African American: “Is this where Titus lived?”

Is this the house where Titus lived? The Arms homestead where Titus was enslaved by Daniel Arms, Jr. was built around 1720 and demolished in 1853. This drawing, published in The Life of a New England Boy (1896), is based on the artist’s memory of how the property looked over 75 years after Titus walked its grounds. The renovation and rebuilding activity on the Arms house lot highlights the challenges of offering an accurate view of the places where Titus and other enslaved Deerfield residents lived. Many structures now standing on slavery sites post-date the lives of those once enslaved there. The few existing structures dating to their presence have been altered, renovated and restored. Despite these changes in the built environment, surviving evidence in the form of account books, wills, inventories and other sources informs and reminds us that Titus and dozens of other enslaved people lived on Deerfield’s village street in the 17th and 18th centuries.

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TopicAfrican American, Black Life