Violet Thayer

The Hartwell Tavern where Violet Thayer was enslaved.

NPS Photo

Quick Facts

Significance:

Violet Thayer knew from her own experience that freedom came slowly. Enslaved "from infancy" by Ephraim and Elizabeth Hartwell, Violet fought to exercise her own agency at a time when Revolutionary conflict transformed the world around her.

Date of Birth:

Unknown

Place of Death:

Lincoln, Ma

Date of Death:

February 20, 1813

“The deceased while living was, from her infancy till her death, a servant to said John Hartwell.”
Probate Record for Violet Thayer, April 16, 1813
By Donald L. Hafner
 

Violet Thayer knew from her own experience that freedom came slowly, even after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared in 1783 that slavery was incompatible with the new state constitution. But Violet Thayer would prosper on her own, once freedom came.

Violet had been enslaved “from infancy” in the household of Ephraim and Elizabeth (Heywood) Hartwell, whose tavern stood along the Battle Road in north Lincoln. The Hartwells had married in 1732, and over the next seven years, they had five children. Then tragedy struck. In the span of three weeks in October 1740, all five children died of “throat distemper,” known at the time as “the strangling angel of children,” because swelling in the throat slowly cut off the child’s ability to breathe. Ephraim and Elizabeth began a family once again, and eventually had nine more children. Ephraim became one of the largest landowners in Lincoln when he inherited all his father’s property in 1745.

At first, Ephraim supported his family as a farmer and cordwainer. But in 1756, he obtained an innkeeper’s license, and that became his principal occupation. His three sons did military service during the Revolution, first as minute men and militia on April 19, 1775, and then in Massachusetts regiments. After the war, Ephraim’s unmarried son John returned to the household, to help his parents with the farm and the inn. When John married Hepzipah Brooks in 1783, he built an addition to the inn for his aging parents and then continued to run the inn on his own.

Violet Thayer no doubt knew what year she had been born and who her mother was, but no one in the Hartwell family bothered to record it. Possibly Ephraim Hartwell acquired Violet when he received his innkeeper’s license and anticipated that he would need more household help. According to local lore, on April 19, 1775, in the small hours of the night, Violet helped spread the alarm that the British Regulars were marching toward Concord.

Violet would have been not yet thirty years old in 1783, when Justice William Cushing of the Supreme Judicial Court asserted that slavery was no longer enforceable because of the Declaration of Rights in the new Massachusetts constitution. Despite Justice Cushing’s assertion, the Massachusetts legislature never formally banned slavery. The lawmakers got tangled up in a controversy over whether slaveowners were entitled to compensation for their loss of “property” if their enslaved servants were free. Ephraim Hartwell certainly did not think Violet was freed. When he made out his will in 1786, he included this clause: “I give unto Elizabeth Hartwell my beloved wife … my Negro woman, named Violet for her own service & disposal.”

Ephraim Hartwell died in 1793, and the probate inventory of his estate did not include any mention of Violet among his “property.” In the census returns of 1790 and 1800, the Hartwell household reported Violet under the census category of “All other free persons,” (“other” meaning non-white) rather than in the column for “Slaves.”

At some point between 1800 and 1808, Violet left the Hartwell household and set out on her own. Perhaps Violet had challenged her enslavement. Perhaps John Hartwell had formally released her. Either way, when freedom finally came to her, Violet Thayer made her own path in the world—and quite successfully.

Violet began earning money for herself as a seamstress. In time, she accumulated enough savings to make “loans at interest” to two of Lincoln’s prominent men. This was Violet’s shrewd equivalent of a savings account that earned a little income, at a time when Lincoln had no banks.

Violet died on February 20, 1813. She was probably in her late fifties, and she apparently had never married. She had taken Thayer as her surname, although the significance of that name to her is unknown. Violet’s mother was still alive, perhaps nearly eighty, but she was blind and incapable of handling Violet’s estate. So John Hartwell asked the probate court to appoint him as administrator.

The probate inventory of Violet Thayer’s possessions included what one might expect of a seamstress—two calico gowns, one cambric gown, four short gowns, six chemises, seven aprons, twelve petticoats, seventeen handkerchiefs, eight yards of shirting fabric, ten yards of sheeting, thimbles, work bags, yarn. Violet’s inventory also included two pairs of silk gloves, two bonnets, two coats, two cloaks, one muff, four pairs of shoes, a fan, and an umbrella. Perhaps Violet was allowing herself a bit of elegance. More likely, she had acquired these luxuries to earn a bit of income by selling them to others. Violet had been living in various households, at first with the Hartwells, then perhaps with her mother, so at her death, her only furniture items were a foot‑pedal spinning wheel and an old butter churn. In all, Violet’s estate was valued at $114, including $30 in cash and the two “loans at interest” totaling $55. No doubt Violet’s blind and aged mother could have benefitted from the modest savings Violet had managed to accumulate. But that is not what happened.

Violet had been ill for seven weeks before her death, and during that time, she had been cared for by John and Hepzibah Hartwell. In his role as administrator, John Hartwell reimbursed himself $38.50 for “boarding & nursing … fuel, candles, &c, &c” for these seven weeks of care. Then he reimbursed himself another $27.50 for boarding Violet five years earlier, for twenty‑two weeks in 1808. By the time he tallied up these reimbursements, the funeral costs, and his own charges as administrator, the total came to $119—more than the value of Violet’s estate. And John Hartwell noted that he was still owed $4.74.

Violet Thayer had given a lifetime of unpaid servitude to the Hartwells, yet when the fruit of her labor was finally hers to bequeath, to ease the poverty of her blind mother, that too was taken by her former enslaver.

Just one story of enslavement in the households along the Battle Road in Minute Man National Historical Park

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This article is an excerpt from a forthcoming book by Prof. Donald L. Hafner, Entangled Lives, Black and White: The Black Community, Enslaved and Free, of Eighteenth-century Lincoln Massachusetts, to be published by the Lincoln Historical Society. Prof. Hafner can be contacted at [e-mail].