The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Research finds descendant of slaves in Conn.
Adams Middle School 8th-graders study town’s role in history
GUILFORD — Patricia Wilson Pheanious was sitting on the porch of her Ashford home when her husband came out and told her that someone was on the phone and wanted to talk about her ancestry.
Dennis Culliton, co-founder of the Witness Stones Project, in which markers are placed where enslaved Guilford residents lived or worked, had found a living descendant, the sixth-greatgranddaughter of Montros and Phillis, Africans brought from Barbados to Connecticut
in 1710.
Wilson Pheanious knew that her father, Lt. Col. Bertram Wadsworth Wilson Jr., was a Tuskegee Airman, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross and a Bronze Star. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He had been personnel director for the University of Connecticut.
What she didn’t know was the possibility that “my fifth-great-grandfather, if I’ve got it counted right, was a freeman who fought in the Revolutionary War in the 6th Connecticut Regiment from 1779 to 1783.” That would have been Sharper Rogers, who may have been married to Flora, a daughter of Montros and Phillis.
And she didn’t know that the man who had bought Montros and Phillis in Boston in 1728, David Naughty, had put in his will that the couple and their eight children “should all be freed at the death of his wife,” according to Culliton, but that his wife, Ruth, would live 33 years after Naughty’s death, until 1772, and that only one of the children would ever make it out of slavery.
“When she died, in her will, which is very explicit, she frees Montros and Phillis but she doesn’t free any of the children,” Culliton said. Flora died before Ruth Naughty did, so she never was freed, but her son, Cesar, Wilson Pheanious’ fourth-greatgrandfather, was freed in 1800.
“There was a Colonial census taken in 1774 and that was the peak of slavery in Connecticut,” Culliton said. “In Guilford it clearly shows we had about 60 slaves in Guilford at that time.”
The Witness Stones project began last year when Culliton, a social studies teacher at Adams Middle School, and Doug Nygren, a retired social worker, started the program of installing markers in Guilford’s sidewalks, based on the Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) in Germany that memorialize victims of the Holocaust.
The project includes a lesson in which Adams’ 300 eighth-graders are researching one of Guilford’s enslaved residents, studying primary documents, such as wills and census records.
For Culliton, it was a surprise to find Wilson Pheanious living in Ashford — she is former commissioner of the state Department of Social Services and is running as the Democratic candidate for the 53rd District House seat held by Republican Sam Belsito.
Wilson Pheanious, 68, said she knew her family had its share of accomplishments. “I knew that I had elders who had gone to college, for example, long before it was customary,” she said. “It was a highly educated family and there was a great emphasis on education.”
And her son, Cheo Hodari Coker, has made a name for himself as a film and television writer and the creator of the Netflix series “Luke Cage,” based on a Marvel Comics superhero.
At the same time, “a lot of terrible things happened to this family,” Wilson Pheanious said. “They were freed by a will and then indentured by another will.”
But she is impressed by what Culliton has found. “The fact that they were property owners, the fact that they were free people, the fact that they had trades,” she said. “One of them ran the business of his master and actually was responsible for sending the master’s son to Yale. … It’s difficult to put into words how this has concretized my
connection to America and to my birthright as an American, and to have schoolchildren in Guilford doing the research that lays out that path, how exciting that is for me.”
In all, including her three grandchildren, Jomo, Jahi and Kaia Coker, Wilson Pheanious now has a connection to 11 generations of her family, unusual for someone whose ancestors were forced to come to America as slaves. Among the details she found out was that the photo of “Aunt Delia” that hung in the house was actually her great-grandmother Ardelia Burk Wilson, “and she looks just like my niece Nandi,” Wilson Pheanious said.
According to Culliton, “the real idea behind this project is an educational opportunity for eighth-grade students to learn about slavery in Connecticut. … We have them specifically research enslaved people and the write stories about them.”
He said a result of the research into slaves’ lives is “restoring their humanity. … They had agency, they made choices,” such as “running away, purchasing their freedom. … They could do something to better their lives.” They also made other choices, such as sabotage or work slowdowns. “Sometimes they were freed by their owners because they were loyal or dutiful, showing fidelity,” Culliton said.
One of Montros’ and Phillis’ children, Moses, was considered “king of the local slaves,” Culliton said. “It was almost like an extrajudicial system … Instead of going to the white masters they would deal with it on their own level.” His stone was placed last year, along with those of his sister Candace and their mother, Phillis.
The stones this year will be in honor of Phillis’ husband Montros, and Pompey, the oldest son and the last known slave in Guilford. The third will be of an enslaved man named Jouachim.
“The house where the Naughtys lived is on the corner of Park and Boston streets … and it’s where the Guilford Savings Bank is today,” Culliton said. The bank, located in a house built in 1810, replaced the Naughtys’ house, he said.
Julia Schroers, 13, is researching Jouachim’s story and said the project is important because slavery has been “a little bit brushed over. There were other people here that built the community that did these amazing things.” She said the project reaches back into history to say to enslaved people, “you were here, you did this, you really helped build the town.”
Julia, whose father is German and whose mother is Jewish, has seen the German stumbling stones, calling them “a tribute to the people who have died, and I think America doesn’t have any outlet for remembrance for these people who had their rights stripped away and their humanity and still did amazing things for this country.”
Scout Coimie, 13, is also researching Jouachim and said, “I didn’t know I’d get to learn all these different people that I had no idea lived in this town.” She said she knew Connecticut had slaves “because we were part of the 13 Colonies, but I didn’t know the full extent of the slaves that we had in Guilford and I feel like this project is helping me learn more about our history and community.”
Tom Bushnell, also an eighth-grade social studies teacher, said the project involves nine teachers, including language arts teachers, who work with the students on the writing portion. “I think the kids and school and community have all responded really positively” to a project that challenges the students to study centuries-old documents,” he said.
“The culmination is we go to the Green (and) the kids are recognized for all the work that they’ve done and I think they’ve taken great pride in that,” Bushnell said. “You can see in their faces the sense of pride (for) the work that they’ve done.”
The ceremony will be held at 9:45 a.m. Nov. 15 on the