Spot Pond. Earnest would later go to sea, serving in the U.S. Navy during the Spanish American War.
There were painful losses, as the loss of your firstborn son, Charles H. Cephas, age one. Infant deaths were also recorded in 1874 and 1883.
At some point the stresses of life must have crossed over to your marriage. In 1895, after 28 years, your wife petitioned the Middlesex Court for divorce, and it was granted.
Sometime after this, you moved to Chelsea and started working as a stone mason at the Charleston Navy Yard. I couldn’t find any more about you until 1908, when I found this in the Stoneham Independent:
Charles Cephas, colored, passed away Wednesday evening of last week, at the Chelsea Marine hospital, as the result of injuries received by being assaulted as he was coming out of the Charlestown Navy Yard.
The reporter speculated that your killers must have been after your pension money.
Although there was no mention in the Boston papers, I did find a copy of the coroner’s report. It stated the cause of death as “acute fibrinous pneumonia consequent on hemorrhage and laceration of the brain sustained under circumstances unknown, probably those of an accidental fall.” Accidental fall? Really?
After a funeral in Chelsea, they brought you back to Stoneham for burial in the Civil War military section. Was there an honor guard? On Memorial Day I stopped by Lindenwood to pay my respects.
Sometimes I wonder what you would make of our town today. Of our nation. Some things are better. Some not.
Charles Cephas stone in Lindenwood Cemetery in Stoneham
There’s so much that would amaze you. So many stories of African Americans who paved the way in education, music, science, law enforcement, athletics, and business, not only on the national stage, but in our own town, some of them your descendants.
If I tell you about the achievements, however, I also have to mention the set-backs. I have to tell you about George Floyd.
But here’s something to celebrate. Did you know we now celebrate Juneteenth, the date in 1865 when enslaved folk in Texas finally found out they were free?
Mr. Cephas, when I think of you, I think of a man digging wells so families can have water. I think of a stone mason, his hands rough with callouses. I think of a man who had a temper, but who wanted, above all, a safe place to live, work and raise a family. Who deserved more respect than he got.
Rumeysa Ozturk, a doctoral student at Tufts, is grabbed off the street and flown to a prison in Louisiana. In Boston a man is nabbed while leaving the courthouse. In New Bedford, ICE agents smash the windows of a car to arrest someone with no criminal history. In Chelsea, Boston, Worcester, Medford, Wakefield and other cities, hundreds have gone missing, picked up by ICE in raids.
Meanwhile, immigrants, including those with temporary protected status (TPS), are afraid. Children don’t want to go to school for fear their parents won’t be there when they return home. Community leaders talk of a siege mentality.
Since a 2017 ruling by the state Supreme Judicial Court, Massachusetts has limited its cooperation with the federal government’s deportation efforts. As Stoneham Police Chief James O’Connor puts it: “Being in this country without legal documentation is a civil offense. Massachusetts police officers do not have the jurisdiction to enforce civil immigration law.” The only exceptions are in cases of criminal activity or threats to public safety.
In a policy statement, Chief O’Connor stated: “Stoneham Police will afford all residents all civil rights, due process, and equal protection safeguards available under the U. S. Constitution, the Massachusetts Constitution and Town laws, ‘irrespective of the person’s immigration and/or documentation status.’”
Regardless of state and local policies, our immigrant neighbors are increasingly threatened by a Trump administration that has shown no regard for rules or, for that matter, First Amendment rights.
For this reason, four bills are now at the State House that would increase protections for immigrants in Massachusetts. They are sponsored by various state reps and senators and supported by the ACLU, MIRA and numerous organizations.
The first is the Safe Communities Act. It would prohibit voluntary involvement of local police and courts in civil immigration matters and require “informed consent” before any ICE interview can take place.
The second bill is the Immigrant Legal Defense Act. Studies show that immigrants are five times more likely to win relief from deportation if they are represented by a lawyer. This act would provide funds for free legal defense for at-risk immigrants, especially those in federal detention.
A third bill at the State House, the Language Access and Inclusion Bill, would expand translation and interpretation for Massachusetts residents. This is especially important as the federal government is pulling back from communications except in English.
A fourth bill in Boston would prohibit contracts with the federal government for detention facilities in the Commonwealth, such as the Plymouth County Correctional Facility, which currently holds hundreds of immigrants awaiting deportation.Fact sheets on all four legislative proposals can be found online at the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition at miracoalition.org.
This week, members of Stoneham for Social Justice, a network of concerned citizens, endorsed these four bills and called on state legislators to support and fast track them.
In Massachusetts there are an estimated 250,000 undocumented immigrants, individuals and families who have sought a safe place to work and live. Thousands more have fled oppression and disasters under programs that grant them protective status. For many, including Venezuelans and Haitians, this status is being revoked.
Immigrants among us, our families, our neighbors, those we work with, those who provide services to us, are part of our daily lives. They play an integral and productive role in our communities. At the very least, they deserve the rights guaranteed to all in our Constitution, including the right to fair hearings and due process. When these are threatened, they deserve our protection.
As we celebrate our town’s 300th birthday, reflecting on our founding in 1725, you may have wondered, who was our first employee?
Well, it seems we were rather selective, because the first person we hired was a graduate of Harvard. But before I tell you who it was, here’s some historical context.
In 1725, as we broke away from Charlestown, we were just a village ten miles north of Boston in a colony called Massachusetts Bay. Massachusetts Bay was founded in 1630 by English Puritans led by John Winthrop, who became its first governor.
The Puritans, who had separated from the Church of England, were a serious lot. They based their customs and laws on English Common Law and the Bible, especially the Old Testament.
They also believed that church and state should function as one, and that’s why, as stated in the founding document, the town was required to find, install and support a minister. That person would become the first paid employee of the Town of Stoneham.
That person was James Osgood and he came from Salem. When the words “Puritan” and “Salem” are mentioned in the same breath, it is not unnatural to think of witchcraft, and the trials and executions of the late 17th century. For the Osgood family, some of whom lived in Andover, the connection was personal. In 1692 James’ paternal grandmother, Mary Clements Osgood was accused of being a witch.
Mary Osgood’s story is too long to tell here. Suffice it to say, she confessed in 1692, under considerable pressure, of making a pact with the Devil and afflicting several other women and was subsequently imprisoned in Salem. But under examination by the Rev. Increase Mather, who had been sent to Salem to reign in the witchcraft hysteria, she recanted her confession and said she had made it all up. You can read about it in the report made by Governor Thomas Hutchinson. Meanwhile, over 50 citizens of Andover had petitioned for her release, and she was freed.
One of Mary’s sons was Peter Osgood, a tanner, who did so well that he sent two sons to Harvard, the younger one being James. One other thing I should mention is that the Osgood family owned slaves. Owning slaves was not common in colonial Massachusetts, but neither was it exceptional. For an enterprising farmer, seaman, merchant or tradesman, owning a slave could make the difference between just getting by and prospering. A 1754 inventory of enslaved persons age 16 and over in Salem listed 83. There were 989 in Boston. Eight in Stoneham.
Growing up in Salem, James Osgood followed his brother to Harvard. From what we know, he did well. At one point, however, he appears to have gotten into trouble. In a biographical sketch of Harvard graduates, we read that “James found himself caught up in the student riot of 1722 at Harvard, managing to break glass to the value of 11 shillings.” My guess is, he smashed a window.
But time can make a difference, as the parents of any college student know. By the time James graduated with a master’s degree, he was described as “one of the soberest and quietest members of his class.”
Looking for Employment
When James Osgood graduated from Harvard in 1727, he must have wondered what the future would hold. The youngest son of a Salem tanner and church deacon, he had earned a master’s degree, placing him into the upper echelon of Puritan society.
A few months before his graduation, there had been a turning point. An entry in his diary from this period stands out. It’s dated Jan. 1, 1727. It seems James had stopped taking Communion in church. Had he, a college don studying Greek and Latin, entertained doubts? Had he grown skeptical?
For whatever reason, as he now wrote, he repented his neglect of the sacrament and promised to “walk according to the Rules of the Gosple & the Discipline of the Church.” From now on, he covenanted, he would “walk as becomes a true Disciple & follower of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
After graduation, Osgood left Cambridge and returned to Salem, where he began looking for employment. One of his first jobs was teaching school in Salisbury, for which, records show, he received 30 pounds. He was also called on to fill the pulpit as a guest preacher in nearby parishes, giving him valuable experience.
In the fall of 1728 the young theologian received an invitation from the newly incorporated town of Stoneham, which was searching for its first minister. To audition for the job, Mr. Osgood would have to preach in front of the whole town, around 65 families, and get the approval of town voters, all 13 of them, men only. Other candidates would also be invited.
Meanwhile, in Stoneham “it was voted in town meeting assembled to set apart a day for prayer to ask God’s direction in the choice of a minister” (William B. Stevens, The History of Stoneham).
James Osgood was only 23 when he came down from Salem, probably on horseback, to audition for the job. What must have gone through his mind as he entered the simple structure of the Meeting House, erected by the townspeople just three years earlier, and stood before the small congregation. We can only imagine his looks and manner, and the sermon to follow. We can assume he made a powerful impression, because he got the job.
Was it a hard choice for him to make? I wonder when I read that it took him until April to formally accept. Nevertheless a few months later, on Sept. 10, 1729, he was ordained and installed in the Meeting House as Stoneham’s first minister.
All things considered, it was not a bad job. The town voted him an annual salary of 110 British pounds (about $22,000 today). It also gave him 172 pounds ($38,000) “for a settlement,” and agreed to supply him with ten cords of wood for heating and cooking.
At first boarding at the home of Peter Hay, a prominent town citizen, the young bachelor set about ministering to the families of the parish. Besides preaching two or more sermons a week, his duties included teaching, baptizing, counseling and consoling. He conducted weddings and funerals. And he began plans for a parsonage. As Stevens records: “Mr. Osgood purchased land and built him a house which was a fine one for those times.”
A photograph of the parsonage, taken in the 19th century, shows a large house in the traditional saltbox style. Nine windows face the street, and a storage shed is attached at the rear. Cord wood is stacked on the side, and children play in the yard.
We don’t know when the house was completed, but it may have been before 1735, when Osgood, now 30, returned from Killingly, Connecticut, with his new bride. Her name was Sarah Fiske and she was 17. In Stoneham, the couple would have two children, Abigail and John.
From William B. Stevens’ History of Stoneham, 1891.
The Reverend’s Account Books
On August 6, 1729, James Osgood started recording his expenses in two books, preserved in the Congregational Library in Boston. These daily accounts give us clues into the 24-year-old Harvard graduate from Salem, ordained in October as Stoneham’s first minister.
The entries, made in his own hand, are various and include lists, like what books he was reading, the founding of Puritan churches in Massachusetts Bay, and commentary on historical and theological matters. They also record payments received, like one of 56 pounds from Daniel Gould, town treasurer, half of his yearly salary.
Another shows Osgood paying 49 pounds, then another 50, to “Mr. Ebenezer Phillips, yeoman,” for the purchase of land. Below that is payment made to Francis Kittridge–12 pounds, 16 shillings and 6 pence—for 1,000 board feet of lumber for construction of his house.
Most of Osgood’s purchases, however, are for daily necessities, such as 16 shillings paid to David Gould for a bushel of corn. There are also payments for rye, sugar, molasses, tea, salt, beef, veal, and fish. Also, cotton, wool, linen and eiderdown, as well as kettles, tallow and other houseware items. And there are regular purchases of rum.
We also see a stream of payments for workmen building the parsonage. Others for plowing, hauling manure, planting and mowing. There are purchases of animals, including a pig. A payment is made to have Osgood’s horse shod.
Then there are payments for services rendered, like weaving and shoemaking. In one entry, the minister pays Simon Barjona, a cordwainer, one pound for a pair of shoes.
After his marriage to Sarah and the arrival of children, we see purchases that reflect his family, such as a handkerchief, silk, a looking glass and a pair of stockings for Sarah. Also a buckle and a new hat for Johnny, and a frock for his daughter, whom he calls Nabbe.
We find regular payments made to Abigail, the household maid. To employ a household maid must have made a huge difference to the family, especially for Sarah, whose duties as the minister’s wife would have gone beyond household management and raising children. She would have been called on to support her husband’s ministry in various ways, counseling the women and children, visiting the poor and the sick.
In October of 1743, however, payments to the maid cease. From November through January, no further payments are found. For whatever reason, Abigail is no longer employed. It appears the Osgood family is without household support.
In February that is about to change in a way that we, looking back three centuries later, find disturbing. On Feb. 21, 1744, Osgood writes: “Paid away for a Negro woman named (Fibbe) to Mr. Thomas Bancroft, 20 pounds.”
Osgood’s payment of 20 pounds was just a down payment. In March he will make a second payment of 12 pounds. Then in April, as he notes in his account book, “paid for my Negro woman in full, 43 pounds”—bringing the total to 75 pounds.
Reading this, I am stunned. Yes, I’ve known that many prominent families in colonial New England owned slaves. But this feels personal. It is my church, the First Congregational Church, founded in 1729, and in my town, which this year celebrates its 300th Birthday.
How could the minister of my church be a slave owner? Next week, I will conclude my story of the Rev. James Osgood. I’ll tell of his sudden demise and what happened to his family and his enslaved servant, Phebe.
Page 26 of James Osgood’s Account Book for the year 1744.
A Slave in the Parsonage
When James Osgood in 1744 brought home a Negro woman he had purchased, few in town would have questioned his actions or his ethics. Slavery had sprung up in the Massachusetts Bay Colony soon after its founding in 1630. English colonists had initially enslaved natives captured in battle, but found them too difficult to manage.
In 1637 the slave ship Desire, built in Marblehead, left for the Caribbean with 17 Pequot natives, including 15 children, to be sold to Caribbean plantations. Eight months later, the ship sailed into Boston with a cargo of cotton, tobacco and slaves from Africa.
In 1641 the Puritan community published The Body of Liberties, which spelled out rights and obligations of its members. Article 91 sanctioned the owning of slaves.
In Stoneham, as throughout New England, having slaves signaled a family’s success and status. Among owners were merchants, tradesmen, land owners and ship captains. There were also ministers, like the eminent Puritan minister, Cotton Mather, in Boston. Or like James Osgood.
The minister’s own family, his father, Peter Osgood, and uncles, owned slaves in Salem and Andover. When James Osgood arrived in Stoneham, he first boarded with Captain Peter Hays, who kept two slaves. At one time or another, at least eight Stoneham families owned slaves.
Osgood believed, as did Cotton Mather, that it was the duty of slave masters not only to treat their slaves kindly, but to Christianize them, thus to save their souls. In Stoneham, writes Stevens, “The colored people, though in a state of slavery, were admitted as brethren and sisters to the church.” Welcome in the Meeting House, they were restricted, however, to sitting in the balcony.
Church records show that Osgood “received” several slaves into full communion. Among them were “Amos, Negro servant of Deacon Green” and “Pomfrey, Negro servant of Mr. Sprague.” The minister also officiated at their weddings. In 1738 he blessed the marriage of Mingo and Moll, “servants” of Peter Hay, Jr.,” and in 1743 of “Obadiah How, Negro servant of Mr. Souther, married to Priscilla.”
The Puritans in Massachusetts had rejected the rigid hierarchy of the Church of England and instituted congregational reforms that gave the common person more say in church and society. Yet they continued to see themselves as part of the Great Chain of Being, which described their place in the natural order. At the bottom of this chain were natives and Africans.
So it was that Phebe, the woman Osgood had purchased for 75 pounds, was expected to serve the family in perpetuity. Regardless of the degree of kindness shown her, she must labor with no pay and no hope of freedom.
What would eventually happen to Phebe, however, the Stoneham minister would never know, because on March 2, 1745, a few months shy of his 40th birthday, the Rev. James Osgood suffered a fatal stroke.
James Osgood had served the people of Stoneham for 16 years, and his sudden demise must have shocked the town. William B. Stevens writes: “His body was carried to the Meeting House and there attended to grave by several ministers and a great Concourse of People.” He was laid to rest in the Old Burying Ground on Pleasant Street.
For the minister’s family, the loss was enormous. John, his son, was only 6, and his sister, Abigail, 9. Details about the family after his death are few. John Osgood grew up in Stoneham and married Lucy Torrey, and they had one daughter. He then married Jane Libby on January 2, 1781. He died in 1792 in Boston at the age of 53.
Abigail, their daughter, at age 15 married Joseph Bryant, Jr, in Stoneham. He would later fight in the Revolutionary War. They had five children. Abigail lived a long life, 89 years, and died in 1826 in Stoneham.
Sarah, town records show, remarried in 1752 to a Captain Ralph Hart of Boston. She, too, lived into the next century. When she died in 1801 at age 83, she was buried beside her first husband in the Old Burying Ground. In his Brief History of the Town of Stoneham, Silas Dean described her as “a very amiable and excellent person.”
As to what happened to Phebe, the Osgood’s household slave, I found two pieces of information. The first is her mention in the inventory of the Osgood’s belongings, made after his death. The inventory list is chilling, because tucked between items like “A looking Glass, 2 oval Tables, a Desk and Tankard board” and “A bed and furniture, a low Chest with Draws & a Table” is the entry: “A Negroe Woman, 70 pounds,” valued at five pounds less than her original purchase price.
The second is from Stoneham vital records for 1747, two years later. It noted the marriage of “Phebe, servant of Mrs. Sarah Osgood, and Quecoo, servant of Peter Hay, 3d, Mar. 12, 1747.” I could find no further information.
As we look back to our founding, we view it from afar. When Reverend Osgood arrived from Salem, Stoneham had just incorporated as a Puritan community in a British Colony. Yet it was in those times that our town was forged. What followed was earth shaking, the Revolutionary War and the creation of a republic inspired by the Declaration of Independence. Soon after, in 1780, came the Massachusetts Constitution. Authored by John Adams, it became the model for the U.S. Constitution. It was also the basis for the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling in 1783 that ended slavery in the Commonwealth. In the first federal census of 1790, there were no enslaved persons in Stoneham.
For history to have value for us, we must do our best to tell it with honesty. We must acknowledge its complexity. This shouldn’t deter us, however, from paying tribute to the founders of Stoneham, including our first minister and first employee, the Rev. James Osgood. We also pay tribute to all those, enslaved or free, who helped build our town.
This is a story about Charles Cephas, a Black man who came to our town after the Civil War. On his gravestone in the soldiers’ lot at Lindenwood Cemetery, you’ll see he served in the U. S. Navy.
Charles was born in 1844 in Norfolk, Virginia. He may have been enslaved. One year after the Emancipation Proclamation, he joined the Union Navy and was inducted aboard the USS Ohio in Boston. He was then assigned to the USS Sacramento, which served to blockade Confederate ships off South Carolina and in Europe.
Discharged after the war, Cephas settled in Stoneham, Massachusetts. On August 13, 1867, as reported in the Stoneham Independent, he appeared before Silas Dean, justice of the peace, with his bride. Her name was Sarah Cecelia Hill, and she was from Brooklyn. He was 23, she was 18. In Stoneham they would raise five children, three sons and two daughters.
I don’t know what Charles Cephas looked like, but he must have been a man of considerable strength. I say that because he was a mason, a well digger, an earth mover. An ad in the Stoneham Independent reads: “The services of Charles Cephas stone mason can now be had. He tends to laying pipes, sinking wells, digging cesspools and blasting. ‘He thoroughly understands his business.’”
That same year the newspaper reported that “Charles Cephas is digging and stoning a well in Montvale, which he thinks will be the deepest in Woburn. It is 35 feet deep.”
In the 1870 federal census, Charles and Sarah are two of only 27 “non-whites” listed in a town of 3,444. Yet, from what I can find, they did all right, and by 1876 purchased their own home. In the Independent, we read: “Wm. Howell sold a house on Hancock Street to Charles Cephas, and the latter had had it successfully moved to Albion Ave in the north westerly part of the town. Ellis of Malden did the moving.”
But life for the Cephas family had its rough parts. And here the story gets complicated. It’s complicated, because if we are to know the tenor of Charles Cephas’s life, we must acknowledge the persistent prejudice African Americans faced, not only in the South, but in booming factory towns like Stoneham. His story raises questions that make us uneasy.
Most of what we know about Cephas comes from the Stoneham Independent. There are also census reports and vital records. We also have notices of court actions, arrests and fines. Sometimes, we have to read between the lines.
I don’t know if Charles was enslaved in Virginia. He may have been. Certainly, his desire for freedom, his enlistment in the Union Navy, and his insistence that he be respected as a free man played out in his daily life. He didn’t always get respect.
Cabinet card portraits of African Americans from the David V. Tinder Collection of Michigan Photography. Left: Man with Pipe, circa 1887. Right: Woman in Silk Dress, circa 1888. William L. Clements Library
Disturbing the Peace
Although Charles Cephas found Stoneham a good place to start a business, a place where hard work was rewarded, he was also learning that even in the North men who looked like him could become targets of abuse.
In 1878, as reported in the Independent, five men, aged 16-25, attacked and beat Cephas and Thomas Shanks, another Black man. Arraigned in court for assault and battery, the men were fined and released.
There were other times, however, when Cephas was the one being charged. For example, in 1891 at the P Cogan & Sons shoe factory on Main Street, where he was arrested for disturbing the peace.
According to the Independent, Charles Cephas was walking beside the Cogan plant when, from an upstairs window, someone dumped a bucket of whitewash onto him. Furious, he rushed into the mill in search of the culprits. Not surprisingly, no one admitted the racist prank. Cephas was “pretty well worked up,” wrote the reporter, “and may have talked pretty loud, for Officer Newton appeared on the scene.”
Rather than find the perpetrator, however, the officer “arrested Charles and started for the ‘lock-up.’” When Cephas resisted, the policeman enlisted “one or two outsiders for aid” and hauled him off to jail.
Another time, according to the papers, Cephas threatened to blow up the Stoneham police force. The Boston Globe, which picked up the story, told it like this:
Early this morning an officer saw a young man chasing a girl along a street. The latter was shouting for assistance. The officer hailed the man, who stopped and was informed that he was under arrest. The man, who proved to be Charles Cephas, refused to be taken into custody and opened a handbag he carried, and told the officer the contents were dynamite, and if he was molested he would explode the same.
The Independent gave more detail, alleging that Cephas, uttering profanity, had chased a “Miss Kelly” to the home of Officer Green, where she sought protection. Green and another officer confronted Cephas, who was standing in the street, and told him to go home or be arrested. Cephas started, but then stopped, warning the officers that he had dynamite in his bags and would blow “the whole —- police force up” if they came near.
On Monday Cephas showed up in court and paid a fine of $10 for disturbing the peace. He told the judge that he couldn’t remember threatening “to blow up the police force,” but if he did, “he was sorry.” No mention was made of the altercation between Cephas and the young woman.
Looking back at Charles Cephas, we see a puzzle with many pieces missing. We will never get a full picture. Still, what we have suggests the complexity of his life in our town. We also learn a little about his family, about their losses and achievements.
In 1869 the Independent listed the death of a son, age 1. Infant deaths were also recorded in 1874 and 1883. In the notes section of an 1885 edition, we read: “Mr. Charles Cephas has had the misfortune to lose one of his youngest children lately.”
In October of 1884 Sarah (also known as Cecilia or Celia) posted a card thanking family friends in Woburn, Wakefield and Stoneham “for their many kindnesses and sympathy in her late bereavement.”
But there were also good times, such as the wedding of their son, George, to Carrie H. Yancey. It was “a very pretty home wedding” reported the Independent, “performed in the presence of a large company of friends.”
In another story we learn about an ice-hockey game on Spot Pond in which the Stoneham team beat Salem 1-0. The ice was rough, the paper reported, due to the many ice yachts that had been racing on the pond. Playing with the Stoneham team was Ernest Cephas, George’s brother.
There is evidence that the Cephas boys learned shoemaking trades. Ernest, however, seems to have something else in mind.
In 1887 we find out that Ernest has gone to sea. Like his father, he enlisted in the Navy. Home on leave in 1896, wearing his sailor’s uniform, he was returning from Woburn late one night when he was accosted by several toughs, who berated him with racial slurs.
Getting off the trolley at the last stop, Ernest stepped up to the gang leader “and lit into him like a cyclone,” giving him “such a pummeling as he probably never had in all his life.”
Although Ernest was later charged in court, the Independent clearly took his side. The headline ran: “He Deserved It!—Ernest Cephas Teaches a Haverhill Tough a Wholesome Lesson.”
Two years later, during the Spanish-American War, Ernest was serving aboard the Navy cruiser USS Brooklyn. In a letter published by the newspaper, he described in dramatic detail a victorious battle between American and Spanish warships.
Of the Cephas’ third son, Louis, born in 1876, we know very little. His name does appear, however, in a news report of the 1904 trolley car disaster in Melrose. Lewis was riding in the car when dynamite carried by workmen exploded. Nine passengers were killed and 30 wounded. Blown into the street, Louis survived with cuts and bruises from flying glass and debris.
Of the two surviving daughters, Eva, born in 1883, and Sarah, born in 1887, there is also little information. Records show that Sarah married John Addison in Boston in 1912, and that Eva married a man with the last name of Carter in 1913.
Coming Home
Charles and Sarah Cephas were not the only African Americans to settle in Stoneham after the Civil War. There were also the Yanceys, Freemans, Reeds and others. In the Independent, we find mention of “a Mr. Curtis and a Mr. Turner, [who] owned adjoining lots on Albion St. in 1874.” Also noted was the Lewis family, “that married into the Yancey family.”
For the Black families, Stoneham was a good place to put down roots. But the soil could also be rocky, in more ways than one. For Charles Cephas, getting along in an overwhelmingly white community inevitably involved conflict.
On at least one occasion, reported in the press, he was assaulted. Other times, he was charged with disturbing the peace, including the time workers at a shoe mill dumped whitewash on him.
His marriage was another story. We can never know the complexities of any marital relationship. But the stresses of his life must have crossed over to his marriage. In the Independent on March 9, 1895, we learn that Sarah Celia Cephas, after 28 years, has petitioned the Middlesex Court for divorce and that “a decree of divorce was given.”
Sometime after this, Cephas moved out of Stoneham. In 1899 we find him living in Chelsea and working at the Charlestown Navy Yard, where he continued for another nine years. Until June 10, 1908.
What happened on that date is unclear. It was not reported on, as far as I can tell, by any Boston papers. Nor, does it seem, were the police involved. It was, however, reported on by the Independent. Here is what the Stoneham newspaper said on Saturday, June 20:
Charles Cephas, colored, passed away Wednesday evening of last week, at the Chelsea Marine hospital, as the result of injuries received by being assaulted as he was coming out of the Charlestown Navy Yard, where he has been employed as a stone mason. He was about 65 years of age.
The paper then speculated that “the object of the assault was robbery, his assailants evidently being after Mr. Cephas’ pension money.”
After listing the five names of his surviving children, the Independent continued:
The deceased was a Civil War veteran, having served four years in the Navy. Until about 15 years ago he was a resident of this town for thirty years. He was born in Virginia in ante-bellum days.
Funeral Services for Cephas were held in Chelsea. But for burial he was brought back to Stoneham, interned in the Civil War memorial lot at Lindenwood cemetery. Was there an honor guard present, as there often is for veterans? No mention is made.
Looking back at the demise of Charles Cephas, we are left with questions. Why did his brutal murder in Charlestown receive so little attention? Was there no police report? Was there no attempt to apprehend and prosecute his killers?
I was able to find the Chelsea coroner’s report, filed a week after his death. The cause of death was listed as “acute fibrinous pneumonia consequent on hemorrhage and laceration of the brain sustained under circumstances unknown, probably those of an accidental fall.” Accidental fall? Really?
Back in 1891, when Cephas was still living in Stoneham, the Independent reported that “People on the outskirts of town complain of dry wells. Will it ever rain in earnest?”
In that same issue was the news of Charles Cephas digging a 35-feet-deep well, “the deepest in Woburn.”
When I think of Charles Cephas, I like to think of this.
Charles Cephas came to Stoneham looking for a place he and his family could call home, and in doing so, he helped build our town. Although his story is complicated by factors we can only partially understand, it challenges us to look honestly at history and ourselves.
His story is part of our history. It is our story as well.
Gravestone of Charles Cephas in Lindenwood Cemetery
Thanks to Joan Quigley, historian and archivist at the Stoneham Historical Society & Museum, and Dee Morris, Medford historian, for their help in researching the Cephas family.
Ben Jacques is the author of In Graves Unmarked: Slavery & Abolition in Stoneham, Massachusetts, and If the Shoe Fits: Stories of Stoneham Then & Now. Both are available at the Book Oasis on Main Street. He also writes essays, poems and articles, many of them found on his blog at benjacquesstories.com.
A fugitive, he got off the boat in Newport and continued by coach to New Bedford. There, in the whaling seaport founded by Quakers, he found safety. He also found work.
“There was no work too hard—none too dirty,” he would write. “I was ready to saw wood, shovel coal, carry wood, sweep the chimney, or roll oil casks.”
His name was Frederick Douglass and for first time in his life, he was working for himself and his newly married wife, Anna. “It was the first work,” he wrote, “the reward of which was to be entirely my own. There was no Master Hugh standing ready, the moment I earned the money, to rob me of it.”
The year was 1838. Dressed as a sailor and using false papers, the young man (he was just 20) had fled Baltimore. Having found a haven in New Bedford, he was amazed at its wealth and absence of poverty. “I had somehow imbibed the opinion that, in the absence of slaves, there could be no wealth, and very little refinement.”
He continued: “Everything looked clean, new, and beautiful. I saw few or no dilapidated houses, with poverty-stricken inmates; no half-naked children and barefooted women, such as I had been accustomed to see.”
Instead, Douglass found a city bustling with commerce and men and women eagerly engaged in their work. “I saw no whipping of men; but all seemed to go smoothly on. Every man appeared to understand his work, and went at it with a sober, yet cheerful earnestness….”
Most surprising was the condition of fellow fugitives and free Blacks. “I found many, who had not been seven years out of their chains, living in finer houses, and evidently enjoying more of the comforts of life, than the average of slaveholders in Maryland.”
His friends, Nathan and Polly Johnson, who had taken him and Anna into their home, “lived in a neater house; dined at a better table; took, paid for, and read, more newspapers; better understood the moral, religious, and political character of the nation,—than nine tenths of the slaveholders in Talbot county Maryland. Yet Mr. Johnson was a working man. His hands were hardened by toil, and not his alone, but those also of Mrs. Johnson.”
Even though New Bedford had become a refuge for escaped slaves, there was still racial prejudice. In Baltimore, Douglass had worked as a ship’s caulker, but was refused work with the white caulkers here, work which would have earned him twice his laborer’s wage.
Still, he and his wife made a living and found their own apartment. They attended church and socialized with others in the community. As a boy he had been taught to read by the sympathetic wife of his owner. Now he scoured the pages of The Liberator, published in Boston by William Lloyd Garrison.
Three years later, at an abolitionist meeting on Nantucket, he was asked to tell his own story, and the rest is history. He went on to become perhaps the most eloquent champion of the anti-slavery cause, lecturing, editing, writing and speaking throughout the Northern States, England and Ireland. A friend of all those yearning for freedom, he was an advocate for women’s rights as well.
Remembering Frederick Douglass is fitting as we celebrate Black History Month. But it’s also important given the threats to the human rights of millions of those in our nation today threatened with deportation. Like him, they have sought refuge among us. Like him, they will work at anything to provide for their families. Like him, they have stories to tell.
As the Trump administration carries out raids, as it dehumanizes men, women and children because of their immigration status or gender identity, I can’t help wondering what Frederick Douglass what would have to say.
It was a gray day in Moscow, and a 7-year-old girl was on the way to the train station. Her mother had gone to the hospital to deliver, and the girl was being sent to her aunt. In the streets, she remembers, were soldiers with rifles, and everywhere people in shock, some openly weeping.
Why are they crying,” she asked her father. It was March 5, 1953.
“Stalin has died,” her father said.
A friend and colleague told me this story. She also said that in a little bag her father took with him to work each day he packed a toothbrush, razor and extra underwear, in case he didn’t return.
I could relate. Also having Russian heritage, I knew of the Soviet dictator’s reign of terror. My relatives, German-Russian farmers on the Kuban steppe in Southern Russia, were exiled to Siberia and Kazakhstan. One died in a gulag. Another was shot. My Tanta Anna as a teenager was forced to work in a logging camp.
Meanwhile, my friend grew up under Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev. In a famous speech, Khrushchev had shocked the party by condemning Stalin’s crimes, coining the phrase, “cult of personality.”
In the following years, she excelled at the university, earning a doctorate. and began a career teaching math. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, she, her husband and their parents left Moscow and settled in New England. We taught together in Massachusetts.
As I had tea with her one day between classes, we talked about Stalin and the power he had over people. I recalled a passage in Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago describing a Communist party meeting in the 1940s, where, after Stalin had spoken, the audience jumped to its feet to applause. The applause continued. It didn’t stop. Looking around, members were afraid to stop clapping. Would someone notice? Would they be on the slow train to Siberia?
Similar scenes occurred in Nazi Germany. In a 1936 photograph of a rally held at a shipyard, one German worker stands in a crowd with his arms folded. He is the only one not giving the Nazi salute. Once a loyal member of the Party, August Landmesser had fallen in love with a Jewish woman. After his engagement was discovered, he was expelled from the Party, and his marriage application denied. They had a daughter.
In 1937 Landmesser attempted to flee Germany with his family, but was arrested at the border. The Gestapo also arrested his wife, who delivered their second child in prison. Sent to the Bernburg Euthanasia Centre, she was murdered along with 14,000 others.
After three years in a concentration camp, Landmesser was forced into the German Army. He went missing in Croatia.
Many are the lessons we can draw from history. One we cannot ignore, however, is that authoritarian, autocratic governments cause great harm, not only to democratic institutions, but to vulnerable people.
Deportation of Jews from Muenster, Germany, Dec. 13, 1941.
As we begin life under a second Trump administration, millions of our neighbors are threatened with deportation. These include hundreds of thousands of DACA students and millions under temporary protected status (TPS) or awaiting action on their requests for asylum.
In the coming days, how shall we respond. Will we clap? Will we fold our arms? Will we speak what we believe? Will we act to safeguard the lives and liberties of others?
This summer when our cousins, the Haegelens, arrived from Germany, east and west came together. Irina grew up in a village in Siberia, Manfred in Ufa on the slopes of the Ural Mountains. When they were 15, as the Soviet Union was crumbling, their families emigrated to Germany.
When their jet touched down at Logan, they brought their two children, Friedrich and Johanna. They also brought stories, not only about their busy lives near Dusseldorf, but about family history.
Their branch of the family connects to the same tree as my paternal ancestors. We share great grandparents, Mennonite farmers who settled in Southern Russia, along with other ethnic Germans invited to Russia in the 18th century by Catherine II.
In 1914, at the start of the Great War, my grandfather was arrested and exiled to Siberia. The next year, however, he escaped to China, then boarded a ship to San Francisco. The rest of the family remained in Russia.
Now, in our backyard, children and grandchildren were playing together. We made day trips to Walden Pond and Rockport, hiked in the Fells and visited Stone Zoo. In the evening we played dominoes and bingo, calling out numbers in two languages.
Arriving in Germany as teenagers, Manfred and Irina found opportunities unavailable in Russia. Excelling in their studies, they both earned doctorates, Manfred in engineering, Irina in pharmacology.
In the evening we shared old photos and stories. Irina remembered carrying milk in cans from their small farm to the depot. She also remembers her grandfather, who taught math in the village school. He saw her potential and encouraged her.
We also talk of our beloved Tanta Anna, who with two of her five children left their kolkhoz, a collective farm in Southern Russia, to find a new life in Cologne. I have a photo of her on a motorcycle.
When she was 17, during World War II, she was forced to work in the forests, cutting and hauling trees. It happened like this. After Hitler’s tanks crossed into Russia, Stalin, fearing that the nation’s ethnic minorities would rise up against him, ordered their removal and banishment. It was the Great Deportation of 1941.
On September 1, 1941, some 440,000 ethnic Germans living along the Volga were told to report for deportation. Treated as prisoners, they were herded into freight cars for the long trek east. The journey—the trains stopping only every three or four days for food and water—took weeks, sometimes months. On the way four of ten deportees died, their bodies left inside the cars or thrown out beside the tracks.
The mass deportations were also accompanied by summary executions. Manfred’s grandfather, who taught German in the village school, was taken out and shot.
Siberia was not the only destination. Thousands were deported to Kazakhstan and other eastern republics. Cousin Lena, who also emigrated to Germany, told me her grandmother’s account.
“When the soldiers came, they took everything. If a woman had two skirts on, she had to take one off and give it to them.”
They traveled in horse-drawn carts across Kazakhstan almost to the Chinese border. If someone died, they had to leave them lying there. There was no time for burial.
At their destination, there were no houses, so to survive the oncoming winter, they dug shelters in the earth. The next year they built crude houses. They could travel no more than three kilometers in any direction.
Russia’s Germans were not the only ones deported. In all, there were at least 1.5 million, including the Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Chechens and others.
As we sat on the couch sharing family photos, or watched the kids swinging in the hammock, I realized how lucky we are. How lucky the Haegelens are to have found good lives in Germany, and how lucky we are in America. Yet somewhere in my consciousness, as it is in theirs, is the shadow of history. A history of deportation, compulsion and violence. I pray it is something our children will never know.
Ben Jacques Stories 