Call for Proposals for a Public Monument
[On the occasion of the 375th anniversary of the incorporation of the Town of Kittery]
To the following histories around water:
To the four unidentified Black individuals who did not survive the passage to Kittery from Barbados aboard the Sarah under Captain John Morris, 1719, to be sold to Sir William Pepperrell as enslaved people, and whose names were not recorded. To the one woman aboard the Sarah, 1719, to be sold to Pepperrell as an enslaved person for 50 shillings, and whose identity was only recorded as being “marked with a Y on her right shoulder,” who survived the voyage only to die shortly upon arriving. (1)
To “Boston,” a young enslaved person who belonged to Captain John Underwood of Kittery, who escaped as far as the “crook opposite Cutt’s Island,” in 1777, before his capture by John Trott and Philip Hubbard. (2)
To Black seamen— one in every five American seamen in the early 19th century— whose stories have been less visible over time. (3)
How might we remember and make visible these histories here in Kittery? Responses and drawings will be archived.
__________________________
(1) “Bill of lading for slave, 1719,” April 11, 1719, Item 7372, Coll. 35, Box 1/13, William Pepperrell Papers, Maine Historical Society, Portland, Maine. https://www.mainememory.net/artifact/7372; Maine Historical Society. (2021). Begin Again: Reckoning with Intolerance in Maine [online exhibit]. Maine Historical Society , Accessed February 15, 2022. https://www.mainememory.net/exhibits/beginagain.
(2) Underwood, John; Trott, John; and Underwood, Philip, “1777 Account of slave capture by John Trott and Philip Hubbard for John Underwood of Kittery” (2017). 1764-1865. 8. https://digitalmaine.com/early_aa_history_me/8.
(3) W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).