Episode 56: The Most Dreadful Of All Enemies

Kathryn Gehred  00:05

Hello and welcome to Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant. This is a women's history podcast where we feature 18th and early 19th century women's letters that don't get as much attention as we think they should. I'm your host. Kathryn Gehred. I'm so excited to welcome Dr. Jacqeline Beatty to the podcast. Dr. Beatty is an associate professor of history at York College of Pennsylvania. In 2023 she published her bookIn Dependence: Women and the Patriarchal State in Revolutionary America, which is absolutely excellent. So hello, Jackie. Welcome to the show.

Jacqueline Beatty  00:36

Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Kathryn Gehred  00:37

Before we jump into talking about the letter. I want to talk a little bit about your book. Would you give me sort of your short elevator pitch for it.

Jacqueline Beatty  00:45

Sure. So what I was investigating in my book was the ways in which women were able to exploit and manipulate assumptions about their dependence, various forms of dependence. So that's economic, legal, social, cultural, to work to their advantage. And I was investigating petitions to state legislatures largely, but also court documents, to see the ways in which they employed this language of women's dependence, helplessness, vulnerability, to basically demand things from the state. In the end, what I found is that they really latched on to this language of rights that was on the rise during the American Revolution and became conscious of themselves as rights bearing individuals, which is a necessary step before kind of moving towards collective action in the antebellum period.

Kathryn Gehred  01:42

First of all, super interesting argument. My background, I worked as an editor of the Papers of Martha Washington. And I do think it's interesting, because there's a lot of times people talking about Martha Washington as sort of a role model or whatever. But if you look at her writings, she would never say something like that about herself. She would talk about herself like as a wife has somebody who's dependent. So to see your take was really interesting and refreshing for me, because I don't think it necessarily has to be either or somebody could be a really interesting figure and not necessarily have to be a girl boss. But the way of using this position that they occupied in 18th century as a way of wielding power is so fascinating. Did you find that it's something that white women were able to wield more than black women, absolutely.

Jacqueline Beatty  02:23

Yeah.

Kathryn Gehred  02:23

What were the differences with that?

Jacqueline Beatty  02:25

Yeah. I mean, you have to kind of take an intersectional approach to these sources, because both race and class come into play in this context, the assumptions of women who need the protection and assistance of men, the assumption is that those are more elite or kind of upper middling white women, so women who are kind of in the lower working classes, as well as black women and indigenous women, have to employ different kinds of strategies. But it also means that their employment of dependents and the outcomes of their petitions have, I think, greater significance when they are not afforded the assumption of that protection of white men and the white patriarchal state. What inspired your argument? What did you latch on to? So I was working on this book when I was in graduate school. It was part of my dissertation, and I have always been very interested in the constructions of gender, especially as they inform power dynamics in society and culture. Woody Holton had written an article about Abigail Adams and her bond speculation work, and it was really interesting because Adams was able to argue that what she was doing was okay, even though she was kind of jumping into the masculine sphere of finance and bond speculation, because it was an extension of her role as a wife and mother and work for her family. And I was like, well, that's really savvy. I'm sure she thought part of it was nonsense, right? We know a lot about Abigail Adams and her ideology, but I was kind of captivated by that. And when I was on my very first research trip down in Columbia, South Carolina, at their state archives, I spoke to an archivist, and he said, you know, you should look at these petitions to the General Assembly. And I did, and they were incredible. And I just kind of fell in love with those sources as a way to understand women's experiences of wartime, and you know, how they thought of themselves as citizens and what the state owed them, especially during these moments of crisis.

Kathryn Gehred  04:31

One of my favorite moments when I was reading more about Abigail Adams was because, you know, I'd seen the musical 1776 as many people have there was the whole song where she's writing about, like, saltpeter and pins, and it's this, like, cute little thing. But then when you find out more about Abigail Adams, like, she's interested in pins because she's selling them at a hugely higher rate. She's, like, taking advantage of the wartime lack of pins to, like, make money for herself. I was like, Abigail,

Jacqueline Beatty  04:58

Yeah.

Kathryn Gehred  04:58

What?

Jacqueline Beatty  04:59

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, she's pretty incredible. You know, everybody always cites the, remember the ladies letter that she writes to her husband, John. But what I find more compelling, you know, his response that is very dismissive and frustrating of her the tyranny of the petticoat or something like that. And then she writes to her friend, and she's like, can you believe what he just said to me? Right? So she's really leaning on her female friends and just eye rolling at him through letter writing, which is great.

Kathryn Gehred  05:25

I made a promise to myself when I started this podcast that I would not do the remember the ladies. Yeah, this is a little overdone, but, but it's great if you haven't read it, reading, it's so good. So actually, you led us with a really great segue into talking about the actual document we're talking about today. So this is a not a letter, the way a lot of the letters I cover are, this is a petition. Could you tell me a little bit about these petitions, like, what are they? How do they work?

Jacqueline Beatty  05:50

Yeah, I think when you know, those of us who live in the 21st century think about petitions. We think about, you know, people who go door to door for a cause and are collecting signatures, or, you know, the more modern version, are online petitions, right? And kind of go fund me type things. Petitions are very different in the 18th century, and they have English roots. And the idea was that a subject of the crown could write a petition to Parliament, in this case, right to a legislative body, asking for some kind of redress for an individual grievance or issue. So there were collective petitions, but it was much more common for an individual to use this medium as a method of redress. So this obviously gets translated and brought over to the colonies this strategy and there are petitions to colonial assemblies later, to state legislatures during and after the revolution. There are also petitions to the Continental Congress during and after the war, and to actual Congress right once the Constitution is ratified and that body exists as the 19th century wears on, a lot more collective petitions arise, but they come out of this tradition of individual petitioning, mostly for individual redress. The format is kind of formulaic. I sometimes refer to it as being kind of like Mad Libs, where you insert your name and your problem and what you would like from the government. So I think some folks kind of give pushback when we talk about petitions and the meaning that can be drawn from them. But when you've read like thousands of them, as I have, I can note the distinctions pretty quickly, and obviously what they all have in common is the tone of supplication to an authority, but men and women do this differently. It's very gendered and performative that way. And you know, they kind of state their problem, but especially in a source like the one we're going to talk about today, you really get to know the petitioner in a way that you might not otherwise, because often the people that are petitioning for assistance have no other place to turn. Many of them are desperate, and they really paint compelling narrative. They understand that their audience is this kind of body of elite white men in power, and they have to be deferential and recognize the authority of the government and supplicate themselves in that way, but some of them get a little salty also. So it's really fun to see their personalities come through. But it also really gives a lens to understanding the difficulties of living through these conflicts and establishing a new state as well. As, you know, really demonstrating the experience of people who we might otherwise never learn about because they don't leave behind any other written record. So they're, they're really fantastic sources.

Kathryn Gehred  08:53

Yeah, that's interesting, because a lot of the times with this podcast, I do a lot of letters between sisters and mothers and mothers and all of that, where somebody is really free and sort of chatty, this is like the exact opposite of that, yes, but it still tells you a lot, like there's still a lot of information in there. So specifically, the one we're talking about today, this is from a 1783 petition from a woman named Belinda Sutton. So who was Belinda?

Jacqueline Beatty  09:17

So Belinda was a woman who was kidnapped from West Africa and brought into slavery, specifically in Massachusetts, and was enslaved by the Royall family outside of Boston. I mean, you refer to her as Belinda Sutton. We can kind of get to that she was married at some point in the 1780s we're not exactly sure. Well, you refer to her as Belinda, as she would have been known during her enslavement, she labored in the Royall household for several decades. I want to say, I think in her petition, she mentions 40-50, years that she was enslaved to this family, and we can talk about slavery. History in Massachusetts in this context, because 1783 is an important year for slavery and abolition in in the state of Massachusetts as well. Isaac Royall was the head of the family to whom she was enslaved, and Isaac Royall was a loyalist. He ended up fleeing Massachusetts during the revolution, and he later wrote a will, I believe, in 1781, where he provided a certain amount of money and annuity for Belinda after his death. During his life, while he was absent, right? He had a friend who still lived in Massachusetts who was taking care of that, and he essentially said in his will, provided Belinda with the opportunity to choose her freedom, and that there should be, I would have to look up the language, but something like a certain amount of money provided to her in her freedom so that she would not become dependent on the state. Essentially, she would not be on the public dole, which was what a lot of citizens were worried about. So he kind of provided that for her in his will, and for a time, his friend was making such payments. But the problem was that, as often happened with loyalists during the revolution is that the state confiscated his property. I have a number of situations like this in the book, so what Belinda has to do to recover those annuity payments is tell the state what happened and advocate for herself.

Kathryn Gehred  11:36

We've had petitions on the podcast before, and in that case, it was someone sort of speaking in front of an audience and someone writing down the words as they heard them. And sometimes they're not exactly accurate, but sometimes they're direct quotes. What was this situation like?

Jacqueline Beatty  11:50

Yeah, so it's unclear. A lot of scholars think actually that a man named Prince Hall helped Belinda to draft this petition. Prince Hall was a Black activist in the Boston community and an anti slavery activist at that as folks will be able to tell from the language of the petition. So it really depended on the situation. Some women had assistance from lawyers and other officials who could help them write and submit these documents. Some petitions were submitted orally and taken down, as you kind of alluded to, by a clerk of the court. And many of the petitions have that kind of beautiful script written by by the clerk of the assembly, I should say, and then are either signed by the petitioner in a space or there is an x which indicates that the petitioner either could not write or could not read or write. So they would have had to hear the petition in order to sign onto it, if they were not literate, as we assume in the case of Belinda, because she marked her petition with an X so she at least could not write her name, she may also not have been able to read any of the petition.

Kathryn Gehred  13:10

I was wondering, it seems as though the Royall family seemed to be putting some sort of effort into paying her money. I wasn't sure if there was any chance that she had gotten some kind of an education?

Jacqueline Beatty  13:22

Yeah, unfortunately, we don't know a lot about Belinda's life before this petition, as is the case with many enslaved people. I think what's interesting is that we know a lot more about Belinda than most other enslaved people in the 18th century because of her petitions and her self advocacy. But even what we know is fairly limited, and we make kind of educated guesses about certain things based on context, like the fact that Prince Hall was likely to have helped her draft this petition.

Kathryn Gehred  13:53

So at the moment that she's writing this petition, do we know what's going on in her life?

Jacqueline Beatty  13:58

It's not clear exactly what's going on in her life. But I think 1783 when her first petition is submitted, is a really important year in the state of Massachusetts regarding slavery. Each state was kind of given the task by the Continental Congress to rewrite constitutions after independence, and John Adams famously drafted the Massachusetts State Constitution in 1780 the Constitution did not abolish slavery, but the way that slavery scholars kind of quibble about whether it was officially abolished this way, but the demise of slavery in Massachusetts came through the courts. There were several legal challenges by enslaved people themselves that were challenging their enslavement, many of them using the language of the revolution, freedom, rights, equality, which is really compelling. I think the two most famous cases are those of clock Walker and mum bett or Elizabeth Freeman as. She named herself after slavery. So those cases were, I believe, in 1781 and 1783 so from that point, it was kind of understood that the court had basically decreed that slavery was illegal in the state of Massachusetts on the basis of the language of the Constitution, the language that John Adams wrote was the language that enslaved people used to challenge the very existence of slavery in that state. So I wonder, although we don't know for sure, if that had anything to do with the content and the tone of Belinda's petition. All right, she petitions at this time because she's looking for the money that she is owed based on Royalls will but as I'm sure we'll talk about, the language is quite pointed. Is maybe a delicate way to put it, but it's extraordinarily vivid in its depiction of the effect of slavery on an individual like Belinda, and then when you compound it to include all enslaved people in the United States, it's that much more powerful, I think.

Kathryn Gehred  16:08

Thank you. I think that's a great setup

Kathryn Gehred  16:10

Commonwealth of Massachusetts

Jacqueline Beatty  16:11

To the Honourable the senate and House of Representatives in General Court assembled.  

Jacqueline Beatty  16:16

The Petition of Belinda an African, humbly shews.  

Jacqueline Beatty  16:19

That seventy years have rolled away, since she on the banks of the Rio da Valta, received her existence—the mountained covered with spicy forests, the valleys loaded with the richest fruits, spontaneously produced; joined to that happy temperature of air which excludes excess; would have yielded her the most compleat felicity, had not her mind received early impressions of the cruelty of men, whose faces were like the moon, and whose bows and arrows were like the thunder and the lightning of the Clouds. -the idea of these, the most dreadful of all Enemies, filled her Infant slumbers with horror, and her noon tide moments with evil apprehensions! - but her affrighted imagination, in its most alarming extension, never represented distresses equal to what she hath since really experienced. For before she had twelve years enjoyed the fragrance of her native groves, and e’er she realized, that Europeans placed their happiness in the yellow dust which she carelessly marked with her infant footsteps- even when she, in a sacred grove, with each hand in that of a tender Parent, was paying her devotions to the great Orisa who made all things- an armed band of white men, driving many of her coutnrymen in chains, rushed into the hallowed shade! - could the tears, the sighs, and supplications, nursing from the Tortured Parental affection, have blunted the keen edge of avarice, she might have been rescued from Agony, which many of her Countrys children have felt, but which none hath ever described—In vain she lifted her Supplicating voice to an insulted father, and her guiltless hands to a dishonored Deity! She was ravished from the bosom of her Country, from the arms of her friends, while the advanced age of her Parents, rendering them unfit for servitude, cruelly separated her from them forever!   

Jacqueline Beatty  18:07

Scenes which her imagination had never conceived of—a floating World—the sporting monsters of the deep and the familiar meetings of Billows and clouds, strove, but in vain to divert her melancholly attention, from three hundred affricans in chains, suffering the most excruciating torments, and some of them rejoicing that the pangs of death come like a balm to their wounds.   

Jacqueline Beatty  18:29

Once more her eyes were blest with a Continent- but alas! How unlike the land where she received her being! Here all things appeared unpropitious- she learned to catch the ideas, marked by the sounds of language, only to know that her doom was Slavery, from which death alone was to Emancipate her. What did it avail her, that the walls of her Lord were hung with Splendor, and that the dust troden underfoot in her native country crowded his Gates with Sordid worshipers- the Laws had rendered her incapable of receiving property- and though she was free moral agent, accountable for her actions, yet she never had a moment at her own disposal!   

Jacqueline Beatty  19:09

Fifty years her faithful hands have been compelled to ignoble servitude for the benefit of an Isaac Royall, until, as if nations must be agitated, and the world convulsed for the preservation of that freedom which the almighty father intended for all the human race, the present war was commenced, the terror of men armed in the cause of freedom, compelled her master to fly- and to breathe away his life in a Land, where, Lawless domination sits enthroned, pouring bloody outrage and cruelty on all who dare to be free.   

Jacqueline Beatty  19:40

The face of your Petitioner, is now marked with the furrows of time, and her frame feebly binding under the oppression of years, while she, by the Laws of the Land, is denied the enjoyment of more morsel of that immense wealth, apart whereof hath been accumulated by her own industry, and the whole augmented by her servitude.   

Jacqueline Beatty  19:59

Wherefore, casting herself at the feet of your honours, as to a body of men, formed for the extirpation of vassalage, for the reward of virtue, and the just returns of honest industry- she prays, that such allowance may be made her out of the Estate of Colonel Royall, as will prevent her, and her more infirm daughter, from misery in the greatest extreme, and scatter comfort over the short and downward path of their Lives. And she will ever Pray   

Jacqueline Beatty  20:26

Her mark [X] Belinda   

Speaker 1  20:28

Boston 14th February 1783

Kathryn Gehred  20:29

Like snaps.

Jacqueline Beatty  20:30

Yeah.

Kathryn Gehred  20:31

So good.

Jacqueline Beatty  20:32

Yes.

Kathryn Gehred  20:33

This is beautiful language. The first thing that strikes me with this is it's almost poetically beautiful language, and it definitely sounds like she was involved in some kind of anti slavery work like this sounds sort of like abolitionist language. So you mentioned earlier Prince hall that she might have worked with with this. Does this sound like something that was the type of language he was using at this time?

Jacqueline Beatty  20:55

Yes, I think that's the reason why many scholars believe that she had assistance and had assistance from someone who was involved in anti slavery activism is, you know, the language I just read, right? It's not that Belinda wouldn't have felt this. And obviously this is her personal story. She has clear memories of being ripped away from her parents at the age of 12, as the petition indicates, I'm struck by the vivid nature of the description her infant footsteps in the dust, and the kind of floating world, the experience of being on a boat across the ocean for the first time, the European men whose faces were like the moon, and whose bows and arrows had the sounds of thunder, right, describing their their guns, their weapons. There's a sense of innocence in that language as well, because she's really kind of recounting her feelings as a child being taken away and into slavery, and how that felt, and how she interpreted what was happening to her.

Speaker 1  22:05

That's an aspect of slavery in the United States that I feel like, even like pro slave holders had a hard time finding defensible when you talk about, like, kidnapping people from their country and bringing them over. And I agree with you the part where she talks about the boat, I thought was like, you couldn't make this up. This is something that somebody's remembering,

Jacqueline Beatty  22:22

yeah, yeah.

Kathryn Gehred  22:23

hey've honed the language to make it as beautiful and forceful as possible, but this feels so real, like this is somebody

Jacqueline Beatty  22:29

Yeah, you can picture remember,

Kathryn Gehred  22:30

yes, like horrible trauma,

Jacqueline Beatty  22:32

yeah

Kathryn Gehred  22:32

And like the monsters of the deep and all of that, like somebody who'd never seen sharks and whales before, describing them like so well put in like you say evocative.

Jacqueline Beatty  22:45

Well, I think it's gutsy to say something like this to a body of men, some of whom would have been enslavers themselves, and certainly all of them were implicitly involved, right? All Americans were implicitly involved in the continuation of slavery. So it's pretty gutsy to throw this at their feet.

Kathryn Gehred  23:04

Yeah

Jacqueline Beatty  23:05

it's not, not very supplicating for the first 90% of the petition, which is fine, good for her.

Kathryn Gehred  23:12

This may be like off base, but one of the things that sort of struck me when she was talking about it is she says things like valleys loaded with the richest fruit spontaneously produced. It reminds me of the way people talk about, like, Hawaii pre contact.

Jacqueline Beatty  23:24

Yeah

Kathryn Gehred  23:25

There's, you know, like fruit food is falling from the trees. Like it isn't a culture that's talking about you have to work, work, work constantly, labor, labor, labor, labor. The whole, like, Protestant work ethic doesn't exist. I feel like if you were writing something that was really like, supplicating to people in power, you'd be saying, like, Oh, that was bad. And and you've brought me over here to this new better life, right? No, she's saying like that ruled. No, like that was great, yeah. And then I've been brought over to work, work, work, work, work, constantly, and talk about that aspect of slavery

Jacqueline Beatty  23:53

Yeah. There's no language of talking about civilization or Christianity or any of that. In fact, there's references to the religion that she practiced with her family before being kidnapped into slavery. It's not just talking about the life that she was taken away from, but the culture and the world that she was taken away from this kind of, like sustainable agriculture and like peaceful existence, and very much the opposite of kind of how you describe it this like ordered and structured agriculture that is focused on cash crops and cultivating the land for profit. It's not present until she is enslaved, right? And it's the polar opposite of what she's describing before she's kidnapped.

Kathryn Gehred  24:38

She even says, my dishonored deity, and she's not saying yeah, and for 1783 even, like in 1883 I'd be surprised to see somebody using this language. So it just feels really powerful. And she's making things from her perspective, and she's centering her own perspective in a way that I just think is so unique and fantastic.

Jacqueline Beatty  24:57

Her ask is very very deep and very buried, right? She doesn't necessarily need to do any of this, and in fact, it's distinct and different from certainly, what her white counterparts are doing. But even the few other petitions we have from black women or the way that we see them interacting with the state she's like, You know what? I'm going to use this opportunity, along with Prince Hall's likely assistance to just go after the institution of slavery and show you what hell it has wrought in my life and everyone else's before I come back to the fact that actually I am also owed this money based on a legal document written by a white man that has not necessarily anything to do with this experience, but I'm gonna give you both.

Kathryn Gehred  25:42

Yeah, she's basically asking for freedom. She's talking about emancipation, but then also give me the money that I am owed.

Jacqueline Beatty  25:50

Right, and she's already a free woman at this point, but she's kind of saying obliquely, this is why all enslaved people should be freed. She has had the freedom to speak these words now, and because the state of Massachusetts has moved away from the institution of slavery, she's not gonna necessarily rock any boats legally in the state, but, yeah, it's still very brave to submit something like this and then make your mark so that you are affirming that this is how you feel.

Kathryn Gehred  26:21

Just thinking about all these people's faces,

Jacqueline Beatty  26:24

Yeah

Kathryn Gehred  26:25

hearing this read to them.

Jacqueline Beatty  26:26

Yes. Love to be a fly on the wall in that room.

Kathryn Gehred  26:29

So to sort of fit with the argument of your book, Are there aspects of this position that you find to be using this language of dependence? How is she using her dependent state?

Jacqueline Beatty  26:41

Yes. So the last kind of two, we call them paragraphs, but they're really two long sentences here, where she talks about her face being marked with the furrows of time, right? So she's quite old, her frame feebly, bending under the oppression of years. But then also talking about her daughter, who is infirm, and she kind of makes the indication that her daughter is more ill than she is, but it's also kind of wrapped in blame, also for the legislature and the law not holding up their end of the bargain. She's like, oh, I'm so old and tired and physically weak, and my daughter is ill, and you won't even give me what is owed to me that's kind of alternating between supplication and depicting herself as someone who is helpless in the situation, which belies the majority of the language of the piece, right? This is what I find so compelling about a lot of these petitions, is that the language doesn't really match the act, the very act of these women advocating for themselves in front of a body that does not consider them full or equal citizens, especially in the case of black women, is incredibly powerful, but they use the language and assumptions of their powerlessness to do that, because if they just come out guns a blazing in every single petition and upset that kind of delicate balance of what womanhood is perceived to be in this society, then they're not going to have the sympathy of the body. And there are many instances of that as well where women just have at it and essentially either screaming about their husbands or screaming about the state or both. And you know, their petitions are ignored or denied because they are not kind of checking this box and performing helpless femininity. I was struck a little bit when the part where she talks about her master, she sort of brings in the language of the American Revolution a little bit, which I thought was really interesting.

Kathryn Gehred  28:40

Yes, the way she talks about the king him choosing to go back to England, where lawless Davidian sits enthroned, pouring bloody outrage and cruelty on all who dare to be free. So good.

Jacqueline Beatty  28:52

There are these moments in these petitions where the petitioner knows who they're speaking to, right? This is a group of revolutionaries sitting in this body in 1783 who would love to hear anyone go after the king. He's the tyrant, lawless dominion on the throne, who comes after anyone with bloody outrage, anyone who wants freedom, which includes them, but also includes her right. So she kind of has common cause here, but puts it in the context of, like this righteous cause of the revolution. But there's also subtle digs at them too, and at the revolution more broadly, right? The World convulsed for the preservation of that freedom which the Almighty Father intended for all the human race, just being like, Oh, I hear, I hear your cries for freedom like I raise you one. And you know, make it universal in this case, and not just about taxation and representation for white guys of property.

Kathryn Gehred  29:51

It made me think of the Samuel Johnson quote where he says, How is it that we hear the loudest yelps forlLiberty among the drivers of negroes?

Jacqueline Beatty  29:59

That's right.

Kathryn Gehred  30:00

Right? The first time I read that, it did sort of, like, blow my mind a little bit, because I'd sort of been thinking of things like, you know, way back then, nobody was even thinking about this, like it was just this was the way things were. And the more you read documents from the 18th century, that's just not true.

Jacqueline Beatty  30:13

No

Kathryn Gehred  30:13

people were challenging it from the very, very beginning. And this is Belinda doing exactly that in 1783,

Jacqueline Beatty  30:19

Exactly.

Kathryn Gehred  30:21

Okay. It's a fabulous petition. She's strategic. She's using language of abolition. She's bringing up the war that is sort of still ongoing in 1783 Did she win her petition? Did she get her money?

Jacqueline Beatty  30:33

So yes and no, I had to take notes over here because there's so many follow ups in this situation. So the legislature did approve her petition, but we know from subsequent petitions that they didn't actually follow through with executing the order to provide her with that money. So she has four other petitions after this, one in 1783 in 1785 she petitions being like, basically, you know, you said this in 1783 I still haven't seen my money. It would be nice if you followed through with this. In 1787 she petitions again and is granted a one year allowance. In 1788 she petitions for three years back pay, which indicates to us that they are not following through on their promise. And the last petition we have of hers is in 1793 with more evidence that what they affirmed did not actually occur. And unfortunately, we don't really know what is happening in Belinda's life in this 10 years of repeated petitioning, besides the fact that at some point she gets married and claims this surname, Sutton, and I think by 1799 the Royall estate indicates that there are no servants living on the property anymore, or no servants Living who be taking money out of the estates accounts. So I think we are led to believe with that, that Sutton did not survive beyond 1799 there's a lot that we don't know. What we do know is that she kept petitioning right five times total within a span of a decade, and had to keep advocating for herself, because despite the Massachusetts legislature affirming that she had a right to this money, she wasn't getting it. This is not uncommon either. I think there's a lot of frustration in kind of reading through some of these petitions and desperately searching for answers. Sometimes there are documents that exist that affirm that payments were made or, you know, whatever the request that women petitioners made, those were granted. Sometimes the journals of these legislators would say, You know what, we're gonna we're gonna table this for tomorrow, or we're gonna send it to this committee, and then they're gonna report back to us. And searching and searching and searching through these documents, it's just kind of like a pocket veto, right? It goes away. Either they forget about it or they intentionally just like, let it go, and we don't know really what happened to a lot of these people based on these petitions. So it's very frustrating when there is no neat bow at the end. But it's especially frustrating in a situation like this, where the legislature agrees with Belinda on the facts of the case, and yet they do not follow through to help her.

Kathryn Gehred  33:26

Yeah, I feel like that's kind of a recurring theme with these sort of continental governments and paying anybody, yeah? Like trying to pay the soldiers, like paying literally anyone, right? Seems extremely complicated.

Jacqueline Beatty  33:39

Well, the 1780s were also a bit of an economic mess, to be fair

Kathryn Gehred  33:42

But but still, this is money that is clearly it was intended for her. It rightfully belongs to her, and just the fact that she had to fight and fight and fight and fight to get it is just frustrating. But I'm so happy that these documents exist to give us this little insight into Belinda's life and the time. But, yeah, sorry, Belinda, that sucks.

Jacqueline Beatty  34:07

Yeah, it does. There are also, I should say, some scholars who argue that this is kind of the first real evidence of a formerly enslaved person demanding reparations for enslavement. I don't know where I fall. I kind of go back and forth about this, because the money that she is owed out of Royall's estate was not given as kind of payment for her work while she was enslaved, but the language that she uses in this petition that we Read, the language that probably Prince Hall helps her craft suggests that she is owed money for the labor of her enslavement. So it depends on your perspective, whose shoes you're filling, right? If you're the state of Massachusetts, you're probably not going to say that this is reparations for slavery. It's just like this is in his. Will, and we have to provide it, but I don't know. You know, Belinda and Prince Hall may have had other ideas that the money in Royall's account, she probably rightly thought like he owed her, because she labored for Him for 50 years, for half a century, and made him wealthy.

Kathryn Gehred  35:18

Thank you so much for bringing this document to my attention and for sharing it. If there's one sort of takeaway that you want people to walk away from this episode with, what would it be?

Jacqueline Beatty  35:29

I think major takeaway from this document, and from all the documents that I looked at for the book, is basically that there are a lot of ways to express power, even if you are in a position in society that others deem powerless, right, that no one is without power. There are different amounts of power. There are different ways to express power to different effect, but no one in the society was without power. And I think more importantly, no one in society was kind of accepting a position of powerlessness without advocating for themselves in unique ways. There are ways in which the constrictions of the patriarchal state and kind of white supremacy in American history really constrict the way that people can express power, but many people do so within those confines, and some people, like the women I write about, do so using those confines right and undermining them in the process. So I think maybe even in this political environment, it's important for people to remember that there are a lot of ways to have agency in a democratic society, even if you feel kind of helpless and powerless. And that's a good thing. That feels good to hear yes, people in much worse straights in the 18th century were doing it so so can we that's great if people are interested in learning more about Belinda's life and the many other petitions that she submitted the Royall House website has transcriptions of this petition. They have some historical context and secondary source material on their website, and they also link out to a database of petitions submitted by free and enslaved black residents of Massachusetts that folks at Harvard put together almost 10 years ago. And it's free and open access, and you can see the originals too, which are really beautiful. So if you're interested in learning more, I would point folks to the Royall House and Slave Quarters website.

Kathryn Gehred  37:38

Awesome. Yeah, I will definitely put a link to that in the show notes. And check all this out and read everything you can about Belinda, because she's fascinating. So to my listeners, thank you so much for listening, and I am, as ever, your most obedient and humble servant. Thank you very much.

Kathryn Gehred  38:05

Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant is a production of R2 Studios, part of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. I'm Kathryn Gehred, the creator and host of this podcast, Jeanette Patrick and Jim Ambuske are the executive producers. Special thanks to Virginia Humanities for allowing me to use the recording studio. If you enjoyed this episode, please tell a friend and be sure to rate and review the series in your podcast app. For more great history podcasts, head to r2studios.org. Thanks for listening.