One of the notable contributions of the Yale & Slavery Research Project will be the investigation of chattel slavery in eighteenth- century New Haven and in connection to Yale College. Many previous histories of Yale relegated slavery to the periphery of their narratives or ignored the subject all together.
So far, the Eighteenth-Century Research Team has discovered that New Haven once harbored ships sailing directly to and from West Indies islands such as Barbados, a major site of the production of sugar, rum, and molasses during the Atlantic slave trade. As a lucrative seaport, New Haven was able to essentially outbid the towns of Saybrook and Hartford as the new location of Yale College when it moved from its location in Saybrook in 1717. In 1721 and 1727, the Connecticut Assembly explicitly directed taxes from West Indies rum to fund the College. Rum from the Caribbean was produced by numerous enslaved Africans, whose lives were routinely endangered and lost performing the brutal labor of harvesting and processing sugar cane into sugar, rum, and molasses.
Rum Duties to Yale College, in the Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut [1636-1776]
Additionally, several Yale students, faculty, and staff owned enslaved people. For example, it is widely known that famed New England preacher, Jonathan Edwards (Yale Class of 1720), owned enslaved Africans. However, other Yalies such as schoolmaster and Connecticut lottery manager, Samuel Mix (Yale Class of 1720), also enslaved people.
Mix assisted President Thomas Clap (Yale’s first president) in the building of Connecticut Hall, the oldest building on Yale’s campus. While enslaved people like George (enslaved by Clap), and free black skilled workers, such as Jethro and Gad Luke, worked to lay the brick and mortar of Connecticut Hall, these contributions to Yale by free and enslaved Africans have been lost over time.
Alongside profits from West Indian slavery, the labor of enslaved and free Africans, and lands from disposed Native Americans, some early donations to the College came from slave owners, such as Gurdon Saltonstall (Governor of Connecticut, 1708 to 1724), Joseph Noyes (Yale Class of 1709), and the aforementioned Thomas Clap (Yale President, 1740 to 1766).
Our research is ongoing and the (hi)story is still unfolding. However, our findings already make clear that slavery was not peripheral to the early development of Yale College. Slavery was a significant component of eighteenth-century Yale. The Eighteenth-Century research team is uncovering this story, or as much as we can find, to give a full(er) history of Yale and Slavery.
—Teanu Reid, PhD candidate in African American Studies and History at Yale University
Eighteenth- Century Research Team:
Christy Charnel, Yale Divinity School ‘22
Kate Kushner, Yale College ’21
Kenneth Minkema, Executive Editor, Jonathan Edwards Center, Yale Divinity School
Michael Morand, Communications Director, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Teanu Reid, Departments of History and African American Studies, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Ph.D. ’23
Harold Rose, Senior Associate General Counsel
Edward Town, Head of Collections Information & Access; Assistant Curator of Early Modern Art, Yale Centre for British Art
Bibliography
Primary Sources (arranged by date of publication)
Connecticut. The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut [1636-1776] ..: Transcribed And Published, (in Accordance With a Resolution of the General Assembly) … Hartford: Brown & Parsons, 1850-1890.
“Sundry accounts and memoranda, 1749-1754”, Folder 8, Box 1, Thomas Clap, President of Yale College, Records (RU 130). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.
Inventory of Samuel Mix, August, 10, 1756, Ancestry.com. Connecticut, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1609-1999 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015. Original data: Connecticut County, District and Probate Courts.
“Runaway Slave Ad.” Connecticut Gazette, 7 Oct. 1758. Connecticut Hall citation: Yale Events and Activities Photographs (RU 690). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.
Secondary Sources
Dexter, Franklin Bowditch, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College: With Annals of the College History. New York: H. Holt and Company, 1885.
Dexter, Franklin Bowditch. Sketch of the History of Yale University. New York: H. Holt and Company, 1887.
Mitchell, Mary (Hewitt). “Slavery in Connecticut and Especially in New Haven,” In New Haven Colony Historical Society Papers, Volume 10, 286-312. New Haven: Printed for the Society, 1951.