OLD LYME–Ten small brass plaques installed Friday morning on the Sill Lane Green are there to fill holes left by untold stories.
Cesar was about 15-years-old when he was purchased for 80 pounds by Reynold Marvin Jr. in 1730. Zacheus Still, born enslaved to Richard Lord Jr. in 1726, served in the French and Indian War and the American Revolution. A 26-year-old known to history only as ‘Negro Woman’ was recorded as being healthy and “capable at housework” when she was sold in 1802 by Enoch Lord Jr.
The information was culled from scant references in land records, emancipation certificates, and other primary sources, according to the Witness Stones Old Lyme organization that for five years has been working to unearth the town’s history of enslavement.
The group on Friday held its fifth installation ceremony on the grounds of the Old Lyme Phoebe Griffin Noyes Library. The Sill Lane Witness Stones join 50 others laid in Lyme and Old Lyme since the organization began in 2020 as an offshoot of the wider Connecticut-based Witness Stones initiative.
The local group marks sites of enslavement and engages students in telling the stories behind the stones.
Witness Stones Old Lyme Chairwoman Carolyn Wakeman said the ceremony would be the last of its kind as the sun sets on the five-year-project.
“Together, we have restored missing history,” she said.
Wakeman described the map of Witness Stones as a wide circle extending from Lyme Street, past the Lower Town Green to McCurdy Road, south to the Black Hall section of town, north to Lyme and the East Lyme border, and back to Lyme Street’s northern end at the Sill Lane Green.
The 12 most recent installations were located on Sill Lane and at the Florence Griswold Museum.
“Even though we could easily place another 60 plaques to commemorate additional enslaved persons, the Witness Stones website will continue to provide new information about local enslavement, and middle school students will continue in the years ahead to engage with the Witness Stones curriculum and to focus on primary documents in the history of our town,” she said.
Kate Rushin, a poet and Connecticut College professor, read her poem “Fishing for Shad” as one of four artists selected to remember in verse people enslaved on Lyme Street.
Rushin, along with Antoinette Brim-Bell, Marilyn Nelson and Rhonda Ward, are the Witness Stones Old Lyme poets. The group received a Health Improvement Collaborative of Southeastern Connecticut (HIC) Partnership Grant for Racial Equity.
Rushin wrote the poem from the perspective of Jack Howard. He was born enslaved to Samuel Mather Jr. in 1795 and willed to Mather’s son James in 1809.
She said she used Wakeman’s research, her own understanding of others, and her experiences to imagine how she might feel if she were the enslaved child.
“I don’t know where I belong/but I know I don’t belong here,” she wrote in the poem’s opening lines.
Rushin is also the author of Meditations on Generations, written for Jane. Born enslaved to Joseph Peck Jr. in 1726, Jane was sold for 25 pounds at the age of 3. No more information about her has been discovered.
“I’ll remember you, Jane,” she wrote in the poem’s final lines. “You were here./I will honor you, respect you;/hold you in my words.”
The poet, who identified herself as the great-granddaughter of an enslaved woman and the free man who released her from bondage, grew up in the first incorporated African-American town in New Jersey.
“This project is very personal to me, as it is to the other Witness Stones poets,” she said.
Eight Lyme-Old Lyme Middle School students followed Rushin with their own poems honoring those whose plaques were laid Friday.
Michelle Dean, curriculum director for the Lyme-Old Lyme Schools, described the five-year collaboration between Witness Stones Old Lyme and the schools as a shared commitment to telling the stories of “those whose voices for far too long have gone unheard.”
She said historical documents allowed students to confront complex truths and explore diverse perspectives that shaped the history of Lyme and Old Lyme.
“If our past is indeed our greatest teacher, then let it teach us this: We each have the capacity to honor others with dignity and respect,” she said. “Let us honor the past and our future by choosing humanity every day.”
Editor’s Note: This article was updated with the most recent Witness Stones Old Lyme map and to correct Wakeman’s name in one reference.