Enslavement in South Hadley

Researchers & Organizations

Leo P. Labonte 

Greyhawk Associates 

Historical & Genealogical Research Services

Greypet@comcast.net

Facebook – South Hadley & Granby Community Historical Tidbits

Mark Auslander 

Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology, Mount Holyoke College

markauslander@icloud.com

mauslander@mtholyoke.edu

Professor Marla Miller (UMass Amherst)

Professor of History at Umass Amherst

mmiller@history.umass.edu

Cliff McCarthy 

Archivist at Springfield Museums

Contributor to Early History of Black Lives, UMass Dataset

cmccarthy@springfieldmuseums.org 

Zoe Cheek 

Archivist at Springfield Museums 

Contributor to Early History of Black Lives, UMass Dataset

zcheek@springfieldmuseums.org

Barbara Mathews

Public Historian and Director of Academic Programs at Historic Deerfield

bmathews@historic-deerfield.org

Karen Sanchez-Eppler

Professor of American Studies and English at Amherst College

President of the Board of Directors, Porter-Phelps-Huntington Foundation

kjsanchezepp@amherst.edu 

David Morrell

Center Church Historian

dmorell@mtholyoke.edu 

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Websites

South Hadley:

• In Search of Caesar Cambridge, a former enslaved man in South Hadley, Massachusetts
• Ancestry.com Caesar Cambridge Family Tree  
• Old Meeting House, South Hadley, Mass – Lost New England
• History | Center Church – South Hadley, Massachusetts

Connecticut River Valley: Slavery and Race:

• Documenting the Early History of Black Lives in the Connecticut River Valley, UMass Dataset
• Forgotten Patriots; African American and Native American Patriots in the Revolutionary War
• Hampshire Council of Governments Records
• Higher Education and Slavery in Western Massachusetts 
• Slavery and Servitude at Forty Acres 
• Hampden Deeds
  • How to navigate this website:

1. Click on the link above. 
2. On this page enter name and date range then click Search Records
3. Click on the little book that corresponds to the name of the person you are interested in. 
4. Click on the view image online link on the next page
5. Locate the name of the person you are interested
   1. If either of the next two columns after the first name is a letter, you will not be able to view the deed online
   2. If the next two columns after the first name are both numbers you will input the names into the previous page.
6. The next two columns after the first name indicate the book and page of the deed. Navigate back to the previous page and input them. (Look at figure a to see what the input page should look like)
7. Click search
8. On the new pop-up page, click the little book image
9. On the new pop-up page, click on the view image online link on the next page
10. The deed you are looking for should then be viewable in a new tab

Race and Remembrance in New England:

• https://witnessstonesproject.org/

National Race and Remembrance Projects:

• https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/us/lynching-memorial-alabama.html
• https://www.brown.edu/about/public-art/martin-puryear-slavery-memorial

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Books and Documents

• Finding slaves in South Hadley.docx

Made by Mark Auslander to help students in this topic’s research process. 

• Researching the Early History of Black Lives in the Connecticut River Valley, Valley Probate Records

• Look into: The probate records for Hampshire County, 1660-1820. Call Number: Microfilm 1555 (12 reels).
• Holbrook collection, South Hadley 1730 – 1890 Microfiche 82

• Collection of documents about the free Black community in Hadley, compiled by Erika Slocumb and the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museums.

Available at the Mount Holyoke College Library:

A history of South Hadley’s old homes built before 1850. (1976). The Committee and The Society. 

Boltwood, L.M. (1979). Genealogies of Hadley Families. Genealogical Publishing Company. 

Cronin, I. (1998). South Hadley. Arcadia.

Eastman, S.E. (1912). In Old South Hadley. Blakely Printing Company. 

Johnson, C. (1932). Historic Hampshire in the Connecticut Valley ; happenings in a charming old New England county from the time of the dinosaur down to about 1900. Milton Bradley.

Judd, S. (1976). The History of Hadley. New Hampshire Publishing Company. 

Muus, J. (1985). A corner of South Hadley: 25 Woodbridge Street and the people who lived there. South Hadley Historical Society. 

Available at the Skinner Museum:

First Congregational Church of South Hadley. : Confession of faith, covenant, ecclesiastical principles and regulations, and catalog of members, to January 1861. (1861). Trumbull & Gere.