PHYLLIS

Plaque location: Black Hall

Phyllis, the “maid servant” of Rev. Jonathan Parsons (1707-1776) when she was baptized on August 10, 1740, was likely a gift from his father-in-law John Griswold (1690-1764). Lyme slave-holders commonly distributed youths born into hereditary slavery in their households to family members, and Parsons, chosen as minister of Lyme’s first parish in 1731, had married that year Griswold’s 15-year-old daughter Phoebe. Like Cato, the child servant in Parsons’s household who died in 1734 (commemorated by a Witness Stone in 2021), Phyllis likely moved from Griswold’s household in Black Hall, some three miles away, to serve the new minister. 

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Phyllis apparently did not leave Lyme when Rev. Parsons moved with his family to Newbury, Massachusetts, after a rupture in the first parish during the Great Awakening revival movement. The inclusion of Phyllis in Judge Griswold’s estate inventory indicates that she returned to his Black Hall household. Two decades later in 1766, she passed with her unnamed child to Griswold’s widow Hannah Lee Griswold (1694-1773). 

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Research into the lives of those enslaved in Lyme is ongoing and sometimes uncovers new details that may not have been known when the stone was installed. The text on this page reflects the most current information.