A Tale of Three Houses
Missionaries, emancipation, and madness in 18th Century New England
Mission House was built circa 1740, for John Sergeant, minister to the Stockbridge Indians, in Massachusetts.
Ashley House, built in Sheffield, MA, by Col. John Ashley in 1735, was the home where Elizabeth Freeman, "Mumbet", was enslaved until 1781. Between these two houses lie events linked by marriage, misery and emancipation.
Mission House was donated by Mabel Choate to the Trustees of Reservations. Mabel had purchased the house in the 1920s, moving it from its original location (presently the National Shrine of Divine Mercy) to where it now stands on Main Street in Stockbridge, MA.
John Sergeant, born in 1710, was an Yale educated theologian who was hired by the Commissioners for Indian Affairs in Boston in 1734 to establish a Christian missionary for the "River Indians" (descendants of the Mahican tribe), later to be known as the Stockbridge Indians.
Photo: Courtesy of Christianity.com (http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1701-1800/john-sergeant-and-stockbridge-indians-11630255.html)
The Mahican tribe significantly diminished in size with the arrival of European settlers whose continual pushing out, the disease they brought, and by native conflicts all but annihilated the tribe. As they scattered into smaller tribes, one renamed the "Housatonic", came to live on the edges of that eponymous river in Stockbridge. In 1734, their Chief, Konkapot, opined: "Since my remembrance, there were ten Indians where there is now one. But the Christians greatly increase and multiply, and spread over the land; let us, therefore, leave our former courses and become Christians."
Photo: Courtesy of BerkShares, Inc. (https://www.berkshares.org/heroes/mohicans.htm)
John Sergeant lived within the missionary settlement until he married Abigail Williams in 1739 (sister of Ephraim, the founder of Williams College), who was not particularly fond of the Indians.
This final, unfinished painting by Norman Rockwell, features John Sergeant and Chief Konkopot talking, with the minister's wife spying, around the corner, on their meeting. During John Sergeant's fourteen years at Stockbridge, the Indian population increased from less than 50 to 218, with 129 baptized by him.
Photo: Courtesy of the Norman Rockwell Museum (http://www.nrm.org/MT/text/Konkapot.html)
John Sergeant died unexpectedly at the age of 39 from a "nervous fever" in the summer of 1749. He left behind his widow, Abigail, and 3 young children, Electa, Erastus, and John, Jr. Abigail married Brig. Gen. Joseph Dwight a few years later, and they soon welcomed a daughter, Pamela. Joseph also replaced John as the head of the mission, and, together with Abigail, operated an Indian school. They were, however, so unpopular within the community that, eventually, they were forced to leave it and relocated to Sheffield. John Sergeant's tombstone reads (barely visible now):
"Where is that pleasing Form, I ask, thou canst not show; He's not within, false stone, There's nought but Dust below; And where's that pious soul, that Thinking conscious MIND? Wilt thou pretend, vain cypher, THAT'S with thee enshrined? Alas, my Friend's not here with thee that I can find; Here's not a Sergeant's body or a Sergeant's MIND. I'll seek him hence, for all's alike Deception here. I'll go to Heav'n & I shall find my Sergeant there."
Mabel Choate collaborated with her friend and noted Landscape Designer, Fletcher Steele, to conceive a design of colonial gardens on the property.
Detail of S-curve pediment over front door. The house would
remain in the ownership of the Sergeant family until the 1870s.
The Stockbridge Indians left for Oneida River in 1785, when,
after returning from serving the colonists in the French and
Indian, and Revolutionary Wars, found their lands had been
even further reduced and that they were excluded from
community gatherings. Eventually, they migrated to central
Wisconsin, where descendants of the Stockbridge Indians live
to this day.
Around 1758, John and Hannah Ashley acquired Bett, a black female teen, through Hannah's father's will. She had been born into slavery and was initially purchased at a slave auction in Albany by Hannah's father. She remained with the Ashleys for the next 3 decades, and had 4 children of her own.
One day, while preparing food in the kitchen's fireplace (on the other side of this pictured screen door), Bett's daughter, Lizzie, sampled the food and was caught doing so by Madame Hannah, who picked up a hot fireplace shovel to strike her. Bett stepped in between them taking the blow squarely upon her arm.
A kitchen in the Ashley House (the actual place Bett was struck is the room seen off of this room). Bett received a horrific burn and gash, which she displayed, un-bandaged for all to see. When asked about it by visitors she would simply say: "ask missis!"
Photo: Courtesy of the Trustees of Reservations (http://www.thetrustees.org/places-to-visit/berkshires/ashley-house.html)
Around that time Bett had also witnessed a public recitation of the 1780 Massachusetts State Constitution, which led her to seek out Theodore Sedgwick (1746–1813), whose law office was a 3 mile walk from the Ashleys' home in Sheffield.
Photo: Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/theodore-sedgwick-32467)
Bett solicited the legal services of Atty. Sedgwick while quoting the Massachusetts Constitution: "All men are born free and equal", which ultimately won Bett her freedom. She changed her name to Elizabeth Freeman shortly thereafter and was hired as domestic help (along with her daughter) by Sedgwick who moved them to his home where she remained until she purchased her own home years later. Mumbet died in 1829 when she was in her eighties.
(Photo: “Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society” http://www.masshist.org/database/23)
The Sedgwick house in Stockbridge, which remains in the family to this day, was filled with Theodore's children (10) and his second wife, Pamela, who was none other than the daughter of Abigail Williams Sergeant Dwight (John Sergeant's wife)!
Photo: Courtesy of Arthur Warton Schwartz, fourth great-grandson of Theodore (http://www.sedgwick.org/na/families/robert1613/B/4/B4-sedgwick-theodore.html)
During her marriage to Theodore, Pamela became increasingly unstable, and the care of the children greatly shifted to Mumbet., who was beloved within the family as evidenced by the moniker they gave her--"Mum-bett". She was regarded as a second mother to the Sedgwick children.
Image: Pamela Dwight Sedgwick, from The Republican Court, or, American Society in the Days of Washington, Rufus W. Griswold. New and rev. ed. (New York, 1856), plate opposite 271. First ed., 1855.
Pamela committed suicide in 1807 after years of struggling with her unraveling mental health. She was 43 when she died. She is interred to the right of her husband, Theodore, in the Stockbridge Cemetery in a section known as the "Sedgwick Pie". In concentric circles, the Sedgwick line of relatives surround Theodore and his wife.
Mumbet is buried there, too, right next to the Sedgwicks' daughter, Catharine, who was a famous American novelist (all but one of her books are still in print today). Mumbet and Catharine were particularly close in life, and, now lie, together, for eternity. This was a true place of honor not only in that Mumbet was a family employee but also a black woman.
Mumbet once said: "Any time, any time while I was a slave, if one minute's freedom had been offered to me, and I had been told I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it-- just to stand one minute on god's airth a free woman--I would."
Inscription on Mum Bett's tombstone (composed by Catharine Sedgwick):
"ELIZABETH FREEMAN known by the name of MUMBET died Dec. 28' 1829. Her supposed age was 85 Years. She was born a slave and remained a slave for nearly thirty years. She could nei ther read nor write, yet in her own sphere she had no superior nor equal. She nei- ther wasted time nor property She never violated a trust, nor failed to perform a duty. In every situation of domes- tic trial, she was the most effi- cient helper, and the tenderest friend. Good Mother, farewell."
Detail of Catharine's grave.
Sections of the "Pie":
Family members are still being interred here to this day.
American writier, John P. Marquand, Jr., mused about the "Pie":
"on Judgment Day when they arise and face the Judge, they
will have to see no one but Sedgwicks."
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