Derby Historical Society Celebrates Black History Month by Highlighting Quash and Rosewell Freeman

Black history is everyone's history. We celebrate Black History Month by remembering accomplishments that helped shape our Nation by Black individuals and their contribution to our communities. Included in that narrative are the realities that history records, whether dark and shameful or worthy of celebrating - the events of the past influenced the path that led to today. 

This is an interpretation by The Hartford Black History Project of Black Governors

The Derby Historical Society is highlighting Quash and Roswell Freeman. Father and son, both men went on to become Derby’s first and third Black Governors, the latter serving three terms. This was an office that began in the northeast in 1755, and in Derby, 55-years later, that officer would be held by Quash. Indeed, Connecticut would need to come a long way before satisfying the duty to abolish slavery, which in Derby still existed until 1840, one-year after the Amistad Rebellion, eight-years prior to the State ending slavery as a whole, and 56-years after Connecticut passed gradual emancipation laws. The context and significance of the date here must be understood and these revolutionary individuals are thus remembered. 

What a powerful story it is to share - Quash who was born in Ghana, was captured and sold into slavery, traveled the Middle Passage, and received his freedom in Derby to then become Derby's first Black Governor. There is much discourse that we could have on the institutions that appointed them or the reasons behind the Governorship.

An anecdote that Orcutt (1880) shares about Quash describes that, "He [Quash Freeman] was a man of herculean strength, a giant six-footer, and it is said of him that he could take a bull by the horns and the nose and at once prostrate him to the ground. No one ever dared to molest or tried to make him afraid, and when he was approaching from a distance he awakened the sense of a coming thunder cloud... Physically speaking. Quash was probably the strongest and largest man that ever shared the gubernatorial honors of this commonwealth." At the time of the Rev. War/Pork Hollow incident, when Quash was still a slave, he was Isaac Smith Sr.'s personal bodyguard.

Below is a listing of CT’s Black Governors, courtesy of The Hartford Black History Project - you will notice that Jubal, Nelson, and Wilson Weston were Humphreysville Governors. Horace Weston, whose father was Nelson, was regarded as the world's best banjo player in the 1880s (Raechel Guest, 2018). 

Name	Location	Approximate date
Quash Freeman	Derby	1810
Tobias	Derby	1815
Roswell Freeman	Derby	1830-1835
Eben Tobias	Derby	1840-1845
Caesar	Durham	1800
Peter Freeman	Farmington	1780
William Lanson	New Haven	1825
Quash Piere	New Haven	1832
Thomas Johnson	New Haven	1833-1837
Boston Trowtrow	Norwich	1770
Sam Huntington	Norwich	1772-1800
Jubal Weston	Seymour	1825
Nelson Weston	Seymour	1850
Wilson Weston	Seymour	1855
London	Wethersfield	1760
Cuff	Woodbridge	1840

The Derby Historical Society is located on 37 Elm Street in Ansonia. It was founded in 1946 to serve the Naugatuck Valley towns of Ansonia, Derby, Oxford, Seymour, and Shelton. For more information visit their website.