On this site on a spring evening in 1834, a violent mob attacked black and white members of the newly formed Middletown Anti-Slavery Society as they met in a small factory to work for the abolition of slavery, pelting them with eggs and rocks, chasing them through the streets, and cutting open the face of a minister. Though only a handful of slaves remained in Connecticut by the 1830s, millions of African Americans were still enslaved in the South, and Middletown abolitionists regarded slavery as a monstrous evil and a national sin. Facing constant threats from pro-slavery men who insisted the North had no right to interfere and warned that anti-slavery agitation could destroy the Union, Samuel W. Griswold declared in 1837 that his group would remain undaunted and never abandon its principles. Middletown’s African-American community played a central role in these efforts under the leadership of the Reverend Jehiel Beman, a founder of the society, along with his sons Amos and Leverett, while Leverett Beman’s wife, Clarissa, founded the Colored Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1834, only the second such group in the country. Jesse Baldwin, another founder, refused to use slave-produced sugar and his house on Broad Street was a likely stop on the Underground Railroad. The society first met here in the pump factory of William Benjamin Douglas, where violent mobs repeatedly broke up gatherings. Amos Beman, who came to Middletown in the 1820s with his father, was barred from Wesleyan University because of his race in 1833, later taught African-American children in Hartford, became a minister, and led the Temple Street Congregational Church in New Haven. Some local abolitionists also aided freedom seekers through the clandestine Underground Railroad, which was active in Middletown; in an 1854 letter, Jehiel Beman wrote that it was "in good repair," and other possible conductors included Jesse Baldwin, Benjamin Douglas, and William Lyman. After Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, increasing penalties for helping runaway slaves to six months in prison and a $1,000 fine for each offense while requiring citizens to assist in captures, William Lyman and five other Middlefield farmers publicly denounced the law and declared that they would not obey it.

Photo: Michael Herrick

Photo: Michael Herrick