MODULE III The Emergence of Free Black Communities in Connecticut 1800 1830 Introduction Between 1800 and 1830 the free black population of the state would grow steadily Many of these individuals moved to Connecticut s growing towns including New Haven Hartford and Middletown where more work could be found In those locations the free black population began to cluster in fledgling communities New Haven witnessed the growth of a remarkable black community under the leadership of William Lanson a prosperous landholder stone mason and stable owner Prospects for the state s free black Americans however began to dim in the 1810s when an anxious General Assembly disfranchised them A growing voice of citizens began to call for the removal of free black residents in the 1820s and condemned them as a degraded people 1 First Communities Numbers of free black individuals in Connecticut grew in the first decades after 1800 Many migrated towards the larger towns and cities of the state where they began to gather with others in early neighborhoods As these fledgling communities became more settled free Afrodescendant people began to create institutions such as churches and improvement societies to serve the needs of their communities Prominent individuals from among them also began to assume positions of leadership The free black population of the North grew dramatically between 1790 and 1830 In 1790 free black individuals in the North numbered about 27 000 in 1810 75 000 and in 1830 145 000 The numbers of free black persons had grown since the Revolution even more dramatically in the South especially in the upper South states of Maryland Delaware Virginia and North Carolina However their importance continued to be outweighed by a much larger and even more rapidly expanding body of slaves In the 1 North freedom was becoming the rule for African Americans as slavery steadily declined This new free African American presence was pronounced in the growing cities of the early nineteenth century North especially the three eastern seaboard cities of Boston New York City and Philadelphia In 1790 over 5000 free black Americans lived in these three cities alone in 1810 18 000 and in 1830 26 000 Many thousands more especially after 1810 settled in older smaller cities like Providence Rhode Island New Haven Connecticut Brooklyn and Albany New York and in newly emerging cities such as Buffalo New York Cincinnati Ohio and Pittsburgh Pennsylvania Free black populations were drawn to cities because of the greater economic opportunities available in comparison to more rural locales where work was limited and black people were largely barred by local practices from purchasing property Cities also provided another enticement welcomed by free black Americans the occasion to gather together in large numbers to form their own distinctive neighborhoods and communities In the early nineteenth century free people of color launched such neighborhoods in Philadelphia s Cedar Ward on the north slope of Boston s Beacon Hill and in the Fifth and Sixth Wards of Lower Manhattan As the free black population grew in Connecticut black residents similarly tended to move towards the larger towns and cities of the state While the state had a little more than 2500 free blacks in 1790 by 1810 it had 6500 and by 1830 more than 8000 During slavery the enslaved had been spread throughout Connecticut to help meet the predominant agricultural needs of the colony For example the following small agricultural towns had also the following numbers of slaves in 1775 Milford 158 Farmington 106 Ridgefield 36 Pomfret 65 and Wallingford 135 Yet by 1800 and 2 after these black populations had diminished significantly Pomfret reported in 1800 that it had very few if any Negroes in the same year Ridgefield had only 8 in about 1810 Farmington indicated it had no more than 30 blacks in 1812 Wallingford reported 22 and in 1816 Milford stated that its black population was small Moreover a number of these resident black people were still slaves and unable to move freely On the other hand the black population in the growing urban centers of Connecticut was swelling While New Haven for example had a large enslaved population 262 in 1775 its free black population in 1810 was 390 and by 1820 would surpass 625 The free black population in the cities was usually undercounted as well because a surprising number of fugitives from slavery in the South fled to these towns to avoid official detection In New Haven in 1820 one townsperson observed that enslaved fugitives from the South come northward and are rapidly increasing in this town Another estimated in 1823 that New Haven contained no less than about seven hundred free black people In New Haven and in other large towns such as Hartford New London and Middletown free black workers could find employment as sawyers bootblacks domestics launderers day laborers barbers mariners and as other service providers Some like William Lanson of New Haven became property owners and businessmen Homer Peters of Danbury opened a barber shop at the town s Meeker Hotel Work although menial and poorly paid was still readily available in the large towns allowing the black Americans a chance to maintain their independence Largely impoverished and treated with mounting disdain by the masses of whites urban free black Americans sought increasingly to gather together living worshipping and socializing in spaces free from white control In the decades after the Revolution 3 many settled on the outskirts of towns like New Haven in makeshift dwellings etching out a life as best they could Due to costs and community customs property and home ownership was beyond the reach of the vast majority of free black Connecticut residents Those renting places to live in large towns like New Haven often found a selection of dwellings which included squalid cellars or huts in the rear of backyards In New Haven however by the 1810s William Lanson began purchasing inexpensive lots in a relatively undeveloped section of New Haven called the New Township By 1820 he owned a remarkable amount of land there and had constructed a number of buildings with small residences for rent many of which he rented to African Americans By 1820 there were well over 150 black residents clustered in Lanson s district of the New Township thus creating the first discernible black neighborhood in town Their numbers grew throughout the expansive 1820s to include Lanson and the