Elizabeth Freeman Image Credit: Courtesy Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston
Mum Bett, sued for her freedom in 1780 and won based on wording in the Massachusetts Constitution leading to the end of slavery in Massachusetts. She is best-known for her wisdom of the law and her courage to bring her case to trial less than one year after the state constitution’s adoption. Mum Bett’s case launched a series of “freedom suits” that led to the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts.
It is estimated that Mum Bett was born in 1742 to enslaved African parents in Clavareck, New York, about twenty miles south of Albany. She was enslaved on the plantation of Pieter Hogeboom with Lizzie, her younger sister. Hogeboom was a Dutchman and when his youngest daughter, Hannah married Colonel John Ashley, he gifted Mum Bett at the age of around seven and her sister to the new couple (some accounts say the girls were inherited by the daughter when Hogeboom died).
Colonel John Ashley was a wealthy man of Sheffield, Massachusetts and one of the original proprietors granted settlement rights along the Housatonic River by the General Court of Massachusetts. Additionally, he was an influential lawyer, local judge, and had commanded a local militia in the French and Indian War. Ashley was considered a major slaveowner in the area with five slaves working on his property. This area became the largest settlement in western Massachusetts and would eventually become Berkshire County.
The influential Ashleys had four children they raised in their busy home. While enslaved by John Ashley, Mum Bett had a daughter known as “Little Bett” but the identification of the father is unknown. Bett’s husband was killed fighting in the Revolutionary War. She could not read or write but Bett was very clever. She would listen carefully to conversations of the wealthy men visiting the house including discussions of the Bill of Rights and the new Massachusetts state constitution.
Colonel John Ashley House
Colonel Ashley became a judge in the Berkshire Court of Common Pleas in 1761. He was appointed chairman of a committee in 1773 that was “to take into consideration the grievances which Americans in general and Inhabitants of this Province in particular labor under.” His responsibility as committee chairman was to moderate the production of the Sheffield Declaration of 1772. This declaration included the statement, “mankind in a state of nature are equal, free, and independent of each other, and have a right to the undisturbed enjoyment of their lives, their liberty and property.” Later, the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 adopted this wording.
The developmental team of the Sheffield Declaration met for several hours in the Ashley’s home in early January of 1773, within Mum Bett’s earshot (she was most likely serving the attendees at the time). It is assumed this is the meeting that introduced Mum Bett to her “legal” interpretation of the freedom rights of the enslaved in Massachusetts. Mum Bett understanding from the overheard conversations was that if all people were born free and equal, then the laws must also apply to her.
Mum Bett served the Ashley family for over 30 years. When her mistress Hannah (who was known to be very abusive of the enslaved) attempted to strike her sister with a heated kitchen shovel, Mum Bett intervened, taking the blow herself. The injury caused a severe wound and left a nasty scar that Mum Bett would later leave exposed to show the signs of cruelty the enslaved endured. After the injury was incurred, Mum Bett (estimated to have been about thirty-seven years old) left the house. When Ashley tried to force her return, she sought out the legal advice of attorney Theodore Sedgwick of Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
Theodore Sedgwick (1747 – 1813) by Gilbert Stuart Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Sedgwick fought in the Revolutionary War and was elected to the first General Court under the new Massachusetts state constitution in 1780. Sedgwick was a prominent attorney who helped draft the Sheffield Declaration with Colonel Ashley and is believed to have been his close friend. Sedgwick was anti-slavery and agreed to represent Mum Bett in suing for her freedom. Along with other anti-slavery lawyers, Sedgwick saw this as a potential “test case” on the constitutionality of slavery in Massachusetts. Their lawsuit was known as Brom & Bett v. Ashley, and it was argued before a county court. Sedgwick and his team argued that no law had ever established slavery and therefore slavery was certainly not protected under the state constitution.
Mum Bett’s accounting of her “legal” education was recorded by Harriet Martineau, a strong abolitionist and close friend of the Sedgwicks. Martineau states that when Theodore Sedgwick asked Mum Betts how she obtained a belief suggesting she had legal rights to freedom, she replied, “By keepin’ still and mindin’ things.” When pressed further, Mum Bett elaborated that when she was waiting a table at the Ashleys, she heard gentlemen talking over the Bill of Rights and the new constitution of Massachusetts. They said that all people were born free and equal, and she resolved to test this statement in court.
Sedgwick filed a document with his legal team called a “writ of replevin” (a form of action taken for the recovery of property) with the Berkshire Court of Common Pleas in May of 1781. The property in this case was specifically, two humans (Bett and Brom) who claimed they were being illegally detained. At least two such writs were issued to the Colonel and his son, John Ashley, Jr. (where Brom may have been enslaved). After the Ashleys refused to release their two slaves, the court ordered the sheriff to issue a summons to both father and son to appear at its next session. Although the Berkshire Court said Colonial Ashley could not declare Bett and Brom his legitimate property, he still refused to provide them with their freedom. The case proceeded and was heard by the County Court on August 21, 1781.
The opponents included prominent representation on both sides. The Sedgwick team included the assistance of Tapping Reeve, of Litchfield, Connecticut (who later founded the Litchfield Law School) while the Ashleys were represented by David Noble, who subsequently became a judge, and John Canfield, a respected lawyer from Sharon, Connecticut.
Ashley’s lawyers argued they could prove that “the said Brom and Bett, are and were at the time of Issuing the original Writ [or replevin], the legal Negro Servants of the said John Ashley during their Lives” and therefore, these were grounds for the case to be dismissed. Sedgwick’s team argued there was no legal ground to assert that Bett and Brom were servants for life to the Ashley family. Therefore, since there was no law establishing slavery, there was no proof that Brom and Bett were legally obtained and even if there were such an argument, the Massachusetts state constitution revoked that right.
The jury trial found in favor of Bett and Brom agreeing there was no law supporting slavery and that the state constitution prohibited slavery thus making them the first enslaved African Americans freed under the Massachusetts constitution of 1780. Ashley was ordered to pay Bett and Brom thirty shillings and to cover their court costs. He appealed the case and then later dropped the appeal after a reaffirming decision in the Quock Walker case. The Bett-Brom case was set up as a municipal case precedent and ultimately led to Massachusetts’ abolition of slavery under the state constitution.
While Colonel Ashley pleaded with Mum Bett to return for compensated employment after the case, she chose to work for the Sedgwicks as their housekeeper. Once a freed woman, Mum Bett adopted the name of Elizabeth Freeman for herself. Eventually, Freeman’s daughter joined her at the Sedgwicks. Freeman became an extended family member of the Sedgwicks and even their defenders.
On a winter night in 1785, followers of Shay’s Rebellion broke into the Sedgwick home demanding silver. It is recorded that Freeman faced the men down while Theodore Sedgwick was away. She detoured them through the house on their search for the silver. Meanwhile, Freeman had hidden the Sedgwick silver in her own chest of drawers. When the unruly men attempted to search her room, she shamed them out of looking by urging the intruders to search - they ultimately declined, preserving the family silver.
After 20 years of living with the Sedgwicks, Freeman was able to buy her own house in 1808 from her earnings where she then lived with her children on nearby Cherry Hill Road. In 1811, Susan Sedgwick (Theodore’s granddaughter) painted a miniature portrait of Freeman wearing clothes that representative respectability for women of the day including a blue dress and white neckcloth. She is wearing a gold necklace given to her by Catherine Sedgwick (daughter of Theodore Sedgwick and mother of Susan).
Sedgwick family cemetery plot in Stockbridge, MA
On October 18, 1829, Elizabeth Freeman signed with her mark, a last will and testament revealing the fact that she was married and had children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. As a free woman, she was a popular nurse and midwife until her death on December 28th, 1829, surrounded by generations of her freed family. Mum Bett is buried in the Sedgwick plot in Stockbridge, Massachusetts as a family member and placed in the family “inner circle” of burials. She is the only non-Sedgwick family member and only African American buried there. Her memorial at the site reads:
“ ELIZABETH FREEMAN, known by the name of MUMBET died Dec. 28 1829. Her supposed age was 85 years. She was born a slave and remained a slave for nearly thirty years. She could neither read nor write, yet in her own sphere she had no superior nor equal. She neither wasted time nor property. She never violated a trust, nor failed to perform a duty. In every situation of domestic trial, she was the most efficient helper, and the tenderest friend. Good mother fare well.”
Mum Bett’s freedom led to another future African American trailblazer, one of her great-grandchildren was W.E.B. DuBois. He was born in Great Barrington, the same town where her case was argued and won almost forty years earlier.
W.E.B. DuBois - Getty Images
References:
https://www.americanheritage.com/slave-who-sued-freedom
http://www.longroadtojustice.org/topics/slavery/mum-bett.php
https://www.masshist.org/longroad/01slavery/bett.htm
https://www.massmoments.org/moment-details/jury-decides-in-favor-of-elizabeth-mum-bett-freeman.html
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2p39.html
https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/elizabeth-freeman