Who Was Caesar Robbins and Why Is His House So Special?
Posted on | April 21, 2010 | No Comments
by Faith Ferguson for the Drinking Gourd Project
Concord’s Untold Revolution: A Series from the Drinking Gourd Project, dedicated to preserving the Caesar Robbins house as an educational center for the untold stories of Concord’s early Africans, Abolitionists & other civil liberties advocates
We can’t know what Caesar Robbins thought or felt as he worked fortifying Dorchester Heights for the cannon that Henry Knox led back from Ticonderoga in early spring of 1776. But we know he was there, working as a soldier, a patriot of the American Revolution, because we have his enlistment record. And yet fighting for freedom from Great Britain, Robbins was enslaved by Simon Hunt of Concord.
By 1783, slavery was formally ended in Massachusetts and Caesar Robbins built himself a house.
Caesar Robbins House, Concord, MA
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Caesar Robbins House Cellar Beam (courtesy Steve Moga)
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It is a small house-a humble house even. But the history it represents is anything but humble, and the people who lived in that house made and inspired tremendous contributions to Concord and beyond. Who were these people? Who was Caesar Robbins and why is his house so special?
Caesar Robbins was a kind of patriarch of Concord’s colonial African community. He was the only African citizen of Concord listed as a landowner in the 1798 Direct Tax enumeration, listing all the property owners in Concord at the very beginning of our country. His extended family is connected to many of the other families of African descent, and his tenacity and endurance in providing a homesite for them is truly remarkable
Robbins was born around 1746; we don’t know if he was born in Concord, in Africa, or elsewhere. In 1769 he married Phillis, who was owned by Phebe Bliss Emerson, and her husband Concord’s Rev. William Emerson. Caesar and Phillis soon had a daughter, also named Phillis. Little Phillis remained a slave in the household of the Rev. Emerson; he included a note to her in a letter from Ticonderoga, “tell Phillis to be a good girl.”
Since Phillis’s mother died in about 1771, and her father Caesar was enslaved and working for the Hunts, little Phillis was mostly raised by Cate, another slave in the Bliss-Emerson household, and her husband Boston (who was owned by Samuel Potter.) 1n 1795, little Phillis married Cato Ingraham, a slave of Duncan Ingraham. When they freed themselves from Ingraham, they lived near Walden Woods in deep poverty.
Caesar Robbins remarried twice, first to Catherine, then to Rose. He had an extensive family, who occupied his house for six continuous generations. They included a daughter who became a dressmaker in Providence RI, and another daughter Susan, who married Jack Garrison, a self-emancipated slave from New Jersey. Their son John Garrison worked as a farm laborer-he worked for more than 30 years for the Ripley family at the Old Manse, and worked alongside Henry Thoreau on the famous Wedding Garden for the Hawthornes.
John married a Susan as well-this Susan Garrison was deeply involved in the Abolition work of Concord’s Female Anti Slavery Society. The society met at least once at her house (Grandfather-in-law Caesar Robbins house, too) where she served delicious cookies. The interior of the modest house retains some architectural details of the early 19th century, like a hand-molded chair-rail, that tell us that the residents sought a level of dignity and gentility in their daily lives beyond mere subsistence. Such a parlor would have made a suitable room for the ladies of the Society. (And Society member Martha Prescott said in her diary that she thought Susan Garrison had more sense than most of the well-born ladies in Concord.)
These few glimpses of the residents of the Caesar Robbins house barely skim the surface of what we know about their lives, of the magnitude of their contributions to Concord’s history, and the great epic sweep of the nation’s history as well. We know of near neighbors who also served in the Revolution, and fought in Massachusetts’ fabled 54th with Robert Gould Shaw; of friends who made significant agricultural innovations; of family members who inspired poetry and more from Concord’s sages, Thoreau and Emerson; and Peter Hutchinson, family member who was the first Concordian of African descent to vote in Concord..
This humble house is a link and a witness to some of the most important and real history that we have. It is the only standing house built by an early African resident of Concord. It in, we have been given a unique gift: the opportunity to create a center where we can teach these stories to our youth and the visitors from across the US and the Globe who come to Concord each year.
The Drinking Gourd Project, along with many town historic organizations, is working to restore the Robbins house for use as a civil liberties educational center. You can help by coming to April Town Meeting and voting YES on article 35 for CPC funding approval and article 36 to lease land next to the North Bridge parking lot as the new location for the Robbins House Educational Center. For further information, please see www.drinkinggourdproject.org.