Slavery in the Connecticut Valley of Massachusetts

(Levellers Press) In the first history of colonial-era slavery in western Massachusetts, Romer demonstrates that slavery was much more widespread and significant across this region than previously assumed. He shows, for example, that most of the ministers in the Connecticut Valley were slave owners – including Jonathan Edwards, minister of Northampton for 20 years and president of Princeton in 1758. Working from original sources – wills, church records, merchants’ account books, and probate inventories – Romer pieces together a history of the slaves, and their owners, who populated the valley. Robert H. Romer is a professor of physics emeritus at Amherst College.