Freedom for Jenny Slew

Jenny Slew was born about 1719 as the child of a free white woman and a black slave. She married one or more black men but lived her life as a free woman until 1762 when she was enslaved by John Whipple Jr. of the Hamlet, part of Ipswich that later became Hamilton.

Slew found a sympathetic attorney, Benjamin Kent, and in March 1765 sued Mr. Whipple in the Inferior Court of Common Pleas on a charge of trespass for holding her in bondage illegally. In the civil suit “Jenny Slew, Spinster, versus John Whipple Jr., Gentleman” she asserted through her counsel that as a child’s legal status follows that of the mother, and thus she was a free woman. The complaint stated that “on Jan. 29, 1762, John Whipple with force and arms took her held and kept her in servitude as a slave in his service and thus restrained her of her lawful liberty and did other injuries to the amount of £25.” Although it is frequently written that Jenny Slew was kidnapped, “Force and Arms” is a legal phrase universally inserted in a writ of trespass.

Whipple countered that he possessed a bill of sale for the purchase of Jenny Slew and that she had no legal standing to sue him since she had been married. Under Massachusetts law, at that time a married woman had no legal identity separate from her husband and therefore could not sue on her own behalf. The court dismissed her petition on a technicality, ruling that because Jenny had been married, “Jenny Slew, spinstress” did not exist. Adding insult to injury, the court assessed Jenny Slew £4 damage and court costs to be paid to John Whipple.

The Ipswich Riverwalk Mural painted by Alan Pearsall portrays Jenny Slew receiving compensation from John Whipple.

A year later Jenny Slew filed an appeal with the Essex Superior Court of Judicature in Salem, which granted her a jury trial. Whipple’s lawyer Jeremiah Gridley argued, “Shall not the Plaintiff who sues in Trespass for Goods be compelled to prove his Possession and that it was by force taken out of his Possession. She has never been in Possession of her Liberty, she has been out of Possession of it for 50 years.” Judge Oliver replied, “This is a contest between liberty and property—both of great consequence, but liberty of most importance of the two.”

The court took into consideration that she had not been married at the times of the two trials and that under the state’s 1705 anti-miscegenation statute, “For Better Preventing of a Spurious and Mixt Issue,” (which remained in effect until 1843), the marriage of a slave to a woman born of a white mother was of questionable validity. The court decided that she was, therefore, a “spinster.”

In November of 1766, the jury ruled in favor of the plaintiff and ordered Whipple to free Jenny Slew. She was awarded £4 in damages and £5 in costs. Her lawyer was Benjamin Kent, who took several cases of slaves suing their masters for illegal enslavement. Kent based his successful argument on the issue of trespass, telling Judge Peter Oliver, who was a slave owner, “I shall not enter into the right of some men to slave others.” Kent won the case because Whipple failed to produce a bill of sale for the ownership of Jenny Slew.

Slavery and Colonization in Early America

John Whipple’s relative Matthew Whipple (1685-1766), who also lived in the Hamlet, changed his will in 1760 to provide that after his and his wife’s death their slave Plato “shall be free if he desires it, and if he doesn’t he shall have Liberty to live with any of my friends whom he pleases and I give him liberty to live in my east kitchen.” Plato was to receive several items, including a cow and “a good Pasture for her and liberty to cut hay sufficient for her” and if Plato could no longer support himself comfortably, Whipple’s heirs were to grant him “whatever he shall stand in need of.” When Plato died in 1799, he was said to be 109 years of age.

Jenny Slew is believed to have been the first person held as a slave to be granted freedom through trial by jury, and the people of Massachusetts were becoming increasingly anti-slavery. Article 1 of the Constitution of Massachusetts adopted in 1780 declared that “All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights.” The General Court (legislature) passed an Act in March 1788 to prevent the slave trade and “granting relief to the families of such unhappy persons as may be kidnapped or decoyed away from this Commonwealth.”

The small County Street park at the foot of Elm Street was named in honor of Jenny Slew.

Who was John Whipple?

Captain John Whipple Jr. (1717-1794), was a descendant of early Ipswich settler Matthew Whipple, whose brother John Whipple constructed the Whipple House on the South Green of Ipswich. They received from the Town a grant of 200 acres in the Hamlet, which is now the town of Hamilton. Matthew Whipple settled there, where the family prospered and was extensively involved in town affairs. The 1680 home of Matthew Whipple is still standing.

Captain John Whipple Jr. commanded a company during the French and Indian War, composed largely of the young men of the Hamlet and Chebacco parishes. He served on the Ipswich Committee of Intelligence preceding the Revolutionary War and commanded a company during the war, although it is not stated that he saw action in the war.

A list of slaves and slave-holders in the book Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony includes the Whipple family:

During King Philip’s War, Capt. John Whipple brought home an Indian boy, Lawrence as a slave.
Nicholas Freeman was a mulatto servant of Maj. Matthew Whipple of the Hamlet in Ipswich 1658- 1739, Whipple’s will provided that Freeman “shall serve the executors one year after my decease and then be discharged.”
Phebe, 1762, servant of Deacon Matthew Whipple
Plato was a servant to Deacon Whipple of the Hamlet, who made a provision in his will, “in Consideration that my Servant Plato has been a faithful Servant that after my Death and my Wife’s Death, he shall be free.”

Who was Jenny Slew?

jenny-slew-jillian — Painting of Jenny Slew for the Ipswich “People Who Tell the Truth” project, courtesy of Jillian Bemis and First Church Ipswich.

The appellate court’s records indicate that Jenny Slew was believed to be the daughter of “Betty Slew.” The only local record for the surname Slew is found in Beverly, sometimes spelled as Sloo.

Tracing Jenny Slew’s ancestry proved to be fascinating, and starts with John and Killicross Ross, young Scottish soldiers who were captured in 1650 at the battle of Dunbar by Oliver Cromwell’s army, and were sold to Puritans who needed indentured servants. Killicross Ross married Mary Galley from Beverly and never returned to Scotland. Mary’s father, John, emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony from West Yorkshire, England.

Mary’s sister Dorcas was a fortune teller and accused thief who married William Hoar of Beverly, In 1692 Dorcas was accused during the Salem Witchcraft Trials of being a witch, but her sentence was stayed and she was eventually released. The Records of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County indicate that several members of the Hoar family were charged with petty thievery.

William Hoar’s son William Jr. married Sarah Ross, on June 3, 1685. In Nov. 1685 the couple was charged by the court with fornication before marriage. Hoare acknowledged he was married in June and his child was born in October. William Hoar was fined 40s or to be whipped on the next lecture day in Salem.

One of the children of William and Dorcas Hoar was Tabitha, aka Tabby, who married Leonard Slew and is found in court records charged with thievery from the family for whom she worked. Although they died in Purpooduck, Maine during an Indian attack, they had two children named Leonard and Rachel. On February 21, 1728, seven “children and grandchildren of William Hoar, late of Beverly,” assigned 5/7 of William Hoar’s commonage in the common lands of Beverly to Peter Pride of Beverly for “ten pounds procured bills of credit.” Among the grandchildren’s names were siblings Leonard and Rachel Slew. Each person ratified the deed with a mark, signifying that they were illiterate. (Salem Deeds 55:10). The Vital Records of Beverly lists the death of Leonard Slew in 1744 and the death of his sister Rachel Slew in 1734.

Although the Hoars and Slews lived on the margin of society, Rachel was baptized as a member of the First Church in Beverly in 1706. Her daughter, also named Rachel Slew, was received into full communion in 1721. Jeanne Pickering, who has a Master’s degree in history from Salem State University, believes that Rachel Slew was the mother of Jenny Slew. There is no documentation regarding the black man who was Jenny Slew’s father, or the identity of her two husbands, other than that they were “Negro.”

Jenny Slew and Abigail Adams

Present in the Salem courthouse during the 1765 trial of Jenny Slew vs John Whipple was a lawyer named John Adams, who took notes on the proceedings: “Attended Court, heard the trial of an action of trespass, brought by a mulatto woman, for damages, for restoring her liberty. This is called suing for liberty; the first action that ever I knew of the sort, though I have heard there have been many.” Adams was a close friend of Jenny Slew’s lawyer, Benjamin Kent, who fourteen years later encouraged him to include in the draft for the Massachusetts State Constitution a declaration of rights stating that “all men are born free and equal.”

Adams frequently attended court in Ipswich and always stayed at Treadwell’s Inn on North Main Street. Adams’ temperament was inclined toward reflection, but he married a most remarkable woman, Abigail Smith, who despite never receiving a formal education (because she was a woman), became his intellectual advisor, moral compass, and pen pal. Adams’ dry legal notes about the Jenny Slew case don’t hint at his opinion, but he surely talked about it with Abigail, who was quite confident in her opinions. In 1774 she wrote to him, “I wish most sincerely there was not a Slave in the province. We are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have.” Two years later, she added, “And by the way! In the new code of laws, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could.”

John Adams personally drafted the 1780 Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the world’s oldest functioning written constitution. It begins with “A Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and states that “All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights.” Adams was influenced by two very different women: his wife who became a First Lady and mother of another president, the other a descendant of an indentured Scottish prisoner of war, the daughter of an illiterate mother and a slave, and became the first enslaved person in America to successfully sue for her freedom in a trial by jury.