Washerwoman/Laundress

Sign in Modify your search

Narrow Your Choices

Format

Type

Articles containing

Sex

Life event

Date

Subject

Occupation

Era

Availability

 1-2 of 2 Results  for:

  • Washerwoman/Laundress x
  • Writing and Publishing x
Clear all

Article

Spear, Chloe  

Margot Minardi

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

Boston freedwoman, was born in Africa. Spear is known to scholars primarily through the Memoir of Mrs. Chloe Spear, written by “A Lady of Boston” in 1832. According to the Memoir, Spear was kidnapped from the African coast when she was about twelve years old. Her captors carried her to a slave ship headed for Philadelphia, where Captain John Bradford purchased her and took her to his home in Boston.

Bradford was a merchant and, during the American Revolution, the Continental agent for Massachusetts. The Memoir depicts him as a harsh master and Chloe as an obedient slave. For the deeply religious author of the Memoir Bradford s most reprehensible fault was his failure to bring up his slaves in the Christian faith Bradford also claimed that it made negroes saucy to know how to read Lady of Boston 26 When he discovered that Chloe ...

Article

Spear, Chloe  

Caryn E. Neumann

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
06 April 2006
Published online:
01 December 2006

Chloe Spear was born in Africa. At about the age of twelve, while she was playing on the shore, she and three or four other children were captured by a band of white men who had hidden in the bushes nearby. They were transported to a slave ship for passage to the American colonies and arrived in Philadelphia. Too sick to be an attractive purchase, she went unsold at a slave market while her childhood companions were dispersed to various buyers. Eventually, a Mr. B. of Boston bought the young slave to serve as a household worker.

In this era the state of Massachusetts attempted to promote Christianity by forcing masters to rest slaves on the Sabbath Mr B permitted his slaves including Spear to attend church services for half of Sunday Like the others Spear lacked a strong enough command of English to understand the services The slaves ...