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Slaves And Free Blacks In Mid-Eighteenth To Mid-Nineteenth Century Cape Neddick, Maine, Bryan C. Weare

Maine History

In coastal southern Maine, a number of towns people enslaved others in the years through the end of the American Revolution. The height of slavery in the region was the period just before the American Revolution. During the revolution, attitudes changed dramatically leading to emancipation in Massachusetts and what is now Maine. This article explores the lives of Cape Neddick’s early black community, before and after freedom, using sparse public documents, contemporary newspaper accounts, local histories, and the unpublished diary of farmer Joseph Weare. The diary provides evidence of how a prominent slaveholder’s grandson frequently cooperated with a neighboring free …