Nancy and Toney, Part 2

Nancy Toney portrait, by Osbert Loomis. Photograph of painting from the collection of the Loomis Chaffee Archives, Loomis Chaffee School, Windsor, Connecticut. Photo by John Groo.

In part one of this story, we went over the early days of Nancy Toney and her father, Anthony Bartram. In our earliest records of them, they lived, enslaved, in the Greens Farms neighborhood of Fairfield, Connecticut, as did Nancy’s mother, Nanny, and sister, Flora. In 1779, in the midst of the Revolutionary War, the British attacked Fairfield. During this attack, Bartram took his two daughters, 4-year-old Nancy and 1-year-old Flora, and escaped behind British lines. Earlier in the war, the British promised freedom to any enslaved person who joined their cause. Bartram saw this as the best opportunity to ensure a life of freedom for him and his girls, so he joined.

During their almost four years with the British, it appears that Bartram served under Captain Nathaniel Hubbell in the Armed Boat Company, which were a series of raiding ships based in Long Island Sound. As the war reached its end, Bartram, Nancy, and Flora went to New York City, one of the last British strongholds left in the colonies. There they were supposed to be safe until the British could send them to Nova Scotia in the fall of 1783. Unfortunately, they were not. Nancy was kidnapped, and despite Bartram’s efforts and the support of the British Army, she never reunited with her father. Nancy was sent back into slavery, and Bartram went to Nova Scotia alone. It is not known what happened to Flora. From here we continue Nancy’s and Anthony’s stories.

Toney Bartram and Black Loyalists in Nova Scotia

Anthony Bartram is among the 3,000 Black Loyalists listed in The Book of Negros. This is the record the British presented to General George Washington to  prove the enslaved individuals that the two sides had been fighting over for so long were no longer in the country. This document lists the names of everyone they  evacuated, what boat they were on, where and by whom they had been enslaved, a short physical description, and their age. The record states Bartram was 25, but based off the birth years of his children, he was probably a little older. There were 22 other Black Loyalists with him on the ship he took to Nova Scotia, the brig Concord. Bartram and three others on that ship were all listed as being indentured to Hubbell. ^{1 2} Capt. Hubbell landed in Canada just a month before.³ They met again in a little town called Port Mouton, though they did not stay there long.⁴

Page of the Brownspriggs Grant, Nova Scotia
Archives.

Port Mouton burned down in 1784, less than a year after they arrived. At that point, most of the Port Mouton Loyalists relocated to Chedabucto, later renamed Guysborough, after Guy Carleton (see part 1).⁵ In 1785, Capt. Hubbell was granted 750 acres of land in Guysborough County.^{6 7} In 1787, Bartram (referred to as Anthony Barton) was among the 74 Black Loyalists listed in the Brownspriggs Land Grant, which gave him roughly 40 acres of land in either northern  Guysborough or Antigonish County.^{8 9 10} Because he was part of this land grant, it is safe to assume that Bartram was no longer working for Capt. Hubbell at that point.

The last document where we find Bartram is a 1792 poll tax return. In it, Toney Bartram was listed as a sailmaker living in Guysborough.¹¹ Perhaps this was a skill he gained while working for the British on former whaling ships in Long Island Sound.

It was a relief to find Bartram both alive and employed. Life as a Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia was notoriously difficult. Many were never given the land they were promised, and those who were, found the land to be unforgivable and unfarmable. Nova Scotia was ill prepared for the influx of over 30,000 Black and white Loyalists in the 1780s. The job market was tough, and most of the few jobs there were went to the white settlers.^{12 13} Not only that, but slavery was still legal in Canada which led to white men not wanting to pay for Black labor. There were also cases of white men trying to claim free Black Loyalists as their enslaved property.¹⁴ The winters were cold and harsh, and without proper farming land or paying work, many Loyalists who settled there left or starved.^{15 16}

Recreation of a pit house used by Black Loyalists in their years in Nova Scotia at Black Loyalist Heritage Center. Courtesy of the Black Loyalist Heritage Center.

Among the white Loyalist population, many made the decision to return to the United States rather than stay. This was the choice Capt. Hubbell made. He is buried in Trumbull, Connecticut. For Black Loyalists (who could not return), the British government presented the opportunity to emigrate to Sierra Leone in 1792. About half of the remaining Black Loyalist population, over 1,000 people, decided to cross the sea.^{17 18 19} Bartram probably stayed. Later censuses show Black families with the last name Bartram in and around Guysborough County. Still a young man when he arrived, it is probable that he remarried and started a new family.

Nancy Toney and the Chaffee and Loomis Families

This brings us back to Nancy. In 1779, when she was 4 years old, her father made a bid for her freedom. In the midst of a terrible raid, he took Nancy across British lines where he had heard they might be free. They lived among the British Army for almost four years, until Nancy was 8. In 1783, while the family was in New York City, waiting for their ship to Nova Scotia, Nancy was kidnapped and sent back to slavery in Connecticut. She never saw her father again.

At first, Nancy lived in Fairfield, Connecticut, not far from where she was born. She was enslaved by the Bradley family. The mother, Abigail Bradley, was the sister of Jeremiah Sherwood, the man who had enslaved Nancy’s father when Nancy was born. In 1785, Charlotte Bradley, the Bradley daughter, married Hezekiah Chaffee Jr. of Windsor.²⁰

Hezekiah Chaffee Jr. house at 5 North Meadow Rd. | Photo by Mike Taylor

Upon this marriage, 11-year-old Nancy was sent to Windsor with Charlotte to help run her new home. For the next 36 years, Nancy worked in the Chaffee house, probably cooking, cleaning, and helping to raise the three Chaffee children, Abigail, Hezekiah III, and Samuel.²¹ Charlotte died in 1812 and 1821 saw the death of Hezekiah Jr, who willed Nancy to his daughter, Abigail Loomis.²² Nancy then moved to Abigail’s home on the town green. There too she helped cook, clean, and raise the six Loomis children.

Nancy’s status in the Loomis house is nebulous. She was listed as free while living in that home on multiple censuses, but no emancipation paper for her has been found. However, slavery was abolished in Connecticut in 1848, which meant, at the age of 74, Nancy was finally free. She could have left the Loomis house at that point, but the census shows that she stayed. Given her age, she probably had nowhere else to go, and the Chaffee’s would have been legally required to financially support her.²³

Nancy Toney’s old gravestone (since replaced with a reproduction)

On December 19, 1857, Nancy died. She was 82 years old. She is widely regarded to have been among the last, if not the last, enslaved person in Connecticut. Upon her death, the Loomis family erected a grave for her in Palisado Cemetery. On this stone, she has a last name, the name of her father: Toney.

For most of her life, Nancy did not have a last name. As mentioned in part one of this story, most enslaved people didn’t. Only upon becoming free was a last name chosen. Some, like her father Toney, took on the last name of their enslaver. Some choose a last name to reflect their newfound freedom, like Windsor’s Dr. Primus Manumit. But Nancy chose her father’s name. It was a choice made with love and grounded in a wish to preserve a connection to a family she did not see for almost 70 years. And perhaps it was meant to be a gift to the memory of a man, who almost 80 years before, had run with her in the hope that they could be free together.

This research was inspired by “Black Loyalist Refugees: Toney Escapes During the Burning of Fairfield,” by Alec Lurie published on ConnecticutHistory.org, September 2023, which brought the Anthony Bartrum case to the British to our attention.

By Heather Lodge, program manager, 2024

Footnotes