Since the Society’s two historic houses have been closed for the past year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the staff has taken this opportunity to reinterpret the Dr. Hezekiah Chaffee House to more deeply reflect [...]
The service of a doctor requires skill, understanding, patience, and knowledge. To become one after being torn from your family and forced into servitude for a man you know nothing of makes the already arduous feat exceptional. In the late 18th century, after years of enslavement Dr. Primus Manumit became Windsor’s first Black doctor.
They worked in the kitchen from dawn to dusk cooking, washing, and ironing. They emptied chamber pots every morning after sleeping in basements and attics. And they were supposed to be invisible whenever guests came calling. Who are ‘they’? They are the slaves of Windsor’s Chaffee family.