The Scary Truth: Slaveowners in the Family Tree
Five Generations of Bucknam Slaveowners:
William Bucknam
Joses and William Bucknam
Lt. Samuel Bucknam
Captain William Bucknam & Benjamin Bucknam
John Bucknam
I was so surprised to find one of my ancestors, Reuben Hull,
owned slaves in New Hampshire, of all places. I’d never realized that slavery
had been so common in the northern colonies in the 17th century—I’d
believed it was confined to the southern colonies. How wrong I was! But when I
discovered another ancestor, William Bucknam, was a slaveowner in
Massachusetts, I was stunned. I was even more horrified to realize the family
continued to own slaves over the course of five generations and for over a
century, and that they refused to free their last slaves until they were forced
to some years after Massachusetts outlawed slavery in 1783. This was a scary
and shameful chapter in the Bucknam family history.
I might never have discovered that the Bucknams owned slaves
if I hadn’t started researching William’s carpentry and construction career.
While he was an artisan, he was also acquiring large tracts of land in the
Charlestown and Malden areas of Massachusetts. However, he apparently lacked
necessary farming skills and farm labor. When William’s wife was accused of
adultery with William’s friend, farmer Robert Burden, one of the witnesses
defending Sarah and Burden noted that William “had much occation of carting and
plowing and had neither cattle nor skill of his owne to doe it and could
sheldom get others to doe it though often prest my selfe and others.” (See #1
below.) Perhaps William saw the acquisition of slaves as an easy option for
gaining farm laborers that he so obviously needed.
Several sources include this quote: “The Bucknam farm was a
slave farm. In the days of slavery it was one of the largest slave farms in the
northeast.” The source of this information is never identified, so it is hard
to evaluate its veracity.
According to the Corey book, “There were several slaves
attached to the farm of William Bucknam and his descendants…” How many is “several”?
A slave census done in 1754 in Massachusetts found only 21 slaves total in
Malden, 16 males and 5 females. Obviously by that year, the Bucknams had few
slaves on their farm.
However, there are references to the individual Bucknam
slaves in Malden town and court records from the late 1600s and early 1700s,
when William’s sons Joses and William Jr. had inherited their father’s land
following their father’s death in 1679.
When William Jr. died in 1693, his will granted freedom to one slave, a
man named Shan. It is unclear if this
was the only slave William owned, or if there were others who were not freed at
his death.
In addition to William’s Shan, Joses’ son Samuel owned a “negro
peeter” who had some sort of run-in with a Puritan woman in 1703. I can find no
explanation of the incident. Was it sexual? Was it an argument? Whatever the
details, it was serious enough that Samuel, as the person responsible for
Peeter’s actions, was charged a fine by the city of Malden in the amount of two
pounds and 12 shillings, a sizable sum for that period.
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| Samuel Bucknam headstone, from Findagrave |
Samuel’s son William, known as Captain William Bucknam from
his war service in Maine, was probably the person described in this incident
from Corey’s Malden history:
“The story is told that many times old Captain Bucknam
marched down the road from his house at the head of his band of Negro slaves
that had been captured from the Spanish and French. There is no explanation for
his title of "Captain". No date is given and therefore it is
impossible to determine to which Bucknam it referred.”
I find it very interesting that the slaves are supposedly trophies
of war, taken from the Spanish and French rather than purchased. If that is
true, perhaps William’s rank came from captaining a ship. Perhaps he received a
share of bounty from captured enemy ships that had been loaded with slaves as
well as other goods. We may never know the truth. William was born in 1709, and
died in 1776, so this incident likely occurred in the 1750s or 1760s after
William’s military service in the French and Indian War (1754-1763).
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| Captain William Bucknam's grave in Maine, from Findagrave |
The Malden history book also lists slave weddings, births
and deaths that author Corey had discovered in his research. One marriage
record was for “Bramer, a negro belonging to Benjamin Bucknam of Malden, and
Dinah, a mulatto belonging to Mr. Toler of Stoneham. By Rev. Joseph Emerson.
Jan. 24, 1760.” Benjamin was Captain William’s brother, and the son of Samuel
Bucknam.
The deaths included another slave owned by Benjamin Bucknam:
“Samson, a negro man belonging to Benjamin Bucknam, died January 5, 1786.” Note
that this is three years after the date slaves were supposed to be freed in
Massachusetts. Obviously Benjamin had not complied with the new law.
 |
| July 1749 sale ad from Charlestown where Bucknams owned land. |
The Maine State Museum had some interesting information on
the Bucknam family slaves as well. Captain William and Benjamin Bucknam bought
land in the Falmouth area of Maine, and alternated living in Massachusetts and
Maine. The State Museum owns a silk waistcoat worn by Captain William’s son
John at his wedding in 1773. The museum notes:
“Wearing silk, like owning slaves, was a sign of prestige. John
Bucknam was raised in a slave-owning household in Falmouth (Portland). When he
was three years old, his father William’s slave, Cuffe, ran away. William
advertised in three Boston newspapers to offer a cash prize for anyone who
caught and returned his property. Cuffe may have successfully escaped because
the first runaway notice appeared in 1749 and the last in 1755.
John Bucknam wore this silk waistcoat (vest) in 1773 when he
married Mary Wilson in Columbia Falls, Maine. He and Mary had nine children and
owned two or three enslaved people. The Bucknams were forced to free their
slaves when Massachusetts outlawed slavery in 1783.”
 |
| Boston Evening Post Fugitive Slave Advertisement Sep. 18, 1749 |
Corey’s history quotes an article about the Bucknam farm
from the August 14, 1875 edition of the Malden Mirror newspaper. The article,
which apparently provided some history of the Bucknams and the farm, stated
that, “The two last woolly-haired residents upon the place rejoiced in the
decidedly euphonious names of Pomp and Samp.”
Corey continues, “Pomp and seser (Cesar?) are mentioned as
fiddlers at a country frolic in 1777, in a piece of doggerel which is said to
have been written by one of the slaves of this estate. This rhyme, which, with
other curious papers, is in the possession of Mr. Swan, is hardly to be
compared with the work of Phyllis Wheatley, the slave poet of Boston. It was to
be sung ‘in the tune of the black swan’ and two couplets of the seven of which
it is composed will fairly present its merits.
Theare was five cobelers made a
frolick
As one was taken with the collick.
The fiddlers name was pomp or seser
And dauid danced with a mop
squeezer.”
I wish I knew what happened to Pomp, Samp, Seser and all the
other human beings my ancestors enslaved. What I do know is that apparently my
ninth-great-grandfather William Bucknam and at least two of his sons, (my
eighth great-grandfather Joses and his brother William), one of his grandsons (Samuel Bucknam), two of his great-grandsons
(Captain William and Benjamin Bucknam) and one great-great-grandson (John Bucknam) owned slaves, over a period from the 1660s until at least 1783. The Bucknam family was quite wealthy, and
unfortunately this wealth was built in part through the forced labor of an
unknown number of black slaves. This was a scary discovery and a grim legacy.
Sources:
Sex in Middlesex:
Popular Mores in a Massachusetts County, 1649-1699. Roger Thompson.
Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986; reprint 2012).
The History of Malden
Massachusetts, 1633-1785, Deloraine P Corey, 1836-1910, pgs. 417-451
Early History of
Malden, By Frank Russell, Arcadia Publishing, 2018, pgs 21-22
"A
Bucknam/Buckman Genealogy" Anne Theopold Chaplin, Gateway Press,
Baltimore, 1988,
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