Needham History: What Will History Say About Us?

And the present? That’s up to us now.

Free Soil and Free Men! A broadside announcing a meeting in Needham’s Town Hall to elect Free Soil delegates to the nominating conventions in September 1848.

What Will History Say About Us?

I have been asked on several occasions to provide information about the history of minority communities or about race relations in Needham – story tie-ins for Black History Month, or program information for the Needham Diversity Committee or the Human Rights Committee. This has not been very easy. The issue of race is not often discussed in the history of Needham, not because it is absent or unimportant, but because so little was recorded.

Despite a general sense that modern history is comprehensive and “everything is known,” the historical record is surprisingly sparse. In a town like Needham, which was literate but not literary, recorded history is mostly found in official documents such as tax rolls, town clerk’s records, church registers, town reports. This is the history of the town leaders, office holders, property owners, and clergy. While this information is indeed important, it also leaves out large segments of the community’s experience, all the things that were so familiar and seemingly unimportant that no one thought it necessary to write them down – the experience of the working class; the routine rhythms of work and leisure; the accommodations of neighborhood; the attitudes, opinions, and relationships that governed everyone’s daily life. Reading George Kuhn Clarke’s History of Needham from 1711 to 1911 – which exhaustively compiles the official town documents – one could easily come away with the impression that Needham was not only devoid of African-Americans, but also of Native Americans, women, non-British Europeans, Catholics, Jews, and children.

Piecing together information about these groups (and I am almost certain that there were women and children in 19th-century Needham) takes a number of different strategies and resources. Ephemera (which, by very definition are incomplete and randomly preserved), personal letters, club records, or photographs of gatherings and events, are good sources of otherwise-unrecorded information. Even so, these items show very little evidence of a Black population in Needham. This is backed up by the Census over the years, which shows that only a fractional percentage of Needham’s population was Black – 13 people out of 1130 in 1790, 14 people out of 3607 in 1870; 19 out of 4016 in 1900; 19 out of 10,845 in 1930.

Why so few? First, because the overall population of African-Americans in Massachusetts was small. In the 1920 US Census, only 45,466 people, 1.2% of the state population, are identified as Black. Of these, 60% lived in Boston and Cambridge, with another significant population (13%) in New Bedford. Numbers in the industrial towns like Lowell, Lawrence, and Lynn were quite small. This suggests to me that the trades, unions, and ethnic enclaves made an effort to close their ranks, while the cities and the ports, which were accustomed to more fluid population changes, provided more opportunities.

In Needham, prior to 1850, the population was apparently quite static, with few people moving in or out. The big markets and roads were in neighboring towns. The small number of freed people living in Needham in the early 19th century had passed away. By the 1860s, however, industrial growth in the Heights was drawing in immigrants from other parts of Europe, and there were jobs to be had – but among the Irish, Italian and other faces seen in the mill photos, none are African-American. Also, Needham had a well-entrenched system of neighborhood redlining. Ads for residential development from the 1890s through the 1930s nearly all mention that “proper restrictions assure good neighbors.” These restrictions served for decades to direct the non-white and non-Protestant – Irish, Italian, Russian, Polish, and Jews – toward ethnic enclaves in the Heights, and apparently kept African-Americans out of town almost entirely.

Needham records do tell us a little bit about Needham’s Black population. The marriage of Cromwell Oliver and Elizabeth Gossen, both free Black people living in Needham, was recorded in the First Parish in March 1730. The Parish records also record the births of their ten children between 1731 and 1747, and the deaths of three between 1733 and 1751. They disappear from the records thereafter, so it is not clear whether or not they are among the 14 Black people noted in the Needham Census of 1765. The 1790 census records the households of Jethro Cato, his wife Dinah, and two children; and of Cesar Cummings, his wife, Patience, and four of their (?six) children. The Catos owned a small farm near the intersection of Charles River and Pine Streets.

However, these are generalities. There are two topics in Needham’s history in which race is the specific and central focus. The first is slaveholding. Despite Clarke’s denial of the topic, death registers from the First Parish clearly show that in the 1750s there were at least eight slave-holding families in Needham – including the Rev. Jonathan Townsend, the Parish’s first Minister – and more than thirteen enslaved people. The First Parish in Needham and the Needham History Center are working together on research about enslavement in 18th-century Needham, and will have more information on this topic at a later time.

The other, a brighter spot in our history, is Abolition. Multiple sources of information show that Needham was a strong Abolition town, and took what actions it could to advance the cause. The town’s physician, Dr. Josiah Noyes, was an ardent abolitionist, sponsoring public Lyceum discussions on the issue from about the 1830s – long before it was a matter of widespread public discussion. By the 1840s, Needham had become a stronghold of the Free Soil Party. Free Soil was a precursor to the Republican Party. Under the motto “Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, Free Men,” it opposed the compromise legislation that allowed the expansion of slavery into the new US states and territories. In congressional elections on the 1840s and 50s, Needham consistently elected the Free Soil/Republican candidates by large margins as its Representatives to the US House. Broadsides in our collections attest to Free Soil meetings held in town, and Free Soil/Republican presidential candidate John C. Fremont made a personal campaign appearance in Needham in 1856.

Needham’s stance is also reflected in the Town Meeting records. In March 1851, TM voted to include a statement opposing the new Fugitive Slave Law (“a flagrant outrage”) which required local authorities to assist in the capture of escaped slaves. A broadside posted in Needham in April 1851 suggests that Needhamites marched to Boston to protest the deportation of Thomas Sims, one of the first fugitive slaves to be returned from MA under the law. Although the effort was in fact poorly-planned and unsuccessful, it finally moved the Abolitionist cause from theory to action, making MA the heart of the northern Abolitionist movement. In 1854, TM voted to oppose President Polk’s expansion of slavery into the new territories. The town did not send a single soldier to the Mexican War (1846-1848), which was widely seen as an effort to expand the slave territories. The Mexican War is the only US war that Needham did not participate in.

When the Civil War came, Needham responded early (“Needham to the Rescue!”) and filled its quota without need for conscription. Shoemaker William Fuller enlisted in August 1861, just four months after Ft. Sumter, and was killed a year later at the Second Battle of Bull Run in Virginia. In letters sent to Charles C. Greenwood, the town’s soldiers’ agent, he wrote: “I am here liveing a soldiers life waiting to do my duty whenever and wherever I am called to do it ready to stand by those principles wich I have voted for even unto death that those that come after may enjoy the blessings of Liberty Fredom Free Speech… I am confident that the closeing up of this war will be the end of Slavery Yes let the word Emancipation go forth and I think it would not take long to settle the question… I am ready to stand by it to the last Yes Liberty and Freedom to all is the right way and the only safe way to settle the war.”

So what have we learned? Like every town, our history shows events to be proud of and events that shame us. And the present? That’s up to us now. With all due deference to my friend George Kuhn Clarke – our town’s history is more than just the official records. It is rich with hopes, aspirations, and relationships good and bad. Luckily for me, it is also rich with stories.

Gloria Polizzotti Greis is the Executive Director of the Needham History Center & Museum. For more information, please see their website at www.needhamhistory.org.