Voices from the NHS Archives: Records of Enslaved, Free, and Manumitted People of Color and Enslavers in Newport, Rhode Island
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This dataset contains records for over 7,019 people of African and Indigenous descent who were connected to Newport, Rhode Island, and the surrounding area-either through their presence in the town or through their enslavement and transport on voyages funded by Newport merchants-between 1663 and 1865.Approximately 27 percent (1,892) of these records include a name.The majority of the people of color in the dataset are "unidentified"; their names were once known, but are currently obscured by an incomplete historical record and the biases of historical record-keepers.The dataset also contains 2,128 records for people identified as white, who are included on the basis of their mutual association in Event records with people of color or through their own apprenticeship or indenture.A further 38 people whose race is unclear from context have also been included.White enslavers trafficked ten to fifteen million enslaved Africans to the Americas between 1650 and 1860; roughly 60 percent of voyages originating in North America started in Rhode Island. 1 2By 1774, the town of Newport was an established and prosperous regional trade center, standing as one of the five major colonial ports.At this time, over 9,200 people lived in 3 Newport, and over one third of Newport's white-led households contained at least one person of color.Approximately 13% of the town's population was of African descent.The number of 4 African-born Newporters was fairly high and was likely at its highest between 1751 and 1775.More than two thirds of the gravemarkers that contain African names in Newport's Common Burying Ground predate 1775, and Rhode Island slave traders trafficked more than twice the number of enslaved Africans than all other colonies combined between 1751 and 1775, at which time the Rhode Island General Assembly's partial ban on the import of enslaved Africans would have taken effect.Without an official accounting of Rhode Island and Newport's 5 African-born population, it is impossible to know the demographics with certainty, yet some estimate that as much as 75% of New England's Black community during this period was African-born.6 6 William D. Piersen, Black Yankees: The Development of an Afro-American Subculture in Eighteenth-Century New England (
Authors: Kaela Bleho, Zoe Hume
Institutions: Newport Historical Society, Florida State University
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7130507357
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