While there has been much controversy over whether Christopher Columbus “discovered” or “Invaded” America in 1492, there has been little attention paid to the fact that on his second voyage to the New World he brought sugar cane for planting. 1)  More than 500 years later, American life is still greatly influenced by Columbus’ horticultural experiment. According to a recent study by George Washington University, the average American consumes 100 pounds of sugar and sweeteners each year. 2)  While this might not be good for the waistline, the effect sugar had on the world’s economy starting in 1493 was monumental.  Sugar production was a labor-intensive crop.  It needed to be planted, tended, and cut.  Once cut it needed to be pressed, boiled and refined.  As a result, West Indian sugar production required a large labor force. 3)  The solution to this labor shortage was slavery. At first Europeans turned to Indigenous People to provide slave labor.  Connecticut was one of the first English Colonies to export enslaved Pequots and other Indigenous people to the West Indies.  Unfortunately, enslave Pequots and later captives from King Phillips War 1675-1676 could not keep up with the demand for labor on sugar plantations where sugar refineries operated around the clock to feed the world’s sweet tooth. 4)

Connecticut and other New England colonies became enmeshed in the notorious triangle trades.  New England in the 17th and early 18th century had an abundance of forests, crops and livestock. West Indian planters found raising sugar so profitable that they found it more economical to buy wooden products like firewood, shingles, boards, barrel staves even entire house frames, as well as crops like onions and livestock from New England.  That’s why the onion has become the symbol of Wethersfield.  New England ships returned from the West Indies with salt, sugar, molasses to be distilled into rum and slaves.  Molasses was distilled in New England and used as a trade item in Africa to acquire slaves to be sold in the West Indies, North and South America. 5)

Hebron’s history was profoundly changed by the Triangle trades.  During the early 18th century, settlers worked hard to clear fields and to produce enough surplus to purchase salt to preserve food, molasses or sugar to enhance flavor, and rum to supplement the daily ration of cider. Until about 1750, Hebron farmers relied upon the former forest soil to raise crops for themselves and export.  However, Yankee farming was not ecologically sound.  Once the trees were removed and crops planted, fertile soil would erode during the winter. 6)  By 1750 Hebron farmers found that once the top soil was gone, stones and more stones appeared each year.  At the same time, children of large Yankee families had to be provided with farms to set up their own households.  Connecticut’s last empty space Litchfield County provided a temporary solution, but eventually Hebron sons and daughters would move to Vermont, New Hampshire, New York and further west.  Those Hebron farmers who remained in town were faced with the need for greater labor to till stoney fields.  Slave labor provided a solution for those who were prosperous enough to invest.  By 1774, there were 52 presumably enslaved people in Hebron.  Enslaved men provided the labor to clear fields of stone and build stonewalls to fence in crops and livestock.  7)

This seems to have been the case with one of Hebron’s earliest records of slave ownership.  By 1750,  John Talcott and his sons were not in good health and found it difficult to actively farm.  Talcott decided to remedy this problem by investing in a slave who he named Cuff.  Isolated from other African Americans living in a foreign household, Cuff committed suicide in February of 1754. 8) This did not discourage John Talcott’s neighbors from purchasing slaves. Thus, as rhetoric about freedom and taxes began to arise, slavery in Hebron and New England was on the rise. None-the less, although they could not participate in government Brister, Cesar, Jack Peter and Augustus all enlisted to fight the British.

By the Revolutionary War Southeastern Connecticut and western Rhode Island had the largest African American population in New England. 9) Some farms were run like plantations relying on the labor of 10-12 slaves.  However, the West Indian trade was so profitable that many middle -income farmers could afford one slave. Some gentlemen farmers could afford to purchase more than one slave.  The Gilbert and Peters families owned several slaves who farmed their owner’s land. While the number of slaves is known through census information, the names of the enslaved are sadly missing. 10) Probably the most widely known enslave individual in Revolutionary War Hebron is Cesar Peters and his wife Lois.  Due to the fact that their owner, the Rev. Samuel Peters was an Anglican minister and Loyalist, Cesar Peters’ narrative of being sold to settle debts and his family’s fortunate rescue have been a staple of Hebron stories for over a century.  11)Cesar and Lois Peters’ family were not the only slave family owned by Rev. Peters.  Pomp Mundo and his wife Rachel were also the property of Rev. Peters, but their story is vastly different from that of Cesar Peters. At age 15 Pomp Mundo was purchased by Hezekiah Edgerton of Norwich for whom he worked for 19 years, saving his outside earnings which amounted to 68 pounds.  Connecticut law required owners of manumitted slaves to assume the responsibility of supporting their former property, if a newly freed slave fell upon hard times.  Edgerton was reluctant to assume this responsibility for Pomp Mundo and instead sold him to Ozias Hawkins of Coventry in 1768.  Hawkins, too, was reluctant to assume responsibility for Pomp Mundo if he were freed.  The Rev. Samuel Peters was aware of this situation and purchased Pomp Mundo for12 shillings intending to manumit him.  Unfortunately, Hebron’s Selectmen forbade Rev. Peters from freeing Pomp Mundo. 12)  So, Pomp Mundo like Cesar Peters remained as part of Rev. Peters property when Rev Peters was driven from town by the mob of patriots from Windham and Lebanon. Unfortunately, the newly formed State of Connecticut failed to manumit Rev. Peters’ slave families, but rented Rev. Peters farms and evicted his slaves. At the end of the Revolutionary War, Rev. Peters’ brother-in-law John Mann and his son Nathaniel Mann were deeply indebted to Reverend Peters living in London.  In 1787, the Manns hit upon the idea of selling Cesar Peters’ family to retire their debts.  Throughout the summer of 1787, the Manns harassed Cesar Peters’ family.  Toward evening on Sept 27th, the Manns with several men armed with clubs came to transport Cesar Peters family to South Carolina to be sold. 13)  Although the men living on Burnt Hill were off at militia training, the women of Burnt Hill rallied and tried to prevent the abduction.  They were not successful, but when their husbands returned, a scheme was decided upon of creating a bill for clothing that Cesar Peters had picked up from being mended by a neighboring farmer Elijah Graves.  With the bill in hand and enlisting the aid of Hebron’s Selectmen, and the abduction foiled.  Cesar Peters family was put under protective custody for 2 years and in 1789 Cesar Peters Family and Pomp Mundo were manumitted by the Connecticut General Assembly upon the testimonies of Cesar Peters’ neighbors. Both African American families moved out of town, but not before Cesar Peters attempted to sue his abductors for 1000 pounds.  The case was settled out of court. 14)

The Revolutionary War altered New England’s access to the West Indian trade.  By the end of the war, expanding cities like Boston and New York came to replace the West Indies as places to sell crops and livestock. Although Connecticut would not abolish slavery until 1848, thirteen years before the Civil War, Hebron farmers began to manumit their slaves after the Revolutionary War.  A 1784 Connecticut law manumitted enslaved individuals born after that date when they reached their majority.  By the first Federal census in 1790, Hebron had 1064 white residents, 25 free African Americans and 18 enslaved individuals.  By 1800, the number of slaves shrank to 4 and by 1810 there were no enslaved individuals in Hebron. 15)

Starting in 1790 Hebron Center began to develop into a neighborhood of gentlemen farmers’ mansion houses, shops and tradesmen homes.  In 1806 Rev. Samuel Peters’ nephew John Samuel Peters decided to sell his Burnt Hill farm and establish a farm close to Hebron Center.  He had his eye on land that Merchant David Barber had owned, but lost due to debt to a Boston merchant.  Over the years, John S. Peters who was trained as a physician acquired the Barber farm land which is now known as #17 Kinney Road. 16) Interestingly, Cesar Peters’ family moved back to Hebron in 1806.  Cesar Peters purchased his former abductors two story house on Wall Street (no longer standing).  Cesar Peters and his sons Cesar Junior and Henry began a long career of working for Dr. Peters and Judge Sylvester Gilbert providing labor for these gentlemen’s farm.  By the 1830’s Dr. Peters had become Governor of Connecticut and hired the Peters men and other African Americans to build a series of stonewalls and laneways that remain today along Route 85.  Governor Peters was a progressive farmer and mentioned his acquisition of the Barber farm in his autobiography and the building of the laneways in his unpublished history of Hebron.  At the same time Gov Peters was improving his farm, Judge Sylvester Gilbert sold 2 acres of his farm to Cesar Peters’ son Henry.  In all seven African American families settled in Hebron center living in middle class houses and farming the local elites’ land. 17) Although there was growing attitude of prejudice developing in Connecticut in the early 19th century, Hebron center was an integrated neighborhood where Yankees and African-Americans lived, worked, learned and worshiped together in a unique economic network that was the total opposite of southern share cropping after the Civil War. Ready employment by Hebron’s gentlemen farmers made Hebron a magnet for free African Americans from area town.18)  In 1800 Hebron was the wealthiest town in Tolland County. 19)  By 1850, Hebron had the largest free African American population in the county.20) Connecticut’s new constitution repealed the voting rights of African Americans, but did establish a greater degree of religious freedom. Interestingly,  at least 8 African American men from Hebron served during the Civil War, even though they had been deprived of their right to vote.21)

Gov Peters was the first Connecticut Governor who was not a Congregationalist.  He was also a very progressive leader who encouraged Connecticut’s government to invest in turnpikes, canals, industry and the newly invented railroads.22) Although Governor Peters would not live to see it, the railroads burst the bubble of Hebron’s agricultural economy.  After the Civil War the United States invested heavily in railroads making western wheat and meat readily available to New England cities.  As Hebron farmers began to move elsewhere, so did Hebron’s African American farm laborers.  By the time of Hebron’s Bicentennial in 1908, there was only one African American family living in Hebron-- Benjamin Smith age 63, his wife Rebecca age 60 and son Frank age 26 who supported themselves by doing odd jobs. By 1920, there was only one African American living in town and by 1930 there were none. 23)

In the early 20th century New England received a large number of African Americans as a result of the Great Migration or Exodus from the Jim Crow South.  World War II provided employment and a host of technologic and social innovations that changed New England.  Improved cars and roads allowed people to live in the country and commute to work.  The GI Bill which excluded African Americans made buying a home easier for White Americans.  The result of this was that in the 1960’s subdivisions began to constructed in Hebron.  Although some African American families did move to Hebron, zoning and home prices created a White suburb.  Interestingly, Hebron’s school system at this time was more integrated than its subdivisions. 24)  This demographic split continued into the 21st century with many new Hebron residents never realizing that the desire for sugar gave rise to slavery which in Hebron resulted in slaves and then free laborers to construct stonewalls rescuing Hebron’s farms so that Hebron crops and livestock could fuel the Triangle Trade and New England’s developing cities. This series of events created a historically integrated town where both White and African Americans could enjoy a middling class lifestyle.

1. Annaberg Sugar Mill, National perk Service, U.S. Department of the Interior
2. Face the Facts USA, Project of George Washington University
3. World history Encyclopedia, Life on a Colonial Sugar Plantation
4. Margaret Ellen Newell  Brthren by Nature pg 15
5. Wikipedia, Triangular Trade
6. Robert M Thorson Stone by Stone
7. Connecticut Colony Census 1774
8. Barbara Brown and James Rose Black Roots in Southeastern Connecticut 1650-1900  pg 484
9. Brown and Rose pg XIII
10. Federal Census Hebron 1790
11. John Sibun Our Town’s Heritage
12. Rose and Brown, pg 263
13. Manuscript copy of “The Letters of Rev. Samuel Peters” Episcopal Archives
14. Susan Pendleton, “History of Hebron” Rockville Leader 
15. Federal Census Hebron 1790 , 1800, 1810
16. Autobiography of John S. Peters
17. Hebron land Records
18. Account book of John S. Peters
19. Hebron Conn Bicentennial
20. 1856 Tolland County Map Magic Maps, University of Connecticut
21. Rose and Brown
22. Wikipedia, Governor John S. Peters
23. Federal Census Hebron 1900, 1910, 1920
24. RHAM Triangle Yearbooks 1965-1971