Servitude took many forms in colonial America, including Massachusetts. Indentured servants whose contracts could be bought and sold, apprentices bound to labor for their masters for a set term, and enslaved people (sometimes referred to as “servants for life”) were common sights in fields, shops, and houses throughout British North America. By the mid-18th century, over a third of the households on Deerfield’s mile-long main street included at least one enslaved person. The prominent Williams family enslaved over a dozen people in this period, several of whom were baptized by Deerfield ministers whose own households included enslaved people.

Community webs of interaction and economic relationships ensured that Deerfield’s free and enslaved residents crossed paths daily. Free men, women, and children were tended by the same physicians, shopped in the same stores, and worshipped at the same meeting house as enslaved people. Lucy Terry and Caesar became members of the Deerfield Church while enslaved by Ebenezer Wells and his wife Abigail. Meseck, enslaved by Abigail and Ebenezer Hinsdale, assisted Ebenezer in the operation of trading posts in Deerfield and Hinsdale, New Hampshire. The account book of Daniel Arms, Jr. documents the many occasions when other Deerfielders paid Arms for Titus’s labor, a man enslaved in the Arms household for 14 years. Humphry was one of many enslaved Deerfield residents who were both treated by and who labored for Dr. Thomas Williams. Dr. Williams, in common with many other professional men, was also an enslaver. ‘Umphry,’ who bought three pipes at Elijah Williams’ store, was among approximately eighteen enslaved and free Blacks who had accounts there in the mid-1700s.