The Logbooks. Anne Farrow

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The Logbooks - Anne Farrow


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       The Logbooks

       A DRIFTLESS CONNECTICUT SERIES BOOK

       This book is a 2014 selection in the Driftless Connecticut Series, for an outstanding book in any field on a Connecticut topic or written by a Connecticut author.

       ALSO BY ANNE FARROW

      Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery (2005; with Joel Lang & Jenifer Frank)

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       WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS

       MIDDLETOWN, CONNECTICUT

       ANNE FARROW

      The Logbooks

       CONNECTICUT’S SLAVE SHIPS AND HUMAN MEMORY

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      Wesleyan University Press

      Middletown CT 06459

       www.wesleyan.edu/wespress

      © 2014 Anne Farrow

      All rights reserved

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      Designed by Eric M. Brooks

      Typeset in Monotype Bell by Passumpsic Publishing

      Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper.

       The Driftless Connecticut Series is funded by the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request

      5 4 3 2 1

      Cover photograph: The jetty at Bence Island, by Thomas Brown/Hartford Courant. For thousands of African people, walking this gravel path was their last moment on African soil.

       FOR STEPHEN,

       who has a verdant heart

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       Contents

       Preface

       [ONE]

       RECOVERING THE STORY

       Cleared for Africa 1

       Shadows on the Wall 4

       Creating a Record 7

       “How Did You Find Me?” 18

       [TWO]

       THE HAUNTED LAND

       Meeting the Slave Traders 21

       Another Century, Not My Own 29

       The Past in Dreams 32

       History for an Abandoned Place 35

       The Screaming Man 48

       The Story of a Stone 55

       The Slaughterhouse 60

       [THREE]

       TROUBLE IN MIND

       A Book with Many Bookmarks 69

       A Platform for Memory 73

       The Pain That Survives 86

       The Fragile Power 91

       History That Won’t End 96

       [FOUR]

       A HISTORY THAT DOESN’T “FIT”

       Back to Africa 101

       To Live in Peril on the Sea 110

       Not a Word but a World 115

       The Slave Trade’s Men in Full 117

       [FIVE]

       SEPARATIONS

       A Visit to Madina 131

       This Far, and No Further 140

       Legacy 144

       Lost and Found 146

       Our Choice Is the Truth or Nothing 151

       Afterword 155

       Acknowledgments 159

       Notes 161

       Selected Bibliography 173

       Reading Guide 185

       Color photographs follow page 96

       Preface

      “Why are you doing this?” my friend asked.

      I looked at her lean brown face, lit by the glass lamps suspended over our restaurant table, and made what I did not recognize, then, as an excuse.

      “New England’s relationship with slavery is a great story,” I said. “We’re journalists; we’re supposed to uncover stories of wrong and injustice.” I made my argument, or, as we called it in the newsroom, my pitch.

      Liz looked at me for a long moment with the level, answering gaze I knew from having had her edit my stories at the newspaper.

      “That’s not it,” she said. “When white people take up black stuff, there’s always a reason. There’s always something there.”

      I told her that I needed engaging work, having recently broken up with my longtime boyfriend. Studying my country’s tortured relationship with slavery and race prejudice made my own life, with its varied


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