Windsor’s population had grown so by 1790 that two congregational churches—one north of the Farmington River and another south—served the faithful of the town. Records of the North Windsor Church note “Baptiz’d Jack Japhet Pell Negro quondam servant of Dr. Chaffee on his profession of faith” on February 22, 1790.1 Pell was an adult free person when he was baptized and joined the church.
What can we tease out from this one record about Pell’s life and his life in enslavement?
Single, one-word names denote most enslaved people in 18th century Windsor records. For some, a first and a last name are used, but three names—first, last, and middle—are extremely rare. The North Windsor Church records list Pell’s name as Jack Jephat Pell. Jephat is an Old Testament name, the name given to one of Noah’s sons. After the flood, Noah divides the world among his sons; in this biblical story Jephat is given what is known as Europe. In early 18th century New England, Jephat, a Native person and so-called “Indian preacher” living on Martha’s Vineyard visited members of the Niantic and Narragansett nations in Rhode Island and Connecticut hoping to persuade them to convert to Christianity.2 A half-century earlier--the 1650s—a man identified as an Indian named Japhet moved to Hartford and purchased a very small house, appearing on the tax records as paying one of the lowest taxes in the town.3 While his place of residence before Hartford is unknown, perhaps the same violence that disrupted the Niantic and Narragansett nations had impacted his life too. It’s probably impossible to know the meaning Jack Japhet Pell ascribed to his own name—what it meant to him–but the examples above suggest possibilities of a name chosen to express belonging within Christianity and/or within Southern New England Indigenous naming heritages.
Antonio Bly’s deep investigation of enslaved persons’ names presented in colonial New England fugitive ads arrives at the observation that “names afforded enslaved African Americans their most brazen expressions of the aesthetic;”4 an aesthetic he defines as “pretty, sassy, and cool.”5 Bly is referring to names given or claimed by Blacks or persons of mixed-race heritages, not names chosen by whites. Might Jack Pell have claimed his middle name–Japhet–and in doing so, expressed an aesthetic or one of the aesthetics of his identity. Did he use all three names regularly or were these used exclusively by White record keepers in Connecticut? Admittedly, we want Jack Japhet Pell to be sassy and cool; Bly would say these are elements of resistance in Northern enslavement, and it’s tempting to wonder if Pell gained his freedom through some act of resistance.6 Documentation of his manumission eludes researchers. And what about the name Jack? Could this be a name given to Japhet by an enslaver or employer, a moniker associated with the masses of working common people during the 18th and early 19th centuries; a name assigned by the powerful to laborers who in turn lost their individuality, their identities lumped into an amorphous group of people who work and work for others, and are referred to as “Jack”.7
Jack J. Pell--as he was named in a sentence appearing in the 1909 Chaffee Family Genealogy-- (it’s not surprising that the name Jack is highlighted and Japhet is reduced to “J” in this telling of his baptism) was enslaved by Doctor Hezekiah Chaffee, Jr. 8 While the dates of his enslavement remain unclear, it’s unlikely that Pell worked inside the Chaffee household which by February 1790 included Mrs. Charlotte Bradley Chaffee, three-year old Abigail, and almost one-year old Hezekiah.9 Instead, it was most likely Nancy Toney, enslaved since birth, who worked in the house. By 1790, she had lived with the family for five years and herself was around 15 years old having been removed from her own birth family in southern Connecticut upon the marriage of Doctor Chaffee, Jr. and Charlotte Bradley. Charlotte’s father had previously enslaved Nancy and sent Nancy to live with the newlywed Chaffees in 1785.10 Pell may have done agricultural work, helped Doctor Chaffee with this medical practice or perhaps performed other tasks. We wonder if he and Nancy Toney, an enslaved person with a first and last name too--a combination of her mother’s and father’s names—socialized or worked together outside the physical boundaries of the Chaffee family's home and land holdings. We wonder if they interacted once Pell became a free person in 1790. We wonder if they knew each other previously in southern Connecticut.
What we do know is that Pell was a father and, a decade after his own baptism, tragically lost one or possibly two children. The most definitive evidence tells us that he lost his child, aged two, on February 16, 1800.11 Pell, and presumably the child’s mother and Pell’s partner, laid him or her to rest in Hartford’s Ancient Burying Ground, the “first and foremost burying ground in Harford… Anyone who died in town, regardless of age, gender, race, ethnic background, economic status, or religious faith, was interred” there.12 The 1820 US Census lists Japhet Pell living in Montville, Connecticut.13 Documents from an 1817 court case regarding debts owed by Pell and Primus Geer in Montville, New London County, Connecticut reveal Pell signing the legal papers with his mark, the customary X signifying that he could not or chose not to write his name, Japhet Pell.14
1. North Windsor Congregational Church Records, Windsor, CT (1761-1794), Available at C - Film # 008305825 (familysearch.org). See also, William H. Chaffee, The Chaffee Genealogy, 1635-1909, New York: The Grafton Press, 1909, 204.
2. William S. Simmons, "Red Yankees: Narragansett Conversion in the Great Awakening." American Ethnologist 10, no. 2 (1983): 253-71. Accessed July 22, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/643911, 260.
3. “The Rate Payer: The Story of Japhet - Uncovering Their History (africannativeburialsct.org)”, Uncovering Their History: African, African-American and Native-American Burials in Hartford’s Ancient Burying Ground, 1640-1815, February 28, 2019.
4. Antonio T Bly, "Pretty, Sassy, Cool: Slave Resistance, Agency, and Culture in Eighteenth-Century New England." The New England Quarterly 89, no. 3 (2016): 457-92. Https://www.jstor.org/stable/26405800, 476.
5.Ibid., 1.
6. Ibid., 469.
7. Jack Tar: Myth and Reality | More Than a List of Crew (mun.ca) Maritime History Archive, Memorial University of Newfoundland.
8. William H. Chaffee, The Chaffee Genealogy, 1635-1909, New York: The Grafton Press, 1909, 204.
9. Ibid., 205.
10. Christina Vida, Nancy Toney's Lifetime in Slavery | Connecticut History | a CTHumanities Project, 2016.
11. Pell, Jack, Child of - Uncovering Their History (africannativeburialsct.org), Record #363.
12. Ibid.; Home - Hartford’s Ancient Burying Ground (theancientburyingground.org).
13. "United States Census, 1820," Database with images. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org : 20 July 2021. Citing NARA microfilm publication M33. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.
14. Geer v Pell, March 1817, New London CT County Court, CT State Library African American and People of Color Collection, Box 5, Folder 30.
Documentation of Jack Japhet Pell’s Baptism, 1790. North Windsor Congregational Church Records, Windsor, CT (1761-1794)
Japhet Pell’s mark. Geer v Pell, March 1817, New London CT County Court Records, CT State Library African American and People of Color Collection