Delete comment from: Boston 1775
Thank you for revisiting the question of whether or not James Otis Jr owned slaves in view of his strong antislavery sentiment expressed in his 1764 Rights of the British Colonies. Here is a link via the University of Oxford to the full document: http://tei.it.ox.ac.uk/tcp/Texts-HTML/free/N07/N07655.html (the antislavery part starts in the section "Of the natural
Rights of Colonists" and in particular the passage beginning with "The colonists are by the law of nature freeborn, as indeed all men are, white or black."
If I may clarify one point where you write : “London, servant to James Otis Esqr and Bathsheba Towardy, an Indian,” in 1760." Well, two things: The main point is that the paragraph also mentions “Col. Otis,” with the implication that the reference to James Otis Esqr may be to James Otis Jr. This leads to an examination of “the vital records” of Barnstable which indicates the reference is to James Otis Sr., also referred to as Col. Otis.
The link you provided for Barnstable Vital Records is to a compilation from issues of The Mayflower Descendant, and notes the volume and page of the original source for each entry. The Mayflower Descendant doesn’t seem to be a scholarly journal, though. The journal was printed from 1900 to 1937 with the “Barnstable, Mass., Vital Records Transcribed by the Editor.” The editor was George Ernest Bowman. Volume 23 of the journal, which was printed in 1921, contained the marriage information about London. I found an earlier document that contained the exact quotation about London and Bathsheba Towardy. Its’ title is either “Library of Cape Cod History & Genealogy- Barnstable Town Records”, or just “Barnstable Town Records” printed in 1912. It isn’t clear who compiled it but it contains entries going back to the middle of the 17th Century (with lots of ye’s) and was fascinating. It doesn’t have a table of contents or index, and it seems thrown together. Here it is via Google Books: http://bit.ly/2rDib3D On page 36 there is an Oct. 23d 1734 reference to “James Otis Esq.” It had to be James Sr. since Jr. was about 9 years old then. On page 37 is the reference to London and Bathsheba’s wedding in 1760. After that on the same page is the notice of the birth of “Their son James born 5th Fery 1724-5.” Then on the same page it jumps to an 1772 event which includes: “ ‘Voted to give the Hon. James Otis Esq. Thanks for his good services he has done this Town’ 45 years.” Thus the reference is still to Otis Sr. at that point, so relying on that document London would be connected with James Sr.
I wonder if there is a scholarly or accessible source of the Barnstable Town Records so it can be verified that the reference is to James Otis, Sr.? The actual quote from the Barnstable Town Records was “London, Negro man, servant to James Otis Esq and Bathsheba Lowardy, an Indian, Dec’r 19, 1760.” The compiled list you linked to varied on this from the link that the compiled list itself supplied to a copy of the page from the actual Mayflower Descendant. I wonder if it was possible that London was not a slave? Would London’s marriage have been included in the Barnstable Town Records if he was a slave?
Sadly, I noticed that the 1771 Massachusetts tax records for Samuel Adams showed one “servant for life.” I came across your mention of his “servant” Surry in your Jan. 8, 2009 post, http://boston1775.blogspot.com/2008/01/samuel-adamss-servant-surry.html Perhaps the entry is for Surry. I wonder if there were laws, or other impediments on the books against freeing slaves in Massachusetts between 1765 and 1771?
Jun 11, 2017, 2:58:09 AM
Posted to James Otis, Jr., and Slavery Revisited