14

We had just celebrated Christmas and a New Year when Bett came in talking about a lot of tea being dumped into the Boston harbor. Upstairs they called it the Boston Tea Party. “They emptied all the British East India Company’s tea in the sea. All of it.”

“Who?”

“Some say the Indians. But upstairs they say it was colonists who dressed up like Indians on a dark night and destroyed that valuable tea.”

“Why do they dress like Indians?”

“They’re cowards and want the soldiers to think the Indians did it so they can be killed.”

“The mistress complains all the time about how much tea costs. Why would they throw it into the water?”

“Because it costs so much. And now the king has put even more tax on it, and closed off the harbor until they pay for what they threw into the sea. We can’t get tea, sugar, nothing from other places.”

“Oh, I hate to think of what the mistress is going to do. She’ll be hard to live with now.”

At Christmas in 1774, things were rough in our town. We had some sugar and molasses but no tea. Everyone was angry and on edge, not knowing what was going to happen. I would have missed the sugar and molasses, but not their tea. Bett knew how to make the best tea from her roots and leaves, teas that the mistress would not have dared to taste. So she suffered. The children missed the puddings, tarts, and pies, but things got worse before they got better and our holiday was spent without the usual fun.

One morning a messenger came to the door with a sealed packet for the master. Bett led him upstairs. Later she gave him some hot scones and cheese. The message was for Mistress Anna, all the way from New York, and even before the messenger had gone we knew that the news was not good.

Our old master, the mistress’s father, Cornelis Hogeboom, then a sheriff in Columbia County, New York, had been killed in an anti-rent squabble. He had gone to settle a dispute between landowners and renters who claimed that they had paid the landlords and the landlords’ children more rent for the land than the land was worth. They were determined not to pay more. “We are paying rent under a system here,” the renters declared, “that was overthrown in England in the thirteenth century.”

Sheriff Hogeboom had gone to a land auction that had been put off again and again and was further postponed because of the argument. As he started to leave, a shot was fired in the air. Some men, dressed and painted like Indians, suddenly appeared and followed the sheriff and his men. They fired more shots. His men ran, but the sheriff refused to spur his horse because he was a representative of the law and didn’t want to appear a coward. The men dressed like Indians soon left, but one named Arnold, the leader of the anti-renters, chased the sheriff and shot him in the heart.

Mistress Anna fainted when she was told that her father’s last words as he fell from his horse were, “I am a dead man.” We were all upset and actually sorry for her. She wanted to go home, even though the journey was difficult and the funeral would have long been over by the time she arrived. Still she cried for the master please to let her go.

The master grieved, too. But he knew that the border wars between Massachusetts and New York and between landlords and renters were dangerous and that the trip was long and hard. He did not want to risk taking the children on such a journey.

About three months later, Bett showed another messenger into the master’s upstairs room. When she came down she told us, “The master is so sorry that he did not go with the mistress to Claverack. Her mother is dead from grief over Sheriff Hogeboom.”

The mistress put all of her beautiful clothes away and dressed in black. Her face became thin; streaks of gray began to show in her hair. She moved like a ghost in the house that was still bustling with visitors coming and going to the meetings that were held upstairs. Besides that hustle and bustle, the children were lively and had lots of friends who were in and out of the house. It was Bett’s duty to take them to parties and pick the girls up from music lessons and John up from tutoring, and to see that they got to water picnics.

Of the four children, I liked Mary, the oldest girl, the best. She had a sense of fairness and could see through the rage and tantrums of her mother. Knowing this, her mother ignored Mary, giving much undeserved attention to Hannah, who was so like herself—demanding, impatient, and often cruel to her sisters. I was also her target. Hannah delighted in telling her mother things about me that caused the mistress to go into rages.

One day I came in from the field to find Hannah in the middle of the kitchen floor with mud from her head to her toes. She started screaming and the mistress came running into the room wanting to know what had happened.

“She put me in the water and made me sit there,” Hannah said, pointing at me. With her eyes tightly closed, her little mouth opened with earsplitting screams. The mistress grabbed a green stick and began beating me over the head and arms. Mary cried to her mother that I had not been there. Hannah had played in the mud after being warned not to. With this distraction, I was able to escape back into the field.

Later Mary came to me and said, “Lizzie, I’m sorry. Hannah is a liar.”

“It’s not for you to be sorry, you’re just a child.” Then I remembered she was her mother’s child and said, “Thank you, Mary. You are a good girl.” She clung to me, her small arms around my waist, and I began to understand how my sister could let go and feel for some of them. Without the mistress knowing, Mary and I became friends.

The talk of freedom among the slaves and free Africans did not stop. Josiah and Agrippa continued to petition the governing body. Then one Saturday night when we were at Bett’s house, Agrippa came with three other free Africans from around the colony: Peter Salem, Felix Holbrook, and Salem Poor. I could tell these were not men from Sheffield. The fire in their eyes and in their voices let me know they were different.

They had heard about the Sheffield Document and about the declaration that began it. Sheffield could become the first place to free slaves. “But are these honest men?” Peter Salem asked. “Do they believe these words, or are they just mouthing them?”

“Their words are far-reaching,” Josiah said, “not only for African slaves, but for slaves from England and other countries. When I look about, I fear they give these words with one hand and take them back with the other.”

“We must have faith that they believe them, not only for themselves, but for all men,” Grippy said.

“We will find out only if we petition them as we have others. Our chances here are better because they have made the declaration. So let us send our petition,” Salem Poor said.

Of course, my sister was all for it and very excited. She and I listened as they argued back and forth before they came up with a petition that stated: “… Your petitioners … have in common with all other men a natural right to our freedoms without being deprived of them by our fellow men as we are a freeborn people and have never forfeited this blessing by any compact or agreement whatever.”

They talked awhile about being brought here and enslaved, how bitter our lives were and how husbands and wives lived as strangers. Finally, I said, “What about the children? What about us who live all of our lives without hope of ever being free?”

There was that ominous silence that always followed my questions or statements in the company of men. Bett’s head shot up, and her back stiffened with indignation. I waited.

Josiah looked at me and smiled. “That is my sister, Aissa, who insists on being heard. I guess in this strange land where we often work equally hard and are treated equally harsh, she feels that the demands for freedom should be made by women as well as by men.”

“Aissa,” Agrippa said, “we’ll consider the children.”

To my surprise, these words were added: “… If there was any law to hold us in bondage … there never was any to enslave our children for life when born in a free country. We therefore beg your excellency and honors will … cause an act … to be passed that may obtain our natural right our freedoms and our children be set at liberty at the year of twenty-one.”