Elizabeth Freeman’s Revolutionary War veterans
Many people have read at one time or another about Elizabeth Freeman, known earlier as Mum Bett or Mumbet. She brought one of two lawsuits widely credited with ending slavery in Massachusetts in 1781 -- although it actually took a little longer for the legal arguments to take full effect. The Massachusetts Court of Common Pleas accepted her and her attorney's argument that the post-revolutionary state constitution had rendered slavery untenable. But it did not instantly free every enslaved person in the state.
What is less well known is that her first husband died serving in the Continental Army at the Battle of Saratoga, and her second husband, Jacob Burghardt, was a veteran who survived his Revolutionary War service. Jacob's son, Othello, by his first marriage to a woman known only as Violet, was the maternal grandfather of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois.
No published source provides the name of Elizabeth's first husband. He may have enlisted in Colonel John Ashley's 1st Berkshire County Militia Regiment, which was sent to Fort Edward in upstate New York in July 1777, and then in September reinforced the Continental Army for the Saratoga Campaign under General Horatio Gates. They served in the brigade of General John Patterson, who began the war as colonel of an early Berkshire County regiment, one of the elite units designated as Minute Men. Patterson's original regiment, with about 496 soldiers, was transferred to the Continental Army 15 June 1775. Patterson fought at Bunker Hill, the invasion of Canada, and the crossing of the Delaware to attack British and Hessian forces in Trenton Christmas Eve 1776.
Battle of Saratoga
Freeman’s first husband was killed in action during the first battle that forced an entire British army to surrender to Continental forces.
For private soldiers, who seldom kept diaries, the history of the regiment is often the only way to know where they were. Colonel Ashley, of course, was Elizabeth's owner-of-record. Her husband was not part of the Ashley household, but lived nearby. Ashley was the husband of a short-tempered woman named Annetje Hogeboom, who brought to the marriage a number of slaves owned by her family. One of these was a young woman called Bett, a dimunitive for Elizabeth.
According to some biographical accounts, patriarchy served Bett well, because Colonel Ashley was a reasonable man who recognized skill and ability in his servants, slave or free, and treated them with some courtesy. He exercised some restraint on his wife, although she gave free reign to her short temper when he was away. He did nonetheless fight hard in court to retain ownership of his enslaved property.
Ashley was also on a committee with Samuel Adams, Ethan Allen, and others that met to draft a Declaration of Grievances to King George in 1773 -- two years before open hostilities against British troops. Ethan Allen led the Green Mountain Boys in Vermont, where slavery had been prohibited since the first settlement of the area -- including two families of African descent.
The father of Elizabeth's second husband Jacob was named Tom. He was born in Africa and sold in the 1730s to one Coenraet Borghghardt, a man of Dutch ancestry who was among the first to move up the Hudson River valley and settle near what is now Great Barrington, Massachusetts. In October of 1780, Tom Burghardt served in a militia company commanded by Captain John Ashley. Most likely, he secured his subsequent freedom in return for his military service, dying six years after the cause of American independence triumphed at the Battle of Yorktown. The details of Jacob's military service have not been identified.
Anyone with additional information, with verifiable sources, is invited to comment, and may be invited to post.