Graves of Slaves
no. 9897
Cambridge, a Negro Belonging to Robert Oliver; Betty, a Negro Servant of Col. Robert Oliver and Bristol, a Negro Servant of Mr. C James Foster. “Ann, a Negro Child Belonging to Mr. Robert Oliver, &
Daughter to his Negro Mimbo; Aged 2 Yrs., Died June 1743.”
Robert Tracy Jackson. “History of the Oliver, Vassall and Royall Houses in Dorcheser, Cambridge and Medford.” The Genealogical Magazine, January, 1907, Vol. II, No. 1.1907.
“About 1737, Robert Oliver, a wealthy planter from Antigua [West Indies], settled in Dorchester. . . . . [William H. Whitmore cites records of purchases of land in Dorchester by Robert Oliver in 1738, and at later dates, and a petition by him in 1739 as a house owner to the town of Dorchester.] He brought a wife, Anne’, and one son Thomas, who became later the last Lieutenant-Governor of the Province of Massachusetts. . . . . Robert bought a number of pieces of land [in Dorchester], of which 30 acres had been the property of Comfort Foster; and on this homestead lot, he built in 1745, a fine mansion which took the place of a more modest house. [Pl. 1] . . . . Tradition records that he brought many black slaves with him, and dwells with scornful pity upon the fact that they carried burdens on their heads in ignorance of the proper use of a Yankee wheelbarrow.” (Stark). Three of his slaves, named Ann, Cambridge and Betty, are buried in the old North Cemetery in Dorchester. Trask comments on Oliver’s slaves, and their method of working.
The graves of these slaves are in the northwestern portion of the cemetery, near to what is now Columbia Road, formerly Boston St. Their positions are close together and are marked by three small slate head-stones. The epitaphs are worth recording as I believe they have not been previously published.
no. 23773, photo 2024
ANN A NEGRO CHILD
BELONGING TO Mr.
ROBERT OLIVER, & DAUGr. TO HIS
NEGRO NIMBO; AGED 2 Yrs.
DIED JUNE 1743.
CAMBRIDGE A NEGRO
BOY BELONGING TO
ROBERT OLIVER Esqr.
AGED 3 YEARS HE
DIED DECr. Ye 14, 1 1747
BETTY A NEGRO
SERVANT OF COL.
ROBERT OLIVER
DIED FEBy Ye 19, 1748. AGED
ABOUT 25 YEARS.
See also:
“The Slaveholders of Dorchester.” by Gianna Cacciatore
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/02/26/opinion/slaveholders-dorchester/?p1=BGSearch_Overlay_Results
” The headstones sit beneath a billboard on the Columbia Road side of Dorchester North Burying Ground, a 400-year-old cemetery in Uphams Corner. Battered by time but still legible, the headstones mark the graves of three enslaved people who lived and died in this neighborhood: Betty, “aged about 25,” d. 1748; Bristol, “aged about 30,” d. 1748; and Cambridge, age 3, d. 1747.
“Like many headstones of the enslaved in the United States, these are carved with the names of the deceased and their enslavers. Thus we know that Cambridge and Betty were owned by Col. Robert Oliver, and Bristol by M. James Foster.
“Because details about the enslaved were not routinely recorded in the historical record, it’s hard to know more than this.
“But that doesn’t mean we know nothing. Robert Oliver was a wealthy and influential Bostonian in his time. From the copious information about him that has been preserved, it is possible to piece together a fuller picture of the lives of Cambridge, “a negro boy belonging to Robert Oliver,” and Betty, two enslaved people who lived and died — and, in the case of Betty, labored — right here, in Dorchester.
“Oliver was born in 1700 in Antigua to a prosperous English merchant family that owned two sugar plantations. He remained on the island, overseeing up to 400 enslaved people, until 1736, when a rumored island-wide rebellion was preemptively and violently quashed, resulting in the deaths of 88 of the enslaved. Historians today believe the rebellion conspiracy was conjured by nervous European landowners.
“Many fled the island, including Oliver and his family, who settled with a number of enslaved people in the area we now call Uphams Corner. His enslaved people built his house. Their efforts yielded an imposing mansion, one adorned with a gambrel roof and wooden balustrades. The mansion’s grandeur, praised in an 1873 essay, was a testament to the skill of its enslaved builders. Later famous as the birthplace of Massachusetts’ 15th governor, Edward Everett, the house no longer stands.”