In a History Blog article posted on the Florence Griswold Museum's website, Old Lyme Witness Stones chair Carolyn Wakeman reveals new information about enslaved persons who ran away from Lyme owners. Advertisements in the Connecticut Gazette, published in New London, document 21 slaves who escaped and offer precise details about their clothing, as well as other identifying details. Among the runaways are four persons commemorated by Witness Stones on Lyme Street and McCurdy Road. "The advertisements reshaped what I know about local enslavement," Wakeman said. "Previously I thought Samuel Freeman, emancipated in 1820, was the last person enslaved in Lyme, but then I found an advertisement for "James Black man," who ran away from Joseph Noyes Jr. in 1826."
Read the entire article here.
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