A venerable Deerfield resident and town historian, George Sheldon’s (1818-1916) earliest memories included Cato, who had once been enslaved by the Reverend Jonathan Ashley. Realizing that slavery was part of the town’s history, Sheldon knew of “no reason…why we should not face the facts relating to it, found in church and town records, and old family manuscripts.” His 1893 “Essay on Negro Slavery” did just that, drawing on unpublished sources ranging from bills of sale, account books, and legal records, to the oral history of a woman kidnapped from her family in Africa when she was twelve years old.

After learning about the same Cato that George Sheldon knew as a boy, retired Amherst College physics professor Robert Romer continued to research the history of enslaved people in Deerfield. He dedicated his 2009 book, Slavery in the Connecticut Valley of Massachusetts to Cato’s mother, Jenny. Romer’s passion for the topic led to the construction of the first map of Old Deerfield’s main street devoted to identifying sites where enslaved people lived and worked.