WIREFRAME ONLY - NOT YET DESIGNED
1710 - 1801
Amos Fortune was born in Africa in about 1710, probably in the part of West Africa known at the time among Europeans as Guinea. Nothing is known today of Amos’ original name, his early life in Africa, or the circumstances of his capture. We do know that by 1752, he was enslaved in the household of Ichabod Richardson, a tanner, and living in Woburn, Massachusetts. Tanners converted cow, goat, calf, sheep, pig, and other animal skins into raw hides and then leather. In high demand in New England and other colonies, leather was used to make many items, including boots, shoes, gloves, breeches (knee pants), work aprons, saddles, harnesses, and for binding books. [i]
Amos was 51 years old in 1752, the year both death and property were on Ichabod Richardson’s mind. The will he wrote that spring is the first surviving historical reference to Amos, in which Richardson stipulated that he was to be freed six years after Richardson’s death. [ii]
Ten years later, Richardson was still alive and freedom must still have seemed far away to Amos. Then, on December 30, 1763, his enslaver drafted an emancipation document stating that he “agreed to and with my Negroe man, Amos, that at the end of four years next insuing this date the said Amos shall be Discharged, Freed, and Set at Liberty from my service power & Command for ever….” Unfortunately for Amos, Richardson apparently had second thoughts about this arrangement as he never signed this document. Nor did the new will Richardson had written make any mention of freeing Amos. [iii]
Ichabod Richardson died in 1768 and left his estate, including Amos, to nine heirs. All nine apparently agreed finally to emancipate him. In May, 1769, one of the heirs, Simon Carter, agreed to pay “Amos Fortune” 6 Pounds annually, three of which were to be set aside to support Amos should he become unable to support himself. In a document dated November, 1770, all nine heirs acknowledged the “Many feathful Services Amos Fortune did perform to the said decd [deceased] Ichabod in his Life Time and hath since performed to us Respectively.” In the same document, they granted “unto the said Amos Fortune the full and free Liberty of his person and Services… To Have Hold and Improve to his own sole Use and Behoof forever in as full and Ample a Manner as any free born Man what ever might or should do.” Amos Fortune was at last a free man. He was 60 years old. [iv]
Amos quickly became a respected and successful tanner and businessman in his own right. He bought land in Woburn, built a home, and began thinking about marriage. In 1778, he purchased an enslaved woman, Lydia, from her Woburn enslavers for £50. Amos and Lydia married two weeks later. Sadly, she died that fall. Amos decided to remarry. Once again, he had to first purchase the freedom of the woman he wanted to be his wife. In November of 1779, Amos married Violate Baldwin of Woburn, formerly enslaved by James Baldwin. At age 50, Violate was almost 20 years younger than Amos. Their marriage lasted until his death in 1801.
In 1781, the couple moved to the rural town of Jaffrey, New Hampshire, where Amos built a home and started his tannery business on land the town had set aside for a new minister. They adopted a young girl named Celyndia and Amos took on apprentices, including “Simon Peter of Jaffrey in the County of Cheshire…Negroman” in 1790. Fortune’s business did well, with clients in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. As he prospered, he was able to eventually purchase a fur coat and a silver watch and shoe buckles. By 1789, he could afford to buy 25 acres of land nearby, where he built a house and barn, and re-established his tannery. The house and barn still stand today. [v]
The Fortunes actively participated in the life of the town. Amos was literate and helped found the Jaffrey Social Library. The Fortunes attended the First Church of Jaffrey where he was a full member. Despite the family’s respected role in the community, they did not own a pew and likely sat in the upstairs gallery. In 1801, Jaffrey town residents voted that no Black residents would be allowed to sit on the main floor of the meetinghouse.[vi]
In October of 1801, perhaps knowing he would not live much longer, Amos had a lawyer draw up his will. Violet inherited the house and tan yard and he also arranged for a $100 donation to the church and $233 to the town for care of one of the district schools. The church used the $100. bequest to purchase a pewter communion service in use until 1878 until it was sent to a missionary church in Michigan. He also ordered that, “after my decease and after the decease of said Vilot my beloved wife that handsome grave stones be erected to each of us if their is any estate left for that purpose.”[vii]
Amos Fortune died on November 17, 1801, at the age of 91. His and Violet’s gravestones read:
Sacred to the memory of Amos Fortune, who was born free in Africa, a slave in America, he purchased liberty, professed Christianity, lived reputably, and died hopefully, Nov. 17, 1801, AEt. 91
Sacred to the memory of Violate, by sale the slave of Amos Fortune, by marriage his wife, by her fidelity, his friend and solace, she died his widow Sept. 13, 1802, AEt. 73[viii]
The funds Amos left to the town for support of the school grew, and in 1988 became the Amos Fortune Fund, which annually provides the trustees of the Jaffrey Public Library with money for public programs about the life of this remarkable resident. In August of 2023, some of these funds (which had grown to $40,000) were used to erect a historical marker in his honor that is now part of New Hampshire’s Black Heritage Trail.[ix]
[i] Peter Lambert, Amos Fortune: The Man and his Legacy. (Jaffrey, NH: Amos Fortune Forum, printed by Savron Graphics, 2000.) While little is known of Amos Fortune’s early life, Elizabeth Yates wrote a popular biography in 1950 for which she received a Newberry Award for outstanding children’s literature in 1951. Illustrated by Nora Unwin, it includes a creative reimagining of his life in Africa: Elizabeth Yates, Amos Fortune: Free Man (NY: Puffin Books, 2007, copyright 1950.)
[ii] Lambert, Amos Fortune, p.5
[iii] Lambert, p. 27. For images and accompanying transcriptions of surviving manuscripts relating to Amos Fortune including Richardson’s unsigned manumission document and other, see Lambert, pp. 27-52. A Jaffrey resident donated the papers to the Town of Jaffrey where they are in the special collection of the Jaffrey Public Library.
[iv] Lambert, pp. 32-33.
[v] Lambert, p. 17; Image and transcription of Simon Peter’s indenture with Amos Fortune in Lambert, 39-40; 7; 9; 13; 19; New Hampshire Wills and Probate Records 1643-1982, p. 860.
[vi] New Hampshire Public Radio, 8-21-23 https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2023-08-21/in-jaffrey-a-formerly-enslaved-man-left-a-fortune-to-the-town-now-the-moneys-funding-a-marker-in-his-memory
[vii] For a transcription of Amos Fortune’s will, see Lambert, p. 50The pewter believed to be Amos Fortune’s bequest is not in the collection of the Brooklyn Historical Society. For a discussion of the bequest and the pewter service, see Lambert, pp. 14-16; for an image of the pewter, see p. 20.
[viii] For an image of the Fortune’s gravestones in the Jaffrey burying ground adjacent to the Meetinghouse, see Lambert, p. 22.
[ix] New Hampshire Public Radio, 8-21-23